Southern Convention at Vicksburg, Part 2 [pp. 205-220]

SPEECH OF MR. SPRATT) OF SOUTH CAROLINA, 213
ties, without the rupture of relations that are still fondly cherished, without im bruing her hand in the blood of kindred, it must be in the way that we propose;
it must be by giving play to the elements of her system-by permitting of the
subject race enough tQ meet her requisitions-by giving her thus a path to polit ical power, and through political power to the security of her rights But, with- I
out this, t here is no power on earth to save this Union, and if there were there is
no conceivable calamity so dreadful as its preservation.
If slavery stand, as it must stand-for it is too abundant of blessings and too
prodigal of promise to be given up-it must start from its repose, it must take the
moral strength of an aggressive attitude. Though strong-strong as a tempest
slumbering, with latent energies of infliction and endurance to meet the world in
arms-it is still unsafe, unless those energies are called to action. The passive
subject of foreign sentiment, it has lain too long already. It was thus that slavery fell in Domingo and Jamaica. It is thus that it may fall in Cuba, and here,
also, for here already the toils are thrown around it. It is proscribed and reprobated-its foreign sources of support are cut away from it-the reins of its government are held by other hands than its own. Its own property is used to corrupt
its own people. Men, diffident of its endurance, move away from it. Its pious
people are instructed to deplore it. Its women and children are taught to turn
against it. Its friends, who speak for its integrity, and who claim the means to
its extension, are looked upon as agitators, and I now, who speak truly what I
believe for its advancement, and the advancement of humanity-in which, under
heaven, I believe it to be the most potent agent this world has ever seen-am
sure that scarce a womnan's heart in all this land responds to what I say, or that,
from the pious and pure, whom most I wish to please-if to please them were
consistent with my duty-will raise one praver for the measure we propose.
These things being so, it is time that slavery should be raised to a consciousness
of responsibility for its own preservation; that it should be an actor in the drama
of its own fate; that it should speak for itself upon this great question. It never
yet has spoken. The world speaks of slavery, the North speaks of slavery, we
speak of slavery as a thing apart from us: but slavery never yet has spoken, and
it is time that it should speak. WVhen it does, its first utterance will be: "We
must be free-free to expand according to our own nature-free of the touch of
any hostile hand upon us. We are right in that existence which it has pleased
Almighty God to give us, and we can admit no declaration of a wrong in the
means to our advancement!"
Mr. Speaker, we have been elected here at the South to a fearfully momentous trust. It is a trust of moment to have liberty and hopes at stake, with the
hand of a power already stretched to grasp them. But there is a trust, for time
and man, of even greater moment. It is the precept of human experience that
equals must be equal, and that political distinctions, therefore, must yield to that
necessity. But it is the precept, also, that to power and progress there must be
separate orders in the State; and to us, the first in human history, has been committed a society combining these conditions. There has been equality in France.
but despotism is the welcome refuge from its enormities; there were slaves in
Greece and Rome, but they were the natural equals of their masters, and the relation, therefore, was forced and transitory; but here there is a perfect compliance
with the requisition-there is, among equals, equality the most perfect, and there
are" orders that can never merge; and in this, the Eternal Ruler of the world
has committed to us a sacred social trust, which we are under the most sacred obligations to transmit to other ages. To that transmission we are committed by
the highest sanctions that were ever incumbent upon any people. If we do so
act we shall find, as our reward, a career of greatness and of glory, more extended than was ever opened to the hopes of man. If we do not-if we bend in the
execution of that trust, to the requisitions of another people, not so charged with
that responsibility, and so fail, we shall leave to our land and our posterity a heritage of calamity and crime the darkest that ever fell to any people. States
have been subjugated, and Rome was plundered by barbarians, yet carnage ended
with resistance; but here, with subjugation comes a war of races, hand to hand,
that will not end while a remnant of the weaker race remains. In view of these