PETITION AND MEMORIAL
OF
DAVID QUINN,
ASKING FOR THE
RE-ESTABLISHMENT OF NEGRO SLAVERY
IN THE
UNITED STATES.
[Pg 1]
To the Congress of the United States ofAmerica.
Gentlemen:
The undersigned, an American citizen, respectfullypetitions your honorable body, and praysthat measures may be immediately taken for there-establishment of Negro slavery in the Statesfrom which it has just been ejected, and also for itsestablishment by law in all the other States andTerritories, of our federal Union; and in support ofhis petition, he herewith submits the following
MEMORIAL.
He is by no means insensible of the opposition heis likely to encounter at the hands of the half-learned,the vain and the vicious; but as the roarof the battle no longer drowns the voice of reason,he expects to be heard, and when heard to be respected,and his policy sooner or later adopted. Thetempest, he is also aware, still sweeps on in its olddirection; but the bending forest is beginning to rise,light to break, and when it comes, in that serenitywhich follows the storm, he looks for the calm andcandid judgment, not of the vicious, but of thepatriotic people of his nation.
At the foundation of all polities there are principles—equalityat the basis of democracy, and inequality[Pg 2]at the basis of all other systems. But whatevermay be the propriety or impropriety of either, allhuman laws to be wholesome must conform to thelaws of nature. From these there can be no variancewithout harm, therefore is it incumbent on thestatesman, who is of necessity a philosopher, to studynature, and to conform all his policy to her demands.Her star is the polar star of all wise legislation, butfrom it you have turned aside, and inclined yourears to the siren songs of countries beyond theseas until you are transformed into beasts, and becomethe destroyers of your own kindred and kind.You have joined your enemies in their false cry ofliberty—a device invented for your ruin; and inyour delusion have assumed, as self-evidently true,propositions which are as self-evidently false. Youhave assumed a general equality of all the humanraces, and the equal adaptability of all localities totheir propagation and development. These are bothfalse, and in their falsity is to be found the greatvolume of that disorder which has converted ourStates into antagonisms, drawn the sword of thefather upon the son, sent a million of our young mento untimely graves, and burdened the living with anational debt which is, even now, grinding them intothe ground.
The superiority of mankind, we readily concede,is not determined by shades and shadows; the standardis much higher. But as mind conforms to matter,[Pg 3]or matter to mind, mentalities are as diversifiedas are the shades and colors of human skins. Theexterior is but an index of the interior, or life within;consequently, as exteriors differ, so do interiors, andas gradation rises, so do equalities disappear, as thesage, and all intermediate ascendencies, rise above thefool. But nature rises by degrees, and, in the harmonyof h