In your paper of the 2d of 7th mo., the same in which you denounce the
"false and fanatical philanthropy" of abolitionists, you avow yourselves
members of the Bible Society, and bestow warm and deserved encomiums on
the "truly pious undertaking of sending the truth among all nations."
You, therefore, gentlemen, whatever others may do, will not accuse me of
"fanaticism," if I endeavor to sustain my first great reason for opposing
slavery by a reference to the volume of inspiration:
"Therefore, all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you do
ye even so to them."
"Wherefore now let the fear of the Lord be upon you, take heed and do it;
for there is no iniquity with the Lord, nor respect of persons."
"Is not this the fast that I have chosen? To loose the bands of
wickedness; to undo the heavy burdens and let the oppressed go free, and
that ye break every yoke?"
"If a man be found stealing any of his brethren, and maketh merchandise
of him, or selling him, that thief shall die."
"Of a truth, I perceive that God is no respecter of persons."
"And he that stealeth a man and selleth him, or if he be found in his
hands, he shall surely be put to death."
2. Because it is an open violation of all human equality, of the laws of
Nature and of nations.
The fundamental principle of all equal and just law is contained in the
following extract from Blackstone's Commentaries, Introduction, sec. 2.
"The rights which God and Nature have established, and which are
therefore called natural rights, such as life and liberty, need not the
aid of human laws to be more effectually vested in every man than they
are; neither do they receive any additional strength when declared by
municipal laws to be inviolable: on the contrary, no human legislation
has power to abridge or destroy there, unless the owner shall himself
commit some act that amounts to a forfeiture."
Has the negro committed such offence? Above all, has his infant child
forfeited its unalienable right?
Surely it can be no act of the innocent child.
Yet you must prove the forfeiture, or no human legislation can deprive
that child of its freedom.
Its black skin constitutes the forfeiture!
What! throw the responsibility upon God! Charge the common Father of the
white and the black, He, who is no respecter of persons, with plundering
His unoffending children of all which makes the boon of existence
desirable; their personal liberty!
"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 these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."--
(Declaration of Independence, from the pen of Thomas Jefferson.)
In this general and unqualified declaration, on the 4th of July, 1776,
all the people of the United States, without distinction of color, were
proclaimed free, by the delegates of the people of those states assembled
in their highest sovereign capacity.
For more than half a century we have openly violated that solemn
declaration.
3. Because it renders nugatory the otherwise beneficial example of our
free institutions, and exposes us to the scorn and reproach of the
liberal and enlightened of other nations.
"Chains clank and groans echo around the walls of their spotless
Congress."--(Francis Jeffrey.)
"Man to be possessed by man! Man to be made property of! The image of
the Deity to be put under the yoke! Let these usurpers show us their
title-deeds!"--(Simon Boliver.)
"When I am indulging in my views of American prospects and American
liberty, it is mortifying to be told that in that very country a large
portion of the people are slaves! It is a dark spot on the face of the
nation. Such a state of things cannot always exist."--(Lafayette.)
"I deem it right to raise my humble voice to convince the citizens of
America that the slaveholding states are held in abomination by all those
whose opinion ought to be valuable. Man is the property of man in about
one half of the American States: let them not therefore dare to prate of
their institutions or of their national freedom, while they hold their
fellow-men in bondage! Of all men living, the American citizen who is
the owner of slaves is the most despicable. He is a political hypocrite
of the very worst description. The friends of humanity and liberty in
Europe should join in one universal cry of shame on the American slave-
holders! 'Base wretches!' should we shout in chorus; 'base wretches!
how dare you profane the temple of national freedom, the sacred fane of
republican rites, with the presence and the sufferings of human beings in
chains and slavery!'"--(Daniel O'Connell.)
4. Because it subjects one portion of our American brethren to the
unrestrained violence and unholy passions of another.
Here, gentlemen, I might summon to my support a cloud of witnesses, a
host of incontrovertible, damning facts, the legitimate results of a
system whose tendency is to harden and deprave the heart. But I will not
descend to particulars. I am willing to believe that the majority of the
masters of your section of the country are disposed to treat their
unfortunate slaves with kindness. But where the dreadful privilege of
slave-holding is extended to all, in every neighborhood, there must be
individuals whose cupidity is unrestrained by any principle of humanity,
whose lusts are fiercely indulged, whose fearful power over the bodies,
nay, may I not say the souls, of their victims is daily and hourly
abused.
Will the evidence of your own Jefferson, on this point, be admissible?
"The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise, of
the most boisterous passions; the most unremitting despotism on the one
part, and degrading submission on the other. Our children see this, and
learn to imitate it. The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the
lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller
slaves, gives loose to the worst of passions; and thus nursed, educated,
and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot fail to be stamped by it with
odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy who can retain his
morals and manners undepraved by such circumstances."--(Notes on
Virginia, p. 241.)
"Il n'existe a la verite aucune loi qui protege l'esclave le mauvais
traitement du maitre," says Achille Murat, himself a Floridian slave-
holder, in his late work on the United States.
Gentlemen, is not this true? Does there exist even in Virginia any law
limiting the punishment of a slave? Are there any bounds prescribed,
beyond which the brutal, the revengeful, the intoxicated slave-master,
acting in the double capacity of judge and executioner, cannot pass?
You will, perhaps, tell me that the general law against murder applies
alike to master and slave. True; but will you point out instances of
masters suffering the penalty of that law for the murder of their slaves?
If you examine your judicial reports you will find the wilful murder of a
slave decided to be only a trespass!--(Virginia Reports, vol. v. p. 481,
Harris versus Nichols.)
It indeed argues well for Virginian pride of character, that latterly,
the law, which expressly sanctioned the murder of a slave, who in the
language of Georgia and North Carolina, "died of moderate correction,"
has been repealed. But, although the letter of the law is changed, its
practice remains the same. In proof of this, I would refer to
Brockenborough and Holmes' Virginia Cases, p. 258.
In Georgia and North Carolina the murder of a slave is tolerated and
justified by law, provided that in the opinion of the court he died "of
moderate correction!"
In South Carolina the following clause of a law enacted in 1740 is still
in force:--
"If any slave shall suffer in his life, limbs, or members, when no white
person shall be present, or being present shall neglect or refuse to give
evidence concerning the same, in every such case the owner or other
person who shall have the care and government of the slave shall be
deemed and taken to be guilty of such offence; unless such owner or other
person can make the contrary appear by good and sufficient evidence, or
shall by his own oath clear and exculpate himself, which oath every court
where such offence shall be tried is hereby empowered to administer and
to acquit the offender accordingly, if clear proof of the offence be not
made by two witnesses at least, any law, usage, or custom to the contrary
notwithstanding."
Is not this offering a reward for perjury? And what shall we think of
that misnamed court of justice, where it is optional with the witnesses,
in a case of life and death, to give or withhold their testimony.
5. Because it induces dangerous sectional jealousies, creates of
necessity a struggle between the opposing interests of free and slave
labor, and threatens the integrity of the Union.
That sectional jealousies do exist, the tone of your paper, gentlemen, is
of itself an evidence, if indeed any were needed. The moral sentiment of
the free states is against slavery. The freeman has declared his
unwillingness that his labor should be reduced to a level with that of
slaves. Harsh epithets and harsh threats have been freely exchanged,
until the beautiful Potomac, wherever it winds its way to the ocean, has
become the dividing line, not of territory only, but of feeling,
interest, national pride, a moral division.
What shook the pillars of the Union when the Missouri question was
agitated? What but a few months ago arrayed in arms a state against the
Union, and the Union against a state?
From Maine to Florida, gentlemen, the answer must be the same, slavery.
6. Because of its pernicious influence upon national wealth and
prosperity.
Political economy has been the peculiar study of Virginia. But there are
some important truths connected with this science which she has hitherto
overlooked or wantonly disregarded.
Population increasing with the means of subsistence is a fair test of
national wealth.
By reference to the several censuses of the United States, it will be
seen that the white population increases nearly twice as fast in states
where there are few or no slaves as in the slave states.
Again, in the latter states the slave population has increased twice as
fast as the white. Let us take, for example, the period of twenty years,
from 1790 to 1810, and compare the increase of the two classes in three
of the Southern states.
Per cent. of whites. Per cent. of blacks.
Maryland 13 31
Virginia 24 38
North Carolina 30 70
The causes of this disproportionate increase, so inimical to the true
interests of the country, are very manifest.
A large proportion of the free inhabitants of the United States are
dependent upon their labor for subsistence. The forced, unnatural system
of slavery in some of the states renders the demand for free laborers
less urgent; they are not so readily and abundantly supplied with the
means of subsistence as those of their own class in the free states, and
as the necessaries of life diminish population also diminishes.
There is yet another cause for the decline of the white population. In
the free states labor is reputable. The statesman, whose eloquence has
electrified a nation, does not disdain in the intervals of the public
service to handle the axe and the hoe. And the woman whose beauty,
talents, and accomplishments have won the admiration of all deems it no
degradation to "look well to her household."
But the slave stamps with indelible ignominy the character of occupation.
It is a disgrace for a highborn Virginian or chivalrous Carolinian to
labor, side by side, with the low, despised, miserable black man.
Wretched must be the condition of the poorer classes of whites in a
slave-holding community! Compelled to perform the despised offices of
the slave, they can hardly rise above his level. They become the pariahs
of society. No wonder, then, that the tide of emigration flows from the
slave-cursed shores of the Atlantic to the free valleys of the West.
In New England the labor of a farmer or mechanic is worth from $150 to
$200 per annum. That of a female from $50 to $100. Our entire
population, with the exception of those engaged in mercantile affairs,
the professional classes, and a very few moneyed idlers, are working men
and women. If that of the South were equally employed (and slavery
apart, there is no reason why they should not be), how large an addition
would be annually made to the wealth of the country? The truth is, a
very considerable portion of the national wealth produced by Northern
labor is taxed to defray the expenses of twenty-five representatives of
Southern property in Congress, and to maintain an army mainly for the
protection of the slave-master against the dangerous tendencies of that
property.
In the early and better days of the Roman Republic, the ancient warriors
and statesmen cultivated their fields with their own hands; but so soon
as their agriculture was left to the slaves, it visibly declined, the
once fertile fields became pastures, and the inhabitants of that garden
of the world were dependent upon foreign nations for the necessaries of
life. The beautiful villages, once peopled by free contented laborers,
became tenantless, and, over the waste of solitude, we see, here and
there, at weary distances, the palaces of the master, contrasting
painfully with the wretched cottages and subterranean cells of the slave.
In speaking of the extraordinary fertility of the soil in the early times
of the Republic, Pliny inquires, "What was the cause of these abundant
harvests? It was this, that men of rank employed themselves in the
culture of the fields; whereas now it is left to wretches loaded with
fetters, who carry in their countenances the shameful evidence of their
slavery."
And what was true in the days of the Roman is now written legibly upon
the soil of your own Virginia. A traveller in your state, in
contemplating the decline of its agriculture, has justly remarked that,
"if the miserable condition of the negro had left his mind for
reflection, he would laugh in his chains to see how slavery has stricken
the land with ugliness."
Is the rapid increase of a population of slaves in itself no evil? In
all the slave states the increase of the slaves is vastly more rapid than
that of the whites or free blacks. When we recollect that they are under
no natural or moral restraint, careless of providing food or clothing for
themselves or their children; when, too, we consider that they are raised
as an article of profitable traffic, like the cattle of New England and
the hogs of Kentucky; that it is a matter of interest, of dollars and
cents, to the master that they should multiply as fast as possible, there
is surely nothing at all surprising in the increase of their numbers.
Would to heaven there were also nothing alarming!
7. Because, by the terms of the national compact, the free and the slave
states are alike involved in the guilt of maintaining slavery, and the
citizens of the former are liable, at any moment, to be called upon to
aid the latter in suppressing, at the point of the bayonet, the
insurrection of the slaves.
Slavery is, at the best, an unnatural state. And Nature, when her
eternal principles are violated, is perpetually struggling to restore
them to their first estate.
All history, ancient and modern, is full of warning on this point. Need
I refer to the many revolts of the Roman and Grecian slaves, the bloody
insurrection of Etruria, the horrible servile wars of Sicily and Capua?
Or, to come down to later times, to France in the fourteenth century,
Germany in the sixteenth, to Malta in the last? Need I call to mind the
untold horrors of St. Domingo, when that island, under the curse of its
servile war, glowed redly in the view of earth and heaven,--an open hell?
Have our own peculiar warnings gone by unheeded,--the frequent slave
insurrections of the South? One horrible tragedy, gentlemen, must still
be fresh in your recollection,--Southampton, with its fired dwellings and
ghastly dead! Southampton, with its dreadful associations, of the death
struggle with the insurgents, the groans of the tortured negroes, the
lamentations of the surviving whites over woman in her innocence and
beauty, and childhood, and hoary age!
"The hour of emancipation," said Thomas Jefferson, "is advancing in the
march of time. It will come. If not brought on by the generous energy
of our own minds, it will come by the bloody process of St. Domingo!"
To the just and prophetic language of your own great statesman I have but
a few words to add. They shall be those of truth and soberness.
We regard the slave system in your section of the country as a great
evil, moral and political,--an evil which, if left to itself for even a
few years longer, will give the entire South into the hands of the
blacks.
The terms of the national compact compel us to consider more than two
millions of our fellow-beings as your property; not, indeed, morally,
really, de facto, but still legally your property! We acknowledge that
you have a power derived from the United States Constitution to hold this
"property," but we deny that you have any moral right to take advantage
of that power. For truth will not allow us to admit that any human law
or compact can make void or put aside the ordinance of the living God and
the eternal laws of Nature.
We therefore hold it to be the duty of the people of the slave-holding
states to begin the work of emancipation now; that any delay must be
dangerous to themselves in time and eternity, and full of injustice to
their slaves and to their brethren of the free states.
Because the slave has never forfeited his right to freedom, and the
continuance of his servitude is a continuance of robbery; and because, in
the event of a servile war, the people of the free states would be called
upon to take a part in its unutterable horrors.
New England would obey that call, for she will abide unto death by the
Constitution of the land. Yet what must be the feelings of her citizens,
while engaged in hunting down like wild beasts their fellow-men--brutal
and black it may be, but still oppressed, suffering human beings,
struggling madly and desperately for their liberty, if they feel and know
that the necessity of so doing has resulted from a blind fatality on the
part of the oppressor, a reckless disregard of the warnings of earth and
heaven, an obstinate perseverance in a system founded and sustained by
robbery and wrong?
All wars are horrible, wicked, inexcusable, and truly and solemnly has
Jefferson himself said that, in a contest of this kind, between the slave
and the master, "the Almighty has no attribute which could take side with
us."
Understand us, gentlemen. We only ask to have the fearful necessity
taken away from us of sustaining the wretched policy of slavery by moral
influence or physical force. We ask alone to be allowed to wash our
hands of the blood of millions of your fellow-beings, the cry of whom is
rising up as a swift witness unto God against us.
8. Because all the facts connected with the subject warrant us in a most
confident belief that a speedy and general emancipation might be made
with entire safety, and that the consequences of such an emancipation
would be highly beneficial to the planters of the South.
Awful as may be their estimate in time and eternity, I will not,
gentlemen, dwell upon the priceless benefits of a conscience at rest, a
soul redeemed from the all-polluting influences of slavery, and against
which the cry of the laborer whose hire has been kept back by fraud does
not ascend. Nor will I rest the defence of my position upon the fact
that it can never be unsafe to obey the commands of God. These are the
old and common arguments of "fanatics" and "enthusiasts," melting away
like frost-work in the glorious sunshine of expediency and utility. In
the light of these modern luminaries, then, let us reason together.
A long and careful examination of the subject will I think fully justify
me in advancing this general proposition.
Wherever, whether in Europe, the East and West Indies, South America, or
in our own country, a fair experiment has been made of the comparative
expense of free and slave labor, the result has uniformly been favorable
to the former.
(See Brougham's Colonial Policy. Hodgdon's Letter to Jean Baptiste
Say. Waleh's Brazil. Official Letter of Hon. Mr. Ward, from
Mexico. Dr. Dickson's Mitigation of Slavery. Franklin on The
Peopling of Countries. Ramsay's Essay. Botham's Sugar Cultivation
in Batavia. Marsden's History of Sumatra. Coxe's Travels. Dr.
Anderson's Observations on Slavery. Storch's Political Economy.
Adam Smith. J. Jeremies' Essays. Humboldt's Travels, etc., etc.)
Here, gentlemen, the issue is tendered. Standing on your own ground of
expediency, I am ready to defend my position.
I pass from the utility to the safety of emancipation. And here,
gentlemen, I shall probably be met at the outset with your supposed
consequences, bloodshed, rapine, promiscuous massacre!
The facts, gentlemen! In God's name, bring out your facts! If slavery
is to cast over the prosperity of our country the thick shadow of an
everlasting curse, because emancipation is dreaded as a remedy worse than
the disease itself, let us know the real grounds of your fear.
Do you find them in the emancipation of the South American Republics? In
Hayti? In the partial experiments of some of the West India Islands?
Does history, ancient or modern, justify your fears? Can you find any
excuse for them in the nature of the human mind, everywhere maddened by
injury and conciliated by kindness? No, gentlemen; the dangers of
slavery are manifest and real, all history lies open for your warning.
But the dangers of emancipation, of "doing justly and loving mercy,"
exist only in your imaginations. You cannot produce one fact in
corroboration of your fears. You cannot point to the stain of a single
drop of any master's blood shed by the slave he has emancipated.
I have now given some of our reasons for opposing slavery. In my next
letter I shall explain our method of opposition, and I trust I shall be
able to show that there is nothing "fanatical," nothing
"unconstitutional," and nothing unchristian in that method.
In the mean time, gentlemen, I am your friend and well-wisher.
HAVERHILL, MASS., 22d 7th Mo., 1833.