University of Virginia Library

Lydia Maria Child.
The Rebel Faulkner.

This gentleman is now a prisoner at Fort Warren; having taken
up arms against the U.S. for the purpose of establishing a
government avowedly based on Slavery, and for the sake
of with the explicit avowal that Slavery shall be introduced
and sustained all over the continent. To judge how he has
fallen, it is only necessary to read his own description of the
baneful effects of Slavery.

In the winter of 1831-2, Mr. Faulkner said, in the Legisla-
-ture of Virginia: "Sir, I am gratified to perceive that no gentle-
-man has yet risen in this Hall the avowed advocate of Slavery.
The day has gone by, when such a voice could be listened to with
patience, or even with forbearance. I even regret, sir, that we should
find one among us who enters the lists as its apologist, except on
the ground of uncontrollable necessity. If there be one who concurs
with the gentleman from Brunswick [Mr. Gholson] in the harmless
character of this institution, let me request him to compare the
condition of the slaveholding portion of this Commonwealth,
barren, desolate, and seared, as it were, by the avenging hand
of Heaven, with the descriptions which we have of this same
country from those who first broke its virgin soil. To what
is this change ascribable? It is to be ascribed alone to the
withering and blasting effects of Slavery.

If this does not satisfy him, let me request him to extend
his travels to the Northern States of this Union. Let me beg
him to contrast the happiness and contentment which pre-
-vail throughout the country, the busy and cheerful sounds of
industry, the rapid growth of their population, their means and
institutions of education, their skill and proficiency in the
useful arts, their enterprise and public spirit, the monuments
of their commercial and manufacturing industry, and above
all their devoted attachment to the government, from which
they derive protection, with the division, discontent, indolence,
and poverty of the Southern country. To what, sir, is all
this ascribable? To that vice in the organization of society,
by which one half of its inhabitants are arrayed in interest and
feeling against the other half; to that unfortunate state of
(turnover)

society in which freemen regard labor as disgraceful, and
slaves shrink from it as a burden tyrannically imposed upon
them; to that condition of things in which half a million of
your population can feel no sympathy with the society in the
prosperity of which they are forbidden to participate, and no
attachment to a government at whose hands they receive
nothing but injustice.

If the curious, incredulous inquirer should suggest that
this contrast, which is so manifest, might be traced to a
difference of climate, or to other causes, distinct from Slavery,
permit me to refer him to the two States of Kentucky and Ohio.
There is no difference of soil, no diversity of climate, no diversity
in the original settlement of those two States, to account
for the remarkable disproportion in their advancement.
Separated by a river alone, they seem to have been purposely
and providentially designed to exhibit, in their future,
histories, the difference which necessarily results between a
country free from Slavery and a country afflicted with
the curse of Slavery. The same may be said of the two
States of Missouri and Illinois.

Slavery is an institution which presses heavily
against the best interests of the State. It banishes free labor,
it exterminates the mechanic, the artisan,andthe manufacturer.
It converts the energy of a community into indolence,
its power into imbecility, its efficiency into weakness.
Sir, being thus injurious, have we not a right to demand
its extermination? Shall society suffer, that the
slaveholder may continue to gather his vigintial crop of
human flesh? What is his mere pecuniary claim, compared
with the great interests of the common weal? Must the
country languish and die, that the slaveholder may flourish?
Shall all interests be subservient to one? Must all rights
be subordinate to those of the slaveholder? Has not the
mechanic rights? Have not the middle classes rights—
rights which are incompatible with the existence of Slavery?"