nts on both
sides. This produced great excitement among the whites, and the two
parties armed against each other, and horrible massacres and
conflagrations followed. Then the Assembly rescinded this last decree,
and like results followed, the blacks being the exasperated parties and
the aggressors. Then the decree giving citizenship to the blacks was
restored, and commissioners were sent out to keep the peace. The
commissioners, unable to sustain themselves, between the two parties,
with the troops they had, issued a proclamation that all blacks who were
willing to range themselves under the banner of the Republic should be
free. As a result a very large proportion of the blacks became in fact
free. In 1794, the Conventional Assembly _abolished slavery_ throughout
the French Colonies. Some years afterward, the French Government sought,
with an army of 60,000 men, to reinstate slavery, but were unsuccessful,
and then the white planters were driven from the Island.]

[Footnote 32:--_Vide_ Jefferson's Autobiography, commenced January 6th,
1821. JEFFERSON'S _Works_, vol. 1, p. 49.]

[Footnote 33:--"I am not ashamed or afraid publicly to avow that the
election of William H. Seward or Salmon P. Chase, or any such
representative of the Republican party, upon a sectional platform, ought
to be resisted to the disruption of every tie that binds this
Confederacy together. (Applause on the Democratic side of the House.)"
_Mr. Curry, of Alabama, in the House of Representatives_.

"Just so sure as the Republican party succeed in electing a sectional
man, upon their sectional, anti-slavery platform, breathing destruction
and death to the rights of my people, just so sure, in my judgment, the
time will have come when the South must and will take an unmistakable
and decided action, and then he who dallies is a dastard, and he who
doubts is damned! I need not tell what I, a Southern man, will do. I
think I may safely speak for the masses of the people of Georgia--that
when that event happens, they, in my judgment, will consider it an overt
act, a declaration of war, and meet immediately in convention, to take
into consideration the mode and measure of redress. That is my position;
and if that be treason to the Government, make the most of it."--_Mr.
Gartell, of Georgia, in the House of Representatives_.

"I said to my constituents, and to the people of the capital of my
State, on my way here, if such an event did occur," [_i.e._, the