Uriah Boston to Frederick Douglass, August 1855

DISSOLUTION OF THE UNION—ITS PROBABLE, ALMOST CERTAIN RESULTS.

MR. EDITOR:—As I have seen nothing original in your paper, on the much and long-talked of dissolution of the Union, and having some thoughts, that may be of interest to your readers, I deem the present a fit time to express them. Our friends, Hon. Daniel Webster and Henry Clay, used all possible means to save the Union, up to their last moment; the first by his magic influence in speech and act, the latter by tears, speeches and compromises. But though these two of the great if not the greatest American statesmen used their combined influence and efforts to save this Union, yet, present appearances do indicate that the Union is not yet out of danger. Indeed things look as though they were just coming to a crisis—This crisis will come, if the South mean what they have declared, and the North are true to their interests. This crisis will be brought about in the application of Kansas to be admitted to the union as a Slave State.

Now, let us see what would be the result of the dissolution of the Union. Your readers will judge of the correctness and probabilities of the statements here made. There they are:

1. The first result of a dissolution would be the weakening of the Slave Power, by the withdrawal of the sixteen Northern free States, containing a population of 18 or 20 millions, and leaving 16 Slave States with a population of four or five millions to sustain Slavery. In other words, now, 25 millions of people sustain and suffer the disgrace for sustaining, the worst system of slavery ever known,—certainly the worst of the 19th century; then this disgrace would fall upon the guilty parties only, namely the slaveholding States. This would be a great change for the better, inasmuch as we are professedly (as free States would then really be) the freest nation on earth.

We then would be the great example of all nations aspiring to become free.

2. The second result would be a final release of the Northern States from the enormous expenses incurred by the general or federal government in promoting slave interests. These expenses are enormous considering the free population of the Slave States.

3. The third beneficial result to the free States, would be that they would be freed from the unpleasant and disagreeable agitation of the slavery question, and its developments, such as ministers of Christ advocating the constitutionality of the fugitive slave Law, and the duty of citizens to catch, and send back to bondage, the panting fugitive. Many disgusting things of this sort, would end with the dissolution of the Union. The whole question would be taken out of Church, and State and we would be relieved from the heart-sickening, demoralizing sight, of otherwise seemingly good men, proving themselves knaves in order to prove themselves constitutionally good citizens. The above results would accrue to the North from dissolution of the Union, and all very desirable, because really beneficial,—durably so.

But there are others of not so pleasant a character, which would be felt directly by the South.

1. The slaves would be flee without let or hinderance in every direction. Thousands of people who now refuse to assist fugitives to escape, would then openly and freely assist them.—The fugitives would find open and avowed friends in all quarters, and any and all of the free States, would be as safe as Queen Victoria's dominions. (The colored population of the free States would increase in ten years 50 per cent, if not 100 per cent. It would put the colored churches in a flourishing condition.)

2. A second result to the South would be slave insurrections. These disturbances would be excited and encouraged by Indians, Mexicans and Yankees. By Indians, and Mexicans, to retaliate for the injuries done them; and by the Yankees, as a matter of policy, to get slavery off the continent, and to encourage free labor and to make it honorable and praiseworthy.

The final and grand result would be, that slavery would be abolished—it would end sooner by the dissolution of the Union than it will if the Union continues, and all the States where Slavery now exists, would come into the Union again, thus constituting one great and free Republic. There can be but little doubt of this, where we reflect that now slavery is protected by the whole power of the federal government, and it would only be sustained then by the power of the Slave States, a power, too weak to suppress the discordent elements of its own existence.

In view of the facts here stated, and others that might be stated, I would ask why should citizens of the free States shudder at the oft-repeated threat of dissolutions?

U. B.