suppose, for a moment, that it was: and, then, how does it appear right
to enslave them? The curse in question is prophecy. Now prophecy does
not say what ought to come to pass: nor does it say, that they who have
an agency in the production of the foretold event, will be innocent in
that agency. If the prediction of an event justifies those who are
instrumental in producing it, then was Judas innocent in betraying our
Saviour. "It must needs be that offences come, but wo to that man by
whom the offence cometh." Prophecy simply tells what will come to pass.
The question, whether it was proper to enslave Canaanites, depends for
its solution not on the curse or prophecy in question. If the measure
were in conformity with the general morality of the Bible, then it was
proper. Was it in conformity with it? It was not. The justice, equity
and mercy which were, agreeable to the Divine command, to characterize
the dealings of the Jews with each other, are in such conformity, and
these are all violated by slavery. If those dealings were all based on
the general morality of the Bible, as they certainly were, then slavery,
which, in its moral character, is completely opposite to them, cannot
rest on that morality. If that morality did not permit the Jews to
enslave Canaanites, how came they to enslave them? You will say, that
they had special authority from God to do so, in the words, "Both thy
bondmen and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the
heathen that are around about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and
bondmaids." Well, I will admit that God did in one instance, and that He
may have done so in others, give special authority to the Jews to do
that, which, without such authority, would have been palpably and
grossly immoral. He required them to exterminate some of the tribes of
the Canaanites. He may have required them to bring other Heathens under
a form of servitude violative of the general morality of his word.--Of
course, no blame attaches to the execution of such commands. When He
specially deputes us to kill for Him, we are as innocent in the agency,
notwithstanding the general law, "thou shalt not kill," as is the
earthquake or thunderbolt, when commissioned to destroy. Samuel was as
innocent in hewing "Agag in pieces," as is the tree that falls upon the
traveler. It may be remarked, in this connexion, that the fact that God
gave a special statute to destroy some of the tribes of the Canaanites,
argues the contrariety of the thing required to the morality of the
Bible. It argues, that this morality would not have secured the
accomplishment of what was required by the statute. Indeed, it is
probable that it was, sometimes, under the influence of the tenderness
and mercy inculcated by this morality, that the Jews were guilty of
going counter to the special statute in question, and sparing the
devoted Canaanites, as in the instance when they "spared Agag." We might
reason, similarly to show that a special statute, if indeed there were
such a one, authorizing the Jews to compel the Heathen to serve them,
argues that compulsory service is contrary to fundamental morality. We
will suppose that God did; in the special statute referred to, clothe
the Jews with power to enslave Heathens, and now let me ask you, whether
it is by this same statute to enslave, that you justify your neighbors
and yourself for enslaving your fellow men? But this is a special
statute, conferring a power on the Jews only--a power too, not to
enslave whomsoever they could; but only a specified portion of the human
family, and this portion, as we have seen, of a stock, other than that
from which you have obtained your slaves. If the special statutes, by
which God clothed the Jews with peculiar powers, may be construed to
clothe you with similar powers, then, inasmuch as they were authorized
and required to kill Canaanites, you may hunt up for destruction the
straggling descendants of such of the devoted ones, as escaped the sword
of the Jews. Or, to make a different interpretation of your rights,
under this supposition; since the statute in question authorized and
required the Jews to kill the heathen, within the borders of what was
properly the Jews' country, then you are also authorized and required to
kill the heathens within the limits of your country:--and these are not
wanting, if the testimony of your ecclesiastical bodies, before referred
to, can be relied on; and, if it be as they say, that the millions of
the poor colored brethren in the midst of you are made heathens by the
operation of the system, to which, with unparalleled wickedness, they
are subjected.
If then, neither Noah's curse, nor the special statute in question,
authorize you to enslave your fellow men, there is, probably, but one
ground on which you will contend for authority to do so--and this is the
ground of the general morality of the Christian religion--of the general
principles of right and duty, in the word of God. Do you find your
authority on this ground? If you do, then, manifestly, you have a right
to enslave me, and I a right to enslave you, and every man has a right
to enslave whomsoever he can;--a right as perfect, as is the right to do
good to one another. Indeed, the enslavement of each other would, under
this construction of duty, _be_ the doing of good to one another. Think
you, sir, that the universal exercise of this right would promote the
fulfilment of the "new commandment that ye love one another?" Think you,
it would be the harbinger of millenial peace and blessedness? Or, think
you not, rather, that it would fully and frightfully realize the
prophet's declaration: "They all lie in wait for blood: they hunt every
man his neighbor with a net."
If any people have a right to enslave their fellow men, it must be the
Jews, if they once had it. But if they ever had it, it ceased, when all
their peculiar rights ceased. In respect to rights from the Most High,
they are now on the same footing with other races of men. When "the vail
of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom," then that
distinction from the Gentile, in which the Jew had gloried, ceased, and
the partition wall between them was prostrate for ever. The Jew, as well
as the Gentile, was never more to depart from the general morality of
the Bible. He was never again to be under any special statutes, whose
requirements should bring him into collision with that morality: He was
no more to confine his sympathies and friendships within the narrow
range of the twelve tribes: but every son and daughter of Adam were
thenceforth entitled to claim from him the heart and hand of a brother.
"Under the glorious dispensation of the gospel," says the immortal
Granville Sharp, "we are absolutely bound to consider ourselves as
citizens of the world; every man whatever, without any partial
distinction of nation, distance, or complexion, must necessarily be
esteemed our neighbor and our brother; and we are absolutely bound, in
Christian duty, to entertain a disposition towards all mankind, as
charitable and benevolent, at least, as that which was required of the
Jews under the law towards their brethren; and, consequently, it is
absolutely unlawful for those who call themselves Christians, to exact
of their brethren (I mean their brethren of the universe) a more
burthensome service, than that to which the Jews were limited with
respect to their brethren of the house of Israel; and the slavery or
involuntary bondage of a brother Israelite was absolutely forbid."
It occurs to me, that after all which has been said to satisfy you, that
compulsory servitude, if such there were among the Jews, cannot properly
be pleaded in justification of yours; a question may still be floating
in your mind whether, if God directed his chosen people to enslave the
Heathen, slavery should not be regarded as a good system of servitude?
Just as pertinently may you ask, whether that is not a good system of
servitude, which is found in some of our state prisons. Punishment
probably--certainly not labor--is the leading object in the one case as
well as the other: and the labor of the bondman in the one, as well as
of the convict in the other, constitutes but a subordinate
consideration. To suppose that God would, with every consideration out
of view, but that of having the best relation of employer and laborer,
make choice of slavery--to suppose that He believes that this state of
servitude operates most beneficially, both for the master and the
servant--is a high impeachment of the Divine wisdom and goodness. But
thus guilty are you, if you are unwilling to believe, that, if He chose
the severe servitude in question, He chose it for the punishment of his
enemies, or from some consideration, other than its suitableness for the
ordinary purposes of the relation of master and servant.
But it has been for the sake of argument only, that I have admitted that
God authorized the Jews to enslave the heathen. I now totally deny that
He did so. You will, of course, consent that if He did so, it was in a
special statute, as was the case when He authorized them to exterminate
other heathen: and you will as readily consent that He enacted the
statutes, in both instances, with the view of punishing his enemies.
Now, in killing the Canaanites, the Jew was constituted, not the owner
of his devoted fellow man, but simply the executioner of God's
vengeance: and evidently, such and no other was his character when he
was reducing the Canaanite to involuntary servitude--that he did so
reduce him, and was commissioned by God to do so, is the supposition we
make for the sake of argument. Had the Jews been authorized by God to
shut up in dungeons for life those of the heathen, whom they were
directed to have for bondmen and bondmaids, you would not claim, that
they, any more than sheriffs and jailers in our day, are to be
considered in the light of owners of the persons in their charge. Much
less then, can the Jews be considered as the owners of any person whom
they held in servitude: for, however severe the type of that servitude,
the liberty of its subject was not restricted, as was that of the
prisoners in question:--most certainly, the power asserted over him is
not to be compared in extent with that asserted by the Jew over the
Canaanite, whom he slew;--a case in which he was, indisputably, but the
executioner of the Divine wrath. The Canaanite, whether devoted to a
violent death or to an involuntary servitude, still remained the
property of God: and God no more gave him up to be the property of the
executioner of his wrath, than the people of the State of New York give
up the offender against public justice to be the property of the
ministers of that justice. God never suspends the accountability of his
rational creatures to himself: and his rights to them, He never
transfers to others. He could not do so consistently with his
attributes, and his indissoluble relations to man. But slavery claims,
that its subjects are the property of man. It claims to turn them into
mere chattels, and to make them as void of responsibility to God, as
other chattels. Slavery, in a word, claims to push from his throne the
Supreme Being, who declares, "all souls are mine." That it does not
succeed in getting its victim out of God's hand, and in unmanning and
_chattelizing_ him--that God's hold upon him remains unbroken, and that
those upward tendencies of the soul, which distinguish man from the
brute, are not yet entirely crushed in him--is no evidence in favor of
its nature:--it simply proves, that its power is not equal to its
purposes. We see, then, that the Jews--if it be true that they reduced
their fellow men to involuntary servitude, and did so as the
Heaven-appointed ministers of God's justice,--are not to be charged with
slaveholding for it. There may be involuntary servitude where there is
no slavery. The essential and distinguishing feature of slavery is its
reduction of man to property--to a thing. A tenant of one of our state
prisons is under a sentence of "hard labor for life." But he is not a
slave. That is, he is not the _thing_ which slavery would mark its
subject. He is still a man. Offended justice has placed him in his
present circumstances, because he is a man: and, it is because he is a
_man_ and not a _thing_--a responsible, and not an irresponsible being,
that he must continue in his present trials and sufferings.
God's commandments to the Jews, respecting servants and strangers, show
that He not only did not authorize them to set up the claim of property
in their fellow men, but that He most carefully guarded against such
exercises of power, as might lead to the assumption of a claim so
wrongful to Himself. Some of these commandments I will bring to your
notice. They show that whatever was the form of servitude under which
God allowed the Jews to hold the heathen, it was not slavery. Indeed, if
all of the Word of God which bears on this point were cited and duly
explained, it would, perhaps, appear that He allowed no involuntary
servitude whatever amongst the Jews. I give no opinion whether he
allowed it or not. There are strong arguments which go to show, that He
did not allow it; and with these arguments the public will soon be made
more extensively acquainted. It is understood, that the next number of
the Anti-Slavery Examiner will be filled with them.
1st. So galling are the bonds of Southern slavery, that it could not
live a year under the operation of a law forbidding the restoration of
fugitive servants to their masters. How few of the discontented subjects
of this oppressive servitude would agree with Hamlet, that it is better
to
--"bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of."
What a running there would be from the slave States to the free!--from
one slave State to another!--from one plantation to another! Now, such a
law--a solemn commandment of God--many writers on slavery are of the
opinion, perhaps too confident opinion, was in force in the Jewish
nation (Deut. xxiii, 15); and yet the system of servitude on which it
bore, and which you cite as the pattern and authority for your own,
lived in spite of it. How could it? Manifestly, because its genius was
wholly unlike that of Southern slavery; and because its rigors and
wrongs, if rigors and wrongs there were in it, bear no comparison to
those which characterize Southern slavery; and which would impel
nine-tenths of its adult subjects to fly from their homes, did they but
know that they would not be obliged to return to them. When Southern
slaveholders shall cease to scour the land for fugitive servants, and to
hunt them with guns and dogs, and to imprison, and scourge, and kill
them;--when, in a word, they shall subject to the bearing of such a law
as that referred to their system of servitude, then we shall begin to
think that they are sincere in likening it to the systems which existed
among the Jews. The law, enacted in Virginia in 1705, authorizing any
two justices of the peace "by proclamation to _outlaw_ runaways, who
might thereafter be killed and destroyed by any person whatsoever, by
such ways and means as he might think fit, without accusation or
impeachment of any crime for so doing," besides that it justifies what I
have just said about hunting fugitive servants, shows, 1st. That the
American Anti-Slavery Society is of too recent an origin to be the
occasion, as slaveholders and their apologists would have us believe, of
all the cruel laws enacted at the South. 2d. That Southern slaveholders
would be very unwilling to have their system come under the operation of
such a law as that which allowed the Jewish servant to change his
master. 3d. That they are monsters, indeed, into which men may be turned
by their possession of absolute power.
You, perhaps, suppose, (and I frankly admit to you, that there is some
room for the supposition,) that the servants referred to in the 15th and
16th verses of the 23d chapter of Deuteronomy, were such as had escaped
from foreign countries to the country of the Jews. But, would this view
of the matter help you? By taking it, would you not expose yourself to
be most pertinently and embarrassingly asked, for what purpose these
servants fled to a strange and most odious people?--and would not your
candid reply necessarily be, that it was to escape from the galling
chains of slavery, to a far-famed milder type of servitude?--from
Gentile oppression, to a land in which human rights were protected by
Divine laws? But, as I have previously intimated, I have not the
strongest confidence in the anti-slavery argument, so frequently drawn
from this passage of the Bible. I am not sure that a Jewish servant is
referred to: nor that on the supposition of his being a foreigner, the
servant came under any form of servitude when entering the land of the
Jews. Before leaving the topic, however, let me remark, that the
passage, under any construction of it, makes against Southern slavery.
Admit that the fugitive servant was a foreigner, and that he was not
reduced to servitude on coming among the Jews, let me ask you whether
the law in question, under this view of it, would be tolerated by the
spirit of Southern slavery?--and whether, before obedience would be
rendered to it, you would not need to have a different type of
servitude, in the place of slavery? You would--I know you would--for you
have been put to the trial. When, by a happy providence, a vessel was
driven, the last year, to a West India island, and the chains of the
poor slaves with which it was filled fell from around them, under
freedom's magic power, the exasperated South was ready to go to war with
Great Britain. _Then_, the law against delivering up foreign servants to
their masters was not relished by you. The given case comes most
strikingly within the supposed policy of this law. The Gentile was to be
permitted to remain in the land to which he had fled, and where he would
have advantages for becoming acquainted with the God of the Bible. Such
advantages are they enjoying who escaped from the confessed heathenism
of Southern slavery to the island in question. They are now taught to
read that "Book of life," which before, they were forbidden to read. But
again, suppose a slave were to escape from a West India island into the
Southern States--would you, with your "domestic institutions," of which
you are so jealous, render obedience to this Divine law? No; you would
subject him _for ever_ to a servitude more severe than that, from which
he had escaped. Indeed, if a _freeman_ come within a certain portion of
our Southern country, and be so unhappy as to bear a physical
resemblance to the slave, he will be punished for that resemblance, by
imprisonment, and even by a reduction to slavery.
2d. Southern slaveholders, who, by their laws, own men as absolutely as
they own cattle, would have it believed, that Jewish masters thus owned
their fellow-men. If they did, why was there so wide a difference
between the commandment respecting the stray man, and that respecting
the stray ox or ass? The man was not, but the beasts were, to be
returned; and that too, even though their owner was the enemy of him who
met them. (Ex. 23. 4.) I repeat the question;--why this difference? The
only answer is, because God made the brute to be the _property_ of man;
but He never gave us our noble nature for such degradation. Man's title
deed, in the eighth Psalm, extends his right of property to the
inanimate and brute creation only--not to the flesh and bones and spirit
of his fellow-man.
3d. The very different penalties annexed to the crime of stealing a man,
and to that of stealing a thing, shows the eternal and infinite
difference which God has established between a man and property. The
stealing of a man was _surely_ to be punished with death; whilst mere
property was allowed to atone for the offence of stealing property.
4th. Who, if not the slave, can be said to be vexed and oppressed! But
God's command to his people was, that they should neither "vex a
stranger, nor oppress him."
5th. Such is the nature of American slavery, that not even its warmest
friends would claim that it could recover itself after such a "year of
jubilee" as God appointed. One such general delivery of its victims
would be for ever fatal to it. I am aware that you deny that all the
servants of the Jews shared in the blessings of the "year of jubilee."
But let me ask you, whether if one third or one half of your servants
were discharged from servitude every fiftieth year--and still more,
whether if a considerable proportion of them were thus discharged every
sixth year--the remainder would not be fearfully discontented? Southern
masters believe, that their only safety consists in keeping down the
discontent of their servants. Hence their anxious care to withhold from
them the knowledge of human rights. Hence the abolitionist who is caught
in a slave state, must be whipped or put to death. If there were a class
of servants amongst the Jews, who could bear to see all their fellow
servants go free, whilst they themselves were retained in bondage, then
that bondage was of a kind very different from what you suppose it to
have been. Had its subjects worn the galling chains of American slavery,
they would have struggled with bloody desperation for the deliverance
which they saw accorded to others.
I scarcely need say, that the Hebrew words rendered "bondmen" and
"bondmaids," do not, in themselves considered, and independently of the
connexion in which they are used, any more than the Greek words _doulos_
and _doule_, denote a particular kind of servant. If the servant was a
slave, because he was called by the Hebrew word rendered "bondman," then
was Jacob a slave also:--and even still greater absurdities could be
deduced from the position.
I promised, in a former part of this communication, to give you my
reasons for denying that you are at liberty to plead in behalf of
slavery, the example of any compulsory servitude in which Jews may have
held foreigners. My promise is now fulfilled, and I trust that the
reasons are such as not to admit of an answer.
Driven, as you now are, from every other conceivable defence of
slaveholding it may be (though I must hope better things of you), that
you will fly to the ground taken by the wicked multitude--that there is
authority in the laws of man for being a slaveholder. But, not only is
the sin of your holding slaves undiminished by the consideration, that
they are held under human laws; but, your claiming to hold them under
such laws, makes you guilty of an additional sin, which, if measured by
its pernicious consequences to others, is by no means inconsiderable.
The truth of these two positions is apparent from the following
considerations.
1st. There is no valid excuse to be found, either in man's laws or any
where else, for transgressing God's laws. Whatever may be thought, or
said to the contrary, it still remains, and for ever will remain true,
that under all circumstances, "sin is the transgression of the (Divine)
law."
2d. In every instance in which a commandment of God is transgressed,
under the cover and plea of a human law, purporting to permit what that
commandment forbids, there is, in proportion to the authority and
influence of the transgressor, a fresh sanction imparted to that law;
and consequently, in the same proportion the public habit of setting up
a false standard of right and wrong is promoted. It is this habit--this
habit of graduating our morality by the laws of the land in which we
live--that makes the "mischief framed by a law" so much more pernicious
than that which has no law to countenance it, and to commend it to the
conscience. Who is unaware, that nothing tends so powerfully to keep the
traffic in strong drink from becoming universally odious, as the fact,
that this body and soul destroying business finds a sanction in human
laws? Who has not seen the man, authorized by these laws to distribute
the poison amongst his tippling neighbors, proof against all the shafts
of truth, under the self-pleasing and self-satisfying consideration,
that his is a lawful business.
This habit of setting up man's law, instead of God's law, as the
standard of conduct, is strikingly manifested in the fact, that on the
ground, that the Federal Constitution binds the citizens of the United
States to perpetuate slavery, or at least, not to meddle with it, we
are, both at the North and the South, called on to forbear from all
efforts to abolish it. The exertions made to discover in that
instrument, authority for slavery, and authority against endeavors to
abolish it, are as great, anxious, and unwearied, as if they who made
them, thought that the fortunate discovery would settle for ever the
great question which agitates our country--would nullify all the laws of
God against slavery--and make the oppression of our colored brethren, as
long as time shall last, justifiable and praiseworthy. But this
discovery will never be made; for the Constitution is not on the side of
the slaveholder. If it were, however, it would clothe him with no moral
right to act in opposition to the paramount law of God. It is not at all
necessary to the support of my views, in this communication, to show
that the Constitution was not designed to favor slavery; and yet, a few
words to this end may not be out of place.