The enormities inflicted by slaveholders upon their slaves will never
be discredited except by those who overlook the simple fact, that he
who holds human beings as his bona fide property, _regards_ them as
property, and not as _persons;_ this is his permanent state of mind
toward them. He does not contemplate slaves as human beings,
consequently does not _treat_ them as such; and with entire
indifference sees them suffer privations and writhe under blows,
which, if inflicted upon whites, would fill him with horror and
indignation. He regards that as good treatment of slaves, which would
seem to him insufferable abuse if practiced upon others; and would
denounce that as a monstrous outrage and horrible cruelty, if
perpretated upon white men and women, which he sees every day meted
out to black slaves, without perhaps ever thinking it cruel.
Accustomed all his life to regard them rather as domestic animals, to
hear them stormed at, and to see them cuffed and caned; and being
himself in the constant habit of treating them thus, such practices
have become to him a mere matter of course, and make no impression on
his mind. True, it is incredible that men should treat as _chattels_
those whom they truly regard as _human beings;_ but that they should
treat as chattels and working animals those whom they _regard_ as
such, is no marvel. The common treatment of dogs, when they are in the
way, is to kick them out of it; we see them every day kicked off the
sidewalks, and out of shops, and on Sabbaths out of churches,--yet, as
they are but _dogs_, these do not strike us as outrages; yet, if we
were to see men, women, and children--our neighbors and friends,
kicked out of stores by merchants, or out of churches by the deacons
and sexton, we should call the perpetrators inhuman wretches.
We have said that slaveholders regard their slaves not as human
beings, but as mere working animals, or merchandise. The whole
vocabulary of slaveholders, their laws, their usages, and their entire
treatment of their slaves fully establish this. The same terms are
applied to slaves that are given to cattle. They are called "stock."
So when the children of slaves are spoken of prospectively, they are
called their "increase;" the same term that is applied to flocks and
herds. So the female slaves that are mothers, are called "breeders"
till past child bearing; and often the same terms are applied to the
different sexes that are applied to the males and females among
cattle. Those who compel the labor of slaves and cattle have the same
appellation, "drivers:" the names which they call them are the same
and similar to those given to their horses and oxen. The laws of slave
states make them property, equally with goats and swine; they are
levied upon for debt in the same way; they are included in the same
advertisements of public sales with cattle, swine, and asses; when
moved from one part of the country to another, they are herded in
droves like cattle, and like them urged on by drivers; their labor is
compelled in the same way. They are bought and sold, and separated
like cattle: when exposed for sale, their good qualities are described
as jockies show off the good points of their horses; their strength,
activity, skill, power of endurance, &c. are lauded,--and those who
bid upon them examine their persons, just as purchasers inspect horses
and oxen; they open their mouths to see if their teeth are sound;
strip their backs to see if they are badly scarred, and handle their
limbs and muscles to see if they are firmly knit. Like horses, they
are warranted to be "sound," or to be returned to the owner if
"unsound." A father gives his son a horse and a _slave_; by his will
he distributes among them his race-horses, hounds, game-cocks, and
_slaves_. We leave the reader to carry out the parallel which we have
only begun. Its details would cover many pages.
That slaveholders do not practically regard slaves as _human beings_
is abundantly shown by their own voluntary testimony. In a recent work
entitled, "The South vindicated from the Treason and Fanaticism of
Northern Abolitionists," which was written, we are informed, by
Colonel Dayton, late member of Congress from South Carolina; the
writer, speaking of the awe with which the slaves regard the whites,
says,--
"The northerner looks upon a band of negroes as upon so many _men_,
but the planter or southerner _views them in a very different light._"
Extract from the speech of Mr. SUMMERS, of Virginia, in the
legislature of that state, Jan. 26, 1832. See the Richmond Whig.
"When, in the sublime lessons of Christianity, he (the slaveholder) is
taught to 'do unto others as he would have others do unto him,' HE
NEVER DREAMS THAT THE DEGRADED NEGRO IS WITHIN THE PALE OF THAT HOLY
CANON."
PRESIDENT JEFFERSON, in his letter to GOVERNOR COLES, of Illinois,
dated Aug. 25, 1814, asserts, that slaveholders regard their slaves as
brutes, in the following remarkable language.
"Nursed and educated in the daily habit of seeing the degraded
condition, both bodily and mental, of these unfortunate beings [the
slaves], FEW MINDS HAVE YET DOUBTED BUT THAT THEY WERE AS LEGITIMATE
SUBJECTS OF PROPERTY AS THEIR HORSES OR CATTLE."
Having shown that slaveholders regard their slaves as mere working
animals and cattle, we now proceed to show that their actual treatment
of them, is _worse_ than it would be if they were brutes. We repeat
it, SLAVEHOLDERS TREAT THEIR SLAVES WORSE THAN THEY DO THEIR BRUTES.
Whoever heard of cows or sheep being deliberately tied up and beaten
and lacerated till they died? or horses coolly tortured by the hour,
till covered with mangled flesh, or of swine having their legs tied
and being suspended from a tree and lacerated with thongs for hours,
or of hounds stretched and made fast at full length, flayed with
whips, red pepper rubbed into their bleeding gashes, and hot brine
dashed on to aggravate the torture? Yet just such forms and degrees of
torture are _daily_ perpetrated upon the slaves. Now no man that knows
human nature will marvel at this. Though great cruelties have always
been inflicted by men upon brutes, yet incomparably the most horrid
ever perpetrated, have been those of men upon _their own species_. Any
leaf of history turned over at random has proof enough of this. Every
reflecting mind perceives that when men hold _human beings_ as
_property_, they must, from the nature of the case, treat them worse
than they treat their horses and oxen. It is impossible for _cattle_
to excite in men such tempests of fury as men excite in each other.
Men are often provoked if their horses or hounds refuse to do, or
their pigs refuse to go where they wish to drive them, but the feeling
is rarely intense and never permanent. It is vexation and impatience,
rather than settled rage, malignity, or revenge. If horses and dogs
were intelligent beings, and still held as property, their opposition
to the wishes of their owners, would exasperate them immeasurably more
than it would be possible for them to do, with the minds of brutes.
None but little children and idiots get angry at sticks and stones
that lie in their way or hurt them; but put into sticks and stones
intelligence, and will, and power of feeling and motion, while they
remain as now, articles of property, and what a towering rage would
men be in, if bushes whipped them in the face when they walked among
them, or stones rolled over their toes when they climbed hills! and
what exemplary vengeance would be inflicted upon door-steps and
hearth-stones, if they were to move out of their places, instead of
lying still where they were put for their owners to tread upon. The
greatest provocation to human nature is _opposition to its will_. If a
man's will be resisted by one far _below_ him, the provocation is
vastly greater, than when it is resisted by an acknowledged superior.
In the former case, it inflames strong passions, which in the latter
lie dormant. The rage of proud Haman knew no bounds against the poor
Jew who would not do as he wished, and so he built a gallows for him.
If the person opposing the will of another, be so far below him as to
be on a level with chattels, and be actually held and used as an
article of property; pride, scorn, lust of power, rage and revenge
explode together upon the hapless victim. The idea of _property_
having a will, and that too in opposition to the will of its _owner_,
and counteracting it, is a stimulant of terrible power to the most
relentless human passions and from the nature of slavery, and the
constitution of the human mind, this fierce stimulant must, with
various degrees of strength, act upon slaveholders almost without
ceasing. The slave, however abject and crushed, is an intelligent
being: he has a _will_, and that will cannot be annihilated, _it will
show itself_; if for a moment it is smothered, like pent up fires when
vent is found, it flames the fiercer. Make intelligence _property_,
and its manager will have his match; he is met at every turn by an
_opposing will_, not in the form of down-right rebellion and defiance,
but yet, visibly, an _ever-opposing will_. He sees it in the
dissatisfied look, and reluctant air and unwilling movement; the
constrained strokes of labor, the drawling tones, the slow hearing,
the feigned stupidity, the sham pains and sickness, the short memory;
and he _feels_ it every hour, in innumerable forms, frustrating his
designs by a ceaseless though perhaps invisible countermining. This
unceasing opposition to the will of its 'owner,' on the part of his
rational 'property,' is to the slaveholder as the hot iron to the
nerve. He raves under it, and storms, and gnashes, and smites; but the
more he smites, the hotter it gets, and the more it burns him.
Further, this opposition of the slave's will to his owner's, not only
excites him to severity, that he may gratify his rage, but makes it
necessary for him to use violence in breaking down this
resistance--thus subjecting the slave to additional tortures. There is
another inducement to cruel inflictions upon the slave, and a
necessity for it, which does not exist in the case of brutes.
Offenders must be made an example to others, to strike them with
terror. If a slave runs away and is caught, his master flogs him with
terrible severity, not merely to gratify his resentment, and to keep
him from running away again, but as a warning to others. So in every
case of disobedience, neglect, stubbornness, unfaithfulness,
indolence, insolence, theft, feigned sickness, when his directions are
forgotten, or slighted, or supposed to be, or his wishes crossed, or
his property injured, or left exposed, or his work ill-executed, the
master is tempted to inflict cruelties, not merely to wreak his own
vengeance upon him, and to make the slave more circumspect in future,
but to sustain his authority over the other slaves, to restrain them
from like practices, and to preserve his own property.
A multitude of facts, illustrating the position that slaveholders
treat their slaves _worse_ than they do their cattle, will occur to
all who are familiar with slavery. When cattle break through their
owners' inclosures and escape, if found, they are driven back and
fastened in again; and even slaveholders would execrate as a wretch,
the man who should tie them up, and bruise and lacerate them for
straying away; but when _slaves_ that have escaped are caught, they
are flogged with the most terrible severity. When herds of cattle are
driven to market, they are suffered to go in the easiest way, each by
himself; but when slaves are driven to market, they are fastened
together with handcuffs, galled by iron collars and chains, and thus
forced to travel on foot hundreds of miles, sleeping at night in their
chains. Sheep, and sometimes horned cattle are marked with their
owners' initials--but this is generally done with paint, and of course
produces no pain. Slaves, too, are often marked with their owners'
initials, but the letters are stamped into their flesh with a hot
iron. Cattle are suffered to graze their pastures without stint; but
the slaves are restrained in their food to a fixed allowance. The
slaveholders' horses are notoriously far better fed, more moderately
worked, have fewer hours of labor, and longer intervals of rest than
their slaves; and their valuable horses are far more comfortably
housed and lodged, and their stables more effectually defended from
the weather, than the slaves' huts. We have here merely _begun_ a
comparison, which the reader can easily carry out at length, from the
materials furnished in this work.
We will, however, subjoin a few testimonies of slaveholders, and
others who have resided in slave states, expressly asserting that
slaves are treated _worse than brutes_.
The late Dr. GEORGE BUCHANAN, of Baltimore, Maryland, a member of the
American Philosophical Society, in an oration delivered in Baltimore,
July 4, 1791, page 10, says:
"The Africans whom you despise, whom you _more inhumanly treat than
brutes_, are equally capable of improvement with yourselves."
The Rev. GEORGE WHITEFIELD, in his celebrated letter to the
slaveholders of Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, and
Georgia, written one hundred years ago, (See Benezet's Caution to
Great Britain and her Colonies, page 13), says:
"Sure I am, it is sinful to use them as bad, nay worse than if they
were brutes; and whatever particular _exceptions_ there may be, (as I
would charitably hope there are _some_) I fear the _generality_ of you
that own negroes, _are liable to such a charge_."
Mr. RICE, of Kentucky in his speech in the Convention that formed the
Constitution of that state, in 1790, says:
"He [the slave] is a rational creature, reduced by the power of
legislation to the _state of a brute_, and thereby deprived of every
privilege of humanity.... The brute may steal or rob, to supply
his hunger; but the slave, though in the most starving condition,
_dare not do either, on penalty of death, or some severe punishment_."
Rev. HORACE MOULTON, a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church, in
Marlborough, Mass. who lived some years in Georgia, says:
"The southern horses and dogs have enough to eat, and good care is
taken of them; but southern negroes--who can describe their misery and
their wretchedness, their nakedness and their cruel scourgings! None
but God. Should we _whip our horses_ as they whip their slaves, even
for small offences, we should expose ourselves to the penalty of the
law."
Rev. PHINEAS SMITH, Centerville, Allegany county, New York, who has
resided four years in the midst of southern slavery--
"Avarice and cruelty are twin sisters; and I do not hesitate to
declare before the world, as my deliberate opinion, that there is
_less compassion_ for working slaves at the south, than for working
oxen at the north."
STEVEN SEWALL, Esq. Winthrop, Maine, a member of the Congregational
Church, and late agent of the Winthrop Manufacturing Company, who
resided five years in Alabama, says--
"I do not think that brutes, not even horses, are treated with _so
much cruelty_ as American slaves."
If the preceding considerations are insufficient to remove incredulity
respecting the cruelties suffered by slaves, and if northern objectors
still say, 'We might believe such things of savages, but that
civilized men, and republicans, in this Christian country, can openly
and by system perpetrate such enormities, is impossible';--to such we
reply, that this incredulity of the people of the free states, is not
only discreditable to their intelligence, but to their consistency.
Who is so ignorant as not to know, or so incredulous as to disbelieve,
that the early Baptists of New England were fined, imprisoned,
scourged, and finally banished by our puritan forefathers?--and that
the Quakers were confined in dungeons, publicly whipped at the
cart-tail, had their ears cut off, cleft sticks put upon their
tongues, and that five of them, four men and one woman, were hung on
Boston Common, for propagating the sentiments of the Society of
Friends? Who discredits the fact, that the civil authorities in
Massachusetts, less than a hundred and fifty years ago, confined in
the public jail a little girl of four years old, and publicly hung the
Rev. Mr. Burroughs, and eighteen other persons, mostly women, and
killed another, (Giles Corey,) by extending him upon his back, and
piling weights upon his breast till he was crushed to death [17]--and
this for no other reason than that these men and women, and this
little child, were accused by others of _bewitching_ them.
[Footnote 17: Judge Sewall, of Mass. in his diary, describing this
horrible scene, says that when the tongue of the poor sufferer had, in
the extremity of his dying agony, protruded from his mouth, a person
in attendance took his cane and thrust it back into his mouth.]
Even the children in Connecticut, know that the following was once a
law of that state:
"No food or lodging shall be allowed to a Quaker. If any person turns
Quaker, he shall be banished, and not be suffered to return on pain of
death."
These objectors can readily believe the fact, that in the city of New
York, less than a hundred years since, thirteen persons were publicly
burned to death, over a slow fire: and that the legislature of the
same State took under its paternal care the African slave-trade, and
declared that "all encouragement should be given to the _direct_
importation of slaves; that all _smuggling_ of slaves should be
condemned, as _an eminent discouragement to the fair trader_."
They do not call in question the fact that the African slave-trade was
carried on from the ports of the free states till within thirty years;
that even members of the Society of Friends were actively engaged in
it, shortly before the revolutionary war; [18] that as late as 1807,
no less than fifty-nine of the vessels engaged in that trade, were
sent out from the little state of Rhode Island, which had then only
about seventy thousand inhabitants; that among those most largely
engaged in these foul crimes, are the men whom the people of Rhode
Island delight to honor: that the man who dipped most deeply in that
trade of blood (James De Wolf,) and amassed a most princely fortune by
it, was not long since their senator in Congress; and another, who was
captain of one of his vessels, was recently Lieutenant Governor of the
state.
[Footnote 18: See Life and Travels of John Woolman, page 92.]
They can believe, too, all the horrors of the middle passage, the
chains, suffocation, maimings, stranglings, starvation, drownings, and
cold blooded murders, atrocities perpetrated on board these
slave-ships by their own citizens, perhaps by their own townsmen and
neighbors--possibly by their own _fathers_: but oh! they 'can't
believe that the slaveholders can be so hard-hearted towards their
slaves as to treat them with great cruelty.' They can believe that his
Holiness the Pope, with his cardinals, bishops and priests, have
tortured, broken on the wheel, and burned to death thousands of
Protestants--that eighty thousand of the Anabaptists were slaughtered
in Germany--that hundreds of thousands of the blameless Waldenses,
Huguenots and Lollards, were torn in pieces by the most titled
dignitaries of church and state, and that _almost every professedly
Christian sect, has, at some period of its history, persecuted unto
blood_ those who dissented from their creed. They can believe, also,
that in Boston, New York, Utica, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Alton, and
in scores of other cities and villages of the free states, 'gentlemen
of property and standing,' led on by civil officers, by members of
state legislatures, and of Congress, by judges and attorneys-general,
by editors of newspapers, and by professed ministers of the gospel,
have organized mobs, broken up lawful meetings of peaceable citizens,
committed assault and battery upon their persons, knocked them down
with stones, led them about with ropes, dragged them from their beds
at midnight, gagged and forced them into vehicles, and driven them
into unfrequented places, and there tormented and disfigured
them--that they have rifled their houses, made bonfires of their
furniture in the streets, burned to the ground, or torn in pieces the
halls or churches in which they were assembled--attacked them with
deadly weapons, stabbed some, shot others, and killed one. They can
believe all this--and further, that a majority of the citizens in the
places where these outrages have been committed, connived at them; and
by refusing to indict the perpetrators, or, if they were indicted, by
combining to secure their acquittal, and rejoicing in it, have
publicly adopted these felonies as their own. All these things they
can believe without hesitation, and that they have even been done by
their own acquaintances, neighbors, relatives; perhaps those with whom
they interchange courtesies, those for whom they _vote_, or to whose
_salaries they contribute_--but yet, oh! they can never believe that
slaveholders inflict cruelties upon their slaves!
They can give full credence to the kidnapping, imprisonment, and
deliberate murder of WILLIAM MORGAN, and that by men of high standing
in society; they can believe that this deed was aided and abetted, and
the murderers screened from justice, by a large number of influential
persons, who were virtually accomplices, either before or after the
fact; and that this combination was so effectual, as successfully to
defy and triumph over the combined powers of the government;--yet
that those who constantly rob men of their time, liberty, and wages,
and all their _rights_, should rob them of bits of flesh, and
occasionally of a tooth, make their backs bleed, and put fetters on
their legs, is too monstrous to be credited! Further these same
persons, who 'can't believe' that slaveholders are so iron-hearted as
to ill-treat their slaves, believe that the very _elite_ of these
slaveholders, those most highly esteemed and honored among them, are
continually daring each other to mortal conflict, and in the presence
of mutual friends, taking deadly aim at each other's hearts, with
settled purpose to _kill_, if possible. That among the most
distinguished governors of slave states, among their most celebrated
judges, senators, and representatives in Congress, there is hardly
_one_, who has not either killed, or tried to kill, or aided and
abetted his friends in trying to kill, one or more individuals. That
pistols, dirks, bowie knives, or other instruments of death are
generally carried throughout the slave states--and that deadly affrays
with them, in the streets of their cities and villages, are matters of
daily occurrence; that the sons of slaveholders in southern colleges,
bully, threaten, and fire upon their teachers, and their teachers upon
them; that during the last summer, in the most celebrated seat of
science and literature in the south, the University of Virginia, the
professors were attacked by more than seventy armed students, and, in
the words of a Virginia paper, were obliged 'to conceal themselves
from their fury;' also that almost all the riots and violence that
occur in northern colleges, are produced by the turbulence and lawless
passions of southern students. That such are the furious passions of
slaveholders, no considerations of personal respect, none for the
proprieties of life, none for the honor of our national legislature,
none for the character of our country abroad, can restrain the
slaveholding members of Congress from the most disgraceful personal
encounters on the floor of our nation's legislature--smiting their
fists in each other's faces, throttling and even _kicking_ and trying
to _gouge_ each other--that during the session of the Congress just
closed, no less than six slaveholders, taking fire at words spoken in
debate, have either rushed at each other's throats, or kicked, or
struck, or attempted to knock each other down; and that in all these
instances, they would doubtless have killed each other, if their
friends had not separated them. Further, they know full well, these
were not insignificant, vulgar blackguards, elected because they were
the head bullies and bottle-holders in a boxing ring, or because their
constituents went drunk to the ballot box; but they were some of the
most conspicuous members of the House--one of them a former speaker.
Our newspapers are full of these and similar daily occurrences among
slaveholders, copied verbatim from their own accounts of them in their
own papers and all this we fully credit; no man is simpleton enough to
cry out 'Oh, I can't believe that slaveholders do such things;'--and
yet when we turn to the treatment which these men mete out to their
_slaves_, and show that they are in the habitual practice of striking,
kicking, knocking down and shooting _them_ as well as each other--the
look of blank incredulity that comes over northern dough-faces, is a
study for a painter: and then the sentimental outcry, with eyes and
hands uplifted, 'Oh, indeed, I can't believe the slaveholders are so
cruel to their slaves.' Most amiable and touching charity! Truly, of
all Yankee notions and free state products, there is nothing like a
'_dough face_'--the great northern staple for the southern
market--'made to order,' in any quantity, and _always on hand_. 'Dough
faces!' Thanks to a slaveholder's contempt for the name, with its
immortality of truth, infamy and scorn.[19]
[Footnote 19: "_Doe_ face," which owes its paternity to John Randolph,
age has mellowed into "_dough_ face"--a cognomen quite as expressive
and appropriate, if not as classical.]
Though the people of the free states affect to disbelieve the
cruelties perpetrated upon the slaves, yet slaveholders believe _each
other_ guilty of them, and speak of them with the utmost freedom. If
slaveholders disbelieve any statement of cruelty inflicted upon a
slave, it is not on account of its _enormity_. The traveler at the
south will hear in Delaware, and in all parts of Maryland and
Virginia, from the lips of slaveholders, statements of the most
horrible cruelties suffered by the slaves _farther_ south, in the
Carolinas and Georgia; when he finds himself in those states he will
hear similar accounts about the treatment of the slaves in _Florida_
and _Louisiana_; and in Missouri, Kentucky, and Tennessee he will hear
of the tragedies enacted on the plantations in Arkansas, Alabama and
Mississippi. Since Anti-Slavery Societies have been in operation, and
slaveholders have found themselves on trial before the world, and put
upon their good behavior, northern slaveholders have grown cautious,
and now often substitute denials and set defences, for the voluntary
testimony about cruelty in the far south, which, before that period,
was given with entire freedom. Still, however, occasionally the 'truth
will out,' as the reader will see by the following testimony of an
East Tennessee newspaper, in which, speaking of the droves of slaves
taken from the upper country to Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, etc.,
the editor says, they are 'traveling to a region where their condition
through time WILL BE SECOND ONLY TO THAT OF THE WRETCHED CREATURES IN
HELL.' See "Maryville Intelligencer," of Oct, 4, 1835. Distant
cruelties and cruelties _long past_, have been till recently, favorite
topics with slaveholders. They have not only been ready to acknowledge
that their _fathers_ have exercised great cruelty toward their slaves,
but have voluntarily, in their official acts, made proclamation of it
and entered it on their public records. The Legislature of North
Carolina, in 1798, branded the successive legislatures of that state
for more than thirty years previous, with the infamy of treatment
towards their slaves, which they pronounce to be 'disgraceful to
humanity, and degrading in the highest degree to the laws and
principles of a free, Christian, and enlightened country.' This
treatment was the enactment and perpetuation of a most barbarous and
cruel law.
But enough. As the objector can and does believe all the preceeding
facts, if he still '_can't_ believe' as to the cruelties of
slaveholders, it would be barbarous to tantalize his incapacity either
with evidence or argument. Let him have the benefit of the act in such
case made and provided.
Having shown that the incredulity of the objector respecting the
cruelty inflicted upon the slaves, is discreditable to his
consistency, we now proceed to show that it is equally so to his
_intelligence_.
Whoever disbelieves the foregoing statements of cruelties, on the
ground of their enormity, proclaims his own ignorance of the nature
and history of man. What! incredulous about the atrocities perpetrated
by those who hold human beings as property, to be used for their
pleasure, when history herself has done little else in recording human
deeds, than to dip her blank chart in the blood shed by arbitrary
power, and unfold to human gaze the great red scroll? That cruelty is
the natural effect of arbitrary power, has been the result of all
experience, and the voice of universal testimony since the world
began. Shall human nature's axioms, six thousand years old, go for
nothing? Are the combined product of human experience, and the
concurrent records of human character, to be set down as 'old wives'
fables?' To disbelieve that arbitrary power naturally and habitually
perpetrates cruelties, where it can do it with impunity, is not only
ignorance of man, but of _things_. It is to be blind to innumerable
proofs which are before every man's eyes; proofs that are stereotyped
in the very words and phrases that are on every one's lips. Take for
example the words _despot_ and _despotic_. Despot, signifies
etymologically, merely one who _possesses_ arbitrary power, and at
first, it was used to designate those alone who _possessed_ unlimited
power over human beings, entirely irrespective of the way in which
they exercised it, whether mercifully or cruelly. But the fact, that
those who possessed such power, made their subjects their _victims_,
has wrought a total change in the popular meaning of the word. It now
signifies, in common parlance, not one who _possesses_ unlimited power
over others, but one who exercises the power that he has, whether
little or much, _cruelly_. So _despotic_, instead of meaning what it
once did, something pertaining to the _possession_ of unlimited power,
signifies something pertaining to the _capricious, unmerciful and
relentless exercise_ of such power.
The word tyrant, is another example--formerly it implied merely a
_possession_ of arbitrary power, but from the invariable abuse of such
power by its possessors, the proper and entire meaning of the word is
lost, and it now signifies merely one who _exercises power to the
injury of others_. The words tyrannical and tyranny follow the same
analogy. So the word arbitrary; which formerly implied that which
pertains to the will of one, independently of others; but from the
fact that those who had no restraint upon their wills, were invariably
capricious, unreasonable and oppressive, these words convey accurately
the present sense of _arbitrary_, when applied to a person.
How can the objector persist in disbelieving that cruelty is the
natural effect of arbitrary power, when the very words of every day,
rise up on his lips in testimony against him--words which once
signified the _mere possession_ of arbitrary power, but have lost
their meaning, and now signify merely its cruel _exercise_; because
such a use of it has been proved by the experience of the world, to be
inseparable from its _possession_--words now frigid with horror, and
never used even by the objector without feeling a cold chill run over
him.
Arbitrary power is to the mind what alcohol is to the body; it
intoxicates. Man loves power. It is perhaps the strongest human
passion; and the more absolute the power, the stronger the desire for
it; and the more it is desired, the more its exercise is enjoyed: this
enjoyment is to human nature a fearful temptation,--generally an
overmatch for it. Hence it is true, with hardly an exception, that
arbitrary power is abused in proportion as it is _desired_. The fact
that a person intensely desires power over others, _without
restraint_, shows the absolute necessity of restraint. What woman
would marry a man who made it a condition that he should have the
power to divorce her whenever he pleased? Oh! he might never wish to
exercise it, but the _power_ he would have! No woman, not stark mad,
would trust her happiness in such hands.
Would a father apprentice his son to a master, who insisted that his
power over the lad should be _absolute_? The master might perhaps,
never wish to commit a battery upon the boy, but if he should, he
insists upon having full swing! He who would leave his son in the,
clutches of such a wretch, would be bled and blistered for a lunatic
as soon as his friends could get their hands upon him.
The possession of power, even when greatly restrained, is such a fiery
stimulant, that its lodgement in human hands is always perilous. Give
men the handling of immense sums of money, and all the eyes of Argus
and the hands of Briarcus can hardly prevent embezzlement.
The mutual and ceaseless accusations of the two great political
parties in this country, show the universal belief that this tendency
of human nature to abuse power, is so strong, that even the most
powerful legal restraints are insufficient for its safe custody. From
congress and state legislatures down to grog-shop caucuses and street
wranglings, each party keeps up an incessant din about _abuses of
power_. Hardly an officer, either of the general or state governments,
from the President down to the ten thousand postmasters, and from
governors to the fifty thousand constables, escapes the charge of
'_abuse of power_.' 'Oppression,' 'Extortion,' 'Venality,' 'Bribery,'
'Corruption,' 'Perjury,' 'Misrule,' 'Spoils,' 'Defalcation,' stand on
every newspaper. Now without any estimate of the lies told in these
mutual charges, there is truth enough to make each party ready to
believe of the other, and _of their best men too,_ any abuse of power,
however monstrous. As is the State, so is the Church. From General
Conferences to circuit preachers; and from General Assemblies to
church sessions, abuses of power spring up as weeds from the dunghill.
All legal restraints are framed upon the presumption, that men will
abuse their power if not hemmed in by them. This lies at the bottom of
all those checks and balances contrived for keeping governments upon
their centres. If there is among human convictions one that is
invariable and universal, it is, that when men possess unrestrained
power over others, over their time, choice, conscience, persons,
votes, or means of subsistence, they are under great temptations to
abuse it; and that the intensity with which such power is desired,
generally measures the certainty and the degree of its abuse.
That American slaveholders possess a power over their slaves which is
virtually absolute, none will deny.[20] That they _desire_ this
absolute power, is shown from the fact of their holding and exercising
it, and making laws to confirm and enlarge it. That the desire to
possess this power, every tittle of it, is _intense_, is proved by the
fact, that slaveholders cling to it with such obstinate tenacity, as
well as by all their doings and sayings, their threats, cursings and
gnashings against all who denounce the exercise of such power as
usurpation and outrage, and counsel its immediate abrogation.
[Footnote 20: The following extracts from the laws of slave-states are
proofs sufficient.
"The slave is ENTIRELY subject to the WILL of his master."--Louisiana
Civil Code, Art. 273.
"Slaves shall be deemed, sold, taken, reputed and adjudged in law to
be _chattels personal,_ in the hands of their owner and possessors,
and their executors, administrators and assigns, TO ALL INTENTS,
CONSTRUCTIONS, AND PURPOSES, WHATSOEVER."--Laws of South Carolina, 2
Brev. Dig. 229; Prince's Digest, 446, &c.]
From the nature of the case--from the laws of mind, such power, so
intensely desired, griped with such a death-clutch, and with such
fierce spurnings of all curtailment or restraint, _cannot but be
abused._ Privations and inflictions must be its natural, habitual
products, with ever and anon, terror, torture, and despair let loose
to do their worst upon the helpless victims.
Though power over others is in every case liable to be used to their
injury, yet, in almost all cases, the subject individual is shielded
from great outrages by strong safeguards. If he have talents, or
learning, or wealth, or office, or personal respectability, or
influential friends, these, with the protection of law and the rights
of citizenship, stand round him as a body guard: and even if he lacked
all these, yet, had he the same color, features, form, dialect,
habits, and associations with the privileged caste of society, he
would find in _them_ a shield from many injuries, which would be
_invited,_ if in these respects he differed widely from the rest of
the community, and was on that account regarded with disgust and
aversion. This is the condition of the slave; not only is he deprived
of the artificial safeguards of the law, but has none of those
_natural_ safeguards enumerated above, which are a protection to
others. But not only is the slave destitute of those peculiarities,
habits, tastes, and acquisitions, which by assimilating the possessor
to the rest of the community, excite their interest in him, and thus,
in a measure, secure for him their protection; but he possesses those
peculiarities of bodily organization which are looked upon with deep
disgust, contempt, prejudice, and aversion. Besides this, constant
contact with the ignorance and stupidity of the slaves, their filth,
rags, and nakedness; their cowering air, servile employments,
repulsive food, and squalid hovels, their purchase and sale, and use
as brutes--all these associations, constantly mingling and circulating
in the minds of slaveholders, and inveterated by the hourly
irritations which must assail all who use human beings as things,
produce in them a permanent state of feeling toward the slave, made up
of repulsion and settled ill-will. When we add to this the corrosions
produced by the petty thefts of slaves, the necessity of constant
watching, their reluctant service, and indifference to their master's
interests, their ill concealed aversion to him, and spurning of his
authority; and finally, that fact, as old as human nature, that men
always hate those whom they oppress, and oppress those whom they hate,
thus oppression and hatred mutually begetting and perpetuating each
other--and we have a raging compound of fiery elements and disturbing
forces, so stimulating and inflaming the mind of the slaveholder
against the slave, that _it cannot but break forth upon him with
desolating fury._
To deny that cruelty is the spontaneous and uniform product of
arbitrary power, and that the natural and controlling tendency of such
power is to make its possessor cruel, oppressive, and revengeful
towards those who are subjected to his control, is, we repeat, to set
at nought the combined experience of the human race, to invalidate its
testimony, and to reverse its decisions from time immemorial.
A volume might be filled with the testimony of American slaveholders
alone, to the truth of the preceding position. We subjoin a few
illustrations, and first, the memorable declaration of President
Jefferson, who lived and died a slaveholder. It has been published a
thousand times, and will live forever. In his "Notes on Virginia,"
sixth Philadelphia edition, p. 251, he says,--
"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..... 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 but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities."
Hon. Lewis Summers, Judge of the General Court of Virginia, and a
slaveholder, said in a speech before the Virginia legislature in 1832;
(see Richmond Whig of Jan. 26, 1832,)
"A slave population exercises _the most pernicious influence_ upon the
manners, habits and character, of those among whom it exists. Lisping
infancy learns the vocabulary of abusive epithets, and struts the
_embryo tyrant_ of its little domain. The consciousness of superior
destiny takes possession of his mind at its earliest dawning, and love
of power and rule, 'grows with his growth, and strengthens with his
strength.' Unless enabled to rise above the operation of those
powerful causes, he enters the world with miserable notions of
self-importance, and under the government of an unbridled temper."
The late JUDGE TUCKER of Virginia, a slaveholder, and Professor of Law
in the University of William and Mary, in his "Letter to a Member of
the Virginia Legislature," 1801, says,--
"I say nothing of the baneful effects of slavery on our _moral
character_, because I know you have been long sensible of this point."
The Presbyterian Synod of South Carolina and Georgia, consisting of
all the clergy of that denomination in those states, with a lay
representation from the churches, most, if not all of whom are
slaveholders, published a report on slavery in 1834, from which the
following is an extract.
"Those only who have the management of servants, know what the
_hardening effect_ of it is upon _their own feelings towards them._
There is no necessity to dwell on this point, as all _owners_ and
_managers_ fully understand it. He who commences to manage them with
tenderness and with a willingness to favor them in every way, must be
watchful, otherwise he will settle down in _indifference, if not
severity."_
GENERAL WILLIAM H. HARRISON, now of Ohio, son of the late Governor
Harrison of Virginia, a slaveholder, while minister from the United
States to the Republic of Colombia, wrote a letter to General Simon
Bolivar, then President of that Republic, just as he was about
assuming despotic power. The letter is dated Bogota, Sept. 22, 1826.
The following is an extract.
"From a knowledge of your own disposition and present feelings, your
excellency will not be willing to believe that you could ever be
brought to an act of tyranny, or even to execute justice with
unnecessary rigor. But trust me, sir, there is nothing more
corrupting, nothing more _destructive of the noblest and finest
feelings of our nature than the exercise of unlimited power_. The man,
who in the beginning of such a career, might shudder at the idea of
taking away the life of a fellow-being, might soon have his conscience
so seared by the repetition of crime, that the agonies of his murdered
victims might become music to his soul, and the drippings of the
scaffold afford blood to swim in. History is full of such excesses."
WILLIAM H. FITZHUGH, Esq. of Virginia, a slaveholder, says,--"Slavery,
in its mildest form, is cruel and unnatural; _its injurious effects on
our morals and habits are mutually felt."_
HON. SAMUEL S. NICHOLAS, late Judge of the Court of Appeals of
Kentucky, and a slaveholder, in a speech before the legislature of
that state, Jan. 1837, says,--
"The deliberate convictions of the most matured consideration I can
give the subject, are, that the institution of slavery is a _most
serious injury to the habits, manners and morals_ of our white
population--that it leads to sloth, indolence, dissipation, and vice."
Dr. THOMAS COOPER, late President of the College of South Carolina, in
a note to his edition of the "Institutes of Justinian" page 413,
says,--
"All absolute power has a direct tendency, not only to detract from
the happiness of the persons who are subject to it, but to DEPRAVE THE
GOOD QUALITIES of those who possess it..... the whole history of human
nature, in the present and every former age, will justify me in saying
that _such is the tendency of power_ on the one hand and slavery on
the other."
A South Carolina slaveholder, whose name is with the executive
committee of the Am. A.S. Society, says, in a letter, dated April 4,
1838:--
"I think it (slavery) _ruinous to the temper_ and to our spiritual
life; it is a thorn in the flesh, for ever and for ever goading us on
to say and to do what the Eternal God cannot but be displeased with. I
speak from experience, and oh! my desire is to be delivered from it."
Monsieur C.C. ROBIN, who was a resident of Louisiana from 1802 to
1806, published a work on that country; in which, speaking of the
effect of slaveholding on masters and their children, he says:--
"The young creoles make the negroes who surround them the play-things
of their whims: they flog, for pastime, those of their own age, just
as their fathers flog others at their will. These young creoles,
arrived at the age in which the passions are impetuous, do not _know
how to bear contradiction_; they will have every thing done which they
command, _possible or not_; and in default of this, they avenge their
offended pride by multiplied punishments."
Dr. GEORGE BUCHANAN, of Baltimore, Maryland, member of the American
Philosophical Society, in an oration at Baltimore, July 4, 1791,
said:--
"For such are the effects of subjecting man to slavery, that it
_destroys every humane principle_, vitiates the mind, instills ideas
of unlawful cruelties, and eventually subverts the springs of
government."--_Buchanan's Oration_, p. 12.
President EDWARDS the younger, in a sermon before the Connecticut
Abolition Society, in 1791, page 8, says:--
"Slavery has a most direct tendency to haughtiness, and a _domineering
spirit_ and conduct in the proprietors of the slaves, in their
children, and in all who have the control of them. A man who has been
bred up in domineering over negroes, can scarcely avoid contracting
such a habit of haughtiness and domination as will express itself in
his general treatment of mankind, whether in his private capacity, or
in any office, civil or military, with which he may be invested."
The celebrated MONTESQUIEU, in his "Spirit of the Laws," thus
describes the effect of slaveholding upon the master:--
"The master contracts all sorts of bad habits; and becomes _haughty,
passionate, obdurate, vindictive, voluptuous, and cruel_."
WILBERFORCE, in his speech at the anniversary of the London
Anti-Slavery Society, in March, 1828, said:--
"It is _utterly impossible_ that they who live in the administration
of the petty despotism of a slave community, whose minds have been
_warped_ and _polluted_ by that contamination, should not _lose that
respect_ for their fellow creatures over whom they tyrannize, which is
essential in the nature and moral being of man, to rescue them from
the abuse of power over their prostrate fellow creatures."
In the great debate, in the British Parliament, on the African
slave-trade, Mr. WHITBREAD said:
"Arbitrary power would spoil the hearts of the best."
But we need not multiply proofs to establish our position: it is
sustained by the concurrent testimony of sages, philosophers, poets,
statesmen, and moralists, in every period of the world; and who can
marvel that those in all ages who have wisely pondered men and things,
should be unanimous in such testimony, when the history of arbitrary
power has come down to us from the beginning of time, struggling
through heaps of slain, and trailing her parchments in blood.
Time would fail to begin with the first despot and track down the
carnage step by step. All nations, all ages, all climes crowd forward
as witnesses, with their scars, and wounds, and dying agonies.
But to survey a multitude bewilders; let us look at a single nation.
We instance Rome; both because its history is more generally known,
and because it furnishes a larger proportion of instances, in which
arbitrary power was exercised with comparative mildness, than any
other nation ancient or modern. And yet, her whole existence was a
tragedy, every actor was an executioner, the curtain rose amidst
shrieks and fell upon corpses, and the only shifting of the scenes was
from blood to blood. The whole world stood aghast, as under sentence
of death, awaiting execution, and all nations and tongues were driven,
with her own citizens, as sheep to the slaughter. Of her seven kings,
her hundreds of consuls, tribunes, decemvirs, and dictators, and her
fifty emperors, there is hardly one whose name has come down to us
unstained by horrible abuses of power; and that too, notwithstanding
we have mere shreds of the history of many of them, owing to their
antiquity, or to the perturbed times in which they lived; and these
shreds gathered from the records of their own partial countrymen, who
wrote and sung their praises. What does this prove? Not that the
Romans were worse than other men, nor that their rulers were worse
than other Romans, for history does not furnish nobler models of
natural character than many of those same rulers, when first invested
with arbitrary power. Neither was it mainly because the martial
enterprise of the earlier Romans and the gross sensuality of the
later, hardened their hearts to human suffering. In both periods of
Roman history, and in both these classes, we find men, the keen
sympathies, generosity, and benevolence of whose general character
embalmed their names in the grateful memories of multitudes. _They
were human beings, and possessed power without restraint_--this
unravels the mystery.
Who has not heard of the Emperor Trajan, of his moderation, his
clemency, his gashing sympathies, his forgiveness of injuries and
forgetfulness of self, his tearing in pieces his own robe, to furnish
bandages for the wounded--called by the whole world in his day, "the
best emperor of Rome;" and so affectionately regarded by his subjects,
that, ever afterwards, in blessing his successors upon their accession
to power, they always said, "May you have the virtue and goodness of
Trajan!" yet the deadly conflicts of gladiators who were trained to
kill each other, to make sport for the spectators, furnished his chief
pastime. At one time he kept up those spectacles for 123 days in
succession. In the tortures which he inflicted on Christians, fire
and poison, daggers and dungeons, wild beasts and serpents, and the
rack, did their worst. He threw into the sea, Clemens, the venerable
bishop of Rome, with an anchor about his neck; and tossed to the
famished lions in the amphitheatre the aged Ignatius.
Pliny the younger, who was proconsul under Trajan, may well be
mentioned in connection with the emperor, as a striking illustration
of the truth, that goodness and amiableness towards one class of men
is often turned into cruelty towards another. History can hardly show
a more gentle and lovely character than Pliny. While pleading at the
bar, he always sought out the grievances of the poorest and most
despised persons, entered into their wrongs with his whole soul, and
never took a fee. Who can read his admirable letters without being
touched by their tenderness and warmed by their benignity and
philanthropy: and yet, this tender-hearted Pliny coolly plied with
excruciating torture two spotless females, who had served as
deaconesses in the Christian church, hoping to extort from them matter
of accusation against the Christians. He commanded Christians to
abjure their faith, invoke the gods, pour out libations to the statues
of the emperor, burn incense to idols, and curse Christ. If they
refused, he ordered them to execution.
Who has not heard of the Emperor Titus--so beloved for his mild
virtues and compassionate regard for the suffering, that he was named
"The Delight of Mankind;" so tender of the lives of his subjects that
he took the office of high priest, that his hands might never be
defiled with blood; and was heard to declare, with tears, that he had
rather die than put another to death. So intent upon making others
happy, that when once about to retire to sleep, and not being able to
recall any particular act of beneficence performed during the day, he
cried out in anguish, "Alas! I have lost a day!" And, finally, whom
the learned Kennet, in his Roman Antiquities, characterizes as "the
only prince in the world that has the character of _never doing an ill
action_." Yet, witnessing the mortal combats of the captives taken to
war, killing each other in the amphitheatre, amidst the acclamations
of the populace, was a favorite amusement with Titus. At one time he
exhibited shows of gladiators, which lasted one hundred days, during
which the amphitheatre was flooded with human blood. At another of
his public exhibitions he caused five thousand wild beasts to be
baited in the amphitheatre. During the siege of Jerusalem, he set
ambushes to seize the famishing Jews, who stole out of the city by
night to glean food in the valleys: these he would first dreadfully
scourge, then torment them with all conceivable tortures, and, at
last, crucify them before the wall of the city. According to
Josephus, not less than five hundred a day were thus tormented. And
when many of the Jews, frantic with famine, deserted to the Romans,
Titus cut off their hands and drove them back. After the destruction
of Jerusalem, he dragged to Rome one hundred thousand captives, sold
them as slaves, and scattered them through every province of the
empire.
The kindness, condescension, and forbearance of Adrian were
proverbial; he was one of the most eloquent orators of his age; and
when pleading the cause of injured innocence, would melt and overwhelm
the auditors by the pathos of his appeals. It was his constant maxim,
that he was an Emperor, not for his own good, but for the benefit of
his fellow creatures. He stooped to relieve the wants of the meanest
of his subjects, and would peril his life by visiting them when sick
of infectious diseases; he prohibited, by law, masters from killing
their slaves, gave to slaves legal trial, and exempted them from
torture; yet towards certain individuals and classes, he showed
himself a monster of cruelty. He prided himself on his knowledge of
architecture, and ordered to execution the most celebrated architect
of Rome, because he had criticised one of the Emperor's designs. He
banished all the Jews from their native land, and drove them to the
ends of the earth; and unloosed the bloodhounds of persecution to rend
in pieces his Christian subjects.
The gentleness and benignity of the Emperor Aurelius, have been
celebrated in story and song. History says of him, 'Nothing could
quench his desire of being a blessing to mankind;' and Pope's eulogy
of him is in the mouth of every schoolboy--'Like good Aurelius, let
him reign;' and yet, '_good_ Aurelius,' lifted the flood gates of the
fourth, and one of the most terrible persecutions against Christians
that ever raged. He sent orders into different parts of his empire,
to have the Christians murdered who would not deny Christ. The
blameless Polycarp, trembling under the weight of a hundred years, was
dragged to the stake and burned to ashes. Pothinus, Bishop of Lyons,
at the age of ninety, was dragged through the streets, beaten, stoned,
trampled upon by the soldiers, and left to perish. Tender virgins
were put into nets, and thrown to infuriated wild bulls; others were
fastened in red hot iron chairs; and venerable matrons were thrown to
be devoured by dogs.
Constantine the Great has been the admiration of Christendom for his
virtues. The early Christian writers adorn his justice, benevolence
and piety with the most exalted eulogy. He was baptized, and admitted
to the Christian church. He abrogated Paganism, and made Christianity
the religion of his empire; he attended the councils of the early
fathers of the church, consulted with the bishops, and devoted himself
with the most untiring zeal to the propagation of Christianity, and to
the promotion of peace and love among its professors; he convened the
Council of Nice, to settle disputes which had long distracted the
church, appeared in the assembly with admirable modesty and temper,
moderated the heats of the contending parties, implored them to
exercise mutual forbearance, and exhorted them to love unfeigned, to
forgive one another, as they hoped to be forgiven by Christ. Who would
not think it uncharitable to accuse such a man of barbarity in the
exercise of power?--and yet he drove Arius and his associates into
banishment, for opinion's sake, denounced death against all with whom
his books should afterwards be found, and prohibited, on pain of
death, the exercise, however peaceably, of the functions of any other
religion than Christianity. In a fit of jealousy and rage, he ordered
his innocent son, Crispus, to execution, without granting him a
hearing; and upon finding him innocent, killed his own wife, who had
falsely accused him.
To the preceding maybe added Theodosius the Great, the last Roman
emperor before the division of the empire. He was a member of the
Christian church, and in his zeal against paganism, and what he deemed
heresy, surpassed all who were before him. The Christian writers of
his time speak of him as a most illustrious model of justice,
generosity, magnanimity, benevolence, and every virtue. And yet
Theodosius denounced capital punishments against those who held
'heretical' opinions, and commanded inter-marriage between cousins to
be punished by burning the parties alive. On hearing that the people
of Antioch had demolished the statues set up in that city, in honor of
himself, and had threatened the governor, he flew into a transport of
fury, ordered the city to be laid in ashes, and all the inhabitants to
be slaughtered; and upon hearing of a resistance to his authority in
Thessalonica, in which one of his lieutenants was killed, he instantly
ordered a _general massacre_ of the inhabitants; and in obedience to
his command, seven thousand men, women and children were butchered in
the space of three hours.
The foregoing are a few of many instances in the history of Rome, and
of a countless multitude in the history of the world, illustrating the
truth, that the lodgement of arbitrary power, in the best human hands,
is always a fearfully perilous experiment; that the mildest tempers,
the most humane and benevolent dispositions, the most blameless and
conscientious previous life, with the most rigorous habits of justice,
are no security, that, in a moment of temptation, the possessors of
such power will not make their subjects their victims; illustrating
also the truth, that, while men may exhibit nothing but honor,
honesty, mildness, justice, and generosity, in their intercourse with
those of their own grade, or language, or nation, or hue, they may
practice towards others, for whom they have contempt and aversion, the
most revolting meanness, perpetrate robbery unceasingly, and inflict
the severest privations, and the most barbarous cruelties. But this is
not all: history is full of examples, showing not only the effects of
arbitrary power on its victims, but its terrible reaction on those who
exercise it; blunting their sympathies, and hardening to adamant their
hearts toward _them_, at least, if not toward the human race
generally. This is shown in the fact, that almost every tyrant in the
history of the world, has entered upon the exercise of absolute power
with comparative moderation; multitudes of them with marked
forbearance and mildness, and not a few with the most signal
condescension, magnanimity, gentleness and compassion. Among these
last are included those who afterwards became the bloodiest monsters
that ever cursed the earth. Of the Roman Emperors, almost every one of
whom perpetrated the most barbarous atrocities, Vitellius seems to
have been the only one who cruelly exercised his power from the
_outset_. Most of the other emperors, sprung up into fiends in the
hot-bed of arbitrary power. If they had not been plied with its fiery
stimulants, but had lived under the legal restraints of other men,
instead of going to the grave under the curses of their generation,
multitudes might have called them blessed.
The moderation which has generally distinguished absolute monarchs at
the commencement of their reigns, was doubtless in some cases assumed
from policy; in the greater number, however, as is manifest from their
history, it has been the natural workings of minds held in check by
previous associations, and not yet hardened into habits of cruelty, by
being accustomed to the exercise of power without restraint. But as
those associations have weakened, and the wielding of uncontrolled
sway has become a habit, like other evil doers, they have, in the
expressive language of Scripture, 'waxed worse and worse.'
For eighteen hundred years an involuntary shudder has run over the
human race, at the mention of the name of Nero; yet, at the
commencement of his reign, he burst into tears when called upon to
sign the death-warrant of a criminal, and exclaimed, 'Oh, that I had
never learned to write!' His mildness and magnanimity won the
affections of his subjects; and it was not till the poison of absolute
power had worked within his nature for years, that it swelled him into
a monster.
Tiberius, Claudius, and Caligula, began the exercise of their power
with singular forbearance, and each grew into a prodigy of cruelty. So
averse was Caligula to bloodshed, that he refused to look at a list of
conspirators against his own life, which was handed to him; yet
afterwards, a more cruel wretch never wielded a sceptre. In his thirst
for slaughter, he wished all the necks in Rome _one_, that he might
cut them off at a blow.
Domitian, at the commencement of his reign, carried his abhorrence of
cruelty to such lengths, that he forbad the sacrificing of oxen, and
would sit whole days on the judgment-seat, reversing the unjust
decisions of corrupt judges; yet afterwards, he surpassed even Nero in
cruelty. The latter was content to torture and kill by proxy, and
without being a spectator; but Domitian could not be denied the luxury
of seeing his victims writhe, and hearing them shriek; and often with
his own hand directed the instrument of torture, especially when some
illustrious senator or patrician was to be killed by piece-meal.
Commodus began with gentleness and condescension, but soon became a
terror and a scourge, outstripping in his atrocities most of his
predecessors. Maximin too, was just and generous when first invested
with power, but afterwards rioted in slaughter with the relish of a
fiend. History has well said of this monarch, 'the change in his
disposition may readily serve to show how dangerous a thing is power,
that could transform a person of such rigid virtues into such a
monster.'
Instances almost innumerable might be furnished in the history of
every age, illustrating the blunting of sympathies, and the total
transformation of character wrought in individuals by the exercise of
arbitrary power. Not to detain the reader with long details, let a
single instance suffice.
Perhaps no man has lived in modern times, whose name excites such
horror as that of Robespierre. Yet it is notorious that he was
naturally of a benevolent disposition, and tender sympathies.
"Before the revolution, when as a judge in his native city of Arras he
had to pronounce judgment on an assassin, he took no food for two days
afterwards, but was heard frequently exclaiming, 'I am sure he was
guilty; he is a villain; but yet, to put a human being to death!!' He
could not support the idea; and that the same necessity might not
recur, he relinquished his judicial office.--(See Laponneray's Life of
Robespierre, p. 8.) Afterwards, in the Convention of 1791, he urged
strongly the abolition of the punishment of death; and yet, for
sixteen months, in 1793 and 1794, till he perished himself by the same
guillotine which he had so mercilessly used on others, no one at Paris
consigned and caused so many fellow-creatures to be put to death by
it, with more ruthless insensibility."--_Turner's Sacred history of
the World_, vol. 2 p. 119.
But it is time we had done with the objection, "such cruelties are
INCREDIBLE." If the objector still reiterates it, he shall have the
last word without farther molestation.
An objection kindred to the preceding now claims notice. It is the
profound induction that slaves _must_ be well treated because
_slaveholders say they are!_
OBJECTION. II.--'SLAVEHOLDERS PROTEST THAT THEY TREAT THEIR SLAVES
WELL.'
Self-justification is human nature; self-condemnation is a sublime
triumph over it, and as rare as sublime. What culprits would be
convicted, if their own testimony were taken by juries as good
evidence? Slaveholders are on trial, charged with cruel treatment to
their slaves, and though in their own courts they can clear themselves
_by their own oaths_,[21] they need not think to do it at the bar of
the world. The denial of crimes, by men accused of them, goes for
nothing as evidence in all _civilized_ courts; while the voluntary
confession of them, is the best evidence possible, as it is testimony
_against themselves_, and in the face of the strongest motives to
conceal the truth. On the preceding pages, are hundreds of just such
testimonies; the voluntary and explicit testimony of slaveholders
against themselves, their families and ancestors, their constituents
and their rulers; against their characters and their memories; against
their justice, their honesty, their honor and their benevolence. Now
let candor decide between those two classes of slaveholders, which is
most entitled to credit; that which testifies in its own favor, just
as self-love would dictate, or that which testifies against all
selfish motives and in spite of them; and though it has nothing to
gain, but every thing to lose by such testimony, still utters it.
But if there were no counter testimony, if all slaveholders were
unanimous in the declaration that the treatment of the slaves is
_good_, such a declaration would not be entitled to a feather's weight
as testimony; it is not _testimony_ but _opinion_. Testimony respects
matters of _fact_, not matters of opinion: it is the declaration of a
witness as to _facts_, not the giving of an opinion as to the nature
or qualities of actions, or the _character_ of a course of conduct.
Slaveholders organize themselves into a tribunal to adjudicate upon
their own conduct, and give us in their decisions, their estimate of
their own character; informing us with characteristic modesty, that
they have a high opinion of themselves; that in their own judgment
they are very mild, kind, and merciful gentlemen! In these conceptions
of their own merits, and of the eminent propriety of their bearing
towards their slaves, slaveholders remind us of the Spaniard, who
always took off his hat whenever he spoke of himself, and of the
Governor of Schiraz, who, from a sense of justice to his own character
added to his other titles, those of, 'Flower of Courtesy,' 'Nutmeg of
Consolation,' and 'Rose of Delight.'
[Footnote 21: The law of which the following is an extract, exists in
South Carolina. "If any slave shall suffer in life, limb or member,
when no white person shall be present, or being present, shall refuse
to give evidence, the owner or other person, who shall have the care
of such slave, and in whose power such slave shall be, shall be deemed
guilty of such offence, _unless_ such owner or other person shall 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 compared to administer, and to
_acquit the offender_, if clear proof of the offence be not made by
_two_ witnesses at least."--2 Brevard's Digest, 242. The state of
Louisiana has a similar law.]
The _sincerity_ of those worthies, no one calls in question; their
real notions of their own merits doubtless ascended into the sublime:
but for aught that appears, they had not the arrogance to demand that
their own notions of their personal excellence, should be taken as the
_proof_ of it. Not so with our slaveholders. Not content with offering
incense at the shrine of their own virtues, they have the effrontery
to demand, that the rest of the world shall offer it, because _they_
do; and shall implicitly believe the presiding divinity to be a good
Spirit rather than a Devil, because _they_ call him so! In other
words, since slaveholders profoundly appreciate their own gentle
dispositions toward their slaves, and their kind treatment of them,
and everywhere protest that they do truly show forth these rare
excellencies, they demand that the rest of the world shall not only
believe that they _think_ so, but that they think _rightly_; that
these notions of themselves are _true_, that their taking off their
hats to themselves proves them worthy of homage, and that their
assumption of the titles of, 'Flower of Kindness,' and 'Nutmeg of
Consolation,' is conclusive evidence that they deserve such
appellations!
Was there ever a more ridiculous doctrine, than that a man's opinion
of his own actions is the true standard for measuring them, and the
certificate of their real qualities!--that his own estimate of his
treatment of others; is to be taken as the true one, and such
treatment be set down as _good_ treatment upon the strength of his
judgment. He who argues the good treatment of the slave, from the
slaveholder's _good opinion_ of such treatment, not only argues
against human nature and all history, his own common sense, and even
the testimony of his senses, but refutes his own arguments by his
daily practice. Every body acts on the presumption that men's feelings
will vary with their _practices_; that the light in which they view
individuals and classes, and their feelings towards them, will modify
their opinions of the treatment which they receive. In any case of
treatment that affects himself, his church, or his political party, no
man so stultifies himself as to argue that such treatment must be
good, because the _author_ of it thinks so.
Who would argue that the American Colonies were well treated by the
mother country, because parliament thought so? Or that Poland was well
treated by Russia, because Nicholas thought so? Or that the treatment
of the Cherokees by Georgia is proved good by Georgia notions of it?
Or that of the Greeks by the Turks, by Turkish opinions of it? Or that
of the Jews by almost all nations, by the judgment of their
persecutors? Or that of the victims of the Inquisition, by the
opinions of the Inquisitor general, or of the Pope and his cardinals?
Or that of the Quakers and Baptists, at the hands of the Puritans,--to
be judged of by the opinions of the legislatures that authorized, and
the courts that carried it into effect. All those classes of persons
did not, in their own opinion, abuse their victims. If charged with
perpetrating outrageous cruelty upon them, all those oppressors would
have repelled the charge with indignation.
Our slaveholders chime lustily the same song, and no man with human
nature within him, and human history before him, and with sense enough
to keep him out of the fire, will be gulled by such professions,
unless his itch to be humbugged has put on the type of a downright
chronic incurable. We repeat it--when men speak of the treatment of
others as being either good or bad, their declarations are not
generally to be taken as testimony to matters of _fact_, so much as
expressions of _their own feelings_ towards those persons or classes
who are the subjects of such treatment. If those persons are their
fellow citizens; if they are in the same class of society with
themselves; of the same language, creed, and color; similar in their
habits, pursuits, and sympathies; they will keenly feel any wrong done
to them, and denounce it as base, outrageous treatment; but let the
same wrongs be done to persons of a condition in all respects the
reverse, persons whom they habitually despise, and regard only in the
light of mere conveniences, to be used for their pleasure, and the
idea that such treatment is barbarous will be laughed at as
ridiculous. When we hear slaveholders say that their slaves are _well
treated_, we have only to remember that they are not speaking of
_persons_, but of _property_; not of men and women, but of _chattels_
and _things_; not of friends but of _vassals_ and _victims_; not of
those whom they respect and honor, but of those whom they _scorn_ and
trample on; not of those with whom they sympathize, and co-operate,
and interchange courtesies, but of those whom they regard with
contempt and aversion and disdainfully set with the dogs of their
flock. Reader, keep this fact in your mind, and you will have a clue
to the slaveholder's definition of "_good treatment_." Remember also,
that a part of this "good treatment" of which the slaveholders boast,
is plundering the slaves of all their inalienable rights, of the
ownership of their own bodies, of the use of their own limbs and
muscles, of all their time, liberty, and earnings, of the free
exercise of choice, of the rights of marriage and parental authority,
of legal protection, of the right to be, to do, to go, to stay, to
think, to feel, to work, to rest, to eat, to sleep, to learn, to
teach, to earn money, and to expend it, to visit, and to be visited,
to speak, to be silent, to worship according to conscience, in fine,
their right to be protected by just and equal laws, and to be
_amenable to such only_. Of _all these rights the slaves are
plundered_; and this is a _part_ of that "good treatment" of which
their plunderers boast! What then is the _rest_ of it? The above is
enough for a sample, at least a specimen-brick from the kiln. Reader,
we ask you no questions, but merely tell you what _you know_, when we
say that men and women who can habitually do such things to human
beings, _can do_ ANY THING _to them_.
The declarations of slaveholders, that they treat their slaves well,
will put no man in a quandary, who keeps in mind this simple
principle, that the state of mind towards others, which leads one to
inflict cruelties on them _blinds the inflicter to the real nature of
his own acts_. To him, they do not _seem_ to be cruelties;
consequently, when speaking of such treatment toward such persons, he
will protest that it is not cruelty; though if inflicted upon himself
or his friends, he would indignantly stigmatize it as atrocious
barbarity. The objector equally overlooks another every-day fact of
human nature, which is this, that cruelties invariably cease to _seem_
cruelties when the _habit_ is formed though previously the mind
regarded them as such, and shrunk from them with horror.
The following fact, related by the late lamented THOMAS PRINGLE, whose
Life and Poems have published in England, is an appropriate
illustration. Mr. Pringle states it on the authority of Captain W. F.
Owen, of the Royal Navy.
"When his Majesty's ships, the Leven and the Barracouta, employed in
surveying the coast of Africa, were at Mozambique, in 1823, the
officers were introduced to the family of Senor Manuel Pedro
d'Almeydra, a native of Portugal, who was a considerable merchant
settled on that coast; and it was an opinion agreed in by all, that
Donna Sophia d'Almeydra was the most superior woman they had seen
since they left England, Captain Owen, the leader of the expedition,
expressing to Senor d'Almeydra his detestation of slavery, the Senor
replied, 'You will not be long here before you change your sentiments.
Look at my Sophia there. Before she would marry me, she made me
promise that I should give up the slave trade. When we first settled
at Mozambique, she was continually interceding for the slaves, and she
_constantly wept when I punished them_; and now she is among the
slaves front morning to night; she regulates the whole of my slave
establishment; she inquires into every offence committed by them,
pronounces sentence upon the offender, and _stands by and sees them
punished_.'