The negro race in the United States have derived great benefits from
their condition of servitude. Let us have done with the wailings of
weak sympathizers who know not what they would be at. No African
has come as a slave to this country who was not a slave before. The
exchange of masters which transferred the service of the negro from
a barbarous owner in Africa to a civilized proprietor in America is
likely to prove the salvation of the race. From time immemorial slavery
has prevailed in Africa. The characteristics of slavery there, so
terrible, so abominable that any condition of existence would seem
preferable--how utterly are they forgotten by those who delight to
dwell upon the “wrongs of the negro!” In the United States the negro
has attained the Pisgah height from which he can look forward into
a land of promise, rich in blessings. No event has happened in the
history of Africa, since her degradation, so likely to result in good
to her as the residence of Africans in this country. At this moment
the negro colonist, conveyed from Maryland to the settlement at Cape
Palmas, stands a superior being among the natives that surround him in
the land of his progenitors. Servitude in the United States has been
the school of discipline and of progress by means of which the black
man may become fit for freedom.
Here, surrounded by the elements of civilization and Christian
knowledge, the negro has imbibed largely of both. His nature is
admirably adapted to catch the hue and quality of any notable
characteristic of the superior people about him. He is imitative in
a high degree; he is quick of apprehension; docile; easy of control,
without a sense of degradation connected with his service. The
position of servitude, then, in a civilized community is adapted to
him; he improves by it.
The natives of Africa at this day are just such a people as were the
slaves first brought to America; just such a people as all the slaves
were who have come from Africa to this country. If none had been
brought to our shores; if the progenitors of the negroes now here had
remained in Africa, their descendants would have been of like pattern
with themselves; they would have been in all respects similar to the
native tribes now found in Africa, because they would have been a
portion of them.
But look at the contrast which is presented when you take one of our
Maryland men of color and compare him with a native African. They
hardly seem to belong to the same race. The colonist of Cape Palmas is
very nearly, if not altogether, as much superior to the natives on the
coast of Africa as the first settlers of America were to the aborigines.
What has caused this difference? There is but one answer. Through
the ordeal of servitude in the United States the negro has passed
into the threshold of civilization, into the portals of Christianity.
Every moment of his existence among enlightened people has been one of
progress. Like a negative body brought into connection with one fully
charged, he has been continually a recipient; imparting nothing he has
acquired from every surrounding source.
Let us reverently acknowledge the overruling power of Providence, by
whose dispensation an unrighteous traffic has been made the means of
benefit to a benighted race. Africa herself will hail, on her own
shores, the return of her children who went forth in chains, and the
still heavier bondage of ignorance and barbarism--but restored to her
as freemen; the heralds of civilization; not as Israelites, bearing
away the spoil of the Egyptians, but enriched in knowledge and virtue,
and followed by the good will of their former masters.
I have deemed it the more important to set forth these views, because
of the style of language so much in vogue when the servitude of the
negroes in this country is spoken of. How incessantly do we hear of the
“wrongs of the African,” with abundance of that sort of phraseology
which makes up so much of the cant of philanthropy.
I here say nothing of the slave trade. Let those condemn it who
will; it is not for me to utter a word in its defence. But viewing
the negroes in the United States as already here, no matter by what
means brought, there is no question at all but that, as a race, their
condition here has been a fortunate state of existence for them;
whether as compared with their condition in Africa, where they were
slaves, or as taken in connection with their moral and intellectual
state and their adaptation to service.
It is perhaps too late in the day to hope for any assuaging of that
strong feeling which prevails in some parts of the north on this
subject--a feeling so strong and inflexible, that we see ecclesiastical
organizations rent asunder by it. Yet must we deplore the prevalence
of a spirit which exhibits itself in such unlovely forms of violence;
and the more especially since there is no call for such manifestations.
The race of people in whose behalf this agitation is made have never
asked for it; nothing has done them so much harm already. It is a work
of supererogation, so far as they are concerned--one of gratuitous
injury. No thought seems to have been bestowed upon the condition in
which the colored people would be placed, if abolitionism were every
where successful. The active principle in the whole business, what
has it been but an overpowering, inexorable sentiment of anathema
and condemnation against slaveholders, who are so by the inevitable
circumstances of their position, by the necessity of a transmitted
heritage of social and political relationship? And this relationship
is one for which Paul has given precepts and thus recognised--which
Christianity has embraced as one of the varied features of social
organization, bearing with it its peculiar obligations and duties.
If it were charged that the duties imposed by this peculiar
relationship had been lost sight of; if the masters were arraigned
for cruelty and injustice in their sphere--then would there be a
charge which could be judged of according to the facts. Master and
servant--both have their respective obligations: the one to render
obedience, not with eye-service, but truly; the other to exercise his
power of direction as one acting in the sight of the great Master of
all men.
Unfortunately this view is not taken. It is deemed a crime that a man
shall be a master--though by ceasing to be so his servants might be the
chief sufferers. All circumstances, facts, conditions are lost sight
of; denunciation does not stop to discriminate; the slaves are made the
objects of sympathy whether they will or not; and with a self-assumed
superiority of righteousness, these Pharisees, who thank God that they
are not as other men, pronounce judgment of condemnation, because other
men are not as they are.
It would be well if these displays of superfluous solicitude, these
copious outpourings of random philanthropy, involved nothing more than
the waste of so much of the raw material of sentimental morality.
But the arrogance of some and the vindictiveness of others of the
abolitionists, blended with such exhibitions of phrenzy, has produced
the reaction of disgust in the minds of the southern people--the
reaction of indignation and defiance. In Virginia, the disposition
which had been manifested to hasten the extinction of Slavery in 1832
was suddenly checked. So also in Kentucky. And, more lamentable still,
the relation between master and slave, previously one of simplicity and
confidence, and of kind domestic regard, was disturbed by the infusion
of a harsher ingredient. The servant became restless and discontented;
the master suspicious. I speak of the result of this abolition movement
in Maryland. Who does not remember the old domestic relation of master
and servant, so full of kindly household sympathies? There yet remain
many specimens of that class of faithful attached servitors, whose
pride in the family name and respectability, whose identification with
the family interests, was affiliated with the strongest personal
affection for the master and his household. Many of those, we say, yet
remain; they are to be found chiefly in the old families of Maryland,
and in those parts of the State farthest removed from the abolition
excitement. In the simple minds of those people no perception ever
entered of the idea that their masters, the objects of their love
and reverence, were robbers, man-stealers, or oppressors; they had
no consciousness that they themselves were degraded by a service of
which they were proud; and as to a deprivation of rights, they would
have esteemed any rights hateful which would have compelled their
separation from the hearth and home to which their affections were
devoted. Is it not clear that in a position like this, so well adapted
to the growth of good affections, a docile, mild, yet rude and simple
people, might find the elements of improvement, might find themselves
in circumstances beautifully suited to their state? What better school
could there be for such a people in which to learn the rudiments of
civilization? What a happy exchange for them to leave a barbarian
master in Africa, a capricious and savage despot, who would inflict
death or mutilation in any fit of passion, for the judicious control
of the civilized white man, at once, a master, teacher, protector, and
friend! How fortunate for the future prospects of the race that their
lot was taken from the dreary barrenness of savage life, in Africa,
with its cruelties, its debasing superstitions, its hideous brutalities
and licentiousness, to be cast in the bosom of a Christian land, amid
the elements of social refinement and political freedom? Of these the
African in the United States has profited much. The well bred colored
man in Maryland appreciates, to the full, the character of a gentleman;
the self-governing colored man at Cape Palmas understands well the
operation of republican institutions.
IV. _How Slavery is to be regarded as an Institution: whether permanent
or not._
If it is evident, from the foregoing, that the state of servitude has
been well adapted to the condition of the negroes who were brought to
this country; if it appears beyond all doubt that they have improved in
that state; it is no less clear that the condition of Slavery is not
adapted to their continued improvement--that it is in fact incompatible
with their improvement beyond a certain point.
The uses of Slavery are those of tutelage; in other words, Slavery is
beneficial and proper only in so far as it is a species of tutelage.
But a state of tutelage must have an end; the child in due time grows
beyond it. So of a race in servitude--for it is as a race that we are
considering the negro and his position.
The law of progress is an inherent principle in every form of social
organization; it is the mark of its vitality and the main element
thereof. Efforts indeed have been made, and long persevered in, to
defeat this tendency to development. Hence the organism of castes in
Hindostan; hence the Chinese policy of prohibiting changes in the most
trivial as well as the most important things. In both instances the
mind is dwarfed, and unnatural exhibitions are produced from which
civilization turns away with disgust. Society can not be petrified in
fixed forms; stereotyped in one immovable aspect, like metal fused and
cast in a mould. It has a vital principle; it is a living organization;
it has powers of growth and expansion which must go on to their
development, or the vital force, suppressed, will generate disorder in
the system and manifest itself in the shapes of maladies and eruptions.
But what need is there of argument or illustration on so plain a
point? Is it not palpable to the perception of every one that the idea
of Slavery is utterly repugnant to the attainment by man, of his due
stature and proportions in the world, of moral and civil action? The
ascendency which superior intelligence gives may be used to control
the less enlightened, if it is found that control is necessary to the
latter, from the circumstances of their position and their inability to
govern themselves. But the ascendency of superior intelligence should
be itself controlled by superior benevolence and justice; it should
not be made the mere instrument of selfish ends. Slavery, let it be
repeated, when right and proper, is a species of guardianship; a form
of tutelage. In this view a good thing, it becomes, like other good
things, when perverted, a pernicious evil.
I am aware that some distinguished gentlemen at the south maintain the
doctrine that Slavery, as a permanent institution, is no evil; and
they contend that, as a mode of organizing labor, it is better than
the English system which makes the operatives by the mass the slaves
of a social organization, which, cutting them off from the domestic
sympathies of their employers, leaves them to a cold isolation and to
the slender resources of a pittance, in the shape of scanty wages, and
to the poor rates, contributed by a calculating cupidity, and reduced
to the lowest minimum on this side of starvation.
It would not be to the purpose to enter into a comparison of these
two systems. It is enough to know that neither can be permanent;
because both are incompatible with the progress of mankind. There is
this, however, to be noted. The aristocracy of Great Britain hold
in servitude men of their own blood, race, and complexion; elements
of Anglo-Saxon hardihood; bone of their bone, flesh of their flesh;
millions worthy of a better state, and capable of appreciating better
things. In this republic the servile class are of a race and complexion
different from ours; just entering upon the borders of civilization,
adapted from their characteristic disposition to service, and rapidly
improving in the service of their superiors; incapable of holding any
other relation, because incapable of being harmoniously blended with
the general mass of society--a class whose condition, if liberated from
the control and protection of individual masters yet remaining in the
community, would be one of exposure to a thousand ills from which they
are now shielded. Gurth, the born thrall of Cedric the Saxon, found
shelter under his master’s roof; in sickness a master’s care; in old
age, sustenance from a master’s hand. He was one of a household sharing
in the life thereof, in its loves and fears, its attachments and
feuds, its domestic endearments, its homefelt enjoyments. The English
operative of this day has no such associations as these. There are
superiors around him; but he finds a protector in none of them. Hence
his feelings towards the wealthy and noble are apt to be characterized
by sullen dislike, or by a mean servility. As for sympathy, he may
look for that to the spinning jenny and the cotton bale, and let his
affections grow to them if they can.
The world will behold in due time the disruption of that vast
organization of labor by which the ruling class in Great Britain have
concentrated the energies of the empire, and directed the same for so
many years to the extension of British power and dominion, which was
but a generalized mode of aggrandizing themselves. That system has
answered great purposes, has accomplished great results. But it has
generated in its progress a mass of social and political evil which
now clogs its working, and is gradually impairing its inmost springs
of action. Civilization is expanding beyond the narrow basis of a
class government. Humanity cries aloud in the name of her millions.
Men are something more than machines. The object of human existence
is not merely to gain, by incessant toil, the means of subsistence,
that the ability to toil on may be maintained. The mass of mankind
were never designed to be the drudges of a few, and to rest in
that position, as the highest attainment for them. The progress of
freedom is but the progress of individual development; its results
are the results of individual activity, extended more and more to the
integers of society. Men have found that power, in whatever depository
lodged, has been used by rulers in forgetfulness of its true uses, in
forgetfulness of the general good, in a blind persuasion that it was
theirs by an inherent right, to be employed for their aggrandizement
or pleasure. Thus the Priesthood first, as the agents of heaven, and
holding intercourse with the celestial powers; then the monarch, as the
personal representative of Deity; next the highest order of men in the
State, ὁι αριστοι, as possessing the combined wisdom of the wisest; all
these have held the supreme power in succession, in the progress of
freedom, and all have perverted the functions of government. Instead
of shepherds, guarding well the flock, they have been as hirelings,
fleecing the flock. The assumption of sovereign power by the general
body of the people, is the result of continued disappointments--of
continued failures to find a depository where sovereignty might be
safely deposited and righteously and wisely administered.
It will not do for the rulers of nations nor for the masters of slaves
to regard themselves as the holders of power for their own purposes
merely--but as the holders of a trust which they are to discharge with
fidelity, and which they are to give up, when their agency as the
administrators of authority is no longer productive of good.