Page:The African Slave Trade (Clark).djvu/97

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SOUTHTRN NEWSPAPERS.
93

advise on these questions: he only presented them. The people should think and act upon them. If there are but few more slave States, it is not because of abolitionism, or the Wilmot Proviso, but simply for the want of people to settle them. We can not make States without people; rivers and mountains do not make them; and slave States can not be made without Africans."

This language was addressed to the gentlemen and ladies of the city, and is said to have been received with great applause.

At Fort Valley, Ga., there is published a newspaper, called "The Nineteenth Century," which holds the following language in regard to the slave trade:

"Necessity will demand it at no distant day, and we also believe that the necessity will bring about the object of itself, without much noise or confusion on the part of the southern people."

So it seems that the flood gates of this stream of moral and physical death are to be opened quietly, without much disturbance of the public conscience, a few slight tremors, perhaps, and without much 66 noise" from that unfortunate class whose nerves are affected by the horrors of the middle passage. Perhaps the soothing influences of the "Nineteenth Century" will aid in this matter, and the introduction of modern improvements may render the African more submissive to his fate.

There is still another argument for the revival of