Roman republic and empire, Spain shared the lot of the other provinces,
as Gaul, etc.; and what has been said in relation to slavery in the
Roman world applies to her also. The results of the German invasions,
and the establishment of the Goths in Spain, were similar in their
bearings to what we have already seen as taking place in Gaul and
Italy. Scarcely had the two races begun to fuse on the soil of
Spain, and the relations between the conqueror and the conquered to
be modified and softened, when the invasions by the Moors (whose
domination lasted for nearly seven centuries), threw the Spaniards
into internal wars. Their protracted efforts to expel the invaders
fostered the preponderance of the men of the sword; and there is every
likelihood that the unavoidable sequellæ of war contributed to preserve
longer in Spain than in any of the other nationalities that arose out
of the ruins of the Roman empire, certain of the features of domestic
slavery, of bondage, and the feudal tenure. The final expulsion of the
Moors from the Iberian peninsula was almost immediately followed by
the discovery of the continent of America, and by the formation here
of a great Spanish empire, and the introduction thereinto of Africans
as domestic slaves. To master the various relations of property and
villeinage, of bondage and chattelhood in Spain and in the Spanish
Main, requires special studies, for which, indeed, we have as yet no
sufficient material. At least I had none such within my reach--none
that was, to my mind, conclusive and satisfactory. The Spanish
republics nobly satisfied the hopes of humanity by abolishing all kinds
of bondage and all distinctions of race. The Peruvian republic paid
to the owners three hundred dollars per head for each slave, of every
age and both sexes, and then liberated them. It may be emphatically
asserted, that the protracted political confusion prevailing in the
Spanish American States, has its sources not in the act of emancipatory
justice, but that it is the result of altogether different causes.
These, however, do not come within the compass of the present
investigation.
The many analogies between domestic slavery as practised by various
nations and races of the past, and as it now exists in our Slave
States, have been often enough pointed out. These analogies prove
beyond doubt that slavery always corrupts the slave-holder and the
whole community--be the ethnic peculiarities of the enslaved race what
they may.
History shows slavery to have been always most luxuriant in those
nations where society was most disorganized, just as noxious animals
and plants multiply in putrefaction and rottenness. Facts reveal to us
how far the disorder has already penetrated Southern life; and it would
progress even more rapidly were it not for the purifying and healing
influences (feeble though they now be) coming from the North.
The civilized Christian world follows with ever-increasing interest the
stages of the political struggle in the American Union--sympathizing
deeply with those who, though they cannot hope to effect an immediate
cure, yet seek to arrest the growth of the fatal disorder.[21]
Slavery is as fatal to society as are the Southern and tropical swamps
to human life. And as material culture drains the marshes, clears the
forests, and renders the soil productive and the air healthy: so in
like manner, will moral and social culture yet make the institutions of
this republic rich and refulgent--unblighted by the presence of a slave!
The source of many, if not of all, the political and administrative
disorders in these States, is to be found in the struggles occasioned
by the arrogant and everlasting encroachments on liberty and on
the Union, by the militant worshippers of slavery. To cure these
disorders, the _growth_ of the disease--its expansion over yet
uninfected territories--_must be stopped_: such must be the first step
in a sanitary direction; and the paramount duty of self-preservation
now commands its adoption. This whole question of Slavery, too, must be
forced back to where it was left by the immortal expounders of Southern
instinct and intuition on slavery, those noble patriots--Henry,
Laurens, Washington, Jefferson, Mason, Randolph, and a host of other
great names--now forsworn by their political descendants. To conceal
the vulture that is devouring their vitals, the fanatical upholders of
slavery pervert and degrade all that humanity, morality, civilization
and history have recognized as sacred.
The slave-orators and so-called statesmen avouch "that no one in the
South believes in popular sovereignty." This unbelief is natural
enough; for popular sovereignty can only exist in intelligent, orderly
and laborious communities. It exists in the Free States, and here
freemen practically believe in and uphold it. But an ignorant and
degraded population of oligarchs, oppressors and slave-breeders never
were capable of exercising popular sovereignty, and consequently
nowhere could they ever have faith in it: barbarians generally mistrust
civilization. Universal suffrage is _not_ a failure in the villages and
townships of the Free States, though it does fail on slave plantations,
or among a so-called free population drilled and led by oligarchs.
Human institutions experience ups and downs--they have their luminous
and their gloomy epochs. Ignorant and debased masses throw a shadow
over universal suffrage and self-government; and only genuine freedom
goes hand in hand with reason, knowledge and morality. These, too,
mutually reproduce each other. It is, therefore, easy to be understood
how freedom disappears from the Slave South, and is no more cherished
or believed in.
Many consider the American institution of self-government as a new
experiment; and European serviles and American slave oligarchs utter
fearful forebodings that the experiment is already a failure. But the
prophecy only expresses their desires. For this so-called experiment is
but the natural, progressive development of man, and for this reason
proves itself every day more and more successful in the Free States.
The kingdoms and nations of the old world are now diligently studying
this experiment of freedom, and trying to appropriate its beneficent
results. Agents of European governments uninterruptedly investigate the
system of free communal schools, the manufactures, the inventions, the
multifarious industrial and agricultural progress of the Free States.
But no government sends its messengers to study out the condition of
slave plantations, slave huts, or slave pens; for they know well that
by the action of self-government and universal suffrage, qualitative
and quantitative knowledge is more generally spread, and has reached
a far higher grade in the American Free States than among all the
militant oligarchs and knight-errants of slavery the world over.
An experiment generally proves successful if made with properly adapted
and unadulterated materials. A structure raised on a treacherous
foundation and built with rotten materials must fall. It is an
experiment altogether new to the human race to construct a society
and government with chattelhood as an integral element. It is an
experiment to attempt to bring down horrified humanity on its knees
to the worship of chattelhood and the devilish slave traffic. Such an
experiment is now being tried by the apostles of slavery; and that too,
though morality, civilization and history have unanimously and forever
pronounced the sentence of condemnation against holding property in
man. The civilized and Christian world of both hemispheres and every
race unanimously awarded to John Brown the crown of a martyr, who fell
in the cause of human liberty.
One deviation from a sound social principle is speedily followed by
another; violence ever begets violence; and this is the fatal genesis
of all oppressions and tyrannies. The oligarchic despotism in the
Slave States runs rapidly through all the stages with which individual
despotism has filled the dark records of history. It has already
succeeded in the suppression of free speech and even free thought,
violation of seal, censorship of the press, and the centring of
political control in the hands of officials and lacqueys. If individual
tyrants dispatch their victims by special executioners, lynch law
and mob law--although often executed by misguided "poor whites"--are
as lawless as the murders of the tyrant, and bear a striking analogy
to the executions perpetrated by agents or court-martials. Despotism
drills the masses in all kinds of degradation: thus a part of the
population of the Slave States is drilled in ignorance by the
slaveholders, and blindly perpetrate their murderous biddings. To these
deluded men who execute the bloody behests of the tyrant, the words of
the Christ on Calvary apply: "Forgive them; _for they know not what
they do_."
A society based on a violation of cardinal human rights can never
be considered free. Freemen are never governed by violent passions.
Injustice and tyranny cannot recede; they divorce themselves from
mercy, and are guilty of the most remorseless actions: thus fatally,
of late, the gallows was once more ennobled. Executions and burning at
the stake, amid the applaudings of the ignorant and the infuriated, are
nothing new in history; and neither is the transmission of the names of
the murderers to the maledictions of eternity.
Human society will perhaps always be subject, in one shape or another,
to wrongs and disorders: but humanity specially revolts at the hideous
wrongs which now exist, such as the claim of property in man, and the
traffic in man. As long as this claim is found on the legal record,
as long as slavery exists as a common fact, futile will be all
efforts to stifle the voice of freedom, to crush into oblivion the
question of slavery, or to expel it from the chambers of legislation
or the tribunals of the people. It will and must ever reappear on
the surface:--as in bodily disorders, when the virus has eaten its
way into the innermost organism, external eruptions may be locally,
healed or closed up, but again they reappear on another spot, or
attack another organ, until a radical cure relieves the body from the
poison. Until utterly destroyed, slavery will always be paramount to
all other political questions, to all political complications, and it
will forever force its way into them all. To a greater or less degree,
diseases assume the characteristics of a prevailing epidemic. When
several diseases are complicated together, the physician first attempts
to cure the most virulent and dangerous. This question of slavery
must have a solution; and it is in vain that the weak-minded deny the
existence of the devouring disorder, or attempt to conjure it with
paltry expedients.
Humanity would gratefully applaud even an intermediate step from
absolute chattelhood toward emancipation, or any public measure
foreshadowing an intention on the part of the slaveholding States to
become humane. First of all, let them recognize in the bondman the
sacred, imprescriptible, natural rights of man and of family; then let
them abandon the slave traffic, and thus avoid separation of man and
wife, of parent and child. Even the transformation of the slaves into
serfs, into _adscripti glebæ_, would be an alleviation, and a cheering
sign of progress. Certainly, there are economic impediments which stand
in the way of immediate and absolute emancipation. The emancipated
might be interested in labor, in the soil, and in freedom, by the
possession of homesteads, even if they remained under the control of
their masters. The noble examples set by Prussia and Russia in Europe,
and by England in her West Indian possessions, might be modified and
adapted to circumstances and to special conditions. But the present
extollers of human bondage never will listen to the imploring voice of
humanity, or to the admonishing warnings of history; they deliberately
prepare volcanic eruptions for coming generations.
Pro-slavery orators sometimes grow florid, sentimental, and idyllic
in their praises and glorification of slavery. But gaseous speeches
emanate not from vigorous or healthy minds. Gas generally arises from
substances in process of decomposition. Posterity venerates only the
names of the orators who stand up for a sacred cause or a grand idea,
who act under generous impulses, who defend human rights and liberties,
and who brand with infamy every kind of oppression.
Every day freedom gets a firmer and more enduring foothold in Europe.
Every nation of the old continent enjoys greater liberty to-day than
it did on the birthday of the American Republic. The disorders which
are the accumulation of almost countless centuries, slowly, but
nevertheless uninterruptedly, melt away before the breath of the
ever-vigorous spirit of humanity. After a protracted experience of
sufferings, old Europe, centuries ago, got rid of domestic slavery.
But what civilization and humanity assert to be their greatest
afflictions are upheld as blessings in this New World by the Young
Republic. Sadness and even despair fill the mind when witnessing the
loftiest and best social structure ever erected by man sapped to its
foundations by the sacrilegious champions of human bondage!
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 21: What in common politics is called a "party," "an
expedient," never had even the slightest influence upon my convictions
or action--events having furnished me more than one occasion to
sacrifice to principle some leaves of my existence. I now use my
right of American citizenship in voting the "Republican" ticket, the
tendencies and actions of that organization satisfying my convictions.
But excepting some few personal friends, the leaders of the party,
whether in this city, the State, or the Union, are scarcely known to me
even by name.]
THE END.