uth American brethren from political
thralldom? It is; and has all its fervor in favor of liberty been
exhausted upon foreign countries, so as not to leave a single whisper
in favor of three millions of men in our own country, now groaning
under the most galling oppression the world ever saw? No, sir. Sordid
interest rules the hour. Men are made property, and paper is made
money, and the Senator, no doubt, sees in these two peculiar
institutions a power which, if united, will be able to accomplish all
his wishes. He informs us that some have computed the slaves to be
worth the average amount of five hundred dollars each. He will
estimate within bounds at four hundred dollars each. Making the amount
twelve hundred millions of dollars' worth of slave property. I heard
this statement, Mr. President, with emotions of the deepest feeling.
By what rule of political or commercial arithmetic does the Senator
calculate the amount of property in human beings? Can it be fancy or
fact, that I hear such calculation, that the people of the United
States own twelve hundred millions' (double the amount of all the
specie in the world) worth of property in human flesh! And this
property is owned, the gentleman informs us, by all classes of
society, forming part of all our contracts within our own country and
in Europe. I should have been glad, sir, to have been spared the
hearing of a declaration of this kind, especially from the high source
and the place from which it emanated. But the assertion has gone forth
that we have twelve hundred millions of slave property at the South;
and can any man so close his understanding here as not plainly to
perceive that the power of this vast amount of property at the South
is now uniting itself to the banking power of the North, in order to
govern the destinies of this country. Six hundred millions of banking
capital is to be brought into this coalition, and the slave power and
the bank power are thus to unite in order to break down the present
administration. There can be no mistake, as I believe, in this matter.
The aristocracy of the North, who, by the power of a corrupt banking
system, and the aristocracy of the South, by the power of the slave
system, both fattening upon the labor of others, are now about to
unite in order to make the reign of each perpetual. Is there an
independent American to be found, who will become the recreant slave
to such an unholy combination? Is this another compromise