Georgia against the Slave trade.
Almost the first action of the Georgia Convention has been to pass unanimously an ordinance against the African Slave Trade, making the penalty imprisonment in the Penitentiary.Here is another Republican gun spiked !--We republish below an article from the Columbia (S. C.) Presbyterian, a paper which represents the highest talents and moral worth of that denomination in the South. We may add, as the result of recent personal observation in the Southern States, that there is no more intention to revive the slave trade there than in Virginia. It is a weak and malicious device of the enemy.
[From the Columbia (S. C.) Presbyterian.]
‘ "We have just read, what we ought to have done a week ago, with special care, the editorial in the 'secular department' of the New York Observer, under the title 'Progress and Prospects of Disunion. ' The manifest tendency of it, if not its insidious and treacherous design and purpose, is to produce jealousy and dissention between different parts of the South, in order to cripple and defeat the Southern movements in defence of Southern rights. We will not waste our time in a discussion of its various suggestions, and confine our remarks on it to the following extract: The Observer says: 'From South Carolina, already, we have the most contemptuous language addressed to Virginia, who is distinctly informed that she is not wanted in the new republic of the South. The reason for this repulse of any advances from Virginia is easy to be understood. The leaders of the Cotton States are expected to re-open the slave trade as soon as they get the control of a Southern Government.' The Observer then refers to the opposition of the Northern slaveholding States to this project, and says: 'But the men below, who intend to revive the traffic, are fearful of the influence of Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee, and would rather keep them out than have them in, when the new empire is set up in the South.
"We find it difficult, we confess, to restrain the feelings of indignation with which we quote these passages, but we will try to speak of them calmly. We cannot do less, however, than pronounce them in substance and effect grievous misrepresentations. It may be that some foolish person in South Carolina has used 'contemptuous language' in reference to Virginia; but the Observer, which is constantly telling the South that the North ought not to be held responsible for the wild ravings of Northern fanatics, ought to be ashamed of noticing such ebullitions of Southern extravagance. And we unhesitatingly assert that nothing could be more false and unjust than to insinuate that the people of the Cotton States, or their 'leaders,' do not desire the 'Northern slaveholding States' to be united with them in the Southern Republic, unless it is the intimation that they desire and intend to re-open the African slave trade. The heart of South Carolina beats in warm, loyal, loving regard for Virginia. She has proved it in trying times. It was that more than anything else that decided her to yield in the purpose of nullification, when Virginia sent a Commissioner to ask her to stay her earnest resolution. After John Brown's invasion, she sent a Commissioner herself to Virginia to convey her desire and determination to act with the "Old Dominion" in whatever course the latter might judge to be best; and when Virginia said she desired nothing more to be done, South Carolina acquiesced; and now, if constrained by a sense of overpowering necessity, she takes action alone and of herself, one universal shout of joy and congratulation would echo from the seaboard to the mountains, if Virginia and the other border States would proclaim their purpose to unite their destiny with hers. And we hope the misrepresentations of the Observer will meet in Virginia with the contempt they deserve, as apparently designed to awaken jealousy and discord between the Southern States. It is time that Southern readers ceased to listen to the suggestions of those who do not and cannot understand our interests, or our relations to one another.
"As to the re-opening of the slave trade, we shall content ourselves with affirming again that there is not the slightest danger of it. The Southern people are not going to do anything so foolish and wicked as to engage in that."
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