I had
some conversation with Calhoun on the slave question pending in Congress. He
said he did not think it would produce a dissolution of the Union, but, if it
should, the South would be from necessity compelled to form an alliance,
offensive and defensive, with Great Britain.
I said
that would be returning to the colonial state.
He said,
yes, pretty much, but it would be forced upon them. I asked him whether he
thought, if by the effect of this alliance, offensive and defensive, the
population of the North should be cut off from its natural outlet upon the
ocean, it would fall back upon its rocks bound hand and foot, to starve, or
whether it would not retain its powers of locomotion to move southward by land.
Then, he said, they would find it necessary to make their communities all
military. I pressed the conversation no further; but if the dissolution of the
Union should result from the slave question, it is as obvious as anything that
can be foreseen of futurity, that it must shortly afterwards be followed by the
universal emancipation of the slaves. A more remote but perhaps not less
certain consequence would be the extirpation of the African race on this
continent, by the gradually bleaching process of intermixture, where the white
portion is already so predominant, and by the destructive progress of
emancipation, which, like all great religious and political reformations, is
terrible in its means, though happy and glorious in its end. Slavery is the
great and foul stain upon the North American Union, and it is a contemplation
worthy of the most exalted soul whether its total abolition is or is not
practicable: if practicable, by what means it may be effected, and if a choice
of means be within the scope of the object, what means would accomplish it at
the smallest cost of human sufferance. A dissolution, at least temporary, of
the Union, as now constituted, would be certainly necessary, and the
dissolution must be upon a point involving the question of slavery, and no
other. The Union might then be reorganized on the fundamental principle of
emancipation. This object is vast in its compass, awful in its prospects,
sublime and beautiful in its issue. A life devoted to it would be nobly spent
or sacrificed. This conversation with Calhoun led me into a momentous train of
reflection. It also engaged me so much that I detained him at his office,
insensibly to myself, till near five o'clock, an hour at least later than his
dining-time.
SOURCE:
Charles Francis Adams, Editor, Memoirs of
John Quincy Adams: Comprising Portions of His Diary from 1795 to 1848,
Volume 4, p. 530-1
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