WRITINGS OF 5AM HOUSTON, 1855
168
upon me a grave responsibility to vindicate an institution with which I am concerned, one with which I had no election, one that fortune, or destiny, cast me into connection with, and one that must continue, or the two races cannot exist together. To discuss the abstract principles of slavery and freedom is not my task. I take it as I find it, and as I have found it in past life. It was not a contrivance of myself, or of my ancestors, and I am not responsible that the institution of slavery exists in the country in which I live. We find that the adaptation of climate, of soil, and of production, have demanded and commanded a class of laborers that have been expelled from this section of the country. The institutions here have changed. At the time of the achievement of American liberty, there was not one of the colonies which did not hold slaves and recognize it as a right institution, as it then existed. The achievement of our liberty was made by slaveholders, and they have since dispossessed themselves of slaves; now, they exist in only one portion of the country. They are not objects of cruelty, they are not objects of harshness, they are not doomed to a state of heathenism; they have the light of religion, of civ- ilization, of morality. It is the care of masters there, who desire the countenanc·e and fellowship of the community, to see that on the Sabbath day the slaves attend the worship of the Supreme Being. The Word is given them by their own preachers, and they are instructed in religion. Masters rightly constituted there, feel anxious that their slaves should be acquainted with the mysteries and joys of revelation. They do not wish it shut out from their spirits, nor from their eyes. The house of a man who would make his slaves labor on the Sabbath-I have known but two who have been charged with employing their laborers on the Sabbath day-would become like an infected place. No one con- sorts with such a master, or trusts office or distinction to him. These, I know, are statements that are not in conformity with the general and excited state of feeling which exists in certain portions of the country, but they are, nevertheless, true, and I feel called upon by the respect shown me, to state the truth in return for that respect. [Applause.] So far as the South has heretofore expressed itself-and I have come to vindicate the South against the responsibility sought to be cast upon it for that which it is not responsible-the South has said, "Let us alone, let us regulate our domestic institutions for ourselves. You gentlemen of the North, you legislators, you
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