Chapter 78: Georgia moderate Robert Toombs addresses slavery in a Boston speech.

On January 4, 1856 Toombs addresses a large gathering at the Tremont House aimed at defending slavery. He begins with a warning:

….I do not then hesitate to avow before the country, and in the presence of the living God, that if by your legislation you seek to drive us from the Territories purchased by the common blood and treasure of the people, and to abolish slavery in the District, I am for Disunion.

His proposals follow:

We simply propose that the common territories be left open to the common enjoyment of all the people of the United States … (until) the character of the domestic institutions of the new State be determined by the freemen thereof. This is justice—this is constitutional equality.

Our political system gives the slave great and valuable rights. His life is equally protected with that of his master…He is entitled, by law, to a home, to ample food and clothing, and exempted from “excessive” labor; and, when no longer capable of labor, in old age and disease, he is a legal charge upon his master.

In surveying the whole civilized world, the eye rests not on a single spot where all classes of society are so well content with their social system, or have greater reason to be so, than in the slaveholding States of this Union. Stability, progress, order, peace, content, prosperity, reign throughout our borders.