EARLY APPROACH TO THE NEGRO PROBLEM
1. The Ultimate Problem and the Missouri Compromise
In a previous chapter[1] we have already indicated the rise of the Negro
Problem in the last decade of the eighteenth and the first two decades
of the nineteenth century. And what was the Negro Problem? It was
certainly not merely a question of slavery; in the last analysis this
institution was hardly more than an incident. Slavery has ceased to
exist, but even to-day the Problem is with us. The question was rather
what was to be the final place in the American body politic of the
Negro population that was so rapidly increasing in the country. In the
answering of this question supreme importance attached to the Negro
himself; but the problem soon transcended the race. Ultimately it was
the destiny of the United States rather than of the Negro that was to be
considered, and all the ideals on which the country was based came to
the testing. If one studied those ideals he soon realized that they were
based on Teutonic or at least English foundations. By 1820, however, the
young American republic was already beginning to be the hope of all
of the oppressed people of Europe, and Greeks and Italians as well as
Germans and Swedes were turning their faces toward the Promised Land.
The whole background of Latin culture was different from the Teutonic,
and yet the people of Southern as well as of Northern Europe somehow
became a part of the life of the United States. In this life was it also
possible for the children of Africa to have a permanent and an honorable
place? With their special tradition and gifts, with their shortcomings,
above all with their distinctive color, could they, too, become genuine
American citizens? Some said No, but in taking this position they denied
not only the ideals on which the country was founded but also the
possibilities of human nature itself. In any case the answer to the
first question at once suggested another, What shall we do with the
Negro? About this there was very great difference of opinion, it not
always being supposed that the Negro himself had anything whatever to
say about the matter. Some said send the Negro away, get rid of him by
any means whatsoever; others said if he must stay, keep him in slavery;
still others said not to keep him permanently in slavery, but emancipate
him only gradually; and already there were beginning to be persons who
felt that the Negro should be emancipated everywhere immediately, and
that after this great event had taken place he and the nation together
should work out his salvation on the broadest possible plane.
[Footnote 1: IV, Section 3.]
Into the agitation was suddenly thrust the application of Missouri for
entrance into the Union as a slave state. The struggle that followed
for two years was primarily a political one, but in the course of the
discussion the evils of slavery were fully considered. Meanwhile, in
1819, Alabama and Maine also applied for admission. Alabama was allowed
to enter without much discussion, as she made equal the number of slave
and free states. Maine, however, brought forth more talk. The Southern
congressmen would have been perfectly willing to admit this as a free
state if Missouri had been admitted as a slave state; but the North felt
that this would have been to concede altogether too much, as Missouri
from the first gave promise of being unusually important. At length,
largely through the influence of Henry Clay, there was adopted a
compromise whose main provisions were (1) that Maine was to be admitted
as a free state; (2) that in Missouri there was to be no prohibition of
slavery; but (3) that slavery was to be prohibited in any other states
that might be formed out of the Louisiana Purchase north of the line of
36° 30'.
By this agreement the strife was allayed for some years; but it is now
evident that the Missouri Compromise was only a postponement of the
ultimate contest and that the social questions involved were hardly
touched. Certainly the significance of the first clear drawing of the
line between the sections was not lost upon thoughtful men. Jefferson
wrote from Monticello in 1820: "This momentous question, like a
fire-bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered
it at once as the knell of the Union. It is hushed, indeed, for the
moment. But this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence.... I can
say, with conscious truth, that there is not a man on earth who would
sacrifice more than I would to relieve us from this heavy reproach, in
any _practicable_ way. The cession of that kind of property, for so it
is misnamed, is a bagatelle that would not cost me a second thought,
if, in that way, a general emancipation and _expatriation_ could be
effected; and, gradually, and with due sacrifices, I think it might
be."[1] For the time being, however, the South was concerned mainly
about immediate dangers; nor was this section placed more at ease by
Denmark Vesey's attempted insurrection in 1822.[2] A representative
South Carolinian,[3] writing after this event, said, "We regard our
Negroes as the _Jacobins_ of the country, against whom we should always
be upon our guard, and who, although we fear no permanent effects from
any insurrectionary movements on their part, should be watched with an
eye of steady and unremitted observation." Meanwhile from a ratio of
43.72 to 56.28 in 1790 the total Negro population in South Carolina had
by 1820 come to outnumber the white 52.77 to 47.23, and the tendency
was increasingly in favor of the Negro. The South, the whole country in
fact, was more and more being forced to consider not only slavery but
the ultimate reaches of the problem.
[Footnote 1: _Writings_, XV, 249.]
[Footnote 2: See Chapter VII, Section 1.]
[Footnote 3: Holland: _A Refutation of Calumnies_, 61.]
Whatever one might think of the conclusion--and in this case the speaker
was pleading for colonization--no statement of the problem as it
impressed men about 1820 or 1830 was clearer than that of Rev. Dr. Nott,
President of Union College, at Albany in 1829.[1] The question, said he,
was by no means local. Slavery was once legalized in New England; and
New England built slave-ships and manned these with New England seamen.
In 1820 the slave population in the country amounted to 1,500,000. The
number doubled every twenty years, and it was easy to see how it would
progress from 1,500,000 to 3,000,000; to 6,000,000; to 12,000,000; to
24,000,000. "Twenty-four millions of slaves! What a drawback from our
strength; what a tax on our resources; what a hindrance to our growth;
what a stain on our character; and what an impediment to the fulfillment
of our destiny! Could our worst enemies or the worst enemies of
republics, wish us a severer judgment?" How could one know that wakeful
and sagacious enemies without would not discover the vulnerable point
and use it for the country's overthrow? Or was there not danger that
among a people goaded from age to age there might at length arise some
second Toussaint L'Ouverture, who, reckless of consequences, would array
a force and cause a movement throughout the zone of bondage, leaving
behind him plantations waste and mansions desolate? Who could believe
that such a tremendous physical force would remain forever spell-bound
and quiescent? After all, however, slavery was doomed; public opinion
had already pronounced upon it, and the moral energy of the nation would
sooner or later effect its overthrow. "But," continued Nott, "the solemn
question here arises--in what condition will this momentous change place
us? The freed men of other countries have long since disappeared, having
been amalgamated in the general mass. Here there can be no amalgamation.
Our manumitted bondmen have remained already to the third and fourth, as
they will to the thousandth generation--a distinct, a degraded, and a
wretched race." After this sweeping statement, which has certainly not
been justified by time, Nott proceeded to argue the expediency of his
organization. Gerrit Smith, who later drifted away from colonization,
said frankly on the same occasion that the ultimate solution was either
amalgamation or colonization, and that of the two courses he preferred
to choose the latter. Others felt as he did. We shall now accordingly
proceed to consider at somewhat greater length the two solutions that
about 1820 had the clearest advocates--Colonization and Slavery.
[Footnote 1: See "African Colonization. Proceedings of the Formation of
the New York State Colonization Society." Albany, 1829.]
2. _Colonization_
Early in 1773, Rev. Samuel Hopkins, of Newport, called on his friend,
Rev. Ezra Stiles, afterwards President of Yale College, and suggested
the possibility of educating Negro students, perhaps two at first, who
would later go as missionaries to Africa. Stiles thought that for the
plan to be worth while there should be a colony on the coast of Africa,
that at least thirty or forty persons should go, and that the enterprise
should not be private but should have the formal backing of a society
organized for the purpose. In harmony with the original plan two young
Negro men sailed from New York for Africa, November 12, 1774; but the
Revolutionary War followed and nothing more was done at the time. In
1784, however, and again in 1787, Hopkins tried to induce different
merchants to fit out a vessel to convey a few emigrants, and in the
latter year he talked with a young man from the West Indies, Dr. William
Thornton, who expressed a willingness to take charge of the company.
The enterprise failed for lack of funds, though Thornton kept up his
interest and afterwards became a member of the first Board of Managers
of the American Colonization Society. Hopkins in 1791 spoke before the
Connecticut Emancipation Society, which he wished to see incorporated as
a colonization society, and in a sermon before the Providence society in
1793 he reverted to his favorite theme. Meanwhile, as a result of the
efforts of Wilberforce, Clarkson, and Granville Sharp in England, in
May, 1787, some four hundred Negroes and sixty white persons were landed
at Sierra Leone. Some of the Negroes in England had gained their freedom
in consequence of Lord Mansfield's decision in 1772, others had been
discharged from the British Army after the American Revolution, and all
were leading in England a more or less precarious existence. The sixty
white persons sent along were abandoned women, and why Sierra Leone
should have had this weight placed upon it at the start history has not
yet told. It is not surprising to learn that "disease and disorder were
rife, and by 1791 a mere handful survived."[1] As early as in his _Notes
on Virginia_, privately printed in 1781, Thomas Jefferson had suggested
a colony for Negroes, perhaps in the new territory of Ohio. The
suggestion was not acted upon, but it is evident that by 1800 several
persons had thought of the possibility of removing the Negroes in the
South to some other place either within or without the country.
[Footnote 1: McPherson, 15. (See bibliography on Liberia.)]
Gabriel's insurrection in 1800 again forced the idea concretely forward.
Virginia was visibly disturbed by this outbreak, and _in secret
session_, on December 21, the House of Delegates passed the following
resolution: "That the Governor[1] be requested to correspond with the
President of the United States,[2] on the subject of purchasing land
without the limits of this state, whither persons obnoxious to the laws,
or dangerous to the peace of society may be removed." The real purpose
of this resolution was to get rid of those Negroes who had had some part
in the insurrection and had not been executed; but not in 1800, or in
1802 or 1804, was the General Assembly thus able to banish those whom
it was afraid to hang. Monroe, however, acted in accordance with his
instructions, and Jefferson replied to him under date November 24, 1801.
He was not now favorable to deportation to some place within the United
States, and thought that the West Indies, probably Santo Domingo, might
be better. There was little real danger that the exiles would stimulate
vindictive or predatory descents on the American coasts, and in any case
such a possibility was "overweighed by the humanity of the measures
proposed." "Africa would offer a last and undoubted resort," thought
Jefferson, "if all others more desirable should fail."[3] Six months
later, on July 13, 1802, the President wrote about the matter to Rufus
King, then minister in London. The course of events in the West Indies,
he said, had given an impulse to the minds of Negroes in the United
States; there was a disposition to insurgency, and it now seemed that if
there was to be colonization, Africa was by all means the best place. An
African company might also engage in commercial operations, and if there
was coöperation with Sierra Leone, there was the possibility of "one
strong, rather than two weak colonies." Would King accordingly enter
into conference with the English officials with reference to disposing
of any Negroes who might be sent? "It is material to observe," remarked
Jefferson, "that they are not felons, or common malefactors, but persons
guilty of what the safety of society, under actual circumstances,
obliges us to treat as a crime, but which their feelings may represent
in a far different shape. They are such as will be a valuable
acquisition to the settlement already existing there, and well
calculated to coöperate in the plan of civilization."[4] King
accordingly opened correspondence with Thornton and Wedderbourne, the
secretaries of the company having charge of Sierra Leone, but was
informed that the colony was in a languishing condition and that funds
were likely to fail, and that in no event would they be willing to
receive more people from the United States, as these were the very ones
who had already made most trouble in the settlement.[5] On January 22,
1805, the General Assembly of Virginia passed a resolution that embodied
a request to the United States Government to set aside a portion of
territory in the new Louisiana Purchase "to be appropriated to
the residence of such people of color as have been, or shall be,
emancipated, or may hereafter become dangerous to the public safety."
Nothing came of this. By the close then of Jefferson's second
administration the Northwest, the Southwest, the West Indies, and Sierra
Leone had all been thought of as possible fields for colonization, but
from the consideration nothing visible had resulted.
[Footnote 1: Monroe.]
[Footnote 2: Jefferson.]
[Footnote 3: _Writings_, X, 297.]
[Footnote 4: _Writings_, X, 327-328.]
[Footnote 5: _Ibid_., XIII, 11.]
Now followed the period of Southern expansion and of increasing
materialism, and before long came the War of 1812. By 1811 a note of
doubt had crept into Jefferson's dealing with the subject. Said he:
"Nothing is more to be wished than that the United States would
themselves undertake to make such an establishment on the coast of
Africa ... But for this the national mind is not yet prepared. It may
perhaps be doubted whether many of these people would voluntarily
consent to such an exchange of situation, and very certain that few of
those advanced to a certain age in habits of slavery, would be capable
of self-government. This should not, however, discourage the experiment,
nor the early trial of it; and the proposition should be made with all
the prudent cautions and attentions requisite to reconcile it to the
interests, the safety, and the prejudices of all parties."[1]
[Footnote 1: _Writings_, XIII, 11.]
From an entirely different source, however, and prompted not by
expediency but the purest altruism, came an impulse that finally told in
the founding of Liberia. The heart of a young man reached out across
the sea. Samuel J. Mills, an undergraduate of Williams College, in 1808
formed among his fellow-students a missionary society whose work later
told in the formation of the American Bible Society and the Board of
Foreign Missions. Mills continued his theological studies at Andover and
then at Princeton; and while at the latter place he established a school
for Negroes at Parsippany, thirty miles away. He also interested in
his work and hopes Rev. Robert Finley, of Basking Ridge, N.J., who
"succeeded in assembling at Princeton the first meeting ever called to
consider the project of sending Negro colonists to Africa,"[1] and who
in a letter to John P. Mumford, of New York, under date February 14,
1815, expressed his interest by saying, "We should send to Africa a
population partly civilized and christianized for its benefit; and our
blacks themselves would be put in a better condition."
[Footnote 1: McPherson, 18.]
In this same year, 1815, the country was startled by the unselfish
enterprise of a Negro who had long thought of the unfortunate situation
of his people in America and who himself shouldered the obligation to
do something definite in their behalf. Paul Cuffe had been born in May,
1759, on one of the Elizabeth Islands near New Bedford, Mass., the son
of a father who was once a slave from Africa and of an Indian mother.[1]
Interested in navigation, he made voyages to Russia, England, Africa,
the West Indies, and the South; and in time he commanded his own vessel,
became generally respected, and by his wisdom rose to a fair degree of
opulence. For twenty years he had thought especially about Africa,
and in 1815 he took to Sierra Leone a total of nine families and
thirty-eight persons at an expense to himself of nearly $4000. The
people that he brought were well received at Sierra Leone, and Cuffe
himself had greater and more far-reaching plans when he died September
7, 1817. He left an estate valued at $20,000.
[Footnote 1: First Annual Report of American Colonization Society.]
Dr. Finley's meeting at Princeton was not very well attended and hence
not a great success. Nevertheless he felt sufficiently encouraged to go
to Washington in December, 1816, to use his effort for the formation of
a national colonization society. It happened that in February of this
same year, 1816, General Charles Fenton Mercer, member of the House of
Delegates, came upon the secret journals of the legislature for the
period 1801-5 and saw the correspondence between Monroe and Jefferson.
Interested in the colonization project, on December 14 (Monroe
then being President-elect) he presented in the House of Delegates
resolutions embodying the previous enactments; and these passed 132 to
14. Finley was generally helped by the effort of Mercer, and on December
21, 1816, there was held in Washington a meeting of public men
and interested citizens, Henry Clay, then Speaker of the House of
Representatives, presiding. A constitution was adopted at an adjourned
meeting on December 28; and on January 1, 1817, were formally chosen
the officers of "The American Society for Colonizing the Free People
of Color of the United States." At this last meeting Henry Clay, again
presiding, spoke in glowing terms of the possibilities of the movement;
Elias B. Caldwell, a brother-in-law of Finley, made the leading
argument; and John Randolph, of Roanoke, Va., and Robert Wright, of
Maryland, spoke of the advantages to accrue from the removal of the free
Negroes from the country (which remarks were very soon to awaken
much discussion and criticism, especially on the part of the Negroes
themselves). It is interesting to note that Mercer had no part at all in
the meeting of January 1, not even being present; he did not feel that
any but Southern men should be enrolled in the organization. However,
Bushrod Washington, the president, was a Southern man; twelve of the
seventeen vice-presidents were Southern men, among them being Andrew
Jackson and William Crawford; and all of the twelve managers were
slaveholders.
Membership in the American Colonization Society originally consisted,
first, of such as sincerely desired to afford the free Negroes an asylum
from oppression and who hoped through them to extend to Africa the
blessings of civilization and Christianity; second, of such as sought to
enhance the value of their own slaves by removing the free Negroes; and
third, of such as desired to be relieved of any responsibility whatever
for free Negroes. The movement was widely advertised as "an effort
for the benefit of the blacks in which all parts of the country could
unite," it being understood that it was "not to have the abolition of
slavery for its immediate object," nor was it to "aim directly at the
instruction of the great body of the blacks." Such points as the last
were to prove in course of time hardly less than a direct challenge to
the different abolitionist organizations in the North, and more and more
the Society was denounced as a movement on the part of slaveholders for
perpetuating their institutions by doing away with the free people of
color. It is not to be supposed, however, that the South, with its usual
religious fervor, did not put much genuine feeling into the colonization
scheme. One man in Georgia named Tubman freed his slaves, thirty in all,
and placed them in charge of the Society with a gift of $10,000; Thomas
Hunt, a young Virginian, afterwards a chaplain in the Union Army, sent
to Liberia the slaves he had inherited, paying the entire cost of the
journey; and others acted in a similar spirit of benevolence. It was
but natural, however, for the public to be somewhat uncertain as to the
tendencies of the organization when the utterances of representative
men were sometimes directly contradictory. On January 20, 1827, for
instance, Henry Clay, then Secretary of State, speaking in the hall of
the House of Representatives at the annual meeting of the Society, said:
"Of all classes of our population, the most vicious is that of the free
colored. It is the inevitable result of their moral, political, and
civil degradation. Contaminated themselves, they extend their vices to
all around them, to the slaves and to the whites." Just a moment later
he said: "Every emigrant to Africa is a missionary carrying with him
credentials in the holy cause of civilization, religion, and free
institutions." How persons contaminated and vicious could be
missionaries of civilization and religion was something possible only in
the logic of Henry Clay. In the course of the next month Robert Y. Hayne
gave a Southern criticism in two addresses on a memorial presented in
the United States Senate by the Colonization Society.[1] The first
of these speeches was a clever one characterized by much wit and
good-humored raillery; the second was a sober arraignment. Hayne
emphasized the tremendous cost involved and the physical impossibility
of the whole undertaking, estimating that at least sixty thousand
persons a year would have to be transported to accomplish anything like
the desired result. At the close of his brilliant attack, still making
a veiled plea for the continuance of slavery, he nevertheless rose to
genuine statesmanship in dealing with the problem of the Negro, saying,
"While this process is going on the colored classes are gradually
diffusing themselves throughout the country and are making steady
advances in intelligence and refinement, and if half the zeal were
displayed in bettering their condition that is now wasted in the vain
and fruitless effort of sending them abroad, their intellectual and
moral improvement would be steady and rapid." William Lloyd Garrison was
untiring and merciless in flaying the inconsistencies and selfishness of
the colonization organization. In an editorial in the _Liberator_, July
9, 1831, he charged the Society, first, with persecution in compelling
free people to emigrate against their will and in discouraging their
education at home; second, with falsehood in saying that the Negroes
were natives of Africa when they were no more so than white Americans
were natives of Great Britain; third, with cowardice in asserting that
the continuance of the Negro population in the country involved dangers;
and finally, with infidelity in denying that the Gospel has full power
to reach the hatred in the hearts of men. In _Thoughts on African
Colonisation_ (1832) he developed exhaustively ten points as follows:
That the American Colonization Society was pledged not to oppose the
system of slavery, that it apologized for slavery and slaveholders, that
it recognized slaves as property, that by deporting Negroes it increased
the value of slaves, that it was the enemy of immediate abolition, that
it was nourished by fear and selfishness, that it aimed at the utter
expulsion of the blacks, that it was the disparager of free Negroes,
that it denied the possibility of elevating the black people of the
country, and that it deceived and misled the nation. Other criticisms
were numerous. A broadside, "The Shields of American Slavery" ("Broad
enough to hide the wrongs of two millions of stolen men") placed side by
side conflicting utterances of members of the Society; and in August,
1830, Kendall, fourth auditor, in his report to the Secretary of the
Navy, wondered why the resources of the government should be used "to
colonize recaptured Africans, to build homes for them, to furnish them
with farming utensils, to pay instructors to teach them, to purchase
ships for their convenience, to build forts for their protection, to
supply them with arms and munitions of war, to enlist troops to guard
them, and to employ the army and navy in their defense."[2] Criticism of
the American Colonization Society was prompted by a variety of motives;
but the organization made itself vulnerable at many points. The movement
attracted extraordinary attention, but has had practically no effect
whatever on the position of the Negro in the United States. Its work
in connection with the founding of Liberia, however, is of the highest
importance, and must later receive detailed attention.
[Footnote 1: See Jervey: _Robert Y. Hayne and His Times_, 207-8.]
[Footnote 2: Cited by McPherson, 22.]
3. _Slavery_
We have seen that from the beginning there were liberal-minded men in
the South who opposed the system of slavery, and if we actually take
note of all the utterances of different men and of the proposals for
doing away with the system, we shall find that about the turn of the
century there was in this section considerable anti-slavery sentiment.
Between 1800 and 1820, however, the opening of new lands in the
Southwest, the increasing emphasis on cotton, and the rapidly growing
Negro population, gave force to the argument of expediency; and the
Missouri Compromise drew sharply the lines of the contest. The South now
came to regard slavery as its peculiar heritage; public men were forced
to defend the institution; and in general the best thought of the
section began to be obsessed and dominated by the Negro, just as it is
to-day in large measure. In taking this position the South deliberately
committed intellectual suicide. In such matters as freedom of speech and
literary achievement, and in genuine statesmanship if not for the time
being in political influence, this part of the country declined, and
before long the difference between it and New England was appalling.
Calhoun and Hayne were strong; but between 1820 and 1860 the South had
no names to compare with Longfellow and Emerson in literature, or with
Morse and Hoe in invention. The foremost college professor, Dew, of
William and Mary, and even the outstanding divines, Furman, the Baptist,
of South Carolina, in the twenties, and Palmer, the Presbyterian of New
Orleans, in the fifties, are all now remembered mainly because they
defended their section in keeping the Negro in bonds. William and Mary
College, and even the University of Virginia, as compared with Harvard
and Yale, became provincial institutions; and instead of the Washington
or Jefferson of an earlier day now began to be nourished such a leader
as "Bob" Toombs, who for all of his fire and eloquence was a demagogue.
In making its choice the South could not and did not blame the Negro
per se, for it was freely recognized that upon slave labor rested such
economic stability as the section possessed. The tragedy was simply that
thousands of intelligent Americans deliberately turned their faces to
the past, and preferred to read the novels of Walter Scott and live in
the Middle Ages rather than study the French Revolution and live in the
nineteenth century. One hundred years after we find that the chains are
still forged, that thought is not yet free. Thus the Negro Problem began
to be, and still is, very largely the problem of the white man of the
South. The era of capitalism had not yet dawned, and still far in the
future was the day when the poor white man and the Negro were slowly to
realize that their interests were largely identical.
The argument with which the South came to support its position and to
defend slavery need not here detain us at length. It was formally stated
by Dew and others[1] and it was to be heard on every hand. One could
hardly go to church, to say nothing of going to a public meeting,
without hearing echoes of it. In general it was maintained that slavery
had made for the civilization of the world in that it had mitigated
the evils of war, had made labor profitable, had changed the nature of
savages, and elevated woman. The slave-trade was of course horrible and
unjust, but the great advantages of the system more than outweighed a
few attendant evils. Emancipation and deportation were alike impossible.
Even if practicable, they would not be expedient measures, for they
meant the loss to Virginia of one-third of her property. As for
morality, it was not to be expected that the Negro should have the
sensibilities of the white man. Moreover the system had the advantage of
cultivating a republican spirit among the white people. In short, said
Dew, the slaves, in both the economic and the moral point of view, were
"entirely unfit for a state of freedom among the whites." Holland,
already cited, in 1822 maintained five points, as follows: 1. That the
United States are one for national purposes, but separate for their
internal regulation and government; 2. That the people of the North and
East "always exhibited an unfriendly feeling on subjects affecting the
interests of the South and West"; 3. That the institution of slavery
was not an institution of the South's voluntary choosing; 4. That the
Southern sections of the Union, both before and after the Declaration
of Independence, "had uniformly exhibited a disposition to restrict
the extension of the evil--and had always manifested as cordial a
disposition to ameliorate it as those of the North and East"; and 5.
That the actual state and condition of the slave population "reflected
no disgrace whatever on the character of the country--as the slaves were
infinitely better provided for than the laboring poor of other countries
of the world, and were generally happier than millions of white people
in the world." Such arguments the clergy supported and endeavored to
reconcile with Christian precept. Rev. Dr. Richard Furman, president
of the Baptist Convention of South Carolina,[2] after much inquiry and
reasoning, arrived at the conclusion that "the holding of slaves is
justifiable by the doctrine and example contained in Holy Writ; and is,
therefore, consistent with Christian uprightness both in sentiment and
conduct." Said he further: "The Christian golden rule, of doing
to others as we would they should do to us, has been urged as an
unanswerable argument against holding slaves. But surely this rule
is never to be urged against that order of things which the Divine
government has established; nor do our desires become a standard to us,
under this rule, unless they have a due regard to justice, propriety,
and the general good.... A father may very naturally desire that his son
should be obedient to his orders: Is he therefore to obey the orders of
his son? A man might be pleased to be exonerated from his debts by the
generosity of his creditors; or that his rich neighbor should equally
divide his property with him; and in certain circumstances might desire
these to be done: Would the mere existence of this desire oblige him
to exonerate his debtors, and to make such division of his property?"
Calhoun in 1837 formally accepted slavery, saying that the South should
no longer apologize for it; and the whole argument from the standpoint
of expediency received eloquent expression in the Senate of the United
States from no less a man than Henry Clay, who more and more appears in
the perspective as a pro-Southern advocate. Said he: "I am no friend of
slavery. But I prefer the liberty of my own country to that of any other
people; and the liberty of my own race to that of any other race.
The liberty of the descendants of Africa in the United States is
incompatible with the safety and liberty of the European descendants.
Their slavery forms an exception--an exception resulting from a
stern and inexorable necessity--to the general liberty in the United
States."[3] After the lapse of years the pro-slavery argument is pitiful
in its numerous fallacies. It was in line with much of the discussion of
the day that questioned whether the Negro was actually a human being,
and but serves to show to what extremes economic interest will sometimes
drive men otherwise of high intelligence and honor.
[Footnote 1: _The Pro-Slavery Argument_ (as maintained by the most
distinguished writers of the Southern states). Charleston, 1852.]
[Footnote 2: "Rev. Dr. Richard Furman's Exposition of the Views of the
Baptists relative to the Coloured Population in the United States, in
a Communication to the Governor of South Carolina." Second edition,
Charleston, 1833 (letter bears original date, December 24, 1822).]
[Footnote 3: Address "On Abolition," February 7, 1839.]