MAN HAS PROPERTY IN MAN!
In the Liberator of the 19th December, we observe that the editor
narrows down the slavery contest to the mere question, whether "Man may
rightfully hold property in man?"
We think we can dispose of this objection to domestic slavery in a very
few words.
Man is a social and gregarious animal, and all such animals hold
property in each other. Nature imposes upon them slavery as a law and
necessity of their existence. They live together to aid each other, and
are slaves under Mr. Garrison's higher law. Slavery arises under the
higher law, and is, and ever must be, coeval and coextensive with human
nature.
We will enumerate a few of its ten thousand modifications.
The husband has a legally recognized property in his wife's services,
and may legally control, in some measure, her personal liberty. She is
his property and his slave.
The wife has also a legally recognized property in the husband's
services. He is her property, but not her slave.
The father has property in the services and persons of his children till
they are twenty-one years of age. They are his property and his slaves.
Children have property, during infancy, in the services of each parent.
Infant negroes, sick, infirm and superannuated negroes, hold most
valuable property in the services and capital of their masters. The
masters hold no property in such slaves, because, for the time, they are
of no value.
Owners and captains of vessels own property in the services of sailors,
and may control their personal liberty. They (the sailors) are property,
and slaves also.
The services and persons, lives and liberty of soldiers and of officers,
belong to the Government; they are, whilst in service, both property and
slaves.
Every white working man, be he clerk, carpenter, mechanic, printer,
common laborer, or what else, who contracts to serve for a term of days,
months, or years, is, for such term, the property of his employer. He is
not a slave, like the wife, child, apprentice, sailor or soldier,
because, although the employer's right to his services be equally
perfect, his remedy to enforce such right is very different. In the one
case, he may resort to force to compel compliance; in the other, he is
driven to a suit for damages.
Again: Every capitalist holds property in his fellow men to the extent
of the profits of his capital, or income. The only income possibly
resulting from capital, is the result of the property which capital
bestows on its owners, in the labor of other people. In our first three
chapters we attempt to explain this.
All civilized society recognizes, and, in some measure, performs the
obligation to support and provide for all human beings, whether natives
or foreigners, who are unable to provide for themselves. Hence
poor-houses, &c.
Hence all men hold valuable property, actual or contingent, in the
services of each other.
If, Mr. Garrison, this be the only difficulty to be adjusted between
North and South, we are sure that your little pet, Disunion, "living
will linger, and lingering will die."
When Mr. Andrews and you have quite "expelled human nature," dissolved
and disintegrated society, and reduced mankind to separate, independent,
but conflicting monads, or human atoms--then, and not till then, will
you establish the 'sovereignty of the individual,' and destroy the
property of man in man.