The Old Guard/Volume 1/Issue 1/The U.S. Treasury Robbed to Buy Negroes
The Lower House of Congress has passed a bill to appropriate ten million dollars ($10,000,000) of the people’s money to buy the negroes in Missonri. If the people of Missouri are fools enough to take Mr. Lincoln’s or Congress’ promise to pay for that amount, so be it; but it will never be paid.—Congress has no power to appropriate the people’s money for such an object—no more right to empty the treasury of the United States to buy negroes in Missouri, than it has to buy negroes in Guinea—or, than it has to pass a law authorizing Mr. Lincoln to send out his provost marshals to rob the pockets, and steal the shirts from the backs, of every man they can overtake.
The administration has been for some time spending more than one hundred thousand dollars a day, to support negroes whom they have stolen, or induced to run away from their masters. And all thisoutlay for negroes has been going on while our soldiers have remained unpaid, and their wives and children are suffering with want—almost with starvation Within the last thirty days, over one hundred thousand white men—North and South—have been slain to appease the terrible Moloch of abolitionism. The whole of this bloody crime may now be summed up in the horrid word—abolitionism. Ilias malorum. It is the death-warrant of the nation.
"Born to afflict Afric’s family,
And sow dissension in the hearts of brothers.”
Born to impoverish and destroy white men, to bestow an imaginary and unattainable good upon black men. Will the people pay the unlawfnl debt? For one, I am resolved not to go into this negro-buying business if I can help it. If the people of Missouri wish to get rid of their negroes, they are welcome—provided they do not throw them upon us for support. If they do not wish to get rid of them, they are welcome to keep them. Only the people of these Northern States are determined that they will not be taxed to buy them. Let those who wish invest in that kind of fund; only let them understand that they have Mr. Lincoln and his crazy Congress for paymasters. I, Abraham Lincoln & Co., promise to pay ten millions of dollars for the aforesaid negroes of Missouri. If any body is content with such a note of hand they can take it; but let them not imagine that the nation will ever endorse its If capitalists are content to advance money on such paper, it is their own speculation; let them not accuse the nation of dishonesty in repudiating the illegal demand.