LOYAL PUBLICATION SOCIETY,
863 BROADWAY.
JYo. 28.
THE DEATH OF SLAYERY.
LETTER FROM
PETER COOPER v TO GOVERNOR SEYMOUR.
x ' n ^ \ - \ t % -5 .
His Excellency Horatio Seymour, Governor of the State of
New York ;
My Dear Sir : I thank you for your prompt answer to iny
letter of 8th ult., and for the assurance I received that " we
agree in the end to be realized, the restoration of the Union and
the preservation of the Constitution."
So deeply am I impressed with the absolute necessity of
maintaining the integrity of the Union and the Constitution,
that I desire to see all the powers that God in nature has given
us brought into requisition to save our country from being dis-
severed, and from becoming the sport of foreign and domestic
Saracens. I fear we are in danger of being drawn into error by
men who have no faith in a real democratic form of government-
I mean a government that aims to secure the greatest good to
all the people.
Being a democrat, nearly seventy-three years of age, and hav-
ing served my country in person and by substitute from the com-
mencement of the war with England to its close, I feel that I
have a right to plead with my countrymen of all the shades of
political opinions, and to beseech them by every consideration
that can move our manhood, to look with me at the dangers
which threaten us as a nation.
One of the principal arguments made use of during the last
canvass to induce people to vote the democratic ticket, was the
declaration in their platform and speeches, of the assurance that
by such a vote they would obtain " a more vigorous prosecution
of the war."
Since that time it has become common for those who sympa-
thize with the South to profess great concern about the sover-
eignty of the individual states. Such persons fail to realize how
entirely impossible it would have been for any one individual
state to have gained an independence for itself. It required the
united pow r er and efforts of all the states to win and maintain an
independence of the mother country.
It does now, it always has, and will forever, require the united
powers of all the states, to hold securely the dear-bought treasure
of freedom and independence a treasure that should be the
pride and glory of every American citizen, For men to talk
about the sovereignty of an individual state that never had and
never can have the power to win or maintain its sovereignty, is
to talk of a living body without any animating spirit.
James Madison declared in the convention that formed the
Constitution that " the states never possessed the essential right
of sovereignty. These were always vested in Congress." He
called the states great corporations. The folly of such an as-
sumption of sovereignty was rendered apparent by the first
attempt to form a government out of a league of states. Chan-
cellor Kent assures us that " as soon as the league was ratified
the states began to fail in a prompt and faithful obedience to
its laws, and as danger receded instances of neglect became more
frequent, and by the time of the peace of 1783 the disease of the
government had displayed itself with alarming rapidity. The
delinquencies of one state became the apology for those of
another." He then declares that " the idea of supplying the
pecuniary exigencies of the nation from requisitions on the states
was soon found to be a delusion."
After a great deal had been said in the convention as to the
rights of individual states, President Madison remarks : " I hope
these arguments may convince all of the necessity of a strong
energetic government, which will equally tend to give energy
and protection to the state governments." He adds : " the ob-
ject of the federation is twofold ; first, to maintain the Union
secondly, good government." "It is evident if we do not rad-
ically depart from the federal plan we shall share the fate of
ancient and modern confederacies." Mr. Madison says, " Our
greatest danger is from the encroachments of the states on the
General Government." This apprehension is justly founded
upon the experience of ancient confederacies, and ours is proof
of it. He further says : " Our National Government must oper-
ate for the whole, and the people must have an interest in its
support, But if you make the legislators subject and at the
mercy of state governments, you ruin the fabric," " The weaker
you make your confederacy the greater the danger." He cites
evidences of this truth from the acts of the state governments too
numerous to mention. It was his opinion, expressed at various
times in the convention that framed the Constitution under
which we live, that any thing less than such a yielding up of the
powers of all the individual states, as would make a national
government, would prove a phantom.
We are too apt to forget that the Constitution makes the duly
elected President the commander-in-chief of the army and navy
of the United States, and holds him responsible for an energetic
use of all the powers of the nation, to preserve its interests, its
honor, and its life.
Nothing can be more certain than the fact that every effect,
physical, moral, political, flows from a cause sufficient for its pro-
duction. If the causes that now operate to spread misery, death,
and desolation through the land are within our reach, there is
nothing that can be more important for us than to understand
and remove the causes that endanger all we hold dear.
Some may reply that we must stop the abolitionists from
talking and writing, in order to prevent and remove dangers
from our country ; for these abolitionists are constantly declar-
ing that "these truths are self-evident, that all men are lorn
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain in-
alienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness" These abolitionists even go so far as to
say, "That to secure these rights governments are instituted
among men."
If it has been found impossible to restrain the few active aboli-
tionists who were in the country when the war of rebellion was
commenced, what can we expect to accomplish when, by the
course of events, they have been multiplied one hundred or a
thousand fold ?
Under these circumstances would it not be wise for us to take
a lesson from Mahomet, who, when he found the mountain
would not come to him, thought it best that he should go to
the mountain ?
Others will say that the President's proclamation of freedom
and the Congressional act of confiscation must be withdrawn in
order to remove the cause that continues the war. Such an
opinion is without a shadow of authority from any act or from
any member of the Confederate government.
In opposition to such an opinion I learn direct from Mr.
Dean, the Provost-Marshal of St. Louis, that the proclamation
of freedom has done more to weaken the rebellion than any
other measure that could have been adopted. On his late visit
to my house he informed me, that he had brought on a large
number of rebel officers and men to be exchanged at Fortress
Monroe. During their passage he took the opportunity to ask
the officers in a body what eifect the President's proclamation
of freedom had produced in the South. Their reply was (to
use their own vulgar mode of expression) that " it had played
hell with them." Mr. Dean then asked them how that could
be possible since the negroes cannot read. To which one of
them replied that one of his negroes had told him of the
proclamation five days before he heard it in any other way.
Others said their negroes gave them their first information of
the proclamation. One of these officers then said with a
defiant air that if we would only leave them their corn, their
bacon and their homespun, which their negroes produced, they
would fight us twenty years. We cannot as a people too
sincerely consider that old and worthy saying, that "a house
divided against itself cannot stand."
It is undoubted that the proclamation did more to prevent
foreign interference than all other measures.
Unfortunately for us, the seeds of a conflicting system were soon 1
broadcast through our land by the unyieldingpolicy of the mother
country, acting in concert with mercenary men of our own,
entirely regardless of human rights. Such a system has and
must continue to spread death and desolation through the land,
until we are filled with our own ways, and become sick of our
sins, and are made willing to do unto others as we would that
others should do unto us. Just so long as we employ the power
of the government to maintain, extend and perpetuate an insti-
tution that enables thousands to sell their own children to be
enslaved, with, all their posterity, just so long we must be a house
divided against itself, with ruin staring us in the face. For slavery
must forever be a war in its natural struggles for freedom,
so long as God lights up the love of liberty in the human heart.
The great question for the country is now to be settled by us
whether we will accept a providential interposition that has com-
pelled the government, in the most reluctant self-defence, to de-
clare freedom to all slaves claimed by rebels in arms, as the only
effectual means of saving the nation's life, and thus performing
the highest duty enjoined by the Constitution.
From all that can be gathered from the newspapers of the
South that profess to speak in behalf of the states now in rebel-
lion, we are compelled to believe that their Vice-President was
in earnest when he declared that their intention was to make
slavery the corner-stone of their confederacy. After the fright-
ful loss of life and treasure already brought upon the nation,
these men seem determined to wade through seas of blood in
order to obtain stronger guarantees and additional protection
for an institution which is at war with natural justice and all the
noble instincts of a common humanity. When we are called
upon to listen to the advocates of such a system, we would do
well to bear in mind that men, in the opinion of Dr. Franklin,
are proud, spirited little animals, not fit to be trusted with power.
We should also profit by the warning of k Jefferson, who said,
(when speaking of the enslavement of human beings,) " when I
remember that God is just, I tremble for my country." We, as
a people, may well tremble for our country, when we fail to co-
operate with events which have made the slave- owners of the
South the grandest abolitionists of the nation. The people of
the South, by making war for the destruction of the Union and
Constitution, have made it necessary, right and proper, for the
government to abolish slavery upon the same principle that it
would be right to destroy a city in order to save a nation.
6
It is painful to find so many persons, whom we are compelled
to respect for honesty of purpose, who, we are also compelled to
believe, are as much in error as St. Paul was when he was haul-
ing men, women and children to prison and death. I sincerely
believe that ten years will not pass after the South obtains relief
from the paralyzing and corrupting power of holding Africans
in slavery with so large a portion of their own children in the
same bondage, before they will erect monuments in honor of
their deliverance from so great an evil. This opinion is confirmed
by the actual experience of a gentleman now in this city,
who, after having lived twenty-five years in the South, and hav-
ing constantly employed hundreds of negroes, gives it as his un-
qualified opinion that the South would be enriched by the libera-
tion of its slaves. He says the South has untold wealth within
its reach which it never can obtain while it works men as slaves.
This opinion is further confirmed by one of the largest sugar
planters in the South. This gentleman, since the war was com-
menced, found one morning all his negroes surrounding his house,
when one of them informed him that they had " 'eluded to have
wages after dis." Their master, after some parley, agreed to
give them seven dollars per month, which they accepted and
went to their work. This same master informed Judge "Wood-
ruff, of New Orleans, after getting in his crop, that he had never
got it in so well and so cheaply before.
I believe it will be found that so soon as the South is secured
to freedom, the colored people of the North will rapidly emi-
grate to the South and furnish an abundance of cheap labor of
all kinds.
I have written this long letter because I fear that errors, how-
ever honestly entertained, have been and will continue to be the
means of stimulating the rebels to persevere in their efforts for
our destruction. The sympathy manifested for the rebellion by
men throughout the North, and the constant opposition to the
course adopted by our Administration, may enable the rebels to
draw foreign governments to their aid, and in that way bring
unheard-of suffering upon our country.
I do not know a single man in the whole nation who has the
power to do so much to strengthen the hands of the government
as yourself. Your efforts may prevent foreign interference in
our affairs, and enable our government the sooner to bring the
rebellion to an end. The influence you can exert would do an
immense amount of good by persuading our democratic friends
to give their whole strength to a " more vigorous prosecution of
the war."
I believe it would be the proudest day of your life, if I could
induce you to call on all, without distinction of party, to unite
to conquer the rebellion, relying that all reasonable sympathy
and kindness will be manifested to the people of the South by
the people of the North, when they see that the rebels have laid
down their arms and have shown a determination to become
peaceable citizens of a united country.
I have written these long letters with an inexpressible desire
to do w T hat I can to restore peace and prosperity to our suffering
country a country that, in the course of nature, I shall soon
leave ; but with an ardent hope that it may forever remain a
glorious Union of states, where goodness and greatness shall be
the motto and inspiration of the people.
Yours, most respectfully,
PETEK COOPER
New York, September 22, 1863.
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