Massachusetts, Former Slave State, Declares Moral War on Slave States
Though taking a high moral and self-righteous stand against slavery and the South in 1846, Henry Wilson of the former slave (and religiously-intolerant) State of Massachusetts, was instigating war against fellow States which had every right to eradicate African slavery in their own time as Massachusetts and other States had done. His State held little moral-standing to lecture the South -- Massachusetts first codified slavery in North America, New England slavers had been in operation for well-over 100 years, by 1750 Providence, Rhode Island had surpassed Liverpool as the slaving center of North America, ravenous Massachusetts cotton mills demanded slave-picked cotton, and Manhattan banks gladly extended loans and credit to plantation owners for production and expansion. New England was highly-responsible for the perpetuation of slavery in North America.
Instead of leading a peaceful moral crusade for emancipation and to repay humanity for the sins of Massachusetts slave-trading, Wilson envisioned a Southern “slave-power” which had to be destroyed. He got his war and with it the destruction of the Constitution and the United States.
Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
http://www.ncwbts150.com "The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"
Massachusetts, Former Slave State, Declares Moral War on Slave States
Speech on Slavery in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, 1846:
“We must now act. We are in a position where we cannot stand still with honor and dignity. We may declare that this gross outrage of the General Government is an entire revolution, which will justify Massachusetts in dissolving all connection with the government. We may declare our independence, withdraw our delegation from Congress, exercise exclusive jurisdiction over our territory, and maintain it by force.
Very few will recommend such a course of action. Such a step would doubtless lead to bloodshed, which few can contemplate the horror. What, then, can we do?
We can pledge all the moral, social, and political power of the Commonwealth against slavery, and for freedom. We will remain in the Union; but we remain there to fight the battles of freedom. We will stand by the Constitution; but we stand by it to rescue and defend it from the slave-power; to exercise all its just powers for the overthrow of slavery.
Let Massachusetts but do her duty, and other States will rally around her, and she will lead them on to the rescue of the constitution and the government from the slave-power. Standing on the broad and elevated platform of equal rights, living out and illustrating her own great principles, she will speak to her sister States with a thousand tongues. She will come to the rescue. She will be the standard-bearer in the contest.
Her descent from the sturdy Puritan stock, her free labor and her free schools, all point her out as the leader in the great struggle between freedom and slavery. South Carolina has placed herself in advance as the leader of the cohorts of slavery. Let the descendants of the old Cavaliers and Puritans meet once more, not as their fathers met on the fields of Naseby and Worcester, but in the stern conflict of opinion. I have no fears for the issue. Everything will be with us…civilization will be with us…and God will be with us.
That is the true ground we must take; and, if it be taken boldly and manfully….confident that in five years our cause will sweep through the country like a tornado. It is our “manifest destiny.”
(Life and Public Services of Henry Wilson, Rev. Elias Nason and Thomas Russell, B.B. Russell, 1876, pp. 68-69, 82-85)
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