considered _unclean_ by the Hebrews, or when prisoners taken in war,
were not cut off from the general law of protection. They enjoyed
human rights, and some of the civil privileges of the Jewish born. No
absolute distinctions of men can be traced in the Mosaic law without
perverting its whole moral tendency. When a slave received any severe
wound from his master, he was from thence declared free, and the Jewish
law punishes with death the sale of a freeman into slavery--(a fact,
by the way, in striking contrast with the great social movement of
the militant pro-slavery party, whose policy it is to enslave both
emancipated and free-born). A slave concubine could not be sold to
strangers--still less her children by her master. But if he wished to
be rid of her, the master was obliged to find her a husband or another
master among his relatives or friends. In the old colonial times in
America, the law inflicted a penalty on _white servants and bondsmen_
for mixing with black chattels--but what penalty threatened the _white
masters_ for the same offence? The fact is, the slave-breeders of the
slave regions continually invoke the Bible to justify their doings, and
continually violate Scriptural regulations.
The Mosaic law commands: "Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the
servant which is escaped from his master unto thee: he shall dwell
with thee, even among you, in the place which he shall choose in one
of thy gates, where it liketh him best: thou shalt not oppress him."
Some modern commentators attempt to contract this humane and universal
command, by arguing that it only applied to _Jewish born_ servants or
slaves; but sound criticism utterly annihilates the assumption. On
the contrary, the phrase "_in one of thy gates_," is a positive proof
that the command had in view fugitives of every tribe and kingdom.
All Gentiles, slaves as well as freemen, were considered by the Jews
"unclean," and there might have been some difficulty in admitting such
runaways into their _houses_. But whatever was the creed or nationality
of the _escaped_, he found safety "_in the gates_," and from thence
could not be "delivered unto his master." Difference of religion and
not of race constituted the paramount distinction between the Jew and
the Gentile; if the command, therefore, were exclusively applicable
to the Jewish slave, even then its spirit is violated by the American
fugitive slave act, to uphold which, the Mosaic law is blasphemed--for
the enslaved race of Christian America are of the same faith and
baptism as their owners.
With the increase of luxury and corruption under the Hebrew kings,
kidnapping and the traffic in men and women seem to have largely
increased. The slaves stolen in piratical expeditions among neighboring
tribes were exported to a distance, while others were imported from
thence into Judea. But against this practice the prophets--those
inspired successors of the lawgiver of Sinai--thundered terribly. The
Edomites and other Phoenicians--who seem to have been pre-eminently
the slave-traders of their time--importing slaves from Gaza, which was
then a great thoroughfare and commercial metropolis, and exporting them
to other points, were declared to be the most accursed of nations. So
now, the modern Edomites of this continent, who have again revived the
slave-traffic between Africa and this country, together with all who
aid, abet, patronize or excuse them, come under the curse so often
denounced against their ancient prototypes.
Under the kings, also, domestic slavery became more extensive, and its
influence more fatal. It did not yet, however, succeed in devouring the
vitals of the nation, or wholly destroying the small homesteads and
the free yeomanry, as it afterward did in Greece, and over almost the
entire ancient world under republican and imperial Rome. The epoch of
the kings is one of moral degradation and effeminacy on the one hand,
and of disasters and captivities to the Jews themselves, on the other.
Sensuality and general depravity flourished rank and wild under the
malignant influence of domestic slavery. Slavery relaxed the ties of
family and society among the Jews, as history shows it to have done in
every place and in all ages of its existence--for slavery, sensuality
and general depravity mutually engender and sustain each other. But in
their deepest and most helpless degradation, the Jews never sold the
offspring of their own personal lechery into slavery: this advance on
the turpitude of Hebraic slavery--this outrage on the humanity of the
faith we inherit from the Jews--was first justified and systematized
by the slave states of the great Republic of the West! In ancient as
in Christian times, there were doubtless parents who abandoned their
legitimate or illegitimate offspring to public mercy, to accident, or
to servitude; but all legislators have condemned such inhumanity, and
tried, if possible, to regulate and soften it. So, deliberate selling
of one's children may anciently have occurred in solitary instances;
but it was always and everywhere condemned as the sum of all infamies.
Many of the tutelary regulations for the slaves laid down in the law,
fell, it is true, into disuse, even as other parts of the law were
violated by the wayward and stiff-necked Israelites. On the advent
to power of the good Josiah, however, the violated commandments and
regulations of Moses, including those concerning the slaves, were
rigidly enforced, and a general reformation inaugurated.
The increase of wealth, the various modifications and changes generated
in the organism of society by its growth, as also by wars, captivities,
changes of government, etc., brought forth a new subordinate condition
in the domestic and civil life of the Hebrews--it was that of the
_client_, and belongs to the latter epoch of the kings. Theologians of
doubtful learning, and still more dubious honesty, argue that such
clients were slaves; but, in truth, the clients among the Hebrews
were no more the slaves of their patrons than the same class were
among the Romans or Gauls. The Hebrew client was a _subordinate_, but
_independent_; he was under the protection of his patron, but both
were bound by mutual obligations and prescribed conditions; and the
property and estate of the patron were often under the guardianship
of the client. Many expressions in the Scriptures, also, bearing on
the mission of the future Messianic servant of Jahveh, mean properly a
client, and not a slave or a chattel.
The old kingdom of Judea was overthrown in wars with Assyria and
Babylon; and the Jews were carried away as captives. These repeated
captivities chiefly befell the most wealthy and influential part of
the population. Such captives generally became political slaves, that
is, were deprived of political, though not of religious or civil
rights, and were not made domestic slaves or chattels. They became the
property of the king or of the state; but were not individually subject
to be scattered or sold; in fact, they became colonists, and lands
were assigned them in some part of the empire. Thus Tiglath-Palassar
colonized certain regions north of Nineveh with Hebrews; and Sargon (or
Sargina) transplanted others to Media. In the Babylonian captivities
their condition was precisely similar: thus, when Cyrus liberated
forty-two thousand three hundred and sixty Jews from captivity in
Babylon, there were among them only seven thousand three hundred and
eighty-seven slaves, or about one-sixth of the whole number.
Domestic slavery, as we have seen, made considerable havoc among
the Beni-Israel, and its life was continually recruited by wars and
the consequent ruin and impoverishment of the people, as well as by
other causes already pointed out. But down to the last breath of
the political and national existence of the Jews--to the day of the
destruction of Jerusalem and the hour of final dispersion--slavery
never succeeded in wholly destroying the humble homesteads of the free
rural population--as it did in other nations and empires of antiquity:
for example, it never extirpated the free agricultural yeomanry in
Palestine as it afterward did in the Roman world, from the Atlantic to
the Euphrates. The free population was mostly devoted to agriculture,
and possessed homesteads; and these small free homesteads were regarded
almost as sacred--even kings could only by violence seize upon the poor
man's farm.
Little Palestine, to the East, swarmed like a beehive with people,
notwithstanding captivities, calamities, and exterminating wars. At
the time of David, the kingdom of Palestine was about the size of
the present kingdom of Portugal, and had a population of about three
million eight hundred thousand. Under Solomon, his son, fifty-three
thousand six hundred foreign-born slaves worked at the construction of
the temple, most of whom, probably, were the property of the king or
of the state--not private chattels. If we allow that the number of
Jewish-born slaves of both sexes and of all ages was even four times
as large (which is not at all likely, considering the source and means
of supply of slaves), it will give only two hundred and sixty-eight
thousand slaves of every type, in Judea, or one-fourteenth part of the
population.[8]
How corrupt soever the law and its regulations became, both,
nevertheless, remained a check upon domestic slavery. Long previous to
the terrible Flavian epoch, the Hebrews were thickly scattered over the
eastern and western world, not as exported slaves, but as wanderers
and adventurers: there may, indeed, have been slaves among them, but
such slaves formed the minority. Strangers, indeed, they were, but free
according to then existing municipal limitations. It was the surplus
of a free population that thus wandered abroad in search of better
fortunes--a phenomenon which is reproduced in the present day by the
immigration to America of the surplus population of various European
states. So large was this emigration that, in the time of Cicero, the
Jews, Italians and Greeks formed the principal nationalities that
took part in the tumults of the Roman forum, and on one occasion they
hooted Cicero while on the rostrum. The great and striking fact of
the preservation of the people of Beni-Israel, and its increase at
an epoch when the populations of other countries were slowly dying
out, is to be attributed solely to the curb which the law imposed on
domestic slavery, and which it partially maintained even in the times
of the greatest national decay.
On our knowledge of the internal organism and economy of the Hebrews,
may be based certain deductions as to the domestic economy of other
contemporaneous nations, especially those of Syria and certain parts of
west Asia. Lydia, and above all, Babylon and Assyria are historically
known only in the last stages of their existence, when political and
domestic slavery had almost completely fused themselves together.
For earlier times, the sources of investigation are limited, if not
altogether wanting, and analogy alone can guide research. It is,
however, probable that only the Mosaic law remained to combat and
regulate serfdom and slavery with moral and legal weapons. The Hebrews
did not possess, and did not transmit to history, any of the products
of a brilliant civilization or of a refined culture such as reaches us
in echoes from the antique oriental empires. But the Hebrews were, at
the same time, endowed with certain spiritual impulses, aspirations
and ideas, far grander than those of any of the surrounding nations.
Material civilization and culture cannot be considered as the highest
manifestation of man's spirit. History presents examples of the
development of the noblest human impulses to a degree out of all
proportion with the so-called "civilization" of the nation.
The authority of the Scriptures is invoked as absolute sanction for
the enslavement of one branch of the human family; and the theological
right to enslave the African is based on the well-known words of
Noah: "Cursed be Canaan: a servant of servants shall he be unto his
brethren." The general import of these words, however, even in the
strictest construction, has rather a reference to their degradation as
a caste--exemplified in the case of the swineherds among the Egyptians,
or the Çudras (Soudras) among the Hindus--either of which, however,
were chattels deprived of human and family rights.
Modern criticism, guided chiefly by the light of comparative philology
and ethnology, has established beyond any doubt the genuine meaning of
the patriarchal names of Scripture. Down to Abraham, or at the utmost
to Terah his father, all those names bear an ethnical or geographical
signification. Abraham, however, is an historical person, and with him
positive Jewish history opens.
Moses and the other writers of the book of Genesis were educated among
the highly learned and scientific Egyptians; and in Palestine they came
in contact with a highly advanced civilization among the Canaanites or
Phoenicians, Arabians, and Nabatheans, who were then in the full tide
of life and action. From these kindred Shemitic peoples the Hebrews
learned the use of written characters; and many of the scientific
discoveries of these epochs are dimly preserved in the Mosaic record,
as also the general outlines of the ethnic knowledge of the age.
Moses and the other writers did but record the various geographic and
ethnic names which came to their ears, and for this no inspiration was
necessary. Modern scientific criticism, guided by the inductions of
reason--that grandest product of the hand of God--now infuses living
spirit into what was for ages a dead and incomprehensible letter.
This can be easily elucidated by a few examples. The word Ham, or
_Erez-Cham_, has no root or meaning in Hebrew or any other Shemitic
dialect; it was doubtless borrowed from the Egyptians, and to Egypt
must we go for the solution of its signification. Other Biblical
names, as, for example, _Eber_, _Pheleg_ or _Peleg_, _Reu_ or _Rehu_,
_Serug_ and _Nahor_, represent distinct Shemitic tribes, or, as the
record tropically styles them, kingdoms and states, of Mesopotamia
(Naharaina). _Eber_, or more properly, _Heber_ (whence our "Hebrews"),
signifies "the stranger" or "a person from the other side," that is,
one who came from a foreign region. _Aram_ also implies an immigrant
from the other side of the Euphrates. So, likewise _Misraim_ (the
_Misr_ or M-R of the Egyptians), _Cush_, _Phut_ and _Lud_, constituted
distinct tribes and nations in widely distant regions, and perhaps
even belonged to different races, according to accepted schemes of
ethnology. _Lud_ answers to the Libyan _Lewatah_, the _Leguatan_ of
the Byzantine writers, and the classical _Garaman_. _Phut_ and _Lud_
belong to Africa; they are brothers of Mizraim, or its nearest ethnic
relations in the remotest antiquity, or perhaps closely allied but
independent tribes--as the Scriptures generally record tribes and
states politically and geographically independent. _Phut_ and _Lud_
are also mentioned as the allied troops of the Egyptians, or of the
Syrians. Finally _Lud_ (_Ludim_) descends from Mizraim; so it may be
that they were a branch of the Egyptian stem, just as the Irish are an
offshoot of the Gallo-Celtic stock, or the Anglo-Saxons of the Teutonic
trunk.
The curse of Noah was hurled against _Canaan_. The philological and
ethnic signification of this name has already been explained. The
Canaanites, although themselves but an elder branch of the Shemitic
family, were the enemies of Beni-Israel, who conquered them and
drove them from their land and homes. There is thus a manifest logic
in the writer of this part of Genesis condemning them to eternal
servitude--for it was written after the subjugation of the Canaanites.
Indeed, the same policy of enslavement was pursued by almost all the
ancient conquering nations in the flush of their victorious battles;
and so, in later times, did the Longobards of Italy, the Goths and
Franks in Gaul and Spain, the Anglo-Saxons in Britain, and the Normans
in England and Ireland.
There seems to be no scientific doubt that the cursed Canaanites were
of the same family and stock as the Hebrews. After the most searching
and conscientious investigations in ethnology and philology, it is
impossible to regard the Canaanites or Phoenicians as other than
Shemites; and with this also coincide the Scriptures--their land of
Canaan is not in Africa. Who the _Cushites_ of antiquity were, has
likewise been already pointed out. And if, as some have attempted to
prove, the ancient Egyptians were not of the African race (according
to our modern designation), then they were the Chamites, Cushites,
etc., of Scripture. How, through them, the curse can be shown to reach
the genuine African, requires an effort of casuistry repulsive both
to logic and fact--nay, to the baldest common sense. Not the dimmest
shadow of authority can be tortured from the Scriptures for the
enslavement of the black or negro race. With somewhat sounder logic has
this curse of Canaan been applied, even in Christian times, and among
European nations, to classes kept in bondage by masters belonging to
the same race. Slavery, indeed, has been the common fate, in successive
epochs, of all human races and families; and the oppressor has never
been wanting in a pious plea. The so-called nobility of the mediæval
Christian ages considered the burghers and subdued laborers as being of
impure and degraded blood, and all over Europe they were held to be the
descendants of Ham. (Some old aristocratic European families even now
consider all who are not nobles to be of the degraded caste). According
to this construction of the Noachic curse, the foul taint even now
circulates not in the vein of the African slave, but in the veins
of the tyrants who oppress him. Neither the Egyptians, Phoenicians,
Hebrews, nor, indeed, any nation of antiquity, considered any special
race or tribe as absolutely predestined to eternal bondage. This
abominable conception is a putrid growth from mental, social and moral
decay. Even Moses had a black woman for his wife (not his concubine),
and, nevertheless, was admitted to converse with Jehovah.
The present historical investigation aims not at the vindication of
the African: science and history do this triumphantly for all honest
and intelligent minds. These pages have but in view to exhibit the
terrific havoc and devastation which domestic slavery brings on all
races, nations and civilizations, and to point out the complete analogy
of slavery as it existed in the past with that which still blasts our
country and our age. The leprosy of early Egypt, Syria and Judea, was
the same as that which existed long centuries afterward in western
Europe; and so also is it with the social leprosy of the ages. And as,
in special conditions, a disease may assume a more deadly intensity,
so also do social maladies at times show themselves with increased
virulence. In antiquity, domestic slavery seized hold of all races and
all social and civil conditions: it was not exclusively fastened on any
special race. It may be for this reason that it ate but slowly into
the marrow of the antique civilizations. Now modern sophistry attempts
to give a divine and moral sanction to chattel slavery, and bases its
justice on the absolute and predestined inferiority of the _black
race_. But the natural work of slavery in destroying manhood, morals
and intellect, progresses with terrible rapidity in this country, and
is here receiving its most mournful illustration.
But what is the testimony of the highest scientific generalization
on this question, of the natural inferiority of the African? All the
authoritative names in comparative anatomy and physiology--Owen,
Flourens, Bachman, Muller, Haenle, Pritchard, Wagner, Vogt and Draper,
among them--together with men of the mental calibre and scientific
attainments of William and Alexander von Humboldt--men of every
variety of scientific theory, and discussing the question from every
possible stand-point--universally deny the existence of any absolute
inferiority of the negro race, or even any essential difference or
line of demarcation between the races at all! The physiological
and craniological differences which are so easily observed, do not
amount to a difference of _species_; and cerebral physiology makes
no essential distinction between the brain of a white man--even an
Anglo-Saxon--and that of a negro.
Still more groundless are the current assertions concerning the mental
inferiority of the African race. If such an inferiority really exists
at the present day, it is, at the utmost, but transient and conditional
in its nature. It can only be such an inferiority as for countless
centuries characterized the northern races in contrast to the southern.
While the former roved and fought as savages in the wilds and forests,
the latter were elaborating grand and harmonious civilizations. It
is difficult to imagine what would have been the condition of the
Germans--aye, even of the Anglo-Saxons--what kind of civilization they
would have inaugurated--without their Christian, Roman and Gallo-Celtic
inoculation. If it be urged that certain African tribes _are_ less
susceptible of culture, or less endowed with intellectual qualities
and capacities than certain white tribes or their offshoots--is it not
also the case that the offspring from the same parents may have widely
varying powers, tendencies and capacities; and that diverse tribes
and nations springing from the same ethnic source, have played very
different parts in the drama of universal history?
In the remotest antiquity, the great Gallo-Celtic stem actively
influenced the destinies of Europe, and a part of Asia; yet it is only
eighty years since the historian Pinckerton, speaking of _Ireland_ and
the _Irish_--those purest Celtic remains, said: "It is indeed a matter
of supreme indifference at what time the savages of a continent peopled
a neighboring island" (Ireland). This remark it would be difficult to
justify--although there are even now many Englishmen who consider the
genuine Irish an inferior race, and one, too, incapable of any high
development.
The moral and mental growth of those Africans who were formerly slaves
in the British West Indies, shows the possibility of negro culture
under the influence of freedom. The official reports of the various
governors of these islands, show that, since emancipation, there has
been a rapid and steady growth of their prosperity; and the absolute
veracity which characterizes these reports of English agents to their
government cannot for a moment be doubted. In some of the islands,
such as Nassau and others, the products and revenues have increased a
hundred-fold, while the cost of administration (for keeping protective
fleets and repressive soldiery, needed now no more) has greatly
diminished. They also certify to a great increase in the imports
from England--their mother country in the noblest sense of the word.
Even the _export_ of sugar is nearly equal to what it was under the
forced labor of slavery, while _its intrinsic production has vastly
increased_--the domestic consumption far surpassing what it was in the
palmiest days of the planters. These are facts which only hypocrisy can
pervert, or perversion conceal.