Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Speech of Hon. R. K. Meade, of Virginia, on the Admission of California as a State: Delivered in the House of Representatives, June 6, 1850
Now, in order to justify the course pursued by the North, and relieve them of the suspicion of merely seeking political power, they must show that, by confining the area of slavery, the number of slaves will be diminished, or at least their increase retarded.
I have heard some of my southern friends con, tend, that extending the bounds will not add to the number of slaves. In this I differ with them; and the law which governs the case, is Well nu derstood by our northern brethren, and that law, hard as it is, they are looking to, in the course of time, for the ultimate accomplishment of their purposes. It is the law which prevents procre tien in all densely-inhabited countries - that of hard usage, stint, and starvation. To proclaim this to the world, would disarm fanaticism, while a shriek of horror would rise from the lips of outraged humanity. Hence, they are silent; the masses are deceived, and the finest chords of the human heart are made to discourse music at the touch of hypocrisy. This is the whole game which they confidently believe will end, at no dis tant day, either in equality and amalgamation, or a war of extermination between the races. The more kind-hearted, in view of the power which California, Oregon, New Mexico, and a third of Texas will hereafter give them, and the convenient doctrine of obligations superior to the Constitution, lately broached in the Senate, may perhaps contemplate a more speedy and less bloody termination to the con?ict.
There are men, sir, now listening to my voice, who, while singing peans to the Union, are coolly calculating these chances; and there are some among us so fascinated with the song, like charmed birds, they are utterly unconscious of the deadly gaze of the serpent that is drawing them every day closer and closer to his folds.
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