Lewis Tappan

Think you your planting nobility will ever grant freedom to their serfs, from sentiments of piety or patriotism?

And from what quarter do you look for redemption?

Ignorance, vice, idleness, lawless violence, dread of insurrection, anarchy, and a haughty and vindictive aristocracy will all combine with augmented energy in crushing you to the earth.

And what, fellow-citizens, will be the condition of such of you as shall then remain in the slave States?

But while the white population of the South will be thus diminished, its number of slaves will be increased by the addition of the stock from the breeding States.

When it shall be found no longer profitable to raise slaves for the market, the stock on hand will be driven South and sold for what it may fetch, and free labor substituted in its place.

The cotton cultivation in the East Indies, by cheapening the article, will close the markets in the South, and thus it guarantees the abolition of slavery in the breeding States.

In these States slave labor is unprofitable, and the bondman is of but little value, save as an article of exportation.

But these markets are already glutted, and human flesh has fallen in value from 50 to 75 per cent.

And remember, we pray you, that the number and physical strength of the negroes will increase in a much greater ratio than that of their masters.

Think you that the majority of the PEOPLE in the cotton States, cheered and encouraged as they will be by the sympathy of the world, and the example of the West Indies, will forever tamely submit to be beasts of burden for a few lordly…

And think you that this is the country, and this the age, in which the republican maxim that the MAJORITY must govern, can be long and barbarously reversed?