CONCLUSION 349
PREFACE.
To the conquerors of my native State, and perhaps to some of her sons,
a large part of the following defence will appear wholly unseasonable.
A discussion of a social order totally overthrown, and never to be
restored here, will appear as completely out of date to them as the
ribs of Noah's ark, bleaching amidst the eternal snows of Ararat, to
his posterity, when engaged in building the Tower of Babel. Let me
distinctly premise, that I do not dream of affecting the perverted
judgments of the great anti-slavery party which now rules the hour. Of
course, a set of people who make success the test of truth, as they
avowedly do in this matter, and who have been busily and triumphantly
engaged for so many years in perfecting a plain injustice, to which
they had deliberately made up their minds, are not within the reach of
reasoning. Nothing but the hand of a retributive Providence can avail
to reach them. The few among them who do not pass me by with silent
neglect, I am well aware will content themselves with scolding; they
will not venture a rational reply.
But my purpose in the following pages is, first and chiefly, to lay
this pious and filial defence upon the tomb of my murdered mother,
Virginia. Her detractors, after committing the crime of
destroying a sovereign and co-equal commonwealth, seek also to bury
her memory under a load of obloquy and falsehood. The last and only
office that remains to her sons is to leave their testimony for her
righteous fame--feeble it may be now, amidst the din of passion and
material power, yet inextinguishable as Truth's own torch. History
will some day bring present events before her impartial bar; and then
her ministers will recall my obscure little book, and will recognize
in it the words of truth and righteousness, attested by the signatures
of time and events.
Again: if there is indeed any future for civilized government in what
were the United States, the refutation of the abolitionist postulates
must possess a living interest still. Men ask, "Is not the slavery
question dead? Why discuss it longer?" I reply: Would God it were
dead! Would that its mischievous principles were as completely a thing
of the past as our rights in the Union in this particular are! But in
the Church, abolitionism lives, and is more rampant and mischievous
than ever, as infidelity; for this is its true nature. Therefore the
faithful servants of the Lord Jesus Christ dare not cease to oppose
and unmask it. And in the State, abolitionism still lives in its full
activity, as Jacobinism; a fell spirit which is the destroyer of every
hope of just government and Christian order. Hence, the enlightened
patriot cannot cease to contend with it, until he has accepted, in his
hopelessness, the _nefas de republica desperandi_. Whether wise and
good men deem that this discussion is antiquated, may be judged from
the fact that Bishop Hopkins (one of the most revered divines among
Episcopalians) judged it proper, in 1864, and Dr. Stuart Robinson, of
Louisville, (equally esteemed among Presbyterians,) in 1865, to put
forth new and able arguments upon this question.
It should be added, in explanation, that, as a son of Virginia, I have
naturally taken her, the oldest and greatest of the slaveholding
States, as a representative. I was most familiar with her laws. In
defending her, I have virtually defended the whole South, of which she
was the type; for the differences between her slave institutions and
theirs were in no respect essential.
The most fearful consequence of the despotic government to which the
South is now subjected, is not the plundering of our goods, nor the
abridgment of privileges, nor the death of innocent men, but the
degrading and debauching of the moral sensibilities and principles of
the helpless victims. The weapon of arbitrary rulers is physical
force; the shield of its victims is usually evasion and duplicity.
Again: few minds and consciences have that stable independence which
remains erect and undebauched amidst the disappointments, anguish, and
losses of defeat, and the desertion of numbers, and the obloquy of a
lost cause. Hence it has usually been found, in the history of
subjugated nations, that they receive at the hands of their conquerors
this crowning woe--a depraved, cringing, and cowardly spirit. The
wisest, kindest, most patriotic thing which any man can do for his
country, amidst such calamities, is to aid in preserving and
reinstating the tottering principles of his countrymen; to teach them,
while they give place to inexorable force, to abate nothing of
righteous convictions and of self-respect. And in this work he is as
really a benefactor of the conquerors as of the conquered. For thus
he aids in preserving that precious seed of men, who are men of
principle, and not of expediency; who alone (if any can) are able to
reconstruct society, after the tumult of faction shall have spent its
rage, upon the foundations of truth and justice. The men at the North
who have stood firmly aloof from the errors and crimes of this
revolution, and the men at the South who have not been unmanned and
debauched by defeat--these are the men whom Providence will call forth
from their seclusion, when the fury of fanaticism shall have done its
worst, to repair its mischiefs, and save America from chronic anarchy
and barbarism; if, indeed, any rescue is designed for us. It is this
audience, "few but fit," with which I would chiefly commune. They will
appreciate this humble effort to justify the history of our native
States, and to sustain the hearts of their sons in the hour of cruel
reproach.
_Hampden Sidney, Virginia, June, 1867._
A DEFENCE OF VIRGINIA.
* * * * *
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
To the rational historian who, two hundred years hence, shall study
the history of the nineteenth century, it will appear one of the most
curious vagaries of human opinion, that the Christianity and
philanthropy of our day should have given so disproportionate an
attention to the evils of African slavery. Such a dispassionate
observer will perceive that, while many other gigantic evils were
rampant in this age, there prevailed a sort of epidemic fashion of
selecting this one upon which to exhaust the virtuous indignation and
sympathies of the professed friends of human amelioration. And he will
probably see in this a proof that the Christianity and benevolence of
the nineteenth century were not so superior, in wisdom and breadth, to
those of the seventeenth and eighteenth, as the busy actors in them
had persuaded themselves; but were, in fact, conceited, overweening,
and fantastic.
It will appear to him a still stranger fact, that this zeal against
African slavery was so partial in its exhibition. Up to this day, not
only the Southern States of the late American Union, but the
Brazilian, Turkish, and Spanish empires, among civilized nations, and
many barbarous people, have continued the explicit practice of
slavery, in so stern a form, that the institution in the Confederate
States was, by comparison, extremely mild. Yet, throughout the
Northern States of America and Europe, it is upon the devoted heads of
Southern masters almost exclusively that the vials of holy wrath are
poured out. Renascent Spain is quite a pet among Yankees and
Europeans, though tenaciously clinging, in her colonies, to a system
of slavery at whose barbarities the public sentiment of these Southern
States would shudder, and though persistently winking at the African
Slave Trade in addition. Slaveholding Brazil is on most pleasing terms
with the United States and the European governments, which vie in
soliciting her commercial intercourse and friendship with most amiable
suavity. But when the sounding lash of the self-constituted friend of
man is raised to chastise "the wickedness of slavery," all Yankeedom
and all Europe seem to think only of us sinners. And yet here, of all
places where it prevailed, African bondage was most ameliorated and
most justifiable! Indeed, not a few of these consistent reformers have
ten-fold as much patience with that demon of slaveholders, the King of
Dahomey, as with the benignant Christian master in Virginia; and go to
that truculent savage to request him not to cut the throats of another
thousand of his inoffensive slaves in a "grand custom," with far more
of courtesy, forbearance, and amiability, than they can exercise
towards us, when they come to reason with us touching the rights of
our late peaceful and well-fed domestics. We see no reason for this
partiality, but that the King of Dahomey is himself of that colour,
which seems to be the only one acceptable to the tastes of this type
of philanthropists. An Abolitionist poet has sung of our oppressing
our brother man, because he was "guilty of a skin." To give the
contrast, these persons act as though, in their view, the King of
Dahomey's meritorious possession of the skin of approved colour, were
enough to cover his multitude of sins! Now, if the rest of Christendom
have determined to take slaveholders for their pet objects of abuse,
we may justly demand of them, at least, to distribute their hard words
more generally, and give all a share.
This injustice is to be accounted for, in part, by the greater
prominence which the late United States held before the world, making
all their supposed sins more prominent; and in part by the zeal of our
late very amiable and equitable partners, the Yankee people. They
reserved their abuse and venom on this subject for their Southern
fellow-citizens alone. They made it their business to direct the whole
storm of odium, from abroad and at home, on our heads. They, having
the manufacture of American books chiefly in their hands, took pains
to fill Europe and their own country with industrious slanders against
their own brethren: and so occupied the ear of the world with abuse of
us, as to make men almost forget that there were any other
slaveholders. For this they had two motives, one calculated, and the
other passionate and instinctive. The latter was the sectional
animosity which was bred by the very intimacy of their association
under one government, with rival interests. The man who has learned to
hate his brother, hates him, and can abuse him, more heartily than any
more distant enemy. The deliberative motive was, to reduce the South
to a state of colonial dependency upon themselves, and exclude all
other nations from the rich plunder which they were accustomed to draw
from the oppressed section, by means of the odium and misunderstanding
which they created concerning us. The South was their precious gold
mine, from which they had quarried, and hoped yet again to quarry,
hoards of wealth, by the instruments of legislative and commercial
jugglery. From this precious mine, they wished to keep other
adventurers away by the customary expedient of spreading an odious
character for moral _malaria_ and pestilential vices around it. It did
not suit their selfish purposes, that Europe should know, that in this
slaveholding South was the true conservative power of the American
Government, the most solid type of old English character, the greatest
social stability and purity, and above all, the very fountain of
international commerce and wealth; lest Europe should desire to visit
and to trade with this section for itself. And the readiest way to
prevent this, was to paint the South to all the rest of the world, in
the blackest colours of misrepresentation, so as to have us regarded
as a semi-barbarous race of domestic tyrants, whose chief occupations
were chaining or scourging negroes, and stabbing each other with
bowie-knives. The trick was a success. The Yankee almost monopolized
the advantages of Southern trade and intercourse.
But the South should have been impelled by the same facts to defend
its institutions before the public opinion of the civilized world; for
_opinion_ is always omnipotent in the end, whatever prejudices and
physical powers may oppose it. If its current is allowed to flow
unchecked, its silent waters gradually undermine the sternest
obstacles. This great truth men of thought are more apt to recognize
than men of action. While the true statesman is fully awake to it, the
mere politician is unconscious of its power; and when his
expedients--his parties and his statutes--have all been silently swept
away by the diffusion of abstract principles opposed to them, he
cannot understand his overthrow. If the late Confederate States would
have gained that to which they aspired, the position of a respectable
and prosperous people among the nations of the world, it was extremely
important that they should secure from their neighbours a more just
appreciation of their institutions. A respectful and powerful appeal
in defence of those institutions was due to our neighbours' opinions,
unfair and unkind as they have been to us; and due to our own rights
and self-respect.
Our mere politicians committed an error in this particular, while we
were still members of the United States, by which we should now learn.
They failed to meet the Abolitionists with sufficient persistence and
force on the radical question--the righteousness of African servitude
as existing among us. It is true that this fundamental point has
received a discussion at the South, chiefly at the hands of clergymen
and literary men, which has evoked a number of works of the highest
merit and power, constituting almost a literature on the subject. One
valuable effect of this literature was to enlighten and satisfy the
Southern mind, and to produce a settled unanimity of opinion, even
greater than that which existed against us in other States. But such
is the customary and overweening egotism of the Yankee mind, that none
of these works, whatever their merit, could ever obtain general
circulation or reading in the North. People there were satisfied to
read only their own shallow and one-sided arguments, quietly treating
us as though our guilt was too clear to admit of any argument, or we
were too inferior to be capable of it. The consequence was, that
although the North has made the wrongs of the African its own peculiar
cause--its great master-question--it is pitiably ignorant of the facts
and arguments of the case. After twenty-five years of discussion, we
find that the staple of the logic of their writers is still the same
set of miserable and shallow sophisms, which Southern divines and
statesmen have threshed into dust, and driven away as the chaff before
the whirlwind, so long ago, and so often, that any intelligent man
among us is almost ashamed to allude to them as requiring an answer.
When the polemic heat of this quarrel shall have passed away, and the
dispassionate antiquary shall compare the literature of the two
parties, he will be amazed to see that of the popular one so poor,
beggarly, and false, and that of the unpopular one so manly,
philosophic, and powerful. But at present, such is the clamour of
prejudice, our cause has not obtained a hearing from the world.
The North having arrogated to itself the name of chief manufacturer
of literary material, and having chief control of the channels of
foreign intercourse, of course our plea has been less listened to
across the Atlantic than in America. The South has been condemned
unheard. Well-informed men in Great Britain, we presume, are ignorant
of the names and works of the able and dignified advocates to whom the
South confidently and proudly committed her justification; and were
willing to render their verdict upon the mere accusations of our
interested slanderers. But while the United States yet existed
unbroken, there was one _forum_, where we could have demanded a
hearing upon the fundamental question: the Federal Legislature. From
that centre of universal attention, our defence of the righteousness
of the relation of master and slave, as existing among us, might have
been spread before the public mind; and the abstract question having
been decided by triumphant argument, the troubles of our Federal
relations might possibly have been quieted. There were two courses,
either of which might have been followed by our politicians, in
defending our Federal rights against Abolitionism. One plan would have
been, to exclude the whole question of slavery persistently from the
national councils, as extra-constitutional and dangerous, and to
assert this exclusion always, and at every risk, as the essential
condition of the continuance of the South in those councils. The other
plan was, to meet that abstract question from the first, as underlying
and determining the whole subject, and to debate it everywhere, until
it was decided, and the verdict of the national mind was passed upon
it. Unfortunately, the Southern men did neither persistently. After
temporary resistance, they permitted the debate; and then failed to
conduct it on fundamental principles. With the exception of Mr.
Calhoun, (whom events have now shown to have been the most far-seeing
of our statesmen, notwithstanding the fashion of men to depreciate him
as an "abstractionist" while he lived,) Southern politicians usually
satisfied themselves with saying, that the whole matter was, according
to the Constitution, one of State sovereignty; that Congress had no
right to legislate concerning its merits; and that therefore they
would not seem to admit such a right, by condescending to argue the
matter on its merits. The premise was true; but the inference was
practically most mischievous. If the Congress had no right to
legislate about slavery, then it should not have been permitted to
debate it. And Southern men, if they intended to make their stand on
that ground, should have exacted the exclusion of all debate, at every
cost. But this was perhaps impossible. The debate came; and, of
course, the principles agitated ran at once back of the Constitution,
to the abstract ethical question: "Is the holding of an African slave
in the South a moral wrong in itself?" Southern men should have
industriously followed them there; but they did not do it: and soon
the heat and animosity of an aggressive and growing faction hurried
the country beyond the point of calm consideration. A moment's
reflection should have shown that the decisive question was the
abstract righteousness of the relation of master and slave. The
Constitution gave to the Federal Government no power over that
relation in the States. True; but that Constitution was a compact
between sovereign commonwealth: it certainly gave recognition and
protection to the relation of master and slave; and if that relation
is intrinsically unrighteous, then it protected a wrong. Then the
sovereign States of the North were found in the attitude of protecting
a wrong by their voluntary compact; and therefore it would have been
the duty of all citizens of those States to seek, by all righteous
means, the amendment or repeal of that compact. They would not,
indeed, have been justified to claim all the benefits of the compact,
and still agitate under it a matter which the compact excluded. But
they would have been more than justified, they would have been bound
to clear their skirts of the wrong, by surrendering the compact, if
necessary. There was no evasion from the duty, except by proving that
the Constitution did nothing unrighteous by protecting the relation;
in other words, that the relation was not unrighteous. Again, on the
subject of the "Higher Law," our conservative statesmen and divines
threw up a vast amount of pious dust. This partially quieted the
country for a time; but, as might have been foreseen, it was destined
to be inevitably blown away. There _is a higher law_, superior to
constitutions and statutes; not, indeed, the perjured and unprincipled
cant which has no conscience against swearing allegiance to a
Constitution and laws which it declares sinful, in order to grasp
emoluments and advantages, and then pleads "conscience" for disobeying
what it had voluntarily sworn to obey; but the everlasting law of
right in the word of God. Constitutions and laws which contravene
this, ought to be lawfully amended or repealed; and it is the duty of
all citizens to seek it. Let this be applied to the Fugitive Slave
Law. If the bondage was intrinsically unrighteous, then the Federal
law which aided in remanding the fugitive to it, legalized a wrong. It
became, therefore, the duty of all United States officers, who were
required by statute to execute this law--not, indeed, to hold their
offices and emoluments, and swear fidelity, and then plead
conscientious scruples for the neglect of these sworn functions, (for
this is a detestable union of theft and perjury with hypocrisy,)--but
to resign those offices wholly, with their profits and their sinful
functions. It would have become the duty of any private citizen, who
might have been summoned by a United States officer, to act in a
_posse_, guard, or any other way in enforcing this law, to decline
obedience; and then, in accordance with Scripture, to submit meekly to
the legal penalty of such a refusal, until the unrighteous law were
repealed. But, moreover, it would have become the right and duty of
these and all other citizens to seek the repeal of that law, or, if
necessary, the abrogation of that Federal compact which necessitated
it. But on the other hand, when we proved that the relation of master
and slave is not unrighteous, and that therefore the Fugitive Slave
Law required the perpetration of no wrong, and was constitutional, it
became the clear moral duty of every citizen to concur in obeying it.
Once more: the true key of the more commanding question of _free soil_
was in the same abstract ethical point. If the relation of master and
servant was unrighteous, and the institution a standing sin against
God and human rights, then it was not to be extended at the mere
dictate of convenience and gain. Although Northern men might be
compelled to admit that, in the States, it was subject to State
control alone, and expressly exempted from all interference of the
Federal Government by the Constitution; yet, outside of the States,
that Constitution and Government, representative as it was as a
majority of free States, ought not to have been prostituted to the
extension of a great moral wrong. Those free States ought, if their
Southern partners would not consent to relinquish their right by a
peaceable amendment of the Constitution, to have retired from the
odious compact, and to have surrendered the advantages of the Union
for conscience' sake. If, on the contrary, African slavery in America
was no unrighteousness, no sin against human rights, and no
contradiction to the doctrines of the Constitution, then the general
teachings of that instrument concerning the absolute equality of the
States and their several citizens under it, were too clear to leave a
doubt, that the letter and spirit of the document gave the slaveholder
just the same right to carry his slaves into any territory, with that
of the Connecticut man to carry his clock-factory. Hence the ethical
question, when once the slavery agitation became inevitable, should
have been made the great question by us. The halls of Congress should
have rung with the arguments, the newspaper press should have teemed
with them. But little was done to purpose in this discussion, save by
clergymen and literary men; and for reasons already indicated they
were practically unheard. After it was too late to stem the torrent of
passion and sectional ambition pouring against us, politicians did
indeed awake to a tardy perception of these important views; but the
eyes of the Northern people were then obstinately closed against them
by a foregone conclusion.
We have cited these recent and striking illustrations of the
fundamental importance of the ethical discussion, to justify the task
we have undertaken. Some may suppose that, as the United States are no
more as they were, and slaveholding is absolutely and finally ended,
the question is obsolete. This is a great mistake. The status of the
negro is just beginning to develop itself as an agitating and potent
element in the politics of America. It will still continue the great
ground of contrast, and subject of moral strife, between the North and
the South.
We have attempted to indicate the potency of the slow and silent but
irresistible influence of opinion over human affairs. Let our enemies
claim the triumph without question in the field of opinion; let them
continue to persuade mankind successfully that we were a people
stained by a standing social crime; and we shall be continually
worsted by them. In order to be free, we must be respected: and to
this end we must defend our good name. We need not urge that
instinctive desire for the good opinion of our fellow-men, and that
sense of justice, which must ever render it painful to be the objects
of undeserved odium. Instead, therefore, of regarding the discussion
of the rightfulness of African slavery as henceforth antiquated, we
believe that it assumes, at this era, a new and wider importance.
While the swords of our people were fighting the battles of a
necessary self-defence, the pens of our statesmen should have been no
less diligent in defending us against the adverse opinion of a
prejudiced world. Every opening should have been seized to disabuse
the minds of Europeans, a jury to which we have hitherto had no
access, although condemned by it. The discussion should everywhere
have been urged, until public opinion was effectually rectified and
made just to the Confederate States.
At the first glance, it appears an arduous, if not a hopeless
undertaking, to address the minds of such nations as the North and
Great Britain in defence of Southern slavery. We have to contend
against the prescriptive opinions and prejudices of years' growth. We
assert a thesis which our adversaries have taken pains to represent as
an impossible absurdity, of which the very assertion is an insult to
the understanding and heart of a freeman. Ten thousand slanders have
given to the very name of Southern slaveholder a colouring, which
darkens every argument that can be advanced in his favour. Yet the
task of self-defence is not entirely discouraging. Our best hope is in
the fact that the cause of our defence is the cause of God's Word, and
of its supreme authority over the human conscience. For, as we shall
evince, that Word is on our side, and the teachings of Abolitionism
are clearly of rationalistic origin, of infidel tendency, and only
sustained by reckless and licentious perversions of the meaning of the
Sacred text. It will in the end become apparent to the world, not only
that the conviction of the wickedness of slaveholding was drawn wholly
from sources foreign to the Bible, but that it is a legitimate
corollary from that fantastic, atheistic, and radical theory of human
rights, which made the Reign of Terror in France, which has threatened
that country, and which now threatens the United States, with the
horrors of Red-Republicanism. Because we believe that God intends to
vindicate His Divine Word, and to make all nations honour it; because
we confidently rely in the force of truth to explode all dangerous
error; therefore we confidently expect that the world will yet do
justice to Southern slaveholders. The anti-scriptural, infidel, and
radical grounds upon which our assailants have placed themselves, make
our cause practically the cause of truth and order. This is already
understood here by thinking men who have seen Abolitionism bear its
fruit unto perfection: and the world will some day understand it. We
shall possess at this time another advantage in defending our good
name, derived from our late effort for independence. Hitherto we have
been little known to Europeans, save through the very charitable
representations of our fraternal partners, the Yankees. Foreigners
visiting the United States almost always assumed, that when they had
seen the North, they had seen the country, (for Yankeedom always
modestly represented itself as constituting all of America that was
worth looking at.) Hence the character of the South was not known, nor
its importance appreciated. Its books and periodicals were unread by
Europeans. But now the very interest excited by our struggle has
caused other nations to observe for themselves, and to find that we
are not _Troglodytes_ nor _Anthropophagi_.
Another introductory remark which should be made is, that this
discussion, to produce any good result, must distinctly disclaim some
extravagant and erroneous grounds which have sometimes been assumed.
It is not our purpose to rest our defence on an assumption of a
diversity of race, which is contradicted both by natural history and
by the Scripture, declaring that "God hath made of one blood all
nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth." Nor does
the Southern cause demand such assertions as that the condition of
master and slave is everywhere the normal condition of human society,
and preferable to all others under all circumstances. The burden of
odium which the cause will then carry, abroad, will be immeasurably
increased by such positions. Nor can a purpose be ever subserved by
arguing the question by a series of comparisons of the relative
advantages of slave and free labour, laudatory to the one part and
invidious to the other. There has been hitherto, on both sides of this
debate, a mischievous forgetfulness of the old adage, "comparisons are
odious!" When Southern men thus argued, they assumed the disadvantage
of appearing as the propagandists, instead of the peaceful defenders,
of an institution which immediately concerned nobody but themselves;
and they arrayed the self-esteem of all opponents against us by making
our defence the necessary disparagement of the other parties. True,
those parties have usually been but too zealous to play at this
invidious game, beginning it in advance. We should not imitate them.
It is time all parties had learned that the lawfulness and policy of
different social systems cannot be decided by painting the special and
exceptional features of hardship, abuse, or mismanagement, which
either of the advocates may imagine he sees in the system of his
opponent. The course of this great discussion has too often been this:
Each party has set up an easel, and spread a canvas upon it, and
drawn the system of its adversary in contrast with its own, in the
blackest colours which a heated and angry fancy could discover amidst
the evils and abuses imputed to the rival institution. The only
possible result was, that each should blacken his adversary more and
more; and consequently that both should grow more and more enraged.
And this result did not argue the entire falsehood of either set of
accusations. For, unfortunately, the human race is a fallen
race--depraved, selfish, unrighteous and oppressive, under all
institutions. Out of the best social order, committed to such hands,
there still proceeds a hideous amount of wrongs and woe; and that, not
because the order is unrighteous, but because it is administered by
depraved man. For this reason, and for another equally conclusive, we
assert that the lawfulness, and even the wisdom or policy of social
institutions affecting a great population, cannot be decided by these
odious contrasts of their special wrong results. That second reason
is, that the field of view is too vast and varied to be brought fairly
under comparison in all its details before the limited eye of man.
First, then, if we attempt to settle the matter by endeavouring to
find how much evil can be discovered in the working of the opposite
system, there will probably be no end at all to the melancholy
discoveries which both parties will make against each other, and so no
end to the debate: for the guilty passions of men are everywhere
perpetual fountains of wrong-doing. And second, the comparison of
results must be deceptive, because no finite mind can take in all the
details of both the wholes. Our wisdom, then, will be to take no
extreme positions, and to make no invidious comparisons
unnecessarily. It is enough for us to place ourselves on this
impregnable stand; that the relation of master and slave is recognized
as lawful in itself by a sound philosophy, and above all, by the Word
of God. It is enough for us to say (what is capable of overwhelming
demonstration) that for the African race, such as Providence has made
it, and where He has placed it in America, slavery was the righteous,
the best, yea, the only tolerable relation. Whether it would be wise
or just for other States to introduce it, we need not argue.
And in conclusion, we would state that it is our purpose to argue this
proposition chiefly on Bible grounds. Our people and our national
neighbours are professedly Christians; the vast majority of them
profess to get their ideas of morality, as all should, from the Sacred
Scriptures. A few speculative minds may reason out moral conclusions
from ethical principles; but the masses derive their ideas of right
and wrong from a "Thus saith the Lord." And it is a homage we owe to
the Bible, from whose principles we have derived so much of social
prosperity and blessing, to appeal to its verdict on every subject
upon which it has spoken. Indeed, when we remember how human reason
and learning have blundered in their philosophizings; how great
parties have held for ages the doctrine of the divine right of kings
as a political axiom; how the whole civilized world held to the
righteousness of persecuting errors in opinion, even for a century
after the Reformation; we shall feel little confidence in mere human
reasonings on political principles; we shall rejoice to follow a
steadier light. The scriptural argument for the righteousness of
slavery gives us, moreover, this great advantage: If we urge it
successfully, we compel the Abolitionists either to submit, or else to
declare their true infidel character. We thrust them fairly to the
wall, by proving that the Bible is against them; and if they declare
themselves against the Bible (as the most of them doubtless will) they
lose the support of all honest believers in God's Word.
This discussion will therefore be, in the main, a series of
expositions. The principles of scriptural exposition are simply those
of common sense; and it will be the writer's aim so to explain them
that they shall commend themselves to every honest mind, and to rid
them of the sophisms of the Abolitionists.
But before we proceed to this discussion we propose to devote a few
pages to the exposition of the historical facts which place the
attitude of Virginia in the proper light.
CHAPTER II.
THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE.
This iniquitous traffick, beginning with the importation of negroes
into Hispaniola in 1503, was first pursued by the English in 1562,
under Sir John Hawkins, who sold a cargo at the same island that year.
The news of his success reaching Queen Elizabeth, she became a partner
with him in other voyages. Under the Stuart kings, repeated charters
were given to noblemen and merchants, to form companies for this
trade, in one of which, the Duke of York, afterwards James II., was a
partner. The colony of Virginia was planted in 1607. The first cargo
of negroes, only twenty in number, arrived there in a Dutch vessel in
1620, and was bought by the colonists. All the commercial nations of
Europe were implicated in the trade; and all the colonies in America
were supplied, to a greater or less extent, with slave labour from
Africa, whether Spanish, Portuguese, English, French, or Dutch. But
England became, on the whole, the leader in this trade, and was
unrivalled by any, save her daughter, New England.
The happy revolution of 1688, which placed William and Mary on the
throne, arrested for a time the activity of the royal company for
slave trading, by throwing the business open to the whole nation. For
one of the reforms, stipulated with the new government, was the
abolition of all monopolies. But the company did not give up its
operations; and it even succeeded in exacting from Parliament an
indemnity of £10,000 _per annum_ for the loss of its exclusive
privilege. But the most splendid triumph of British enterprise was
that achieved by the treaty of Utrecht, 1712, between Queen Anne and
Spain. By a compact called the _Asiento_ treaty, the Spanish monarch
resigned to the English South Sea Company, the exclusive slave trade
even between Africa and the Spanish colonies. Four thousand eight
hundred slaves were to be furnished to the Spanish colonies annually,
for thirty years, paying to the King of Spain an impost of
thirty-three and a third dollars per head; but the company had the
privilege of introducing as many more as they could sell, paying half
duty upon them. The citizens of every other nation, even Spaniards
themselves, were prohibited from bringing a single slave. The British
Queen and the King of Spain became stockholders in the venture, to the
extent of one-fourth each; the remainder of the stock was left to
British citizens. And Anne, in her speech from the throne, detailing
to her Parliament the provisions of the treaty of Utrecht,
congratulated them on this monopoly of slave trading, as the most
splendid triumph of her arms and diplomacy.[1] Meantime, the African
Company, with private adventurers at a later day, plied the trade with
equal activity, for furnishing the British colonies. Finally, in 1749,
every restriction upon private enterprise was removed; and the slave
trade was thrown open to all Englishmen; for, says the statute: "the
slave trade is very advantageous to Great Britain." But every resource
of legislation, and even of war, was employed during the eighteenth
century to secure the monopoly of the trade to British subjects, and
to enlarge the market for their commodity in all the colonies. To this
end, the royal government of the plantations, which afterwards became
the United States, was perseveringly directed. The complaint of Hugh
Drysdale, Deputy Governor of Virginia, in 1726, that when a tax was
imposed to check the influx of Africans, "the interfering interest of
the African company has obtained the repeal of the law,"[2] was common
to him and all the patriotic rulers of the Southern colonies.
[Footnote 1: Bancroft, Hist. U. S., vol. iii., p. 232. Com. Boutwell,
Slave Trade. Bancroft, vol. iii., p. 414.]
[Footnote 2: Bancroft, vol. iii., p. 415.]
Reynal estimates the whole number of negroes stolen from Africa before
1776 at nine millions; Bancroft at something more than six millions.
Of these, British subjects carried at least half: and to the above
numbers must be added a quarter of a million thrown by Englishmen into
the Atlantic on the voyage.[3] As the traffick continued in full
activity until 1808, it is a safe estimate that the number of victims
to British cupidity taken from Africa was increased to five millions.
The profit made by Englishmen upon the three millions carried to
America before 1776, could not have been less than four hundred
millions of dollars. The negroes cost the traders nothing but
worthless trinkets, damaged fire-arms, and New England rum: they were
usually paid for in hard money at the place of sale. This lucrative
trade laid the foundation, to a great degree, for the commercial
wealth of London, Bristol, and Liverpool. The capital which now makes
England the workshop and _emporium_ of the world, was in large part
born of the African slave trade. Especially was this the chief source
of the riches which founded the British empire in Hindostan. The South
Sea and the African Companies were the prototypes and pioneers of that
wonderful institution, the East India Company; and the money by which
the latter was set on foot was derived mainly from the profitable
slave-catching of the former. When the direct returns of the African
trade in the eighteenth century are remembered; when it is noted how
much colonial trade has contributed to British greatness, and when it
is considered that England's colonial system was wholly built upon
African slavery, the intelligent reader will be convinced that the
slave trade was the corner-stone of the present splendid prosperity of
that Empire.
[Footnote 3: Ibid., vol. iii., pp. 411, 412.]
But after the nineteenth century had arrived, the prospective impolicy
of the trade,[4] the prevalence of democratic and Jacobin opinions
imported from France, the shame inspired by the example of Virginia,
with (we would fain hope) some influences of the Christian religion
upon the better spirits, began to create a powerful party against the
trade. First, Clarkson published in Latin, and then in English, his
work against the slave trade, exposing its unutterable barbarities, as
practised by Englishmen, and arguing its intrinsic unrighteousness.
The powerful parliamentary influence of Wilberforce was added, and
afterwards that of the younger Pitt. The commercial classes made a
tremendous resistance for many years, sustained by many noblemen and
by the royal family; but at length the Parliament, in 1808, declared
the trade illicit, and took measures to suppress it. Since that time,
the British Government, with a tardy zeal, but without disgorging any
of the gross spoils with which it is so plethoric, wrung from the
tears and blood of Africa, has arrogated to itself the special task of
the catchpole of the seas, to "police" the world against the
continuance of its once profitable sin. Its present attitude is in
curious contrast with its recent position, as greedy monopolist, and
queen of slave traders; and especially when the observer adverts to
her activity in the Coolie traffick, that new and more frightful form,
under which the Phariseeism of this age has restored the trade, he
will have little difficulty in deciding, whether the meddlesome
activity of England is prompted by a virtuous repentance, or by a
desire to replace the advantages of the African commerce with other
fruits of commercial supremacy.
[Footnote 4: Speeches of Pitt and Fox, in Clarkson's Hist., pp. 315,
339.]
The share of the Colony of Virginia in the African slave trade was
that of an unwilling recipient; never that of an active party. She had
no ships engaged in any foreign trade; for the strict obedience of her
governors and citizens to the colonial laws of the mother country
prevented her trading to foreign ports, and all the carrying trade to
British ports and colonies was in the hands of New Englanders and
Englishmen. In the replies submitted by Sir William Berkeley,
Governor, 1671, to certain written inquiries of the "Lords of
Plantations," we find the following statement: "And this is the cause
why no great or small vessels are built here; for we are most obedient
to all laws, while the men of New England break through, and trade to
any place that their interest leads them."[5] The same facts, and the
sense of grievance which the colonists derived from them, are
curiously attested by the party of Nathaniel Bacon also, who opposed
Sir William Berkeley. When they supposed that they had wrested the
government from his hands, Sarah Drummond, an enthusiastic patriot,
exclaimed: "Now we can build ships, and like New England, trade to any
part of the world."[6] But her hopes were not realized: Virginia
continued without ships. No vessel ever went from her ports, or was
ever manned by her citizens, to engage in the slave trade; and while
her government can claim the high and peculiar honour of having ever
opposed the cruel traffick, her citizens have been precluded by
Providence from the least participation in it.
[Footnote 5: Herring, Stat. at Large, vol. ii., p. 516.]
[Footnote 6: Campbell's Virginia, p. 304.]
The planting of the commercial States of North America began with the
colony of Puritan Independents at Plymouth, in 1620, which was
subsequently enlarged into the State of Massachusetts. The other
trading colonies, Rhode Island and Connecticut, as well as New
Hampshire (which never had an extensive shipping interest), were
offshoots of Massachusetts. They partook of the same characteristics
and pursuits; and hence, the example of the parent colony is taken
here as a fair representation of them. The first ship from America,
which embarked in the African slave trade, was the _Desire_, Captain
Pierce, of Salem; and this was among the first vessels ever built in
the colony. The promptitude with which the "Puritan Fathers" embarked
in this business may be comprehended, when it is stated that the
Desire sailed upon her voyage in June, 1637.[7] The first feeble and
dubious foothold was gained by the white man at Plymouth less than
seventeen years before; and as is well known, many years were expended
by the struggle of the handful of settlers for existence. So that it
may be correctly said, that the commerce of New England was born of
the slave trade; as its subsequent prosperity was largely founded upon
it. The Desire, proceeding to the Bahamas, with a cargo of "dry fish
and strong liquors, the only commodities for those parts," obtained
the negroes from two British men-of-war, which had captured them from
a Spanish slaver.
[Footnote 7: Winthrop's Journal, i., 254. Moore's Slavery in Mass.,
pp. 5, 6.]
To understand the growth of the New England slave trade, two connected
topics must be a little illustrated. The first of these is the
enslaving of Indians. The pious "Puritan Fathers" found it convenient
to assume that they were God's chosen Israel, and the pagans about
them were Amalek and Amorites. They hence deduced their righteous
title to exterminate or enslave the Indians, whenever they became
troublesome. As soon as the Indian wars began, we find the captives
enslaved. The ministers and magistrates solemnly authorized the
enslaving of the wives and posterity of their enemies for the crimes
of the fathers and husbands in daring to defend their own soil. In
1646, the Commissioners of the United Colonies made an order,[8] that
upon complaint of a trespass by Indians, any of that plantation of
Indians that should entertain, protect, or rescue the offender, might
be seized by reprisal, and held as hostages for the delivery of the
culprits; in failure of which, the innocent persons seized should be
slaves, and be exported for sale as such. In 1677, the General Court
of Massachusetts[9] ordered the enslaving of the Indian youths or
girls "of such as had been in hostility with the colony, or had lived
among its enemies in the time of the War." In the winter of 1675-6,
Major Waldron, commissioner of the General Court for that territory
now included in Maine, issued a general warrant for seizing,
enslaving, and exporting every Indian "known to be a manslayer,
traitor, or conspirator."[10] The reader will not be surprised to
hear, that so monstrous an order, committed for execution to any or
every man's irresponsible hands, was employed by many shipmasters for
the vilest purposes of kidnapping and slave hunting. But in addition,
in numerous instances whole companies of peaceable and inoffensive
Indians, submitting to the colonial authorities, were seized and
enslaved by publick order. In one case one hundred and fifty of the
Dartmouth tribe, including their women and children, coming in by a
voluntary submission, and under a general pledge of amnesty, and in
another instance, four hundred of a different tribe, were shamelessly
enslaved. By means of these proceedings, the numbers of Indian
servants became so large, that they were regarded as dangerous to the
Colony. They were, moreover, often untameable in temper, prone to run
away to their kinsmen in the neighbouring wilderness, and much less
docile and effective for labour than the "blackamoors." Hence the
prudent and thrifty saints saw the advantage of exporting them to the
Bermudas, Barbadoes, and other islands, in exchange for negroes and
merchandise; and this traffick, being much encouraged, and finally
enjoined, by the authorities, became so extensive as to substitute
negroes for Indian slaves, almost wholly in the Colony.[11] Among the
slaves thus deported were the favourite wife and little son of the
heroic King Philip. The holy Independent Divines, Cotton, Arnold, and
Increase Mather, inclined to the opinion that he should be slain for
his father's sins, after the example of the children of Achan and
Agag;[12] but the authorities probably concluded that his deportation
would be a more profitable, as well as a harsher punishment. These
shocking incidents will no longer appear incredible to the reader,
when he is informed that the same magistrates sold and transported
into foreign slavery two English children, one of them a girl, for
attending a Quaker meeting;[13] while the adult ladies present were
fined £10 each, and whipped.[14]
[Footnote 8: Moore's Slavery in Mass., p. 32.]
[Footnote 9: Ibid., p. 38.]
[Footnote 10: Ibid., p. 47.]
[Footnote 11: On the whole of above, see Moore, pp. 33-46.]
[Footnote 12: Moore, p. 45.]
[Footnote 13: Ibid., pp. 33, 34.]
[Footnote 14: The following passage, from a late valuable letter of
Thomas P. Devereux, Esq., of Halifax County, North Carolina, to the
Governor of that State, gives us one _item_ of evidence as to the
extent of this abominable usage of the "Pilgrim Fathers." See Raleigh
Daily Sentinel, Dec. 12th, 1866: "It is worthy of note that, amongst
my slaves, there was a large intermixture of Indian blood from the
Pequots, brought from Massachusetts and sold in North Carolina, in the
early part of the 18th century, and, up to the act of emancipation, I
could, with tolerable certainty, detect the mixed race by their
addiction to liquor and its effects upon them."]
In pleasing contrast with these enormities, stands the contemporaneous
legislation of the Colony of Virginia touching its Indian neighbours.
By three acts, 1655 to 1657, the colonists were strictly forbidden to
trespass upon the lands of the Indians, or to dispossess them of their
homes even by purchase. Slaying an Indian for his trespass was
prohibited. The Indians, provided they were not armed, were authorized
to pass freely through the several settlements, for trading, fishing,
and gathering wild fruits. It was forbidden to enslave or deport any
Indian, no matter under what circumstances he was captured; and Indian
apprentices or servants for a term of years could only be held as such
by authority of their parents, or if they had none, of the
magistrates.[15] Their careful training in Christianity was enjoined,
and at the end of their terms, their discharge, with wages, was
secured by law.
[Footnote 15: Herring, Stat. at Large, vol. i., pp. 395, 415, 456.]
The second, and more potent cause of development of the New England
slave trade, was the commerce between those colonies and the West
Indies. Each of the mother countries endeavoured to monopolize to
herself all the trade and transportation of her own colonies. But it
was the perpetual policy of Great Britain to intrude into this
monopoly, which Spain preserved between herself and her colonies,
while she jealously maintained her own intact. This motive prompted
her systematic connivance at every species of illicit navigation and
traffick of her subjects in those seas. The New England colonies were
not slow to imitate their brethren at home; and although their
maritime ventures were as really violations of the colonial laws of
England, as of the rights of Spain, the mother country easily connived
at them for the sake of their direction. The Spanish Main was
consequently the scene of a busy trade during the seventeenth century,
which was as unscrupulous and daring as the operations of the
Buccaneers of the previous age. The only difference was, that the
red-handed plunder was now perpetrated on the African villages instead
of the Spanish, and for the joint advantage of the New England
adventurers and the Spanish and British planters. At length, the
treaty of Utrecht, in 1712, recognized this encroaching trade, and
provided for its extension throughout the Indies.[16] New England
adventure, as well as British, thus received a new _impetus_. The
wine-staves of her forests, the salt fish of her coasts, the tobacco
and flour of Virginia, were exchanged for sugar and molasses. These
were distilled into that famous New England rum, which, as Dr. Jeremy
Belknap, of Massachusetts, declared, was the foundation of the African
slave trade.[17] The slave ships, freighted with this rum, proceeded
to the coast of Guinea, and, by a most gainful traffick, exchanged it
for negroes, leaving the savage communities behind them on fire with
barbarian excess, out of which a new crop of petty wars, murders,
enslavements, and kidnappings grew, to furnish future cargoes of
victims; while they wafted their human freight to the Spanish and
British Indies, Virginia, the Carolinas, and their own colonies. The
larger number of their victims were sold in these markets; the less
saleable remnants of cargoes were brought home, and sold in the New
England ports. But not seldom, whole cargoes were brought thither
directly. Dr. Belknap remembered, among many others, one which
consisted almost wholly of children.[18]
[Footnote 16: Bancroft, vol. iii., p. 231.]
[Footnote 17: Moore's Hist. of Slavery in Mass., p. 6.]
[Footnote 18: Moore, p. 68.]
Thus, the trade of which the good ship Desire, of Salem, was the
harbinger, grew into grand proportions; and for nearly two centuries
poured a flood of wealth into New England, as well as no
inconsiderable number of slaves. The General Court of Massachusetts
recognized the trade as legal, imposing a duty of £4 per head on each
negro sold in the province, with a drawback for those resold out of
it, or dying in twelve months.[19] The weight of this duty is only
evidence of a desire to raise revenue, and to discourage the
settlement of numbers of negroes in Massachusetts; not of any
disapproval of the traffick in itself, as a proper employment of New
England enterprise. The government of the province preferred white
servants, and was already aware of the unprofitable nature of African
labour in their inhospitable climate; but the furnishing of other
colonies with negroes was a favoured branch of commerce. The increase
of negro slaves in Massachusetts during the seventeenth century was
slow. But the following century changed the record.
[Footnote 19: Idem, pp. 59, 60.]
In 1720, Governor Shute states their numbers at two thousand. In 1754,
a census of negroes gave four thousand five hundred; and the first
United States census, in 1790, returned six thousand.[20]
[Footnote 20: Moore, pp. 50, 51.]
Meantime, the other maritime colonies of Rhode Island and Providence
Plantations, and Connecticut, followed the example of their elder
sister emulously; and their commercial history is but a repetition of
that of Massachusetts. The towns of Providence, Newport, and New Haven
became famous slave trading ports. The magnificent harbour of the
second, especially, was the favourite starting-place of the slave
ships; and its commerce rivalled, or even exceeded, that of the
present commercial metropolis, New York. All the four original States,
of course, became slaveholding.[21]
[Footnote 21: Bancroft, vol. iii., ch. 24, does justice to the crimes
of England against the Africans, and against her own colonies; but is
absolutely silent touching the complicity of New England! And, as
though this _suppressio veri_ were not enough, he proceeds to a
studious _suggestio falsi_. Page 405th he says: "Of a direct voyage
from Guinea to the coast of the United States, no journal is known to
exist, though slave ships from Africa entered nearly every
considerable harbour south of Newport." And, p. 410: "The English
continental colonies, in the aggregate, were always opposed to the
African slave trade." We have seen evidence, that Bancroft must have
known that every American slaver which ever entered a port of the
United States, was either from this same Newport, or other ports north
of it. We shall see hereafter, that he must have known also, that
Massachusetts was certainly not among that "aggregate" of the colonies
which opposed the African slave trade. Yet, in this chapter, he
endeavours expressly to produce that impression. See p. 408.]
No records exist, accessible to the historian, by which the numbers of
slaves brought to this country by New England traders can be
ascertained. Their operations were mingled with those of Englishmen
from the mother country. While the total of the operations of the
latter, including their importations into the Spanish colonies, was
greatly larger than that of the New Englanders, the latter probably
sustained at least an equal share of the trade to the thirteen
colonies, up to the time of the Revolution; and thenceforward, to the
year 1808, when the importations were nominally arrested, they carried
on nearly the whole. So that the presence of the major part of the
four millions of Africans now in America, is due to New England. Some
further illustrations will be given of the method and spirit in which
that section conducted the trade. The number of The Boston Post-Boy
and Advertiser for September 12th, 1763, contains the following:
"By a gentleman who arrived here a few days ago from the coast of
Africa, we are informed of the arrivals of Captains Morris, Ferguson,
and Wickham, of this port, who write very discouraging accounts of the
trade upon the coast; and that upwards of two hundred gallons of real
rum had been given for slaves per head, and scarcely to be got at any
rate for that commodity. This must be sensibly felt by this poor and
distressed Government, _the inhabitants whereof being very large
adventurers in the trade, having sent and about sending upwards of
twenty sail of vessels_, computed to carry in the whole about nine
thousand hogsheads of rum, a quantity much too large for the places on
the coast, where that commodity has generally been vended. We hear
that many vessels are also gone and going from the neighbouring
Governments, likewise from Barbadoes, from which place a large cargo
of rum had arrived before our informant left the coast, of which they
gave two hundred and seventy gallons for a prime slave."
When it is remembered that the Massachusetts ports were then small
towns, the fact that they had more than twenty ships simultaneously
engaged in the trade to the Guinea coast alone, clearly reveals that
it was the leading branch of their maritime adventure, and main source
of their wealth. The ingenuous lament of the printer over the
increasing cost of "a prime slave," gives us the correct clue to the
change in their views concerning the propriety of the trade. When the
negro rose in value to two hundred gallons "of real rum" (the sable
slave hunters were becoming as acute as Brother Jonathan himself,
touching the adulterated article), the conscience of the holy
adventurer began to be disturbed about the righteousness of the
traffick. When the slave cost two hundred and fifty gallons, the
scruples became troublesome; and when his price mounted up towards
three hundred, by reason of the imprudence of the naughty man with his
large cargo, from Barbadoes, the stings of conscience became
intolerable. By the principles of that religion which "supposeth that
gain is godliness,"[22] the trade was now become clearly wrong.
[Footnote 22: St. Paul's description of Abolitionists, 1 Tim., vi.,
1-5.]
The following extracts are from the letter of instructions given by a
leading Salem firm to the captain of their ship, upon its clearing for
the African coast:[23]
[Footnote 23: Felt's Salem, ii., 289, 290.]
"CAPTAIN----: Our brig, of which you have the command, being
cleared at the office, and being in every other respect complete
for sea, our orders are, that you embrace the first fair wind, and
make the best of your way to the coast of Africa, and there invest
your cargo in slaves. As slaves, when brought to market, like
other articles, generally appear to the best advantage; therefore
too critical an inspection cannot be paid to them before purchase,
to see that no dangerous distemper is lurking about them, to
attend particularly to their age, to their countenances, to the
straightness of their limbs, and, as far as possible, to the
goodness or badness of their constitution, etc., etc., will be
very considerable objects. Male or female slaves, whether full
grown or not, we cannot particularly instruct you about; and on
this head shall only observe that prime male slaves generally sell
best in any market."
* * * * *
"Upon your return, you will touch at St. Pierre's, Martinico, and
call on Mr. John Mounreau for your further advice and destination.
We submit the conducting of the voyage to your good judgment and
prudent management, not doubting of your best endeavours to serve
our interest in all cases; and conclude with committing you to the
almighty Disposer of all events."
The present commercial and manufacturing wealth of New England is to
be traced, even more than that of Old England, to the proceeds of the
slave trade, and slave labour. The capital of the former was derived
mainly from the profits of the Guinea trade. The shipping which first
earned wealth for its owners in carrying the bodies of the slaves, was
next employed in transporting the cotton, tobacco, and rice which
they reared, and the imports purchased therewith. And when the unjust
tariff policy of the United States allured the next generation of New
Englanders to invest the swollen accumulations of their slave trading
fathers in factories, it was still slave grown cotton which kept their
spindles busy. The structure of New England wealth is cemented with
the sweat and blood of Africans.
In bright contrast with its guilty cupidity, stands the consistent
action of Virginia, which, from its very foundation as a colony,
always denounced and endeavoured to resist the trade. It is one of the
strange freaks of history, that this commonwealth, which was guiltless
in this thing, and which always presented a steady protest against the
enormity, should become, in spite of herself, the home of the largest
number of African slaves found within any of the States, and thus,
should be held up by Abolitionists as the representative of the "sin
of slaveholding;" while Massachusetts, which was, next to England, the
pioneer and patroness of the slave trade, and chief criminal, having
gained for her share the wages of iniquity instead of the persons of
the victims, has arrogated to herself the post of chief accuser of
Virginia. It is because the latter colony was made, in this affair,
the helpless victim of the tyranny of Great Britain and the relentless
avarice of New England. The sober evidence of history which will be
presented, will cause the breast of the most deliberate reader to burn
with indignation for the injustice suffered by Virginia, and the
profound hypocrisy of her detractors.
The preamble to the State Constitution of Virginia, drawn up by George
Mason, and adopted by the Convention June 29th, 1776, was written by
Thomas Jefferson. In the recital of grievances against Great Britain,
which had prompted the commonwealth to assume its independence, this
preamble contains the following words: "By prompting our negroes to
rise in arms among us; those very negroes whom, by an inhuman use of
his negative, he had refused us permission to exclude by law."[24] Mr.
Jefferson, long a leading member of the House of Burgesses, and most
learned of all his contemporaries in the legislation of his country,
certainly knew whereof he affirmed. His witness is more than confirmed
by that of Mr. Madison,[25] who says: "The British Government
constantly checked the attempts of Virginia to put a stop to this
infernal traffick." Mr. Jefferson, in a passage which was expunged
from the Declaration of Independence by New England votes in the
Congress, strongly stated the same charge. And George Mason, perhaps
the greatest and most influential of Virginians, next to Washington,
reiterated the accusation with equal strength, in the speech in the
Federal Convention, 1787, in which he urged the immediate prohibition
of the slave trade by the United States. See Madison Papers, vol.
iii., pp. 1388-1398. A learned Virginian antiquary has found,
notwithstanding the destruction of the appropriate evidences, which
will be explained anon, no less than twenty-eight several attempts
made by the Burgesses to arrest the evil by their legislation, all of
which were either suppressed or negatived by the proprietary or royal
authority. A learned and pious Huguenot divine, having planted his
family in the colony, in the first half of the last century, bears
this testimony: "But our Assembly, foreseeing the ill consequences of
importing such numbers among us, hath often attempted to lay a duty
upon them which would amount to a prohibition, such as ten or twenty
pounds a head; but no governor dare pass such a law, having
instructions to the contrary from the Board of Trade at home. By this
means they are forced upon us, whether we will or not. This plainly
shows the African Company hath the advantage of the colonies, and may
do as it pleases with the ministry."[26] These personal testimonies
are recited the more carefully, because the Vandalism of the British
officers at the Revolution annihilated that regular documentary
evidence, to which the appeal might otherwise be made. Governor
Dunmore first, and afterwards Colonel Tarleton and Earl Cornwallis,
carried off and destroyed all the archives of the colony which they
could seize, and among them the whole of the original journals of the
House of Burgesses, except the volumes containing the proceedings of
1769 and 1772. The only sure knowledge which remains of those precious
records is derived from other documents and fragmentary copies of some
passages, found afterwards in the desks of a few citizens. The
wonderfully complete collection of their laws edited by Hening, under
the title of "Statutes at Large," was drawn from copies and
collections of the acts which, having received the assent of the
governors and kings, were promulgated to the counties as actual law.
Of course the suppressed and negatived motions against the slave trade
are not to be sought among these, but could only have been found in
the lost journals of the House. But enough of the documentary evidence
remains, to substantiate triumphantly the testimony of individuals.
[Footnote 24: Code of Virginia, p. 36.]
[Footnote 25: Madison Papers, iii., 1390.]
[Footnote 26: Rev. P. Fontaine, Huguenot Family, pp. 348, 351.]
The first act touching the importation of slaves, which was allowed by
the royal governor and king, was that of the 11th William III., 1699,
laying an impost of twenty shillings upon each servant or African
slave imported. The motive assigned is the raising of a revenue to
rebuild the Capitol or State House, lately burned down; and the law
was limited to three years.[27] This impost was renewed for two
farther terms of three years, by subsequent Assemblies.[28] Before the
expiration of this period, the Assembly of 1705 laid a permanent duty
of sixpence per head on all passengers and slaves entering the
colony;[29] and this little burthen, the most which the jealousy of
the British slave traders would permit, was the germ of the future
taxes on the importation. This impost was increased by the Assembly of
1732, to a duty of five _per centum ad valorem_, for four years.[30]
Subsequent Assemblies continued this tax until 1740, and then doubled
it, on the plea of the war then existing.[31] During the remainder of
the colonial government, the impost remained at this grade, ten _per
centum_ on the price of the slaves, and twenty _per centum_ upon
those imported from Maryland or Carolina. As the all-powerful African
Company in England was not concerned in maintaining a transit of the
slaves from one colony to another, after they were once off their
hands, they permitted the Burgesses to do as they pleased with the
Maryland and Carolina importations. Here, therefore, we have an
unconfined expression of the sentiments of the Assemblies; and they
showed their fixed opposition to the trade by imposing what was
virtually a prohibitory duty. In 1769, the House of Burgesses passed
an act for raising the duty on all slaves imported, to twenty _per
centum_.[32] The records of the Executive Department show that this
law was vetoed by the king, and declared repealed by a proclamation of
William Nelson, President of the Council, April 3d, 1771. The Assembly
of 1772 passed the same law again, with the substitution of a duty of
£5 per head, instead of the twenty _per centum_, on slaves from
Maryland and Carolina;[33] and it received the signature of Governor
Dunmore. It may well be doubted whether it escaped the royal veto.
[Footnote 27: Hening, Stat. at Large, vol. iii., p. 193.]
[Footnote 28: Idem, pp. 212, 233.]
[Footnote 29: Idem, pp. 346, 492.]
[Footnote 30: Hening, vol. iv., p. 319.]
[Footnote 31: Hening, iv., 394, and v., 29, 92, 160, 318.]
[Footnote 32: Hening, viii., 336.]
[Footnote 33: Idem, 531.]
But the House now proceeded to a more direct effort to extinguish the
nefarious traffick. Friday, March 20th, 1772, it was[34] "Resolved,
that an humble address be prepared to be presented to his Majesty, to
express the high opinion we entertain of his benevolent intentions
towards his subjects in the colonies, and that we are thereby induced
to ask his paternal assistance in averting a calamity of a most
alarming nature; that the importation of negroes from Africa has long
been considered as a trade of great inhumanity, and under its present
encouragement may endanger the existence of his American dominions;
that self-preservation, therefore, urges us to implore him to remove
all restraints on his Governors from passing acts of Assembly which
are intended to check this pernicious commerce; and that we presume to
hope the interests of a few of his subjects in Great Britain will be
disregarded, when such a number of his people look up to him for
protection in a point so essential; that when our duty calls upon us
to make application for his attention to the welfare of this, his
antient colony, we cannot refrain from renewing those professions of
loyalty and affection we have so often, with great sincerity, made, or
from assuring him that we regard his wisdom and virtue as the surest
pledges of the happiness of his people."
[Footnote 34: House Journal.]
"Ordered, That a Committee be appointed to draw up an address to be
presented to his Majesty, upon the said resolution." And a Committee
was appointed of Mr. Harrison, Mr. Carey, Mr. Edmund Pendleton, Mr.
Richard Henry Lee, Mr. Treasurer, and Mr. Bland.
"Wednesday, April 1st, 1772: Mr. Harrison reported from the Committee
appointed upon Friday, the twentieth day of last month, to draw up an
address to be presented to his Majesty, that the Committee had drawn
up an address accordingly, which they had directed him to report to
the House; and he read the same in his place; which is as followeth,"
etc. The address is so nearly in the words of the resolution, that the
reader need not be detained by its repetition. The House agreed,
_nemine contradicente_, to the address, and the same Committee was
appointed to present an address to the Governor, asking him to
transmit the address to his Majesty, "and to support it in such manner
as he shall think most likely to promote the desirable end proposed."
This earnest appeal met the fate of all the previous: Mammon and the
African Company were still paramount at Court, over humanity and
right. But the Revolution was near at hand, bringing a different
redress for the grievance.
On the 15th of May, 1776, Virginia declared her independence of Great
Britain, and the Confederacy, following her example, issued its
declaration on the 4th of July of the same year. The strict blockade
observed by the British navy, of course arrested the foreign slave
trade, as well as all other commerce. But in 1778, the State of
Virginia, determined to provide in good time against the resumption of
the traffick when commerce should be reopened, gave final expression
to her will against it. At the General Assembly held October 5th,
Patrick Henry being Governor of the Commonwealth, the following law
was the first passed:
AN ACT FOR PREVENTING THE FARTHER IMPORTATION OF SLAVES.[35]
[Footnote 35: Hening, v. ix., p. 471.]
"I. For preventing the farther importation of slaves into this
Commonwealth: _Be it enacted by the General Assembly_, That from
and after the passing of this act, no slave or slaves shall
hereafter be imported into this Commonwealth by sea or land, nor
shall any slaves so imported be bought or sold by any person
whatsoever.
"II. Every person hereafter importing slaves into this
Commonwealth contrary to this act, shall forfeit and pay the sum
of one thousand pounds for every slave so imported, and every
person selling or buying any such slaves, shall in like manner
forfeit and pay the sum of five hundred pounds for every slave so
bought or sold, one moiety of which forfeitures shall be to the
use of the Commonwealth, and the other moiety to him or them that
will sue for the same, to be recovered by action of debt or
information in any court of record.
"III. _And be it further enacted_, That every slave imported into
this Commonwealth, contrary to the true intent and meaning of this
act, shall, upon such importation, become free."
The remaining sections of the law only proceed to exempt from the
penalty citizens of the other United States, coming to live as actual
residents with their slaves in the Commonwealth, and citizens of
Virginia bringing in slaves from other States of the Union by actual
inheritance.
Thus Virginia has the honour of being the first Commonwealth on earth
to declare against the African slave trade, and to make it a penal
offence. Her action antedates by thirty years the much bepraised
legislation of the British Parliament, and by ten years the earliest
movement of Massachusetts on the subject; while it has the immense
advantage, besides, of consistency; because she was never stained by
any complicity in the trade, and she exercised her earliest
untrammelled power to stay its evils effectually in her dominions.
Thus, almost before the Clarksons and Wilberforces were born, had
Virginia done that very work for which her slanderers now pretend so
much to laud those philanthropists. All that these reformers needed to
do was to bid the British Government go and imitate the example which
Virginia was the first to set, among the kingdoms of the world. It is
true that the first Congress of 1774, at Philadelphia, had adopted a
resolution that the slave trade ought to cease; but this body had no
powers, either federal or national; it was a mere committee; and its
inspiration upon this subject, as upon most others, came from
Virginia. In 1788, Massachusetts passed an act forbidding her citizens
from importing, transporting, buying, or selling any of the
inhabitants of Africa as slaves, on a penalty of fifty pounds for each
person so misused, and of two hundred pounds for every vessel employed
in this traffick. Vessels which had already sailed were exempted from
all penalty for their present voyages.[36] It is manifest from the
character of the penalties, that this law was not passed to be
enforced; and the evidence soon to be adduced will show, beyond all
doubt, that this is true. The act was one of those cheap tributes
which Pharisaic avarice knows so well how to pay to appearances.
Connecticut passed a very similar law the same year, prohibiting her
citizens to engage in the slave trade, and voiding the policies of
insurance on slave ships. The slave trade of New England continued in
increasing activity for twenty years longer.
[Footnote 36: Moore, Hist. of Slavery in Mass., p. 227.]
It may be said, that if the government of Virginia was opposed to the
African slave trade, her people purchased more of its victims than
those of any other colony; and the aphorism may be quoted against
them, that the receiver is as guilty as the thief. This is rarely true
in the case of individuals, and when applied to communities, it is
notoriously false. All States contain a large number of irresponsible
persons. The character of a free people as a whole should be estimated
by that of its corporate acts, in which the common will is expressed.
The individuals who purchased slaves of the traders were doubtless
actuated by various motives. Many persuaded themselves that, as they
were already enslaved, and without their agency, and as their refusal
to purchase them would have no effect whatever to procure their
restoration to their own country and to liberty, they might become
their owners, without partaking in the wrong of which they were the
victims. Many were prompted by genuine compassion, because they saw
that to buy the miserable creatures was the only practicable way in
their reach to rescue them from their pitiable condition; for
tradition testifies that often when the captives were exposed in long
ranks upon the shore, near their floating prisons, for the inspection
of purchasers, they besought the planters and their wives to buy them,
and testified an extravagant joy and gratitude at the event. All
purchasers were, perhaps, influenced partly by the convenience and
advantage of possessing their labour. Had every individual in Virginia
been as intelligent and virtuous as the patriots who, in the
Burgesses, denounced the inhuman traffick, the colony might perhaps
have remained without a slave, notwithstanding the two centuries of
temptation during which its ports were plied with cargoes seeking
sale. But a commonwealth without a single weak, or selfish, or bad
man, is a Utopia. The proper rulers were forbidden by the mother
country to employ that prohibitory legislation which is, in all
States, the necessary guardian of the publick virtue; and it is
therefore that we place the guilt of the sale where that of the
importation justly belongs. Doubtless many an honourable citizen,
after sincerely sustaining the endeavour of his Burgess to arrest the
whole trade, himself purchased Africans, because he saw that their
general introduction into the country was inevitable, without
legislative interference; and his self-denial would only have
subjected him to the severe inconveniences of being without slaves in
a community of slaveholders, whilst it did not arrest the evil.
The government of Virginia was unquestionably actuated, in prohibiting
the slave trade, by a sincere sense of its intrinsic injustice and
cruelty. Mr. Jefferson, a representative man, in his "Notes on
Virginia," had given indignant expression to this sentiment. And the
reprobation of that national wrong, with regret for the presence of
the African on the soil, was the universal feeling of that generation
which succeeded the Revolution; while they firmly asserted the
rightfulness of that slavery which they had inherited. But human
motives are always complex; and along with the moral disapprobation
for the crime against Africa, the Burgesses felt other motives, which,
although more personal, were right and proper. They were sober, wise
and practical men, who felt that to protect the rights, purity, and
prosperity of their own country and posterity, was more properly
their task, than to plead the wrongs of a distant and alien people,
great although those wrongs might be. They deprecated the slave trade,
because it was peopling their soil so largely with an inferior and
savage race, incapable of union, instead of with civilized Englishmen.
This was precisely their apprehension of the enormous wrong done the
colony by the mother country. They understood also the deep political
motive which combined with the lust of gain to prompt the relentless
policy of the Home Government. With it, the familiar argument was:
"Let us stock the plantations plentifully with Africans, not only that
they may be good customers for our manufactures, and producers for our
commerce; but that they may remain dependent and submissive. An
Englishman who emigrates, becomes the bold assertor of popular and
colonial rights; but the negro is only fit for bondage." For the same
reason, the colonies felt that the forcing of the Africans upon them
was as much a political as a social wrong. But that righteous
Providence, whose glory it is to make the crimes of the designing
their own punishment, employed African slavery in the Southern
colonies as a potent influence in forming the character of the
Southern gentleman, without whose high spirit, independence, and
chivalry, America would never have won her freedom from British rule.
This contrast between the policy and principles of Virginia and of the
New England colonies will be concluded with two evidences. The one is
presented in the history of the Declaration of Independence. Mr.
Jefferson, the author, states that he had inserted in the enumeration
of grievances against the King of Great Britain, a paragraph strongly
reprobating his arbitrary support of the slave trade, against the
remonstrances of some of the colonies. When the Congress discussed the
paper, this paragraph was struck out, "in complaisance," he declares,
"to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain
the importation of slaves, and who, on the contrary, still wished to
continue it. Our Northern brethren also, I believe, felt a little
tender under these censures; for though their people had very few
slaves themselves, yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of
them to others."[37] Thus New England assisted to expunge from that
immortal paper a testimony against the slave trade, which Virginia
endeavoured to place there.
[Footnote 37: Jefferson's Correspondence, vol i., p. 15.]
The other evidence is presented by a case much more practical. In the
Convention of 1787, which framed the Constitution of the United
States, two questions concerning African slaves caused dissension.
Upon the supreme right of the States over the whole subject of slavery
within their own dominions, upon the recognition of slaves as property
protected by the federal laws, wherever slavery existed, and upon the
fugitive slave law, not a voice was raised in opposition. But the
Convention presumed (what subsequent history did not confirm,) that
the main expenses of the federal government would be met by direct
taxation; and some principle was to be adopted, for determining how
slaves should rank with freemen, in assessing capitation taxes, and
apportioning representation. The other question of difficulty was the
suppression of the African slave trade, which, upon the return of
peace, had been actively revived by New England, with the connivance
of Carolina and Georgia. The Southern States, who expected to have
nearly the whole tax on slaves to pay, desired to rate them very low;
some members proposed that five slaves should count as equal to only
one white freeman; others, that three slaves should count for one. The
New England colonies generally desired to make a negro count as a
white man, both for representation and taxation! After much
difference, the majority of the Convention agreed to a middle
conclusion proposed by Mr. Madison, that five negroes should count for
three persons.[38] But the other question was not so easily arranged.
The Committee of eleven appointed to draw up a first draught of a
constitution had proposed that in Art. vii., § 4, of their draught,
Congress should be prohibited from laying any import duty on African
slaves brought into the country. The effect of this, so far as the
federal government was concerned, would be to legalize the slave trade
forever, and protect it from all burdens.[39] Maryland (by her
legislature, then sitting,) to her immortal honour, and Pennsylvania
and Virginia, exhibited a determination to change this section, so as
to arrest the trade through the action of the federal government,
either by prohibition or tax. The New England States, South Carolina,
and Georgia, opposed them, and advocated the original section,
assigning various grounds. The difference threatened to make shipwreck
of the whole work of the Convention, when Gouverneur Morris adroitly
proposed to commit the subject, along with that of the proposed
navigation law, in order that disagreeing parties might be induced, by
private conference, to combine mutual concessions into a sort of
bargain. The subjects were accordingly committed to a Committee of one
from each State. This Committee reported, August 24th, "in favour of
not allowing Congress to prohibit the importation of slaves before
1800, but giving them power to impose a duty at a rate not exceeding
the average of other imports." South Carolina (through General
Pinckney) moved to prolong the importation from 1800 to 1808, _and
Massachusetts_ (through Mr. Gorham) _seconded the motion_. It was then
passed, as last proposed, _New Hampshire_, _Massachusetts_,
_Connecticut_, (the only New England States then present,) Maryland,
North Carolina, and South Carolina, voting in the affirmative, and New
Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Virginia in the negative.[40] The
maritime States soon after gained their point, of authorizing Congress
to pass, by a majority vote, a navigation law for their advantage.
[Footnote 38: Madison Papers, v. i., pp. 422-425.]
[Footnote 39: Ibid., v. ii., p. 1234.]
[Footnote 40: Madison Papers, v. iii., pp. 1398 _et seq._]
Thus, by the assistance of New England, the iniquities of the African
slave trade, and the influx of that alien and savage race into
America, were prolonged from the institution of the federal government
until 1808. Is it said, that New England had at this time no interest
in slavery, did not value it, and was already engaged in removing it
at home? This is true; and it is so much the worse for her historical
position. It only shows that she desired to fix that institution
which she had ascertained to be a curse to her, upon her neighbours,
for the sake of keeping open twenty years longer an infamous but
gainful employment, and of securing a legislative bounty to her
shipping. In other words, her policy was simply mercenary. And these
votes for prolonging the slave trade effectually rob her of credit for
emancipation at home; proving beyond all peradventure, that the latter
measure was wholly prompted by her sense of her own interests, and not
of the rights of the negro. For if the latter motive had governed,
must it not have made her the equal opponent of the increase of
slavery in Carolina and Georgia?
But the agency of New England in that increase was still more active
and direct. As though to "make hay while the sun shone," the people of
that section renewed their activity on the African coast, with a
diligence continually increasing up to 1808. Carey, in his work upon
the slave trade, estimates the importations into the thirteen colonies
between 1771 and 1790, (nineteen years,) at thirty-four thousand; but
that between the institution of the federal government and 1808, he
places at seventy thousand. His estimate here is unquestionably far
too low; because forty thousand were introduced at the port of
Charleston, South Carolina, alone, the last four years;[41] and within
the years 1806 and 1807, there were six hundred arrivals of New
England slavers at that place.[42] The latter fact shows that those
States must have possessed nearly the whole traffick. And the former
bears out Mr. De Bow, in enlarging the total of importations under
the federal government to one hundred and twenty-five thousand, at
least. For the average at one port was ten thousand per year. In 1860,
there were ten-fold as many Africans in the United States as had been
originally brought thither from Africa. But as many of these had been
multiplying for four, or even five generations, this rate of increase
is too large to assume for the importations of 1800, whose descendants
had only come to the third generation. Assuming the half as nearly
correct, which seems a moderate estimate, we find their increase
five-fold. So that there were, in 1860, six hundred and twenty-five
thousand more slaves in the United States than would have been found
here, had not New England's cruelty and avarice assisted to prolong
the slave trade nineteen years after Virginia and the federal
government would otherwise have arrested it.
[Footnote 41: De Bow, Compend. of Census, 1850, pp. 83, 84.]
[Footnote 42: Com. Boutwell.]
After the British, and even after the other governments of Europe, had
abolished the trade in name, it continued with a vast volume. Whereas
at the time of the abolition, in 1808, eighty-five thousand slaves
were taken from Africa annually, nearly fifty thousand annually were
still carried, as late as 1847, to Brazil and the Spanish Indies.[43]
In this illicit trade, no Virginian (and, indeed, no Southern) ship or
shipmaster has ever been in a single case implicated, although our
State had meantime begun no inconsiderable career of maritime
adventure. But adventurers from New England ports and New York were
continually found sharing the lion's portion of the foul spoils. And
to the latest reclamations of the British Government upon the Brazilian,
for violations of the treaties and laws against the slave trade upon the
extended shores of that empire, the answer of its noble Emperor has
still been, that if Britain would find the real culprits, she must go to
the ports of Boston and New York to seek them.[44]
[Footnote 43: De Bow, p. 84.]
[Footnote 44: Journal do Commercio, (Rio,) May 26, 1856.]
But one more fact remains: When the late Confederate Government
adopted a constitution, although it was composed exclusively of
slaveholding States, it voluntarily did what the United States has
never done: it placed an absolute prohibition of the foreign slave
trade in its organic law.
CHAPTER III.
LEGAL STATUS OF SLAVERY IN THE UNITED STATES.
It has been a favourite and persistent assertion of Abolitionists,
that slavery in America was an exceptional institution, and contrary
to the law of nature and nations. They represent it as owing its
existence solely to the _lex loci_ of the States where it was
legalized by their own legislation; and hence they draw the
conclusion, that the moment a slave passed out of one of these States
into a free State, or into the territories of the United States, his
bondage terminated of itself. Hence, also, they argue that
slaveholders had no right to the protection of that species of
property in the territories, which were the common possession of the
citizens of all the States; and that the federal government could not
properly permit the growth of, or recognize, new slave States. Their
party cry was: "Freedom is national; slavery is local." It is plain
that this proposition is the premise necessary to all the above
assumptions. It will now be shown that this proposition is untrue.
Slavery in the United States, instead of being the mere creature of
_lex loci_, was founded on a basis as broad as that of the American
Union, was in full accordance with the law of nature and nations as
then recognized by the States and the federal government, and had
universal recognition by the force of general law. The exclusion of
slavery from any State was legally the exception, owing its validity
purely to the _lex loci_, and to the recognized sovereignty of the
States over their own local affairs. Hence, the rights of slaveholders
stood valid, of course, in all the common territories of the United
States, and everywhere, save where the sovereignty of a
non-slaveholding State arrested them within its own borders. This
representation is established by the following facts:
First. When the federal government was formed, all the family of
European nations was slaveholding; and they all alike held the
Africans as unquestioned and legitimate subjects of bondage. The slave
trade was held by publick law as legitimate as the trade in corn. It
was the subject of treaty stipulations between the several powers; and
slave trading companies were formally chartered and protected by all
the leading powers. Slaves were declared by the English judges to be
merchandise.[45] They were universally held legal prize of war when
taken on the high seas.[46] They were recognized subjects of
reclamation in forming and executing treaties. Thus, not to go outside
of our own history, we find General Washington, in 1783, by order of
Congress, remonstrating with the British commander evacuating New York
city, because certain officers of the retiring forces carried away
with them the fugitive slaves of American citizens; and the latter was
compelled to surrender the attempt, as an unauthorized spoliation of
property.[47] In 1788, the Government of the United States claimed of
Spain the return of fugitive slaves from the Spanish colony of
Florida;[48] and our government promised, in return, the rendition of
Spanish slaves found in the United States. It is well known that the
treaty of the United States with Great Britain, negotiated by Mr. Jay,
and ratified by President Washington, and the treaty of Ghent, in
1815, both secured indemnities for slaves of American citizens
abducted during the two wars; thus treating them as property under the
protection of national law in America, and of the law of nations. In
face of this array of facts, we boldly ask, with what face it can be
asserted that slavery was not recognized by international law? Whether
it is not as consonant with the law of nature as of nations, will
appear at another place.
[Footnote 45: Bancroft, vol. iii., p. 414.]
[Footnote 46: Moore's Hist. of Slavery in Mass., p. 162.]
[Footnote 47: Justice Campbell, in Howard, 19th, Dred Scott Case.]
[Footnote 48: Idem.]
Second. During the whole planting and growth of the British colonies
in America, and at the time when they passed from that government into
the federal Union, the Empire of Great Britain was slaveholding in all
its parts. The obvious consequence is, that the government formed by
the thirteen colonies in a part of the territory of that empire,
inherited the legal condition of their mother, in this particular. In
seceding from that empire, they brought away the slaveholding
_status_; and this subsisted _ipso facto_, except where it was changed
by the _lex loci_. All the original territory of the American Union
was slave territory, as was that subsequently acquired from France.
Hence slave owners of course possessed their rights in all this
territory, unless they were expressly restrained by special
legislation of the States, sovereign each one within its own borders.
The consequence cannot be denied, if the premise be admitted. Let the
reader consider the following evidences of it:
In 1772, only four years before the Declaration of Independence, Lord
Mansfield, in the Court of King's Bench, decided the famous Somersett
case, by which, it has usually been asserted, slavery was forever
terminated in England, and the principle was settled that this
relation was inconsistent with her free laws. Mr. Stewart, a citizen
of Virginia, going to England on business, carried with him a negro
slave, Somersett, whom he had bought in Jamaica. After a time he
indicated a purpose to return home, carrying his slave with him;
whereupon the negro absconded. His master had him seized, and placed
on board a ship in the Thames, to be forcibly carried to Jamaica and
sold. The negro then sued out an application for _habeas corpus_,
which being argued at a previous term, was finally decided by Lord
Mansfield, at the Trinity term, 1772. The true extent of that decision
will hereafter be shown. Our purpose here is to cite the admissions
made by the court, as to the existing state of English laws.[49] It is
noticeable, that this tribunal exhibited a great reluctance to decide
the case, declaring that it was attended with great, and almost
inextricable difficulties, and that Lord Mansfield proposed to evade
a decision by recommending a compromise between Mr. Stewart and the
black. This not being done, the court stated that there were then
fifteen thousand negro slaves in England, worth not less than seven
hundred thousand pounds sterling. It also recognized the decisions of
Sir Philip Yorke, and Lord Chief Justice Talbot, confirmed in 1749, by
that of the chancellor, Lord Hardewicke, that if a slave, brought by
his master to England, should be detained from him, an action of
_trover_ for his recovery would lie; and the decision of Lord Talbot,
that a negro slave brought by his master to England from a colony, or
baptized by the clergy, did not thereby gain his liberty; and the
opinion of the latter that while the Statute of Tenures had abolished
manorial villeinage, a white man might still become a _villein in
gross_, by the laws of England.[50] The court declared farther, that
the slave property of a debtor was undoubtedly liable to action in the
English courts, to recover the sums due a creditor. But after all
these admissions, which clearly amount to a recognition of the fact
that England itself was then by law a slaveholding country, Lord
Mansfield proceeds to settle the principle (the only one, as he
carefully declares, to which his decision extends) that the power of
the writ of _habeas corpus_, not being limited to free persons by
express statute, should, as he thinks, in England be extended to
slaves, when they invoke it, and should be held to override the rights
of the master under the laws; because those rights were now regarded
as odious and excessive by current publick opinion. Such, and no more,
is the extent of this much be praised, and much misunderstood
decision! It is plain to common sense, that if it is not an instance
of the judicial abuse of making, instead of expounding, law, it only
establishes the fact that the laws of slaveholding England were then
in a ridiculously inconsistent state.
[Footnote 49: See, on all the following statements from Lord
Mansfield, Lofft's Reports, 12th Geo. 3d, pp. 1, 8, 17, 18, etc.]
[Footnote 50: What the _villein in gross_ was, may be learned from the
following, of Bracton, Lib. iv., 208:
"Purum villenagium est, a quo præstatur servilium incertum et
indeterminatum; ubi scire non potest vespere, quale servitium fieri
debet mane, viz., ubi quis facere tenetur quicquid ei præceptum fuit."
See also Blackstone, Lib. ii., 93.]
In fact, not only were there then fifteen thousand negro slaves in
England, but they were publickly bought and sold in the markets of
London. The prevalence of slavery is attested by another species of
historical evidence, very different from that of learned judges, but
at least as authentick. The pictures by which Hogarth has fixed the
follies and peculiarities of fashionable life on his immortal canvass,
frequently contain the African valet; showing that the possession of
this species of servants was demanded by high life. From the Normans,
those noted slaveholders, to 1775, no statute had been passed upon the
subject of personal slavery.[51] There then existed, in the northern
part of the kingdom of Great Britain, from thirty thousand to forty
thousand persons, of whom the Parliament said, "Many colliers,
coal-heavers, and salters, are in a state of slavery, or bondage,
bound to the collieries or salt-works where they work, for life,
transferable with the collieries and salt-works, when their original
masters have no use for them."[52] Again in 1799, they declare that
"many colliers and coal-heavers still continue in a state of bondage."
[Footnote 51: Justice Campbell, on Dred Scott case, 19th Howard, 109.]
[Footnote 52: Parliament, 15th Geo. 3d.]
Thus it appears that England was itself slave territory, at the time
the thirteen colonies, declaring their independence, brought away her
laws and institutions. But our argument of this fact is _ex
abundantia_; it may be waived, and still our conclusion holds,
because, by existing laws, all the plantations and colonies of England
in America were then, yet more indisputably, slave territory. No
stronger proof of this proposition can be imagined, than the manner in
which slavery was planted in these communities. Not only were all the
thirteen colonies, and all the West India plantations, slaveholding;
but it required no statute, either of Parliament or of colonial
legislature, to introduce African slavery, or to establish the right
of the owner, because it was already established by imperial law and
usage. The first negroes were bought in Virginia in 1620; the first
act touching their bondage was passed by the Burgesses in 1659; and
this does not enact their slavery, but recognizes it as existing. It
was not until 1670,[53] that any law was passed which expressly
enacted their slavery. But for fifty years they had been unquestioned
slaves, had paid impost duty as such, had been bought and sold, had
been bequeathed, had been subject of suits. By what law? Obviously by
the general law of the British Empire, and of nations. The manner of
the introduction of slavery into Massachusetts was the same. "The
involuntary servitude of Indians and negroes in the several colonies
originated under a law not promulgated by legislation, and rested upon
prevalent views of universal jurisprudence, or the _law of nations_,
supported by the express or implied authority of the Home
Government."[54] But the "canny" Puritans, more careful than the
Virginians to fortify their slave property, enacted slavery of both
classes, in their earliest codes of laws, 1641 and 1660.[55]
[Footnote 53: Hening, Stat. at Large, vol. ii., p. 283.]
[Footnote 54: Hurd, Law of Freedom and Bondage, § 216, i., 225.]
[Footnote 55: Moore, Slavery in Mass., pp. 12, 15.]
That African slavery was the universal law of the British colonial
empire, is equally plain from the facts already given concerning the
legalizing of the slave trade. The treaty of Utrecht secured to
Britain a monopoly of that traffick. The Parliament chartered the
African Company, with the right to trade in slaves to all the
colonies. The Parliament then by statute threw the trade open to all
British subjects. The Parliament, by express law, made the property in
slaves held in the colonies subject of action in English courts. The
Solicitor-General, with Chancellor after Chancellor, decided that
residence in England did not emancipate the slave upon his return to
his colonial home. The General Court of Massachusetts enacted the same
rule, as did the Burgesses of Virginia, again and again; and were
never disallowed therein by the king. Even so late as 1827, fifty-five
years after the Somersett case, Lord Stowell decided, in the case of
the slave Grace, from Antigua, that on her return to the colony, her
condition as a slave for life was fully revived.[56] And in the
correctness of this decision, we find Mr. Justice Story
concurring.[57]
[Footnote 56: 2d Haggard, p. 94.]
[Footnote 57: Letter to Lord Stowell.]
The argument then is, that at the American Revolution all the
territory claimed by the thirteen colonies was, by the law of the
Empire, and of nations, slaveholding territory. The colonies, in
assuming their independence, brought away the rights and institutions
which they had inherited as colonial parts of that empire; and
whatever prescriptive right was not expressly changed by law, was
universally held to survive, as of course. Hence all the territory of
the American Union was slave territory; and the only mode by which any
part became non-slaveholding, was by the exercise of State sovereignty
enacting a _lex loci_, which was only operative within the bounds of
the State itself.
Third. The chief territory which the United States acquired between
the Revolution and the Mexican war, was Louisiana. This vast region
was gained by treaty from France in 1803. It was then a single
province and government of the French Republick, and was, through all
its extent, a slaveholding country. In the third article of the treaty
for its purchase, between the United States and the First Consul, it
was stipulated that until the ceded territory should be incorporated,
as States, in the Union, all its citizens should be "in the mean time
maintained and protected in the free enjoyment of their liberty,
property, and the religion which they profess." The settled doctrine
of the courts of Louisiana has always been, that this guarantee
covered all the citizens emigrating into any part of the territory
before its erection into a State, as fully as those living in
Louisiana in 1803.[58] Thus, the rights of slave owners in the whole
of the Louisiana purchase were guaranteed to them by treaty, until
such time as the part they inhabited became a sovereign State, and
thus assumed plenary power over the subject. But, by Article 6th, §
2d, of the Constitution of the United States, all treaties made by the
authority of the United States are declared to be the supreme law of
the land. Thus the rights of the master in all this region were placed
above the power of the legislature itself.
[Footnote 58: Justice Catron, 19th Howard, p. 131.]
Fourth. The federal constitution recognized and protected property in
slaves, in every way which was competent to a federative compact of
this kind. The slaveholding States had representation for three-fifths
of their slaves. The slaves were made subjects of direct taxation, as
property. The constitution provided expressly for a fugitive slave
law, which was soon passed by the Congress, and continued to be the
law of the land until the termination of the government. By the
constitution, property in slaves was created like any other property;
and no ground can be found for the assertion that its rights were more
restricted than rights in cattle or lands. But the fundamental idea of
that instrument was the impartial equality of all the citizens before
the law. Whatever authority Congress had over the common territories,
was as trustee for all the citizens of the United States equally.
Hence it seems obvious that this body was bound to recognize in all
the citizens equal rights, in going into those territories with any
species of property which they might hold by the laws of any State, or
of Congress, and to protect them in those rights while the country was
in a territorial condition.
Finally, these principles have been expressly decided by the highest
constitutional authority in the land, as well as by the voice of the
most enlightened founders of the government. When the mischievous
contest concerning the admission of Missouri was rising in 1819, Mr.
Madison declared, concerning the article of the constitution which
conferred on Congress its powers over the territories, (Art. 4, § 3,)
that "it cannot be well extended beyond a power over the territories
_as property_, and the power to make provisions really needful or
necessary for the government of settlers, until ripe for admission
into the Union."[59] The Supreme Court of the United States, in the
well-known case of Dred Scott, decided that Africans were not citizens
of the United States in the meaning of the constitution;[60] that
property in African slaves was on the same footing under that
instrument with other legal property;[61] that the residence of a
slave in a territory of the United States did not emancipate him, nor
did his residence in a non-slaveholding State for a time, prevent the
recurrence of his state of bondage, on his return to the State in
which he had been a slave;[62] and that Congress had no power to use
its authority to exclude slavery from any part of the territories.[63]
[Footnote 59: Letter to Robert Walsh, Nov. 27, 1819.]
[Footnote 60: 19th Howard, pp. 12, 33.]
[Footnote 61: 19th Howard, p. 57.]
[Footnote 62: Ibid., p. 38, 58.]
[Footnote 63: 19th Howard, p. 58.]
Thus the main proposition with which we set out is abundantly
sustained by the history and legislation of the country. Three
evasions from this conclusion have been attempted, of which the first
is from the language of the Declaration of Independence, in which
these famous words occur: "We hold these truths to be self-evident:
that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator
with certain unalienable rights; that among them are life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness," etc. The inference is, that the
Declaration intended to imply that the slavery of the Africans was a
natural wrong incapable of being legalized; and it is claimed that
this document is of the organic force of constitutional law to the
confederation which then asserted its independence. Both these
suppositions are erroneous. As to the latter, it may be justly argued,
that the Declaration of Independence was simply what it calls itself:
a _declaration_, a justificatory statement addressed to the world
without, and not an act of organic legislation ascertaining the rights
of the citizens within. The evidence is, that it _enacts nothing_ save
the one point of the independence of the colonies. Neither the
Confederation nor the new Union formed in 1787 ever based any
legislation upon it, save as their acts involved the fact of
independence. The constitution made no reference to it; did not ground
itself upon it, and did not reënact it. Hence, let its meaning be what
it may, it legislates nothing for or against slavery.
But it is too clear to be disputed, that the enslaved African race
were not intended to be included, and formed no part of the people who
asserted their rights in this Declaration. The evidence is, that if
the men who framed it had intended to refer to African slavery, they
would have completely stultified themselves. For the majority of them,
and of the States which they represented, continued to hold Africans
in bondage just as before. A few years after, the same men met in
federal convention, and framed the late constitution of the United
States; by which property in slaves was protected and perpetuated as
before, and traffick in Africans was prolonged until 1808, and made
subject of taxation like other merchandise. The States which were
emancipating their own Africans, equally with those which retained
them in bondage, retained their laws prohibiting the marriage of
Africans with whites.[64] Connecticut, until 1796, prohibited free
negroes from travelling beyond their township without a pass. New
Hampshire, and Congress itself, precluded negroes from serving in the
militia.[65] The Declaration of Independence was therefore intended by
its framers to assert the liberties of civilized Americans and
Englishmen, and not of African barbarians held in bondage. Whether
their consistency therein can be defended, is a separate question, to
which attention will be given in the proper place. But all publicists
are agreed, that the meaning of a document is the document; and that
this meaning is to be ascertained by the intentions of those who
frame and adopt it.
[Footnote 64: Law of Massachusetts, 1786, reënacted 1836. Rhode
Island, Laws of, 1822 and 1844.]
[Footnote 65: Code of New Hampshire, 1815. Acts of Congress, 1792.]