NEGRO SLAVERY.
Until the lands of America are appropriated by a few, population becomes
dense, competition among laborers active, employment uncertain, and
wages low, the personal liberty of all the whites will continue to be a
blessing. We have vast unsettled territories; population may cease to
increase, or increase slowly, as in most countries, and many centuries
may elapse before the question will be practically suggested, whether
slavery to capital be preferable to slavery to human masters. But the
negro has neither energy nor enterprise, and, even in our sparser
population, finds, with his improvident habits, that his liberty is a
curse to himself, and a greater curse to the society around him. These
considerations, and others equally obvious, have induced the South to
attempt to defend negro slavery as an exceptional institution,
admitting, nay asserting, that slavery, in the general or in the
abstract, is morally wrong, and against common right. With singular
inconsistency, after making this admission, which admits away the
authority of the Bible, of profane history, and of the almost universal
practice of mankind--they turn round and attempt to bolster up the cause
of negro slavery by these very exploded authorities. If we mean not to
repudiate all divine, and almost all human authority in favor of
slavery, we must vindicate that institution in the abstract.
To insist that a status of society, which has been almost universal, and
which is expressly and continually justified by Holy Writ, is its
natural, normal, and necessary status, under the ordinary circumstances,
is on its face a plausible and probable proposition. To insist on less,
is to yield our cause, and to give up our religion; for if white slavery
be morally wrong, be a violation of natural rights, the Bible cannot be
true. Human and divine authority do seem in the general to concur, in
establishing the expediency of having masters and slaves of different
races. The nominal servitude of the Jews to each other, in its temporary
character, and no doubt in its mild character, more nearly resembled our
wardship and apprenticeship, than ordinary domestic slavery. In very
many nations of antiquity, and in some of modern times, the law has
permitted the native citizens to become slaves to each other. But few
take advantage of such laws; and the infrequency of the practice,
establishes the general truth that master and slave should be of
different national descent. In some respects, the wider the difference
the better, as the slave will feel less mortified by his position. In
other respects, it may be that too wide a difference hardens the hearts
and brutalizes the feelings of both master and slave. The civilized man
hates the savage, and the savage returns the hatred with interest.
Hence, West India slavery, of newly caught negroes, is not a very
humane, affectionate or civilizing institution. Virginia negroes have
become moral and intelligent. They love their master and his family, and
the attachment is reciprocated. Still, we like the idle, but intelligent
house-servants, better than the hard-used, but stupid out-hands; and we
like the mulatto better than the negro; yet the negro is generally more
affectionate, contented and faithful.
The world at large looks on negro slavery as much the worst form of
slavery; because it is only acquainted with West India slavery.
Abolition never arose till negro slavery was instituted; and now
abolition is only directed against negro slavery. There is no
philanthropic crusade attempting to set free the white slaves of Eastern
Europe and of Asia. The world, then, is prepared for the defence of
slavery in the abstract--it is prejudiced only against negro slavery.
These prejudices were in their origin well founded. The Slave Trade, the
horrors of the Middle Passage, and West India slavery, were enough to
rouse the most torpid philanthropy.
But our Southern slavery has become a benign and protective institution,
and our negroes are confessedly better off than any free laboring
population in the world.
How can we contend that white slavery is wrong, whilst all the great
body of free laborers are starving; and slaves, white or black,
throughout the world, are enjoying comfort?
We write in the cause of Truth and Humanity, and will not play the
advocate for master or for slave.
The aversion to negroes, the antipathy of race, is much greater at the
North than at the South; and it is very probable that this antipathy to
the person of the negro, is confounded with or generates hatred of the
institution with which he is usually connected. Hatred to slavery is
very generally little more than hatred of negroes.
There is one strong argument in favor of negro slavery over all other
slavery: that he, being unfitted for the mechanic arts, for trade, and
all skillful pursuits, leaves those pursuits to be carried on by the
whites; and does not bring all industry into disrepute, as in Greece and
Rome, where the slaves were not only the artists and mechanics, but also
the merchants.
Whilst, as a general and abstract question, negro slavery has no other
claims over other forms of slavery, except that from inferiority, or
rather peculiarity, of race, almost all negroes require masters, whilst
only the children, the women, the very weak, poor, and ignorant, &c,
among the whites, need some protective and governing relation of this
kind; yet as a subject of temporary, but world-wide importance, negro
slavery has become the most necessary of all human institutions.
The African slave trade to America commenced three centuries and a half
since. By the time of the American Revolution, the supply of slaves had
exceeded the demand for slave labor, and the slaveholders, to get rid of
a burden, and to prevent the increase of a nuisance, became violent
opponents of the slave trade, and many of them abolitionists. New
England, Bristol, and Liverpool, who reaped the profits of the trade,
without suffering from the nuisance, stood out for a long time against
its abolition. Finally, laws and treaties were made, and fleets fitted
out to abolish it; and after a while, the slaves of most of South
America, of the West Indies, and of Mexico were liberated. In the
meantime, cotton, rice, sugar, coffee, tobacco, and other products of
slave labor, came into universal use as necessaries of life. The
population of Western Europe, sustained and stimulated by those
products, was trebled, and that of the North increased tenfold. The
products of slave labor became scarce and dear, and famines frequent.
Now, it is obvious, that to emancipate all the negroes would be to
starve Western Europe and our North. Not to extend and increase negro
slavery, _pari passu_, with the extension and multiplication of free
society, will produce much suffering. If all South America, Mexico, the
West Indies, and our Union south of Mason and Dixon's line, of the Ohio
and Missouri, were slaveholding, slave products would be abundant and
cheap in free society; and their market for their merchandise,
manufactures, commerce, &c., illimitable. Free white laborers might live
in comfort and luxury on light work, but for the exacting and greedy
landlords, bosses and other capitalists.
We must confess, that overstock the world as you will with comforts and
with luxuries, we do not see how to make capital relax its monopoly--how
to do aught but tantalize the hireling. Capital, irresponsible capital,
begets, and ever will beget, the "immedicabile vulnus" of so-called Free
Society. It invades every recess of domestic life, infects its food, its
clothing, its drink, its very atmosphere, and pursues the hireling, from
the hovel to the poor-house, the prison and the grave. Do what he will,
go where he will, capital pursues and persecutes him. "Haeret lateri
lethalis arundo!"
Capital supports and protects the domestic slave; taxes, oppresses and
persecutes the free laborer.