Slavery Illustrated--Continued.
THE CHATTEL PRINCIPLE IN PRACTICE.
3. _Slavery disregards the parental and filial relations._ The family
is a type of heaven. It is the foundation of the social system--of
social order, refinement and happiness. Destroy this relation and the
most enlightened people will speedily relapse into barbarism. It is
a God-instituted relation, and around it Jesus Christ has thrown the
solemn sanction of his authority. Nature implants in the hearts of
parents an affection for their offspring which is sweeter than life
and stronger than death; and this affection, when associated with
intelligence and religion, eminently fits them to care for helpless
infancy, to guide the feet of inexperienced youth, and to lead the
opening heart and expanding mind to virtue and to God. Without the
soothing, ennobling and virtue-inspiring influences which emanate from
the domestic hearth, this world, I fear, would become a pandemonium.
But slavery, true to its leading principle, utterly disregards and
ruthlessly tramples upon the parental and filial relations. As soon as
a child is born of a slave-mother it is put down on the table of stock
and is henceforth subject to the conditions of property. The father
cannot say--"This is my son. I will train him up in the fear of God,
bestow upon him a liberal education and by help divine make a true man
of him, that he may be my staff in old age." No, the slaveholder has
a usurped claim upon the boy, which, in the code of the "lower law,"
annihilates entirely the father's claim. The mother is not permitted
to press the new born babe to her throbbing bosom and rejoice over it,
saying--"This is my daughter--I will by the assistance of grace give
her tender mind a pious inclination, encourage her to walk in the path
of virtue and religion, to seek the 'good part,' chosen by Mary of old,
that she may become an ornament of her sex." No, that female child is
a valuable part of the planter's stock, and the mother is encouraged
to nurse it well that it may bring a high price in the market!
Parents have no more to say as to the disposition of their children
than animals have as to what shall be done with their young. There
is not a law in any State, if we may except Louisiana, which imposes
the slightest restraint upon masters who may be disposed to sell the
children of slaves. In Louisiana an old law prohibits the separation
of slave children from their mothers before they are ten years of age.
But this law, were it not a dead letter as we are assured it is, would
afford but a trifling mitigation of the wrong. At any time the master
may gather up all the saleable children on his plantation, submit
them to the inspection of a trader, strike a bargain for the lot, and
then start them off like a drove of young cattle, without saying one
word about it to the fathers or mothers of those children. And it
often occurs that when the slave mother returns from the field, weary
with the toils of the day, she finds her hut desolate. Where are my
children? she asks. She calls--no answer--and is presently informed by
a fellow-slave that they are sold and gone! Yes--a christian (?) master
has taken advantage of her absence and sent them off without giving her
a parting word with them! They shall never more return! And yet this
distressed mother has no redress.
Maternal love flows in a slave-mother's bosom with all its wonted
depth and intensity, and the total disregard of this affection is the
occasion of the deepest sorrows recorded in the annals of slavery.
"In slaveholding States, except in Louisiana no law exists to prevent
the violent separation of parents from their children." (_Stroud._) A
slave has no more legal authority over his child than a cow has over
her calf. (_Jay._) John Davis, a dealer in slaves at Hamburg, S. C.,
advertises that he has on hands, direct from Va., "one hundred and
twenty likely young negroes of both sexes; among them small girls,
suitable for nurses, and several small boys without their mothers."
Frederick Douglass relates that "when he was three years old his mother
was sent to work on a plantation eight or ten miles distant, and after
that he never saw her except in the night. After her days toil she
would occasionally walk over to her child, lie down with him in her
arms, hush him to sleep in her bosom, then rise up and walk back again
to be ready for her field work by daylight."--_Key to Uncle Tom's
Cabin._
The following incident occurred within the present year (1853.) We copy
from the _Cleveland True Democrat_.
"It will be remembered by some of our citizens that about two or
three months since, a colored man visited our city for the purpose of
obtaining money enough to buy his child that was held as a slave in
Kentucky. Through the generosity of J. H. Smith and his congregation,
with some added by private individuals, the amount was raised, and the
happy negro went on his way rejoicing. Now comes the saddest part of
the tale. When the poor colored man arrived at his home, he immediately
handed the money, to obtain which had cost him so much labor, over
to a friend, who started immediately to Kentucky. Arriving there, the
money was laid before the master by the gentleman, when to the utter
astonishment of the latter, the slaveholder burst into a fiendish
laugh, and said 'he'd be ---- if he would sell the boy at any price.'
He refused all terms, laughed at all exhortations, and finally ordered
the gentleman who wished to purchase the boy out of the house. He left
sorrowfully, knowing how his bad success would affect the father, who
was in a delirium of joy at the idea of seeing his long lost son.
Imagine the feeling of that man when it was communicated to him that
his boy was lost forever. Our informant tells us that he said not a
word, nor wept; but any one familiar with a human heart, could tell
what agony that poor black man was in. He seems to have grown ten years
older, and it is feared, unless some change takes place, that he will
soon die. His life seems worse than death, and he loudly prays for the
latter to come."
The holder of that boy only did what the laws allowed him to do, and
his conduct was in perfect consistency with _chattel_ slavery. Men can
do as they like about selling the property which the law allows them.
Scenes of the most provoking and heart-rending character, scenes in
which humanity is outraged, scenes which would bring the blood to the
cheek of a savage, even to behold, are enacted in all the Southern
States from day to day, with seeming unconcern! The most bitter cries
pierce the skies and go up to heaven apparently unheard by man. "Here
is a man, a slave-trader, driving before him two boys with a hickory
stick, and carrying a child under his arm. At a little distance is the
_mother_ with chains on her wrists, stretching out her hand toward
the babe; but is prevented, because a strong man holds her while she
endeavors to follow her shrieking babe and her sobbing boys. The owner
who sold the two boys, stands calmly, unmoved, smoking a cigar, while
the overseer holds the mother, and the trader whips off the boys and
carries with him the screaming child." This is precisely the way that
other live stock is sold, and those dealers are only doing what the law
allows. No one is surprised at them. They may be respectable citizens
and good church members!
Christian reader, pass not over these facts with a light heart. I
beseech you to think upon them as a man and a christian ought. You love
home, you esteem family relations the dearest and most sacred upon
earth, and you would resist with all your power a tyranny which would
invade your own family circle and carry away your children for the
exclusive benefit of others. For humanity's sake let your sympathies go
out in behalf of the millions of your fellow creatures who are deprived
of all the blessings of family and home. Have you not a heart to bleed
for those mothers whose children, in tender youth, are ruthlessly
torn away from them for no higher object than the pecuniary advantage
of their masters? J. G. Whittier, the "slave's poet," represents in
mournful strains the Virginia slave mother's lament for her daughters,
sold and gone to the far South.
Gone, gone--sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone.
Where the slave-whip ceaseless swings,
Where the noisesome insect stings,
Where the fever demon strews
Poison with the falling dews,
Where the sickly sunbeams glare
Through the hot and misty air,--
Gone, gone,--sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone,
From Virginia's hills and waters,--
Woe is me, my stolen daughters!
Gone, gone,--sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone.
There no mother's eye is near them,
There no mother's ear can hear them;
Never, when the torturing lash
Seams their back with many a gash,
Shall a mother's kindness bless them,
Or a mother's arms caress them.
Gone, gone, &c.
Gone, gone,--sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone.
O, when weary, sad, and slow,
From the fields at night they go,
Faint with toil, and racked with pain,
To their cheerless homes again,--
There no brother's voice shall greet them,
There no father's welcome meet them.
Gone, gone, &c.
Gone, gone,--sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone.
From the tree whose shadow lay
On their childhood's place of play;
From the cool spring where they drank;
Rock and hill, and rivulet bank;
From the solemn house of prayer,
And the holy counsels there,--
Gone, gone, &c.
Gone, gone, sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone;
Toiling through the weary day,
And at night the spoiler's prey.
O, that they had earlier died,
Sleeping calmly, side by side,
Where the tyrant's power is o'er,
And the fetter galls no more!
Gone, gone, &c.
Gone, gone,--sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone.
By the holy love He beareth,
By the bruised reed He spareth,
O, may He to whom alone
All their cruel wrongs are known
Still their hope and refuge prove,
With a more than mother's love!
Gone, gone, &c.