A RETROSPECT.
“Any slave refusing obedience to any command may be flogged till he
submits or dies. Not by occasional abuses alone, but by the universal
law of the Southern Confederacy, the existing system of slavery violates
all the moral laws of Christianity.”—_Rev. Newman Hall._
Before removing Peculiar from the closet which at Charlton’s bidding he
has entered, we must go back to the time when he was a slave, and
amplify and illustrate certain parts of his abridged narrative. His
life, up to the period when he comes upon our little stage, divides
itself into three eras, all marked by their separate moral experiences.
In the _first_, he felt the slave’s crowning curse,—the absence of that
sense of personal responsibility which freedom alone can give; and he
fell into the demoralization which is the inherent consequence of the
slave’s condition. In the _second_ era, he encountered his mother, and
then the frozen fountain of his affections was unsealed and melted. In
the _third_, he met Corinna, and for the first time looked on life with
the eyes of belief.
It will seem idle to many advanced minds in this nineteenth century to
use words to show the wrong of slavery. Why not as well spend breath in
denouncing burglary or murder? But slavery is still a power in the
world. We are daily told it is the proper _status_ for the colored man
in this country; that he ought to covet slavery as much as a white man
ought to covet freedom. Besides, since Peek has confessed himself at one
time of his life a liar, we must show why he ought logically to have
been one.
To blame a slave for lying and stealing, is about as fair as it would be
to blame a man for using strategy in escaping from an assassin. For the
slaveholder, if not the assassin of the slave’s life, is the assassin of
his liberty, his manhood, his moral dignity.
Mr. Pugh of Ohio, Vallandigham’s associate on the gubernatorial ticket
for 1863, presents his thesis thus: “When the slaves are fit for
freedom, they will be free.”
The profundity of this oracular proposition is only equalled in the
remark of the careful grandmother, who declared she would never let a
boy go into the water till he knew how to swim.
“_When_ the slaves are fit!” As if the road were clear for them to
achieve their fitness! Why, the slave is not only robbed of his labor,
but of his very chances as a thinking being. Yes, with a charming
consistency, the slavery barons, the Hammonds and the Davises, while
they tell us the negro is unfitted for mental cultivation, institute the
severest penal laws against all attempts to teach the slave to read!
The first natural instinct of the slave, black or white, towards his
master is, to cheat and baffle that armed embodiment of wrong, who
stands to him in the relation of a thief and a tyrant. Thus, from his
earliest years, lying and fraud become legitimate and praiseworthy in
the slave’s eyes; for slavery, except under rare conditions, crushes out
the moral life in the victim.
Any conscience he may have, being subordinate to the conscience of his
master, is kept stunted or perverted. The slave may wish to be true to
his wife; but his master may compel him to repudiate her and take
another. He may object to being the agent of an injustice; but the snap
of the whip or the revolver may be the reply to any conscientious
scruples he may offer against obedience.
In the first stage of his slave-life, Peculiar probably gave little
thought to the moral bearings of his lot; although old Alva, his
instructor, who was something of a casuist, had offered him not a few
hard nuts to crack in the way of knotty questions. But Peculiar did
precisely what you or I would have done under similar circumstances: he
taxed his ingenuity to find how he could most safely shirk the tasks
that were put upon him. Knowing that his taskmasters had no right to his
labor, that they were, in fact, robbing him of what was his own, he did
what he could to fool and circumvent them. Thus he grew to be, by a
necessity of his condition, the most consummate of hypocrites and the
most intrepid and successful of liars. At eighteen he was a match for
Talleyrand in using speech to conceal his thoughts.
He saw that, if slaves were well treated, it was because the prudent
master believed that good treatment would pay. Humanity was gauged by
considerations of cotton. Thus the very kindnesses of a master had the
taint of an intense selfishness; and Peculiar, while readily availing
himself of all indulgences, correctly appreciated the spirit in which
they were granted.
The devotional element seems to be especially active in the negro; but
it has little chance for rational development, dwarfed and kept from the
light as the intellect is. The uneducated slave, like the Italian
brigand,—indeed, like many worthy people who go to church,—thinks it an
impertinence to mix up morality with religion. He agrees fully with the
distinguished American divine, who the other Sunday began his sermon
with these words, “Brethren, I am not here to teach you morality, but to
save your souls.” As if a saving faith could exist allied to a corrupt
morality!
Peculiar could not come in contact with a sham, however solemn and
pretentious, without applying to it the puncture of his skeptical
analysis. He saw his master, Herbert, go to church on a Sunday and kneel
in prayer, and on a Monday shoot down Big Sam for attaching himself to
the wrong woman. He saw the Rev. Mr. Bloom take the murderer by the
hand, as if nothing had happened more tragical than the shooting of a
raccoon.
And then Peculiar cogitated, wondering what religion could be, if its
professors made such slight account of robbery and murder. Was it the
observance of certain forms for the propitiation of an arbitrary,
capricious, and unamiable Power, who smiled on injustice and barbarity?
The more he thought of it, the more inexplicable grew the puzzle.
Herbert evidently regarded himself as one of the elect; and Mr. Bloom
encouraged him in his security. If heaven was to be won by such kind of
service as theirs, Peculiar concluded that he would prefer taking his
chances in hell; and so he became a scoffer.
His residence in New Orleans, in enlarging the sphere of his
experiences, did not bring him the light that could quicken the
devotional part of his nature. Dwelling most of the time in a hotel
which frequently contained three or four hundred inmates, he was thrown
among white men of all grades, intellectual and moral. He instinctively
felt his superiority both ways to not a few of these. It was therefore a
swindling lie to say that the blacks were born to be the thrall of the
whites, that slavery was the proper _status_ of the black in this or any
country. If it were true that _stupid_ blacks ought to be slaves, so
must it be true of the same order of whites.
He heard preachers stand up in their pulpits, and, like the Rev. Dr.
Palmer, blaspheme God by calling slavery a Divine institution. “Would it
have been tolerated so long, if it were not?” they asked, with the
confidence of a conjurer when he means to hocus you. To which Peek might
have answered, “Would theft and murder have been tolerated so long, if
they were not equally Divine?” The Northern clergymen he encountered
held usually South-side views of the subject, and so his prejudices
against the cloth grew to be somewhat too sweeping and indiscriminate.
Judged of by its relations to slavery, religion seemed to him an
audacious system of impositions, raised to fortify a lie and a wrong by
claiming a Divine sanction for merely human creeds and inventions.
This persuasion was deepened when he found there were intelligent white
men utterly incredulous as to a future state, and that the people who
went to church were many of them practically, and many of them
speculatively, infidels. The remaining fraction might be, for all he
knew, not only devout, but good and just. Indeed, he had met some such,
but they could be almost counted on his ten fingers.
One day at the St. Charles he overheard a discussion between Mr. James
Sterling, an English traveller, and the Rev. Dr. Manners of Virginia.
Slaves are good listeners; and Peculiar had sharpened his sense of
hearing by the frequent exercise of it under difficulties. He was an
amateur in key-holes. On this occasion he had only to open a ventilating
window at the top of a partition, and all that the disputants might say
would be for his benefit.
“Will you deny, sir,” asked the reverend Doctor, “that slavery has the
sanction of Scripture?”
“I exclude that inquiry as impertinent at present,” said Sterling. “If
Scripture authorized murder, then it would not be murder that would be
right, but Scripture that would be wrong. And so in regard to slavery.
On that particular point Scripture must not be admitted as
authoritative. It cannot override the enlightened human conscience. It
cannot render null the deductions of science and of reason on a question
that manifestly comes within their sphere.”
“Ah! if you reject Scripture, then I have nothing more to say,” retorted
the Doctor. But, after a pause, he added, “Have you not generally found
the slaves well treated and contented?”
“A system under which they are well treated and made content,” replied
Sterling, “is really the most to be deplored and condemned. If slavery
could so brutalize men’s minds as to make them hug their chains and
glory in degradation, it would be, in my eyes, doubly cursed. But it is
not so; the slaves are not happy, and I thank God for it. There is
manhood enough left in them to make them at least unhappy.”[3]
“You assume the equality of the races,” interposed the Doctor.
“It is unnecessary for my argument to make any such assumption,” said
Sterling. “I have found that many black men are superior to many white
men, and some of those white men slaveholders. I do not _assume_ this. I
know it. I have seen it. But even if the black men were inferior, I
hold, that man, as man, is an end unto himself, and that to use him as a
brute means to the ends of other men is to outrage the laws of God. I
take my stand far above the question of happiness or unhappiness. Have
you noticed the young black man, called Peek, who waits behind my chair
at table?”
“Yes, a bright-looking lad. He anticipates your wants well. You have fed
him, I suppose?”
“I have given him nothing. I have put a few questions to him, that is
all; and what I have to say is, that he is superior in respect to brains
to nine tenths of the white youth who suck juleps in your bar-rooms or
kill time at your billiard-tables.”
“As soon as the Abolitionists will stop their infatuated clamor,”
replied the Doctor, “the condition of the slave will be gradually
improved, and we shall give more and more care to his religious
education.”
“So long as the negro is ruled by force,” returned Mr. Sterling, “no
forty-parson power of preaching can elevate his character. It is a
savage mockery to prate of _duty_ to one in whom we have emasculated all
power of will. We cannot make a moral intelligence of a being we use as
a mere muscular force.”
“All that the South wants,” exclaimed the Doctor, “is to be let alone in
the matter of slavery. If there are any alleviations in the system which
can be safely applied, be sure they will not be lacking as soon as we
are let alone by the fanatics of the North. Leave the solution of the
problem to the intelligence and humanity of the South.”
“Not while new cotton-lands pay so well! Be sure, reverend sir, if the
South cannot quickly find a solution of this slave problem, God will
find one for them, and that, trust me, will be a violent one. American
civilization and American slavery can no longer exist together. One or
the other must be destroyed. For my part, I can’t believe it to be the
Divine purpose that a remnant of barbarism shall overthrow the
civilization of a new world. Slavery must succumb.”[4]
“I recommend you, Mr. Sterling, not to raise your voice quite so high
when you touch upon these dangerous topics here at the South. I will bid
you good evening, sir.”