No, my dear cousin, I am not seeking to make slave territory out of free, or to introduce slavery where there is none. Brazil is as much of a slave country as Virginia, and the valley of the Amazon is Brazilian.
I am sure you would rejoice to see the people of Virginia rise up tomorrow and say, from and after a future day—say 1st January, 1855—there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in Virginia. Although this would not strike the shackle from a single arm, nor command a single slave to go free, yet it would relieve our own loved Virginia of that curse. Such an act on the part of the State would cause slave owners generally either to leave the State with their slaves, or to send them off to the Southern markets.[1] But they would be still slaves in our own country. We must take things as we find them, and if we would be practical and do good, we must deal with mankind as they are, and not as we would have them.
If you will read my article published in the Southern Literary Messenger against the "Right of Search", which article was sent in the proof-sheets to Lord Ashburton, and commended to him as containing a plan which if carried out would be most effective in breaking up the slave-trade. . . . You will see that my plan was adopted exactly as I proposed it, and we have now a squadron on the coast of Africa for the suppression of the slave-trade.
. . . . Now for the last two years I have been urging the Government to make a treaty with Brazil, and to remind her in that treaty that we are her best customers for coffee; that nearly all she produces is consumed in the United States, where it is admitted duty free, and of course the consumption is largely increased thereby. I have urged that we should say to Brazil in that treaty, stop the African slave trade, or we will put a duty on that coffee, and thus lessen the demand for the fruits of slave labour, and so take away from you the interest in the Tariff Act. . . . Brazil is a slave country, and all the travelers who go there, I am told, say
- ↑ As the Yankees did early in this century, when they ceased to be profitable north of 39° 30'
