THE LANDING OF SLAVES IN GEORGIA.
Tax fact that a cargo of slaves has been landed in ono of the states of the Union has, as an American paper justly remarks, imparted to the question of slavery and the slave-trade "a prac- tical shape." There is no doubt that the whole proceeding is an outrage on the law, policy, and interest of the Union. It is, by a violent process, substituting the action of an extreme party for that of the nation. The transaction is at present veiled in some doubt ; those who have taken part in it, notwithstanding their love of notoriety, being of course desirous to avoid the penalties of the law, and shrouding their action in as much immediate ob- scurity as possible. Nevertheless, the leading facts have tran- spired, and, whatever doubt may be thrown upon this or that particular, there is not much uncertainty as to the general cha- racter of the occurrence. It appears that some-hundreds of Afri- cans have been landed on the coast of Georgia, probably some- where near Jekyl Island, at the mouth of the Satilla river. Two hundred of these Africans, it is said, have been taken up the Sa- vannah, and the total number imported is reputed to be about four hundred. There is some question whether all these negroes were brought over the Atlantic in the Wanderer. It is called a yacht ; it appears to be a schooner of considerable size. It is possible that the vessel may have brought its cargo across the ocean, and then transferred them to some other ship, from which they were landed ; or the schooner rday have had a consort. It is, however, tolerably certain that the Wanderer reached the coast of the Union with its cargo of blacks ; and it is almost as certain that it took those blacks from tho river'Congo ; in leaving which it passed under the guns of one of our cruisers. The cap- tain and owner of the yacht appears to be a Mr. Corrie, a person who may be said to be more notorious than known. Some short time back be had a claim before Congress for injury done to his property,—of what kind we do not remember, but we believe that he succeeded in establishing his claim, and that he obtained from Congress considerably more than 100,000 dollars. It is supposed that with this sum he fitted up the yacht, with which he has un- dertaken at once to cruise about for his pleasure, to pursue a pro- fitable trade, and to alter the laws of Georgia by coup d'etat. The immediate result of his proceeding indeed is not yet appa- rent. Will he be punished ? This is exceedingly doubtful. There is very little question as to the fact. A medictd man had seen the negroes immediately after they landed, and found that none of them could speak English, and he had reason to con- clude that they had been recently imported from Africa. Wit- nesses who know more of the affair have been brought before the United States Commissioners in Georgia ; but these men appear to have been participes criminis and could not have been made to criminate themselves ; while many links of positive evi- dence lire wanting. Should punishment fail, the incident will no doubt prove to be an inconvenience as well as a scandal to the champions of good order in the state. Elsewhere it will of course be assumed that the whole process is carried out without the con- currence of public opinion, but there is some reason to doubt the correctness of any such assumption. "SO unpopular," says the Washington correspondent of the New York Herald, "is the movement to introduce African slaves, that but one out of the number had been sold, and that was a 'likely' boy, seventeen or eighteen years old, to a coloured barber in Augusta." The conservative planters and respectable people hold off, the pur- chasers are coloured men, or "white niggers."
One of the earliest measures which will be debated in Congress will be seized in the North, and on this side of the Atlantic will probably be seized as further evidence of Southern favour for the new movement: it is proposed to abate the penalty for engaging in the slave trade. But the grounds of this proceeding are suffi- ciently intelligible without subjecting it to any strained interpre- tation. The extreme severity of the punishment is said to be one reason—perhaps the most cogent—why the law is nugatory. Juries hesitate to convict where conviction would be followed by so severe a penalty as death : especially where there is such di- vided opinion upon the amount of culpability involved in the slave-trade. In order therefore to secure a more certain enforce- ment of the law, it is understood that some Southern member will probably propose a measure to render it more effective by softening the punishment.
It is, indeed, and we have lately recognized the fact, untrue to assume that as a body the inhabitants of the Southern States are favourable to the restoration of the Slave-trade, or to an exten- sion of slavery. There is the strongest evidence to the contrary. The Washington correspondent of the New York Herakl says, "Judging from the language of the Southern members of Con- gress, 1 should say nine-tenths of the Southern people are against the introduction of Africans into this country." Nor are we left to general statements, but they are confirmed by specific facts. Let us turn to this very state of Georgia. In the session of 1857, a member of the Georgian Legislature bronght forward a resolu- tion in favour of reopening the African Slave-trade. There is reason to suppose that he was not himself in favour of. the mea- sure, but simply wished to ascertain the state of public optimum. Debate arising, the discussion ended by the resolution's being "laid on the table," that is, shelved. The same resolution was brought forward in the session of 1858, with the same result. Although, therefore an extreme party may assist in smuggling Africans into Georgia,—and although even the ma- jority may hesitate to enforce an extreme penalty,—it appears that the balance of public opinion, as embodied in the constituted representation, is positively and deliberately opposed to any such proceeding. It will be observed that we are not arguing upon the subject ; we are simply collecting such evidence as comes to our hand, and presenting it in its natural order.
The Washington Union,—which is sometimes regarded as the
• Observer of the United States, the organ of the existing adminis- tration,—speaks in the strongest terms' not only of this recent case, but of "the' failure of Justice" in the case of the Echo; in which, it will be remembered, a jury declined to convict persons who had been guilty of an attempt precisely like that which has been more successful in the case of the Wanderer. "Candour," ear the Washington journal, "compels us to admit that our in- stitutions have failed. The laws have not been executed as they ought to have been and as we believe nine-tenths and. more of the American people desire they should be." It is to be doubted, however, whether ultimately "the institutions" of the Republic will be suffered to fail,—whether the republicans will not find means of enforcing their own laws. The discussion of the subject has not been confined to Georgia ; it has lately been taken up in South Carolina, the State which of all others may be regarded as leader in the pro-slavery movement. It cannot, of course, be forgotten that it was South Carolina which sent to the Senate Mr. Calhoun, the great leader of the Nullificator party. Unless our memory deceives us, he was Vice-President when his sympa- thisers in South Carolina took up arms to enforce the separation of the State from the Union and when, it is said, his supe- rior, the President of that day, General Jackson, in plain lan- guage intimated a suspicion of his treachery, and cautioned on the subject with the outspoken hint that if he were detected, "by the Eternal, he should be hanged. as high as Haman." It is in South Carolina, therefore that we may expect to find the strongest pro- slavery feeling ; and accordingly it is in the Legislature of that State that we find Mr. Bryan introducing the following resolu- tion—
" That the importation of African slaves was the origin of the institution of slavery in the United States, and that their importation now cannot be regarded by this General Assembly as injurious to the interests of the slave- holding states or of this state."
But in the same Legislature Mr. Hampton introduced the,fol- lowing resolutions-
" That as the reopening of the African slave-trade is impracticable, all agitation upon the subject is unwise inexpedient, and impolitic.
"That if it was practicable to reestablish this trade, it should not be done; because it would be disastrous to the slaveholding States of the von- federacy, would institute a traffic which would necessarily involve cruel and inhuman practices, and would, by the introduction of barbarians from Africa, demoralise the slaves now owned in this country, and infect with evil influences the whole system of domestic slavery as now established and existing in the United States."
These resolutions, introduced on the day of adjournment, stand for discussion next session ; but the New York Herald remarks- " Mr. Hampton, like Senator Hammond, we have no doubt is on the con- trolling side of this question in the South. The revival of the African slave-trade is but a new hobby of a few desperate and reckless fire-eating politicians."
And a Charleston paper, commenting on these same resolutions, observes that "the restoration of the African slave-trade is im- practicable; it is contrary to the spirit of the age, and would meet with disapprobation from nine-tenths of the people of the South." The freedom of republican institutions permits that a minority, even if it be no more than a tenth, should make a maximum of show by obstructiveness and noise ; but while we have here the spontaneous testimony from many quarters as to the genuine nature of public opinion in the Southern States, we at all events have the indubitable fact that in society, in the press, and in the legislature of more than one Southern State, notwithstanding the common notion in this country that. opinions adverse to slavery dare not make themselves heard, tnose opinions are openly stated, vigorously discussed, and established on division.
• There will be no disposition, in this country any more than in the North of the Union to extenuate the outrage committed in the proceedings of the adventurer Corrie. But if we review the whole subject calmly,—if we thrust it from us, as it were, in order that we may regard it from a more abstract point of view and the more dispassionately,—we shall readily perceive that, while the sense of justice, of law, and of genuine liberty-, asserts its existence in the South, it is not that portion of the Union upon which the blame exclusively rests. On the contrary, we are much inclined to doubt whether in some respects the balance of wrong-doing does not lie with the North. That the institution of slavery is at once a discredit and a nuisance to Republican States cannot for a moment be questioned. We can, indeed, never forget that it was forced upon the American colonies by the British Government; and that when Washington and his com- patriots founded the Republic they bad to confront an existing interest, and to arrange the institutions of the country without forcing the Southern States into an alliance with the Royalist party. In the long interval, statesmen have endeavoured to defer and evade the question ; but, as the Washington Union says, it has now assumed too practical a shape to be deferred much longer. Something must be done to provide for a better vindication of the Republican law. It is an important fact that Mr. Buchanan is the first President in Washington who has broken through the old periphrastic and allusive mode of speaking about "a domestic institution," and has discussed it under the direct head of slavery. But if the Northern States, which have recently secured in the Senate a majority that must henceforward increase in a progres- sive ratio, desire to obtain a more regular enforcement of the Federal laws, or to facilitate a free discussion of "the institution" and its ulterior treatment, they have one obvious and unmis- takeable duty to perform ; and it is the neglect of that duty which constitutes—we do not hesitate to say it with as much sincerity as with respect for the Union—a very grave offence against the interests of the Republic. If the Northern States de- sired to raise a discussion upon such a subject, their foremost and paramount duty was, not to open the discussion without giving pledges that the feelings, the lives, and the property of the South- ern States should be respected. In this country it has been our lot to go through a discussion of the same question. Great Britain possesses powers sufficient to overwhelm the West Indies ; and yet the Slavery Abolitionists in this country were not permitted to discuss the question in Parlia- liament, without evincing their deference for the feelings of the owners in the West Indies, without undertaking to provide for the peace of the islands' nor without giving compensation for the property which they took away. At that time the Spectator took an active part in strenuously resisting the rash claims of a nume- rous and not uninfluential party in this country, succeeded in pro- curing some extension of time for the operation, and aided in obtaining the compensation. There was indeed a compromise, and the fearful ruin which has fallen upon many owners in the West Indies, followed by very doubtful benefit to the Black popu- lation, has only too far Justified our warnings. All who have the same question to discuss ought to be the wiser for our experience ; and the same duties which we then imperfectly acknowledged fall with even greater weight upon those who agitate the question in the Federal Republic, with powers proportionately less adequate to the task, and with responsibilities far more heavy. We are content with reviewin,g the facts, and with pointing attention to that one duty of the North, which is preliminary to any effective claims upon the South.
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