The North Star (Rochester)/1848/01/14/The Senate
THE SENATE.
The following is an extract from a letter from the Albany Patriot's Washington correspondent:
The Senate has changed faces a good deal in two years. A number of the old pillars are there yet, though somewhat crumbling. Mr. Calhoun grown old—irretrievably so. He was formerly erect as a May-pole—his hair brushed up, short and stiff, gave him, with the penetrating glance of his eye, the air of authority and command. His hair is now allowed to hang flabby and flax-like upon his his shoulders; his face is thin and sharp as a wedge; his spare and shadowy trunk stoops and curves at an angle of shout forty-five. He looks like the forlornest Prime Minister of all Christendom! Certainly the care of the Palmetto State is upon his arm; and that, to him, is all the world! Poor men! When Clay and Calhoun are gone, they have no successors in their exact position; no heir apparent to their pernicious influence. As things have gone the last century, what they call statesmanship has been the direst curse of mankind. The less we have of statesman craft, the better for the world. Let us try to educate, under happier influences, and a better discipline, the budding mind that is soon to rule the destinies of the world. Party traffic and government barter have made sad havoc with public and private morals, as they have with the weightiest interests of society. The mock dignity and solemn villanies of our Senate stand in most deplorable contrast with the clear-sightedness, high-toned integrity and devotion to truth and duty that ought to characterize its action in the inflexible maintainence of justice, and in vindicating the claims of universal human nature. I will tell you more about the Senate at another time.
A word now on another subject, The infernal deeds of tyranny in the form of chattelhood are still perpetrated here with sufficient enormity and grossness, one would think, to disgust and put to shame the "outside barbarians" themselves. If we cannot summon virtue and manliness enough among our people to cleanse this District from the foul practices of oppression, nature is likely to take the work into her own hands at last. She works on a double scale. The aspirations of freedom have started a strong tide of emigration Northward, and the instigations of avarice and deviltry have forced another Southward! Between the two strange processes, slavery is quite certain to get contracted in its dimensions at a pretty rapid rate within this national enclosure. It is estimated that not less than four hundred "servants" have been sold from the District—mostly, of course, from the cities of Washington und Georgetown—the last season; say within eight or ten months. It is also supposed that half that number have fallen in love with the voluntary principle, and gone to the North in pursuit of labor and wages! Of course this double business will go on with more or less briskness till the slave fabric here melts away, and its place is supplied by the "industry of freedom." What an infamy upon the nation! How foul a reproach upon a people, themselves shielded by the panolpy of free institutions! A sorrowful young man just came to me for assistance. A girl at the age of eighteen, of his acquaintance, and brought up a neighbor to him, and whom, I conjecture, he sincerely and ardently loves, has been sold, and is now in the pen. Her master disposed of her, because her brother, some weeks since, made his escape, and he did not know how contagious the love of liberty in the family might prove! The slave trader will take five hundred dollars for her, if her friends can make the purchase. Of strangers, he would demand considerably more than that sum!
My pen was stopped at the close of the last sentence for the recital of another tale, and to hear the claims of other victims urged. A man was yesterday told by a white brother in his church—the Methodist—that his family were sold—a wife and four children; and that if he could do it, he had better provide for their safety at once, before the trader could come for them! He has secreted them for the time. What shall be done next? He, himself, poor fellow, is the property of another person! How shall the rescue of that family from the hands of gamblers in human sinews, be effected? The whole North would lend boats, coaches or horses, but votes—the mightiest of all powers in this republic—they have not the honesty or the independence to lend or give! I shall have occasion to refer to these cases again, perhaps. It is now time to finish these paragraphs. For news, matters are rather dull just now. After the "holidays," we shall move faster, and I'll tell you "heaps" of gossip.
Yours, ever,
HONEOYE.