32 SPEECHES [Feb. 27
knew that, as to himself at least, your charge was a slander, and he was not much inclined by it to cast his vote in your favor. Republican doctrines and declarations are accompanied with a con- tinual protest against any interference whatever with your slaves, or with you about your slaves. Surely, this does not encourage them to revolt. True, we do, in common with "our fathers who framed the government under which we live," declare our belief that slavery is wrong; but the slaves do not hear us declare even this. For anything we say or do, the slaves would scarcely know there is a Republican party. I believe they would not, in fact, generally know it but for your misrepresentations of us in their hearing. In your political contests among yourselves, each faction charges the other with sympathy with Black Republicanism ; and then, to give point to the charge, defines Black Republicanism to sim- ply be insurrection, blood, and thunder among the slaves.
Slave insurrections are no more common now than they were before the Republican party was organized. What induced the Southampton in- surrection, twenty-eight years ago, in which at least three times as many lives were lost as at Harper's Ferry ?* You can scarcely stretch your very elastic fancy to the conclusion that South- ampton was "got up by Black Republicanism." In the present state of things in the United
- In August, 1831, at Southampton, Va., Nat Turner,
a negro, led an insurrection of his fellow slaves in the course of which more than sixty white people, most of them women and children, were massacred. The Abolitionists were charged with instigating the rising, but their historians deny the allegation, and no proof has come to light of their connection with the crime.
