[
118]
slavery question, he expressed the belief that all proposals looking to the return of the negroes to
Africa, or to colonizing them in any other part of the world, would be found to be unsound and impracticable.
He regarded them as destined to remain forever in
America, and either die out in the struggle for existence, or be absorbed through the slow processes of nature in the remote ages of the future, into the ultimate composite human race.
But to return to
Dana's work on the
Tribune. In October, 1852, that journal, resenting the intimation of its Democratic contemporaries, declared:
General Scott is not an abolition candidate.
and no action is to be expected from him looking to the overthrow of slavery.
He is simply a Whig candidate. ...
Earlier in the year it praised
Seward for favoring a subsidy for the
Collins line of transatlantic steamers, and when the election was over and
Scott defeated, it stood by the antislavery
Senator as against the coalition of hostile elements for his overthrow.
It adds:
If an antislavery Whig must give up his antislavery or his Whiggery, we choose to part with the latter.
It is to be noted that the custom of signing editorials in the
Tribune with the initials of the writer having ceased, at least for the time being, it becomes henceforth more difficult if not impossible to say with certainty who wrote this or that article, but from the known opinions of the two principal editors, it may be safely assumed that they stood absolutely as one on all the great issues of the year.
But on November 12th an article appeared which was probably written by
Dana, and as it shows a distinct step forward in his social and economic views, I give it as follows:
