The Gospel of Slavery

From 1789 to the outbreak of the Rebellion, Slaveholders occupied the Presidential chair for 48 years, and Northern sympathizers with Slavery for 12 years more – leaving only 12 years for Freedom-proclivities in the President. Although greatly outnumbered by the North, the South almost uniformly ruled in Congress. Not getting all it demanded, the Tariff was made a pretext for secession. "The next pretext," said Jackson, "will be the Negro or Slavery question."

P Stands for Principle. Policy fain
Would measure all deeds by the loss or the gain,
While Principle never finds aught to consult.
But conscience and duty, whate'er the result.
In slaveholding policy, all that you win
May fitly be reckoned the wages of sin,
And what has been earned by the master or thrall,
Is never withheld by the Ruler of All.
Perhaps you will learn, when the payment is due,
That a deed which is wrong is impolitic too.

In 1786 Washington expressed his determination never to "possess another slave by purchase." Avowed in 1794 that he held slaves "very reluctantly to his own feelings." By will emancipated all he held, making provision for the support of the aged and infirm, and for the education of the young – and most solemnly enjoined his executors to see that his instructions were religiously fulfilled. According to the Slavery propagandists of this age of grace, all this was fundamentally wrong!

Q Stands for Query. Inquisitive thought
May lead to conclusions not anxiously sought.
Suppose of Quadroon we a moment should think,
With one side of ancestry sable as ink,
The other side claiming complexion as fair
As fatherly planters most commonly wear:
The child of her Master, a Slave-daughter still,
Must bow to the law of his sensual will;
And when he shall sell her, (perhaps very soon)
The Query may follow the chattel Quadroon.

The cry of "amalgamation" as the result of the abolition of Slavery, comes with a very ill grace from Southerners. How many nearly-white children have been sent to the North for an education, or to hide their negro-blood? How many such have been manumitted, to guard against their continuance in bondage by any mishap? How many Quadroons have been sold voluntarily or brought to the block by the pecuniary embarrassments of their father-masters?

R Stands for Rebel. The Colonies rose
Against the stern sway of tyrannical foes,
But Washington, Jefferson, all were ignored,
When Southerners lifted the sceptre and sword,
And Slavery lust to Rebellion gave birth
Against the best government known in the earth.
Did Rebeldom look to the shame and the cost
Of seeking by war the control they had lost?
Or know they how ages will reckon the guilt
Of a Temple of Freedom on Slavery built?

"The foundations of our new government are laid, its cornerstone rests upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man… This, our new government, is the first in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical and moral truth… This stone which was rejected by the first builders, is become the chief stone of the corner in our new edifice… Our Confederacy is a God-sent missionary to the nations." —Alexander H. Stephens.

S Stands for Slavery. Nations of old
Made bondmen by warfare, or bought them with gold;
And if to the Jews you incline to go back,
No special enslavement you find of the black.
But "might is not right," as in piracy scenes,
Else why do you censure the stern Algerines?
Or what if in Congo a thousand white men
Were Slaves, wholly hopeless of freedom again, —
Would bishops and priests of the Slavery line,
Quote Bible to prove it both right and divine?

"Slavery and the Slave Trade pervaded every nation of civilized antiquity…The founder of the Jewish nation was a Slaveholder… Greeks enslaved each other…The Slave-markets of Rome were filled with men of every complexion and every clime…It is from about the year 990 that regular accounts of the Negro Slave-trade exist." —Bancroft's United States, i. 159. Any Bible argument for Slavery must therefore except the black, if any color is to be excepted!

T Stands for Trader. To call him a brute
Would slander creation, beyond a dispute.
The Planter will mingle and socially dine
With dealers in cotton, and cattle, and swine,
But Slave-driving Traders (with common accord)
By Slave-holding gentry are shunned and abhorred!
Does conscience, with scruples of right, intervene
Concerning a business repugnantly mean?
Yet whoso shall doubt, may the difference tell:
What we rightfully buy, we may honestly sell.

The world moves, slowly it may be, but surely. Russia abolished Serfdom by an imperial decree, and our Republic is cutting a tangled knot by the edge of the sword. The loathing with which the Slave Trader has long been regarded, even in the South, was the index-finger of the hand of God. It is now a voice sounding in the darkness as a prophecy of coming day. Will not angels join the chorus of welcome? May the good Lord hasten the hour of deliverance.

U Stands for Union. The Federal law
Into true common weal would the Colonies draw,
And States, that might else into anarchy run,
Were banded and leagued, indivisibly one —
And a Nation was born, with the rallying call,
"The Stars-and-Stripes Banner that waves over all!"
Secession may rage, and the kingdoms afar
May shout the brief wrath of a fiery star,
But E Pluribus Unum shall evermore be
The motto and law of the land of the free!

"I must declare here, as I have often done before, and which has been repeated by the greatest and wisest of statesmen and patriots in this and other lands, that it [the United States] is the best and freest government, the most equal in its rights, the most just in its decisions, the most lenient in its measures, and the most aspiring in its principles to elevate the race of man, that the sun ever shone upon." —Alexander H. Stephens, in Georgia Convention, Jan. 1, 1661.

V Stands for Victory. Villainy long,
"The sum of all villainies," prospered in wrong;
But when it uplifted the bloody red hand,
The verdict was sealed of its doom in the land.
Poor whites, in the South by aristocrats bowed,
And millions of bondmen are crying aloud;
And Freedom's renown, and Humanity's need,
Alike for a Liberty-Victory plead;
And triumph and peace shall thro' righteousness come,
When Slavery dies and its pleaders are dumb.

Even when Fort Sumter was environed by threatening Rebel batteries, there was a spirit of compromise in all the land; but the first gun aimed at the Flag of Liberty was "the beginning of the end" of Slavery, The Star Spangled Banner of our fathers, that had long floated in honor and triumph, was trodden down and trailed in the dust by miscreant-traitors; and it must yet be vindicated and exalted in righteousness, though it be through blood and fire.

W Stands for Woman. In Slavery-life,
Full many are mothers, but no one is wife
For decency's sake, form of wedding there is,
But the parties are claimed by the master as his;
And the children are sold, and the father is sold
To this or that trader, "to have and to hold"
And the woman is whipped, for the motherly moan