Press enter after choosing selection

Selections: The Liberty Ticket

Selections: The Liberty Ticket image
Parent Issue
Day
25
Month
December
Year
1843
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

"There is but one proper and effecmnl mode by which the ovenhrow of slaverycan beacconipüshe.i, and that is by legislativa auihority; and thie, so faros my snrTage can go, ahall never bc wanting." - Waíhinotow.REASONS FOR VOTING THE LIBERTY TICKET Which every Voter in the State of Maine is requested to read and impartially considcr. 1. The Liberties op tüe country are in danoer. 1. The right of petition has been ruthlessly overthrown, and your petitions are not now allowed to Ie read in Congress, unless tbey pray for what slaveholders please to grant, and in such terms as they díctate. The men on the Liberty Ticket are opposed to this violation of the right of petition. Will you vote for those who would submit to it? 2. Our Habeas Corpus act has been nullified, and the whole legal security of personal freedom is taken away! The slave-holder is allowed to come into Maine and drag off into a slave State any person he pleases to claim as a fugitive slave, no matter of what complexion. If this state of things is allowed to exist long, nobody will be safe. The men on the Liberty Ticket are opposed to this monstrous despotism! Are you willing to submit to it! 3. The right of trial by jury has been taken away, in all that class of cases in which personal freedom is in question. - This is an enormous wrong, a -palpable violation of the Constitution, which declares that the right of trial by jury shall be inviolate. The men of the Liberty Ticket are in favor of a trial by jury in all cases. - Will you not, by votingfor them say that you are, too? 4. Your right ofintercourse with other States is greatly abridged. It js a felony in some of the States to repeat the decla. tion of our rights, which is part of the Constitution of Maine. If you send a vessel with colored stewards, cooks, or hands, they will be seized, in several of the States, as soon as they arriveü If you go yourself, with asick wifeorchild. anda colored nurse, you will be seized and impmo7ieá,although your wife or child may die in consequence!!! The men on the Liberty Ticket are opposed to a continuance of this state of things! Will you, by voting for others. say that you are in favor of it, or indifFer3nt about it?u. iNot content witñ this arrogant ínterferencc with liberty in the nominally free States, the slave-holding oligarchy demands even more absolute submission al home. Senator Preston made no distinction between the cttizens of the slave States and free States when he said, "Lel an abolitionist come with in the bounds of South Carolina, and if we catch him, we will try him, and notwithstanding the mterference of all the governments on earth, including the Federal Government, we will hang him!" Nor was it with any particular reference to the citizens of the free States that the following atrocious threat wasuttered by the Columbia Telescope, a Ieading paper in South Carolina. "Let üs declare that the question of slavery is not, and shall not be, open to discussion: that the very moment any private individual attempts to lecture us upon its evilsand immorality, and the necessity of putting means in operntion to secure usfrom tJiem, in the same moment kis tongue shall bc cut out and cast upon the dimg hill." And the Missouri Argus was speaking only of citizens of slave States when itdeclared, "Abolition editors in the slave States, will not DAR E to AVOWTHEIR OPINIONS;it WOUldbe INSTANT death to them." The men on the Liberty Ticket are opposed to this atrocious despotism which tramples on the right of free discussion every where, and pufs gags in the mouths of freemen. Are you opposed to it, too? Then vote the Liberty Ticket! II. The prospemty of the country IS IMPAIRED AND ENDANGERED BY THE USURPATIONS OF THE SLAVE-HOLDING OLIGARCHY.1. The most accurate computations show that there ave about 250,000 slaveholders in this countr}'. Supposing theii connections to number two millions and a quarter, which is a liberal estímate, we find the slave-holders and their connections to constitute two millions and a half of the population of the slaye States.- Of these not more than three hundred and fifty thousand are voters. The whole number of votes cast in 1840. when every voter that could be, was brought to the polls, was 681,244. Of these, if we suppose only 381,824 to be connected in any way with slave-holding, we have 350,000 as the number of voting slaveholders andtheir connections. Now, it is an admitted truth, fhat this small body of voters, this contemptible sectional faction, has for years controlled the political destinies of our country, and shaped almost entirely its domestic and foreign policy. 2. One result of this domination has been the abuse ofnegotxation and legislationto the selfish purposes of the slaveholders. No country grows rich by slave labor. Fvery country cultivated by slave labor grows poor. The reverse is true of countries cuhivated by free labor. It has been, therefore, an object with slavery polilicians lo compel free labor producers to sell to them, and at the same time secure markels abroadfor their own producís. Accordingly, foreign cash-paying markets have been provided, to a great extent, for cotton and rice; and lens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars have ' been spent in negotiations to obtain i lar markets for tobáceo. Bul no such forts liave leen made in behalf of the producís or manufactures of free labor. - i The markets of the worldare ed against them. The Government, ) der slaveholding control, sees this with I differehce. We have been compelled to sell almost wholly to slave markets, and on credit. Thousands have been ruined by failure to get payment. Hundreds in this State havo lost heavily - some have lost their all. " ' Ask the manufacturera, the produce merchants, the plough makers- ask every body who has dealings with the slavo States, if these things are not so. The men on the Liberty Ticket demand the markets of the world for the products of free labor, and insist that the permanent prosperity of the country cannot be otherwise securcd. Don't you want the best markets, too? Don't you desire permanent prosperity? If yOU do, vote the Liberty Ticket. III. We are taxed enormoüsly to MAINTAIN 8LAVERY.1. l ne Jf lorida war was waged for the recoyery of runaway slaves, and for security against future running away. It was a most disgraceful war It cost forty millions of dollars. The free States had to pay it. We had to pay our share. 2. The safe-keeping of slavery in the slave States compels us to raaintain more troops in the slaveholding section of the country than in others. We have to pay them. We have to keep watch and ward over negro property, fálsely so called. - We have to pay for being disgraced. 4. Expensive negotiations are carried on to obtain markets for slave labor. Wc have to pay for tbem. 5. We are compelled to pay from two and a half to six cents on every pound of sugar we use, which lax goes into the pocketsof the sugar planters of Louisiana, to the tune of a million of dollars a year, to help them buy more plantations and more negroes, thus adroitly convcrting the wages of the free laborer into weáíth and political power for the slaveholder. These are a few of the items of the enormous bill of expense, amounting to millions upon millions, which the free States have to pay for slavery every year. The men on the Liberty Ticket go for making slavery support itself! Do you prefer to support it? Do you prefer the expense and the ignominy of supporting it? If you do, oppose the Liberty Ticket! The men on it are not the men for you! IV. The slave-holders have an UNFAIIt PROPORTIOX OP POLITICAL POWER.1; By the Constitution. the slave States are entit.led to representaron, not only foi tbeir free population, but also for tbree fifths of their slaves. Under tbis rule, one slave-holder holding fivc slaves bas just as much political power as four frecmen. In consequence, tbere are about twenty-five members in Congress who represent property in men. These, and the oiher representatives of tbc slave State?, bound togetJier by interest, have dictated ternis tq the politica] parties, and have thus controllcd the Government. - Of course, nearly all the ofnces are filled with slave-holders.or the abettors of slaveholding, and the whole legislation and representation of the country is made to answer their purposes.The men on the Liberty Ticket desire an amendment of the Constitution, so as to make every slave-holding elector just equal, and no more than equal, to a nonslave-holding elector. Do you prcfer, men of Maine, that one slaveholdcr shalJ be reckoned as equal tofour of you, if he bias Jipe slaves, - and as as equal o sixty one ofyoU) if he as one hundred? If you do, opposo the Liberty men, for thcy are noí so servil cí V. SlAVERY SiVJEEUS AT AND DE3pises Free Labor axd Free Lador-! ers. 1. Hear a Whigl Watkins Leigh, of Virginia, said: "Those who depend on licir daily labor for their daiíy bread, cannever enter into politica] afifairs; they never do- never wiil- NEVER CAN." 2. Heara Dcmocratl F. W. Pickens, of South Carolina, said: "All society settles down into a classification of Capitalists and Laborera. The former will own the latter. If laborera obtain the political power of a country, it is, in fact, in a state of revolution." 3. Hearanother precious Democr&xl George McDuffie said: "The institution of domestic slavery supercedes the necessity of an order of nobility and all the other appendages of an hereditary system of government. An alarming tendency to viólate the rights of property by agrarian legislation is beginning to be manifest in the older States, where universal súfrale prevails without domestic slavery." 4. Hear still another glorious DemosratÜ! Calhoun says: "We regard slavery as the most safe and stable basis :f free institutions in the world." 5. Hear still another, who is sometimes Democrat and sometimes Whig, as occasion requiresü Robert Wickliffe, of Kentucky, said: "White negrocs (that is, free laborers,) have this advantage over black negroeS) they can be con verted into voters." He saw no other difference between free laborers and slaves, poor man! The men on the Liberty Ticket oppose t7ie sijslem, which emboldens these Whigs and Democrats to speak thus of free labor and free laborers. Men of the State of Maine! are you willing to submit to these slanders, and endorse these lies? I f you are, reject the Liberty Ticket, and vote for the candidates of parties to whose success the support of these nabobs is indispensable, and who, therefore, dare not rebuke them! VI. We, the citizexs op the frbe States, are involved ix the guilt and dishoxor qf süpporting slavery ! 1. Slavery exists in the District of Columbia, under acts of Congress. Now,Congress had no power to pass such acts The Constitution expressly says that 'm person shall be depri ved of liberty witb out due process of law.J But, under act! of Congress, thousands are deprived o! liberty without any process of law at all This is palpably unconstitutional. Yei these laws wcre passed in obedience to the slave-holding oligarchy. 2. Slavery exists also iö Florida, under acts of Congress, which are unconstitutional for the sarne reason. 3. Ships are freighted daily with cargoes of slaves from Washington, Alexandria, Baltimore, Richraond, and other places, and proceed on their slave-trading voyages under acts of Congress, whïch are also unconstitutional for the same reason. By supporting men who vote for such laws, or who wifl not propose and vote for their repeal, or for men who act wiih patHes which are opposed to the repeal of these laws, you makeyourselves partakers of the guilt and the shame of slaveholding, before God and the world. Are you willing to encounter this dreadful respo?isiHUtyï If you are not. vote for those men who go openly for the repeal of these laws. Vote the Liberty Ticket. We ask for it the support of all who are weary of submission to thcencroachments of thcslave power; of all who sympathizc with the down-f rodden and the oppressed. Listen to the pleadings of truth and hu manity; }rie]d to the promptings of conscience and reason; obey the voice of enliglitened self-interest. Remember that slavery dishonors our good name, corruptsour government, destroysour rïghts,strangles our prosperi ty, taxes us cnormously, arroga tes to itself the whole control of fhc gbvërhinènt, and tramples on al! the rights and ihtèrésts of fréemen. The only alternatives left are manly rcsistancc or disgraceful submission. Who Will not choose the formor? Many slave-holdcrs, feelinc; ihe intolerable tyranny oftheslave iowër at home, wishus süccess. Theine:est of the whole body of the non-slaveolders in the slave States, as well as of he great mass of the people in the whole ounlry, is on our side. The sympathics f the friênds of freedom everywhere are vith us. We feel sure of ultímate suecess. We submit our ticket to you, thercfore, with conüdence. We ask every man wlio reads th is, and feels disposed to takc Va.síiinoton's words at the head of it for bis guide, to cut it out, and when election day comes, deposite it in the ballot-box, in the name of Justice, Liberty, md God and the country will

Article

Subjects
Signal of Liberty
Old News