A Defence of Virginia
by Robert Lewis Dabney · English · Gutenberg #47422 · 609,976 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: A Defence of Virginia
Author: Robert Lewis Dabney
Release date: November 22, 2014 [eBook #47422]
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Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A DEFENCE OF VIRGINIA ***
A
DEFENCE OF VIRGINIA,
[AND THROUGH HER, OF THE SOUTH,]
IN
RECENT AND PENDING CONTESTS AGAINST
THE SECTIONAL PARTY.
BY
PROF. ROBERT L. DABNEY, D.D.,
OF VIRGINIA,
LATE OF THE CONFEDERATE ARMY.
NEW YORK:
E. J. HALE & SON, 16 MURRAY STREET.
1867.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1867,
BY E. J. HALE & SON,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for
the Southern District of New York.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY 9
CHAPTER II.
THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE 27
CHAPTER III.
LEGAL STATUS OF SLAVERY IN THE UNITED STATES 61
CHAPTER IV.
HISTORY OF EMANCIPATION 79
CHAPTER V.
THE OLD TESTAMENT ARGUMENT 94
The Curse upon Canaan 101
Abraham a Slaveholder 104
Hagar Remanded to Slavery by God 110
Slavery in the Laws of Moses 114
Slavery in the Decalogue 122
Objections to the Old Testament Argument 124
CHAPTER VI.
THE NEW TESTAMENT ARGUMENT 146
Definition of Δουλος 146
Slavery often mentioned; yet not condemned 149
Christ Applauds a Slaveholder 153
The Apostles Separate Slavery and its Abuses 155
Slavery no Essential Religious Evil 158
Slaveholders fully Admitted to Church-membership 161
Relative Duties of Masters and Slaves Recognized 167
Philemon and Onesimus 176
St. Paul Reprobates Abolitionists 185
The Golden Rule Compatible with Slavery 192
Was Christ Afraid to Condemn Slavery? 198
CHAPTER VII.
THE ETHICAL ARGUMENT 209
Misrepresentations Cleared 213
The Rights of Man and Slavery 241
Abolitionism is Jacobinism 262
Labour of Another may be Property 271
The Slave Received due Wages 273
Effects of Slavery on Moral Character 276
Slavery and the African Slave Trade 288
The Morality of Slavery Vindicated by its Results 293
CHAPTER VIII.
ECONOMICAL EFFECTS OF SLAVERY 295
Slavery and Republican Government 297
Slavery and Malthusianism 303
Comparative Productiveness of Slave Labour 317
Effects of Slavery in the South, compared with those of Free
Labour in the North 331
Effects of Slavery on Population, Disease, and Crime 340
CHAPTER IX.
CONCLUSION 349
PREFACE.
To the conquerors of my native State, and perhaps to some of her sons,
a large part of the following defence will appear wholly unseasonable.
A discussion of a social order totally overthrown, and never to be
restored here, will appear as completely out of date to them as the
ribs of Noah's ark, bleaching amidst the eternal snows of Ararat, to
his posterity, when engaged in building the Tower of Babel. Let me
distinctly premise, that I do not dream of affecting the perverted
judgments of the great anti-slavery party which now rules the hour. Of
course, a set of people who make success the test of truth, as they
avowedly do in this matter, and who have been busily and triumphantly
engaged for so many years in perfecting a plain injustice, to which
they had deliberately made up their minds, are not within the reach of
reasoning. Nothing but the hand of a retributive Providence can avail
to reach them. The few among them who do not pass me by with silent
neglect, I am well aware will content themselves with scolding; they
will not venture a rational reply.
But my purpose in the following pages is, first and chiefly, to lay
this pious and filial defence upon the tomb of my murdered mother,
Virginia. Her detractors, after committing the crime of
destroying a sovereign and co-equal commonwealth, seek also to bury
her memory under a load of obloquy and falsehood. The last and only
office that remains to her sons is to leave their testimony for her
righteous fame--feeble it may be now, amidst the din of passion and
material power, yet inextinguishable as Truth's own torch. History
will some day bring present events before her impartial bar; and then
her ministers will recall my obscure little book, and will recognize
in it the words of truth and righteousness, attested by the signatures
of time and events.
Again: if there is indeed any future for civilized government in what
were the United States, the refutation of the abolitionist postulates
must possess a living interest still. Men ask, "Is not the slavery
question dead? Why discuss it longer?" I reply: Would God it were
dead! Would that its mischievous principles were as completely a thing
of the past as our rights in the Union in this particular are! But in
the Church, abolitionism lives, and is more rampant and mischievous
than ever, as infidelity; for this is its true nature. Therefore the
faithful servants of the Lord Jesus Christ dare not cease to oppose
and unmask it. And in the State, abolitionism still lives in its full
activity, as Jacobinism; a fell spirit which is the destroyer of every
hope of just government and Christian order. Hence, the enlightened
patriot cannot cease to contend with it, until he has accepted, in his
hopelessness, the _nefas de republica desperandi_. Whether wise and
good men deem that this discussion is antiquated, may be judged from
the fact that Bishop Hopkins (one of the most revered divines among
Episcopalians) judged it proper, in 1864, and Dr. Stuart Robinson, of
Louisville, (equally esteemed among Presbyterians,) in 1865, to put
forth new and able arguments upon this question.
It should be added, in explanation, that, as a son of Virginia, I have
naturally taken her, the oldest and greatest of the slaveholding
States, as a representative. I was most familiar with her laws. In
defending her, I have virtually defended the whole South, of which she
was the type; for the differences between her slave institutions and
theirs were in no respect essential.
The most fearful consequence of the despotic government to which the
South is now subjected, is not the plundering of our goods, nor the
abridgment of privileges, nor the death of innocent men, but the
degrading and debauching of the moral sensibilities and principles of
the helpless victims. The weapon of arbitrary rulers is physical
force; the shield of its victims is usually evasion and duplicity.
Again: few minds and consciences have that stable independence which
remains erect and undebauched amidst the disappointments, anguish, and
losses of defeat, and the desertion of numbers, and the obloquy of a
lost cause. Hence it has usually been found, in the history of
subjugated nations, that they receive at the hands of their conquerors
this crowning woe--a depraved, cringing, and cowardly spirit. The
wisest, kindest, most patriotic thing which any man can do for his
country, amidst such calamities, is to aid in preserving and
reinstating the tottering principles of his countrymen; to teach them,
while they give place to inexorable force, to abate nothing of
righteous convictions and of self-respect. And in this work he is as
really a benefactor of the conquerors as of the conquered. For thus
he aids in preserving that precious seed of men, who are men of
principle, and not of expediency; who alone (if any can) are able to
reconstruct society, after the tumult of faction shall have spent its
rage, upon the foundations of truth and justice. The men at the North
who have stood firmly aloof from the errors and crimes of this
revolution, and the men at the South who have not been unmanned and
debauched by defeat--these are the men whom Providence will call forth
from their seclusion, when the fury of fanaticism shall have done its
worst, to repair its mischiefs, and save America from chronic anarchy
and barbarism; if, indeed, any rescue is designed for us. It is this
audience, "few but fit," with which I would chiefly commune. They will
appreciate this humble effort to justify the history of our native
States, and to sustain the hearts of their sons in the hour of cruel
reproach.
_Hampden Sidney, Virginia, June, 1867._
A DEFENCE OF VIRGINIA.
* * * * *
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
To the rational historian who, two hundred years hence, shall study
the history of the nineteenth century, it will appear one of the most
curious vagaries of human opinion, that the Christianity and
philanthropy of our day should have given so disproportionate an
attention to the evils of African slavery. Such a dispassionate
observer will perceive that, while many other gigantic evils were
rampant in this age, there prevailed a sort of epidemic fashion of
selecting this one upon which to exhaust the virtuous indignation and
sympathies of the professed friends of human amelioration. And he will
probably see in this a proof that the Christianity and benevolence of
the nineteenth century were not so superior, in wisdom and breadth, to
those of the seventeenth and eighteenth, as the busy actors in them
had persuaded themselves; but were, in fact, conceited, overweening,
and fantastic.
It will appear to him a still stranger fact, that this zeal against
African slavery was so partial in its exhibition. Up to this day, not
only the Southern States of the late American Union, but the
Brazilian, Turkish, and Spanish empires, among civilized nations, and
many barbarous people, have continued the explicit practice of
slavery, in so stern a form, that the institution in the Confederate
States was, by comparison, extremely mild. Yet, throughout the
Northern States of America and Europe, it is upon the devoted heads of
Southern masters almost exclusively that the vials of holy wrath are
poured out. Renascent Spain is quite a pet among Yankees and
Europeans, though tenaciously clinging, in her colonies, to a system
of slavery at whose barbarities the public sentiment of these Southern
States would shudder, and though persistently winking at the African
Slave Trade in addition. Slaveholding Brazil is on most pleasing terms
with the United States and the European governments, which vie in
soliciting her commercial intercourse and friendship with most amiable
suavity. But when the sounding lash of the self-constituted friend of
man is raised to chastise "the wickedness of slavery," all Yankeedom
and all Europe seem to think only of us sinners. And yet here, of all
places where it prevailed, African bondage was most ameliorated and
most justifiable! Indeed, not a few of these consistent reformers have
ten-fold as much patience with that demon of slaveholders, the King of
Dahomey, as with the benignant Christian master in Virginia; and go to
that truculent savage to request him not to cut the throats of another
thousand of his inoffensive slaves in a "grand custom," with far more
of courtesy, forbearance, and amiability, than they can exercise
towards us, when they come to reason with us touching the rights of
our late peaceful and well-fed domestics. We see no reason for this
partiality, but that the King of Dahomey is himself of that colour,
which seems to be the only one acceptable to the tastes of this type
of philanthropists. An Abolitionist poet has sung of our oppressing
our brother man, because he was "guilty of a skin." To give the
contrast, these persons act as though, in their view, the King of
Dahomey's meritorious possession of the skin of approved colour, were
enough to cover his multitude of sins! Now, if the rest of Christendom
have determined to take slaveholders for their pet objects of abuse,
we may justly demand of them, at least, to distribute their hard words
more generally, and give all a share.
This injustice is to be accounted for, in part, by the greater
prominence which the late United States held before the world, making
all their supposed sins more prominent; and in part by the zeal of our
late very amiable and equitable partners, the Yankee people. They
reserved their abuse and venom on this subject for their Southern
fellow-citizens alone. They made it their business to direct the whole
storm of odium, from abroad and at home, on our heads. They, having
the manufacture of American books chiefly in their hands, took pains
to fill Europe and their own country with industrious slanders against
their own brethren: and so occupied the ear of the world with abuse of
us, as to make men almost forget that there were any other
slaveholders. For this they had two motives, one calculated, and the
other passionate and instinctive. The latter was the sectional
animosity which was bred by the very intimacy of their association
under one government, with rival interests. The man who has learned to
hate his brother, hates him, and can abuse him, more heartily than any
more distant enemy. The deliberative motive was, to reduce the South
to a state of colonial dependency upon themselves, and exclude all
other nations from the rich plunder which they were accustomed to draw
from the oppressed section, by means of the odium and misunderstanding
which they created concerning us. The South was their precious gold
mine, from which they had quarried, and hoped yet again to quarry,
hoards of wealth, by the instruments of legislative and commercial
jugglery. From this precious mine, they wished to keep other
adventurers away by the customary expedient of spreading an odious
character for moral _malaria_ and pestilential vices around it. It did
not suit their selfish purposes, that Europe should know, that in this
slaveholding South was the true conservative power of the American
Government, the most solid type of old English character, the greatest
social stability and purity, and above all, the very fountain of
international commerce and wealth; lest Europe should desire to visit
and to trade with this section for itself. And the readiest way to
prevent this, was to paint the South to all the rest of the world, in
the blackest colours of misrepresentation, so as to have us regarded
as a semi-barbarous race of domestic tyrants, whose chief occupations
were chaining or scourging negroes, and stabbing each other with
bowie-knives. The trick was a success. The Yankee almost monopolized
the advantages of Southern trade and intercourse.
But the South should have been impelled by the same facts to defend
its institutions before the public opinion of the civilized world; for
_opinion_ is always omnipotent in the end, whatever prejudices and
physical powers may oppose it. If its current is allowed to flow
unchecked, its silent waters gradually undermine the sternest
obstacles. This great truth men of thought are more apt to recognize
than men of action. While the true statesman is fully awake to it, the
mere politician is unconscious of its power; and when his
expedients--his parties and his statutes--have all been silently swept
away by the diffusion of abstract principles opposed to them, he
cannot understand his overthrow. If the late Confederate States would
have gained that to which they aspired, the position of a respectable
and prosperous people among the nations of the world, it was extremely
important that they should secure from their neighbours a more just
appreciation of their institutions. A respectful and powerful appeal
in defence of those institutions was due to our neighbours' opinions,
unfair and unkind as they have been to us; and due to our own rights
and self-respect.
Our mere politicians committed an error in this particular, while we
were still members of the United States, by which we should now learn.
They failed to meet the Abolitionists with sufficient persistence and
force on the radical question--the righteousness of African servitude
as existing among us. It is true that this fundamental point has
received a discussion at the South, chiefly at the hands of clergymen
and literary men, which has evoked a number of works of the highest
merit and power, constituting almost a literature on the subject. One
valuable effect of this literature was to enlighten and satisfy the
Southern mind, and to produce a settled unanimity of opinion, even
greater than that which existed against us in other States. But such
is the customary and overweening egotism of the Yankee mind, that none
of these works, whatever their merit, could ever obtain general
circulation or reading in the North. People there were satisfied to
read only their own shallow and one-sided arguments, quietly treating
us as though our guilt was too clear to admit of any argument, or we
were too inferior to be capable of it. The consequence was, that
although the North has made the wrongs of the African its own peculiar
cause--its great master-question--it is pitiably ignorant of the facts
and arguments of the case. After twenty-five years of discussion, we
find that the staple of the logic of their writers is still the same
set of miserable and shallow sophisms, which Southern divines and
statesmen have threshed into dust, and driven away as the chaff before
the whirlwind, so long ago, and so often, that any intelligent man
among us is almost ashamed to allude to them as requiring an answer.
When the polemic heat of this quarrel shall have passed away, and the
dispassionate antiquary shall compare the literature of the two
parties, he will be amazed to see that of the popular one so poor,
beggarly, and false, and that of the unpopular one so manly,
philosophic, and powerful. But at present, such is the clamour of
prejudice, our cause has not obtained a hearing from the world.
The North having arrogated to itself the name of chief manufacturer
of literary material, and having chief control of the channels of
foreign intercourse, of course our plea has been less listened to
across the Atlantic than in America. The South has been condemned
unheard. Well-informed men in Great Britain, we presume, are ignorant
of the names and works of the able and dignified advocates to whom the
South confidently and proudly committed her justification; and were
willing to render their verdict upon the mere accusations of our
interested slanderers. But while the United States yet existed
unbroken, there was one _forum_, where we could have demanded a
hearing upon the fundamental question: the Federal Legislature. From
that centre of universal attention, our defence of the righteousness
of the relation of master and slave, as existing among us, might have
been spread before the public mind; and the abstract question having
been decided by triumphant argument, the troubles of our Federal
relations might possibly have been quieted. There were two courses,
either of which might have been followed by our politicians, in
defending our Federal rights against Abolitionism. One plan would have
been, to exclude the whole question of slavery persistently from the
national councils, as extra-constitutional and dangerous, and to
assert this exclusion always, and at every risk, as the essential
condition of the continuance of the South in those councils. The other
plan was, to meet that abstract question from the first, as underlying
and determining the whole subject, and to debate it everywhere, until
it was decided, and the verdict of the national mind was passed upon
it. Unfortunately, the Southern men did neither persistently. After
temporary resistance, they permitted the debate; and then failed to
conduct it on fundamental principles. With the exception of Mr.
Calhoun, (whom events have now shown to have been the most far-seeing
of our statesmen, notwithstanding the fashion of men to depreciate him
as an "abstractionist" while he lived,) Southern politicians usually
satisfied themselves with saying, that the whole matter was, according
to the Constitution, one of State sovereignty; that Congress had no
right to legislate concerning its merits; and that therefore they
would not seem to admit such a right, by condescending to argue the
matter on its merits. The premise was true; but the inference was
practically most mischievous. If the Congress had no right to
legislate about slavery, then it should not have been permitted to
debate it. And Southern men, if they intended to make their stand on
that ground, should have exacted the exclusion of all debate, at every
cost. But this was perhaps impossible. The debate came; and, of
course, the principles agitated ran at once back of the Constitution,
to the abstract ethical question: "Is the holding of an African slave
in the South a moral wrong in itself?" Southern men should have
industriously followed them there; but they did not do it: and soon
the heat and animosity of an aggressive and growing faction hurried
the country beyond the point of calm consideration. A moment's
reflection should have shown that the decisive question was the
abstract righteousness of the relation of master and slave. The
Constitution gave to the Federal Government no power over that
relation in the States. True; but that Constitution was a compact
between sovereign commonwealth: it certainly gave recognition and
protection to the relation of master and slave; and if that relation
is intrinsically unrighteous, then it protected a wrong. Then the
sovereign States of the North were found in the attitude of protecting
a wrong by their voluntary compact; and therefore it would have been
the duty of all citizens of those States to seek, by all righteous
means, the amendment or repeal of that compact. They would not,
indeed, have been justified to claim all the benefits of the compact,
and still agitate under it a matter which the compact excluded. But
they would have been more than justified, they would have been bound
to clear their skirts of the wrong, by surrendering the compact, if
necessary. There was no evasion from the duty, except by proving that
the Constitution did nothing unrighteous by protecting the relation;
in other words, that the relation was not unrighteous. Again, on the
subject of the "Higher Law," our conservative statesmen and divines
threw up a vast amount of pious dust. This partially quieted the
country for a time; but, as might have been foreseen, it was destined
to be inevitably blown away. There _is a higher law_, superior to
constitutions and statutes; not, indeed, the perjured and unprincipled
cant which has no conscience against swearing allegiance to a
Constitution and laws which it declares sinful, in order to grasp
emoluments and advantages, and then pleads "conscience" for disobeying
what it had voluntarily sworn to obey; but the everlasting law of
right in the word of God. Constitutions and laws which contravene
this, ought to be lawfully amended or repealed; and it is the duty of
all citizens to seek it. Let this be applied to the Fugitive Slave
Law. If the bondage was intrinsically unrighteous, then the Federal
law which aided in remanding the fugitive to it, legalized a wrong. It
became, therefore, the duty of all United States officers, who were
required by statute to execute this law--not, indeed, to hold their
offices and emoluments, and swear fidelity, and then plead
conscientious scruples for the neglect of these sworn functions, (for
this is a detestable union of theft and perjury with hypocrisy,)--but
to resign those offices wholly, with their profits and their sinful
functions. It would have become the duty of any private citizen, who
might have been summoned by a United States officer, to act in a
_posse_, guard, or any other way in enforcing this law, to decline
obedience; and then, in accordance with Scripture, to submit meekly to
the legal penalty of such a refusal, until the unrighteous law were
repealed. But, moreover, it would have become the right and duty of
these and all other citizens to seek the repeal of that law, or, if
necessary, the abrogation of that Federal compact which necessitated
it. But on the other hand, when we proved that the relation of master
and slave is not unrighteous, and that therefore the Fugitive Slave
Law required the perpetration of no wrong, and was constitutional, it
became the clear moral duty of every citizen to concur in obeying it.
Once more: the true key of the more commanding question of _free soil_
was in the same abstract ethical point. If the relation of master and
servant was unrighteous, and the institution a standing sin against
God and human rights, then it was not to be extended at the mere
dictate of convenience and gain. Although Northern men might be
compelled to admit that, in the States, it was subject to State
control alone, and expressly exempted from all interference of the
Federal Government by the Constitution; yet, outside of the States,
that Constitution and Government, representative as it was as a
majority of free States, ought not to have been prostituted to the
extension of a great moral wrong. Those free States ought, if their
Southern partners would not consent to relinquish their right by a
peaceable amendment of the Constitution, to have retired from the
odious compact, and to have surrendered the advantages of the Union
for conscience' sake. If, on the contrary, African slavery in America
was no unrighteousness, no sin against human rights, and no
contradiction to the doctrines of the Constitution, then the general
teachings of that instrument concerning the absolute equality of the
States and their several citizens under it, were too clear to leave a
doubt, that the letter and spirit of the document gave the slaveholder
just the same right to carry his slaves into any territory, with that
of the Connecticut man to carry his clock-factory. Hence the ethical
question, when once the slavery agitation became inevitable, should
have been made the great question by us. The halls of Congress should
have rung with the arguments, the newspaper press should have teemed
with them. But little was done to purpose in this discussion, save by
clergymen and literary men; and for reasons already indicated they
were practically unheard. After it was too late to stem the torrent of
passion and sectional ambition pouring against us, politicians did
indeed awake to a tardy perception of these important views; but the
eyes of the Northern people were then obstinately closed against them
by a foregone conclusion.
We have cited these recent and striking illustrations of the
fundamental importance of the ethical discussion, to justify the task
we have undertaken. Some may suppose that, as the United States are no
more as they were, and slaveholding is absolutely and finally ended,
the question is obsolete. This is a great mistake. The status of the
negro is just beginning to develop itself as an agitating and potent
element in the politics of America. It will still continue the great
ground of contrast, and subject of moral strife, between the North and
the South.
We have attempted to indicate the potency of the slow and silent but
irresistible influence of opinion over human affairs. Let our enemies
claim the triumph without question in the field of opinion; let them
continue to persuade mankind successfully that we were a people
stained by a standing social crime; and we shall be continually
worsted by them. In order to be free, we must be respected: and to
this end we must defend our good name. We need not urge that
instinctive desire for the good opinion of our fellow-men, and that
sense of justice, which must ever render it painful to be the objects
of undeserved odium. Instead, therefore, of regarding the discussion
of the rightfulness of African slavery as henceforth antiquated, we
believe that it assumes, at this era, a new and wider importance.
While the swords of our people were fighting the battles of a
necessary self-defence, the pens of our statesmen should have been no
less diligent in defending us against the adverse opinion of a
prejudiced world. Every opening should have been seized to disabuse
the minds of Europeans, a jury to which we have hitherto had no
access, although condemned by it. The discussion should everywhere
have been urged, until public opinion was effectually rectified and
made just to the Confederate States.
At the first glance, it appears an arduous, if not a hopeless
undertaking, to address the minds of such nations as the North and
Great Britain in defence of Southern slavery. We have to contend
against the prescriptive opinions and prejudices of years' growth. We
assert a thesis which our adversaries have taken pains to represent as
an impossible absurdity, of which the very assertion is an insult to
the understanding and heart of a freeman. Ten thousand slanders have
given to the very name of Southern slaveholder a colouring, which
darkens every argument that can be advanced in his favour. Yet the
task of self-defence is not entirely discouraging. Our best hope is in
the fact that the cause of our defence is the cause of God's Word, and
of its supreme authority over the human conscience. For, as we shall
evince, that Word is on our side, and the teachings of Abolitionism
are clearly of rationalistic origin, of infidel tendency, and only
sustained by reckless and licentious perversions of the meaning of the
Sacred text. It will in the end become apparent to the world, not only
that the conviction of the wickedness of slaveholding was drawn wholly
from sources foreign to the Bible, but that it is a legitimate
corollary from that fantastic, atheistic, and radical theory of human
rights, which made the Reign of Terror in France, which has threatened
that country, and which now threatens the United States, with the
horrors of Red-Republicanism. Because we believe that God intends to
vindicate His Divine Word, and to make all nations honour it; because
we confidently rely in the force of truth to explode all dangerous
error; therefore we confidently expect that the world will yet do
justice to Southern slaveholders. The anti-scriptural, infidel, and
radical grounds upon which our assailants have placed themselves, make
our cause practically the cause of truth and order. This is already
understood here by thinking men who have seen Abolitionism bear its
fruit unto perfection: and the world will some day understand it. We
shall possess at this time another advantage in defending our good
name, derived from our late effort for independence. Hitherto we have
been little known to Europeans, save through the very charitable
representations of our fraternal partners, the Yankees. Foreigners
visiting the United States almost always assumed, that when they had
seen the North, they had seen the country, (for Yankeedom always
modestly represented itself as constituting all of America that was
worth looking at.) Hence the character of the South was not known, nor
its importance appreciated. Its books and periodicals were unread by
Europeans. But now the very interest excited by our struggle has
caused other nations to observe for themselves, and to find that we
are not _Troglodytes_ nor _Anthropophagi_.
Another introductory remark which should be made is, that this
discussion, to produce any good result, must distinctly disclaim some
extravagant and erroneous grounds which have sometimes been assumed.
It is not our purpose to rest our defence on an assumption of a
diversity of race, which is contradicted both by natural history and
by the Scripture, declaring that "God hath made of one blood all
nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth." Nor does
the Southern cause demand such assertions as that the condition of
master and slave is everywhere the normal condition of human society,
and preferable to all others under all circumstances. The burden of
odium which the cause will then carry, abroad, will be immeasurably
increased by such positions. Nor can a purpose be ever subserved by
arguing the question by a series of comparisons of the relative
advantages of slave and free labour, laudatory to the one part and
invidious to the other. There has been hitherto, on both sides of this
debate, a mischievous forgetfulness of the old adage, "comparisons are
odious!" When Southern men thus argued, they assumed the disadvantage
of appearing as the propagandists, instead of the peaceful defenders,
of an institution which immediately concerned nobody but themselves;
and they arrayed the self-esteem of all opponents against us by making
our defence the necessary disparagement of the other parties. True,
those parties have usually been but too zealous to play at this
invidious game, beginning it in advance. We should not imitate them.
It is time all parties had learned that the lawfulness and policy of
different social systems cannot be decided by painting the special and
exceptional features of hardship, abuse, or mismanagement, which
either of the advocates may imagine he sees in the system of his
opponent. The course of this great discussion has too often been this:
Each party has set up an easel, and spread a canvas upon it, and
drawn the system of its adversary in contrast with its own, in the
blackest colours which a heated and angry fancy could discover amidst
the evils and abuses imputed to the rival institution. The only
possible result was, that each should blacken his adversary more and
more; and consequently that both should grow more and more enraged.
And this result did not argue the entire falsehood of either set of
accusations. For, unfortunately, the human race is a fallen
race--depraved, selfish, unrighteous and oppressive, under all
institutions. Out of the best social order, committed to such hands,
there still proceeds a hideous amount of wrongs and woe; and that, not
because the order is unrighteous, but because it is administered by
depraved man. For this reason, and for another equally conclusive, we
assert that the lawfulness, and even the wisdom or policy of social
institutions affecting a great population, cannot be decided by these
odious contrasts of their special wrong results. That second reason
is, that the field of view is too vast and varied to be brought fairly
under comparison in all its details before the limited eye of man.
First, then, if we attempt to settle the matter by endeavouring to
find how much evil can be discovered in the working of the opposite
system, there will probably be no end at all to the melancholy
discoveries which both parties will make against each other, and so no
end to the debate: for the guilty passions of men are everywhere
perpetual fountains of wrong-doing. And second, the comparison of
results must be deceptive, because no finite mind can take in all the
details of both the wholes. Our wisdom, then, will be to take no
extreme positions, and to make no invidious comparisons
unnecessarily. It is enough for us to place ourselves on this
impregnable stand; that the relation of master and slave is recognized
as lawful in itself by a sound philosophy, and above all, by the Word
of God. It is enough for us to say (what is capable of overwhelming
demonstration) that for the African race, such as Providence has made
it, and where He has placed it in America, slavery was the righteous,
the best, yea, the only tolerable relation. Whether it would be wise
or just for other States to introduce it, we need not argue.
And in conclusion, we would state that it is our purpose to argue this
proposition chiefly on Bible grounds. Our people and our national
neighbours are professedly Christians; the vast majority of them
profess to get their ideas of morality, as all should, from the Sacred
Scriptures. A few speculative minds may reason out moral conclusions
from ethical principles; but the masses derive their ideas of right
and wrong from a "Thus saith the Lord." And it is a homage we owe to
the Bible, from whose principles we have derived so much of social
prosperity and blessing, to appeal to its verdict on every subject
upon which it has spoken. Indeed, when we remember how human reason
and learning have blundered in their philosophizings; how great
parties have held for ages the doctrine of the divine right of kings
as a political axiom; how the whole civilized world held to the
righteousness of persecuting errors in opinion, even for a century
after the Reformation; we shall feel little confidence in mere human
reasonings on political principles; we shall rejoice to follow a
steadier light. The scriptural argument for the righteousness of
slavery gives us, moreover, this great advantage: If we urge it
successfully, we compel the Abolitionists either to submit, or else to
declare their true infidel character. We thrust them fairly to the
wall, by proving that the Bible is against them; and if they declare
themselves against the Bible (as the most of them doubtless will) they
lose the support of all honest believers in God's Word.
This discussion will therefore be, in the main, a series of
expositions. The principles of scriptural exposition are simply those
of common sense; and it will be the writer's aim so to explain them
that they shall commend themselves to every honest mind, and to rid
them of the sophisms of the Abolitionists.
But before we proceed to this discussion we propose to devote a few
pages to the exposition of the historical facts which place the
attitude of Virginia in the proper light.
CHAPTER II.
THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE.
This iniquitous traffick, beginning with the importation of negroes
into Hispaniola in 1503, was first pursued by the English in 1562,
under Sir John Hawkins, who sold a cargo at the same island that year.
The news of his success reaching Queen Elizabeth, she became a partner
with him in other voyages. Under the Stuart kings, repeated charters
were given to noblemen and merchants, to form companies for this
trade, in one of which, the Duke of York, afterwards James II., was a
partner. The colony of Virginia was planted in 1607. The first cargo
of negroes, only twenty in number, arrived there in a Dutch vessel in
1620, and was bought by the colonists. All the commercial nations of
Europe were implicated in the trade; and all the colonies in America
were supplied, to a greater or less extent, with slave labour from
Africa, whether Spanish, Portuguese, English, French, or Dutch. But
England became, on the whole, the leader in this trade, and was
unrivalled by any, save her daughter, New England.
The happy revolution of 1688, which placed William and Mary on the
throne, arrested for a time the activity of the royal company for
slave trading, by throwing the business open to the whole nation. For
one of the reforms, stipulated with the new government, was the
abolition of all monopolies. But the company did not give up its
operations; and it even succeeded in exacting from Parliament an
indemnity of £10,000 _per annum_ for the loss of its exclusive
privilege. But the most splendid triumph of British enterprise was
that achieved by the treaty of Utrecht, 1712, between Queen Anne and
Spain. By a compact called the _Asiento_ treaty, the Spanish monarch
resigned to the English South Sea Company, the exclusive slave trade
even between Africa and the Spanish colonies. Four thousand eight
hundred slaves were to be furnished to the Spanish colonies annually,
for thirty years, paying to the King of Spain an impost of
thirty-three and a third dollars per head; but the company had the
privilege of introducing as many more as they could sell, paying half
duty upon them. The citizens of every other nation, even Spaniards
themselves, were prohibited from bringing a single slave. The British
Queen and the King of Spain became stockholders in the venture, to the
extent of one-fourth each; the remainder of the stock was left to
British citizens. And Anne, in her speech from the throne, detailing
to her Parliament the provisions of the treaty of Utrecht,
congratulated them on this monopoly of slave trading, as the most
splendid triumph of her arms and diplomacy.[1] Meantime, the African
Company, with private adventurers at a later day, plied the trade with
equal activity, for furnishing the British colonies. Finally, in 1749,
every restriction upon private enterprise was removed; and the slave
trade was thrown open to all Englishmen; for, says the statute: "the
slave trade is very advantageous to Great Britain." But every resource
of legislation, and even of war, was employed during the eighteenth
century to secure the monopoly of the trade to British subjects, and
to enlarge the market for their commodity in all the colonies. To this
end, the royal government of the plantations, which afterwards became
the United States, was perseveringly directed. The complaint of Hugh
Drysdale, Deputy Governor of Virginia, in 1726, that when a tax was
imposed to check the influx of Africans, "the interfering interest of
the African company has obtained the repeal of the law,"[2] was common
to him and all the patriotic rulers of the Southern colonies.
[Footnote 1: Bancroft, Hist. U. S., vol. iii., p. 232. Com. Boutwell,
Slave Trade. Bancroft, vol. iii., p. 414.]
[Footnote 2: Bancroft, vol. iii., p. 415.]
Reynal estimates the whole number of negroes stolen from Africa before
1776 at nine millions; Bancroft at something more than six millions.
Of these, British subjects carried at least half: and to the above
numbers must be added a quarter of a million thrown by Englishmen into
the Atlantic on the voyage.[3] As the traffick continued in full
activity until 1808, it is a safe estimate that the number of victims
to British cupidity taken from Africa was increased to five millions.
The profit made by Englishmen upon the three millions carried to
America before 1776, could not have been less than four hundred
millions of dollars. The negroes cost the traders nothing but
worthless trinkets, damaged fire-arms, and New England rum: they were
usually paid for in hard money at the place of sale. This lucrative
trade laid the foundation, to a great degree, for the commercial
wealth of London, Bristol, and Liverpool. The capital which now makes
England the workshop and _emporium_ of the world, was in large part
born of the African slave trade. Especially was this the chief source
of the riches which founded the British empire in Hindostan. The South
Sea and the African Companies were the prototypes and pioneers of that
wonderful institution, the East India Company; and the money by which
the latter was set on foot was derived mainly from the profitable
slave-catching of the former. When the direct returns of the African
trade in the eighteenth century are remembered; when it is noted how
much colonial trade has contributed to British greatness, and when it
is considered that England's colonial system was wholly built upon
African slavery, the intelligent reader will be convinced that the
slave trade was the corner-stone of the present splendid prosperity of
that Empire.
[Footnote 3: Ibid., vol. iii., pp. 411, 412.]
But after the nineteenth century had arrived, the prospective impolicy
of the trade,[4] the prevalence of democratic and Jacobin opinions
imported from France, the shame inspired by the example of Virginia,
with (we would fain hope) some influences of the Christian religion
upon the better spirits, began to create a powerful party against the
trade. First, Clarkson published in Latin, and then in English, his
work against the slave trade, exposing its unutterable barbarities, as
practised by Englishmen, and arguing its intrinsic unrighteousness.
The powerful parliamentary influence of Wilberforce was added, and
afterwards that of the younger Pitt. The commercial classes made a
tremendous resistance for many years, sustained by many noblemen and
by the royal family; but at length the Parliament, in 1808, declared
the trade illicit, and took measures to suppress it. Since that time,
the British Government, with a tardy zeal, but without disgorging any
of the gross spoils with which it is so plethoric, wrung from the
tears and blood of Africa, has arrogated to itself the special task of
the catchpole of the seas, to "police" the world against the
continuance of its once profitable sin. Its present attitude is in
curious contrast with its recent position, as greedy monopolist, and
queen of slave traders; and especially when the observer adverts to
her activity in the Coolie traffick, that new and more frightful form,
under which the Phariseeism of this age has restored the trade, he
will have little difficulty in deciding, whether the meddlesome
activity of England is prompted by a virtuous repentance, or by a
desire to replace the advantages of the African commerce with other
fruits of commercial supremacy.
[Footnote 4: Speeches of Pitt and Fox, in Clarkson's Hist., pp. 315,
339.]
The share of the Colony of Virginia in the African slave trade was
that of an unwilling recipient; never that of an active party. She had
no ships engaged in any foreign trade; for the strict obedience of her
governors and citizens to the colonial laws of the mother country
prevented her trading to foreign ports, and all the carrying trade to
British ports and colonies was in the hands of New Englanders and
Englishmen. In the replies submitted by Sir William Berkeley,
Governor, 1671, to certain written inquiries of the "Lords of
Plantations," we find the following statement: "And this is the cause
why no great or small vessels are built here; for we are most obedient
to all laws, while the men of New England break through, and trade to
any place that their interest leads them."[5] The same facts, and the
sense of grievance which the colonists derived from them, are
curiously attested by the party of Nathaniel Bacon also, who opposed
Sir William Berkeley. When they supposed that they had wrested the
government from his hands, Sarah Drummond, an enthusiastic patriot,
exclaimed: "Now we can build ships, and like New England, trade to any
part of the world."[6] But her hopes were not realized: Virginia
continued without ships. No vessel ever went from her ports, or was
ever manned by her citizens, to engage in the slave trade; and while
her government can claim the high and peculiar honour of having ever
opposed the cruel traffick, her citizens have been precluded by
Providence from the least participation in it.
[Footnote 5: Herring, Stat. at Large, vol. ii., p. 516.]
[Footnote 6: Campbell's Virginia, p. 304.]
The planting of the commercial States of North America began with the
colony of Puritan Independents at Plymouth, in 1620, which was
subsequently enlarged into the State of Massachusetts. The other
trading colonies, Rhode Island and Connecticut, as well as New
Hampshire (which never had an extensive shipping interest), were
offshoots of Massachusetts. They partook of the same characteristics
and pursuits; and hence, the example of the parent colony is taken
here as a fair representation of them. The first ship from America,
which embarked in the African slave trade, was the _Desire_, Captain
Pierce, of Salem; and this was among the first vessels ever built in
the colony. The promptitude with which the "Puritan Fathers" embarked
in this business may be comprehended, when it is stated that the
Desire sailed upon her voyage in June, 1637.[7] The first feeble and
dubious foothold was gained by the white man at Plymouth less than
seventeen years before; and as is well known, many years were expended
by the struggle of the handful of settlers for existence. So that it
may be correctly said, that the commerce of New England was born of
the slave trade; as its subsequent prosperity was largely founded upon
it. The Desire, proceeding to the Bahamas, with a cargo of "dry fish
and strong liquors, the only commodities for those parts," obtained
the negroes from two British men-of-war, which had captured them from
a Spanish slaver.
[Footnote 7: Winthrop's Journal, i., 254. Moore's Slavery in Mass.,
pp. 5, 6.]
To understand the growth of the New England slave trade, two connected
topics must be a little illustrated. The first of these is the
enslaving of Indians. The pious "Puritan Fathers" found it convenient
to assume that they were God's chosen Israel, and the pagans about
them were Amalek and Amorites. They hence deduced their righteous
title to exterminate or enslave the Indians, whenever they became
troublesome. As soon as the Indian wars began, we find the captives
enslaved. The ministers and magistrates solemnly authorized the
enslaving of the wives and posterity of their enemies for the crimes
of the fathers and husbands in daring to defend their own soil. In
1646, the Commissioners of the United Colonies made an order,[8] that
upon complaint of a trespass by Indians, any of that plantation of
Indians that should entertain, protect, or rescue the offender, might
be seized by reprisal, and held as hostages for the delivery of the
culprits; in failure of which, the innocent persons seized should be
slaves, and be exported for sale as such. In 1677, the General Court
of Massachusetts[9] ordered the enslaving of the Indian youths or
girls "of such as had been in hostility with the colony, or had lived
among its enemies in the time of the War." In the winter of 1675-6,
Major Waldron, commissioner of the General Court for that territory
now included in Maine, issued a general warrant for seizing,
enslaving, and exporting every Indian "known to be a manslayer,
traitor, or conspirator."[10] The reader will not be surprised to
hear, that so monstrous an order, committed for execution to any or
every man's irresponsible hands, was employed by many shipmasters for
the vilest purposes of kidnapping and slave hunting. But in addition,
in numerous instances whole companies of peaceable and inoffensive
Indians, submitting to the colonial authorities, were seized and
enslaved by publick order. In one case one hundred and fifty of the
Dartmouth tribe, including their women and children, coming in by a
voluntary submission, and under a general pledge of amnesty, and in
another instance, four hundred of a different tribe, were shamelessly
enslaved. By means of these proceedings, the numbers of Indian
servants became so large, that they were regarded as dangerous to the
Colony. They were, moreover, often untameable in temper, prone to run
away to their kinsmen in the neighbouring wilderness, and much less
docile and effective for labour than the "blackamoors." Hence the
prudent and thrifty saints saw the advantage of exporting them to the
Bermudas, Barbadoes, and other islands, in exchange for negroes and
merchandise; and this traffick, being much encouraged, and finally
enjoined, by the authorities, became so extensive as to substitute
negroes for Indian slaves, almost wholly in the Colony.[11] Among the
slaves thus deported were the favourite wife and little son of the
heroic King Philip. The holy Independent Divines, Cotton, Arnold, and
Increase Mather, inclined to the opinion that he should be slain for
his father's sins, after the example of the children of Achan and
Agag;[12] but the authorities probably concluded that his deportation
would be a more profitable, as well as a harsher punishment. These
shocking incidents will no longer appear incredible to the reader,
when he is informed that the same magistrates sold and transported
into foreign slavery two English children, one of them a girl, for
attending a Quaker meeting;[13] while the adult ladies present were
fined £10 each, and whipped.[14]
[Footnote 8: Moore's Slavery in Mass., p. 32.]
[Footnote 9: Ibid., p. 38.]
[Footnote 10: Ibid., p. 47.]
[Footnote 11: On the whole of above, see Moore, pp. 33-46.]
[Footnote 12: Moore, p. 45.]
[Footnote 13: Ibid., pp. 33, 34.]
[Footnote 14: The following passage, from a late valuable letter of
Thomas P. Devereux, Esq., of Halifax County, North Carolina, to the
Governor of that State, gives us one _item_ of evidence as to the
extent of this abominable usage of the "Pilgrim Fathers." See Raleigh
Daily Sentinel, Dec. 12th, 1866: "It is worthy of note that, amongst
my slaves, there was a large intermixture of Indian blood from the
Pequots, brought from Massachusetts and sold in North Carolina, in the
early part of the 18th century, and, up to the act of emancipation, I
could, with tolerable certainty, detect the mixed race by their
addiction to liquor and its effects upon them."]
In pleasing contrast with these enormities, stands the contemporaneous
legislation of the Colony of Virginia touching its Indian neighbours.
By three acts, 1655 to 1657, the colonists were strictly forbidden to
trespass upon the lands of the Indians, or to dispossess them of their
homes even by purchase. Slaying an Indian for his trespass was
prohibited. The Indians, provided they were not armed, were authorized
to pass freely through the several settlements, for trading, fishing,
and gathering wild fruits. It was forbidden to enslave or deport any
Indian, no matter under what circumstances he was captured; and Indian
apprentices or servants for a term of years could only be held as such
by authority of their parents, or if they had none, of the
magistrates.[15] Their careful training in Christianity was enjoined,
and at the end of their terms, their discharge, with wages, was
secured by law.
[Footnote 15: Herring, Stat. at Large, vol. i., pp. 395, 415, 456.]
The second, and more potent cause of development of the New England
slave trade, was the commerce between those colonies and the West
Indies. Each of the mother countries endeavoured to monopolize to
herself all the trade and transportation of her own colonies. But it
was the perpetual policy of Great Britain to intrude into this
monopoly, which Spain preserved between herself and her colonies,
while she jealously maintained her own intact. This motive prompted
her systematic connivance at every species of illicit navigation and
traffick of her subjects in those seas. The New England colonies were
not slow to imitate their brethren at home; and although their
maritime ventures were as really violations of the colonial laws of
England, as of the rights of Spain, the mother country easily connived
at them for the sake of their direction. The Spanish Main was
consequently the scene of a busy trade during the seventeenth century,
which was as unscrupulous and daring as the operations of the
Buccaneers of the previous age. The only difference was, that the
red-handed plunder was now perpetrated on the African villages instead
of the Spanish, and for the joint advantage of the New England
adventurers and the Spanish and British planters. At length, the
treaty of Utrecht, in 1712, recognized this encroaching trade, and
provided for its extension throughout the Indies.[16] New England
adventure, as well as British, thus received a new _impetus_. The
wine-staves of her forests, the salt fish of her coasts, the tobacco
and flour of Virginia, were exchanged for sugar and molasses. These
were distilled into that famous New England rum, which, as Dr. Jeremy
Belknap, of Massachusetts, declared, was the foundation of the African
slave trade.[17] The slave ships, freighted with this rum, proceeded
to the coast of Guinea, and, by a most gainful traffick, exchanged it
for negroes, leaving the savage communities behind them on fire with
barbarian excess, out of which a new crop of petty wars, murders,
enslavements, and kidnappings grew, to furnish future cargoes of
victims; while they wafted their human freight to the Spanish and
British Indies, Virginia, the Carolinas, and their own colonies. The
larger number of their victims were sold in these markets; the less
saleable remnants of cargoes were brought home, and sold in the New
England ports. But not seldom, whole cargoes were brought thither
directly. Dr. Belknap remembered, among many others, one which
consisted almost wholly of children.[18]
[Footnote 16: Bancroft, vol. iii., p. 231.]
[Footnote 17: Moore's Hist. of Slavery in Mass., p. 6.]
[Footnote 18: Moore, p. 68.]
Thus, the trade of which the good ship Desire, of Salem, was the
harbinger, grew into grand proportions; and for nearly two centuries
poured a flood of wealth into New England, as well as no
inconsiderable number of slaves. The General Court of Massachusetts
recognized the trade as legal, imposing a duty of £4 per head on each
negro sold in the province, with a drawback for those resold out of
it, or dying in twelve months.[19] The weight of this duty is only
evidence of a desire to raise revenue, and to discourage the
settlement of numbers of negroes in Massachusetts; not of any
disapproval of the traffick in itself, as a proper employment of New
England enterprise. The government of the province preferred white
servants, and was already aware of the unprofitable nature of African
labour in their inhospitable climate; but the furnishing of other
colonies with negroes was a favoured branch of commerce. The increase
of negro slaves in Massachusetts during the seventeenth century was
slow. But the following century changed the record.
[Footnote 19: Idem, pp. 59, 60.]
In 1720, Governor Shute states their numbers at two thousand. In 1754,
a census of negroes gave four thousand five hundred; and the first
United States census, in 1790, returned six thousand.[20]
[Footnote 20: Moore, pp. 50, 51.]
Meantime, the other maritime colonies of Rhode Island and Providence
Plantations, and Connecticut, followed the example of their elder
sister emulously; and their commercial history is but a repetition of
that of Massachusetts. The towns of Providence, Newport, and New Haven
became famous slave trading ports. The magnificent harbour of the
second, especially, was the favourite starting-place of the slave
ships; and its commerce rivalled, or even exceeded, that of the
present commercial metropolis, New York. All the four original States,
of course, became slaveholding.[21]
[Footnote 21: Bancroft, vol. iii., ch. 24, does justice to the crimes
of England against the Africans, and against her own colonies; but is
absolutely silent touching the complicity of New England! And, as
though this _suppressio veri_ were not enough, he proceeds to a
studious _suggestio falsi_. Page 405th he says: "Of a direct voyage
from Guinea to the coast of the United States, no journal is known to
exist, though slave ships from Africa entered nearly every
considerable harbour south of Newport." And, p. 410: "The English
continental colonies, in the aggregate, were always opposed to the
African slave trade." We have seen evidence, that Bancroft must have
known that every American slaver which ever entered a port of the
United States, was either from this same Newport, or other ports north
of it. We shall see hereafter, that he must have known also, that
Massachusetts was certainly not among that "aggregate" of the colonies
which opposed the African slave trade. Yet, in this chapter, he
endeavours expressly to produce that impression. See p. 408.]
No records exist, accessible to the historian, by which the numbers of
slaves brought to this country by New England traders can be
ascertained. Their operations were mingled with those of Englishmen
from the mother country. While the total of the operations of the
latter, including their importations into the Spanish colonies, was
greatly larger than that of the New Englanders, the latter probably
sustained at least an equal share of the trade to the thirteen
colonies, up to the time of the Revolution; and thenceforward, to the
year 1808, when the importations were nominally arrested, they carried
on nearly the whole. So that the presence of the major part of the
four millions of Africans now in America, is due to New England. Some
further illustrations will be given of the method and spirit in which
that section conducted the trade. The number of The Boston Post-Boy
and Advertiser for September 12th, 1763, contains the following:
"By a gentleman who arrived here a few days ago from the coast of
Africa, we are informed of the arrivals of Captains Morris, Ferguson,
and Wickham, of this port, who write very discouraging accounts of the
trade upon the coast; and that upwards of two hundred gallons of real
rum had been given for slaves per head, and scarcely to be got at any
rate for that commodity. This must be sensibly felt by this poor and
distressed Government, _the inhabitants whereof being very large
adventurers in the trade, having sent and about sending upwards of
twenty sail of vessels_, computed to carry in the whole about nine
thousand hogsheads of rum, a quantity much too large for the places on
the coast, where that commodity has generally been vended. We hear
that many vessels are also gone and going from the neighbouring
Governments, likewise from Barbadoes, from which place a large cargo
of rum had arrived before our informant left the coast, of which they
gave two hundred and seventy gallons for a prime slave."
When it is remembered that the Massachusetts ports were then small
towns, the fact that they had more than twenty ships simultaneously
engaged in the trade to the Guinea coast alone, clearly reveals that
it was the leading branch of their maritime adventure, and main source
of their wealth. The ingenuous lament of the printer over the
increasing cost of "a prime slave," gives us the correct clue to the
change in their views concerning the propriety of the trade. When the
negro rose in value to two hundred gallons "of real rum" (the sable
slave hunters were becoming as acute as Brother Jonathan himself,
touching the adulterated article), the conscience of the holy
adventurer began to be disturbed about the righteousness of the
traffick. When the slave cost two hundred and fifty gallons, the
scruples became troublesome; and when his price mounted up towards
three hundred, by reason of the imprudence of the naughty man with his
large cargo, from Barbadoes, the stings of conscience became
intolerable. By the principles of that religion which "supposeth that
gain is godliness,"[22] the trade was now become clearly wrong.
[Footnote 22: St. Paul's description of Abolitionists, 1 Tim., vi.,
1-5.]
The following extracts are from the letter of instructions given by a
leading Salem firm to the captain of their ship, upon its clearing for
the African coast:[23]
[Footnote 23: Felt's Salem, ii., 289, 290.]
"CAPTAIN----: Our brig, of which you have the command, being
cleared at the office, and being in every other respect complete
for sea, our orders are, that you embrace the first fair wind, and
make the best of your way to the coast of Africa, and there invest
your cargo in slaves. As slaves, when brought to market, like
other articles, generally appear to the best advantage; therefore
too critical an inspection cannot be paid to them before purchase,
to see that no dangerous distemper is lurking about them, to
attend particularly to their age, to their countenances, to the
straightness of their limbs, and, as far as possible, to the
goodness or badness of their constitution, etc., etc., will be
very considerable objects. Male or female slaves, whether full
grown or not, we cannot particularly instruct you about; and on
this head shall only observe that prime male slaves generally sell
best in any market."
* * * * *
"Upon your return, you will touch at St. Pierre's, Martinico, and
call on Mr. John Mounreau for your further advice and destination.
We submit the conducting of the voyage to your good judgment and
prudent management, not doubting of your best endeavours to serve
our interest in all cases; and conclude with committing you to the
almighty Disposer of all events."
The present commercial and manufacturing wealth of New England is to
be traced, even more than that of Old England, to the proceeds of the
slave trade, and slave labour. The capital of the former was derived
mainly from the profits of the Guinea trade. The shipping which first
earned wealth for its owners in carrying the bodies of the slaves, was
next employed in transporting the cotton, tobacco, and rice which
they reared, and the imports purchased therewith. And when the unjust
tariff policy of the United States allured the next generation of New
Englanders to invest the swollen accumulations of their slave trading
fathers in factories, it was still slave grown cotton which kept their
spindles busy. The structure of New England wealth is cemented with
the sweat and blood of Africans.
In bright contrast with its guilty cupidity, stands the consistent
action of Virginia, which, from its very foundation as a colony,
always denounced and endeavoured to resist the trade. It is one of the
strange freaks of history, that this commonwealth, which was guiltless
in this thing, and which always presented a steady protest against the
enormity, should become, in spite of herself, the home of the largest
number of African slaves found within any of the States, and thus,
should be held up by Abolitionists as the representative of the "sin
of slaveholding;" while Massachusetts, which was, next to England, the
pioneer and patroness of the slave trade, and chief criminal, having
gained for her share the wages of iniquity instead of the persons of
the victims, has arrogated to herself the post of chief accuser of
Virginia. It is because the latter colony was made, in this affair,
the helpless victim of the tyranny of Great Britain and the relentless
avarice of New England. The sober evidence of history which will be
presented, will cause the breast of the most deliberate reader to burn
with indignation for the injustice suffered by Virginia, and the
profound hypocrisy of her detractors.
The preamble to the State Constitution of Virginia, drawn up by George
Mason, and adopted by the Convention June 29th, 1776, was written by
Thomas Jefferson. In the recital of grievances against Great Britain,
which had prompted the commonwealth to assume its independence, this
preamble contains the following words: "By prompting our negroes to
rise in arms among us; those very negroes whom, by an inhuman use of
his negative, he had refused us permission to exclude by law."[24] Mr.
Jefferson, long a leading member of the House of Burgesses, and most
learned of all his contemporaries in the legislation of his country,
certainly knew whereof he affirmed. His witness is more than confirmed
by that of Mr. Madison,[25] who says: "The British Government
constantly checked the attempts of Virginia to put a stop to this
infernal traffick." Mr. Jefferson, in a passage which was expunged
from the Declaration of Independence by New England votes in the
Congress, strongly stated the same charge. And George Mason, perhaps
the greatest and most influential of Virginians, next to Washington,
reiterated the accusation with equal strength, in the speech in the
Federal Convention, 1787, in which he urged the immediate prohibition
of the slave trade by the United States. See Madison Papers, vol.
iii., pp. 1388-1398. A learned Virginian antiquary has found,
notwithstanding the destruction of the appropriate evidences, which
will be explained anon, no less than twenty-eight several attempts
made by the Burgesses to arrest the evil by their legislation, all of
which were either suppressed or negatived by the proprietary or royal
authority. A learned and pious Huguenot divine, having planted his
family in the colony, in the first half of the last century, bears
this testimony: "But our Assembly, foreseeing the ill consequences of
importing such numbers among us, hath often attempted to lay a duty
upon them which would amount to a prohibition, such as ten or twenty
pounds a head; but no governor dare pass such a law, having
instructions to the contrary from the Board of Trade at home. By this
means they are forced upon us, whether we will or not. This plainly
shows the African Company hath the advantage of the colonies, and may
do as it pleases with the ministry."[26] These personal testimonies
are recited the more carefully, because the Vandalism of the British
officers at the Revolution annihilated that regular documentary
evidence, to which the appeal might otherwise be made. Governor
Dunmore first, and afterwards Colonel Tarleton and Earl Cornwallis,
carried off and destroyed all the archives of the colony which they
could seize, and among them the whole of the original journals of the
House of Burgesses, except the volumes containing the proceedings of
1769 and 1772. The only sure knowledge which remains of those precious
records is derived from other documents and fragmentary copies of some
passages, found afterwards in the desks of a few citizens. The
wonderfully complete collection of their laws edited by Hening, under
the title of "Statutes at Large," was drawn from copies and
collections of the acts which, having received the assent of the
governors and kings, were promulgated to the counties as actual law.
Of course the suppressed and negatived motions against the slave trade
are not to be sought among these, but could only have been found in
the lost journals of the House. But enough of the documentary evidence
remains, to substantiate triumphantly the testimony of individuals.
[Footnote 24: Code of Virginia, p. 36.]
[Footnote 25: Madison Papers, iii., 1390.]
[Footnote 26: Rev. P. Fontaine, Huguenot Family, pp. 348, 351.]
The first act touching the importation of slaves, which was allowed by
the royal governor and king, was that of the 11th William III., 1699,
laying an impost of twenty shillings upon each servant or African
slave imported. The motive assigned is the raising of a revenue to
rebuild the Capitol or State House, lately burned down; and the law
was limited to three years.[27] This impost was renewed for two
farther terms of three years, by subsequent Assemblies.[28] Before the
expiration of this period, the Assembly of 1705 laid a permanent duty
of sixpence per head on all passengers and slaves entering the
colony;[29] and this little burthen, the most which the jealousy of
the British slave traders would permit, was the germ of the future
taxes on the importation. This impost was increased by the Assembly of
1732, to a duty of five _per centum ad valorem_, for four years.[30]
Subsequent Assemblies continued this tax until 1740, and then doubled
it, on the plea of the war then existing.[31] During the remainder of
the colonial government, the impost remained at this grade, ten _per
centum_ on the price of the slaves, and twenty _per centum_ upon
those imported from Maryland or Carolina. As the all-powerful African
Company in England was not concerned in maintaining a transit of the
slaves from one colony to another, after they were once off their
hands, they permitted the Burgesses to do as they pleased with the
Maryland and Carolina importations. Here, therefore, we have an
unconfined expression of the sentiments of the Assemblies; and they
showed their fixed opposition to the trade by imposing what was
virtually a prohibitory duty. In 1769, the House of Burgesses passed
an act for raising the duty on all slaves imported, to twenty _per
centum_.[32] The records of the Executive Department show that this
law was vetoed by the king, and declared repealed by a proclamation of
William Nelson, President of the Council, April 3d, 1771. The Assembly
of 1772 passed the same law again, with the substitution of a duty of
£5 per head, instead of the twenty _per centum_, on slaves from
Maryland and Carolina;[33] and it received the signature of Governor
Dunmore. It may well be doubted whether it escaped the royal veto.
[Footnote 27: Hening, Stat. at Large, vol. iii., p. 193.]
[Footnote 28: Idem, pp. 212, 233.]
[Footnote 29: Idem, pp. 346, 492.]
[Footnote 30: Hening, vol. iv., p. 319.]
[Footnote 31: Hening, iv., 394, and v., 29, 92, 160, 318.]
[Footnote 32: Hening, viii., 336.]
[Footnote 33: Idem, 531.]
But the House now proceeded to a more direct effort to extinguish the
nefarious traffick. Friday, March 20th, 1772, it was[34] "Resolved,
that an humble address be prepared to be presented to his Majesty, to
express the high opinion we entertain of his benevolent intentions
towards his subjects in the colonies, and that we are thereby induced
to ask his paternal assistance in averting a calamity of a most
alarming nature; that the importation of negroes from Africa has long
been considered as a trade of great inhumanity, and under its present
encouragement may endanger the existence of his American dominions;
that self-preservation, therefore, urges us to implore him to remove
all restraints on his Governors from passing acts of Assembly which
are intended to check this pernicious commerce; and that we presume to
hope the interests of a few of his subjects in Great Britain will be
disregarded, when such a number of his people look up to him for
protection in a point so essential; that when our duty calls upon us
to make application for his attention to the welfare of this, his
antient colony, we cannot refrain from renewing those professions of
loyalty and affection we have so often, with great sincerity, made, or
from assuring him that we regard his wisdom and virtue as the surest
pledges of the happiness of his people."
[Footnote 34: House Journal.]
"Ordered, That a Committee be appointed to draw up an address to be
presented to his Majesty, upon the said resolution." And a Committee
was appointed of Mr. Harrison, Mr. Carey, Mr. Edmund Pendleton, Mr.
Richard Henry Lee, Mr. Treasurer, and Mr. Bland.
"Wednesday, April 1st, 1772: Mr. Harrison reported from the Committee
appointed upon Friday, the twentieth day of last month, to draw up an
address to be presented to his Majesty, that the Committee had drawn
up an address accordingly, which they had directed him to report to
the House; and he read the same in his place; which is as followeth,"
etc. The address is so nearly in the words of the resolution, that the
reader need not be detained by its repetition. The House agreed,
_nemine contradicente_, to the address, and the same Committee was
appointed to present an address to the Governor, asking him to
transmit the address to his Majesty, "and to support it in such manner
as he shall think most likely to promote the desirable end proposed."
This earnest appeal met the fate of all the previous: Mammon and the
African Company were still paramount at Court, over humanity and
right. But the Revolution was near at hand, bringing a different
redress for the grievance.
On the 15th of May, 1776, Virginia declared her independence of Great
Britain, and the Confederacy, following her example, issued its
declaration on the 4th of July of the same year. The strict blockade
observed by the British navy, of course arrested the foreign slave
trade, as well as all other commerce. But in 1778, the State of
Virginia, determined to provide in good time against the resumption of
the traffick when commerce should be reopened, gave final expression
to her will against it. At the General Assembly held October 5th,
Patrick Henry being Governor of the Commonwealth, the following law
was the first passed:
AN ACT FOR PREVENTING THE FARTHER IMPORTATION OF SLAVES.[35]
[Footnote 35: Hening, v. ix., p. 471.]
"I. For preventing the farther importation of slaves into this
Commonwealth: _Be it enacted by the General Assembly_, That from
and after the passing of this act, no slave or slaves shall
hereafter be imported into this Commonwealth by sea or land, nor
shall any slaves so imported be bought or sold by any person
whatsoever.
"II. Every person hereafter importing slaves into this
Commonwealth contrary to this act, shall forfeit and pay the sum
of one thousand pounds for every slave so imported, and every
person selling or buying any such slaves, shall in like manner
forfeit and pay the sum of five hundred pounds for every slave so
bought or sold, one moiety of which forfeitures shall be to the
use of the Commonwealth, and the other moiety to him or them that
will sue for the same, to be recovered by action of debt or
information in any court of record.
"III. _And be it further enacted_, That every slave imported into
this Commonwealth, contrary to the true intent and meaning of this
act, shall, upon such importation, become free."
The remaining sections of the law only proceed to exempt from the
penalty citizens of the other United States, coming to live as actual
residents with their slaves in the Commonwealth, and citizens of
Virginia bringing in slaves from other States of the Union by actual
inheritance.
Thus Virginia has the honour of being the first Commonwealth on earth
to declare against the African slave trade, and to make it a penal
offence. Her action antedates by thirty years the much bepraised
legislation of the British Parliament, and by ten years the earliest
movement of Massachusetts on the subject; while it has the immense
advantage, besides, of consistency; because she was never stained by
any complicity in the trade, and she exercised her earliest
untrammelled power to stay its evils effectually in her dominions.
Thus, almost before the Clarksons and Wilberforces were born, had
Virginia done that very work for which her slanderers now pretend so
much to laud those philanthropists. All that these reformers needed to
do was to bid the British Government go and imitate the example which
Virginia was the first to set, among the kingdoms of the world. It is
true that the first Congress of 1774, at Philadelphia, had adopted a
resolution that the slave trade ought to cease; but this body had no
powers, either federal or national; it was a mere committee; and its
inspiration upon this subject, as upon most others, came from
Virginia. In 1788, Massachusetts passed an act forbidding her citizens
from importing, transporting, buying, or selling any of the
inhabitants of Africa as slaves, on a penalty of fifty pounds for each
person so misused, and of two hundred pounds for every vessel employed
in this traffick. Vessels which had already sailed were exempted from
all penalty for their present voyages.[36] It is manifest from the
character of the penalties, that this law was not passed to be
enforced; and the evidence soon to be adduced will show, beyond all
doubt, that this is true. The act was one of those cheap tributes
which Pharisaic avarice knows so well how to pay to appearances.
Connecticut passed a very similar law the same year, prohibiting her
citizens to engage in the slave trade, and voiding the policies of
insurance on slave ships. The slave trade of New England continued in
increasing activity for twenty years longer.
[Footnote 36: Moore, Hist. of Slavery in Mass., p. 227.]
It may be said, that if the government of Virginia was opposed to the
African slave trade, her people purchased more of its victims than
those of any other colony; and the aphorism may be quoted against
them, that the receiver is as guilty as the thief. This is rarely true
in the case of individuals, and when applied to communities, it is
notoriously false. All States contain a large number of irresponsible
persons. The character of a free people as a whole should be estimated
by that of its corporate acts, in which the common will is expressed.
The individuals who purchased slaves of the traders were doubtless
actuated by various motives. Many persuaded themselves that, as they
were already enslaved, and without their agency, and as their refusal
to purchase them would have no effect whatever to procure their
restoration to their own country and to liberty, they might become
their owners, without partaking in the wrong of which they were the
victims. Many were prompted by genuine compassion, because they saw
that to buy the miserable creatures was the only practicable way in
their reach to rescue them from their pitiable condition; for
tradition testifies that often when the captives were exposed in long
ranks upon the shore, near their floating prisons, for the inspection
of purchasers, they besought the planters and their wives to buy them,
and testified an extravagant joy and gratitude at the event. All
purchasers were, perhaps, influenced partly by the convenience and
advantage of possessing their labour. Had every individual in Virginia
been as intelligent and virtuous as the patriots who, in the
Burgesses, denounced the inhuman traffick, the colony might perhaps
have remained without a slave, notwithstanding the two centuries of
temptation during which its ports were plied with cargoes seeking
sale. But a commonwealth without a single weak, or selfish, or bad
man, is a Utopia. The proper rulers were forbidden by the mother
country to employ that prohibitory legislation which is, in all
States, the necessary guardian of the publick virtue; and it is
therefore that we place the guilt of the sale where that of the
importation justly belongs. Doubtless many an honourable citizen,
after sincerely sustaining the endeavour of his Burgess to arrest the
whole trade, himself purchased Africans, because he saw that their
general introduction into the country was inevitable, without
legislative interference; and his self-denial would only have
subjected him to the severe inconveniences of being without slaves in
a community of slaveholders, whilst it did not arrest the evil.
The government of Virginia was unquestionably actuated, in prohibiting
the slave trade, by a sincere sense of its intrinsic injustice and
cruelty. Mr. Jefferson, a representative man, in his "Notes on
Virginia," had given indignant expression to this sentiment. And the
reprobation of that national wrong, with regret for the presence of
the African on the soil, was the universal feeling of that generation
which succeeded the Revolution; while they firmly asserted the
rightfulness of that slavery which they had inherited. But human
motives are always complex; and along with the moral disapprobation
for the crime against Africa, the Burgesses felt other motives, which,
although more personal, were right and proper. They were sober, wise
and practical men, who felt that to protect the rights, purity, and
prosperity of their own country and posterity, was more properly
their task, than to plead the wrongs of a distant and alien people,
great although those wrongs might be. They deprecated the slave trade,
because it was peopling their soil so largely with an inferior and
savage race, incapable of union, instead of with civilized Englishmen.
This was precisely their apprehension of the enormous wrong done the
colony by the mother country. They understood also the deep political
motive which combined with the lust of gain to prompt the relentless
policy of the Home Government. With it, the familiar argument was:
"Let us stock the plantations plentifully with Africans, not only that
they may be good customers for our manufactures, and producers for our
commerce; but that they may remain dependent and submissive. An
Englishman who emigrates, becomes the bold assertor of popular and
colonial rights; but the negro is only fit for bondage." For the same
reason, the colonies felt that the forcing of the Africans upon them
was as much a political as a social wrong. But that righteous
Providence, whose glory it is to make the crimes of the designing
their own punishment, employed African slavery in the Southern
colonies as a potent influence in forming the character of the
Southern gentleman, without whose high spirit, independence, and
chivalry, America would never have won her freedom from British rule.
This contrast between the policy and principles of Virginia and of the
New England colonies will be concluded with two evidences. The one is
presented in the history of the Declaration of Independence. Mr.
Jefferson, the author, states that he had inserted in the enumeration
of grievances against the King of Great Britain, a paragraph strongly
reprobating his arbitrary support of the slave trade, against the
remonstrances of some of the colonies. When the Congress discussed the
paper, this paragraph was struck out, "in complaisance," he declares,
"to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain
the importation of slaves, and who, on the contrary, still wished to
continue it. Our Northern brethren also, I believe, felt a little
tender under these censures; for though their people had very few
slaves themselves, yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of
them to others."[37] Thus New England assisted to expunge from that
immortal paper a testimony against the slave trade, which Virginia
endeavoured to place there.
[Footnote 37: Jefferson's Correspondence, vol i., p. 15.]
The other evidence is presented by a case much more practical. In the
Convention of 1787, which framed the Constitution of the United
States, two questions concerning African slaves caused dissension.
Upon the supreme right of the States over the whole subject of slavery
within their own dominions, upon the recognition of slaves as property
protected by the federal laws, wherever slavery existed, and upon the
fugitive slave law, not a voice was raised in opposition. But the
Convention presumed (what subsequent history did not confirm,) that
the main expenses of the federal government would be met by direct
taxation; and some principle was to be adopted, for determining how
slaves should rank with freemen, in assessing capitation taxes, and
apportioning representation. The other question of difficulty was the
suppression of the African slave trade, which, upon the return of
peace, had been actively revived by New England, with the connivance
of Carolina and Georgia. The Southern States, who expected to have
nearly the whole tax on slaves to pay, desired to rate them very low;
some members proposed that five slaves should count as equal to only
one white freeman; others, that three slaves should count for one. The
New England colonies generally desired to make a negro count as a
white man, both for representation and taxation! After much
difference, the majority of the Convention agreed to a middle
conclusion proposed by Mr. Madison, that five negroes should count for
three persons.[38] But the other question was not so easily arranged.
The Committee of eleven appointed to draw up a first draught of a
constitution had proposed that in Art. vii., § 4, of their draught,
Congress should be prohibited from laying any import duty on African
slaves brought into the country. The effect of this, so far as the
federal government was concerned, would be to legalize the slave trade
forever, and protect it from all burdens.[39] Maryland (by her
legislature, then sitting,) to her immortal honour, and Pennsylvania
and Virginia, exhibited a determination to change this section, so as
to arrest the trade through the action of the federal government,
either by prohibition or tax. The New England States, South Carolina,
and Georgia, opposed them, and advocated the original section,
assigning various grounds. The difference threatened to make shipwreck
of the whole work of the Convention, when Gouverneur Morris adroitly
proposed to commit the subject, along with that of the proposed
navigation law, in order that disagreeing parties might be induced, by
private conference, to combine mutual concessions into a sort of
bargain. The subjects were accordingly committed to a Committee of one
from each State. This Committee reported, August 24th, "in favour of
not allowing Congress to prohibit the importation of slaves before
1800, but giving them power to impose a duty at a rate not exceeding
the average of other imports." South Carolina (through General
Pinckney) moved to prolong the importation from 1800 to 1808, _and
Massachusetts_ (through Mr. Gorham) _seconded the motion_. It was then
passed, as last proposed, _New Hampshire_, _Massachusetts_,
_Connecticut_, (the only New England States then present,) Maryland,
North Carolina, and South Carolina, voting in the affirmative, and New
Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Virginia in the negative.[40] The
maritime States soon after gained their point, of authorizing Congress
to pass, by a majority vote, a navigation law for their advantage.
[Footnote 38: Madison Papers, v. i., pp. 422-425.]
[Footnote 39: Ibid., v. ii., p. 1234.]
[Footnote 40: Madison Papers, v. iii., pp. 1398 _et seq._]
Thus, by the assistance of New England, the iniquities of the African
slave trade, and the influx of that alien and savage race into
America, were prolonged from the institution of the federal government
until 1808. Is it said, that New England had at this time no interest
in slavery, did not value it, and was already engaged in removing it
at home? This is true; and it is so much the worse for her historical
position. It only shows that she desired to fix that institution
which she had ascertained to be a curse to her, upon her neighbours,
for the sake of keeping open twenty years longer an infamous but
gainful employment, and of securing a legislative bounty to her
shipping. In other words, her policy was simply mercenary. And these
votes for prolonging the slave trade effectually rob her of credit for
emancipation at home; proving beyond all peradventure, that the latter
measure was wholly prompted by her sense of her own interests, and not
of the rights of the negro. For if the latter motive had governed,
must it not have made her the equal opponent of the increase of
slavery in Carolina and Georgia?
But the agency of New England in that increase was still more active
and direct. As though to "make hay while the sun shone," the people of
that section renewed their activity on the African coast, with a
diligence continually increasing up to 1808. Carey, in his work upon
the slave trade, estimates the importations into the thirteen colonies
between 1771 and 1790, (nineteen years,) at thirty-four thousand; but
that between the institution of the federal government and 1808, he
places at seventy thousand. His estimate here is unquestionably far
too low; because forty thousand were introduced at the port of
Charleston, South Carolina, alone, the last four years;[41] and within
the years 1806 and 1807, there were six hundred arrivals of New
England slavers at that place.[42] The latter fact shows that those
States must have possessed nearly the whole traffick. And the former
bears out Mr. De Bow, in enlarging the total of importations under
the federal government to one hundred and twenty-five thousand, at
least. For the average at one port was ten thousand per year. In 1860,
there were ten-fold as many Africans in the United States as had been
originally brought thither from Africa. But as many of these had been
multiplying for four, or even five generations, this rate of increase
is too large to assume for the importations of 1800, whose descendants
had only come to the third generation. Assuming the half as nearly
correct, which seems a moderate estimate, we find their increase
five-fold. So that there were, in 1860, six hundred and twenty-five
thousand more slaves in the United States than would have been found
here, had not New England's cruelty and avarice assisted to prolong
the slave trade nineteen years after Virginia and the federal
government would otherwise have arrested it.
[Footnote 41: De Bow, Compend. of Census, 1850, pp. 83, 84.]
[Footnote 42: Com. Boutwell.]
After the British, and even after the other governments of Europe, had
abolished the trade in name, it continued with a vast volume. Whereas
at the time of the abolition, in 1808, eighty-five thousand slaves
were taken from Africa annually, nearly fifty thousand annually were
still carried, as late as 1847, to Brazil and the Spanish Indies.[43]
In this illicit trade, no Virginian (and, indeed, no Southern) ship or
shipmaster has ever been in a single case implicated, although our
State had meantime begun no inconsiderable career of maritime
adventure. But adventurers from New England ports and New York were
continually found sharing the lion's portion of the foul spoils. And
to the latest reclamations of the British Government upon the Brazilian,
for violations of the treaties and laws against the slave trade upon the
extended shores of that empire, the answer of its noble Emperor has
still been, that if Britain would find the real culprits, she must go to
the ports of Boston and New York to seek them.[44]
[Footnote 43: De Bow, p. 84.]
[Footnote 44: Journal do Commercio, (Rio,) May 26, 1856.]
But one more fact remains: When the late Confederate Government
adopted a constitution, although it was composed exclusively of
slaveholding States, it voluntarily did what the United States has
never done: it placed an absolute prohibition of the foreign slave
trade in its organic law.
CHAPTER III.
LEGAL STATUS OF SLAVERY IN THE UNITED STATES.
It has been a favourite and persistent assertion of Abolitionists,
that slavery in America was an exceptional institution, and contrary
to the law of nature and nations. They represent it as owing its
existence solely to the _lex loci_ of the States where it was
legalized by their own legislation; and hence they draw the
conclusion, that the moment a slave passed out of one of these States
into a free State, or into the territories of the United States, his
bondage terminated of itself. Hence, also, they argue that
slaveholders had no right to the protection of that species of
property in the territories, which were the common possession of the
citizens of all the States; and that the federal government could not
properly permit the growth of, or recognize, new slave States. Their
party cry was: "Freedom is national; slavery is local." It is plain
that this proposition is the premise necessary to all the above
assumptions. It will now be shown that this proposition is untrue.
Slavery in the United States, instead of being the mere creature of
_lex loci_, was founded on a basis as broad as that of the American
Union, was in full accordance with the law of nature and nations as
then recognized by the States and the federal government, and had
universal recognition by the force of general law. The exclusion of
slavery from any State was legally the exception, owing its validity
purely to the _lex loci_, and to the recognized sovereignty of the
States over their own local affairs. Hence, the rights of slaveholders
stood valid, of course, in all the common territories of the United
States, and everywhere, save where the sovereignty of a
non-slaveholding State arrested them within its own borders. This
representation is established by the following facts:
First. When the federal government was formed, all the family of
European nations was slaveholding; and they all alike held the
Africans as unquestioned and legitimate subjects of bondage. The slave
trade was held by publick law as legitimate as the trade in corn. It
was the subject of treaty stipulations between the several powers; and
slave trading companies were formally chartered and protected by all
the leading powers. Slaves were declared by the English judges to be
merchandise.[45] They were universally held legal prize of war when
taken on the high seas.[46] They were recognized subjects of
reclamation in forming and executing treaties. Thus, not to go outside
of our own history, we find General Washington, in 1783, by order of
Congress, remonstrating with the British commander evacuating New York
city, because certain officers of the retiring forces carried away
with them the fugitive slaves of American citizens; and the latter was
compelled to surrender the attempt, as an unauthorized spoliation of
property.[47] In 1788, the Government of the United States claimed of
Spain the return of fugitive slaves from the Spanish colony of
Florida;[48] and our government promised, in return, the rendition of
Spanish slaves found in the United States. It is well known that the
treaty of the United States with Great Britain, negotiated by Mr. Jay,
and ratified by President Washington, and the treaty of Ghent, in
1815, both secured indemnities for slaves of American citizens
abducted during the two wars; thus treating them as property under the
protection of national law in America, and of the law of nations. In
face of this array of facts, we boldly ask, with what face it can be
asserted that slavery was not recognized by international law? Whether
it is not as consonant with the law of nature as of nations, will
appear at another place.
[Footnote 45: Bancroft, vol. iii., p. 414.]
[Footnote 46: Moore's Hist. of Slavery in Mass., p. 162.]
[Footnote 47: Justice Campbell, in Howard, 19th, Dred Scott Case.]
[Footnote 48: Idem.]
Second. During the whole planting and growth of the British colonies
in America, and at the time when they passed from that government into
the federal Union, the Empire of Great Britain was slaveholding in all
its parts. The obvious consequence is, that the government formed by
the thirteen colonies in a part of the territory of that empire,
inherited the legal condition of their mother, in this particular. In
seceding from that empire, they brought away the slaveholding
_status_; and this subsisted _ipso facto_, except where it was changed
by the _lex loci_. All the original territory of the American Union
was slave territory, as was that subsequently acquired from France.
Hence slave owners of course possessed their rights in all this
territory, unless they were expressly restrained by special
legislation of the States, sovereign each one within its own borders.
The consequence cannot be denied, if the premise be admitted. Let the
reader consider the following evidences of it:
In 1772, only four years before the Declaration of Independence, Lord
Mansfield, in the Court of King's Bench, decided the famous Somersett
case, by which, it has usually been asserted, slavery was forever
terminated in England, and the principle was settled that this
relation was inconsistent with her free laws. Mr. Stewart, a citizen
of Virginia, going to England on business, carried with him a negro
slave, Somersett, whom he had bought in Jamaica. After a time he
indicated a purpose to return home, carrying his slave with him;
whereupon the negro absconded. His master had him seized, and placed
on board a ship in the Thames, to be forcibly carried to Jamaica and
sold. The negro then sued out an application for _habeas corpus_,
which being argued at a previous term, was finally decided by Lord
Mansfield, at the Trinity term, 1772. The true extent of that decision
will hereafter be shown. Our purpose here is to cite the admissions
made by the court, as to the existing state of English laws.[49] It is
noticeable, that this tribunal exhibited a great reluctance to decide
the case, declaring that it was attended with great, and almost
inextricable difficulties, and that Lord Mansfield proposed to evade
a decision by recommending a compromise between Mr. Stewart and the
black. This not being done, the court stated that there were then
fifteen thousand negro slaves in England, worth not less than seven
hundred thousand pounds sterling. It also recognized the decisions of
Sir Philip Yorke, and Lord Chief Justice Talbot, confirmed in 1749, by
that of the chancellor, Lord Hardewicke, that if a slave, brought by
his master to England, should be detained from him, an action of
_trover_ for his recovery would lie; and the decision of Lord Talbot,
that a negro slave brought by his master to England from a colony, or
baptized by the clergy, did not thereby gain his liberty; and the
opinion of the latter that while the Statute of Tenures had abolished
manorial villeinage, a white man might still become a _villein in
gross_, by the laws of England.[50] The court declared farther, that
the slave property of a debtor was undoubtedly liable to action in the
English courts, to recover the sums due a creditor. But after all
these admissions, which clearly amount to a recognition of the fact
that England itself was then by law a slaveholding country, Lord
Mansfield proceeds to settle the principle (the only one, as he
carefully declares, to which his decision extends) that the power of
the writ of _habeas corpus_, not being limited to free persons by
express statute, should, as he thinks, in England be extended to
slaves, when they invoke it, and should be held to override the rights
of the master under the laws; because those rights were now regarded
as odious and excessive by current publick opinion. Such, and no more,
is the extent of this much be praised, and much misunderstood
decision! It is plain to common sense, that if it is not an instance
of the judicial abuse of making, instead of expounding, law, it only
establishes the fact that the laws of slaveholding England were then
in a ridiculously inconsistent state.
[Footnote 49: See, on all the following statements from Lord
Mansfield, Lofft's Reports, 12th Geo. 3d, pp. 1, 8, 17, 18, etc.]
[Footnote 50: What the _villein in gross_ was, may be learned from the
following, of Bracton, Lib. iv., 208:
"Purum villenagium est, a quo præstatur servilium incertum et
indeterminatum; ubi scire non potest vespere, quale servitium fieri
debet mane, viz., ubi quis facere tenetur quicquid ei præceptum fuit."
See also Blackstone, Lib. ii., 93.]
In fact, not only were there then fifteen thousand negro slaves in
England, but they were publickly bought and sold in the markets of
London. The prevalence of slavery is attested by another species of
historical evidence, very different from that of learned judges, but
at least as authentick. The pictures by which Hogarth has fixed the
follies and peculiarities of fashionable life on his immortal canvass,
frequently contain the African valet; showing that the possession of
this species of servants was demanded by high life. From the Normans,
those noted slaveholders, to 1775, no statute had been passed upon the
subject of personal slavery.[51] There then existed, in the northern
part of the kingdom of Great Britain, from thirty thousand to forty
thousand persons, of whom the Parliament said, "Many colliers,
coal-heavers, and salters, are in a state of slavery, or bondage,
bound to the collieries or salt-works where they work, for life,
transferable with the collieries and salt-works, when their original
masters have no use for them."[52] Again in 1799, they declare that
"many colliers and coal-heavers still continue in a state of bondage."
[Footnote 51: Justice Campbell, on Dred Scott case, 19th Howard, 109.]
[Footnote 52: Parliament, 15th Geo. 3d.]
Thus it appears that England was itself slave territory, at the time
the thirteen colonies, declaring their independence, brought away her
laws and institutions. But our argument of this fact is _ex
abundantia_; it may be waived, and still our conclusion holds,
because, by existing laws, all the plantations and colonies of England
in America were then, yet more indisputably, slave territory. No
stronger proof of this proposition can be imagined, than the manner in
which slavery was planted in these communities. Not only were all the
thirteen colonies, and all the West India plantations, slaveholding;
but it required no statute, either of Parliament or of colonial
legislature, to introduce African slavery, or to establish the right
of the owner, because it was already established by imperial law and
usage. The first negroes were bought in Virginia in 1620; the first
act touching their bondage was passed by the Burgesses in 1659; and
this does not enact their slavery, but recognizes it as existing. It
was not until 1670,[53] that any law was passed which expressly
enacted their slavery. But for fifty years they had been unquestioned
slaves, had paid impost duty as such, had been bought and sold, had
been bequeathed, had been subject of suits. By what law? Obviously by
the general law of the British Empire, and of nations. The manner of
the introduction of slavery into Massachusetts was the same. "The
involuntary servitude of Indians and negroes in the several colonies
originated under a law not promulgated by legislation, and rested upon
prevalent views of universal jurisprudence, or the _law of nations_,
supported by the express or implied authority of the Home
Government."[54] But the "canny" Puritans, more careful than the
Virginians to fortify their slave property, enacted slavery of both
classes, in their earliest codes of laws, 1641 and 1660.[55]
[Footnote 53: Hening, Stat. at Large, vol. ii., p. 283.]
[Footnote 54: Hurd, Law of Freedom and Bondage, § 216, i., 225.]
[Footnote 55: Moore, Slavery in Mass., pp. 12, 15.]
That African slavery was the universal law of the British colonial
empire, is equally plain from the facts already given concerning the
legalizing of the slave trade. The treaty of Utrecht secured to
Britain a monopoly of that traffick. The Parliament chartered the
African Company, with the right to trade in slaves to all the
colonies. The Parliament then by statute threw the trade open to all
British subjects. The Parliament, by express law, made the property in
slaves held in the colonies subject of action in English courts. The
Solicitor-General, with Chancellor after Chancellor, decided that
residence in England did not emancipate the slave upon his return to
his colonial home. The General Court of Massachusetts enacted the same
rule, as did the Burgesses of Virginia, again and again; and were
never disallowed therein by the king. Even so late as 1827, fifty-five
years after the Somersett case, Lord Stowell decided, in the case of
the slave Grace, from Antigua, that on her return to the colony, her
condition as a slave for life was fully revived.[56] And in the
correctness of this decision, we find Mr. Justice Story
concurring.[57]
[Footnote 56: 2d Haggard, p. 94.]
[Footnote 57: Letter to Lord Stowell.]
The argument then is, that at the American Revolution all the
territory claimed by the thirteen colonies was, by the law of the
Empire, and of nations, slaveholding territory. The colonies, in
assuming their independence, brought away the rights and institutions
which they had inherited as colonial parts of that empire; and
whatever prescriptive right was not expressly changed by law, was
universally held to survive, as of course. Hence all the territory of
the American Union was slave territory; and the only mode by which any
part became non-slaveholding, was by the exercise of State sovereignty
enacting a _lex loci_, which was only operative within the bounds of
the State itself.
Third. The chief territory which the United States acquired between
the Revolution and the Mexican war, was Louisiana. This vast region
was gained by treaty from France in 1803. It was then a single
province and government of the French Republick, and was, through all
its extent, a slaveholding country. In the third article of the treaty
for its purchase, between the United States and the First Consul, it
was stipulated that until the ceded territory should be incorporated,
as States, in the Union, all its citizens should be "in the mean time
maintained and protected in the free enjoyment of their liberty,
property, and the religion which they profess." The settled doctrine
of the courts of Louisiana has always been, that this guarantee
covered all the citizens emigrating into any part of the territory
before its erection into a State, as fully as those living in
Louisiana in 1803.[58] Thus, the rights of slave owners in the whole
of the Louisiana purchase were guaranteed to them by treaty, until
such time as the part they inhabited became a sovereign State, and
thus assumed plenary power over the subject. But, by Article 6th, §
2d, of the Constitution of the United States, all treaties made by the
authority of the United States are declared to be the supreme law of
the land. Thus the rights of the master in all this region were placed
above the power of the legislature itself.
[Footnote 58: Justice Catron, 19th Howard, p. 131.]
Fourth. The federal constitution recognized and protected property in
slaves, in every way which was competent to a federative compact of
this kind. The slaveholding States had representation for three-fifths
of their slaves. The slaves were made subjects of direct taxation, as
property. The constitution provided expressly for a fugitive slave
law, which was soon passed by the Congress, and continued to be the
law of the land until the termination of the government. By the
constitution, property in slaves was created like any other property;
and no ground can be found for the assertion that its rights were more
restricted than rights in cattle or lands. But the fundamental idea of
that instrument was the impartial equality of all the citizens before
the law. Whatever authority Congress had over the common territories,
was as trustee for all the citizens of the United States equally.
Hence it seems obvious that this body was bound to recognize in all
the citizens equal rights, in going into those territories with any
species of property which they might hold by the laws of any State, or
of Congress, and to protect them in those rights while the country was
in a territorial condition.
Finally, these principles have been expressly decided by the highest
constitutional authority in the land, as well as by the voice of the
most enlightened founders of the government. When the mischievous
contest concerning the admission of Missouri was rising in 1819, Mr.
Madison declared, concerning the article of the constitution which
conferred on Congress its powers over the territories, (Art. 4, § 3,)
that "it cannot be well extended beyond a power over the territories
_as property_, and the power to make provisions really needful or
necessary for the government of settlers, until ripe for admission
into the Union."[59] The Supreme Court of the United States, in the
well-known case of Dred Scott, decided that Africans were not citizens
of the United States in the meaning of the constitution;[60] that
property in African slaves was on the same footing under that
instrument with other legal property;[61] that the residence of a
slave in a territory of the United States did not emancipate him, nor
did his residence in a non-slaveholding State for a time, prevent the
recurrence of his state of bondage, on his return to the State in
which he had been a slave;[62] and that Congress had no power to use
its authority to exclude slavery from any part of the territories.[63]
[Footnote 59: Letter to Robert Walsh, Nov. 27, 1819.]
[Footnote 60: 19th Howard, pp. 12, 33.]
[Footnote 61: 19th Howard, p. 57.]
[Footnote 62: Ibid., p. 38, 58.]
[Footnote 63: 19th Howard, p. 58.]
Thus the main proposition with which we set out is abundantly
sustained by the history and legislation of the country. Three
evasions from this conclusion have been attempted, of which the first
is from the language of the Declaration of Independence, in which
these famous words occur: "We hold these truths to be self-evident:
that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator
with certain unalienable rights; that among them are life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness," etc. The inference is, that the
Declaration intended to imply that the slavery of the Africans was a
natural wrong incapable of being legalized; and it is claimed that
this document is of the organic force of constitutional law to the
confederation which then asserted its independence. Both these
suppositions are erroneous. As to the latter, it may be justly argued,
that the Declaration of Independence was simply what it calls itself:
a _declaration_, a justificatory statement addressed to the world
without, and not an act of organic legislation ascertaining the rights
of the citizens within. The evidence is, that it _enacts nothing_ save
the one point of the independence of the colonies. Neither the
Confederation nor the new Union formed in 1787 ever based any
legislation upon it, save as their acts involved the fact of
independence. The constitution made no reference to it; did not ground
itself upon it, and did not reënact it. Hence, let its meaning be what
it may, it legislates nothing for or against slavery.
But it is too clear to be disputed, that the enslaved African race
were not intended to be included, and formed no part of the people who
asserted their rights in this Declaration. The evidence is, that if
the men who framed it had intended to refer to African slavery, they
would have completely stultified themselves. For the majority of them,
and of the States which they represented, continued to hold Africans
in bondage just as before. A few years after, the same men met in
federal convention, and framed the late constitution of the United
States; by which property in slaves was protected and perpetuated as
before, and traffick in Africans was prolonged until 1808, and made
subject of taxation like other merchandise. The States which were
emancipating their own Africans, equally with those which retained
them in bondage, retained their laws prohibiting the marriage of
Africans with whites.[64] Connecticut, until 1796, prohibited free
negroes from travelling beyond their township without a pass. New
Hampshire, and Congress itself, precluded negroes from serving in the
militia.[65] The Declaration of Independence was therefore intended by
its framers to assert the liberties of civilized Americans and
Englishmen, and not of African barbarians held in bondage. Whether
their consistency therein can be defended, is a separate question, to
which attention will be given in the proper place. But all publicists
are agreed, that the meaning of a document is the document; and that
this meaning is to be ascertained by the intentions of those who
frame and adopt it.
[Footnote 64: Law of Massachusetts, 1786, reënacted 1836. Rhode
Island, Laws of, 1822 and 1844.]
[Footnote 65: Code of New Hampshire, 1815. Acts of Congress, 1792.]
The second objection to our conclusion is grounded upon the Ordinance
of the Confederation, in 1787, by which slavery was prohibited in the
North-western Territory ceded to the United States by Virginia. This
magnificent domain, including the present States of Ohio, Indiana and
Illinois, was conquered from the public enemy in the years 1778-9, by
the Commonwealth of Virginia. She sent out her own troops, at her own
charges, without either authority or assistance from the
Confederation, then also engaged in a war with Great Britain, under
her own commission to her heroick son, General George Rogers Clarke.
Upon the conquest of the country, she disposed by her own State action
of the prisoners of war captured, and annexed the territory to the
State of Virginia, which then also included Kentucky. The other
States, and the Confederation, uniformly recognized this region as
legitimately a part of Virginia. But during and after the war, the
States which owned no unsettled territory grew exceedingly jealous of
those which possessed such regions, and especially of Virginia. They
feared her ulterior grandeur and power. But their expressed plea was,
that she, and other States possessed of vacant lands, could pay their
share of the common war debt, without taxation, by the sale of these
lands, which, as they claimed, were the fruits of the common exertions
of the States, while the others would be subjected to an onerous
taxation. The North-west Territory had, in fact, been won by Virginia,
with her own bow and spear; but at the request of the Congress of the
Confederation, she magnanimously laid the splendid prize upon the
altar of the common cause, ceding it in 1784 to Congress, for the
common behoof of the United States. The Congress of the Confederation
passed a long enactment, known as the Ordinance of 1787, providing, in
many articles, for its settlement, for its government while a
territory, and for the sale of lands. Among these was a clause
prohibiting slavery in it. But meantime, the Confederation was
superseded by the general government organized under the new
constitution of 1787. The first Congress during the administration of
General Washington, acting under the article of the constitution
already cited for taking and managing the "territory and other
property" of the Confederation, passed an act, (August 7th, 1789,) for
putting in effect the Ordinance of the Congress of the Confederation,
now extinct.
Such is the history of the case. The inference of the objector is,
that because the Congress of 1789, acting under the late constitution,
claimed power to execute the ordinance of 1787, (passed by the
previous and different general government,) with its anti-slavery
clause included, therefore that constitution gave it power to exclude
slavery from any other territory. But the inference is worthless. For,
first, the Congress of the old Confederation had not a particle of
constitutional power to adopt such an anti-slavery clause. So declared
Mr. Madison emphatically:[66] and so has decided the Supreme Court of
the United States.[67] Both these high authorities declare, that if
the clause had any validity, it derived it only from the assent of
Virginia, who had full sovereignty over the territory, and who
accepted and ratified the exclusion by act of her General Assembly, as
well as by the mouths of her representatives in the Confederation. And
the Congress of 1789, in accepting the conditions imposed by the
Ordinance of 1787 on the territory, as valid and abiding, undertook to
change nothing, because it regarded that validity as the result of
treaty stipulations between Virginia and the other twelve States
represented by the old Congress. It conceived itself as having
inherited from a previous and different government powers over this
particular territory, which it could by no means have originated by
its own constitutional authority.[68] Second: The government framed
under the new constitution was one of limited powers; and Congress was
expressly inhibited, by the instrument which created it, from
exercising any authority not granted. But such a power as that to
exclude citizens of any of the United States from the common
territory, because they proposed to carry there property legalized
both by the Constitution of the United States and of their own State,
was not granted to Congress. That a government whose very foundation
was the equality of the States, should thus attempt to disfranchise
some States of a part of their rights, was a solecism too monstrous
for these able and enlightened men. Third: When similar cessions of
territory were afterwards made by North Carolina and Georgia, these
States refused to Congress the privilege of appending to their laws
touching these lands, the exclusion of slavery; and Congress obeyed,
so framing their enactments as to admit and protect slave-owners. This
proves that the exclusion derived its force from the consent of the
Sovereign State, and not from the power of Congress.
[Footnote 66: Federalist, No. 38. Letter to Walsh, 1819.]
[Footnote 67: 19th Howard, pp. 40, 41.]
[Footnote 68: 19th Howard, pp. 44, 45.]
The third ground of objection which has been advanced against our main
proposition, is the doctrine said to have been decided by the Supreme
Court of the United States, (as in the case of Prigg against the State
of Pennsylvania,) that according to recognized international laws, a
nation which does not hold slaves itself is not bound to recognize
property in slaves in neighbouring nations, when those slaves come
into its borders; and that if a rendition is claimed, it must be asked
of comity, or of special stipulation, and not as of international
right. The answer is clear and facile. The States of the American
Union were, initially, as independent nations to each other; and then
they were all slaveholding. Each one of them recognized in its own
citizens the right of property in slaves; and therefore, if the above
doctrine be granted, they could not then, by international law, refuse
to recognize it in nations living at amity with them. Again: When they
passed out of this condition of absolute independence, into that of
federal union, their relations, so far as they ceased to be
international, were regulated exclusively by the constitution; and by
this constitution the property in slaves was expressly recognized, the
rendition of fugitive slaves was expressly required of all the States,
whether themselves holding slaves or not; and all the common territory
of the Union was originally slave territory until it became free
territory by sovereign State action. Plainly, in such a case as this,
the international law of Europe has no application, against historical
facts and actual constitutional enactments. The sophism of this plea
in the mouths of anti-slavery men, the uniform assertors of
consolidation doctrines, would make the States, in the same breath,
independent nations, in order that the international law of a
different hemisphere may be applied against them, and also subject
provinces of an anti-slavery nation, in order that they may be
stripped of that equality of rights, belonging to sovereign
constituent parties in a confederation.
CHAPTER IV.
HISTORY OF EMANCIPATION.
The motive for introducing the historical facts contained in this
chapter is the following: That the credit of Virginia as a
slaveholding State is relatively illustrated by the conduct of her
partners in the confederation touching the same matter. Virginia never
passed a general act of emancipation; on the contrary, she forbade
masters to free their slaves within her borders, unless they also
provided for their removal to new homes. But what was it which the
Northern States actually did? The general answer to this question
cannot be better given than in the words of the Hon. A. H. H. Stuart
of Virginia, in his Report to the General Assembly, as chairman of its
joint committee on the Harper's Ferry outrages. He says:
"At the date of the declaration of our national independence, slavery
existed in every colony of the Confederation....
"Shortly after the Declaration of Independence, the Northern States
adopted prospective measures to relieve themselves of the African
population. But it is a great mistake to suppose that their policy in
this particular was prompted by any spirit of philanthropy or tender
regard for the welfare of the negro race. On the contrary, it was
dictated by an enlightened self-interest, yielding obedience to
overruling laws of social economy. Experience had shown that the
African race were not adapted to high northern latitudes, and that
slave labour could not compete successfully with free white labour in
those pursuits to which the industry of the North was directed. This
discovery having been made, the people of the North, at an early day,
began to dispose of their slaves by sale to citizens of the Southern
States, whose soil, climate, and productions were better adapted to
their habits and capacities; and the legislation of the Northern
States, following the course of publick opinion, was directed, not to
emancipation, but to the removal of the slave population beyond their
limits. To effect this object, they adopted a system of laws which
provided, prospectively, that all slaves born of female slaves, within
their jurisdiction, after certain specified dates, should be held free
when they attained a given age. No law can be found on the
statute-book of any Northern State, which conferred the boon of
freedom on a single slave in being. All who were slaves remained
slaves. Freedom was secured only to the children of slaves, born after
the days designated in the laws; and it was secured to them only in
the contingency that the owner of the female slave should retain her
within the jurisdiction of the State until after the child was born.
To secure freedom to the afterborn child, therefore, it was necessary
that the consent of the master, indicated by his permitting the mother
to remain in the State, should be superadded to the provisions of the
law. Without such consent, the law would have been inoperative,
because the mother, before the birth of the child, might, at the will
of the master, be removed beyond the jurisdiction of the law. There
was no legal prohibition of such removal, for such a prohibition would
have been at war with the policy of the law, which was obviously
removal, and not emancipation. The effect of this legislation was, as
might have readily been foreseen, to induce the owners of female
slaves to sell them to the planters of the South, before the time
arrived when the forfeiture of the offspring would accrue. By these
laws, a wholesale slave trade was inaugurated, under which a large
proportion of the slaves of the Northern States were sold to persons
residing south of Pennsylvania; and it is an unquestionable fact that
a large number of the slaves of the Southern States are the
descendants of those sold by Northern men to citizens of the South,
with covenants of general warranty of title to them and to their
increase."
Thus wrote Mr. Stuart, after thorough research. A brief recital of the
enactments of the Northern slaveholding States will show that his
general representation is correct. We begin with Massachusetts. No law
against slavery, (which had been long legally established in the
colony,) was ever passed by her legislature;[69] and in that sense,
the right to hold slaves may be said to have formally existed, until
it was extinguished by her adoption of the "constitutional amendment,"
in 1866! Practically, slavery was gradually removed after 1780, by the
current of the legal decisions against it, grounded upon a clause in
the new bill of rights, adopted by the State in that year. This
clause asserted, nearly in the words of the Declaration of
Independence, the native equality and liberty of men. In 1781 a slave
of N. Jennison, of Worcester County, recovered damages of his master
for beating.[70] This decision, if sustained, of course implied the
cessation of slavery. Although the Legislature of the State was moved
in 1783, by this Jennison and others, to declare that slavery did not
exist legally, so that the doubt might be ended, that body refused to
act; nor did it ever after abolish slavery.[71] But judicial decisions
after the example of the Jennison case were made from time to time,
until, in 1796, the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, in the case of
Littleton _v._ Tuttle,[72] gave its countenance to the doctrine, that
the bill of rights virtually made slavery illegal. That all this was a
glaring instance of the judicial abuse, _ampliandi jurisdictionem_, is
manifest from many facts: That the Massachusetts statesmen who adopted
the same proposition in the Declaration of Independence, never dreamed
of its possessing any force to abolish slavery in the United States
which set it forth: That the convention which drew up the bill of
rights for Massachusetts did not think of such an application; That
this document declared "no part of any citizen's property could be
taken from him without his own consent:" That slaves continued to be
bought and sold, and advertised as before; And that the abolitionists,
still in the minority, continued after 1780 to remonstrate against
slavery as a sin still legalized. But such a mode of determining the
question was well adapted to the meddlesome and crooked temper of that
people. By this judicial trick the envious non-slaveholders were
enabled to attack their richer slaveholding neighbours, and render
them so uneasy as to insure their disposing of their slaves; while
still there was neither law nor publick opinion prevalent enough to
procure a legal act of emancipation.
[Footnote 69: Moore, Slavery in Mass., p. 242.]
[Footnote 70: Moore, Hist. of Slavery in Mass., p. 212.]
[Footnote 71: Ibid., p. 216, etc.]
[Footnote 72: Chief Justice Parsons, Mass. Rep., 4, Winchedon _v._
Hatfield.]
New Hampshire and Vermont embodied the principle of prospective
emancipation in their new constitutions. In 1790 there were 158 slaves
in New Hampshire. In 1840 there was still _one_! Rhode Island passed a
law in 1784, that no person born after that year should continue a
slave. Connecticut embodied in the revision of her laws, in 1784, a
law providing that all children born of slave parents after March 1st
of that year, should be free at twenty-five years of age. In 1797 the
term of servitude was reduced to twenty-one years for all born after
August 1st of that year. Slavery was not actually abolished by law
until June 12th, 1848; when the census shows there were no fewer than
seventeen slaves in the State; and how old and worthless they must
have been, appears from the fact that the youngest of them must have
been born before March 1st, 1784.[73]
[Footnote 73: Rep. of C. J. Hoadly, State Librarian of Connecticut.]
In New York, the laws for slaves were more severe than in the Southern
States, and the African slave trade was zealously encouraged during
the whole colonial period. The slave could not testify, even to
exculpate a slave. Three justices, with a sort of jury of five
freeholders, could try capitally, and inflict any sentence, _inclusive
of burning alive_.[74] It was not until 1799 that the State commenced
a system of laws for the gradual abolition of slavery. Every slave
child born after July 4th of that year was to be free, the males after
twenty-eight, and the females after twenty-five years. In 1810, the
benefit of freedom was also extended to those born before July 4th,
1799, to take effect July 4th, 1827, the date at which the earliest
born of those freed by previous law reached their majority of
twenty-eight years.[75] Still the census of 1830 found 75 slaves! The
Revised Statutes of New York, after 1817, provided a penalty for those
carrying them out of the State for sale; showing that the tendency to
do so existed.
[Footnote 74: Chancellor Kent.]
[Footnote 75: Idem.]
In New Jersey, the first act looking towards prospective emancipation
was adopted in 1784. By it all born after 1804 were to be free in
1820. It was not until 1820 that action was taken to give effect to
this promise; and then the nature of the law was such as to postpone
the hopes of the slaves. The first section of the law of February
24th, 1820, says: "Every child born of a slave within this State since
the 4th day of July 1804, or which shall hereafter be born as
aforesaid, shall be free; but shall remain the servant of the owner of
his or her mother, and the executors, administrators and assigns of
such owners, in the same manner as if such child had been bound to
service by the Trustees or Overseers of the poor, and shall continue
in such service, if a male until the age of twenty-five years, and if
a female until the age of twenty-one years." It was within the scope
of possibility that slave women whom this law left slaves for life
might bear children as late as the year 1848: whence bondage would not
have been terminated wholly by it until 1873. New Jersey had 236
slaves for life in 1850. It is stated by one of the best informed of
her old citizens, that the prospective effect of these enactments was
to cause a considerable _exodus_ to Southern markets; and that when a
boy, he heard much talk of the sale of negroes, and the sending of
them to "the Natchez," and was cognizant of the continual apprehension
of the negroes concerning the danger.
In Pennsylvania, emancipation was also prospective and gradual. Her
first act was passed March 1st, 1780. The rate at which it operated
may be seen from these figures: In 1776 she had about 10,000 slaves;
in 1790, (ten years after her first act,) she had 3,737; in 1800,
1,706; in 1810, 795; in 1820, 211; in 1830, 403; and in 1840, 64
slaves.
Thus, the emancipation legislation of the Northern States has been
reviewed, and the assertions of the Hon. Mr. Stuart substantially
sustained. That Northern emancipation was prompted by no consideration
for the supposed rights of Africans, but by regard to their own
interests, is evinced by many facts. Of these, perhaps the most
general and striking is the persistent neglect of the welfare of their
emancipated slaves; the refusal to give them equal civic rights, until
they found a motive for doing so in malice against the South; and the
shocking decadence, vice and misery to which a nominal liberty,
according to the testimony of Northern writers, has consigned their
wretched free blacks. Another proof is found in the current language
of the men of the generation which effected the change. That language,
as is well remembered by elderly persons still living, was usually
such as this: that now that the population had filled up the country,
the question of emancipation was simply one of choice between their
own children and the negro--whether their sons should emigrate, or the
negro be gotten rid of, as there was no longer room for both. Another
conclusive proof is in the fact that while these States were getting
rid of their own negroes, they were deliberately voting
(Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, in the Convention of
1787,) to prolong the introduction of slaves into the Carolinas
nineteen years more. Still another evidence is found in the repugnance
of those States to the influx of free blacks, and the stringent laws
of some of them to prevent it. Thus, Massachusetts, in March, 1788,
(eight years after the pretended extinction of human bondage,) passed
a law ordering every black, mulatto or Indian who came into the State
and remained two months to be publickly whipped; and this punishment
was to be repeated "if he or she shall not depart _toties
quoties_."[76] _This law remained in force until 1834!_ as is shown by
its appearance in the Revised Laws of Massachusetts, 1823. It is also
to be noted that the scheme of gradual emancipation, upon which the
whole North acted, obviously recognizes the property of the master in
his slave as legitimate in itself. It only touches it, (because
private rights are here required to give place to publick interest,)
in the case of those born after a certain day. The slavery of the
others is left as perpetual and legal as ever. And even as to the
later born, the right of the master receives a certain recognition, in
that he is allowed twenty-five years' service as a partial
compensation for the surrender of the remainder.
[Footnote 76: Moore, Hist. of Slavery in Mass., p. 229.]
But how different is the summary abolition forced upon Virginia and
the South! Here, the general legislation of the State was steadily
multiplying, elevating and blessing the black race, which in the North
was so rapidly dying out under its pretended liberty. And private
beneficence of Virginians, without any legal compulsion, had actually
given the boon of freedom to at least one hundred thousand blacks;
which is more than all the citizens of the New England States, New
York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania together, ever did, under the force
of all their laws.[77] In this wise and beneficent career Virginia has
been violently interrupted, against her recognized and guaranteed
rights, by instant and violent abolition. The motive of the North, as
a whole, has manifestly been, not love for the negro, but hatred of
the white man, and lust of domination. This abolition is purely the
result of a supposed military necessity, because the North believed
that otherwise she could not overthrow the South in an unjust war. But
for this single fact, the Africans would still be in bondage, so far
as the Yankee was concerned. The proof is, that the Chicago platform
of the Black Republican party in 1860, expressly repudiated the
purpose ever to meddle with slavery in the States. Mr. Lincoln, the
chosen man of the North, solemnly asserted the same thing in his
letter to A. H. Stephens of Georgia, in his publick inaugural, and in
his messages. The Congress, after the beginning of the war, solemnly
declared to the world by a joint resolution, that the purpose of the
war was only to restore the Union, and not to restrict or change State
institutions. Mr. Lincoln constantly declared to the Abolitionists,
that if the perpetuation of slavery tended to restore the Union, it
should be perpetuated. His standing invitation to the States in arms
against him was: "If you wish to keep your slaves, come back into the
Union." Can the North be believed in her own declarations? Then, the
charge made is true--that abolition in the South was prompted by
ambition and hatred, not by philanthropy.
[Footnote 77: The negroes freed by Virginians, with their increase in
Ohio, Pennsylvania, Liberia, etc., are 100,000 at least. The maximum
number of slaves freed by the above States was, New Hampshire 629,
Massachusetts 6,000, Rhode Island 4,370, Connecticut 6,000, New York
20,000, New Jersey 12,422, Pennsylvania 10,000. Total, 59,421. Such
was the largest number of original freedmen made by those States of
their own slaves. When we remember that the census has proved that in
the Northern States their natural increase has almost ceased for
several decades, and in some there has been an actual diminution, it
appears very plain that they and their progeny do not now number
100,000. Meantime, the votes of the New England States assisted to add
more than 600,000 to the number of slaves in Carolina!]
Nor has this act been less wicked in its effects than in its motive.
To the white race it was the most violent, convulsive, reckless and
mischievous act ever perpetrated by a civilized government. As a war
measure, it was calculated and expected to evoke all the savage
horrors of servile war, neighbourhood massacre and butchery of
non-combatants. Only the kindly relations which the benevolence and
justice of the people of Virginia had established between themselves
and their slaves, and the good character which we had given to these
former savages, disappointed this desired result. As an economic
measure, it was the most violent ever attempted in modern history;
being a sudden confiscation of half, (and in some of the counties
two-thirds) the existing property of the country; and a dislocation of
its whole labour system, just when the people were bowed under the
burden of a gigantic war, and a collapsed currency. That it did not
then again result in a total paralysis of industry, in famine and
anarchy, (which was probably intended), is only to be explained by the
exercise of an energy, versatility, good sense, and industry in the
Southern people, which are almost miraculous. By annihilating at one
blow so much of the property on which the indebtedness of the country
was based, it insured a financial confusion and general bankruptcy
which are destined to plunge hundreds of thousands of innocent persons
(innocent even from Yankee points of view) into destitution and
domestic distress, which three generations will not heal. It
confiscated the property of "loyal Union men," of helpless minors and
lunatics, of venerable and infirm widows, without compensation, just
as it did the possessions of the Confederate leader most obnoxious to
the Yankee wrath. And what was the species of possession? Was it some
foul lucre, like the spoils of an Achan, so unrighteous that it must
be instantly plucked away, regardless of consequences? No; it was a
species of property legalized by Moses and Christ, owned for ages by
the boasted ancestors of the despoilers, now owned by themselves in
the form of its fruits and increase, guaranteed by the Constitution
which alone gave them any right to govern us, legalized by all our
State laws, which were of earlier and superior authority to that
Constitution, and recognized by the sacred pledges of the North
itself, even so late as the beginning of this war.
But the step has been far more mischievous and unjust to the poor
blacks, its pretended beneficiaries. It did not tarry to inquire
whether they were fit for the change. It has resulted in the outbreak
of a flood of vice, before repressed; of drunkenness, of illicit lust,
of infanticide, of theft; and above all, of idleness, the least
flagrant, but most truly mischievous fault of the African. It has
suddenly and greatly diminished their share of the material goods they
before enjoyed. The supplies of clothing and shoes now acquired by
them do not reach a third of what they received before the war.
Immediately on their emancipation, all the rural mill-owners testified
that their grists _fell off one-half_, and have remained at that grade
since. In those neighbourhoods where the blacks did not emigrate,
(which was true of many neighbourhoods,) this showed that the
consumption of bread was reduced one-half; for although the large
proprietors now had no occasion to send their large grists, yet,
unless there were less consumed, the aggregate of the little grists of
the freedmen's families should have made good that decrease. Every
statesman knows that any burden or disaster imposed upon the
industrial pursuits of a country, is transmitted down by the property
classes to the destitute class, and presses there with its whole
force; just as inevitably as the weight of a statue placed upon the
top of a column, is ultimately delivered upon the lowest _stratum_ of
foundation-stones. For the great law of self-preservation prompts each
man, who has any property, to employ it in evading that pressure for
himself and his family. Thus the actual _onus_ is handed down, until
it reaches that class who have no property, and must therefore bear
it, because they have nothing wherewith to pay for the shifting of it.
Thus, all the malice of the conqueror, aimed at the hated white man,
while it crowds us down, also crowds down equally the labourer beneath
us; and the blow alights ultimately on him.
The famine which is now preying upon some parts of the South
illustrates the mischief done by the disorganization of labour, and
the comparative excellence of the old system. Such was its
beneficence, that it carried the Southern country through all the
exhausting trials of the war, without actual dearth in any part of the
Confederacy. Hundreds of thousands of our most vigorous men were
wholly withdrawn from productive pursuits; our own armies were to be
sustained; great hosts of enemies were continually tearing the vitals
of the country; the year 1864 brought a drought so severe that in some
parts of the country the crops of grain were reduced to one-tenth of
the usual harvests; and yet, such was the happiness of our system,
that it endured all these enormous trials, and met the wants of all.
But after the new _régime_ was well established, there came in 1866
such a drought as the South had several times experienced before,
without inconvenience; and although all was peace, there were no
armies to support, and no labouring man was called from the farm to
the unproductive toils of the camp and the intrenchment, famine
immediately resulted. Here is a fair comparison of the system of free
African labour, with the old one. Indolence is the parent of crime.
While the smaller misdemeanours are more frequent, there has been an
alarming increase of felonies. In the orderly little county of Prince
Edward, the criminal convictions of black persons averaged only one
per year before the war. The last year they numbered twelve! An
inquiry into the statistics of crime in our cities would reveal a yet
larger increase.[78]
[Footnote 78: From April 31st, 1860, to May 31st, 1862, two years and
one month, there were _two_ criminal convictions of negroes by Prince
Edward Court. From April 31st, 1865, to April 31st, 1867, a less
period by one month, there were, in the same court, thirty-five
criminal indictments of negroes, and fifteen convictions, leaving
thirteen cases over to be tried at subsequent terms. And this
aggregate of crime has already accumulated in our once peaceful little
community, notwithstanding that the jurisdiction of our courts over
negroes was totally suspended by our conquerors for a number of months
after April 31st, 1865.]
Last, facts already evince, that the doom of ultimate extermination
which Southern philanthropists have ever predicted as the result of
premature emancipation, is already overtaking the negro with giant
strides. About the end of 1866 the officers of the State revenue made
their returns, which showed that there were then about 275,650 negro
males over 21 years within the present limits of Virginia. Repeated
calculations made from previous returns show that there are usually
four and a half times as many souls among the blacks of Virginia as
there are males over 21 years. The entire black population of the
State then, at the end of the last year, was 340,500. The census of
1860 returned 531,000 blacks within the present limits of the State.
The diminution is therefore 190,500; or nearly two-fifths, in less
than two years. Some may suppose that more negro men have left the
State since the war than women and children. If this is true, the
number of males is now relatively smaller, and should be multiplied by
a larger ratio than 4-1/2 to find the correct total. But, on the other
hand, it is certain that the neglect and mortality have been much
larger among the aged and little children than among the robust men.
This fact, therefore, reduces the ratio of the total to the males over
21 years, and renders it certain that 340,500 is a large estimate. The
same officers brought in returns which show that the white population
of Virginia, although decimated by a terrible war, has actually
increased since 1860. But we exposed no negro to the dangers of the
battle. Thus it is made manifest that the philanthropy of Yankees has
been to the poor negro an infinitely more desolating scourge than a
tremendous war has been to the race against which the sword was openly
wielded. And it requires little arithmetic to discover how long it
will be, at this rate, before the monstrous consummation will be
reached of the extinction of a whole nation of people by their
professed friends.
CHAPTER V.
THE OLD TESTAMENT ARGUMENT.
§ 1. Let us appeal, then, to the Bible, to learn the moral character
of Domestic Slavery. It will be well for both writer and readers, if
they recall the reverence and honesty with which such a book should be
approached; if the one is cautious to permit no party zeal, pride of
opinion, or love of hypothesis, to tempt him to warp the sacred text
to any thing inconsistent with its own truth and purity; and if the
others are equally careful to receive its teachings with impartiality
and docility.
That no misunderstanding may attend the discussion, we must define at
the outset, what we mean by that domestic slavery which we defend. By
this relation we understand _the obligations of the slave to labour
for life, without his own consent, for the master_. The thing,
therefore, in which the master has property or ownership, is the
involuntary labour of the slave, and not his personality, or his soul.
A certain right of control over the person of the slave is
incidentally given to the master by his property in the bondsman's
labour; that is, so much control as is necessary to enable him to
secure the labour which belongs to him. But we repeat, it is not the
person, but the labour of the slave, which is the master's property.
This is substantially the definition of Paley, an enemy of slavery;
and it is obviously correct; it expresses the general result of the
laws of all modern nations which have had slaves, touching that
relation.
The abolitionists clamorously insist upon a different definition,
which makes the master claim property in the very personality of the
slave, in his soul, in the highest capacities which connect him with
his God, and in his very being. According to this description, slavery
converts the responsible, rational being, into a mere thing, a
chattel, a commodity, by converting him into mere property of another
man. The motive of this preposterous definition is obvious enough. One
of the most astute of American Abolitionists has been candid enough to
avow it, saying that if our definition be adopted, there is an end of
the discussion; for every logician must see that it is absurd to
declare the mere ownership of one man's labour by another, an
essential and necessary moral wrong; which is the character it suits
them to ascribe to slavery. Their object is so to represent it, that
it shall appear a self-evident injustice, and the apologist shall be
overwhelmed and silenced by a foregone prejudice. For, if it gave a
literal ownership in the person and being of the slave, which can
belong to none but the Creator; if it made not only his labour, but
his conscience, the property of the master, destroying his moral
responsibility, it would indeed dehumanize him, and would be an
iniquity indefensible by any fair mind. The trick of securing the
victory before the contest begins, by raising a false issue, is not
very novel. The utter absurdity of applying such a definition to
African slavery in America, appears from this: that it is contrary to
the whole tenour of the legislation which establishes and regulates
the institution among us. These laws, first, legislate for the slave,
as to his own conduct, as a responsible human being, govern him by
precepts sanctioned by rewards and punishments, and require of him
intelligent obedience to the same moral rules which are enforced on
his master. Second, the laws assign to the master precisely that
amount of control over his slave's person which they suppose (whether
correctly or not is no concern to us in this argument) to be
incidental to his property in the servant's labour; and no more.
Third, they protect the person, being, and moral responsibility of the
slave against his own master. If the master kills him, it is murder,
by the law. The slave's Sabbath is secured to him by the law. If the
master force him to commit a crime, the former is held by the law
guilty therefor, as accessory before the fact: and the latter is also
held to his personal responsibility for it. And last, the law treats
the slave so fully as a rational and responsible human, that it even
bestows on him the right of litigation against his own master, in one
case. Any African setting up a plea of unlawful detention in bondage,
against his master, is allowed to sue _in forma pauperis_, in the
courts of law. How could the fact be more clearly defined, that the
institution of slavery treats the slave as a rational human being, and
gives the master property in nothing but his labour?
Yet Senator Sumner points triumphantly to the words of the South
Carolina statute as proving that slavery makes the servant a mere
thing; and all smaller Abolitionists have caught up his special
pleading. The cane of Mr. Brooks having given him, as it seems, a
special taste for things South Carolinian, he hunted up a clause where
the law of that State declares, that slaves and their children shall
be held in every respect as "chattels personal." This proves beyond a
peradventure, he says, that the law reduces the slave to a mere thing,
as though he were an _ox_ or _bureau_. Yet, a hundred other laws of
South Carolina treat him as a responsible man! Any honest mind will
perceive the explanation, at once; which is, that the lawyers of South
Carolina were not aiming, in this law, to settle the question of the
moral nature of slavery; but to decide whether property in a slave
should be regarded as pertaining to the _real_, or to the _personal_
estate of a citizen; and in deciding it, they very properly had more
regard to legal perspicuity than to ethical accuracy of definition.
Let us suppose that among the statutes of the British Parliament,
there should be one (as there very probably is) declaring that when a
master mechanic dies, having an indentured apprentice, the unfinished
term of service of this apprentice should be held as belonging to his
personal effects, and should be so used for the benefit of his heirs
or creditors. And let us suppose, farther, that in defining this fact,
some such words as these should be used: that said apprentice should
be held in every respect, as pertaining unto the personal estate of
the deceased. Then, the same logic would prove that the British laws
reduce an apprentice to a mere chattel! But we have a better
illustration of its folly. God says, Genesis xxvi. 14: "Isaac had
_possessions_ of flocks, and herds, and servants." Leviticus, xxv. 45:
"Of the children of strangers that do sojourn among you, of them
shall you buy: ... and they shall be your _possession_." Exodus, xxi.
20, 21: "And if a man smite his servant or his maid with a rod, and he
die under his hand: he shall be surely punished. Notwithstanding, if
he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished: _for he is his
money_." Does God's law dehumanize the slave, and reduce him to a mere
chattel? We repeat, then, that, according to the slave institutions of
the Southern States, it is only the labour of the servant which
belongs to the master, and is treated as property.
Let it be understood, then, from the beginning, that we are not
inquiring into the moral character of that thing which Abolitionists
paint as domestic slavery; a something horrid with the groans of
oppressed innocence and the clang of unrighteous stripes; a something
which aims to reduce a man to a brute, and denies him his natural
right to serve his Creator and save his soul. We begin by asserting
that these things, if they ever exist in fact, are not domestic
slavery, but the abuses of it. We are not the apologists of them: we
no more defend them than do the Abolitionists. In this discussion we
have nothing more to do with them, except to express, once for all,
our strong abhorrence and reprobation of all such unlawful abuses of a
lawful institution. It has been a favourite trick of our opponents, to
represent the abuses of the relation so prominently and odiously, that
the defender of slavery shall be held up to the abhorrence of the
publick as the defender of the abuses. Especially if he is a
clergyman, (and necessity has thrown our side of this discussion very
much into the hands of Southern clergymen,) do they raise a holy
clamour, representing the unnatural wickedness of a desecrating of the
sacred office to apologize for such iniquities. Their object is to
raise a prejudice against us in advance, which will deprive us of a
dispassionate and just hearing. With all dispassionate and just
readers, for whom alone we write, it should be enough for us to repeat
emphatically, that it is only the relation of domestic slavery as
authorized by God, that we defend; and not the abuses it has received
at the hands of wicked men. The parental authority, and civil
government, and the operations of God's own church, are often abused
also. The intelligent reader, and especially the intelligent
Englishman, will remember how triumphantly this shallow sophism of
arguing against a thing from its abuses, is exposed by Burke, in his
reply to Bolingbroke's posthumous assault on Christianity, the
ironical "Defence of Natural Society." Such argument from abuses can
only be just when it is shown that the wrongs pointed out are not
incidental abuses, but legitimate, and necessary, and uniform
consequences of the institution itself. But that the incidental evils
of African slavery among us are not such, is abundantly proved by the
simple fact, that thousands of masters held slaves among us, and yet
perpetrated none of these abuses. About the relative frequency of such
abuses, we shall have something to say at a subsequent place. Enough
now to point to the fact, that by the vast majority of our servants
they were unfelt, so that they cannot be necessary parts of the
system.
We conclude these preliminary definitions by requesting the reader to
note well what is the moral character which we understand the Bible
to assign to slavery. We do not admit that it is a thing in itself
evil, but yet attended with such circumstances, in the eyes of many
merciful and humane masters who have found themselves by inheritance
unwilling slaveholders, that a change would be attended with still
greater mischiefs: so that they are excusable for its continuance for
a time. This is the view of many moderate and kind anti-slavery men;
it is not ours. We do not hold that slaveholding is only justified as
belonging to that class of wrongs, to which the laws of Moses assigned
polygamy, which ought not to have been done, but which, when done,
cannot be undone, except by the perpetrating of a greater wrong. We
assert that _the Bible teaches that the relation of master and slave
is perfectly lawful and right, provided only its duties be lawfully
fulfilled_. When we say this, we shall not be understood as saying
that all men ought to live in this relation, notwithstanding the wide
diversities of their condition and characters, or that it would be
politic, or even right, for all. But we say that the relation is not
sin in itself; but may be perfectly righteous and innocent, and not
merely excusable. And we are free to confess that unless the Bible
taught us this truth, we should be obliged to hold with the decided
Abolitionists. We could never be of the number of those, who attempt
to transmute the essential traits of moral right and wrong, at the
demand of expediency, and to excuse the continuance of a radical
injustice, by the inconvenience of repairing it. Duty belongs to man;
consequences to God.
§ 2. _The Curse upon Canaan._
The student of history perceives that, whatever may be the moral
character of domestic slavery, it is one of the most hoary
institutions of the human race. It has prevailed in every age and
continent, and under patriarchal, monarchical, despotic, aristocratic,
republican and democratic governments; while secular history gives us
no account of its origin. But Sacred Writ informs us, and traces it to
the earlier generations of the human family as refounded after the
flood. In Genesis, ix. 20 to 27, we have the following brief
narrative: "And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a
vineyard: and he drank of the wine and was drunken: and he was
uncovered within his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the
nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without. And Shem
and Japhet took a garment, and laid it upon both their shoulders, and
went backward and covered the nakedness of their father; and their
faces were backward, and they saw not their father's nakedness. And
Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto
him; and he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be
unto his brethren. And he said, Blessed be the Lord God of Shem; and
Canaan shall be his servant. God shall enlarge Japhet and he shall
dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant."
In explanation of it, the following remarks may be made; on which the
majority of sound expositors are agreed. In this transaction, Noah
acts as an inspired prophet, and also as the divinely chosen,
patriarchal head of church and state, which were then confined to his
one family. God's approbation attended his verdict, as is proved by
the fact that the divine Providence has been executing it for many
ages since Noah's death. Canaan probably concurred in the indecent and
unnatural sin of Ham. As these early men were extremely ambitious of a
numerous and prosperous posterity, Ham's punishment, and Canaan's,
consisted in the mortification of hearing their descendants doomed to
a degraded lot. These descendants were included in the punishment of
their wicked progenitors on that well-known principle of God's
providence, which "visits the sin of the fathers upon the children,"
and this again is explained by the fact, that depraved parents will
naturally rear depraved children, unless God interfere by a grace to
which they have no claim; so that not only punishment, but the
sinfulness, becomes hereditary. Doubtless God's sentence, here
pronounced by Noah, was based on his foresight of the fact, that Ham's
posterity, like their father, would be peculiarly degraded in morals;
as actual history testifies of them, so far as its voice extends.
Some have been weak enough to draw a justification of slavery from the
fact, that the bondage of Canaan's posterity is predicted. This logic
the Abolitionists have, of course, delighted to expose; it was easy to
show, by sundry biblical instances, like that of the Assyrian employed
to chastise Israel, and then punished by God for his own rapacity,
that it is no justification of one's acts to find that God, in his
inscrutable and holy workings, has overruled them to the effectuation
of his own righteous, secret purposes. And our opponents, with a
treachery fully equal to the folly of our unwise advocates, usually
represent this as nearly the whole amount, and the fair exemplar, of
our biblical argument. Such is not the use we design to make of this
important piece of history.
It does in the first place, what all secular history and speculations
fail to do: it gives us the origin of domestic slavery. And we find
that it was appointed by God as the punishment of, and remedy for
(nearly all God's providential chastisements are also remedial) the
peculiar moral degradation of a part of the race. God here ordains
that this depravity shall find its necessary restraints, and the
welfare of the more virtuous its safeguard against the depraved, by
the bondage of the latter. He introduces that feature of political
society, for the justice of which we shall have occasion to contend;
that although men have all this trait of natural equality that they
are children of a common father, and sharers of a common humanity, and
subjects of the same law of love; yet, in practice, they shall be
subject to social inequalities determined by their own characters, and
their fitness or unfitness to use privileges for their own and their
neighbours' good.
But second: this narrative gives us more than a prediction. The words
of Noah are not a mere prophecy; they are a verdict, a moral sentence
pronounced upon conduct, by competent authority; that verdict
sanctioned by God. Now if the verdict is righteous, and the execution
blessed by God, it can hardly be, that the executioners of it are
guilty for putting it in effect. Can one believe that the descendants
of Shem and Japhet, with this sentence in their hands, and the divine
commendation just bestowed on them for acting unlike Ham, could have
reasonably felt guilty for accepting that control over their guilty
fellow-men which God himself had assigned? For the vital difference
between the case of the Assyrians, when their guilty ambition was
permissively employed by God to punish the back-slidings of his own
people, and the case of Shem and Japhet, is this: The Assyrians were
cursed by God for doing their predicted work, in the very sentence;
Shem and Japhet were blessed by Him in the very verdict which assigns
Canaan as their servant.
It may be that we should find little difficulty in tracing the lineage
of the present Africans to Ham. But this inquiry is not essential to
our argument. If one case is found where God has authorized domestic
slavery, the principle is settled, that it cannot necessarily be sin
in itself. It is proper that we should say, in conclusion, that this
passage of Scripture is not regarded, nor advanced, as of prime force
and importance in this argument. Others more decisive will follow.
§ 3. _Abraham a Slaveholder._
The references to the bondsmen of Abraham and his son Isaac are the
following: Genesis xiv., 14, "And when Abram heard that his brother,"
(or relative, viz.: Lot,) "was taken captive, he armed his trained
servants, born in his own house, three hundred and eighteen, and
pursued them unto Dan. And he divided himself against them, he and his
servants, by night," etc. Genesis xvii., 10, etc., "This is my
covenant which ye shall keep, between me and you, and thy seed after
thee; every man-child among you shall be circumcised," ... v. 12, "And
he that is eight days old shall be circumcised among you, every
man-child in your generations; he that is born in the house, or bought
with money of any stranger, which is not of thy seed. He that is born
in thy house and he that is bought with thy money must needs be
circumcised," and v. 26, 27, "In the self-same day was Abraham
circumcised, and Ishmael his son; and all the men of his house, born
in the house and bought with money of the stranger, were circumcised
with him." Genesis xviii. 17 to 19, "And the _Lord_ said, Shall I hide
from Abraham that thing which I do: seeing that Abraham shall surely
become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth
shall be blessed in him? For I know him, that he will command his
children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of
the _Lord_, to do justice and judgment: that the Lord may bring upon
Abraham that which he hath spoken of him." Genesis xx. 14, "And
Abimelech" (seeking reconciliation with Abraham for the wrong intended
to Sarah his wife, at God's command,) "took sheep and oxen, and
men-servants and women-servants, and gave them unto Abraham, and
restored him Sarah his wife." Genesis xxiv. 35, Eliezer, when seeking
a wife for Isaac, says: "And the Lord hath blessed my master greatly,
and he is become great; and he hath given him flocks, and herds, and
silver, and gold, and men-servants, and maid-servants, and camels and
asses." And Genesis, xxvi. 12, 14, it is said of Isaac: "And the LORD
blessed him. And the man waxed great and went forward and grew until
he became very great. For he had possession of flocks, and possession
of herds, and great store of servants."
It appears then, that Abraham, "the friend of God," and Isaac, the
most holy and spotless of the Patriarchs, were great slaveholders. But
before pursuing the argument farther, it may be prudent to remove the
quibble that these servants were not slaves, in the sense of our
African slaves, but only humble clansmen, retainers, or hirelings. At
least one writer would prove this by the fact that Abraham did not
fear to arm three hundred and eighteen of them. For had they been real
slaves, says he, they would not have continued so one day after
getting arms in their hands. The retort most appropriate would be,
that Abraham was not afraid to arm his slaves, though actual slaves,
because there were no saucy, meddling, Yankee Abolitionists in those
days to preach insubordination and make ill blood between masters and
servants. But, more seriously, what shall we say of the professed
reasoning which assumes the very point in debate? viz.: that slavery
is an evil; and thence infers the conclusion that these could not be
slaves, because they did not seize the power to burst the bonds of
such an evil when placed in their reach? If their bondage was not
evil, which is the question _sub judice_ in this debate, then they
would not necessarily desire to burst from it. And that these were
actual slaves is clear, because the words for bondsman and bondsmaid
here used are, in every case, _ebed_ and _shippheh_, which are defined
by every honest lexicon to mean actual slaves, which are used in that
sense alone everywhere else in the Hebrew Scriptures, which are
contrasted in the book of Leviticus with the "hired servant," or
_sasir_. A part of these servants were bought from foreigners with
Abraham's money. They are represented along with his very sheep and
oxen as his property.
Abraham and Isaac then, were all their lives literal slaveholders, on
a large scale. Now we do not argue that this fact alone, coupled with
the other, that they were good men, proves that slaveholding is
innocent. The Abolitionists, fond of an easy victory on a false issue,
always hasten to represent this as the amount of the argument; and
then, their reply is obvious--that the example of truly good men is no
rule of ethics for us, unless supported by the expressed or implied
approval of God; for good men are imperfect, and many of their errors
are recorded, by the honesty of the sacred writers, for our
warning--that Abraham himself was guilty of falsehood to Abimelech,
King of Gerar, and especially that he was betrayed into the gross sin
of concubinage. Hence they say, Abraham's example no more proves
slaveholding innocent than concubinage. We reply, that all these
remarks, except the last, are perfectly just; but they have no
application to the case, because God's sanction of Abraham's example
as a slaveholder is expressly found in the narrative. The cases of
slaveholding and concubinage are totally different. First, because the
origin of the latter sin in the accursed lineage of Cain, and the act
of the murderer Lamech, is impliedly stamped with God's condemnation,
(Genesis iv. 19,) whereas the origin of domestic slavery is given us
in the righteous sentence of God for depraved conduct. Second, Abraham
fell into the sins of falsehood and concubinage but once, under
violent temptation. There is no evidence that either he or Isaac ever
practised them again, but both lived and died without one recorded
qualm of conscience, in the practice of slaveholding, and made it one
of their last acts, before passing to the judgment-seat of God, to
bequeath their slaves, as property, to their heirs. Third, in Genesis
xxiv. 35, and xxvi. 12, 14, it is represented that the bestowal of a
multitude of slaves on Abraham and Isaac was a mark of the divine
favour. In the first passage, it is indeed only the pious Eliezer who
states this; but in the second, it is stated of Isaac by the sacred
narrative itself. Now to represent God as blessing a favoured saint by
bestowing providentially gifts which it is a sin to have, implicates
God in the sin. Fourth, in Genesis xviii. 17 to 19, Jehovah expresses
his love for Abraham, approbation for his character, and purpose to
exalt him as a blessing to all nations, because "He knew him that he
would command his children and his household after him, that they
shall keep the way of the _Lord_ to do justice and judgment." What was
this "household," distinct from his children? Hebrew usage and the
context answer with one voice, his slaves. Then, God's high favour to
Abraham was explained by the fact that he foresaw the patriarch would
govern his children and slaves religiously and righteously. Now we ask
emphatically, does a holy God bless a misguided and sinning man for
the manner in which he perseveres in the sinful practice, be that
manner what it may? If the relation of master and slave were sinful,
would not the virtue of terminating the relation at once, so far
transcend the questionable credit of using it to make the wronged and
oppressed victim live piously, that it would be impossible for God to
bestow his peculiar praise on the latter, where the former was
lacking? There is no righteous way to perpetuate an unrighteous
relation. Therefore God's blessing Abraham for his good government of
his slaves, is proof that it is not a sin to have slaves to govern.
But, last and chiefly, we have a still stronger fact to present. When
Abraham was directed in Genesis xvii., 10, etc., to circumcise himself
as a sign of the covenant between God and him, he was also directed to
circumcise all his male children. The parental relationship was made
the ground of their inclusion in the same covenant. And God directed
his slaves also, "born in his house, or bought with his money of any
foreigner," to be circumcised along with him. The parental tie brought
his children under the religious rite of circumcision; the bond of
master and servant brought his servants under it. Here then, we have
the relationship of domestic slavery sanctioned, along with the
parental and filial, by God's own injunction, by a participation in
the holiest sacrament of the ancient church. Would a holy God thus
baptize an unholy relation? Would he make it the ground of admission
to a religious ordinance? To see a feeble illustration of the
absurdity of such a conclusion, consider what would be thought of a
minister of the New Testament, in which our Saviour has forbidden a
plurality of wives, if that minister should desecrate the marriage
ceremonial of his church, knowingly, to sanctify the union of the
felon in the act of bigamy? Such a desecration would surely be not
less shocking in the Author, than in a minister of religion.
And here, the favourite plea of the anti-slavery men fails
entirely--that Abraham lived in the dawn of religious light; that the
revelation given him was only partial, and that while he possessed the
rectitude of conscience which would have made him relinquish all
sinful relations, if enlightened as to their true character, the
customs of his age misled him to commit things which Christians
afterwards taught to be sinful, and that therefore, these things,
excusable in him because of his ignorance, would be wickedness in us.
There is some truth in these statements, but they have nothing on
earth to do with this example; because the circumcision of the slaves
was God's act, and not Abraham's. God knows all things. He is
perfectly holy and unchangeable. If he had seen that slavery is
intrinsically wrong, and had intended at some future day to declare it
so, would he at this time have sanctioned it by making it the ground
of a solemn ordinance of religion? As we shall see, this cry of the
imperfection of the Old Testament revelation is of Socinian origin,
and is essentially false, in the sense in which it is uttered. But be
it as just as any statement could be, it has no application here;
because our whole inference is drawn from the acts of God himself, and
not of an Old Testament Saint.
§ 4. _Hagar remanded to Slavery by God._
Sarah, in a season of desperation at her childless condition, seems to
have been tempted to imitate the corrupt expedient which was prevalent
among the Canaanites around her, and which still prevails in the East.
According to this usage, the chief wife, or wife proper, gives to her
husband a concubine from among her slaves, as a sort of substitute for
herself; and the offspring of the connexion is regarded as her own
child. Abram, misled by evil example, and by the solicitations of his
wife--the person who would have had the best right to complain of his
act--concurred temporarily in the arrangement, and received his
Egyptian slave Hagar as an inferior wife. The favour of her master,
and the prospective honour of being the mother of offspring, which has
always been exceedingly prized by Oriental women, so inflated the
servant with impudence, that she no longer treated her mistress with
decent respect. When Sarah bitterly complained of this, Abram replied
by reminding her that Hagar was still her slave; and that she was
entitled, as a mistress, to compel her to observe a suitable
demeanour. When Sarah proceeded to exert this authority, probably
administering corporal punishment to Hagar for some instance of
impertinence, the latter ran away, and pursued the direction which led
to her native country, Egypt. It was then that the angel of the LORD
found her "by the fountain in the way to Shur. And he said, Hagar,
Sarai's maid, whence camest thou? and whither wilt thou go? And she
said, I flee from the face of my mistress Sarai. And the angel of the
LORD said unto her, Return to thy mistress, and submit thyself under
her hands." Genesis xvi., 7 to 9. He then proceeded to unfold the
future of her unborn son, and Hagar obeyed his commands. From verses
10th and 13th, we learn certainly that this angel was a Divine Person.
For, in the first place, he promises Hagar, "I will multiply thy seed
exceedingly;" but none but the Almighty could truthfully make such a
promise in his own name, as it is here made. In the latter place we
are informed that it was the LORD (in Hebrew, _Jehovah_; the most
characteristic and incommendable name of God) that spake unto her; and
Hagar called his name: "Thou God, seest me." We remark again, that
Hagar was certainly in the relation of domestic slavery, and not of a
hired servant, to Abraham and Sarai. She is called _Shiphheh_, which
is the regular word for female slave in the Old Testament. Had she not
been an actual slave, Sarai would never have presumed, according to
Oriental usage, to dispose of her person in the manner related. Here,
then, we have God, himself, the Angel Jehovah, who can be no other
than the Second Person of the Trinity, Christ, commanding this
fugitive to return into the relation of domestic slavery, and submit
to it. Can that relation be in itself sinful? To assert this, would
make our adorable Saviour _particeps criminis_. He cannot have
required a soul to return into a sinful state. He never requires of
his servants more than their duty; so that if Sarai had possessed no
real and just title to Hagar's services as a slave--if the claim had
been a mere imposition and injustice, she would not have been required
to submit to it. Abolitionists attempt to evade this by saying that
Hagar was instructed to return and submit to bondage on the same
principle on which Christ instructs us, when wrongfully smitten on one
cheek to turn the other likewise. This, say they, by no means implies
that the smiting was just. We reply, that the parallel cannot be
drawn. Had Hagar been in the hand of an unjust mistress, it would have
been her duty in Christian forbearance to "take it patiently, though
buffeted wrongfully." But she was not now in Sarai's hand. She had
successfully escaped it, and was far advanced in her' journey to her
native Egypt, where she evidently expected to find friends and
shelter. Under these circumstances, it is preposterous to say that the
grace of Christian forbearance required of her to return voluntarily
whither no claim of right drew her, and subject herself to unjust and
unauthorized persecution again. We ask, Does Christ so press the duty
of peaceableness, as to sacrifice to it the whole personal well-being
and rightful interests of the innocent victim of unjust aggression? Is
his chief object, in these lessons of forbearance, to gratify and
pamper the lust of persecution in the aggressor? Is there no right of
just self-defence left? Surely he teaches us that we owe a duty to our
own life and well-being, as well as to our fellow-men's. When we are
wronged, we are to defend this right only in such ways as become a son
of peace--a man of forgiveness. But the same Saviour who taught his
disciples to render good for evil when injured, also commanded them:
"When they persecute you in one city, flee ye into another." When a
peaceable escape can be secured from injustice, it is both the
privilege and duty of the most forgiving Christian on earth to use it.
Now Hagar was in such a condition; had her subjection to Sarai been,
as the Abolitionists say slavery is, a condition of unjust
persecution, the Saviour's instructions to her would doubtless have
been: "Now that you have escaped the injustice of her that wronged
you, flee to another city." His remanding her to Sarai shows that the
subjection was lawful and right.
It has been objected again, that we cannot argue this, unless we are
willing to argue the lawfulness of concubinage; because to send Hagar
back to her bondage was to resign her again to this relation. We
utterly deny it. The LORD only says to her: "Return to thy mistress
and submit thyself under her hands;" not "Return to thy master's bed."
There is not one particle of proof that Abram continued his improper
connexion with her after these transactions. Nor is there more worth
in the remark, that subsequently, the same divine Being met Hagar
wandering in the same wilderness, and did not require her to return,
but assisted her journey. The answer is, that she was then under no
obligation to return; because her master had fully manumitted her, and
bestowed her freedom on her.
§ 5. _Slavery in the Laws of Moses._
God, in accordance with his covenant with Abraham, set apart Israel,
through the ministry of Moses, to be his peculiar and holy people, his
witness in the midst of an apostate world, to keep alive the services
and precepts of true morality and true religion, till, in the fulness
of time, Jesus Christ should come in the flesh, and begin the
Christianizing of all nations. To effect these objects, He renewed his
revelation of the eternal and unchangeable moral law, from Sinai, in
the Decalogue; and he also gave, by the intervention of Moses, various
religious and civil laws, which were peculiar to the Jews, and were
never intended to be observed after the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The great object of all this legislation, was to set apart the Jewish
nation as a holy people, peculiarly dedicated to purity of moral
life, and the maintenance of true religion, amidst corrupt and
idolatrous generations. To effect this, God found it necessary to
raise a barrier to familiar social intercourse between the Israelites
and their corrupting heathen neighbours; and sundry of the expedients
by which this barrier was raised, were prohibitions of usages which
would have been, in themselves, neither right nor wrong, but morally
indifferent, as the eating of pork. Some of those laws having the same
object in view, required acts in their original nature indifferent;
such as circumcision and eating the Passover. But it is totally
inconsistent with the holiness of God, and with his purpose of setting
Israel apart to a holy life, that any of those peculiar laws should
require acts in themselves wicked, or forbid things in themselves
morally binding. It would be impiety to represent God as capable of
commanding what is wrong; and to enjoin sin in order to make people
holy, would be a folly and a contradiction. God's revealed will, so
far as it is revealed for a rule of life, either permanent or
temporary, can contain nothing but what is right, and pure, and just.
If it had been a positive moral duty to eat pork, this holy God would
never have made the prohibition to eat it a part even of the
temporary, ceremonial laws of his servants. Had it been morally wrong
to kill, roast, and eat a lamb, God would never have enjoined on them
the institution of the Passover. These conclusions are as plain as the
alphabet.
Now then, if we find any particular thing either sanctioned or
enjoined, in the peculiar ceremonial or civil institutions of Moses,
it does not prove that thing to be morally binding on us, in this
century, or necessarily politic and proper for us; but it does prove
it to be, in its essential moral character, innocent. That thing
cannot be sin in itself. So, Jno. David Michaelis, in his
_Commentaries on the Laws of Moses_, Book 1, Art. 1. This is the
important and just distinction. The fact that animal sacrifices were
required in the ceremonial laws of Moses, does not prove that it is
our duty, under the Christian dispensation, to offer sacrifices, or
that it is appropriate for us to do so; but it does prove that the act
would be in itself innocent (though useless) for us, and for every
one, if it had not been forbidden in subsequent revelation. Otherwise,
a holy God would never have enjoined or sanctioned it at all.
Therefore, the fact that God expressly authorized domestic slavery,
among the peculiar and temporary civil laws of the Jews, while it does
not prove that it is our positive duty to hold slaves, does prove that
it is innocent to hold them, unless it has been subsequently forbidden
by God. Now then, let us see what God authorized by Moses. Exodus xxi.
2 to 6: "If thou buy an Hebrew servant, (Ebed,) six years he shall
serve; and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing. If he came
in by himself he shall go out by himself: if he were married, then his
wife shall go out with him. If his master have given him a wife, and
she have borne him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall
be her master's, and he shall go out by himself. And if the servant
shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will
not go out free: then his master shall bring him unto the judges; he
shall also bring him unto the door, or unto the door-post; and his
master shall bore his ear through with an awl; and he shall serve him
forever," (that is, probably, until the year of Jubilee, which came
once in fifty years. See Leviticus xxv. 41.)
This, cries the anti-slavery man, was only temporary servitude. We
reply: but it was involuntary servitude, though temporary. It gave to
the master the right to compel the labour of the servant without his
consent; and this is a sanction of the principle of our institution.
What will be said then to the following? Leviticus xxv. 44 to 46:
"Both thy bondmen and thy bondmaids which thou shalt have, shall be of
the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and
bondmaids. Moreover, of the children of the strangers that do sojourn
among you, of them shall ye buy and of their families that are with
you, which they begat in your land; and they shall be your
possession," (your property.) "And ye shall take them as an
inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a
possession; they shall be your bondmen forever; but over your
brethren, the children of Israel, ye shall not rule over one another
with rigour."
The antithesis in the position of the two laws shows that these
heathen slaves were not to go free at the year of Jubilee, like Hebrew
slaves. They are to be bondmen forever. They and their children,
slaves by birth, are to descend from father to son, as heritable
property. There was to be "no seventh year freedom here; there is no
Jubilee liberation." So says the learned divine, Moses Stuart, of
Andover, himself an anti-slavery man. And so say all respectable
Hebrew antiquaries. Indeed it would be hard to construct language
defining more strongly and fully all those features of domestic
slavery most contradictory to the theory of Abolitionists. They were
to be bought and sold. They were heritable property: (Mr. Sumner would
prove hence, "mere chattels.") Here is involuntary slavery for life,
expressly authorized to God's own peculiar and holy people, in the
strongest and most careful terms. The relation, then, must be innocent
in itself. With what show of candour can men say, in the face of a
sanction so full, so emphatic, so hearty, that Moses, finding the
hoary institution of domestic slavery so deeply rooted that it would
be impossible then to abolish it, _tolerated_ it, and limited it by
all the restrictions which he could apply, calculated to cut off its
worst horrors? We ask, was Moses the author of these laws, or God?
Does the Almighty, the Unchangeable, the Holy, connive at moral
abuses, like a puny human magistrate, and content himself, where he
dare not denounce a sin, with pruning its growth a little? We ask
again: Is this gloss borne out by the facts? Was Moses, in fact, timid
in assailing old and deeply-rooted vices, and in demanding that they
should be eradicated wholly? Let his uncompromising legislation
against Idolatry and Adultery answer. The truth is, such writers as
use the above language know nothing about the true nature of domestic
slavery, and draw their inferences only from their prejudices. God and
Moses knew it well. They knew that it was an institution which, when
not abused, was suitable to the character of the depraved persons for
whom it was designed, and wholesome and benign. Hence, they prohibit
all inhuman abuses of it; and then they do not tolerate it merely as
an unavoidable wrong; but they expressly legalize it, as right. An
honest mind can make nothing less of their words. But in Numbers xxxi.
25 to 30, and Joshua ix. 20 to 27, we have instances which are, if
possible, still stronger. In the former passage the people of Midian
had been conquered by God's command, and the captives and spoils
brought home; the captives to be slaves for life according to the law
of Leviticus, ch. xxv. The book of Numbers then proceeds: "And the
Lord spake unto Moses saying, Take the sum of prey that was taken both
of man and of beast, thou and Eleazer the priest and the chief fathers
of the congregation; and divide the prey into two parts; between them
that took the war upon them who went out to battle, and between all
the congregation. And levy a tribute unto the Lord of the men of war
which went out to battle: one soul of five hundred, both of the
persons, and of the beeves, and of the asses and of the sheep: Take it
of their half, and give it unto Eleazer the priest, for an
heave-offering of the _Lord_. And of the children of Israel's half
thou shalt take one portion of fifty, of the persons, of the beeves,
of the asses and of the flocks, of all manner of beasts, and give them
unto the Levites which keep the charge of the tabernacle of the Lord."
In verses 40th and 46th, we read farther that the "_Lord's_ tribute of
the persons" of the first half, "was thirty and two persons," and of
the second half, "three hundred and twenty." Here God commands a
portion of these slaves to be set apart to a sacred use, and dedicated
to himself, that they might become the property of the ministers of
religion. The second instance is not contained in the books of Moses,
but in the history of his successor Joshua: we group it with the
former, for its similarity. In Joshua, ch. ix., we are told that while
he was triumphantly engaged in the destruction of the condemned
heathen tribes of Palestine, according to God's command, the people of
Gibeon, a part of the doomed race, despairing of a successful defence,
adopted this stratagem to save themselves. Under pretence that they
were not of Palestine at all, but from a very distant place, their
ambassadors obtained from the leaders of the Israelites a very
stringent oath of amity. This pledge the elders incautiously gave,
without seeking the divine direction. In a very few days they learned
to their astonishment, that these Gibeonites lived in the very heart
of Palestine, close to the spot where they were encamped, and that
they were of the very race which they were appointed to destroy. But
they had sworn in the name of Jehovah not to destroy them. In this
state of things, the princes and Joshua determined to punish them for
their falsehood, and at the same time substantially observe their
oath, by leaving them unhurt, but reducing them to slavery as the
serfs of the Tabernacle and its ministers. In verses 23d and 27th,
Joshua told them: "Now, therefore, ye are cursed, and there shall none
of you be freed from being bondmen," (Ebed, i. e., slaves,) "and hewers
of wood and drawers of water for the house of my God." "And Joshua
made them that day hewers of wood and drawers of water for the
congregation and for the altar of the _Lord_, even unto this day, in
that place which he should choose." This compact the Gibeonites seem
gladly to have accepted. In 2d Samuel, ch. xxi., we find this same
race of serfs still living among the Israelites, under the same
compact. King Saul, David's predecessor, having broken it by killing
many of them, God himself interposed, and required a satisfaction for
the breach. Here we have evidence that the slaves of heathen origin
were not freed by the Jubilee, for centuries had now elapsed and they
were still slaves. We also see evidence that the contract made by
Joshua was not regarded by God as unlawful. In this case, also, we
find God accepting a religious offering of slaves for the service of
his sanctuary. And these, while real slaves, did not belong each to an
individual master, but were slaves to an institution and a caste, a
form of bondage always justly regarded as less benevolent than the
former.
Yet men say slavery is a wicked relation, which God only tolerated and
curbed in the Old Testament. The _Lord's_ claiming his tythe of slaves
(as of cattle and wheat) seems to the candid man a strange way of
expressing bare tolerance! Was it not enough to leave the laity of the
"holy people" polluted with the sin of slaveholding, without
proceeding by his own express injunction to introduce the "taint" into
the still more sacred caste of the priesthood? Did the God of all
holiness direct a part of the wages of iniquity to be set apart for
his holy uses? Perhaps it may be said that He regarded the holy use as
sanctifying the unholy source of the offering. The surmise is
blasphemous. But see Deuteronomy xxiii. 18: "Thou shalt not bring the
hire of a whore or the price of a dog into the house of the _Lord_ thy
God for any vow: for even both these are abomination to the _Lord_ thy
God." To set apart to God's use property wickedly acquired was an
insult to his holiness: and to offer Him even what was acquired by
the sale of an animal ceremonially unclean, was resented as a type of
the same sin. The consecration of these slaves to sacred uses is
therefore the strongest possible proof that slaves are lawful
property. To sum up: The divine permission and sanction of slavery to
the very people whom God was setting apart to a holy life, the
consecration of slaves as property to a sacred purpose, the regulating
by law of the duties flowing from the relation, all prove that it was
then a lawful and innocent one. Otherwise, we should have the holy God
teaching sin. If it was innocent once in its intrinsic nature, it is
innocent now, unless it has been subsequently prohibited by God. But
no such prohibition can be shown.
§ 6. _Slavery in the Decalogue._
Although the Ten Commandments were given along with the civil and
ceremonial laws of the Hebrews, we do not include them along with the
latter, because the Decalogue was, unlike them, given for all men and
all dispensations. It is a solemn repetition of the sum of those
duties founded on the natures of man and of God, and on their
relations, enjoined on all ages alike. It contains nothing ceremonial,
or of merely temporary obligation; (which is binding merely because it
is commanded;) but all is of perpetual, moral obligation. It claims to
be, rightly explained, a perfect and complete rule. Our Saviour
repeatedly adopts it as the eternal sum of all duty, on which hang all
the law and the prophets, that is, all Scripture. Accordingly, we find
that the mode of its republication gave to this Decalogue a grandeur
and weight shared by no secular or ceremonial precepts. Deuteronomy
v. informs us that it was delivered first, thus receiving the
precedence, that it was spoken by God himself in articulate words,
heard by all the quaking multitude, in tones of thunder, from the
smoking summit of Sinai, with the terrible concomitants of angelic
hosts, devouring fire, lightnings and earthquakes; that God added no
more, thus refusing to all the subsequent precepts the honour of such
a publication, and that He himself then engraved it on stone,
signifying by the imperishable material, the perpetuity of this law.
Hence, all the principles of right stated or implied in this
Decalogue, are valid, not for Hebrews only, but for all men and ages.
They rise wholly above the temporary and positive precepts, which were
only binding while they were expressly enjoined. They have not been,
because they cannot be, repealed or modified; they are as immutable as
God's perfections. In our Saviour's words, "Till heaven and earth
pass, one jot or one tittle of this law shall not pass away."
Now, our argument is, that in this short summary, the relation of
master and slave is mentioned twice; and that in modes which are a
recognition of its lawfulness. It is introduced as a basis of duties
and rights founded upon it, and those rights are defended, and those
duties enjoined. But if it were an unlawful relation, what rights
could grow out of it except the slave's right to have it broken? And
what duties of the master could be founded on it, except the duties of
discontinuing, repenting of, and repairing its wrongs? In the 4th
Commandment, Exod. xx. 10, it is made the master's duty to cause the
slave to observe the Sabbath day. After the 8th Commandment had
forbidden injury to our fellow-man's property in act, by overt theft,
the 10th, (v. 17,) prohibits its injury even in thought by corrupt
coveting. And in the enumeration of possessions thus carefully covered
from assault, are men-servants (_ebed_) and maid-servants, along with
real estate and cattle. If the reader would feel the strength of the
argument implied in these facts, let him ask himself what would have
been his amazement, if, after the description which God's word gives
of the authority, righteousness, purity, and perpetuity of this
Decalogue, he had read in it, that highwaymen and pirates are
commanded to enforce Sabbath observance on their injured victims, and
that we must not covet our neighbour's concubine, or the stolen goods
in his possession? And this, without hint of the guilt of violence,
concubinage, and theft. It would be impossible for either
understanding or conscience to reconcile itself to the anomaly; he
would feel, inevitably, that God was incapable of such implied
sanction of sin.
§ 7. _Objections to the Old Testament Argument._
To state the arguments from the laws of Moses and the Decalogue has
not required a large space, because those conclusions are so plain and
sound, that many words were not needed. But the cavils, objections and
special pleadings of the Abolitionists teem like the frogs of Egypt,
engendered in the mire of ignorance and prejudice, so numerous because
so worthless. And when it is seen that we perhaps expend more space in
their refutation than we did in the direct argument, the heedless
reader may possibly be inclined to
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