these three millions of slaves would have belonged to Africa if they
had not belonged to America,--that they would have been born of the
same fathers and mothers there as here, so that those of them who are
American mulattoes would have been Ethiopian mulattoes; and admit,
further, that their present condition is better than the alternative
condition alleged,--and what then? Is your duty done? Is it enough if
you have made the condition of a man or of a race a little better,
or any better, if you have not made it as much better as you can?
What standard of morals do gentlemen propose to themselves? If a
fellow-being is suffering under a hundred diseases, and we can relieve
him from them all, what kind of benevolence is that which boasts of
relieving him from one, and permits him to suffer under the other
ninety and nine? By the law of nature and of God, the slave, like
every other man, is entitled “to life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness;” he is entitled to his earnings,--to the enjoyment of his
social affections,--to the development of his intellectual and moral
faculties,--to that cultivation of his religious nature which shall fit
him, not merely to feel, but reason of righteousness, temperance, and
a judgment to come;--he is entitled to all these rights, of which he
has been cruelly despoiled; and when he catches some feeble glimmering
of some of them, we withhold the rest, and defend ourselves and pride
ourselves that he is better off than he would have been in some other
country or in some other condition. Suppose the Samaritan had bound up
a single wound, or relieved a single pang of the bleeding wayfarer who
had fallen among thieves, and then had gone to the next inn and boasted
of his benevolence. He would only have shown the difference between a
“good Samaritan” and a “bigot Samaritan.” The thieves themselves might
have done as much.
But there is another inquiry which the champions of slavery have got
to answer before the world and before Heaven. If American slaves are
better off than native Africans, who is to be thanked for it? Has their
improved condition resulted from any purposed plan, any well-digested,
systematized measure, carefully thought out, and reasoned out, and
intended for their benefit? Not at all. In all the southern statute
books, and legislative records, there is no trace of any such scheme.
Laws, judicial decisions, the writing of political economists,--all
treat the slave as a thing to make money with. Agricultural societies
give rewards for the best crops. Horse-jockey societies improve the
fleetness of the breed for the sports of the turf. Even the dogs have
professional trainers. But not one thing is done to bring out the
qualities of manhood that lie buried in a slave. Look through the
southern statute books, and see what Draconian penalties are inflicted
for teaching a slave to read,--see how he is lashed for attending a
meeting to hear the Word of God. On every highroad patrols lie in wait
to scourge him back if he attempts to visit father, mother, wife,
child, or friend, on a neighboring plantation. By day and by night,
at all times and every where, he is the victim of an energetic and
comprehensive system of measures, which blot out his senses, paralyze
his mind, degrade and brutify his nature, and suppress the instinctive
workings of truth, generosity, and manhood in his breast. All the good
that reaches him, reaches him in defiance of these privations and
disabilities. If any light penetrates to his soul, it is because human
art cannot weave a cloud dense and dark enough to be wholly impervious
to it. There are some blessings which the goodness of God will bestow
in spite of human efforts to intercept them. It is these only which
reach the slave. And after having built up all barriers to forbid the
access of improvement; after having sealed his senses by ignorance, and
more than half obliterated his faculties by neglect and perversion, the
oppressor turns round, and because there are some scanty, incidental
benefits growing out of the very deplorableness of his condition, he
justifies himself before the world, and claims the approval of Heaven,
because the slave is better off here than _he_ would be in Africa.
Sir, such an argument as this is an offence to Heaven. I consider it
to be as much worse than atheism as Christianity is better. And when
such an argument comes from a gentleman belonging to a free state;
when it comes from the gentleman from Pennsylvania, [Mr. BROWN,] from
a representative of the city of William Penn; when he, without motive,
without inducement, offers such a gratuity to the devil, I can account
for it only on the principle of the man who, having a keen relish for
the flesh of swine, said he wished he were a Jew, that he might have
the pleasure of eating pork and committing a sin at the same time.
But the subject presents a still more painful aspect. How are slaves
made better, and from what motives are they made better, in this
country? It is no secret that I am about to tell. There are certain
virtues and sanctities which increase the pecuniary value of certain
slaves; and there are certain vices and debasements which increase
the market price of others. If a master wishes to repose personal
confidence in his slave, he desires to have him honest and faithful
to truth. But if he desires to make use of him to deceive and cajole
and defraud, then he wishes to make him cunning and tricky and false.
If the master trains the slave to take care of his own children, or
of his favorite animals, then he wishes to have him kind; but if he
trains him for a tasker or a field overseer, then he wishes to have him
severe. Now, it is in this way that some of the Christian attributes
of character, being directly convertible into money or money’s worth,
enhance the value of a slave. Hence, it is said in advertisements that
a slave is pious, and, at the auction block, the hardened and heartless
seller dwells upon the Christian graces and religious character of some
slaves with the unction of an apostle. The purchaser sympathizes, and
only desires to know whether the article be a real or a sham Christian.
If mere bones and muscles compacted into human shape be worth five
hundred dollars, then, if the auctioneer can warrant the subject to
have the meekness of Moses and the patience of Job, the same article
may be worth seven hundred. If the slave will forgive injuries, not
merely seventy times seven, but injuries inflicted all his life long,
then an additional hundred may be bid for him. If he possesses all
the attributes of religion and piety, the endurance of a hero, the
constancy of a saint, the firmness of a martyr, the trustingness of a
disciple,--all except those which go to make him feel like a man, and
believe himself a man,--then that which as mere bone and muscle was
worth five hundred dollars, is now worth a thousand. Sir, is not this
selling the Holy Spirit? Is not this making merchandise of the Savior?
Is not this the case of Judas selling his Master over again, with the
important exception of the remorse that made the original culprit
go and hang himself? But suppose the case to be that of a woman;
suppose her ability to work and capacity for production to be worth
five hundred dollars; suppose, in addition to this, she is young and
sprightly and voluptuous; suppose the repeated infusion of Saxon blood
has almost washed the darkness from her skin; and suppose she is not
unwilling to submit herself to the libertine’s embrace; then, too, that
which before was worth but five hundred dollars, will now bring two
thousand. And thus infernal as well as celestial qualities are coined
into money, according to the demands of the market and the uses of the
purchaser.
Now, it is only in some such incidental way, and with regard to some
individuals, that it can be said, that their condition is better here
than it would be in Africa. And this improvement, where it exists, is
not the result of any system of measures designed for their benefit,
but is the product of selfish motives, turning godliness into gain;
and where more gain or more gratification can be obtained by the
debasement, the irreligion, the pollution of the slave, there the
instincts of chastity, the sanctity of the marriage relation, the
holiness of maternal love are all profaned to give security and zest
to the guilty pleasures of the sensualist and debauchee. There are
individual exceptions to what I have said,--exceptions which, amid
surrounding iniquity, shine “like a jewel in an Ethiop’s ear,” but they
are exceptions. Laws, institutions, and the prevailing public sentiment
are as I have described.
I regard the argument, therefore, of the gentleman from Pennsylvania,
[Mr. BROWN,] not only as utterly unsound and false in its premises,
but as blasphemous in its conclusions. Common blasphemy seldom reaches
beyond exclamation. It is some fiery outburst of impious passion, that
flashes and expires. But the gentleman reasons it out coolly. His is
argumentative blasphemy, borrowing the forms of logic that it may
appear to have its force, and transferring it from the passions to the
intellect, to give it permanency.
But the gentleman from Pennsylvania retorts upon Massachusetts,
and refers to certain things in her history which he regards as
disreputable to her. In this he has been followed by the gentleman from
Virginia, [Mr. BEDINGER,] who has poured out a torrent of abuse upon
my native state, and who has attempted to fortify his own intemperate
accusations from a pro-slavery pamphlet which has been profusely
scattered about this House within a few days past, and which is not
merely full of falsehoods, but is composed of falsehoods; so that if
one were to take the false assertions and the false arguments out of
it, there would be nothing but the covers left.[5] Sir, I am very
far from arrogating for Massachusetts all the merits and the virtues
which she ought to possess. I mourn over her errors, and would die to
reform, rather than spend one breath to defend them. The recital of her
offences can fall more sadly upon no ear than upon my own. But it is
as true of a state as of an individual, that repentance is the first
step towards reformation. Massachusetts has committed errors; but when
they were seen to be errors, she discarded them. She once held slaves;
but when she saw that slavery was contrary to the rights of man and
the law of God, she emancipated them. She was the first government
in the civilized world,--in the whole world, ancient or modern,--to
abolish slavery, wherever she had power to do so. This is an honor
that no rival can ever snatch from her brow. Once,--I say it with
humiliation,--she was engaged in the slave trade. But all the gold that
could be earned by the accursed traffic, though spent in the splendors
of luxury and the seductions of hospitality, could not save the trader
himself from infamy and scorn; and I am sure I am right in saying that
the slave trade ceased to be conducted by Massachusetts merchants, and
to be carried on in Massachusetts ships, from Massachusetts ports,
before it was abandoned by the merchants and discontinued in the ships
and from the ports of any other commercial state or nation in the
world. This, too, is an honor, which it will be hers, through all the
immortality of the ages, alone to wear. But Massachusetts, it is still
said, has her idolaters of Mammon in other forms. It is charged upon
her that many of her children still wallow in the sty of intemperance;
that her spiritualism runs wild in religious vagaries; and that
something of the old leaven of persecution still clings to her heart.
In vindicating what is right, I will not defend what is wrong. I cannot
deny,--would to God that I could,--that we still have vices and vicious
men amongst us. There are those there, as elsewhere, who, if they were
to hear for the first time of the River of Life flowing fast by the
throne of God, would instinctively ask whether there were any good
mill sites on it. There are those there, as elsewhere, whose highest
aspirations for heaven and for happiness, whether for this life or for
another, are a distillery and a sugar-house, with steam machinery to
mix the products. There, as elsewhere, there are religionists who are
quick to imitate the Savior when he strikes, but despise his example
when he heals.
But, sir, let me say this for Massachusetts, that whatever sins she
may have committed in former times,--whatever dissenters she may have
persecuted, or witches she may have hanged, or Africans she may have
stolen and sold,--she has long since abandoned these offences, and
is bringing forth fruits meet for repentance. And is a state to have
no benefit from a statute of limitations? Is a crime committed by
ancestors to be forever imputed to their posterity? This is worse than
non-forgiveness; it is making punishment hereditary. Sir, of these
offences, Massachusetts has repented and reformed; and she is giving
that noblest of atonements or expiations, which consists in repairing
the wrong that has been done; and where the victim of the wrong has
himself passed away, and is beyond relief, then in paying, with large
interest, the debt to humanity which the special creditor is no longer
present to receive, by seeking out the objects of want and suffering
wherever they may be found. Sir, our accusers unconsciously do us
the highest honor, when, in their zeal to malign us, they seek for
historical reproaches. If they could find present offences wherewith
to upbraid us, they would not exhume the past. But they condemn
themselves, for they show that even the resuscitation of the errors of
the dead gives them more pleasure than a contemplation of the virtues
of the living. One thing is certain: the moment the other states shall
imitate our present example, they will cease to condemn us for our past
offences. The sympathy of a common desire for improvement will destroy
the pleasure of crimination.
And where, I ask, on the surface of the earth, is there a population of
only eight hundred thousand, who are striving so earnestly, and doing
so much, to advance the cause of humanity and civilization, as is doing
by the people of Massachusetts? Where else, where universal suffrage is
allowed, is a million of dollars voted every year, by the very men who
have to pay it, for the public, free education of every child in the
state?
Where else, by such a limited population, is another million of dollars
voluntarily voted and paid each year for the salaries of clergymen
alone? Where else, where the population is so small, and natural
resources so few and scanty, is still another million of dollars
annually given in charity?--the greater portion of which is sent beyond
their own borders, flows into every state in the Union, and leaves
not a nation on the globe, nor an island in the sea, unwatered by its
fertilizing streams. Look into the statute book of Massachusetts,
for the last twenty years, and you will see how the whole current of
her legislation has set in the direction of human improvement,--for
succoring disease or restoration from it, for supplying the privations
of nature, for reclaiming the vicious, for elevating all,--a
comprehensiveness of scope that takes in every human being, and an
energy of action that follows every individual with a blessing to his
home. When others will abandon their offences, then let the remembrance
of them be blotted out.
But, sir, I think it proper to advert to the fact that I have had
other proofs, during the present session of Congress, of the same
spirit of crimination and obloquy which was so fully developed in the
speeches of the gentleman from Pennsylvania, [Mr. BROWN,] and the
gentleman from Virginia, [Mr. BEDINGER.] Through the post-office of
the House of Representatives, I have been in the regular receipt of
anonymous letters, made up mainly of small slips cut from newspapers
printed at the north, describing some case of murder, suicide,
robbery, or other offence. These have been arranged under the heads
of different states,--Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, &c.,
and accompanied, in the margin, with rude drawings of a school-book
or a school house, and all referred to Common Schools, as to their
source. Two only, of the whole number thus collected, originated in
Massachusetts, and one of these was a case of suicide committed by a
man who had become insane from the loss of his wife. Which of these
events, in the opinion of my anonymous correspondent, constituted
the crime,--whether the bereavement that caused the insanity, or the
suicide committed in one of its paroxysms,--I am unable to say. Now,
what satisfaction even a bad man could have in referring offences
against law and morality to the institution of public schools, when he
must have known that the very existence of the offences only proves
that education has not yet done its perfect work, I cannot conceive.
And what spite, either against an educational office which I once held,
or against an institution which is worthy of all honor, could be so
mean and paltry as to derive gratification from referring me to long
lists of offences, only one of which was committed in my native state,
I must leave for others to conjecture. Surely the author of these
letters must have known little of Common Schools, and profited by them
as little as he has known. Had he referred to any considerable number
of crimes perpetrated in Massachusetts, I would take his letters home
and carry them into our public schools, and make them the text for a
sermon, in which I would warn the children to beware of all crimes, and
especially of the meanness and the wickedness which feels a complacency
in the crimes of others, or can give a false paternity to them. And,
sir, I should be sure of a response; for out of those schools there
is going forth a nobler band of young men and women than ever before
conferred intelligence, virtue, refinement, and renown upon any people
or community on the face of the globe.
But whatever may be said in mitigation or in condemnation of slavery
elsewhere, there are special reasons why it should be discontinued in
this District. This District is the common property of the nation.
Having power of exclusive legislation over it, we are all responsible
for the institutions in it. While slaves exist in it, therefore, it can
be charged upon the north that they uphold slavery. This is unjust to
us, because it places us before the world in the attitude of sustaining
what we condemn. It wounds our moral and religious sensibilities,
because we believe the institution to be cruel towards men, and sinful
in the sight of Heaven; and yet we are made apparently to sanction it.
It is like that species of injustice where a man is compelled by a tax
to support a religion which he disbelieves, and to pay a hierarchy
whom his conscience compels him to denounce. But the existence of
slavery here is not necessary to the faith or the practice of our
southern brethren. If they believe it to be a useful and justifiable
institution, then they evince the sincerity of that belief by
sustaining and perpetuating it at home. For this purpose, there is no
necessity of a crusade to propagate it, or sustain it elsewhere.
Look at the relation which we bear to it, in another respect. I
have been taught from my earliest childhood that “all men are
created equal.” This has become in me not merely a conviction of
the understanding, but a sentiment of the heart. This maxim is my
principle of action, whenever I am called upon to act; and it rises
spontaneously to my contemplations when I speculate upon human duty.
It is the plainest corollary from the doctrine of the natural equality
of man, that when I see a man, or a class of men, who are not equal
to myself in opportunities, in gifts, in means of improvement, or in
motives and incitements to an elevated character and an exemplary
life,--I say, it is the plainest corollary that I should desire to
elevate those men to an equality with myself. However far my own life
may fall below the standard of Christianity and gentlemanliness, yet
I hold it to be clear, that no man is a Christian or a gentleman, who
does not carry about an habitual frame of mind which prompts him, as
far as he has the means to do it, to instruct all the ignorance, to
relieve all the privations, to minister to all the pains, and to supply
all the deficiencies of those with whom he meets in the daily walks
of life; and, so far as he is a man who wields influence, possesses
authority, or exercises legislative power, he is bound to exert his
gifts and his prerogatives for the amelioration and the improvement of
his fellow-men. This is the lowest standard of duty that any one who
aspires to be a Christian or a gentleman can set up for his guidance.
Now take the case of a man from the north, who has incorporated these
views, or any similitude of these views, into his character, and who
has occasion to visit this District. Suppose him to be elected and
sent here as a member of Congress, or to be appointed to a post in
some of the departments, or to visit this city on public business,
or to come here from motives of curiosity; what is the sight which
is inflicted upon him when he first sets his foot within this common
property of the nation,--when he first enters this household, where
the head of the nation resides and directs? Sir, when he first alights
from the cars that bring him within your limits and your jurisdiction,
he beholds a degraded caste,--a race of men whom God endowed with the
faculties of intelligence, but whom man has despoiled of the power of
improving those faculties, squalid in their garb, betraying ignorance
in every word they utter, uncultivated in their manners and their
tastes, fawning for a favor, instead of standing erect like men who are
conscious of rights; or, if they have outgrown servile and sycophantic
habits, then erring on the side of impudence and insolence as much as
they erred before on that of cringing and servility. He repairs to
his lodgings, and there, too, all his moral sensibilities are shocked
and outraged, by seeing a class of men and women hopelessly degraded,
cut off by law and custom from all opportunity of emerging from their
debasement; whom no talent, taste, or virtue can ever redeem to the
pleasures and the rights of social intercourse. He sees men and women
who are not degraded on account of the services they perform,--for
“honor and shame from no condition rise,”--but degraded by the motive
and spirit from which the services are performed; men and women who
have no inducements to industry and frugality, for their earnings will
all be seized by another; who have no incentives to self-respect, for
they can never emerge from their menial condition; who are bereaved of
all the wonders and glories of knowledge, lest under its expansions
their natures should burst the thraldom that enslaves them; and all
whose manly qualities, all whose higher faculties, therefore, are
irredeemably and hopelessly crushed, extinguished, obliterated, so
that nothing but the animal, which the master can use for his selfish
purposes, remains.
Mr. BRODHEAD, [of Pennsylvania.] Would you advance the slaves to an
equal social and political condition with the white race?