James Redpath, The Roving Editor: or, Talks with Slaves in the Southern States.

[vi] down where they stand, and the rights that they have wrested from their slaves, be wrested — if necessary — with bloodshed and violence, with the torch and the rifle, from them.

I am an American-and something more. I think it wrong to give to foreigners the rights that we deny to native-born Americans. I think it wrong and tyrannical for one class of persons — sometimes citizens of foreign birth — to vote for, disfranchise, whip, sell, buy, breed for market, and otherwise degrade the colored natives of our Southern soil. I regard the decision of Judge Taney, and his brethren, as not infamous only, but insulting to our national character. I would extend to all Americans, without distinction of color or creed, the inalienable birthright of whistling Yankee Doodle, and hurrahing, with heart-felt emphasis, on the Fourth of July, and after every presidential election-unless Buchanan is again a successful candidate.

I am an Abolitionist-and something more. I am in favor, not only of abolishing the Curse, but of making reparation for the Crime. Not an Abolitionist only, but a Reparationist. The negroes, I hold, have not merely the inalienable right to be free, but the legal right of compensation for their hitherto unrequited services to the South. I more than agree with the Disunion Abolitionists. They are in favor of a free Northern Republic. So am I. But as to boundary lines we differ. While they would fix the Southern boundary of their free Republic at the dividing line between Ohio and Kentucky, Virginia, and the Keystone State, I would wash it with the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. “But what shall we do with the slaves?” Make free men of them. “And with the slaveholding class?” Abolish them. “And with the Legrees of the plantations?” Them, annihilate! Drive them into the sea, as Christ once drove the swine; or chase them into the dismal swamps and black morasses of the South. “Anywhere — anywhere — out of the world!”