Slavery might be wrong, that was one thing; it
might cut into the rights, first or last, of the free worker; but if the
negro was owned in body and in energy, and his labor taken for nothing,
except the food, shelter, and clothing required to keep him efficient,
was that anything but just a matter of degree from the case of the white
man who was paid so much a day, enough to give him food, shelter, and
clothing, and thus keep him a fit machine? Thus there was a moral
sympathy between the white workers and the black workers; all were
making money for an upper man. If it was wrong to appropriate all the
black man's labor, it was wrong to appropriate too much of the white
man's labor. The Declaration of Independence was a hard nut to crack.
While only a few hare-brained agitators wanted negro equality, even
Douglas did not like slavery.
The new lands of the West brought fresh troubles to Douglas and
desperate struggles to the South. The emigration of revolutionaries from
Europe added to the enemies of the slave system. It was hard for them to
understand that the Declaration of Independence did not include the
negro.
This was the state of affairs in the campaign of 1848. The Democrats had
nominated Mr. Cass, of Michigan, for President, and presented him to the
people on a platform which placed the responsibility for the Mexican War
upon the aggressions of Mexico; it congratulated the American soldiers
of that war for having crowned themselves with imperishable glory; it
tendered to the Republic of France fraternal salutations upon the
success of republican principles, upon the recognition by the French of
the inherent right of the people in their sovereign capacity to make and
amend their forms of government.
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