The German is capable of making a contract, and in the case supposed,
does make a contract; but your slave is incapable of making any
contract. 2d. The German receives wages; the price of carrying himself
and family being the stipulated price for his services, during the ten
years; but your slave receives no wages. 3d. The German, like any other
hireling, and, like any apprentice in our country, is under the
protection of law. But, there is no law to shield the slave from wrongs.
Being a mere chattel or thing, he has no rights; and, therefore, he can
have no wrongs to be redressed. Does Professor Hodge say, that there are
statutes limiting and regulating the power of the slaveholder? I grant
there are; though it must be remembered, that there is one way of even
murdering a slave, which some of the slave States do not only not
forbid, but impliedly and practically admit[A]. The Professor should
know, however, that all these statutes are, practically, a mere nullity.
Nevertheless, they show the absoluteness of the power which they
nominally qualify. This absoluteness is as distinctly implied by them,
as the like was by the law of the Emperor Claudius, which imposed
limitations upon the "jus vitae et necis" (the right of life and death)
which Roman slavery put into the hand of the master. But if the
Professor should be so imprudent as to cite us to the slave code for
evidence of its merciful provisions, he will, in so doing, authorize us
to cite him to that code for evidence of the _nature_ of slavery. This
authority, however, he would not like to give us; for he is unwilling to
have slavery judged of by its own code. He insists, that it shall be
judged of by that ideal system of slavery, which is lodged in his own
brain, and which he can bring forth by parcels, to suit present
occasions, as Mahomet produced the leaves of the Koran.
[Footnote A: The licensed murder referred to, is that where the slave
dies under "moderate correction." But is not the murder of a slave by a
white man, _in any way_, practically licensed in all the slave States?
Who ever heard of a white man's being put to death, under Southern laws,
for the murder of a slave? American slavery provides impunity for the
white murderer of the slave, by its allowing none but whites--none but
those who construct and uphold the system of abominations--to testify
against the murderer. But why particularize causes of this impunity? The
whole policy of the Southern slave system goes to provide it. How
unreasonable is it to suppose, that they, who have conspired against a
portion of their fellow-beings, and mutually pledged themselves to treat
them as _mere things_--how unreasonable, I say, is it to suppose, that
they would consent to put a _man_ to death, on account of his treatment,
in whatever way, of a _mere thing_? Not long ago, I was informed by a
highly respectable lawyer of the State of Georgia, that he had known a
number of attempts (attempts most probably but in form and name) to
effect the conviction of whites for their undoubted murder of slaves.
But in every instance, the jurors perjured themselves, rather than
consent that a _man_ should be put to death, for the liberty he had
taken in disposing of a _thing_. They had rather perjure themselves,
than by avenging the blood of a _slave_ with that of a _man_, make a
breach upon the policy of keeping the slave ignorant, that he has the
_nature_, and consequently the _rights_, of a man.]
Professor Hodge tells his readers, in substance, that the selling of
men, as they are sold under the system of slavery, is to be classed with
the cessions of territory, occasionally made by one sovereign to
another; and he would have the slave, who is sold from hand to hand, and
from State to State, at the expense to his bleeding heart, of the
disruption of its dearest ties, think his lot no harder than that of the
inhabitant of Louisiana, who was passed without his will, from the
jurisdiction of the French government to that of the United States.
When a good man lends himself to the advocacy of slavery, he must, at
least for a time, feel himself to be anywhere but at home, amongst his
new thoughts, doctrines, and modes of reasoning. This is very evident in
the case before us--especially, when now and then, old habits of thought
and feeling break out, in spite of every effort to repress them, and the
Professor is himself again, and discourses as manfully, as fearlessly,
and as eloquently, as he ever had done before the slaveholders got their
hands upon him. It is not a little amusing to notice, that, although the
burden of his article is to show that slavery is one of God's
institutions, (what an undertaking for a Professor of Theology in the
year 1836!) he so far forgets the interests of his new friends and their
expectations from him, as to admit on one page, that "the general
principles of the gospel have destroyed domestic slavery throughout the
greater part of Christendom;" and on another, that "the South has to
choose between emancipation, by the silent and holy influence of the
gospel, or to abide the issue of a long continued conflict against the
laws of God." Whoever heard, until these strange times on which we have
fallen, of any thing, which, to use the Professor's language about
slavery, "it is in vain, to contend is sin, and yet profess reverence
for the Scriptures," being at war with and destroyed by the principles
of the gospel. What sad confusion of thought the pro-slavery influences,
to which some great divines have yielded, have wrought in them!
I will proceed to argue, that the institution in the Southern States
called "slavery," is radically unlike any form of servitude under which
Jews were held, agreeably to the Divine will; and also radically unlike
any form of servitude approved of God in the patriarchal families.
1st. God does not contradict Himself. He is "without variableness or
shadow of turning." He loves his word and has "magnified it above all
his name." He commands his rational creatures to "search the
Scriptures." He cannot, therefore, approve of a system which forbids the
searching of them, and shuts out their light from the soul; and which,
by the confession of your own selves, turns men in this gospel land into
heathen. He has written his commandment against adultery, and He cannot,
therefore, approve of a system, which induces this crime, by forbidding
marriage. The following extract from an opinion of the Attorney General
of Maryland, shows some of the consequences of this "forbidding to
marry." "A slave has never maintained an action against the violator of
his bed. A slave is not admonished for incontinence, or punished for
fornication or adultery; never prosecuted for bigamy." Again, God has
written his commandment, that children should honor their parents. How,
then, can He approve of a system, which pours contempt on the relation
of parent and child? Which subjects them to be forcibly separated from
each other, and that too, beyond the hope of reunion?--under which
parents are exposed and sold in the market-place along with horses and
cattle?--under which they are stripped and lashed, and made to suffer
those innumerable, and some of them, nameless indignities, that tend to
generate in their children, who witness them, any feelings, rather than
those of respect and honor, for parents thus degraded? Some of these
nameless indignities are alluded to in a letter written to me from a
slave state, in March, 1833. "In this place," says the writer, "I find a
regular and a much frequented slave market, where thousands are yearly
sold like cattle to the highest bidder. It is the opinion of gentlemen
here, that not far from five hundred thousand dollars are yearly paid in
this place for negroes; and at this moment, I can look from the window
of my room and count six droves of from twenty to forty each, sitting in
the market place for sale. This morning I witnessed the sale of twelve
slaves, and I could but shudder at the language used and the liberties
taken with the females!"
2d. As a proof, that in the kinds of servitude referred to, God did not
invest Abraham, or any other person with that absolute ownership of his
fellow-men, which is claimed by Southern slaveholders--I would remark,
that He has made man accountable to Himself; but slavery makes him
accountable to, and a mere appendage to his fellow-man. Slavery
substitutes the will of a fallible fellow-man for that infallible rule
of action--the will of God. The slave, instead of being allowed to make
it the great end of his existence to glorify God and enjoy Him for ever,
is degraded from his exalted nature, which borders upon angelic dignity,
to be, to do, and to suffer what a mere man bids him be, do, and suffer.
The Southern slave would obey God in respect to marriage, and also to
the reading and studying of His word. But this, as we have seen, is
forbidden him. He may not marry; nor may he read the Bible. Again, he
would obey God in the duties of secret and social prayer. But he may not
attend the prayer-meeting--certainly not that of his choice; and
instances are known, where the master has intruded upon the slave's
secret audience with heaven, to teach him by the lash, or some other
instrument of torture, that he would allow "no other God before"
himself.
Said Joseph Mason, an intelligent colored man, who was born and bred
near Richmond, in Virginia, in reply to my question whether he and his
fellow-slaves cared about their souls--"We did not trouble ourselves
about our souls; we were our masters' property and not our own; under
their and not our own control; and we believed that our masters were
responsible for our souls." This unconcern for their spiritual interests
grew very naturally out of their relation to their masters; and were the
relation ordained of God, the unconcern would, surely, be both
philosophical and sinless.
God cannot approve of a system of servitude, in which the master is
guilty of assuming absolute power--of assuming God's place and relation
towards his fellow-men. Were the master, in every case, a wise and good
man--as wise and good as is consistent with this wicked and
heaven-daring assumption on his part--the condition of the slave would
it is true, be far more tolerable, than it now is. But even then, we
should protest as strongly as ever against slavery; for it would still
be guilty of its essential wickedness of robbing a man of his right to
himself, and of robbing God of His right to him, and of putting these
stolen rights into the hand of an erring mortal. Nay, if angels were
constituted slaveholders, our objection to the relation would remain
undiminished; since there would still be the same robbery of which we
now complain.
But you will say, that I have overlooked the servitude in which the Jews
held strangers and foreigners; and that it is on this, more than any
other, that you rely for your justification of slavery. I will say
nothing now of this servitude; but before I close this communication, I
will give my reasons for believing, that whatever was its nature, even
if it were compulsory, it cannot be fairly pleaded in justification of
slavery.
After you shall have allowed, as you will allow, that slavery, as it
exists, is at war with God, you will be likely to say, that the fault is
not in the theory of it; but in the practical departure from that
theory; that it is not the system, but the practice under it, which is
at war with God. Our concern, however, is with slavery as it is, and not
with any theory of it. But to indulge you, we will look at the system of
slavery, as it is presented to us, in the laws of the slave States; and
what do we find here? Why, that the system is as bad as the practice
under it. Here we find the most diabolical devices to keep millions of
human beings in a state of heathenism--in the deepest ignorance and most
loathsome pollution. But you will tell me, that I do not look far enough
to find the true theory of slavery; and that the cruelties and
abominations, which the laws of the slave States have ingrafted on this
theory, are not acknowledged by the good men in those States to be a
part of the theory. Well, you shall have the benefit of this plea; and I
admit, for the sake of argument, that this theory of slavery, which lies
far back, and out of sight of every thing visible and known about
slavery, is right. And what does this admission avail you? It is slavery
as it is--as it is seen and known, that the abolitionists are contending
against. But, say you, to induce our forbearance, "We good men at the
South are restoring slavery, as fast as we can, to what it should be;
and we will soon make its erring practice quadrate with its perfect and
sinless theory." Success to your endeavors! But let me ask these good
men, whether similar representations would avail to make them forbearing
towards any other class of offenders; and whether they would allow these
offenders to justify the wickedness of their hands, by pleading the
purity of their hearts. Suppose that I stand in court confessedly guilty
of the crime of passing counterfeit money; and that I ask for my
acquittal on the ground, that, notwithstanding I am practically wrong, I
am, nevertheless, theoretically right. "Believe me," I say, in tones of
deep and unfeigned pathos, and with a corresponding pressure of my hand
upon my heart, "that the principles within are those of the purest
morality; and that it is my faithful endeavor to bring my deportment,
which, as you this day witness, is occasionally devious, into perfect
conformity with my inward rectitude. My theory of honest and holy living
is all that you could wish it to be. Be but patient, and you shall
witness its beautiful exhibitions in my whole conduct." Now, you
certainly would not have this plea turn to my advantage;--why then
expect that your similar plea should be allowed?
We must continue to judge of slavery by what it is, and not by what you
tell us it will, or may be. Until its character be righteous, we shall
continue to condemn it; but when you shall have brought it back to your
sinless and beautiful theory of it, it will have nothing to fear from
the abolitionists. There are two prominent reasons, however, for
believing that you will never present Southern slavery to us in this
lovely character, the mere imagination of which is so dear to you. The
first is, that you are doing nothing to this end. It is an indisputable
fact that Southern slavery is continually getting wider and wider from
God, and from an innocent theory of servitude; and the "good men at the
South," of whom we have spoken, are not only doing nothing to arrest
this increasing divergency, but they are actually favoring it. The
writings of your Dews, and Baxters, and Plummers, and Postells, and
Andersons, and the proceedings of your ecclesiastical bodies, abundantly
show this. Never, and the assertion is borne out by your statute books,
as well as other evidences, has Southern slavery multiplied its
abominations so rapidly, as within the last ten years; and never before
had the Southern Church been so much engaged to defend and perpetuate
these abominations. The other of these reasons for believing that
Southern slavery will never be conformed to your _beau ideal_ of
slavery, in which it is presupposed there are none but principles of
righteousness, is, that on its first contact with these principles, it
would "vanish into thin air," leaving "not a wreck behind." In proof of
this, and I need not cite any other case, it would be immediate death to
Southern slavery to concede to its subjects, God's institution of
marriage; and hence it is, that its code forbids marriage. The rights of
the husband in the wife, and of the wife in the husband, and of parents
in their children, would stand directly in the way of that traffic in
human flesh, which is the very life-blood of slavery; and the
assumptions of the master would, at every turn and corner, be met and
nullified by these rights; since all his commands to the children of
those servants (for now they should no longer be called slaves) would be
in submission to the paramount authority of the parents[A]. And here,
sir, you and I might bring our discussion to a close, by my putting the
following questions to you, both of which your conscience would compel
you to answer in the affirmative.
[Footnote A: I am aware that Professor Hodge asserts, that "slavery may
exist without those laws which interfere with their (the slaves) marital
or parental right" Now, this is a point of immense importance in the
discussion of the question, whether slavery is sinful; and I, therefore,
respectfully ask him either to retract the assertion, or to prove its
correctness. Ten thousands of his fellow-citizens, to whom the assertion
is utterly incredible, unite with me in this request. If he can show,
that slavery does not "interfere with marital or parental rights," they
will cease to oppose it. Their confident belief is, that slavery and
marriage, whether considered in the light of a civil contract, or a
scriptural institution, are entirely incompatible with each other.]
1st. Is not Southern slavery guilty of a most heaven-daring crime, in
substituting concubinage for God's institution of marriage?
2d. Would not that slavery, and also every theory and modification of
slavery, for which you may contend, come speedily to nought, if their
subjects were allowed to marry? Slavery, being an abuse, is incapable of
reformation. It dies, not only when you aim a fatal blow at its life
principle--its foundation doctrine of man's right to property in
man[B]--but it dies as surely, when you prune it of its manifold
incidents of pollution and irreligion.
[Footnote B: I mean by this phrase, "right to property in man," a right
to hold man as property; and I do not see with what propriety certain
writers construe it to mean, a property in the mere services of a man.]
But it would be treating you indecorously to stop you at this stage of
the discussion, before we are a third of the way through your book, and
thus deny a hearing to the remainder of it. We will proceed to what you
say of the slavery which existed in the time of the New Testament
writers. Before we do so, however, let me call your attention to a few
of the specimens of very careless reasoning in that part of your book,
which we have now gone over. They may serve to inspire you with a modest
distrust of the soundness of other parts of your argument.
After concluding that Abraham was a slaveholder, you quote the following
language from the Bible; "Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge, my
commandments, my statutes, and my laws." You then inquire, "How could
this be true of Abraham, holding as he did, until he was an old man,
more slaves than any man in Mississippi or Louisiana?" To be consistent
with your design in quoting this passage, you must argue from it, that
Abraham was perfect. But this he was not; and, therefore, your quotation
is vain. Again, if the slaveholder would quiet his conscience with the
supposition, that "Abraham held more slaves than any man in Mississippi
or Louisiana," let him remember, that he had also more concubines (Gen.
25: 6), "than any man in Mississippi or Louisiana;" and, if Abraham's
authority be in the one case conclusive for slaveholding, equally so
must it be in the other, for concubinage.
Perhaps, in saying that "Abraham had more concubines than any man in
Mississippi or Louisiana," I have done injustice to the spirit of
propagation prevailing amongst the gentlemen of those States. It may be,
that some of your planters quite distance the old patriarch in obedience
to the command to "multiply and replenish the earth." I am correctly
informed, that a planter in Virginia, who counted, I know not how many
slaves upon his plantation, confessed on his death-bed, that his
licentiousness had extended to every adult female amongst them. This
planter was a near relative of the celebrated Patrick Henry. It may be,
that you have planters in Mississippi and Louisiana, who avail
themselves to the extent that he did, of the power which slaveholding
gives to pollute and destroy. The hundreds of thousands of mulattoes,
who constitute the Southern commentary on the charge, that the
abolitionists design amalgamation, bear witness that this planter was
not singular in his propensities. I do not know what you can do with
this species of your population. Besides, that it is a standing and deep
reproach on Southern chastity, it is not a little embarrassing and
puzzling to those who have received the doctrine, that the descendants
of Africa amongst us must be returned to the land of their ancestors.
How the poor mulatto shall be disposed of, under this doctrine, between
the call which Africa makes for him, on the one hand, and that which
some state of Europe sends out for him on the other, is a problem more
difficult of solution than that which the contending mothers brought
before the matchless wisdom of Solomon.
In the paragraph, which relates to the fourth and tenth commandments,
there is another specimen of your loose reasoning. You say, that the
language, "In it (the Sabbath) thou shalt do no work, thou, nor thy son,
nor thy daughter, nor thy man servant, nor thy maid servant,"
"recognises the authority of the master over the servant." I grant, that
it does: but does it at all show, that these servants were slaves? Does
it recognise any more authority than the master should exercise over his
voluntary servants? Should not the head of a family restrain all his
servants, as well the voluntary as the involuntary, from unnecessary
labor on the Sabbath? You also say, that the tenth commandment
"recognizes servants as the _property_ of their masters." But how does
it appear from the language of this commandment, that the man servant
and maid servant are property any more than the wife is? We will
proceed, however, to the third section of your book.
Your acquaintance with history has enabled you to show some of the
characteristics and fruits of Greek and Roman slavery. You state the
facts, that the subjects of this slavery were "absolutely the property
of their masters"--that they "were used like dogs"--that "they were
forbidden to learn any liberal art or perform any act worthy of their
masters"--that "once a day they received a certain number of stripes for
fear they should forget they were slaves"--that, at one time, "sixty
thousand of them in Sicily and Italy were chained and confined to work
in dungeons"--that "in Rome there was a continual market for slaves,"
and that "the slaves were commonly exposed for sale naked"--that, when
old, they were turned away," and that too by a master, highly esteemed
for his superior virtues, to starve to death"--that they were thrown
into ponds to be food for fish--that they were in the city of Athens
near twenty times as numerous as free persons--that there were in the
Roman Empire sixty millions of slaves to twenty millions of freemen mind
that many of the Romans had five thousand, some ten thousand, and others
twenty thousand.
And now, for what purpose is your recital of these facts?--not, for its
natural effect of awakening, in your readers, the utmost abhorrence of
slavery:--no--but for the strange purpose (the more strange for being in
the breast of a minister of the gospel) of showing your readers, that
even Greek and Roman slavery was innocent, and agreeable to God's will;
and that, horrid as are the fruits you describe, the tree, which bore
them, needed but to be dug about and pruned--not to be cut down. This
slavery is innocent, you insist, because the New Testament does not
show, that it was specifically condemned by the Apostles. By the same
logic, the races, the games, the dramatic entertainments, and the shows
of gladiators, which abounded in Greece and Rome, were, likewise,
innocent, because the New Testament does not show a specific
condemnation of them by the apostles[A]. But, although the New Testament
does not show such condemnation, does it necessarily follow, that they
were silent, in relation to these sins? Or, because the New Testament
does not specifically condemn Greek and Roman slavery, may we,
therefore, infer, that the Apostles did not specifically condemn it?
Look through the published writings of many of the eminent divines, who
have lived in modern times, and have written and published much for the
instruction of the churches, and you will not find a line in them
against gambling or theatres or the slave-trade;--in some of them, not a
line against the very common sin of drunkenness. Think you, therefore,
that they never spoke or wrote against these things? It would be
unreasonable to expect to find, in print, their sentiments against all,
even of the crying sins of their times. But how much more unreasonable
is it to expect to find in the few pages of the Apostles' published
letters, the whole of which can be read in a few hours, their sentiments
in relation to all the prominent sins of the age in which they lived!
And far greater still is the unreasonableness of setting them down, as
favorable to all practices which these letters do not specifically
condemn.