[62] first page of next paper, I wish him to put the extracts from McDuffie's Message1 and those of the other governors which accompany this. They form one complete picture.
Amos A. Phelps to W. L. Garrison, at Brooklyn.Farmington, Conn., December 10, 1835.2 I regretted exceedingly that I did not find you in Boston the other day, on several accounts. . . . And first, in reference to Dr. Channing's book. You have doubtless seen it before this, and very likely have begun to dissect it and to set Dr. C. over against Dr. C. Be this as it may, I hope you will take it in hand and give it a thorough review. Some of our good Unitarian friends, I think, are biassed in their judgment of it by their partialities for the Dr. They need to see the Dr. tested by an impartial and unbiassed pen. And I have another reason for saying the Dr. should be thus reviewed. On my return I called on Dr.
This text is part of:
Amos A. Phelps to W. L. Garrison, at Brooklyn.
1 This message of Governor McDuffie to the Legislature of South Carolina (Lib. 5.198) contained the whole gospel of slavery. Beginning with the pictorial and other incendiary documents sent to South Carolina, which were descanted upon at length with the most extraordinary Southern rhetoric, the Governor designated Thompson as ‘the felon renegado who flees from the justice of his country,’ and declared it to be his deliberate opinion that interference like that of the abolitionists with slavery should be made punishable ‘by death without benefit of clergy,’ and the authors of it regarded as ‘enemies of the human race.’ South Carolina should set the example, and also demand of the North, on grounds of ‘international law,’ that it punish the agitators. Slavery existed by the will of God, Africans being fit for no other condition. Emancipation would be a curse to them: they were better off than English operatives or Irish peasants, were cheerful and contented. Servitude was necessary in every community that had ever existed or should exist; and in another generation the North might be driven to choose between its adoption and anarchy. It superseded the necessity for an order of nobility. If the slaves were freed and made voters, no rational man could live in such a state of society. ‘Domestic slavery, therefore, instead of being a political evil, is the cornerstone of our republican edifice.’ The North should be informed that the South makes no distinction between ultimate and immediate emancipation. As the abolitionists cannot hope to convince slaveholders, they must mean to instigate the North to Federal emancipation, against which the Legislature should protest. Finally, cotton and slavery were inseparable. For the other gubernatorial messages referred to above, see Lib. 5.205: Governor Lumpkin, of Georgia (‘Upon this subject [slavery] we can hear no arguments: our opinions are unalterably fixed’); Governor Swain of North Carolina (the North should suppress abolitionism ‘totally and promptly’); and Governors Wolf, of Pennsylvania, and Vroom, of New Jersey, who deprecate agitation but deny that it can be legally repressed.
2 Ms.
The Century Company. , 1885-1889.
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