This complaint of John C. Calhoun refers to efforts to keep slavery out of the territories and to abolish it in the District of Columbia.
JOHN C. CALHOUN, ADDRESS OF
THE SOUTHERN DELEGATES IN CONGRESS
The leading spokesman of the South, Senator John C. Calhoun,
penned the address which described the calamities that emancipation would bring
on the South.
If the determination avowed by the North to monopolize all the territories, to the exclusion of the South, should be carried into effect, that of itself would, at no distant day, add to the North a sufficient number of States to give her threefourths of the whole; when, under the color of an amendment of the Constitution, she would emancipate our slaves, however opposed it might be to its true intent.
To destroy the existing relation between the free and servile races at the South would lead to consequences unparalleled in history. They cannot be separated, and cannot live together in peace, or harmony, or to their mutual advantage, except in their present relation. Under any other, wretchedness, and misery and desolation would overspread the whole South. The example of the British West Indies, as blighting as emancipation has proved to them, furnishes a very faint picture of the calamities it would bring on the South. . . .
Very different would be the circumstances under which
emancipation would take place with us. If it ever should be effected, it will be
through the agency of the Federal Government, controlled by the dominant power
of the Northern States of the Confederacy, against the resistance and struggle
of the Southern. It can then only be effected by the prostration of the white
race; and that would necessarily engender the bitterest feelings of hostility
between them and the North. But the reverse would be the case between the blacks
of the South and the people of the
North. Owing their emancipation to them, they would regard them as friends, guardians, and patrons, and center, accordingly, all their sympathy in them. The people of the North would not fail to reciprocate and to favor them, instead of the whites. Under the influence of such feelings, and impelled by fanaticism and love of power, they would not stop at emancipation. Another step would be taken-to raise them to a political and social equality with their former owners, by giving them the right of voting and holding public offices under the Federal Government. We see the first step toward it in the bill already alluded to-to vest the free blacks and slaves with the right to vote on the question of emancipation in this District. But when once raised to an equality, they would become the fast political associates of the North, acting and voting with them on all questions, and by this political union between them, holding the white race at the South in complete subjection.
Cralle,, ea., Works, Vl, 308311.