FRIENDS AND FELLOW CITIZENS: We are met to exchange congratulations on
the anniversary of an event singular in the history of civilization; a
day of reason; of the clear light; of that which makes us better than a
flock of birds and beasts; a day which gave the immense fortification of
a fact, of gross history, to ethical abstractions. It was the settlement,
as far as a great Empire was concerned, of a question on which almost
every leading citizen in it had taken care to record his vote; one which
for many years absorbed the attention of the best and most eminent of
mankind. I might well hesitate, coming from other studies, and without
the smallest claim to be a special laborer in this work of humanity,
to undertake to set this matter before you; which ought rather to be
done by a strict coöperation of many well-advised persons; but I shall
not apologize for my weakness. In this cause, no man’s weakness is any
prejudice: it has a thousand sons; if one man cannot speak, ten others
can; and, whether by the wisdom of its friends, or by the folly of the
adversaries; by speech and by silence; by doing and by omitting to do, it
goes forward. Therefore I will speak,—or, not I, but the might of liberty
in my weakness. The subject is said to have the property of making dull
men eloquent.
It has been in all men’s experience a marked effect of the enterprise in
behalf of the African, to generate an overbearing and defying spirit. The
institution of slavery seems to its opponent to have but one side, and
he feels that none but a stupid or a malignant person can hesitate on
a view of the facts. Under such an impulse, I was about to say, If any
cannot speak, or cannot hear the words of freedom, let him go hence,—I
had almost said, Creep into your grave, the universe has no need of you!
But I have thought better: let him not go. When we consider what remains
to be done for this interest in this country, the dictates of humanity
make us tender of such as are not yet persuaded.[104] The hardest
selfishness is to be borne with. Let us withhold every reproachful, and,
if we can, every indignant remark. In this cause, we must renounce our
temper, and the risings of pride. If there be any man who thinks the
ruin of a race of men a small matter, compared with the last decoration
and completions of his own comfort,—who would not so much as part with
his ice-cream, to save them from rapine and manacles, I think I must not
hesitate to satisfy that man that also his cream and vanilla are safer
and cheaper by placing the negro nation on a fair footing than by robbing
them. If the Virginian piques himself on the picturesque luxury of his
vassalage, on the heavy Ethiopian manners of his house-servants, their
silent obedience, their hue of bronze, their turbaned heads, and would
not exchange them for the more intelligent but precarious hired service
of whites, I shall not refuse to show him that when their free-papers are
made out, it will still be their interest to remain on his estate, and
that the oldest planters of Jamaica are convinced that it is cheaper to
pay wages than to own the slave.
The history of mankind interests us only as it exhibits a steady gain of
truth and right, in the incessant conflict which it records between the
material and the moral nature. From the earliest monuments it appears
that one race was victim and served the other races. In the oldest
temples of Egypt, negro captives are painted on the tombs of kings, in
such attitudes as to show that they are on the point of being executed;
and Herodotus, our oldest historian, relates that the Troglodytes hunted
the Ethiopians in four-horse chariots. From the earliest time, the negro
has been an article of luxury to the commercial nations. So has it been,
down to the day that has just dawned on the world. Language must be
raked, the secrets of slaughter-houses and infamous holes that cannot
front the day, must be ransacked, to tell what negro slavery has been.
These men, our benefactors, as they are producers of corn and wine, of
coffee, of tobacco, of cotton, of sugar, of rum and brandy; gentle and
joyous themselves, and producers of comfort and luxury for the civilized
world,—there seated in the finest climates of the globe, children of
the sun,—I am heart-sick when I read how they came there, and how they
are kept there. Their case was left out of the mind and out of the
heart of their brothers. The prizes of society, the trumpet of fame,
the privileges of learning, of culture, of religion, the decencies and
joys of marriage, honor, obedience, personal authority and a perpetual
melioration into a finer civility,—these were for all, but not for them.
For the negro, was the slave-ship to begin with, in whose filthy hold he
sat in irons, unable to lie down; bad food, and insufficiency of that;
disfranchisement; no property in the rags that covered him; no marriage,
no right in the poor black woman that cherished him in her bosom, no
right to the children of his body; no security from the humors, none from
the crimes, none from the appetites of his master: toil, famine, insult
and flogging; and, when he sank in the furrow, no wind of good fame blew
over him, no priest of salvation visited him with glad tidings: but he
went down to death with dusky dreams of African shadow-catchers and
Obeahs hunting him.[105] Very sad was the negro tradition, that the Great
Spirit, in the beginning offered the black man, whom he loved better than
the buckra, or white, his choice of two boxes, a big and a little one.
The black man was greedy, and chose the largest. “The buckra box was full
up with pen, paper and whip, and the negro box with hoe and bill; and hoe
and bill for negro to this day.”
But the crude element of good in human affairs must work and ripen,
spite of whips and plantation laws and West Indian interest. Conscience
rolled on its pillow, and could not sleep. We sympathize very tenderly
here with the poor aggrieved planter, of whom so many unpleasant things
are said; but if we saw the whip applied to old men, to tender women;
and, undeniably, though I shrink to say so, pregnant women set in the
treadmill for refusing to work; when, not they, but the eternal law
of animal nature refused to work;—if we saw men’s backs flayed with
cowhides, and “hot rum poured on, superinduced with brine or pickle,
rubbed in with a cornhusk, in the scorching heat of the sun;”—if we saw
the runaways hunted with bloodhounds into swamps and hills; and, in
cases of passion, a planter throwing his negro into a copper of boiling
cane-juice,—if we saw these things with eyes, we too should wince. They
are not pleasant sights. The blood is moral: the blood is anti-slavery:
it runs cold in the veins: the stomach rises with disgust, and curses
slavery. Well, so it happened; a good man or woman, a country boy or
girl,—it would so fall out,—once in a while saw these injuries and had
the indiscretion to tell of them. The horrid story ran and flew; the
winds blew it all over the world. They who heard it asked their rich and
great friends if it was true, or only missionary lies. The richest and
greatest, the prime minister of England, the king’s privy council were
obliged to say that it was too true. It became plain to all men, the
more this business was looked into, that the crimes and cruelties of the
slave-traders and slave-owners could not be overstated. The more it was
searched, the more shocking anecdotes came up,—things not to be spoken.
Humane persons who were informed of the reports insisted on proving them.
Granville Sharpe was accidentally made acquainted with the sufferings of
a slave, whom a West Indian planter had brought with him to London and
had beaten with a pistol on his head, so badly that his whole body became
diseased, and the man useless to his master, who left him to go whither
he pleased. The man applied to Mr. William Sharpe, a charitable surgeon,
who attended the diseases of the poor. In process of time, he was healed.
Granville Sharpe found him at his brother’s and procured a place for
him in an apothecary’s shop. The master accidentally met his recovered
slave, and instantly endeavored to get possession of him again. Sharpe
protected the slave. In consulting with the lawyers, they told Sharpe
the laws were against him. Sharpe would not believe it; no prescription
on earth could ever render such iniquities legal. ‘But the decisions are
against you, and Lord Mansfield, now Chief Justice of England, leans
to the decisions.’ Sharpe instantly sat down and gave himself to the
study of English law for more than two years, until he had proved that
the opinions relied on, of Talbot and Yorke, were incompatible with the
former English decisions and with the whole spirit of English law. He
published his book in 1769, and he so filled the heads and hearts of
his advocates that when he brought the case of George Somerset, another
slave, before Lord Mansfield, the slavish decisions were set aside, and
equity affirmed.[106] There is a sparkle of God’s righteousness in Lord
Mansfield’s judgment, which does the heart good. Very unwilling had that
great lawyer been to reverse the late decisions; he suggested twice from
the bench, in the course of the trial, how the question might be got rid
of: but the hint was not taken; the case was adjourned again and again,
and judgment delayed. At last judgment was demanded, and on the 22d June,
1772, Lord Mansfield is reported to have decided in these words:
“Immemorial usage preserves the memory of _positive law_, long after all
traces of the occasion, reason, authority and time of its introduction,
are lost; and in a case so odious as the condition of slaves, must be
taken strictly (tracing the subject to _natural principles_, the claim of
slavery never can be supported). The power claimed by this return never
was in use here. We cannot say the cause set forth by this return is
allowed or approved of by the laws of this kingdom; and therefore the man
must be discharged.”
This decision established the principle that the “air of England is too
pure for any slave to breathe,” but the wrongs in the islands were not
thereby touched. Public attention, however, was drawn that way, and the
methods of the stealing and the transportation from Africa became noised
abroad. The Quakers got the story. In their plain meeting-houses and
prim dwellings this dismal agitation got entrance. They were rich: they
owned, for debt or by inheritance, island property; they were religious,
tender-hearted men and women; and they had to hear the news and digest
it as they could. Six Quakers met in London on the 6th of July,
1783,—William Dillwyn, Samuel Hoar, George Harrison, Thomas Knowles,
John Lloyd, Joseph Woods, “to consider what step they should take for
the relief and liberation of the negro slaves in the West Indies, and
for the discouragement of the slave-trade on the coast of Africa.” They
made friends and raised money for the slave; they interested their
Yearly Meeting; and all English and all American Quakers. John Woolman
of New Jersey, whilst yet an apprentice, was uneasy in his mind when he
was set to write a bill of sale of a negro, for his master. He gave his
testimony against the traffic, in Maryland and Virginia. Thomas Clarkson
was a youth at Cambridge, England, when the subject given out for a Latin
prize dissertation was, “Is it right to make slaves of others against
their will?” He wrote an essay, and won the prize; but he wrote too
well for his own peace; he began to ask himself if these things could
be true; and if they were, he could no longer rest. He left Cambridge;
he fell in with the six Quakers. They engaged him to act for them. He
himself interested Mr. Wilberforce in the matter. The shipmasters in
that trade were the greatest miscreants, and guilty of every barbarity
to their own crews. Clarkson went to Bristol, made himself acquainted
with the interior of the slave-ships and the details of the trade. The
facts confirmed his sentiment, “that Providence had never made that to
be wise which was immoral, and that the slave-trade was as impolitic
as it was unjust;”[107] that it was found peculiarly fatal to those
employed in it. More seamen died in that trade in one year than in the
whole remaining trade of the country in two. Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox were
drawn into the generous enterprise. In 1788, the House of Commons voted
Parliamentary inquiry. In 1791, a bill to abolish the trade was brought
in by Wilberforce, and supported by him and by Fox and Burke and Pitt,
with the utmost ability and faithfulness; resisted by the planters and
the whole West Indian interest, and lost. During the next sixteen years,
ten times, year after year, the attempt was renewed by Mr. Wilberforce,
and ten times defeated by the planters. The king, and all the royal
family but one, were against it. These debates are instructive, as they
show on what grounds the trade was assailed and defended. Everything
generous, wise and sprightly is sure to come to the attack. On the other
part are found cold prudence, bare-faced selfishness and silent votes.
But the nation was aroused to enthusiasm. Every horrid fact became known.
In 1791, three hundred thousand persons in Britain pledged themselves to
abstain from all articles of island produce. The planters were obliged
to give way; and in 1807, on the 25th March, the bill passed, and the
slave-trade was abolished.
The assailants of slavery had early agreed to limit their political
action on this subject to the abolition of the trade, but Granville
Sharpe, as a matter of conscience, whilst he acted as chairman of the
London Committee, felt constrained to record his protest against the
limitation, declaring that slavery was as much a crime against the
Divine law as the slave-trade. The trade, under false flags, went on
as before. In 1821, according to official documents presented to the
American government by the Colonization Society, 200,000 slaves were
deported from Africa. Nearly 30,000 were landed in the port of Havana
alone. In consequence of the dangers of the trade growing out of the act
of abolition, ships were built sharp for swiftness, and with a frightful
disregard of the comfort of the victims they were destined to transport.
They carried five, six, even seven hundred stowed in a ship built so
narrow as to be unsafe, being made just broad enough on the beam to
keep the sea. In attempting to make its escape from the pursuit of a
man-of-war, one ship flung five hundred slaves alive into the sea. These
facts went into Parliament. In the islands was an ominous state of cruel
and licentious society; every house had a dungeon attached to it; every
slave was worked by the whip. There is no end to the tragic anecdotes
in the municipal records of the colonies. The boy was set to strip and
flog his own mother to blood, for a small offence. Looking in the face
of his master by the negro was held to be violence by the island courts.
He was worked sixteen hours, and his ration by law, in some islands, was
a pint of flour and one salt herring a day. He suffered insult, stripes,
mutilation at the humor of the master: iron collars were riveted on their
necks with iron prongs ten inches long; capsicum pepper was rubbed in the
eyes of the females; and they were done to death with the most shocking
levity between the master and manager, without fine or inquiry. And when,
at last, some Quakers, Moravians, and Wesleyan and Baptist missionaries,
following in the steps of Carey and Ward in the East Indies, had been
moved to come and cheer the poor victim with the hope of some reparation,
in a future world, of the wrongs he suffered in this, these missionaries
were persecuted by the planters, their lives threatened, their chapels
burned, and the negroes furiously forbidden to go near them. These
outrages rekindled the flame of British indignation. Petitions poured
into Parliament: a million persons signed their names to these; and in
1833, on the 14th May, Lord Stanley, Minister of the Colonies, introduced
into the House of Commons his bill for the Emancipation.
The scheme of the Minister, with such modification as it received in the
legislature, proposed gradual emancipation; that on 1st August, 1834, all
persons now slaves should be entitled to be registered as apprenticed
laborers, and to acquire thereby all the rights and privileges of
freemen, subject to the restriction of laboring under certain conditions.
These conditions were, that the prædials should owe three fourths of
the profits of their labor to their masters for six years, and the
non-prædials for four years.[108] The other fourth of the apprentice’s
time was to be his own, which he might sell to his master, or to other
persons; and at the end of the term of years fixed, he should be free.
With these provisions and conditions, the bill proceeds, in the twelfth
section, in the following terms: “Be it enacted, that all and every
person who, on the first August, 1834, shall be holden in slavery within
any such British colony as aforesaid, shall upon and from and after the
said first August, become and be to all intents and purposes free, and
discharged of and from all manner of slavery, and shall be absolutely
and forever manumitted; and that the children thereafter born to any such
persons, and the offspring of such children, shall, in like manner, be
free, from their birth; and that from and after the first August, 1834,
slavery shall be and is hereby utterly and forever abolished and declared
unlawful throughout the British colonies, plantations, and possessions
abroad.”
The Ministers, having estimated the slave products of the colonies
in annual exports of sugar, rum and coffee, at £1,500,000 per annum,
estimated the total value of the slave property at 30,000,000 pounds
sterling, and proposed to give the planters, as a compensation for so
much of the slaves’ time as the act took from them, 20,000,000 pounds
sterling, to be divided into nineteen shares for the nineteen colonies,
and to be distributed to the owners of slaves by commissioners, whose
appointment and duties were regulated by the Act. After much debate, the
bill passed by large majorities. The apprenticeship system is understood
to have proceeded from Lord Brougham, and was by him urged on his
colleagues, who, it is said, were inclined to the policy of immediate
emancipation.
The colonial legislatures received the act of Parliament with various
degrees of displeasure, and, of course, every provision of the bill was
criticised with severity. The new relation between the master and the
apprentice, it was feared, would be mischievous; for the bill required
the appointment of magistrates who should hear every complaint of the
apprentice and see that justice was done him. It was feared that the
interest of the master and servant would now produce perpetual discord
between them. In the island of Antigua, containing 37,000 people, 30,000
being negroes, these objections had such weight that the legislature
rejected the apprenticeship system, and adopted absolute emancipation. In
the other islands the system of the Ministry was accepted.
The reception of it by the negro population was equal in nobleness to
the deed. The negroes were called together by the missionaries and by
the planters, and the news explained to them. On the night of the 31st
July, they met everywhere at their churches and chapels, and at midnight,
when the clock struck twelve, on their knees, the silent, weeping
assembly became men; they rose and embraced each other; they cried,
they sung, they prayed, they were wild with joy, but there was no riot,
no feasting. I have never read anything in history more touching than
the moderation of the negroes. Some American captains left the shore
and put to sea, anticipating insurrection and general murder. With far
different thoughts, the negroes spent the hour in their huts and chapels.
I will not repeat to you the well-known paragraph, in which Messrs.
Thome and Kimball, the commissioners sent out in the year 1837 by the
American Anti-Slavery Society, describe the occurrences of that night in
the island of Antigua. It has been quoted in every newspaper, and Dr.
Channing has given it additional fame. But I must be indulged in quoting
a few sentences from the pages that follow it, narrating the behavior of
the emancipated people on the next day.[109]
“The first of August came on Friday, and a release was proclaimed
from all work until the next Monday. The day was chiefly spent by
the great mass of the negroes in the churches and chapels. The
clergy and missionaries throughout the island were actively engaged,
seizing the opportunity to enlighten the people on all the duties and
responsibilities of their new relation, and urging them to the attainment
of that higher liberty with which Christ maketh his children free. In
every quarter, we were assured, the day was like a Sabbath. Work had
ceased. The hum of business was still: tranquillity pervaded the towns
and country. The planters informed us that they went to the chapels where
their own people were assembled, greeted them, shook hands with them,
and exchanged the most hearty good wishes. At Grace Hill, there were at
least a thousand persons around the Moravian Chapel who could not get
in. For once the house of God suffered violence, and the violent took
it by force. At Grace Bay, the people, all dressed in white, formed a
procession, and walked arm in arm into the chapel. We were told that the
dress of the negroes on that occasion was uncommonly simple and modest.
There was not the least disposition to gayety. Throughout the island,
there was not a single dance known of, either day or night, nor so much
as a fiddle played.”
On the next Monday morning, with very few exceptions, every negro on
every plantation was in the field at his work. In some places, they
waited to see their master, to know what bargain he would make; but for
the most part, throughout the islands, nothing painful occurred. In June,
1835, the Ministers, Lord Aberdeen and Sir George Grey, declared to the
Parliament that the system worked well; that now for ten months, from 1st
August, 1834, no injury or violence had been offered to any white, and
only one black had been hurt in 800,000 negroes: and, contrary to many
sinister predictions, that the new crop of island produce would not fall
short of that of the last year.
But the habit of oppression was not destroyed by a law and a day of
jubilee. It soon appeared in all the islands that the planters were
disposed to use their old privileges, and overwork the apprentices; to
take from them, under various pretences, their fourth part of their
time; and to exert the same licentious despotism as before. The negroes
complained to the magistrates and to the governor. In the island of
Jamaica, this ill blood continually grew worse. The governors, Lord
Belmore, the Earl of Sligo, and afterwards Sir Lionel Smith (a governor
of their own class, who had been sent out to gratify the planters), threw
themselves on the side of the oppressed, and were at constant quarrel
with the angry and bilious island legislature. Nothing can exceed the ill
humor and sulkiness of the addresses of this assembly.
I may here express a general remark, which the history of slavery
seems to justify, that it is not founded solely on the avarice of the
planter. We sometimes say, the planter does not want slaves, he only
wants the immunities and the luxuries which the slaves yield him; give
him money, give him a machine that will yield him as much money as the
slaves, and he will thankfully let them go. He has no love of slavery,
he wants luxury, and he will pay even this price of crime and danger for
it. But I think experience does not warrant this favorable distinction,
but shows the existence, beside the covetousness, of a bitterer element,
the love of power, the voluptuousness of holding a human being in his
absolute control. We sometimes observe that spoiled children contract
a habit of annoying quite wantonly those who have charge of them, and
seem to measure their own sense of well-being, not by what they do,
but by the degree of reaction they can cause. It is vain to get rid of
them by not minding them: if purring and humming is not noticed, they
squeal and screech; then if you chide and console them, they find the
experiment succeeds, and they begin again. The child will sit in your
arms contented, provided you do nothing. If you take a book and read,
he commences hostile operations. The planter is the spoiled child of
his unnatural habits, and has contracted in his indolent and luxurious
climate the need of excitement by irritating and tormenting his slave.
Sir Lionel Smith defended the poor negro girls, prey to the
licentiousness of the planters; they shall not be whipped with tamarind
rods if they do not comply with their master’s will; he defended the
negro women; they should not be made to dig the cane-holes (which is
the very hardest of the field work); he defended the Baptist preachers
and the stipendiary magistrates, who are the negroes’ friends, from the
power of the planter. The power of the planters, however, to oppress,
was greater than the power of the apprentice and of his guardians to
withstand. Lord Brougham and Mr. Buxton declared that the planter had not
fulfilled his part in the contract, whilst the apprentices had fulfilled
theirs; and demanded that the emancipation should be hastened, and the
apprenticeship abolished. Parliament was compelled to pass additional
laws for the defence and security of the negro, and in ill humor at
these acts, the great island of Jamaica, with a population of half a
million, and 300,000 negroes, early in 1838, resolved to throw up the two
remaining years of apprenticeship, and to emancipate absolutely on the
1st August, 1838. In British Guiana, in Dominica, the same resolution
had been earlier taken with more good will; and the other islands fell
into the measure; so that on the 1st August, 1838, the shackles dropped
from every British slave. The accounts which we have from all parties,
both from the planters (and those too who were originally most opposed
to the measure), and from the new freemen, are of the most satisfactory
kind. The manner in which the new festival was celebrated, brings
tears to the eyes. The First of August, 1838, was observed in Jamaica
as a day of thanksgiving and prayer. Sir Lionel Smith, the governor,
writes to the British Ministry, “It is impossible for me to do justice
to the good order, decorum and gratitude which the whole laboring
population manifested on that happy occasion. Though joy beamed on every
countenance, it was throughout tempered with solemn thankfulness to God,
and the churches and chapels were everywhere filled with these happy
people in humble offering of praise.”
The Queen, in her speech to the Lords and Commons, praised the conduct
of the emancipated population:[110] and in 1840 Sir Charles Metcalfe,
the new governor of Jamaica, in his address to the Assembly expressed
himself to that late exasperated body in these terms: “All those who
are acquainted with the state of the island know that our emancipated
population are as free, as independent in their conduct, as well
conditioned, as much in the enjoyment of abundance, and as strongly
sensible of the blessings of liberty, as any that we know of in any
country. All disqualifications and distinctions of color have ceased;
men of all colors have equal rights in law, and an equal footing in
society, and every man’s position is settled by the same circumstances
which regulate that point in other free countries, where no difference of
color exists. It may be asserted, without fear of denial, that the former
slaves of Jamaica are now as secure in all social rights, as freeborn
Britons.” He further describes the erection of numerous churches, chapels
and schools which the new population required, and adds that more are
still demanded. The legislature, in their reply, echo the governor’s
statement, and say, “The peaceful demeanor of the emancipated population
redounds to their own credit, and affords a proof of their continued
comfort and prosperity.”
I said, this event is signal in the history of civilization. There
are many styles of civilization, and not one only. Ours is full of
barbarities. There are many faculties in man, each of which takes its
turn of activity, and that faculty which is paramount in any period and
exerts itself through the strongest nation, determines the civility of
that age: and each age thinks its own the perfection of reason. Our
culture is very cheap and intelligible. Unroof any house, and you shall
find it. The well-being consists in having a sufficiency of coffee and
toast, with a daily newspaper; a well glazed parlor, with marbles,
mirrors and centre-table; and the excitement of a few parties and a few
rides in a year. Such as one house, such are all. The owner of a New
York manor imitates the mansion and equipage of the London nobleman; the
Boston merchant rivals his brother of New York; and the villages copy
Boston. There have been nations elevated by great sentiments. Such was
the civility of Sparta and the Dorian race, whilst it was defective in
some of the chief elements of ours. That of Athens, again, lay in an
intellect dedicated to beauty. That of Asia Minor in poetry, music and
arts; that of Palestine in piety; that of Rome in military arts and
virtues, exalted by a prodigious magnanimity; that of China and Japan in
the last exaggeration of decorum and etiquette. Our civility, England
determines the style of, inasmuch as England is the strongest of the
family of existing nations, and as we are the expansion of that people.
It is that of a trading nation; it is a shopkeeping civility. The English
lord is a retired shopkeeper, and has the prejudices and timidities of
that profession. And we are shopkeepers, and have acquired the vices
and virtues that belong to trade. We peddle, we truck, we sail, we row,
we ride in cars, we creep in teams, we go in canals,—to market, and for
the sale of goods. The national aim and employment streams into our ways
of thinking, our laws, our habits and our manners. The customer is the
immediate jewel of our souls. Him we flatter, him we feast, compliment,
vote for, and will not contradict. It was, or it seemed the dictate of
trade, to keep the negro down. We had found a race who were less warlike,
and less energetic shopkeepers than we; who had very little skill in
trade. We found it very convenient to keep them at work, since, by the
aid of a little whipping, we could get their work for nothing but their
board and the cost of whips. What if it cost a few unpleasant scenes
on the coast of Africa? That was a great way off; and the scenes could
be endured by some sturdy, unscrupulous fellows, who could go, for high
wages, and bring us the men, and need not trouble our ears with the
disagreeable particulars. If any mention was made of homicide, madness,
adultery, and intolerable tortures, we would let the church-bells ring
louder, the church-organ swell its peal and drown the hideous sound. The
sugar they raised was excellent: nobody tasted blood in it. The coffee
was fragrant; the tobacco was incense; the brandy made nations happy; the
cotton clothed the world. What! all raised by these men, and no wages?
Excellent! What a convenience! They seemed created by Providence to bear
the heat and the whipping, and make these fine articles.
But unhappily, most unhappily, gentlemen, man is born with intellect,
as well as with a love of sugar; and with a sense of justice, as well
as a taste for strong drink. These ripened, as well as those. You could
not educate him, you could not get any poetry, any wisdom, any beauty in
woman, any strong and commanding character in man, but these absurdities
would still come flashing out,—these absurdities of a demand for
justice, a generosity for the weak and oppressed. Unhappily, too, for
the planter, the laws of nature are in harmony with each other: that
which the head and the heart demand is found to be, in the long run,
for what the grossest calculator calls his advantage. The moral sense
is always supported by the permanent interest of the parties. Else, I
know not how, in our world, any good would ever get done.[111] It was
shown to the planters that they, as well as the negroes, were slaves;
that though they paid no wages, they got very poor work; that their
estates were ruining them, under the finest climate; and that they
needed the severest monopoly laws at home to keep them from bankruptcy.
The oppression of the slave recoiled on them. They were full of vices;
their children were lumps of pride, sloth, sensuality and rottenness.
The position of woman was nearly as bad as it could be; and, like other
robbers, they could not sleep in security. Many planters have said, since
the emancipation, that, before that day, they were the greatest slaves
on the estates. Slavery is no scholar, no improver; it does not love the
whistle of the railroad; it does not love the newspaper, the mail-bag, a
college, a book or a preacher who has the absurd whim of saying what he
thinks; it does not increase the white population; it does not improve
the soil; everything goes to decay. For these reasons the islands proved
bad customers to England. It was very easy for manufacturers less shrewd
than those of Birmingham and Manchester to see that if the state of
things in the islands was altered, if the slaves had wages, the slaves
would be clothed, would build houses, would fill them with tools, with
pottery, with crockery, with hardware; and negro women love fine clothes
as well as white women. In every naked negro of those thousands, they
saw a future customer. Meantime, they saw further that the slave-trade,
by keeping in barbarism the whole coast of eastern Africa, deprives them
of countries and nations of customers, if once freedom and civility and
European manners could get a foothold there. But the trade could not be
abolished whilst this hungry West Indian market, with an appetite like
the grave, cried, ‘More, more, bring me a hundred a day;’ they could not
expect any mitigation in the madness of the poor African war-chiefs.
These considerations opened the eyes of the dullest in Britain. More than
this, the West Indian estate was owned or mortgaged in England, and the
owner and the mortgagee had very plain intimations that the feeling of
English liberty was gaining every hour new mass and velocity, and the
hostility to such as resisted it would be fatal. The House of Commons
would destroy the protection of island produce, and interfere in English
politics in the island legislation: so they hastened to make the best of
their position, and accepted the bill.
These considerations, I doubt not, had their weight; the interest of
trade, the interest of the revenue, and, moreover, the good fame of the
action. It was inevitable that men should feel these motives. But they do
not appear to have had an excessive or unreasonable weight. On reviewing
this history, I think the whole transaction reflects infinite honor on
the people and parliament of England. It was a stately spectacle, to see
the cause of human rights argued with so much patience and generosity
and with such a mass of evidence before that powerful people. It is a
creditable incident in the history that when, in 1789, the first privy
council report of evidence on the trade (a bulky folio embodying all
the facts which the London Committee had been engaged for years in
collecting, and all the examinations before the council) was presented
to the House of Commons, a late day being named for the discussion,
in order to give members time,—Mr. Wilberforce, Mr. Pitt, the Prime
Minister, and other gentlemen, took advantage of the postponement to
retire into the country to read the report. For months and years the bill
was debated, with some consciousness of the extent of its relations,
by the first citizens of England, the foremost men of the earth; every
argument was weighed, every particle of evidence was sifted and laid
in the scale; and, at last, the right triumphed, the poor man was
vindicated, and the oppressor was flung out. I know that England has the
advantage of trying the question at a wide distance from the spot where
the nuisance exists; the planters are not, excepting in rare examples,
members of the legislature. The extent of the empire, and the magnitude
and number of other questions crowding into court, keep this one in
balance, and prevent it from obtaining that ascendency, and being urged
with that intemperance which a question of property tends to acquire.
There are causes in the composition of the British legislature, and the
relation of its leaders to the country and to Europe, which exclude much
that is pitiful and injurious in other legislative assemblies. From
these reasons, the question was discussed with a rare independence and
magnanimity. It was not narrowed down to a paltry electioneering trap;
and, I must say, a delight in justice, an honest tenderness for the poor
negro, for man suffering these wrongs, combined with the national pride,
which refused to give the support of English soil or the protection of
the English flag to these disgusting violations of nature.
Forgive me, fellow citizens, if I own to you, that in the last few days
that my attention has been occupied with this history, I have not been
able to read a page of it without the most painful comparisons. Whilst
I have read of England, I have thought of New England. Whilst I have
meditated in my solitary walks on the magnanimity of the English Bench
and Senate, reaching out the benefit of the law to the most helpless
citizen in her world-wide realm, I have found myself oppressed by other
thoughts. As I have walked in the pastures and along the edge of woods,
I could not keep my imagination on those agreeable figures, for other
images that intruded on me. I could not see the great vision of the
patriots and senators who have adopted the slave’s cause:—they turned
their backs on me. No: I see other pictures,—of mean men; I see very
poor, very ill-clothed, very ignorant men, not surrounded by happy
friends,—to be plain,—poor black men of obscure employment as mariners,
cooks or stewards, in ships, yet citizens of this our Commonwealth of
Massachusetts,—freeborn as we,—whom the slave-laws of the States of South
Carolina, Georgia and Louisiana have arrested in the vessels in which
they visited those ports, and shut up in jails so long as the vessel
remained in port, with the stringent addition, that if the shipmaster
fails to pay the costs of this official arrest and the board in jail,
these citizens are to be sold for slaves, to pay that expense. This
man, these men, I see, and no law to save them. Fellow citizens, this
crime will not be hushed up any longer. I have learned that a citizen of
Nantucket, walking in New Orleans, found a freeborn citizen of Nantucket,
a man, too, of great personal worth, and, as it happened, very dear to
him, as having saved his own life, working chained in the streets of that
city, kidnapped by such a process as this. In the sleep of the laws, the
private interference of two excellent citizens of Boston has, I have
ascertained, rescued several natives of this State from these Southern
prisons. Gentlemen, I thought the deck of a Massachusetts ship was as
much the territory of Massachusetts as the floor on which we stand. It
should be as sacred as the temple of God. The poorest fishing-smack that
floats under the shadow of an iceberg in the Northern seas, or hunts
whale in the Southern ocean, should be encompassed by her laws with
comfort and protection, as much as within the arms of Cape Ann or Cape
Cod. And this kidnapping is suffered within our own land and federation,
whilst the fourth article of the Constitution of the United States
ordains in terms, that, “The citizens of each State shall be entitled
to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States.” If
such a damnable outrage can be committed on the person of a citizen with
impunity, let the Governor break the broad seal of the State; he bears
the sword in vain.[112] The Governor of Massachusetts is a trifler; the
State-House in Boston is a play-house; the General Court is a dishonored
body, if they make laws which they cannot execute. The great-hearted
Puritans have left no posterity. The rich men may walk in State Street,
but they walk without honor; and the farmers may brag their democracy
in the country, but they are disgraced men. If the State has no power
to defend its own people in its own shipping, because it has delegated
that power to the Federal Government, has it no representation in the
Federal Government?[113] Are those men dumb? I am no lawyer, and cannot
indicate the forms applicable to the case, but here is something which
transcends all forms. Let the senators and representatives of the State,
containing a population of a million freemen, go in a body before the
Congress and say that they have a demand to make on them, so imperative
that all functions of government must stop until it is satisfied. If
ordinary legislation cannot reach it, then extraordinary must be applied.
The Congress should instruct the President to send to those ports of
Charleston, Savannah and New Orleans such orders and such force as should
release, forthwith, all such citizens of Massachusetts as were holden
in prison without the allegation of any crime, and should set on foot
the strictest inquisition to discover where such persons, brought into
slavery by these local laws at any time heretofore, may now be. That
first; and then, let order be taken to indemnify all such as have been
incarcerated. As for dangers to the Union, from such demands!—the Union
already is at an end when the first citizen of Massachusetts is thus
outraged. Is it an union and covenant in which the State of Massachusetts
agrees to be imprisoned, and the State of Carolina to imprison?[114]
Gentlemen, I am loath to say harsh things, and perhaps I know too little
of politics for the smallest weight to attach to any censure of mine,—but
I am at a loss how to characterize the tameness and silence of the two
senators and the ten representatives of the State at Washington. To what
purpose have we clothed each of those representatives with the power of
seventy thousand persons, and each senator with near half a million,
if they are to sit dumb at their desks and see their constituents
captured and sold;—perhaps to gentlemen sitting by them in the hall?
There is a scandalous rumor that has been swelling louder of late
years,—perhaps wholly false,—that members are bullied into silence by
Southern gentlemen. It is so easy to omit to speak, or even to be absent
when delicate things are to be handled. I may as well say, what all men
feel, that whilst our very amiable and very innocent representatives
and senators at Washington are accomplished lawyers and merchants, and
very eloquent at dinners and at caucuses, there is a disastrous want
of _men_ from New England. I would gladly make exceptions, and you
will not suffer me to forget one eloquent old man, in whose veins the
blood of Massachusetts rolls, and who singly has defended the freedom
of speech, and the rights of the free, against the usurpation of the
slave-holder.[115] But the reader of Congressional debates, in New
England, is perplexed to see with what admirable sweetness and patience
the majority of the free States are schooled and ridden by the minority
of slave-holders. What if we should send thither representatives who
were a particle less amiable and less innocent? I entreat you, sirs, let
not this stain attach, let not this misery accumulate any longer. If
the managers of our political parties are too prudent and too cold;—if,
most unhappily, the ambitious class of young men and political men have
found out that these neglected victims are poor and without weight; that
they have no graceful hospitalities to offer; no valuable business to
throw into any man’s hands, no strong vote to cast at the elections; and
therefore may with impunity be left in their chains or to the chance of
chains,—then let the citizens in their primary capacity take up their
cause on this very ground, and say to the government of the State, and
of the Union, that government exists to defend the weak and the poor
and the injured party; the rich and the strong can better take care of
themselves. And as an omen and assurance of success, I point you to the
bright example which England set you, on this day, ten years ago.
There are other comparisons and other imperative duties which come
sadly to mind,—but I do not wish to darken the hours of this day by
crimination; I turn gladly to the rightful theme, to the bright aspects
of the occasion.
This event was a moral revolution. The history of it is before you. Here
was no prodigy, no fabulous hero, no Trojan horse, no bloody war, but all
was achieved by plain means of plain men, working not under a leader,
but under a sentiment. Other revolutions have been the insurrection of
the oppressed; this was the repentance of the tyrant. It was the masters
revolting from their mastery. The slave-holder said, ‘I will not hold
slaves.’ The end was noble and the means were pure. Hence the elevation
and pathos of this chapter of history. The lives of the advocates are
pages of greatness, and the connection of the eminent senators with this
question constitutes the immortalizing moments of those men’s lives. The
bare enunciation of the theses at which the lawyers and legislators
arrived, gives a glow to the heart of the reader. Lord Chancellor
Northington is the author of the famous sentence, “As soon as any man
puts his foot on English ground, he becomes free.” “I was a slave,”
said the counsel of Somerset, speaking for his client, “for I was in
America: I am now in a country where the common rights of mankind are
known and regarded.” Granville Sharpe filled the ear of the judges with
the sound principles that had from time to time been affirmed by the
legal authorities: “Derived power cannot be superior to the power from
which it is derived:” “The reasonableness of the law is the soul of the
law:” “It is better to suffer every evil, than to consent to any.” Out
it would come, the God’s truth, out it came, like a bolt from a cloud,
for all the mumbling of the lawyers. One feels very sensibly in all
this history that a great heart and soul are behind there, superior to
any man, and making use of each, in turn, and infinitely attractive to
every person according to the degree of reason in his own mind, so that
this cause has had the power to draw to it every particle of talent and
of worth in England, from the beginning. All the great geniuses of the
British senate, Fox, Pitt, Burke, Grenville, Sheridan, Grey, Canning,
ranged themselves on its side; the poet Cowper wrote for it: Franklin,
Jefferson, Washington, in this country, all recorded their votes. All men
remember the subtlety and the fire of indignation which the “Edinburgh
Review” contributed to the cause; and every liberal mind, poet, preacher,
moralist, statesman, has had the fortune to appear somewhere for this
cause. On the other part, appeared the reign of pounds and shillings,
and all manner of rage and stupidity; a resistance which drew from Mr.
Huddlestone in Parliament the observation, “That a curse attended this
trade even in the mode of defending it. By a certain fatality, none but
the vilest arguments were brought forward, which corrupted the very
persons who used them. Every one of these was built on the narrow ground
of interest, of pecuniary profit, of sordid gain, in opposition to
every motive that had reference to humanity, justice, and religion, or
to that great principle which comprehended them all.” This moral force
perpetually reinforces and dignifies the friends of this cause. It gave
that tenacity to their point which has insured ultimate triumph; and it
gave that superiority in reason, in imagery, in eloquence, which makes
in all countries anti-slavery meetings so attractive to the people, and
has made it a proverb in Massachusetts, that “eloquence is dog-cheap at
the anti-slavery chapel.”
I will say further that we are indebted mainly to this movement and
to the continuers of it, for the popular discussion of every point of
practical ethics, and a reference of every question to the absolute
standard. It is notorious that the political, religious and social
schemes, with which the minds of men are now most occupied, have been
matured, or at least broached, in the free and daring discussions of
these assemblies. Men have become aware, through the emancipation and
kindred events, of the presence of powers which, in their days of
darkness, they had overlooked. Virtuous men will not again rely on
political agents. They have found out the deleterious effect of political
association. Up to this day we have allowed to statesmen a paramount
social standing, and we bow low to them as to the great. We cannot extend
this deference to them any longer. The secret cannot be kept, that the
seats of power are filled by underlings, ignorant, timid and selfish to a
degree to destroy all claim, excepting that on compassion, to the society
of the just and generous. What happened notoriously to an American
ambassador in England, that he found himself compelled to palter and to
disguise the fact that he was a slave-breeder, happens to men of state.
Their vocation is a presumption against them among well-meaning people.
The superstition respecting power and office is going to the ground. The
stream of human affairs flows its own way, and is very little affected
by the activity of legislators. What great masses of men wish done, will
be done; and they do not wish it for a freak, but because it is their
state and natural end. There are now other energies than force, other
than political, which no man in future can allow himself to disregard.
There is direct conversation and influence. A man is to make himself
felt by his proper force. The tendency of things runs steadily to this
point, namely, to put every man on his merits, and to give him so much
power as he naturally exerts,—no more, no less. Of course, the timid and
base persons, all who are conscious of no worth in themselves, and who
owe all their place to the opportunities which the older order of things
allowed them, to deceive and defraud men, shudder at the change, and
would fain silence every honest voice, and lock up every house where
liberty and innovation can be pleaded for. They would raise mobs, for
fear is very cruel. But the strong and healthy yeomen and husbands of the
land, the self-sustaining class of inventive and industrious men, fear
no competition or superiority. Come what will, their faculty cannot be
spared.
The First of August marks the entrance of a new element into modern
politics, namely, the civilization of the negro. A man is added to the
human family. Not the least affecting part of this history of abolition
is the annihilation of the old indecent nonsense about the nature of
the negro. In the case of the ship Zong, in 1781, whose master had
thrown one hundred and thirty-two slaves alive into the sea, to cheat
the underwriters, the first jury gave a verdict in favor of the master
and owners: they had a right to do what they had done. Lord Mansfield
is reported to have said on the bench, “The matter left to the jury
is,—Was it from necessity? For they had no doubt—though it shocks one
very much—that the case of slaves was the same as if horses had been
thrown overboard. It is a very shocking case.” But a more enlightened
and humane opinion began to prevail. Mr. Clarkson, early in his career,
made a collection of African productions and manufactures, as specimens
of the arts and culture of the negro; comprising cloths and loom,
weapons, polished stones and woods, leather, glass, dyes, ornaments,
soap, pipe-bowls and trinkets. These he showed to Mr. Pitt, who saw and
handled them with extreme interest. “On sight of these,” says Clarkson,
“many sublime thoughts seemed to rush at once into his mind, some of
which he expressed;” and hence appeared to arise a project which was
always dear to him, of the civilization of Africa,—a dream which forever
elevates his fame. In 1791, Mr. Wilberforce announced to the House of
Commons, “We have already gained one victory: we have obtained for these
poor creatures the recognition of their human nature, which for a time
was most shamefully denied them.” It was the sarcasm of Montesquieu, “it
would not do to suppose that negroes were men, lest it should turn out
that whites were not;” for the white has, for ages, done what he could
to keep the negro in that hoggish state. His laws have been furies. It
now appears that the negro race is, more than any other, susceptible of
rapid civilization. The emancipation is observed, in the islands, to
have wrought for the negro a benefit as sudden as when a thermometer is
brought out of the shade into the sun. It has given him eyes and ears.
If, before, he was taxed with such stupidity, or such defective vision,
that he could not set a table square to the walls of an apartment, he is
now the principal if not the only mechanic in the West Indies; and is,
besides, an architect, a physician, a lawyer, a magistrate, an editor,
and a valued and increasing political power. The recent testimonies of
Sturge, of Thome and Kimball, of Gurney, of Philippo, are very explicit
on this point, the capacity and the success of the colored and the black
population in employments of skill, of profit and of trust; and best of
all is the testimony to their moderation. They receive hints and advances
from the whites that they will be gladly received as subscribers to
the Exchange, as members of this or that committee of trust. They hold
back, and say to each other that “social position is not to be gained by
pushing.”
I have said that this event interests us because it came mainly from
the concession of the whites; I add, that in part it is the earning of
the blacks. They won the pity and respect which they have received, by
their powers and native endowments. I think this a circumstance of the
highest import. Their whole future is in it. Our planet, before the age
of written history, had its races of savages, like the generations of
sour paste, or the animalcules that wiggle and bite in a drop of putrid
water. Who cares for these or for their wars? We do not wish a world of
bugs or of birds; neither afterward of Scythians, Caraibs or Feejees. The
grand style of Nature, her great periods, is all we observe in them. Who
cares for oppressing whites, or oppressed blacks, twenty centuries ago,
more than for bad dreams? Eaters and food are in the harmony of Nature;
and there too is the germ forever protected, unfolding gigantic leaf
after leaf, a newer flower, a richer fruit, in every period, yet its next
product is never to be guessed. It will only save what is worth saving;
and it saves not by compassion, but by power. It appoints no police to
guard the lion but his teeth and claws; no fort or city for the bird but
his wings; no rescue for flies and mites but their spawning numbers,
which no ravages can overcome. It deals with men after the same manner.
If they are rude and foolish, down they must go. When at last in a race
a new principle appears, an idea,—_that_ conserves it; ideas only save
races. If the black man is feeble and not important to the existing
races, not on a parity with the best race, the black man must serve,
and be exterminated.[116] But if the black man carries in his bosom an
indispensable element of a new and coming civilization; for the sake of
that element, no wrong nor strength nor circumstance can hurt him: he
will survive and play his part. So now, the arrival in the world of such
men as Toussaint, and the Haytian heroes, or of the leaders of their race
in Barbadoes and Jamaica, outweighs in good omen all the English and
American humanity. The anti-slavery of the whole world is dust in the
balance before this,—is a poor squeamishness and nervousness: the might
and the right are here: here is the anti-slave: here is man: and if you
have man, black or white is an insignificance. The intellect,—that is
miraculous! Who has it, has the talisman: his skin and bones, though they
were of the color of night, are transparent, and the everlasting stars
shine through, with attractive beams. But a compassion for that which
is not and cannot be useful or lovely, is degrading and futile. All the
songs and newspapers and money subscriptions and vituperation of such as
do not think with us, will avail nothing against a fact. I say to you,
you must save yourself, black or white, man or woman; other help is
none. I esteem the occasion of this jubilee to be the proud discovery
that the black race can contend with the white: that in the great anthem
which we call history, a piece of many parts and vast compass, after
playing a long time a very low and subdued accompaniment, they perceive
the time arrived when they can strike in with effect and take a master’s
part in the music. The civility of the world has reached that pitch that
their more moral genius is becoming indispensable, and the quality of
this race is to be honored for itself. For this, they have been preserved
in sandy deserts, in rice-swamps, in kitchens and shoe-shops, so long:
now let them emerge, clothed and in their own form.
There remains the very elevated consideration which the subject opens,
but which belongs to more abstract views than we are now taking, this,
namely, that the civility of no race can be perfect whilst another race
is degraded. It is a doctrine alike of the oldest and of the newest
philosophy, that man is one, and that you cannot injure any member,
without a sympathetic injury to all the members. America is not civil,
whilst Africa is barbarous.[117]
These considerations seem to leave no choice for the action of the
intellect and the conscience of the country. There have been moments in
this, as well as in every piece of moral history, when there seemed room
for the infusions of a skeptical philosophy; when it seemed doubtful
whether brute force would not triumph in the eternal struggle. I doubt
not that, sometimes, a despairing negro, when jumping over the ship’s
sides to escape from the white devils who surrounded him, has believed
there was no vindication of right; it is horrible to think of, but it
seemed so. I doubt not that sometimes the negro’s friend, in the face
of scornful and brutal hundreds of traders and drivers, has felt his
heart sink. Especially, it seems to me, some degree of despondency is
pardonable, when he observes the men of conscience and of intellect,
his own natural allies and champions,—those whose attention should be
nailed to the grand objects of this cause, so hotly offended by whatever
incidental petulances or infirmities of indiscreet defenders of the
negro, as to permit themselves to be ranged with the enemies of the human
race; and names which should be the alarums of liberty and the watchwords
of truth, are mixed up with all the rotten rabble of selfishness and
tyranny.[118] I assure myself that this coldness and blindness will
pass away. A single noble wind of sentiment will scatter them forever.
I am sure that the good and wise elders, the ardent and generous youth,
will not permit what is incidental and exceptional to withdraw their
devotion from the essential and permanent characters of the question.
There have been moments, I said, when men might be forgiven who doubted.
Those moments are past. Seen in masses, it cannot be disputed, there
is progress in human society. There is a blessed necessity by which
the interest of men is always driving them to the right; and, again,
making all crime mean and ugly. The genius of the Saxon race, friendly
to liberty; the enterprise, the very muscular vigor of this nation, are
inconsistent with slavery. The Intellect, with blazing eye, looking
through history from the beginning onward, gazes on this blot and it
disappears. The sentiment of Right, once very low and indistinct, but
ever more articulate, because it is the voice of the universe, pronounces
Freedom. The Power that built this fabric of things affirms it in the
heart; and in the history of the First of August, has made a sign to the
ages, of his will.
V