QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS.
"The sages say dame Truth delights to dwell,
Strange mansion! in the bottom of a well.
Questions are, then, the windlass and the rope
That pull the grave old gentlewoman up."
PETER PINDAR.
My friend, Mr. North, having read the foregoing letters, wrote me a note
requesting me to come and spend an evening with him and his wife, and
answer some questions occasioned by these letters. The lady was earnest
that I should do so.
After being seated before a cheerful fire in my friend's house, while it
was raining violently, so that we felt defended from all interruption,
my friend said,--
"Here, first of all, is the Southern lady's letter to her father, which,
I suppose, belongs to him, and which you may wish to send back."
"I do," said I.
"But, please," said Mrs. North, "let it be published. Add to it the
incident of the Southern lady nursing the sick babe of a slave."
"O my dear," said her husband, "that would create a false impression. It
would be a pro-slavery tract. It would abate Northern zeal against the
'sum of all villanies.' Something should go forth with such
representations to correct their influence in the Free States. What
would become of the cause of freedom should such stories make their
impression upon the minds of our people?"
"You might," said I, "make a heading of an auction-block, or
slave-coffle; add the last pattern of a slave-driver's whip; picture a
panting fugitive on his way to the North; give us a ship's hold, with a
black boy just detected among the stowage. You would thus, perhaps, keep
these beautiful, touching illustrations of loving-kindness in
slave-holders from having the least effect."
"It is very important," said he, seriously, "to keep up a just
abhorrence of slavery here at the North, because"--
"Excuse me," said I, "but what do you mean by an abhorrence of slavery?"
"Why," said he, "is not the Christian world agreed that 'slavery is the
sum of all villanies'?"
"By no means, in the United States," said I; "you might with as real
truth say that here slavery is the sum of all the loving-kindnesses."
"Is not that letter of the Southern lady to her father," said he, "as
rare a thing almost as a white crow?"
"O husband," said Mrs. North, "what an opinion you must have of Southern
society!"
"Is not Gustavus," said I, "a perfect representative of the North, on
the subject of slavery? Does not ultra anti-slavery find or make
everybody, as the Aunt says, either fierce or flat?"
"You do not believe so," said he.
"Neither do you believe," said I, "that where Christianity has exerted
the same influence on the hearts of men and women as on yours, and all
the humanizing and elevating influences of society prevail, that letter
is a rare product."
"I cannot believe," said he, "that one can own a fellow-creature, hold
God's image as property, and be a true Christian. This lady is an
exception which does not destroy the general rule."
"My dear sir," said I, "you are an abstractionist. You make the best
possible condition under the sun your standard, to which you would make
all men and things conform, instead of allowing for the vast
inequalities, the necessities, the mutual dependence, the long
historical conditions of men, as individuals and races. A race or class
of human beings may be in such a condition, that being 'owned' by a
superior race will be, in their circumstances, a real mercy and a great
blessing."
"O my dear sir," said he, "I weep over the degradation of your moral
sense. 'Owning a fellow-creature!' I would not hold property in a human
being 'for all the wealth that sinews bought and sold have ever
earned.'"
"Thousands of men and women," I replied, "as good in the sight of God as
you or I, think otherwise. There is nothing in the relation of ownership
to a human being which in itself is sinful, or wrong."
"If it is your purpose," said he, "to argue in favor of oppression,
perhaps we had better not pursue the conversation."
"Uncharitableness, false judgments, self-righteousness," said I,
"condemning a whole people for the sins of a few, are as truly
'oppression' as anything can be. I plead for no wrongs; I justify no
selfishness in the relation of master and servant; I regard the golden
rule of Christ as the law by which slave-holding should be regulated in
every instance."
"I never expected," said he, "to live long enough to hear of the golden
rule being applied to slavery! It would be like applying light to
darkness, truth to falsehood, holiness to sin."
"By what rule," I inquired, "do you think the lady is habitually
governed who wrote the letter which has interested you so much?"
"Why," said he, "there are good people under every iniquitous system.
These exceptional cases are not the rule of judgment with regard to the
nature and effect of a system."
"Can you not imagine one man owning another," said I, "under
circumstances, and with motives, and in a temper and spirit which will
make the relation most desirable?"
"I go further back," said he, "and I deny that it is right for one human
being to own another."
"Has not God a right," said I, "to place one human being over another as
his owner?"
"Has God a right," said he, "to countenance theft and oppression?"
I said to him: "I might follow your example, and answer you by asking,
Has God a right to countenance war? But I will relieve all your
disagreeable apprehensions as to our conversation at once, by saying
that I am not to argue in favor of oppression. If holding a slave is
oppression, it is a sin. And if it be inconsistent with the golden rule,
it is a sin."
"If that be your doctrine," said he, "we shall soon agree. Now apply the
golden rule to slavery. Are there any circumstances in which you would
yourself be willing to be 'owned'?"
"Certainly," I replied.
He rose, and put some lumps of coal upon the fire with the tongs, and
said, "I presume you mean what you say, and that you do not wish to
trifle with the subject."
"Mr. North," said I, "would you be willing that any one should make you
head-cook in a hotel, engineer in a steamboat, or keeper of a floating
light?"
"No, Sir," said he.
"You would, Mr. North," said I, "under given circumstances. You would
petition for such places, get recommendations for them, and count
yourself perfectly happy, if you succeeded in obtaining them.
"Now look at the slaves. They are a foreign race, we are their civil
superiors, and unless we amalgamate, we intend to remain so. While we
are in this relation, it is a privilege to the blacks to have owners,
but they must use their ownership according to the golden rule. When
this is done, the condition of the blacks, in their present relation to
us, is happy."
"How often," said he, "do you suppose that it is done?"
"That," said I, "is another and a very interesting question, which we
will consider soon. You took the ground, as I understood you, that the
law of love would prevent any one from holding a fellow-creature as a
slave. I reply that it would be in perfect accordance with it, as the
blacks at the South are now situated, for the whites to be their humane
owners. But pray what do you mean by 'owning' a human being?"
"I mean," said he, "having the right to abuse them, domineer over them,
work them as cattle, sell them, and--"
"Did this Southern lady," said I, while he paused for more words, "ever
acquire a right with her ownership to treat Kate so?"
"Her laws," said he, "give her a right to punish her; and such
irresponsible power is fearful. She could whip her to death and"--
"And be punished for it," said I, "as surely as you would be for
whipping a servant to death."
"She is at liberty to punish more severely than the case warrants," said
he, "and then she can shield herself under the laws."
"I presume," said I, "a Northern parent never gives a hasty box on the
ear, never strikes one passionate blow in the chastisement, never shakes
a child a single trill beyond the due harmony of parental affection,
never scourges it with the tongue to momentary madness! What a dreadful
thing parental authority is! Would it not be well to abolish the
authority of parents over children! Indeed, would it not be well to go
further, and interdict the public lands of the United States from being
settled; for as surely as men live there, every form of wickedness will,
in its turn, be perpetrated. How much better the calm and holy silence
of the woods and fields, than if the tumultuous passions of men should
roll over them!"
"But, my dear sir," said he, "I maintain that oppression is inseparable
from the holding of a slave. I insist that this Southern lady, if all
her feelings and conduct toward her servants are like her letter, is an
exception among her people."
"No, Sir," said I, "she is the general rule among all decent people, and
there is as much sense of decency and propriety there as with us, as
many good people, kind, humane, generous, and it is as rare a thing for
a servant to be ill-used there, as for our apprentices, and servants,
and even our children. How kind and good you would be, Sir, if
Providence should place a human being under you as his owner, for the
mutual good of both of you."
"Dear me," said he, "I should try to feel and act just as I suppose
those Southerners do who, you say, are fairly represented by this lady's
letter about the slave-babe."
"Mr. North," said I, "suppose that the State should make you the
absolute owner of some of those boys who set fire to the Westboro' and
Deer Island institutions. In consideration of your personal
responsibility for them, there is ceded to you all right and title to
their services, and absolute control over them, subject, of course, to
the laws against misdemeanors and crimes against the person. My only
point is this: Where would be the sinfulness of that relation? All that
would be sinful about it would be in your neglect or violation of your
duty as a master."
"How glad all this makes me feel," said he, "that I am not troubled with
slaves. If we do not like our servants or apprentices, we can get rid of
them."
"Then," said I, "you surely ought to pity those who are bound to their
slaves and have to put up with a thousand things which you say we can
escape by changing our help."
"But," said he, "can they not sell off their slaves when they please?"
"Suppose, however," said I, "that they happen to be humane, as Mr. North
is, and as we all are in the Free States! and that they are unwilling to
turn off a poor helpless creature for her faults, to be sold, and to go
they know not where!"
"Slavery," said Mr. North, "is surely a great curse. I am so glad that I
live under free institutions."
"Who made us to differ from the South in this respect? How came those
blacks there? Whose ships, whose money, imported them? You remember that
it was by the votes of Free States, that the importation of slaves was
continued for eight years beyond the time when the Southern States had
voted in the Convention that it should cease. And now what would you
have the South do with the slaves, to-day?"
"Set them all free," said he, "'break every yoke; proclaim liberty to
the captives, the opening of the prison-doors to them that are bound.'"
"Allow me," said I, "to smile at your simplicity, for you are very
child-like, not to say childish, in your feelings. You would have the
colored people universally go free. Do you really think that Kate is
worse off in being what you call a slave, than that young, free black
woman who keeps a stall and sells verses and knives near our Park?"
"O dear sir," said he, "liberty is a priceless boon; liberty"--
"Liberty to what?" said I.
"Why," said he, "liberty not to be sold, nor to be beaten, nor to be
subject to the wicked passions of a master."
"Would you rather," said I, "have your daughter a servant in a Southern
family, brought up as a playmate with the children, a sharer in many of
their gifts, a partner with their parents, as the children grew up, in
the pride and joy of the parents, an honored member of the wedding party
when a daughter is married, one of the principal mourners when the bride
departs, identified with the history of the family, provided for in the
will, a support guaranteed to her by law in sickness and old age, and
that, too, not in a pauper establishment, but in her owner's home, and
when the parents die, if she survives, taken by some branch of the
family or neighbor from regard to her and to them; her moral and
religious character improved under their training, a respectable
standing in society conferred upon her by her connection with them, her
religious privileges sacredly secured to her, any insult redressed as
though it were the family's personal affair; she a partaker of their
food and of all their comforts, and followed to her grave with respect
and love; or, for the sake of 'priceless liberty,' 'heaven's best gift
to man,' would you prefer to see her seated under the iron fence of a
park, an old umbrella tied to the pickets for her shelter, and she, in
rain and sunshine, selling 'Old Dan Tucker,' 'Jim Crow, Illustrated,'
and pea-nuts, and sleeping you know not where? Which lot would you
choose for a child? Which is best for this world and the next? In one
case, she is 'owned,' she is 'a slave;' and in the other, she is a free
woman."
"You have no right," said he, with some warmth, "to take the best
condition in slavery, and the very worst in freedom, and compel me to
choose."
"'Best condition in slavery!'" said I; "is there any 'best' in being a
slave, in not being free? Does it admit of degrees? Is not being 'owned'
such a curse, such an unmixed iniquity in its essence, that to compare
its best estate with the worst in freedom, is like comparing the best
devil with the most inferior saint? Is not a devil's nature incapable of
comparison as good, better, best, with anything which is not, in its
nature, devilish? According to your conversation just now, it seemed as
though being 'owned' always implied an unmitigated transgression; and
now when I inquire whether you would prefer degradation to the iniquity
of being 'owned' in comfort and usefulness, respectability and
happiness, you shrink from the question. If freedom in the abstract is
the best thing under the sun, of course you will prefer it to everything
else. No happy condition, no happy prospect for this life, and the life
to come can, in your view, make being 'a slave,' as you call it, capable
of being compared with this abstract privilege of being free. In this
you and your friends labor under a huge mistake, and it poisons all your
views and feelings about slavery. When you denounce slave-holders and
slavery, and depict the condition of the slave in your awful colors,
they at the South know that in hundreds of thousands of instances, as it
regards masters and slaves, all that you say is practically false; you
are carried away by your zeal against a theoretical wrong.
"Now suppose that instead of starting with the theoretical wrong and
getting only such facts as illustrate it, you should travel through the
South to pick up such letters as you consider this, respecting Kate, to
be;--what a pleasing view might be presented of the slaves' condition in
cases without number!"
"But," said he, "there are terrible evils underlying these fair features
of slavery."
"True," said I, "but why, in the name of truth and love do you never
hear such a letter as this read on the platforms of Northern abolition
societies? What mingled groans and hisses and shrieks for freedom, and
then what an emptying of the demoniacal epithets there would be, if such
a letter should be offered. One case of whipping would have more effect
than a thousand such letters, in your assemblies and newspapers. No one
from the continent of Europe would infer from those meetings that such
beings as Kate and her little babe, and this lady and her husband and
father, existed even in fiction, but that slave-holders are Legrees, and
the slaves their victims. What a beautiful effect it would have on us
and on the South, if touching tales of loving-kindness between masters
and slaves, instances of perfect happiness in that relation, should be
cited, and then you should enter your candid, but decided opposition to
the system, to its extension, to its evils where it exists. How soon we
should all be found working together, so far as we might, for the
amelioration of the colored race here, with a view to the extinction of
slavery in every form of it in which it is an evil, or a greater evil
than anything which might properly be substituted."
"Well," said Mrs. North, "husband, what do you say to that?"
"I like it," said he.
"But now," said I, "the language of the place of despair is exhausted in
describing and denouncing the South. If a man among us lifts up his
voice to say good things about Southerners, one universal hiss goes up
from all your conventions and anti-slavery prints. He may be seeking the
same end with you, namely, the peaceful removal of slavery, with due
regard to the highest good of all concerned; but let him utter a word in
arrest of your unqualified condemnation of slavery as it actually is,
and there are no persecutors, nor scourges, nor intolerance on the
earth, more fierce and cruel than you and your denunciations."
"Take it patiently, husband," said Mrs. North, "you know that you
deserve it."
"I know from this," said I, "if from nothing else, that your theory is
wrong. The truth does not excite such passions in those who love and
seek to promote it. We see that, in cases without number, the present
condition of the slaves is a blessing for both worlds, and that if all
who possess slaves were, as many are, slavery would cease to be any more
of a curse than any dependent condition in this world. There must always
be those who will do every sort of menial work. The great Father of all,
who himself says that he has 'deprived' the ostrich 'of wisdom, neither
hath he imparted to her understanding,' so arranges the capacities of
some that their happiness consists in leaning upon superior intelligence
and capability.
"The serving people, in some districts of country, are volunteers from
all races; at the South, they consist of one inferior, dependent race,
who for ages have been slaves in their own country, and would be such
even now, if they were there. We will not shut the door of hope forever
upon any part of the human family, as to their elevation among the
tribes of men, but this race has, for a long period of its history,
evidently been undergoing a tutelage and discipline at the hand of
Providence. There is some marvellous arrangement of Providence, it seems
to me, designing that this black race shall lean upon us. Let the same
number of any other immigrant race have gone from us to Canada as of
this colored race, and the world would have heard a better report from
them ere this. They thrive best in connection with us as their masters,
whether it be right or wrong for us to be in such relation to them."
"But now," said he,--in a persuasive tone, and evidently wishing to turn
the drift of the remarks,--"just set them free, and hire them; we shall
agree then. The slaves will be as well off, and so will their masters."
"Mr. North," said I, "being owned is, in itself, irrespective of the
character of the master, a means of protection to the negro. Somebody
then is responsible for him as his guardian and provider, and is
amenable to the State for his sustenance. You can easily see that, let
the colored people come to be a hireling class, and their interests and
those of their masters are disjoined. There would be conflicts and
oppressions among themselves; they would fall into a degraded, serf-like
condition; but now each of them partakes of his master's interests, and
rises with him. I am not here pleading for slavery in the abstract, but,
the blacks being on the soil, it is far better for them to be owned than
to be free. Why are the Southwestern States, one after another, passing
laws, or framing their constitutions, to shut out from their borders
free negroes,--people in the very condition into which you would reduce
by wholesale all the blacks in the South? I pray you look and see that
you are an abstractionist, setting what you deem a theoretical wrong
against a practical good, and under the circumstances, a real mercy."
"But," said Mr. North, "slavery impoverishes the soil, makes the whites
shun labor, feeling it to be degrading, and it keeps the white children
from industrial pursuits, and"--
"Please stop," said I, "my dear Sir, and think of what you are saying,
and be not carried away by that popular flood of cant phrases. Now you
know that God has given our Southern friends a south country, nearer
than ours to the tropics. Out-of-door labor there is injurious to the
white people, as you know. They are not to be blamed for this. God has
not given them strength to endure exposure to the sun. Had they a
northern climate, in which the labor required by the mechanic arts could
be performed with safety and comfort, do you not suppose that they
would have the same aptitude and relish as we for handicraft? Their
children cannot be brought up to manual labor to the extent that ours
are, because the God of heaven has ordained their lot in a land less
favorable than ours to toil. His providence, making use of the sins of
men, has placed the blacks here; you and the rest of the world, who
depend upon their cotton, are willing enough to use it in its countless
forms, while you reproach your Maker, as I think, for having caused it
to be raised as he has seen fit to do."
"But Oh," said Mr. North, "free labor is more profitable than slave
labor. You well know how it affects the soil, and that the great price
of slaves will in time make the system oppressive to the masters,
especially if they are all as considerate as you say they are about
selling."
"The good Aunt has replied to you as to the soil, and we need not
distress ourselves about the price of slaves; that will regulate itself.
You well understand," said I, "that I am not arguing in favor of slavery
_per se_, nor for the slave-trade, nor for the extension of slavery; but
I contend that where slavery now exists, no one has yet proposed a
scheme which is better than the continuance of ownership, the blacks
remaining on the same soil with their present masters. Nor do I mean to
say that the present system must inevitably continue forever. We must
leave future developments in other hands. Of course there are difficult
problems on such a subject as this. Intelligent Christian gentlemen at
the South say that the best schemes which have been proposed by
Europeans for the substitution of apprenticed negroes for slaves would
make the condition of the negro as far worse than our slavery as the
condition of a degraded negro here is below that of his master. Who will
care for him when he is old, or sick? Granting this apprentice scheme
to be arranged without oppression or sin of any kind, I hold that the
condition of our slaves owned by masters and mistresses, is better than
such a hireling condition, though it have the appearance of liberty."
"Why so?" inquired Mr. North.
"The slaves are not treated as hired horses are liable to be treated," I
replied. "We know how a man is likely to treat his own horse, compared
with the horse which he hires. Men nurse their slaves when they are
sick; they provide for them when they are old. By their care and
responsibility for them, and in relieving them from responsibility, they
pay them wages whose market-value, if it could be reckoned in dollars,
would be higher wages than are paid to the same class of laborers in the
land. There are not four millions of the lower class of the laboring
people in any one district of the earth whose condition is to be
compared with that of the Southern slaves for comfort and happiness."
"I presume," said Mrs. North, "that you would not regard exemption from
responsibility as in itself a blessing. You know how it educates us, how
it sharpens the faculties, how it makes a man more of a man; therefore
is it, after all, any kindness to the slaves, that they are relieved
from responsibility?"
"I thank you," said I, "for that question. Does it concern us that our
domestic servants are relieved, for the time, of all responsibility for
house-rent, taxes, political duties?
"Every condition of poverty and toil has its peculiar hardships and
sorrows. But putting together, respectively, all the advantages and the
disadvantages of our slaves, he who looks upon a population with
enlarged views of liabilities and of the inevitable results in the
working of different schemes of labor, and is not so weak or morbid as
to dwell inordinately on real and imaginary wrongs and miseries, which,
after all, if real, are compensated for by advantages or surpassed by
aggregated smaller evils in other conditions, must admit that, the
colored people being here, their being owned is the very best possible
thing for their protection, and the surest guarantee against all their
liabilities to want in hard times, sickness, and old age.
"Speaking of hard times leads me to say, that if you could put four
millions of laboring people in the Free States, for a winter or during
commercial distresses and the stagnation of every kind of business, in a
position where, while they were still active and useful, a single
thought or care about their sustenance would not visit them, you would
be deemed a philanthropist and public benefactor. There will not be the
same number of people in the laboring class throughout our land next
winter, in any one section, whose comfort and happiness will exceed that
of our slaves."
"Oh, well," said Mr. North, "all this may be true, but this does not
reconcile me to slavery. Our horses here at the North will all be
comfortably provided for, notwithstanding any money pressure. But I
would rather be a human being and fail, every winter, than be a horse."
"Husband," said Mrs. North, "do you consider that a parallel case? Mr.
C. is not arguing, as I understand him, that slavery is better than
freedom. He is not persuading us to be slaves rather than free. He takes
these four millions of blacks as he finds them, in bondage, and he asks,
What shall we do with them? You say, Set them free. He says, They are
better off, as a race, in their present bondage, than they would be if
made free, to remain here. Not that they are better off than four
millions of colored people, who had never been slaves, would be in a
commonwealth by themselves."
"I thank you, Mrs. North," said I, "for your clear and correct statement
of my position. And now I will take up Mr. North's parable about the
horses, and apply it justly. Let hay and grass be exceedingly scarce,
and I had rather take my chance with an owner and be a horse, in a
stable, and at work, than a horse roaming in search of food, chased away
everywhere. The comparison is between horse and horse, and man and man."
"You make me think," said Mrs. North, "of an interesting passage in a
late magazine, written by a lady. She was on a voyage to Cuba. She
arrived at Nassau. She says, 'There were many negroes, together with
whites of every grade; and some of our number, leaning over the side,
saw for the first time the raw material out of which Northern
Humanitarians have spun so fine a skein of compassion and sympathy. You
must allow me one heretical whisper,--very small and low. Nassau, and
all we saw of it, suggested to us the unwelcome question whether
compulsory labor be not better than none.'"[3]
[Footnote 3: _Atlantic Monthly_, May, 1859, p. 604.]
"There is," said I, "this great question of right, with some, as to
slavery: As the State has a right to interpose and send vagrant children
to school, has the world a right to interpose, in certain cases, and
send certain races to labor for the good of mankind? This was the
question which broke upon the lady's mind. It is very interesting to see
the question thus stated, and to notice the graceful touch of apology,
and of playfulness, in the manner of stating it. There was risk, and
even peril, in making the suggestion, but, withal, some moral courage.
Still a lady may sometimes venture where it might not be safe for a
gentleman to go.
"But the question between us is not, 'Freedom or slavery,' in the
abstract, nor, Whether it is right, in any case, to reduce a people to
slavery; but, What is best for our slaves? All your proofs that freedom
is better than slavery in the abstract, are nothing to the point."
"It is the foulest blot on our nation in the eyes of the world," said
Mr. North, "that we have four millions of human beings in bondage."
"Have you read 'Uncle Tom's Cabin?'" I inquired.
"Ask me," said he, pleasantly, "if I know how to read. Every lover of
liberty and hater of oppression has read 'Uncle Tom.'"
"That is very far from being true," said I; "but still, you like Uncle
Tom as a character, do you?"
"You astonish me," said he, "by making a question about it. He is the
most perfect specimen of Christianity that I ever heard of."
"Among the martyrs," said I, "have you ever found his superior?"
"No, Sir!" was his energetic answer.
"Now," said I, "what made Uncle Tom the paragon of perfection?"
"What made him?" said he.
"Yes," said I, "what made him the model Christian? You do not reply, and
I will tell you. SLAVERY MADE UNCLE TOM. Had it not been for slavery, he
would have been a savage in Africa, a brutish slave to his fetishes,
living in a jungle, perhaps; and had you stumbled upon him he would very
likely have roasted you and picked your bones. A system which makes
Uncle Toms out of African savages is not an unmixed evil."
"But," said he, "it makes Legrees also."
"I beg your pardon, Sir," said I, "it does not make Legrees. There are
as many Legrees at the North as at the South, especially if we include
all the very particular 'friends of the slave.' Legree would be Legree
in Wall Street, or Fifth Avenue; Uncle Tom would not be Uncle Tom in the
wilds of Africa."
"And so," said he, "it is right to fit out ships, burn villages in
Africa, steal the flying people, bestow them in slave-ships, and sell
them into hopeless bondage!"
"So you all love to reason," said I, "or seek to force that conclusion
upon us. No such thing. If God overrules the evil doings of men, this is
no reason for repeating the wrong. I am insisting that slavery as it
exists in the South has been a blessing to the African. This does not
warrant you in perpetrating outrages on those who are still in Africa.
"But the result has been, through the mercy of God as though we had
taken millions of degraded savages out of Africa, and had made them
contribute greatly to the industrial interests of mankind.
"We have raised them from heathenish ignorance and barbarism to the
condition of intelligent beings. Look at them in their churches and
Sabbath-schools. Slavery has done this. See the colored population of
Charleston, S.C., voluntarily contributing, as they do, on an average,
three dollars apiece, annually, for the propagation of the Gospel at
home and abroad. See the meeting-house of the African Church at
Richmond, Va., a place selected for public speakers from the North to
deliver their addresses in it to the citizens of Richmond, because it is
more commodious than any other public building in the city. Think of the
membership of slaves in Christian Churches; of the multitudes of them
who have died in the faith and hope of the Gospel. Slavery has done
this. The question is whether slavery has been, or is, such a curse, on
the whole, to the African race, that we must now set free the whole
colored population? Please let us keep to the point. The reopening of
the slave-trade is a question by itself.
"It seems that God had chosen to redeem and save large numbers of the
African race by having them transported to this Christian land.
Philanthropists would not be at the cost and trouble of all this. God
has, therefore, used the cupidity of men to accomplish his purposes, and
he punishes the wicked agents of his own benevolent schemes. His curse
has for ages rested on the African race, and the laws of nature have, to
a great degree, interposed to prevent Christian efforts in their behalf.
God saw fit to change the prison-house, and prison yards and shops of
this race from one continent to another, and New England merchantmen, in
part, have been allowed to be the conveyers. In the process of
transferring these future subjects of civilization and Christianity,
vast misery is endured, as in opening a way by the sword for the
execution of his decrees, great slaughter is the inevitable attendant. I
look at the whole subject of slavery in the light of God's providence.
And I do not see that his providence yet indicates any way for its
termination consistent with the interests of the colored people.
"As to the extension of slavery, in this land, if the Most High has any
further purposes of mercy for the African race in connection with us, he
will not consult you nor me. He will open districts of our country for
them; if my political party refuses to be the instrument in doing this,
from benevolent motives, or from any other cause, He will make that
party to be defeated, it may be by a party below us in moral principle,
as we view it. This question of slavery, its extension and continuance,
is therefore among the great problems of God's providence. I shall do
all that I properly can to prevent it, and to encourage, and, if called
upon, to aid my brethren now in immediate charge of the slaves, to
fulfil their solemn trust; but anything like impatience and passion at
the existence of slavery, I hold to be a sin against God. I pity those
good men whose minds are so inflamed by the consideration of individual
cases of suffering as not to perceive the great and steadfast march of
the divine administration. Politicians and others who get their places,
or their bread, by easy appeals to sympathy for individual cases of
suffering, are the causes of much misplaced commiseration and of a low,
uninstructed view of the great interests involved in slavery. Yet these
very men who, for selfish purposes, stir up the passions of our people,
by dwelling on cases of hardship in slavery, are greatly disappointed
when Napoleon III., at Villafranca, prematurely terminates a war of
unparalleled slaughter. They would have preferred, for the cause of
constitutional liberty and for its possible influence against the Pope,
that the fighting had continued a month longer; we hear no pathetic
remonstrances from them on the score of the killed and maimed, the
widows and orphans and the childless, of homes made desolate, by this
additional month of battle. Such is man, so inconsistent, so blinded by
party prejudice, so ready to maintain that which, in a change of persons
and places, he will denounce. He will be wholly blinded by individual
acts of suffering to all that is good in a system; and again, the good
to be effected by a war will blind him to the hundreds of thousands of
dead or mutilated soldiers, with five times that number of bleeding
hearts, rifled by the sword of their precious treasures."
I saw that I had prolonged my remarks to an undue length. We sat in
silence for a little while, looking into the fire, and listening to the
rain against the windows, when Judith called Mrs. North to the door;
and, after some whispering between them, Mrs. North said to her,
"Oh, bring them in; our company will excuse it."
The cranberries, it seems, were not doing well over the fire in Judith's
department, and she had hesitatingly proposed that they should be
promoted to the parlor grate, where, after due apologies, they were
placed. They soon began to simmer; then one would burst, and then
another, we pausing unconsciously to hear them surrendering themselves
to their fate, while one mouth, at least, watered at the thought of the
delicious dish which they were to furnish; the rich, ruby color of their
juice in the best cut-glass tureen, and the added spoonful, as a reward
for not spilling a drop on the table-cloth the last time they were
served, coming to mind, with thoughts of early days. And here I was
discussing slavery. Now, while the cranberries were over the fire,
making one feel domestic and also bringing back young days, it was
impossible to be disputatious, had we been so inclined. The Northern
cranberry-meadow and the Southern sugar-plantation seemed mixed up in my
feelings on this subject, qualifying and rectifying each other. Perhaps
the soothing presence of the cranberry saucepan was timely; for, without
any design, a phase of our subject next presented itself which was not
the most agreeable. I broke the silence, and said,--
"Mr. North, what do you think is the mission of the abolitionists as a
party, and of all who sympathize with them?"
"Why," said he, "to abolish slavery, to be sure. What else can it be?"
"You are mistaken," said I. "The real mission of the abolitionists, thus
far, is, To perpetuate slavery till Providence has accomplished its
plan. You know what Southern synods, and general assemblies, and many of
the ablest men at the South have said about slavery; how they deplored
it, and called upon Christians to seek its extinction. The South would
probably have tried to abolish slavery ere this, if left to themselves.
But they would have failed; and Providence prevented the useless effort.
The influence of those sentiments which prevailed in the General
Assembly of 1818 would have been to remove all the objectionable
features of slavery, at least, preparatory to its final extinction, if
that could be reached. It looked as though Churches generally would, in
obedience to the General Assembly, have made it, in certain cases, the
subject of discipline. Abolitionism, however, began about that time. It
had the effect to make the South defend themselves and slavery too.
Providence saw that the South was weary of the system, and wished to
throw it off. But the years of the captivity appointed of God had not
come to an end. Purposes of mercy for the African race had not been
accomplished; the South must be made willing to hold these poor people
for the 'time, times, and half a time,' ordained of God. To encourage
them, the God of Nature makes the great Southern staple, cotton, to be
in greater demand for the supply of the world; the cotton-gin is
invented, and immediately the slaves are thereby assisted to retain that
hold upon the South which was about to be broken off. All this seems to
me designed, as it certainly has the effect, to perpetuate slavery until
Providence shall indicate measures for the removal of the colored people
among us. This may be delayed for centuries to come. In the mean time,
we at the North, by keeping up our agitation of the subject, have
impressed the South with the importance of being united against us; but
if any of our schemes of emancipation had divided them, it would not
have been for the good of the slaves. So the abolitionists have been
fulfilling their destiny by fighting against Providence to help
perpetuate slavery till the Most High shall disclose his will concerning
it."
"And helped the South," said Mr. North, "perpetuate violations of the
marriage relation, and to separate families, and to countenance all the
sins in slavery!"
"Yes, to some degree," said I; "for should we treat them with common
candor and truthfulness, make them feel that we appreciate the
perplexities of the subject, admit for once, and act upon it, that they
are better and more competent 'friends of the slave' than we, it would
be the surest way to put a stop to every evil in slavery. Now they have
little power over a certain class of men among them, who, when measures
are proposed for the relief of the slaves, raise the cry that they are
abolitionists, and excite an odium which deters them from doing many
things which would otherwise be attempted."
"They might all certainly join," said Mr. North, "one would think, to
prevent the violation of the marriage contract by the slaves, and the
sundering of the marriage tie by the auctioneer."
"Now," said I, "there are two allegations, and I will answer them. As to
the violation of the marriage covenant by the slaves, are you aware how
many divorces for the same cause are granted in your own state yearly?
You will find, on inquiry, that 'freedom' has nothing to boast of in
this respect. As to the auctioneer, and the separation of the marriage
tie by him, how often do you think that an honest black man, for no
crime, is taken from his wife and sold, or she from him? How often, do
you suppose, are families divided and scattered at the auction-block? If
you will inquire, you will find that the cases are extremely rare; that
in some large districts it has not occurred for several years; and that
in other cases, where it has occurred, regard has been had to the
neighborhood of the purchasers, so that members of the same families
have been within reach of one another. You seem to think that a great
feature, and the most common effect, of slavery is to separate families.
Such is the general belief at the North. Let me remind you that there is
no form or condition of service in the world which has more effect than
slavery to keep families together."
"Well," said Mrs. North, dropping her work in her lap, "I never thought
of that before."
"Why," said I, "where will you find in the Free States husband and wife
and children living together as servants in the same family?"
Said Mrs. North, "It is rather uncommon with us to find two sisters
living together as help in a family. At least, it is always spoken of
and noted as pleasant and desirable."
"What would Northerners think," said I, "of gathering the old parents
and all the brothers and sisters of their domestics together, in small
tenements near their own dwellings? He who should do this would be
regarded as a very great saint. So that you may as well say that slavery
is a system by which a serving class is kept together in families, as to
say that its purpose and effect is to break up families."
"Just think," said Mrs. North, "of the serving class in our families
here at the North,--how they are separated by states, by oceans, from
one another!"
"Be careful, Mrs. North," said I, "how you even hint at such mitigations
in slavery, for you will be denounced as a 'friend of oppression' if you
discern anything in the system but 'villanies.' You never hear such a
feature of slavery, as that of which we have just spoken, recognized
here at the North by our zealous anti-slavery people."
"Do you not think," said she, "that if we were candid and less
passionate, and viewed the subject as anti-slavery men at the South do,
we should exert far more influence against slavery?"
"If we exerted any," I replied, "it would be 'far more' than we do now.
If we would only cease to 'exert influence' in that direction, and begin
to learn that the people of the South are as Christian, benevolent, and
good in every respect as we, this first, great lesson, which we all need
to learn, would do us all great good. Self-righteousness is the great
characteristic of the Northern people with regard to the South. Fifteen
States declare that they are justified before God in continuing the
system of slavery. The other States would be ashamed to condemn those
fifteen States for immorality in the discussion of any other subject;
but here they assume that one half of the American nation is convicted
of crime. I take the ground that, if the Churches and the ministry of
those fifteen States say, With all the evils of slavery, it is right and
best that we should maintain it, I will so far yield my convictions as
not to feel that they are less righteous than I."
"Oh," said Mr. North, "but they have been born and educated under the
system. Of course they must be blinded by it, and their moral sense
perverted."
"There," said I, "Mr. North, is the 'Northern Evil' again. Oh, what a
shame it is for intelligent people to decry Southern Christians in this
way, and to erect their own moral sense into such self-complacent
superiority!
"You will see in your church one excellent brother, whose heart is
filled with anguish at the thought of the 'poor slave.' One sits by him
who knows full as much on this and on all subjects as he, who feels that
the people at the South are perfectly qualified to manage this subject,
and that we have no need to interpose. He thinks that if one wishes to
be excited with compassion at the sorrows and woes of men, a short walk
will bring him to certain abodes such as no Southern slave would be
allowed by any human master to inhabit. If he would benefit men as a
class, our own sailors need all his philanthropy. But the good
anti-slavery brother is possessed with the idea that the Southern slave
is the impersonation of injustice and misery, and that those who stand
in the relation of masters are guilty of crimes, daily, which ought to
shut them out of the Church.
"I have often thought that the most appropriate prayers in our public
assemblies, with regard to slavery, would be petitions against Northern
ignorance and passion with respect to Southern Christians. It is we who
most need to be prayed for. When I think of those assemblies of
Christians of all denominations in the South, with a clergy at their
head who have no superiors in the world, and then hear a Northern
preacher indicting them before God in his prayers, what shall I say? The
verdict of a coroner's inquest, if it were held over some of his hearers
at such a time, might almost be, Died of disgust."
"Now I desire to know," said Mr. North, "if we are never to pray in
public about slavery? Is it not the great subject before the country,
and are not all our interests in Church and State deeply involved in
it?"
"While we believe," said I, "that holding slaves is a sin, I take the
ground that praying for the Southerners is a false impeachment. When we
are rid of this error, we do not feel their need of being prayed for any
more than 'all men,' for whom Paul says, 'I will that men pray
everywhere,'--'lifting up holy hands without wrath or doubting.' Our
'hands' must be 'holy' when we lift them up for 'all men,' including
Southerners; there must be no 'wrath' in our prayers,--which I am sorry
to say is too easily discerned in prayers against the South; and there
must be no 'doubting' in the petitioners whether their feelings and
motives are right before God. There is as much in the relation of
officers and crews in our merchant vessels, to say the least, to enlist
the prayers of ministers, as in slavery. But this relates to ourselves,
and has not the enchantment of a distant sin.
"You must bring yourself to believe, Mr. North, that Southern hearts are
in general as humane and cultivated as ours. This, it is true, is a
great demand upon a Northerner."
"But oh," said he, (we happening to be alone just then,) "the cruelty of
compelling virtuous people, members of Churches, to commit sin, under
pain of being sold."
"Mr. North," said I, "how do you dare to open your lips on that
subject,--you, with myself, a member of a denomination in which men,
eminent in our pulpits, have--so many of them of late years--fallen. One
would think that we would never cast a stone at the South on that
subject.
"Some among us seem to think that the power and the opportunity to
commit sin must necessarily be followed by criminal indulgence. They do
themselves no credit in this supposition. They also leave out of view a
natural antipathy which must be overcome, sense of degradation,
probability of detection, loss of character, conscience, and all the
moral restraints which are common to men everywhere; and they only judge
that all who exercise authority over an abject race must, as a general
thing, be polluted.
"As to opportunities for evil-doing at the South compared with the
North, no one who walks the streets of a Northern city, by day or night,
with the ordinary discernment of one who sets himself to examine the
moral condition of a place, will fail to see that we need not go to the
South to find humiliating proofs of baseness and shame. There is less
solicitation at the South; here it is a nightly trade, without disguise.
At the South the young must go in search of opportunity; here it
confronts them. The small number of yellow children in the interior of
the Cotton States, on 'lone plantations,' is positive proof against the
ready suspicions and accusations of Northern people. Let all be true
which is said of 'yellow women,' 'slave-breeders,' and every form of
lechery, he is simple who does not believe that the statistics of a
certain wickedness at the North would, if made as public as difference
of color makes the same statistics at the South, leave no room for us to
arraign and condemn the South in this particular. Their clergy, their
husbands, their young men, if they are no better, are no worse than we.
But there is nothing in which the self-righteousness created by
anti-slavery views and feelings is more conspicuous than in the way in
which the South is judged and condemned by us with regard to this one
sin. Had the pulpits of the South afforded such dreadful instances of
frailty, for the last ten or fifteen years, as we have had at the North,
what confirmation would we have found for our invectives against the
corrupting and 'barbarous' influence of slavery!
"How the morbid fancy of a Northerner loves to gloat over occasional
instances of violence at the South, and is never employed in depicting
scenes of betrayal and cruelty which our policemen in large cities could
recount by scores."
"I saw," said Mr. North, "in a recent paper, that a slave in Washington
County, N.C., was hanged by the sheriff in the presence of three
thousand spectators, for the murder of a white man, whom he shot with a
pistol because he suspected him of undue familiarity with the wife of
the black man. Poor fellow! no doubt he swung for it because he was a
slave. He must let his marriage rights be invaded by the whites, and
bear it in silence, or die."
Said I, "What a perfect specimen of Northern anti-slavery feeling and
logic have we in what you now say. If a man, on suspicion of you, takes
the law into his hands and shoots you with a pistol, does he not deserve
to die? He does, if he is a white man; perhaps, if he be a slave, that
excuses him! Even where a man is known to be guilty of the crime
referred to, and the husband shoots him, he is apt to have a narrow
escape from being punished. As to bearing such violations of one's
rights in silence under intimidation, there is no more power in
intimidation to save a villain at the South from disgrace and abhorrence
in his community, than at the North."
"But he can evade prosecution under the statute," said Mr. North, "more
easily at the South than here."
"When you have served on the grand jury a few terms," said I, "you will
be more charitable toward Southerners. Human nature is the same
everywhere. It makes, where it does not find, occasion for sin.
"Now you will not understand, in all that I have said, that I am
pleading for slavery, that I desire to have this abject race among us,
that Southerners are purer and better than we. We are both under sin. We
all have our temptations and trials; each form of society has its own
kind of facilities for evil; but the grace of God and all the influences
which bear on the formation and the preservation of character, are the
same wherever Christianity prevails."
"Well, after all," said he, "it must be a semi-barbarous state of
society, where such a system is maintained."
"I shall have to send you," said I, "to the 'Hotel des Incurables.' I
think that your judgments are more than semi-barbarous. If you please to
term even the Southern negroes 'semi-barbarous,' you may do so; but you
are bearing false witness against your neighbor.
"My dear friend," said I, "sum up all the evils of the laboring classes,
of foreigners and the lower orders of society. Take their miseries,
vices, crimes, with all the blessings of freedom and everything else.
Get the proportion of evil to the good. Remember that these classes will
continue to exist among us. Then take the slaves, the lower order at the
South, as foreigners are with us, and say if, on the whole, the
proportion of evil among the slaves is any greater than among the
corresponding classes elsewhere. Do not be an optimist. Acknowledge that
society, in this fallen world, must have elements of evil, by reason at
least of imbecility, want of thrift, misfortune, and other things. You
will not fail to see that slavery with all its evils is, under the
circumstances, by no means, the worst possible condition for the colored
people."
"Well," said he, "I will think of all you have said. I do not wish to be
an ultraist, nor to shut my eyes against truth. You will wish to go to
bed; there are some further points on which I would know your views, and
we will, if you please, resume the subject to-morrow."