We may here refer to the charge, that Virginian slavery condemned the

Africans to mental and religious darkness, by forbidding them all

access to letters; because the laws of the commonwealth forbade the

teaching of them to read. Will not even the intelligent reader, after

the currency of this charge, be surprised to learn that _there has

never been such a law upon the statute books of Virginia_? To assert

that there has been such a law, is an unmitigated falsehood. The only

enactment which touches the subject is the following sentence, in the

statute defining what were "unlawful assemblages" of negroes. "And

every assemblage of negroes for the purpose of instruction in reading

and writing, or in the night time for any purpose, shall be an

unlawful assembly." Stat. 1830-31, p. 107. The previous section,

commencing the definition of these unlawful assemblies, expressly

states that they are unlawful if held _without the master's consent_.

Our courts and lawyers uniformly held that, without this feature, no

assemblage of negroes, to do any thing not criminal _per se_, can be

unlawful; because the whole spirit of Virginian laws recognized the

master's authority. His slaves were subject to his government. His

authorization legalized everything not intrinsically criminal.

Accordingly, the uniform interpretation given to the above words was,

that it was the assembling of slaves for instruction in letters by

others than their master or his authorized agents, which constituted

the unlawful assembly. The whole extent of the law was, to arm masters

with the power to prevent the impertinent interference of others with

his servants, under the pretext of literary instruction; a power which

the meddlesomeness of abolitionists pointed out as most wholesome and

necessary. There was no more law to prevent the master from teaching

his slaves than his children; either by himself, or his authorized

agent; and thousands of slaves in Virginia were taught to read by

their masters, or their children and teachers. As many Virginian

slaves were able to read their Bibles, and had Bibles to read, as

could probably be found among the labouring poor of boasted Britain.

Here let another unmitigated falsehood be exposed. Since the

ill-starred overthrow of our system, the most noted religious

newspaper of the North, mentioning an appropriation of Bibles by the

American Bible Society for gifts to negroes of the South, applauded

the measure, because, as it asserted, "the Southern States had

hitherto forbidden the circulation of the Scriptures among their

slaves." It would be mere puling in us, to affect the belief that this

amazing statement was made in ignorance; when the officials of the

Society whose organ this slanderer professed to be, well know that,

ever since the institution of the Bible Society, they were scarcely

more familiar with any species of applications, than those of

Christian masters and mistresses, and of Southern ministers, for

Scriptures suitable for their servants. There has never been a law in

Virginia preventing the gratuitous circulation of the Bible among

slaves, or the possession or reading of it by slaves: and it is

confidently believed that there has never been a single man in

Virginia who desired such a law, or who would have executed it, had it

defiled our statute book; unless, perchance, it was some infidel of

that French school which invented abolitionism.

It is charged again, that slavery impiously and inhumanly sacrificed

the immortal soul of the slave, to secure the master's pecuniary

interest in him. This slander is already in part answered. We farther

declare that neither our laws, nor the current temper and usage of

masters, interfered with the slave's religious rights. On the

contrary, they all protected and established them. The law protected

the legal right of the slave to his Sabbath, forbidding the master to

employ him on that day in secular labours, other than those of

necessity and mercy. Instances in which slaves were prevented by their

masters from attending the publick worship of God, were fully as rare

among us, and as much reprobated, as similar abuses are in any other

Christian country. On the contrary, the masters were almost

universally more anxious that their servants should attend publick

worship, than the servants were to avail themselves of the privilege.

There was scarcely a Christian church in the South, which had not its

black communicants sitting amicably at the table beside their masters;

and the whole number of these adult communicants was reported by the

statistics of the churches, as not less than a half million. We can

emphatically declare, that we never saw or heard of a house of worship

in the South, where sittings were not provided for the blacks at the

expense of the whites: and it is believed that if there was such a

case, it was in a neighbourhood containing no negro population. And in

nearly every case, these sittings were more ample than the blacks

could be induced to fill. Nor was there any expenditure of money on

ecclesiastical objects, which was more cheerfully and liberally made,

than that for the religious culture of the slaves. Further, with a few

exceptions they enjoyed the fullest religious liberty in the selection

of their religious communions and places of worship. Masters refused

them liberty to join the churches of their choice more rarely than

parents in New England and Old England perpetrated that act of

spiritual tyranny upon their wives and daughters. So punctilious was

this respect for the spiritual liberty of the servants, that masters

universally yielded to it their own denominational preferences and

animosities, allowing their servants to join the sects most repugnant

to their own, even in cases as extreme as that of the Protestant and

Romanist. The white people of the South may consider themselves truly

fortunate, if they preserve, under the despotism which now rules them,

as much religious liberty as our negroes received at our hands.

Our system is represented as oppressive and cruel, appointing

different penalties for crimes to the black man and the white man;

depriving the slave of the privilege of testifying against a white in

a court of justice; subjecting him to frequent and inhuman corporal

punishments, and making it a crime for him to exercise the natural

right of self-defence, when violently assailed by a white man. The

reply is, that the penal code of Virginia was properly made different

in the case of the whites and the blacks, because of the lower moral

tone of the latter. Many things, which are severe penalties to the

white man, would be no punishment to the negro. And the penal code for

the latter was greatly milder, both in its provisions, and in the

temper of its administration, than that which obtained in England over

her white citizens, far into this century. The slave was not permitted

to testify against a white man, and this was a restriction made proper

by his low grade of truthfulness, his difference of race, and the fact

that he was to so great a degree subject to the will of another. But

the seeming severity of this restriction was almost wholly removed,

among us, by the fact that he always had, in his master, an interested

and zealous patron and guardian, in all collisions with other white

men. From oppression by his own master he found his sufficient

protection, usually, in affection and self-interest. But in most of

the abolition States, the wretched free black was equally disqualified

to testify against his white oppressor; and the vast difference

against him was, that he had no white master, the legal equal of his

assailant, eagerly engaged by self-interest, affection, and honourable

pride, to protect him. The black "citizen" was the helpless victim of

the white swindler or bully. And such was usually the hypocrisy of

abolitionism.

It is true again, that our law gave the master the power of corporal

punishment, and required the slave to submit. So does the law of

England give it to parents over children, to masters over apprentices,

and to husbands over wives. Now, while we freely admit that there were

in the South, instances of criminal barbarity in corporal punishments,

they were very infrequent, and were sternly reprobated by publick

opinion. So far were Southern plantations from being "lash-resounding

dens," the whipping of adult men and women had become the rare

exception. It was far less frequent and severe than the whipping of

white men was, a few years ago, in the British army and navy, not

probably more frequent than the whipping of wives is in the Northern

States of America, and not nearly so frequent as the whipping of white

young ladies now is in their State schools. The girls and boys of the

plantations received the lash from masters and agents more frequently

than the adults, as was necessary and right for the heedless children

of mothers semi-civilized and neglectful; but universally, this

punishment by their owners was far less frequent and severe than the

black parents themselves inflicted. We may be permitted to state our

own experience as a fair specimen of the average. The writer was for

eighteen years a householder and master of slaves, having the

government of a number of different slaves; and in that time he found

it necessary to administer the lash to adults in four cases; and two

of these were for a flagrant adultery--(resulting in the permanent

reform of at least one of the delinquents.) His government was

regarded by his slaveholding neighbours as by no means relaxed.

Indeed, Europeans and Yankees are always surprised at the leniency and

tolerance of Southern masters. But to the vain modern notion, that

corporal punishments are in any case barbarous and degrading, we give

place not for an instant. God enjoined them, in appropriate cases, on

Hebrew citizens. Solomon inculcates the rod as the most wholesome

correction for children. The degradation is in the offence, and not in

the punishment. This pretended exclusion of whipping is a part of that

Godless humanitarianism, born of conceit and pride, which always shows

itself as full of real ferocity as of affected mildness.

It is also an outrageous misrepresentation to say that our laws

imposed no check upon the master's brutality in punishing, and took

away the slave's natural right of self-defence. The slave whose life

was assailed might exercise the natural right of self-defence, even

against his own master. He did it, of course, under the same

responsibility to the law, and the same risque of guilt, if it should

appear that he had shed blood gratuitously in a moment of

ill-justified passion, under which the white man acts. Cases actually

adjudicated have clearly ascertained this principle. In the county

of----,[79] a slave, in the year 1861, turned upon his master during

harvest, and with his scythe inflicted a mortal wound. He was arrested

by his own fellow-slaves, and when questioned, replied to one, "I

intended to kill him;" and to another, "I tried to cut him in two." It

was proved by the defence, at his trial, (through the exclusive

testimony of blacks,) that his master had, on previous days, and also

on the morning of the same day, two hours previously, harassed him

with barbarous and unusual punishments, by which, although none of

them even in appearance assailed life, a just sense of outrage and

high indignation must have been produced. The grave defect of this

defence was, that the assaults of the master, although barbarous,

never had implicated life, and that two or more hours had intervened,

for the cooling of passion. The only immediate provocation at the time

of killing was the repetition of some words of rebuke, with a

comparatively slight chastisement. Such was the case. The court

decided that, on the one hand, a verdict of justifiable homicide could

not be given in the slave's favour, because the lawful present

provocation was absent; but on the other, that it was not murder,

because the barbarities which had preceded the act justified

resentment. The crime was therefore ascertained as a mitigated

homicide, with a milder punishment.

[Footnote 79: Names and places are suppressed in this publick

statement, for obvious reasons of regard for meritorious survivors.

But the official records are at hand, and will be furnished any

gainsayer.]

The laws of Virginia protected not only the life, but the limb of the

slave against white persons, and even his own master. The statute

against wounding, stabbing and maiming is in the following words:[80]

"If any free person maliciously shoot, stab, cut or wound _any

person_, or by any means cause him bodily injury with intent to maim,

disfigure, disable or kill, he shall, except where it is otherwise

provided, be punished by confinement in the penitentiary not less

than one, nor more than ten years. If such act be done unlawfully, but

not maliciously, with the intent aforesaid, the offender shall, at the

discretion of the jury if the accused be white, or of the court if he

be a negro, either be confined in the penitentiary not less than one

nor more than five years, or be confined in jail not exceeding twelve

months, and fined not exceeding five hundred dollars." And in the

chapter on trials it is added: [81] "And on any indictment for

maliciously shooting, stabbing, cutting or wounding a person, or by

any means causing him bodily injury with intent to kill him, the jury

may find the accused not guilty of the offence charged, but guilty of

maliciously doing such act with intent to maim, disfigure or disable,

or of unlawfully doing it, with intent to maim, disfigure, disable or

kill, such person." These are but digests of repeated older statutes

of Virginia, of date 1803, 1815, and 1819. Now the General Court, the

highest tribunal of appeal in criminal cases, [82]decided that the

"_any person_," protected by these laws, included the slave; and that

an indictment for the malicious stabbing of a slave could be supported

under these acts. Thus, while the slave was required to accept the

chastisement of his master, his life and limb were as fully protected

as those of the white man.

[Footnote 80: Code of 1849, Ch. 191, § 9. Edit. 1860, p. 784.]

[Footnote 81: Code of 1849, Ch. 208, § 30.]

[Footnote 82: Chapple's case, I. Virginia cases, 184. Carver's case,

5th Randolph's Rep., 660.]

The General Court,[83] in 1851, decided the appeal of Simeon Souther,

convicted in the County of Hanover of murder in the second degree,

because his slave Sam had, according to evidence, died under an

excessive and barbarous whipping, with other punishments, the whole

evidently not intended to kill. Souther's counsel appealed from this

sentence to the General Court, asking that the grade of the offence be

reduced to manslaughter only, because it appeared in evidence that the

punishments were not inflicted with intent to kill. The court, after

reprobating Souther's conduct as a "case of atrocious and wicked

cruelty," instead of reducing the grade of the sentence already

ascertained, decided that it was already too low; and that it should

have been declared murder in the first degree. This tribunal granted

that it is lawful for the master to chastise his slave; and that the

law, as expounded by the same authority, (5th Randolph, 678,) did not

sustain an indictment of the master on the mere allegation of excess

in chastisement, where it was not charged that any unlawful maiming or

other injury ensued. Because "it is the policy of the law in respect

to the relation of master and slave, and for the sake of securing

proper subordination and obedience on the part of the slave, to

protect the master from prosecution in all such cases." ... "But in so

inflicting punishment for the sake of punishment, the owner of the

slave acts at his peril; and if death ensues in consequence of such

punishment, the relation of master and slave affords no ground of

excuse or palliation. The principles of the common law in relation to

homicide apply to his case, without qualification or exception; and

according to those principles, the act of the prisoner, in the case

under consideration, amounted to murder. Upon this point we are

unanimous." And Souther, although a man of property, and supported by

the most active and able counsel, was committed to the penitentiary,

(in pursuance of the original sentence, of murder in the second

degree,) where he died. Such was the law and its administration in

Virginia.

[Footnote 83: 7th Grattan, 673, etc.]

It may further be asserted that the laws were at least as well

administered among us, against the murderers and oppressors of slaves,

as against those who killed their equals. Our people had unfortunately

imbibed, to some degree, the infidel and fanatical notions prevalent

at the North against capital punishments; so that crimes of bloodshed

met with more tolerance from publick sentiment than was proper. But

when a master took the life of his servant, especially if it were done

by cruel punishments, the publick scorn for his meanness and tyranny,

and the general feeling of kindliness for our dependent

fellow-creatures, were apt to secure a far more faithful execution of

the law against him, than if he had slain his white peer for any

insult or wrong.

The laws of Virginia were equally just and careful in protecting the

liberty of every person not justly held to bondage. The stealing or

kidnapping of any human being with the purpose of selling him into

slavery, is a felony, punishable by imprisonment in the penitentiary

not less than three, nor more than ten years.[84]

[Footnote 84: Code of Va., 1849, Chap. 191, § 17. The same may be

found at its appropriate place in the Code of 1860, which is little

more than a reprint of the Code of 1849.]

Any coloured person whatsoever, conceiving himself to be unlawfully

detained in bondage, may apply to any justice of the peace, or county

or circuit superior court, to enter a suit for his freedom. There is

not, within the lids of the Virginian code, another statute, so

generous, so careful, so tender, so watchful, in protecting every

possible right of a plaintiff, as this law enabling the slave,

unjustly detained, to sue out his freedom. First, it compels every

magistrate, of every grade, and every court, of every grade, to

hearken to the cry of the supposed oppressed man, and to take

effectual steps to secure him release, if just. Next, it instantly

takes the claimant out of the hand of his nominal master, and assigns

him protection and maintenance, during the pendency of his claim.

Next, it provides counsel, and all costs of suit for the oppressed

man, at publick expense. Next, it orders that his case shall have

precedence of all other cases, before whatever court he may select, at

its first sessions, irrespective of its place on the docket. And last,

if the claim to freedom be found just, the court is empowered to give

him damages for his detention pending the suit.[85]

[Footnote 85: Code of Va., 1849, Chap. 106.]

Another charge against us is, that our laws abrogated the rights of

marriage among slaves, authorized their capricious separation by

masters, and thus consigned them to promiscuous concubinage, like that

of beasts. Now, first, admitting defect in our legislation here, let

us ask, how much of the blame of the continuance of this defect is

chargeable upon the frantic attacks of abolitionists upon us? Every

sensible man can understand, that a people so fiercely assailed in

their vital rights should be occupied solely by righteous defence,

and should feel the time unsuited for the discussion of innovations,

however needful. And next, let it be understood what the South has

really done, and has not done, herein, and it will appear that an

amazing misrepresentation is made of the whole case. The form of the

charge usually is, that our laws deprived the slaves of all marital

rights. This is, first, a monstrous perversion of the facts, in that

the Africans never had any marital rights or domestic institutions to

be deprived of. Have men forgotten, that in their native country there

was no marriage, and no marriage law, but the negroes either lived in

vagrant concubinage, or held their plurality of wives as slaves, to be

either sold or slain at will? They have, at least, lost nothing, then;

and the utmost that could be charged upon our legislation is, that it

did not undertake to innovate upon their own native usages; that it

did not force upon them marital restraints, and penalties for their

breach, which the Africans were disqualified either to understand or

value, which they would have regarded as a more cruel burden than

their bondage. Next, our laws did not, as many seem to represent,

prohibit, or delegalize the marriage of slaves; but were simply silent

about them. The meaning of this silence was, to leave the whole matter

to the controul of the master. It appears almost impossible for

anti-slavery men to be made to apprehend the nature of the

institution, as described in the words, '_domestic_ slavery.' Their

minds, perverted with vain dreams of the powers and perfectibility of

the State, cannot be made to apprehend that God has made other parties

than the commonwealth and the civil magistrate, depositories of ruling

power; and that this arrangement is right and benevolent. Now, it is

the genius of slavery, to make the family the slave's commonwealth.

The family is his State. The master is his magistrate and legislator,

in all save certain of the graver criminal relations, in which the

commonwealth deals directly and personally with him. He is a member of

municipal society only through his master, who represents him. The

commonwealth knows him as only a life-long minor under the master's

tutelage. The integers of which the commonwealth aggregate is made up,

are not single human beings, but single families, authoritatively

represented in the father and master. And this is the fundamental

difference between the theory of the Bible, and that of radical

democracy. The silence of our laws, then, concerning the marriage of

slaves, means precisely this: that the whole subject is remitted to

the master, the chief magistrate of the little integral commonwealth,

the family. Obviously, therefore, the question whether our laws were

defective therein, is in no sense a question between the living of the

slaves in marriage or in beastly license; it is only a question

whether, in the distribution of ruling functions, those of the master

were not made too large and responsible, herein. And if error be

admitted in this respect, it cannot be one which makes the relation of

servitude sinful; for then the same crime must be fixed on all the

patriarchs, notwithstanding their care in rightly ordering and

preserving, as family heads, the marital relations of their children

and slaves, because, forsooth, there happened to be no commonwealth

law above them, as patriarchs, regulative of these marriages. This is

nonsense. Where the modern patriarch, the Southern master, rightly

ordered and protected the marriage relations of his slaves, the

silence of the commonwealth no more made their connexions concubinage,

than were those of Isaac, and of Abraham's steward, Eliezer of

Damascus. What magistrate or legislature, other than Abraham, issued

their marriage license? Who else enforced their marriage law or

defined its rights? What civic agent solemnized the ceremonial for

them? And this leads to another remark: that that ceremonial is wholly

unessential to the validity of marriage. Of course, where the laws

enjoin it for any class, every good citizen will observe it. But the

absence of such ordained ceremonial does not make lawful marriage

impossible. In this sense, _consensus facit nuptias_. It was thus that

the holiest wedlock ever seen on earth was instituted, that of Adam

and Eve; thus Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, were united. The

fact that our laws pronounce the unions of Quakers and of Jews,

legitimate marriage, although announced with different forms, and

indeed almost without form, evinces this truth.

Now, then, for the facts. These facts are, that marriage in its

substance was as much recognized among our servants as among any other

peasantry; that the union was uniformly instituted upon a formal

written license of the two masters; that it was almost always

sanctioned by a religious ceremonial conducted by a minister; that the

regularity of the connexion was uniformly recognized by the master's

assigning the husband and wife their own dwelling; that the moral

opinion of both whites and blacks made precisely the same distinction

between this connexion and the illicit ones, and between the fruits

of it as legitimate, and the fruits of concubinage as illegitimate,

which publick opinion establishes for white persons: and that even the

criminal law recognized it as a regular connexion, by extending to the

black man who slew the violator of his bed in heat of blood, the same

forbearance which it extends to the outraged husband. How can it be

said, in the face of these facts, that marriage did not exist among

them?

But, it is asked, did not the master possess power to separate this

union at his will; and was not this power often exercised? They did.

The power, relatively, was not often exercised; and when the

separation was not justified by the crimes of the parties, it met the

steady and increasing reprobation of publick opinion. The instances of

tyrannical separation were, at most, far fewer than the harsh tyranny

of destitution imposes on poor whites in all other countries; and the

pretended philanthropy of the Yankees has, in five years, torn asunder

more families than all the slave dealers of the South did in a

hundred. But the power of separating was sometimes abused by masters;

and the room for this abuse was just the defect in our laws, which

nearly all Southern Christians deplored, and which they desired to

repair. Justice requires the testimony, on the other hand, that the

relaxed morals which prevailed among the Africans was not the result

of their marital relations, as arranged among us, but the heritage of

their paganism; that under our system the evil was decreasing; and

that since their emancipation and nominal subjection to the marriage

law of the whites, a flood of licentiousness, vagrant concubinage,

and infanticide, has broken out again among them. Clear proof this,

that our abused system was better adapted to their character than the

present.

Anti-slavery men often talk as though the right of slave parents to

the controul and education of their children, were so indefeasible and

native, that it is a natural wrong to permit the authority of the

master over them to override that of the parents. This we utterly

deny. We have the authority of Locke himself for saying that the

parental authority is correlative to the parental obligation to

preserve and train the child; that it is, therefore, not indefeasible;

that if the father is clearly incompetent to or unwilling for his

duty, his authority often is, and of right ought to be, transferred by

society to another. When, therefore, the civilized master uses his

authority against and over that of the semi-civilized, or savage

parent, to train the slave child to habits of decency, industry,

intelligence, and virtue, which his degraded natural guardians are

unable or unwilling to inculcate, he does no crime against nature, but

an act just and beneficent.

The most odious part of this charge is, that slavery made the chastity

of the female slave the property of her master. We meet this with an

emphatic denial. It is false. The laws of Virginia protect the virtue

of the female slave by the very same statute which shields that of the

white lady, even against her own master. The law of rape, until 1849,

used these words:[86] "If any man do ravish _a woman_," &c. The act of

1849 used the words:[87] "If any white person do carnally know _a

female_ of the age of twelve years or more, against her will, by

force, or carnally know _a female child_, under that age," &c. (If the

ravisher were a negro the penalty was different.) The question is,

whether the words "_a woman_," and "_a female_," were intended to

include coloured persons and slaves. The answer uniformly given by

Virginian lawyers to this question is affirmative. They say that the

terms are the most general in our statutory vocabulary. The law of

1849, just quoted, clearly implies that the terms "a female," in § 15,

are inclusive of coloured females, by expressly introducing the word

"white," "a white female," in § 16, when its purpose was to enact a

special penalty for the forcible abduction of that class. The General

Court has held that _female_ is synonymous with _woman_,[88] and may

be substituted for it even in an indictment. Is it asked, why the

appeal is not made to judicial decisions, as conclusive authority of

the true intent of the statute? We have caused a thorough search to be

made by the most competent authority in Richmond; and while many

indictments are found against black men for rape of white women, none

exist, in the history of our jurisprudence, against white men for rape

of black women. And this, not because there would have been any

difficulty in making the indictment lie: _but because_, as the most

experienced lawyers testify, _the crime is unheard of on the part of

white men amongst us_.

[Footnote 86: Code, 1819, p. 585, Ch. 158.]

[Footnote 87: Code, 1849, p. 725, Ch. 191, § 15.]

[Footnote 88: Burnett's case, 2 Va. cases, 235. And this was an

indictment for rape.]

It is undoubtedly true, that the moral sense of the Africans on this

subject is low: that many voluntary breaches of chastity occur among

themselves, and some between them and whites. But the latter are far

less frequent than similar sins in Philadelphia, in Boston, in London.

Notwithstanding the sad inheritance of vice drawn by the Africans from

their pagan ancestors, Southern slavery had elevated them so far, that

illegitimate births among them had become far fewer than among the

boasted white peasantry of Protestant Scotland, with all its Bibles

and churches, and parochial schools. This fact can be proved by Scotch

statistics. The odious and filthy charge which the abolitionists make

against the Southern people and against slavery, as a system of lust,

also receives a terrible reply from the returns of the American

census. When illicit cohabitation takes place between the whites and

the blacks, nature tells the secret with infallible accuracy, in the

yellow skin of the offspring. The census of 1850 distinguished the

full blacks from the mulattoes, both among the slave and free. Of the

slaves, one in twelve was mulatto, taking the whole United States

together. Of the slaves in Virginia the ratio of mulattoes to blacks

was about the same. In South Carolina there was only one mulatto to

thirty-one black slaves! The explanation is, that the latter State,

being less commercial and manufacturing than Virginia, and having a

system of more perfect agricultural slavery, exposed her slaves less

to intercourse with immigrant and transient whites. But taking the

United States as a whole, the free mulattoes were more than half as

numerous as the free blacks! In several of the slave States they are

more numerous; and in Ohio, the stronghold of Black Republicanism,

there were fourteen thousand mulattoes to eleven thousand blacks.

Since the regular marriage of free blacks to the whites was as unknown

at the North as at the South, these figures tell a tale as to the

comparative prevalence of this infamous and unnatural form of

uncleanness among the Yankees, which should forever seal their lips

from reproaches of us. They also show that at the South the state of

slavery has been far more favourable to chastity among the coloured

people than that of freedom.

The reader probably feels by this time, that if we speak truth, then

was slavery a very different thing practically from its usual picture

abroad. He will perhaps feel with a shade of skepticism, that it is

strange the world should have been so much mistaken. The chief

explanation we offer of so strange a fact, is that trait of

abolitionists, our interested and unscrupulous accusers, predicted by

St. Paul: ("men of corrupt minds and destitute of the truth.") The

world will find them out in due time: the statements made of the

events of the late war have done much to unmask them. Still another

cause is that Europeans, and even Yankees, are so ignorant of Southern

society. Still another explanation is, that slavery in the British

colonies, from which the people of that Empire have chiefly derived

their conceptions, actually was far more harsh and barbarous than in

this country. The reader is emphatically cautioned that he must not

judge slavery in Virginia by slavery in Jamaica or Guiana. Whether the

charge of the great Paley is correct, who accounts for this difference

by the greater harshness of British character,[89] politeness may

forbid us to decide. But the comparative fates of the Africans in the

British colonies, and those in our States, tell the contrast between

the humanity of our system, and the barbarity of theirs, in terms of

indisputable clearness. If political science has ascertained any law,

it is that the well or ill-being of a people powerfully affects their

increase or decrease of numbers. The climate of the British Indies is

salubrious for blacks. Yet, of the one million seven hundred thousand

Africans imported into the British colonies, and their increase, only

six hundred and sixty thousand remained to be emancipated in 1832. The

three hundred and seventy-five thousand (the total) imported into the

Southern States, had multiplied to four millions. Such is the

contrast! How grinding and ruthless must have been that oppression

which in the one case reduced this prolific race, in the most fertile

and genial spots of earth, in the ratio of five to two! And how

generous and beneficent that government which, in the Southern States,

nursed them to a more than ten-fold increase, in a less hospitable and

fruitful clime! Well may we demur to have the world take its

conceptions of our slavery from the British.

[Footnote 89: Moral Philosophy, Bk. 3, p. 2, Ch. 3: "The inordinate

authority which the plantation laws confer upon the slaveholder, is

exercised by the _English_ slaveholder, especially, with rigour and

brutality."]

We trust that we shall proceed, then, to the remaining discussion of

the moral character of slavery, with a just understanding of what is

to be defended. It is simply that system which makes the involuntary

labour of the servant the property of the master, and gives the latter

such controul over the former's person, as will secure his possession

of the labour. We conclude this section with a few words touching the

admitted abuses of the system. That such existed among us, both

legislative and individual, is fully admitted. There were cruel

masters. Slaves were sometimes refused that which the apostle enjoined

masters to give them, as "just and equal." Some cruel punishments were

inflicted. A few slaves have been tortured to death. Some wives and

children were wickedly torn from their husbands and parents. And our

laws in some points failed to secure to the slaves that to which their

humanity entitled them. But we repeat, these things prove only the

sinfulness of the individual agent, and not of the system of which

they are incidents. Fathers have been known to maltreat, scourge, maim

and murder their children; and husbands their wives; but no one dreams

that these things evince the unrighteousness of the family relations.

Wife-murder is doubtless more frequent in the State of New York, than

slave-murder was in Virginia. The laws of the State of Indiana

concerning divorce are, in some particulars, glaring violations of

God's laws. Yet no one dreams of arguing thence, that to have a wife

in those States is a sin. Unless the abuse can be shown to be an

essential part of the system, it proves nothing against the lawfulness

of the system itself. But that none of these crimes against slaves are

essential parts of slavery, is proved by the fact, which we fearlessly

declare, that the vast majority of slaves in our country never

experienced any of them. The unfairness of this mode of arguing cannot

be better stated than in the words of Dr. Van Dyke, of New York:

"Their mode of arguing the question of slaveholding, by a pretended

appeal to facts, is a tissue of misrepresentation from beginning to

end. Let me illustrate my meaning by a parallel case. Suppose I

undertake to prove the wickedness of marriage, as it exists in the

city of New York. In this discussion suppose the Bible is excluded,

or, at least, that it is not recognized as having exclusive

jurisdiction in the decision of the question. My first appeal is to

the statute law of the State.

"I show there enactments which nullify the law of God, and make

divorce a marketable and cheap commodity. I collect the advertisements

of your daily papers, in which lawyers offer to procure the legal

separation of man and wife for a stipulated price, to say nothing, in

this sacred place, of other advertisements which decency forbids me to

quote. Then I turn to the records of our criminal courts, and find

that every day some cruel husband beats his wife, or some unnatural

parent murders his child, or some discontented wife or husband seeks

the dissolution of the marriage bond. In the next place, I turn to the

orphan asylums and hospitals, and show there the miserable wrecks of

domestic tyranny in wives deserted and children maimed by drunken

parents. In the last place, I go through our streets, and into our

tenement houses, and count the thousands of ragged children, who, amid

ignorance and filth, are training for the prison and gallows.

"Summing all these facts together, I put them forth as the fruits of

marriage in the city of New York, and a proof that the relation itself

is sinful. If I were a novelist, and had written a book to illustrate

this same doctrine, I would call this array of facts a 'Key.' In this

key I say nothing about the sweet charities and affections that

flourish in ten thousand homes, not a word about the multitude of

loving-kindnesses that characterize the daily life of honest people,

about the instruction and discipline that are training children at ten

thousand firesides for usefulness here and glory hereafter;--all this

I ignore, and quote only the statute book, the newspapers, the records

of criminal courts, and the miseries of the abodes of poverty. Now,

what have I done? I have not misstated or exaggerated a single fact.

And yet am I not a falsifier and a slanderer of the deepest dye? Is

there a virtuous woman or an honest man in this city whose cheeks

would not burn with indignation at my one-sided and injurious

statements? But this is just what abolitionism has done in regard to

slaveholding. It has undertaken to illustrate its cardinal doctrine in

works of fiction; and then, to sustain the creation of its fancy, has

attempted to underpin it with an accumulation of facts. These facts

are collected in precisely the way I have described. The statute books

of slaveholding States are searched, and every wrong enactment

collated, newspaper reports of cruelty and crime on the part of wicked

masters are treasured up and classified, all the outrages that have

been perpetrated 'by lewd fellows of the baser sort'--of whom there

are plenty, both North and South--are eagerly seized and recorded; and

this mass of vileness and filth, collected from the kennels and sewers

of society, is put forth as a faithful exhibition of slaveholding.

Senators in the forum, and ministers in the pulpit, distil this raw

material into the more reined slander 'that Southern society is

essentially barbarous, and that slaveholding had its origin in hell.'"

Such are the words of one who is himself no advocate of slavery, but

who is moved to utter them solely by his regard for truth. His

reprobation is just. To take the exceptional abuses of any

institution, and exhibit them as giving the ordinary state of society

under it, is the very essence of slander.

But the enemies of the South say, that still the system of slavery is

unrighteous, even though the generosity of a majority of masters

prevents its oppressions from being felt, because it confers a power

which is irresponsible. We reply, that this is true, although to a

vastly less degree than has been charged; but it is also true of every

form of authority under heaven; and it is simply impossible to place

authority in any human hands at all, without some degree of this

risque of irresponsible abuse. The authority of the master is no more

irresponsible than that of the husband, father, or mechanic, over his

wife, child, or apprentice. The father, in order to have authority,

must have discretion: and he may abuse it: for he is imperfect; and

against this abuse the child has no legal remedy. For this

imperfection in the family law there is no help, save by abolishing

all family government; a remedy fraught with ten thousand times the

mischief and misery which all the occasional severities of unnatural

parents have caused. All human government must have this defect, for

man, who administers it, is a sinner. So that the objection of the

abolitionist amounts to this: that the institution of slavery is

unlawful, because it is not perfect; which nothing human can be. It is

so true that any grant of power whatsoever confers some

irresponsibility; that the fact remains even where the rights of free

citizens are most carefully guarded under republican governments. See,

for example, the courts of law, which judge concerning our lives and

property. We attempt to limit the abuse of power of the lower courts,

by passing their decisions in review before a higher; but there must

be some highest, beyond which no appeal can go. Yet the judges of that

highest court are also capable of wrong and error; and if they commit

them, the victim has no human help; he must submit. All that just and

humane legislation can do, then, is so to adjust and limit powers,

that the chances of uncompensated wrong may be as small as possible.

Now we shall see that in this case of employer and labourer, such as

they are in Virginia, the chances of unredressed wrong were reduced to

their _minimum_ by our system of domestic slavery. For we thereby

raised the most efficient motives, those of self-interest and

affection, in the stronger party, to treat the weaker equitably. If

the irresponsibility of a part of the master's power proved the

relation sinful, all government would be wrong.

§ 3. _The Rights of Man and Slavery._

The radical objection to the righteousness of slavery in most minds

is, that it violates the natural liberty and equality of man. To clear

this matter, it is our purpose to test the common theory held as to

the rights of nature, and to show that this ground of opposition to

slavery rests upon a radical and disorganizing scheme of human rights,

is but Jacobinism in disguise, and involves a denial of all authority

whatsoever. The popular theory of man's natural rights, of the origin

of governments, and of the moral obligation of allegiance, is that

which traces them to a _social contract_. The true origin of this

theory may be found with Hobbes of Malmesbury. It owes its

respectability among Englishmen, chiefly to the pious John Locke, a

sort of baptized image of that atheistic philosopher;[90] and it was

ardently held by the infidel democrats of the first French revolution.

According to this scheme, each person is by nature an independent

_integer_, wholly _sui juris_, absolutely equal to every other man,

and naturally entitled, as a "Lord of Creation," to exercise his whole

will. Man's natural liberty was accordingly defined as _privilege to

do whatever he wished_. True, Locke attempts to limit this monstrous

postulate by defining man's native liberty as privilege to do whatever

he wished within the limits of the law of nature. But this virtually

returns to the same; because he teaches that man is by nature

absolutely independent, so that he must be himself the supreme,

original judge, what this law of nature is. According to the doctrine

of the social contract, man's natural rights are confounded with this

so-called natural liberty. Each man's natural right is to protect his

own existence, and to possess himself of whatever will render it more

happy, (Locke again adds, within the limits of natural law.) And this

scheme most essentially ignored the originality of moral distinctions.

Hobbes explains them as the conventional results of the rules which

man's experience and convenience have dictated to him. For, the

experience of the mutual violences and collisions of so many

independent wills, in this supposed "state of nature," induced men, in

time, to consent to the surrender of a part of this native

independence, in order to secure the remainder of their rights. To do

this, they are supposed to have conferred together, and to have formed

a compact with each other, binding themselves to each other to submit

to certain stipulated rules, which restrained a part of their natural

liberty, and to obey certain men selected to govern. The power thus

delegated to these hands was to be used to protect the remaining

rights of all. The terms of this compact form the organic law, or

constitution. Subsequent citizens entering the commonwealth by birth

or immigration, are assumed to have given an assent, express or

implied, to this compact. And if the question be asked, why men are

morally bound to obey magistrates, who naturally are their equals and

fellows, the answer of this school is: because they have voluntarily

bargained to do so in entering the social compact; and they receive a

_quid pro quo_ for their accession to it. Such is the theory of the

origin of government, from which the natural injustice of slavery is

deduced. For, obviously, if man's obligation to civil society

originates in the voluntary social contract of independent integers,

none can be rightfully held to a compulsory obedience, which enters

into all servitude, both domestic and political.

[Footnote 90: Notwithstanding Locke's amiable and pious spirit, the

history of philosophic opinion has shown that he is but a disguised

follower of the philosopher of Malmesbury. His psychology is but a

system of sensationalism, and his ethics lead to the denial of

original moral distinctions. Locke is chargeable with the germs of all

the mischievous and atheistical doctrines developed by Hume in Great

Britain, and Cordillac in France.]

Some liberal writers, as Blackstone, and the great Swiss publicist,

_Burlemaqui_, are too sensible not to see that this scheme is false to

the facts of the case. But they still hold, that although individual

men never, in fact, existed in the independent insulation supposed,

and did not actually pass into a state of society by a formal social

contract, yet such a transaction must be assumed as the implied and

virtual source of political power and civic obligation. To us it

appears, that if the contracting never occurred in fact, but is only a

theoretical fiction, it is no basis for any thing, and no source of

practical rights and duties. Civil society is a universal fact; and

its existence must be grounded in something actual. We object, then,

to this dream of a social contract preceded by a native state of

individual independence, that it is false to the facts of the case.

Human beings never rightfully existed, for one moment, in this state,

out of which they are supposed to have passed by their own option. God

never gave them such independency. Their responsibility to him, and to

the civil society under which He has placed them, is as _native_ as

they are, being ordained by God to exist from the first. Men do not

choose civic obligation, but are born to it, just as the child to his

filial obligation. And the simple, conclusive proof is, that if any

man were to claim this native option to assume or to decline civic

obligations, (in the latter case relinquishing also their advantages,)

there is not a government on earth, not the most liberal, that would

not laugh his claim to scorn, and at once compel his allegiance. The

very assumption of what this theory calls man's normal state, and the

very attempt to exercise the option which, as it babbles, originated

civil society, would constitute a man an outlaw, the radical enemy of

civic society, and would give it a natural right, that of

self-preservation, to destroy him. The scheme is not only fictitious,

but absurd.

Second: We object that it is atheistic, utterly ignoring the existence

of a Creator, and his relations to, and proprietorship in, man. It

affects to treat men as though their existence were underived, and

independent of any Supreme Being. It boldly discards God's right to

determine under what obligations man shall live, and quietly contemns

the great Scriptural fact that He has determined man shall live under

social law.

Third: This scheme is thoroughly unphilosophical, in that whereas the

science of government should be an inductive one, this theory is, and

in its nature must be, purely hypothetical. No body, no history

pretends to relate in a single instance, any such facts as it

professes to rest upon. This Locke admits, and even claims, absurdly

seeking in this mode to evade this vital objection. Hence we assert

that it has no claims to be entertained _in foro scientiæ_, even for

discussion.

Fourth: If man at first possessed that natural liberty, and passed

from it under the obligation of constitutions and laws by a social

contract, then sundry most inconvenient and preposterous consequences

must logically follow. One of these is, that when once men had

established their constitution, (in other words, their compact,) so

long as its terms were observed by the magistrates and the minority,

the majority could never righteously change it, no matter how

inconvenient, or even ruinous, new circumstances might have made it,

against the will of the minority or of the rulers. For when one has

made a voluntary bargain, subsequent inconveniences of it do not

justify its breach. The just man is one who changeth not, though he

"sweareth to his own hurt." Another consequence would be, that it

could never be settled what were the terms agreed upon in the original

compact, and what part of existing laws were the accretions of

unwarranted power, except in the case of written constitutions. Few

nations have such. But a far worse consequence would be, that if the

duty of allegiance originated in such compact, then any one

unconstitutional act of the rulers or majority would dissolve it. For

it is a covenant; but a covenant broken by one party is broken for

both. Now, who believes that a single unconstitutional act of the

ruler voids the whole allegiance of the aggrieved citizen? Where would

be the government which would not be plunged into anarchy?

Last, all commonwealths have found it necessary to arm the magistrate

with some powers, which individuals could not have conferred by a

social compact, because they never possessed them. One of these is the

power of life and death. No man's life is his own: it belongs to God

alone. One cannot bargain away what is not his own. Besides, it is

absurd to represent men as bargaining away this tremendous power for

some smaller advantages and securities; because life is the most

precious of all. "What shall a man accept in exchange for his life?"

It is of no avail to say that the community is entitled, by the law of

self-preservation, to assume this power; because, on this theory,

there is no community as yet. There is only a number of independent

integers, sovereignly treating with each other. The community cannot

assume powers before it exists! It is, if possible, still more

difficult to explain, on this theory, how political societies came by

the power of capital punishment, against aliens who assail their

members. But all governments hold aliens living among them, and

invading enemies, subject to their capital penalties. How is this? The

foreigner certainly has not assented to the social compact of this

society; for he claims to be alien, and to owe no allegiance. His

consent, the supposed fountain of all right over him, is utterly

lacking. Once more, this theory draws a broad distinction between

man's civil liberty as a subject of government, and his natural

liberty. The latter it defines as _privilege to do whatever the man

pleases_, within the limits of natural law as interpreted by himself.

And his natural rights are just the same. Some of these he voluntarily

surrenders to society, to secure the rest. All government, therefore,

is not only of the nature of restraint; it is essentially _restraint

upon one's rights_. The advocates of the theory distinctly represent

government as of the nature of a natural evil and wrong, but adopted

as an expedient against the worse evil, anarchy; and therefore the

obligation to obey it has no higher source than expediency. But worse

yet; if there is any such thing as intrinsic morality, government is

an immoral restraint, for it is a _restraint upon rights_. Whatever

good government may bring us, it is of that species which St. Paul

reprobates, as "doing evil that good may come." The great Hobbes was

therefore perfectly consistent, in teaching that there is no original

morality in acts, and that there was at first no such thing as right,

distinct from might. Morals are factitious distinctions invented under

civil society for expediency. Let the thoughtful reader consider how

this monstrous conclusion uproots all obligation, and order, and

allegiance. No man can hold the theory of the origin of government in

the social contract, unless he either holds, with Hobbes, this

damnable error, or with some abolitionists, (who are thoroughly

consistent here,) that _all government is immoral_.

But its advocates urge that it does give the correct origin of

government, because they can point to specific rights, which must have

been natural in the individual, but which we now find vested in the

government. The instance they most cite, is that of self-defence. We

accept it, and assert that it confirms our view. For, if the right of

self-defence means privilege of forcible resistance to violence at the

time it is offered, we utterly deny that it has been surrendered by

the individual, or can be justly limited one iota by government. If it

means the savage privilege of retaliation after the collision has

passed away, which claims to make the angry defendant accuser, judge,

jury, and executioner in his own case, we utterly deny that nature

ever gave such right to any man. "Vengeance is mine: I will repay,

saith the Lord." Another instance alleged, is when the citizen is

restrained by society from certain acts, moral _per se_: as selling

his corn out of the country when there is dearth. Yet the good citizen

obeys. The answer is, that if the restriction is not unjust, it is

because there exists among the citizens such danger of suffering for

corn, that the sending it out of the country would be a breach of the

natural law of love and equity. Natural rights may change with

circumstances, a simple truth often strangely forgotten on this

subject.

Now, it is from this vicious theory of human rights, that abolitionism

sucks its whole life. The whole argument is but this: no restraint of

government on man's will can be righteous, which is forcible and

involuntary, because the obligation of all just government originates

in the option of the individuals governed, who are by nature

sovereign. Before we indicate the relationship of this conclusion with

its disorganizing brood of kindred, we must pause to meet a question

which arises. It is this: if this pet hypothesis is relinquished, on

what basis shall we defend free government? Let us see if a better

foundation for its blessings cannot be found.

Political and ethical philosophers have been perpetually victims to

the notion, that because theirs are natural sciences, as distinguished

from revealed or theological, therefore they must banish from them all

reference to God, his nature, his acts, and his will, and our

relations to it. The true inference should be, only, that they must

abstain from the introduction of those peculiar revealed facts, which

belong to man as an object of redemption and subject of the Church of

Christ. If we are not atheists, the facts that God is, that our being

proceeds from his act, that we are his property, are as truly

_natural_ as man and his attributes are. They should therefore be

embraced as a part of the facts of the case, to be treated just as

all other natural facts, save that these are the most rudimental of

all. For, how can that treatment be truly scientific, which proceeds

upon a partial induction of the facts of the case, leaving out the

most primary? It is this illusion which has led so many moralists to

attempt the discussion of the nature and origin of moral distinctions,

without introducing a Creator, or a divine will. Whereas, a true

science accepts God as the first fact in ethics; his attributes as the

primary standard of the moral distinction; his will as the fountain of

moral obligation. What wretched impotency and confusion has not this

omission caused in ethical discussions!

In like manner, this impotent and infidel theory of government sets

out, (as was consistent with its atheistic inventors,) without

reference to the fact that man's existence, nature, and rights

originated in the personal will of a Creator, without reference to

original moral distinctions, or to original responsibilities to God,

or to the moral quality of God's will towards man. It quietly ignores

the fact that man's will, if he is the creature of an intelligent and

moral personal Creator, never could, by any possibility, be his proper

rule of acting. It passes over, in the insane pride of human

perfectionism, the great fact that man is also a naturally depraved

creature. It falsely supposes a state of nature, in which man's will

made his right: whereas no being, save an eternal and self-existent

God, has a right to exist in that state for one instant. But all these

are _facts of nature_, belonging to the case, ascertainable by

experience and reason. If, then, we would have a correct theory of

natural rights, all of them must be embraced in our view. And the

proper account of the matter is simply this: Inasmuch as man did not

make himself, _he enters existence the subject of God_. This

subjection is not only of force, but also of moral right. Moral

distinctions are original, being eternally expressed in God's

perfections, and sovereignly revealed to the creature in his

preceptive will; which is, to man, the practical source and rule of

obligation. This moral obligation is therefore as _native_ as man is.

The rudimental relations to his God and his fellows imposed on man are

binding on him _ab initio_; not at all by force of any assent of his

will, but merely by the rightful force of God's will: man's virtue is

to conform his will freely to God's. This will also defines his

rights; by which we mean those things which other creatures are

morally obliged to allow him to have and to do. Man, we repeat, enters

existence with these moral relations resting upon him. And among them,

are his social relations to his fellows; as is shown by the fact that

he has a social nature. Now civil government is nothing more than the

organization of a part of these social relations. God's will and

providence, then, as truly as his word, has placed man naturally under

civil government. It is as natural as man is. Again: the rule of

action imposed by just government is _the moral rule_. That is to say,

an equitable government enjoins on its members or subjects the doing

of those things which are morally right, and the refraining from those

things which are morally wrong.

We trace civil government, then, not to any social contract, or other

human expediency, but to the will and providence of God, and to

original moral obligation. If asked, whence the obligation to obey the

civil magistrate who, personally, is but our fellow, we answer, from

God's will, which is the source and measure of duty. Man's will is

wayward and depraved. Hence practical authority to enforce this rule

of right upon him must be lodged in some hands; and since God does not

rule statedly by miracle, it must be in human hands. Civil government

is God's ordinance, and its obligations are those of original moral

right. The advantage and convenience resulting illustrate and confirm,

but do not originate, the obligation. This is the theory of government

plainly taught by St. Paul (Rom. xiii. 1 to 7) and St. Peter (1 Ep.

ii. 13 to 18.) For we are here told that the civil magistrate is God's

minister, to uphold right and repress wrong; that obedience to him in

this is not only of moral, but religious obligation; and that he who

resists this function disobeys God.

What, then, is man's natural liberty? We answer, that it is only

_privilege to do whatever he has a moral right to do_. Freedom to do

whatever a man wills, is not a liberty, either natural or civil, but

an unnatural license, a natural iniquity; man's will being naturally

depraved. What then is man's civil liberty? We reply, that under an

equitable government, it is the same--the privilege to do whatever he

has a moral right to do. No government is perfectly equitable: none

are wholly unjust. Some withhold more, some fewer, of the citizen's

moral rights. None withhold them all. Hence, under the most despotic

government there are some rights left, and so, some liberty. A

perfectly just government would be one which would allot to each

citizen freedom to do all the things which he had a moral right to do,

and nothing else. Such a government would not restrain the natural

liberty of any citizen in any respect; each man's civil liberty would

be identical with his natural. Government does not originate rights,

neither can it justly take them away. But practically, it confirms,

instead of impairing, our natural liberty; because it secures us in

the exercise of it.

But the friends of liberal government may feel a lurking suspicion of

this plain statement; because it is on a theory of pretended 'divine

right' that the arguments for legitimacy, passive obedience, and

despotism repose. Let us, then, pause to inquire whether the true

scheme looks in that direction. And we ask first: Whether it is not

much more likely that tyrannical conclusions will be drawn from those

principles which ignore God, the great standard of right, and original

moral distinctions, which are the basis of all rights, and so of all

liberty--from principles which make man's might his natural right;

rather than from our principles, which solidly found man's rights in

eternal moral distinctions, and in the will of a just and benevolent

God, the common Father, before whom rulers and ruled are equal? And

when we turn to the history of opinion, we see that while Locke

illogically deduced from this theory of the social contract a scheme

of liberal government, his greater master, Hobbes, inferred that the

most complete despotism was the most consistent. And both the French

and the Yankee Jacobins, deriving from it an impious deification of

the will of the mob which happens to be the larger, as the supreme

law, have reduced their theory to practice in the most violent,

ruthless, and mischievous oppressions ever perpetrated on civilized

communities. Let the tree be judged by its fruits.

We repeat, that the glory and strength of the Christian theory of

human government and liberty is this: that _it founds man's rights on

eternal moral distinctions_. The liberty it grants each man is

privilege of doing all those things which he, with his particular

character and relations, is morally entitled to do. Privilege of doing

all other things it retrenches; for what would this be but sin? Now

the epitome of moral distinctions is, 'Love thy neighbour as thyself.'

It is the same law expressed in the "Golden Rule." The meaning of

this, as we saw, is, not that we must do to our fellow all that our

caprice might desire, if our positions were inverted; but what we

should believe ourselves morally entitled to require of him, in that

case. Here, then, is the true basis of human equality. Men are all

children of a common Father, brethren of the same race, each one

entitled by the same right to his own appropriate share of well-being.

Hence, by a single and conclusive step, as the foundation of civil

government is moral, its proper object is the good of all, governors

and governed. Government is not for the behoof of rulers, but of the

ruled also. Subjects were not made for kings, but kings for subjects.

Indeed, rulers are themselves subjects, owing allegiance to the

universal law of right, and members of the brotherhood for whose

common good this law reigns. In the sublime Words of Samuel

Rutherford, _Rex, Lex_. Neither Scriptures nor providence give to

rulers any of that paternal right over the people, of which the

legitimatists prate. They neither have for their subjects the father's

instinctive love, nor the father's natural superiority in virtue,

experience, or powers. The Scriptural governments over Israel were

none of them legitimatist; and that to which Paul, Peter, and Christ

owned conscientious allegiance, the Empire of the Cæsars, was not

hereditary, and was a recent novelty. Again: while it is God's

ordinance that men shall live under governments, no one form of

government is ordained. "The powers that be are ordained of God." The

one which, in His providence, actually subsists, is the legitimate one

to the individual conscience. Still less has God indicated the

individuals who shall govern as His agents. There is no divine

nomination of the particular person. Hence, as government is for the

common good of all, the selection of these agents belongs to the

common wisdom and rectitude of the whole. And it is in this sense,

(and only this,) that the Christian holds that the power of rulers is

delegated from the ruled. In the higher sense, it is delegated from

God, who is our true, rightful, and literal despot. The despotism of

perfect, infinite rectitude is the most perfect freedom.

Now it is clear, that the several rights of different individuals in

the same society must differ exceedingly, because the persons differ

indefinitely in powers, knowledge, virtue, and natural relations to

each other. From that very law of love and equity, whence the moral

equality of men was inferred, it must also follow, that one man is not

morally entitled to pursue his natural well-being at the expense of

that of other men, or of the society. Each one's right must be so

pursued, as not to infringe others' rights. The well-being of all is

inter-connected. Hence equity, yea, a true equality itself, demands a

varied distribution of social privilege among the members, according

to their different characters and relations. In other words, an equal

government must confer very different degrees of power, and impose

very different degrees of restraint, upon different classes of

members. To attempt an identical and mechanical equality; to confer on

those who are incompetent to use them, the same privileges granted to

others who can and will use them rightfully, would be essential

inequality; for it would clothe the incompetent and undeserving with

power to injure the deserving and capable, without real benefit to

themselves. Hence, the civic liberties of all classes in the same

society ought not to be the same. Thus, of the adult members, half are

females, inexorably separated by sex, strength, social relations, and

natural duties. Hence different civic rights are properly given to the

male, in some respects; not because it is right to empower him to

consume upon the promotion of his natural well-being that of his

sister, but because, on the whole, the well-being of both sexes is

thus most promoted. Whether this result does follow, must be a

question of fact, to be decided by experience, if not settled in

advance by God's Word. There is in the society another class of

members, the children, who are not only different from, but inferior

to, the adults, in knowledge, strength, experience, and self-controul.

Hence, it is equitable to withhold from them still other privileges of

the full citizenship. Again: the amount of privileges properly

conceded to the body of citizens of the first class, should vary in

different commonwealths with their average character. If intelligence

and virtue are, in the average, more developed, the restraints of

government should be fewer; if less cultivated, more numerous.

Different frames of government may be best for different communities.

Once more: If the society contains a class of adult members, so

deficient in virtue and intelligence that they would only abuse the

fuller privileges of other citizens to their own and others'

detriment, it is just to withhold so many of these privileges, and to

impose so much restraint, as may be necessary for the highest equity

to the whole body, inclusive of this subject class. And how much

restraint is just, must be determined by facts and experience. Any

degree of it is righteous, which is necessary to the righteous end.

This is so obvious, that even abolitionists admit it, when they lose

sight for the moment of their hobby. Of this Dr. Francis Wayland, a

prominent abolitionist, gives us a striking instance in his "Moral

Science." (Boston, 1838, p. 351.) He says: "Whatever concessions on

the part of the individual, and whatever powers on the part of

society, are _necessary_ to the existence of society, must, by the

very fact of the existence of society, be taken for granted." On p.

356, he adds: "If it be asked which of these" (hereditary, mixed, or

republican) "is the preferable form of government, the answer, I

think, must be conditional. The best form of government for any

people, _is the best that its present social and moral condition

renders practicable_. A people may be _so entirely surrendered to the

influence of passion_, and so feebly _influenced by moral restraints_,

that a government which relied upon moral restraints could not exist

for a day. In this case a subordinate and inferior principle yet

remains,--_the principle of fear_: and the only resort is to a

government of force, or a military despotism."

If then the necessities of order justify the subjection of a whole

nation, with their labour, property, and lives, to one man, will not

the same reasons justify the far milder and more benevolent authority

of masters over their servants? If it appear that the Africans in

these States were by recent descent pagans and barbarians, men in

bodily strength and appetite, with the reason and morals of children,

constitutionally prone to improvidence, so that their possession of

all the franchises of a free white citizen would make them a nuisance

to society and early victims to their own degradation; and if sound

experience teaches that this ruin cannot be prevented without a degree

of restraint approaching that proper for children; that is, by giving

to a guardian the controul of their involuntary labour, and the

expenditure of the fruits for the joint benefit of the parties; how

can we be condemned for it? And that social welfare and order, and the

happiness of the African himself, do call imperiously for this degree

of controul, is confessed by all who have a practical knowledge of his

character, as it is proved by the disasters resulting from his

emancipation.

Every government in the world acknowledges this necessity, and

applies, in some form, this remedy. The abolition government of the

United States, for instance, imposed compulsory restraints and labour

upon multitudes of fugitive slaves, during the war. The only

difference was, that whereas our system of domestic slavery placed

this power in hands most powerfully interested to employ it humanely

and wisely, the anti-slavery authorities placed it in hands which had

every selfish inducement to abuse it to the misery of the slave, and

the detriment of the publick interest. And the same government is

to-day avouching every word of the above argument, by justifying

itself, from a pretended political necessity, for placing the white

race of the South under a much stricter bondage than that formerly

borne by the negroes; a bondage which places not only labour and

property, but life, at the irresponsible will of the masters. If

slavery is wrong, then the abolitionists are the greatest sinners; for

they have turned their own brethren into a nation of slaves.

Domestic servitude, as we define and defend it, is but civil

government in one of its forms. All government is restraint; and this

is but one form of restraint. As long as man is a sinner, and his will

perverted, restraint is righteous. We are sick of that arrogant and

profane cant, which asserts man's 'capacity for self-government' as a

universal proposition; which represents human nature as so good, and

democratic government as so potent, that it is a sort of miraculous

_panacea_, sufficient to repair all the disorders of man's condition.

All this ignores the great truths, that man is fallen; that his will

is disordered, and therefore ought not to be his rule; that God, his

owner and master, has ordained that he shall live under authority.

What fruit has radical democracy ever borne, except factious

oppression, anarchy, and the stern necessity for despotism?

It has been stated that each man's civil liberty, which, under a just

government, is the same with his natural liberty, consists in the

privilege of doing and having those things to which he is morally

entitled. It has been shown, that as different persons in the same

society differ widely in character, powers, and relations, their

specific natural rights differ also. But under all forms of

government, all still have some liberty. And under a perfectly

equitable form, the different classes of persons would properly have

different grades of liberty. So that, even in the relation of

involuntary servitude for life, if it be not abused, there is an

appropriate liberty. Such a servant has privilege to do those things

which he is morally entitled to do. If there are certain things which

he is restrained by authority from doing, which the superior grades

may do, these things are not rights to him. His inferior character,

ignorance, and moral irresponsibility, have extinguished his right to

do them. And this properly, because his privilege of doing them would

injure others and himself, and thus violate the law of equity. If his

slavery restrains him from doing more things than these, then the laws

do him injustice, and mar his rightful liberty.

This degree of domestic servitude supposes that the end of the

restraints it imposes is, to secure, on the whole, the best well-being

of both parties to the relation, servant as well as master. Here we

may notice a forensic trick practised by Dr. Wayland and the

abolitionists. It is that of giving to the proposition which they wish

to overthrow, such an exposition as makes it absurd in itself. Says

this professed moralist, in his chapter on slavery: "Domestic slavery

proceeds upon the principle that the master has a right to controul

the actions, physical and intellectual, of the slave, for his own,

that is, the master's individual benefit; and of course, that the

happiness of the master, when it comes in competition with the

happiness of the slave, extinguishes in the latter the right to pursue

it." If this were true, it would need no argument to show that slavery

is a natural injustice. But slavery proceeds on no such principles.

All men ought to know that our slave laws proved the contrary, in that

they protected the slave, in many particulars, against the master's

will, when it became unrighteous. All know that the publick sentiment

of our people proved the contrary; in that the vast majority laboured

and gave heartily for the welfare of their servants. And all men who

have informed themselves know, that the grand result stamps the

definition as a misrepresentation; in that domestic slavery here has

conferred on the unfortunate black race more true well-being than any

other form of society has ever given them. But it may be asked: Do not

many masters selfishly use their slaves according to that definition?

We reply: Do not many parents selfishly use their children according

to that definition, neglecting their culture and true well-being,

temporal and eternal, for the sake of gain? And is it not in the

"thrifty" North that most of these instances of greedy, grinding

parents are found? Yet who dreams of accusing the parental relation as

therefore unrighteous and mischievous? This selfish tyranny is not the

parental relation, but the abuse of it. So, every intelligent master

defends his slaveholding, because it was, in the main, as preferable

for the slave's interest as for his own.

§ 4. _Abolitionism is Jacobinism._

The promise was made above, to unmask some of the hideous affinities

of the anti-slavery theory. This is now easy. If men are by nature

sovereign and independent, and mechanically equal in rights, and if

allegiance is founded solely on expressed or implied consent, then not

only slavery, but every involuntary restraint imposed on a person or a

class not convicted of crime, and every difference of franchise among

the members of civil society, is a glaring wrong. Such are the

premises of abolition. Obviously, then, the only just or free

government is one where all franchises are absolutely equal to all

sexes and conditions, where every office is directly elective, and

where no magistrate has any power not expressly assented to by the

popular will. For if inequalities of franchise may be justified by

differences of character and condition, of course a still wider

difference of these might justify so wide an inequality of rights as

that between the master and servant. Your true abolitionist is then,

of course, a Red-Republican, a Jacobin. Is not this strikingly

illustrated by the fact, that the first wholesale abolition in the

World was that enacted for the French colonies by the frantic

democrats of the 'Reign of Terror?' And this hint may serve to explain

to the aristocracy of Great Britain the popularity of the authoress of

'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' and of her slanderous book, among the masses

there. It was not because Britain was so exempt from cases of social

hardship and oppression at home, that its people had all its virtuous

sympathies at leisure and unoccupied, to pour forth upon the

imaginary wrongs of Uncle Tom: but it was because the Jacobinism of

the abolitionist theory awakened an echo in the hearts of the lower

classes, still seething with the recent upheaval of 1848. The

community of agrarian sympathies made itself felt. The noble Lords and

Ladies, who patronized the authoress and her book, were industriously

fanning the very fires which are destined to consume their vested

privileges.

Again, it follows of course from the premises of abolitionism, that

hereditary monarchy, no matter how limited, is a standing injustice. A

hereditary branch of the legislature is, if possible, still worse. Any

such thing as a privileged class in the State is a fraud upon the

others; for "all men are equal." The limitation of the right of

suffrage, by property or sex, is a crime against human right; for the

non-voting classes are ruled without their own consent; but consent

is, according to them, the source of rightful authority. Thus are

condemned at once the three branches of the hoary and honoured British

constitution, kings, lords, and commons; under which men have enjoyed

regulated liberty longer, and to a greater degree, than under any

government on earth. And here it may be remarked that abolitionist

ideas, so current in Great Britain, should have been as alien to the

prevalent turns of thought of that people, as they certainly are to

their welfare and the genius of their institutions. That a fantastic

sciolist, intoxicated with vanity and dazzled by some glittering

sophisms, should be an abolitionist, is natural. But Englishmen have

ever been esteemed a solid and practical race. Their political

conclusions have usually been, to the credit of their good sense,

historical rather than theoretical. Their temper has been rather to

guard the franchises inherited from their fathers, and approved by the

national experience, than to gape after visionary and abstract rights

of man. But despite all this, Great Britain has also been leavened

with this fell spirit. Her political managers imagined that they found

in abolitionism the convenient 'apple of discord' to destroy the peace

of a great rival, and they therefore fostered it. To this great

injustice they have added the condemnation of the South unheard, upon

the testimony of our interested accusers. And the majority of

Englishmen, with a dogmatism as unjust as senseless, have refused to

permit either explanation or defence, proudly wrapped in impenetrable

prejudice, while an innocent and noble people were condemned and

overwhelmed by baseless obloquy. But it requires no spirit of prophecy

to see that Divine Providence is speedily preparing a retribution by

means of their own sin, which will be tremendous enough to satisfy the

resentment of any injured Southerner. Abolitionized America is

manifestly to be the Nemesis of Britain, through her Jacobin ideas, or

arms, or both. The principles of abolition are, as we have proved,

destructive of the foundations of the British constitution. Her own

statesmen have insanely taught them to her people. The masses do not,

indeed, reason very continuously or consistently; yet principles once

fixed in their minds always work themselves out, in time, to their

logical results. The so-called "Liberal Party" of Great Britain, which

draws its inspirations from the abolition democracy of America, is

unveiling itself more and more, as a party of true Jacobinism; and

other parties have now paltered and dallied so long, that it will

speedily show itself irresistible. And when the policy of England is

swayed by moneyless votes, instead of capital and land, the caution

and forbearance, bred by financial interests, which has thus far

scarcely kept the peace between her and the United States, will

speedily be changed. The two Jacobinisms, now so sweetly fraternizing

over the ruin of the South, will disclose their innate and uniform

aggressiveness, and will rush at each other's throats. This the

immemorial rivalries and opposition of dearest interests will insure.

Then will England feel, in the disintegration of her whole social

fabrick by radical American ideas, and the Yankee invasions of Canada

and Ireland, the folly of her own policy.

But other consequences follow from the abolitionist dogmas. "All

involuntary restraint is a sin against natural rights," therefore laws

which give to husbands more power over the persons and property of

wives than to wives over husbands, are iniquitous, and should be

abolished. The same decision must be made upon the exclusion of women,

whether married or single, from suffrage, office, and the full

franchises of men. There must be an end of the wife's obedience to her

husband. Is it said that these subordinations are consistent, because

women assent to them voluntarily, in consenting to become wives? This

plea is insufficient, because the female sex is impelled to marriage

by irresistible laws of their nature and condition. How tyrannous is

this legislation which shuts woman up to the alternative of foregoing

the satisfaction of the prime instincts of her existence; or else of

submitting to a code of natural injustice! As to the disabilities of

single women, this plea has no pretended application. Thus the

abolitionists will reason, yea, are reasoning. What was the strange

prediction of prophetic wisdom, a few years ago, is now already

familiar fact. Female suffrage is already introduced in one State, and

will doubtless prevail as widely as abolitionism. But when God's

ordinance of the family is thus uprooted, and all the appointed

influences of education thus inverted; when America has had a

generation of women who were _politicians_, instead of _mothers_, how

fundamental must be the destruction of society, and how distant and

difficult must be the remedy!

Once more: The same principles have consistently led some

abolitionists to assail the parental relation itself. For although

none can deny that, in helpless infancy, subjection should be the

correlative of protection and maintenance, when once the young citizen

has passed from the age of childhood, by what reason can the

abolitionist justify his compulsory government by the father? Are not

all men by nature equal?

It has been currently asserted that the premises of the abolitionists

were embraced in the Declaration of Independence; so that the United

States have been committed to them from the beginning. The words

usually referred to are the following: "That all men are created

equal: that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable

rights: that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of

happiness. That to secure these rights governments are instituted

among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the

governed," etc. If by these celebrated propositions it was meant that

there ever was, or could be, a government where all men enjoyed the

same measure of privilege, then it is false. If it was meant that

there ever was, or could be, a state of society in which all men could

indulge their volitions to the same extent, and that, in every case,

the full extent, it is false; for natural and unavoidable differences

of persons must ever prevent this. If it were meant that all men are

naturally equal, then it would be false; for men are born with

different bodily and mental powers, different moral qualities, and

different inheritances of rights. If it was meant that every person

enters life free from just controul, it is false; for we all begin our

existence rightfully subject, irrespective of our consent, to

authority in family and State. Neither God nor nature makes it

optional with us whether we will be subject to government. But if it

be meant that all men are created equal in this sense, that all are

children of a common heavenly Father, all common subjects of the law

of equity expressed in the "Golden Rule," each one as truly entitled

to possess the set of rights justly appropriate to him, (and by the

same reason,) as any other is entitled to his set of rights; this is

true, and a glorious truth. This is man's moral equality. It means

that, under God, the servant is as much entitled to the rights and

privileges of a justly-treated servant, as the master is to the rights

of a master; that the commoner is as much entitled to the just

privileges of a commoner, as a peer to those of a peer. It is the

truthful boast of Englishmen, that in their land every man is equal

before the law. What does this mean? Does it mean that Lord Derby has

no other franchises and privileges than the day-labourer? By no

means. But the privileges allotted to the day-labourer by the laws are

defended by the same institutions, and adjudicated by the same free

principles, and made legally as inviolable, as the very different and

larger privileges of Earl Derby. It is in this sense that a just and

liberal government holds all men by nature equal. And if, when the

Declaration of Independence says that the right of all men to their

liberty is "inalienable," the proper definition of civil liberty is

accepted, (that it only means privilege to do what each man, in his

peculiar circumstances, has a moral right to do,) this also is

universally true. But all this is perfectly consistent with

differences of social condition, and station, and privilege; where

characters and relations are different. As we have seen, the servant

for life, who as a slave receives "those things which are just and

equal," has his true liberty, though it is different from that of the

free citizen; and the servant can no more be justly stripped of this

his _modicum_ of liberty, than the master of his. Last, when it is

declared that "governments derive their just powers from the consent

of the governed," there is a sense in which it is true, and one in

which it is false. In one sense, they derive their just powers from

God, his law, and providence. In the other sense, that the people are

not for their rulers, but the rulers for their people, the selection

of particular forms of constitution and of the individuals to execute

the functions, belongs to the aggregate rectitude and intelligence of

the commonwealth, expressed in some way practically fair. But by "the

consent of the governed," our wise fathers never intended the consent

of each particular human being, competent and incompetent. They

intended the representative commonwealth as a body, the "_populus_,"

or aggregate corporation of that part of the human beings properly

wielding the franchises of full citizens. Their proposition is

general, and not particular. The men of 1776 were not vain

_Ideologues_; they were sagacious, practical Englishmen. Thus

understood, as every correct thinker does, they teach nothing against

difference of privilege among the subjects of government; and

consequently, nothing inconsistent with the servitude of those who are

found incapable of beneficially possessing a fuller liberty.

Now, the evidence that this only was their meaning is absolutely

complete. Had their proposition been that of the Jacobin abolitionist,

(that just claim on men's obedience to authority is founded on the

individual's consent,) they must have ordered every thing differently

from their actual legislation. They could not have countenanced

limited suffrage, of which nearly all of them were advocates. They

must have taught female suffrage, which the most democratic of them

would have pronounced madness. Not only did they retain the African

race in slavery, in the face of this declaration, but they refused to

adopt full democratic equality, in reconstructing their constitutions.

Were these men fools? Were they ignorant of the plain meaning of their

own propositions? Did they, like modern Radicals, disdain the plainest

obligations of consistency? Some attempt to evade their retention of

slavery, by saying that they did not defend its consistency, nor

contemplate it as a permanent relation; but the other facts are

unanswerable. It may be true that Jefferson, the draughtsman of the

Declaration, did heartily adopt his propositions in the sense of the

advocates of the social contract; for it is well known that he was

properly a Democrat, and not, like the other great Whigs of Virginia,

only a Republican; that he had drank deeply into the spirit of Locke's

political writings; and that he had already contracted a fondness for

the atheistical philosophy of the French political reformers. But who

can believe that George Mason, of Gunston, could fail to see the

glaring inconsistency between these propositions, taken in the

extravagant and radical sense now forced upon them by the

abolitionists, and the constitution which he gave to the State of

Virginia? According to that immortal instrument, our commonwealth was

as distinctly contrasted with a levelling democracy, as any monarchy

regulated by laws could possibly be. It was, indeed, a liberal,

aristocratic republic. None could vote save the owners of land in

fee-simple; and these were permitted to exercise their elective powers

directly, only in one sole instance, the election of the General

Assembly. This Assembly then exercised, without farther reference to

the freeholders, all the powers of the commonwealth. The Assembly

elected the Governor of the State. The Assembly appointed all judges

of law, and executive officers of State. The county courts, to whom

belonged the whole power of police, of local taxation, and of

administration of local justice in cases beneath the grade of a

felony, formed a proper aristocracy, serving for life, appointing

their own clerks and sheriffs, and filling vacancies in their own

numbers by a nomination to the Governor, which was always virtually

imperative. Such was the government which the statesmen of Virginia

deliberately adopted, after signing the Declaration of Independence;

than which none could have been devised by human wit, so well adapted

to the character and wants of their people, and under which they

exhibited the highest political stability and purity which our

commonwealth has ever known. Any one who knows the British

Constitution will see at a glance, that our Virginian frame of

government was not the work of men led by the Utopian dream of

"liberty, fraternity, and equality," but of practical statesmen,

establishing for their posterity the historical rights of British

freemen.

But were the language of the Declaration of Independence as decisive

as anti-slavery men suppose, it would concern us exceedingly little.

We regard it as no political revelation. When we formed a part of the

United States, it was no article of our constitution; and still less

are we responsible for it now. If it should be even convicted of

embodying some error, this would be neither very surprising, nor very

disgraceful to its authors. For what more probable than that men

inflamed by the spirit of resistance to tyranny, and surrounded by the

excitements of a revolution, in the indiscreet effort to propound a

set of abstract generalities as the basis of their action, should mix

the plausible errors of the advocates of freedom with the precious

truth?

§ 5. _Labour of another may be Property._

By confounding the master's right to the slave's labour with a

pretended property in his conscience, soul, and whole personality,

abolitionists have attempted to represent "property in man" as a

self-evident wrong. But we shall show that, in the only sense in which

we hold it, property in man is recognized by the laws of every

commonwealth. The father has property in his child, the master in his

apprentice, the husband in his wife, the wife in her husband, and the

employer in his hireling. In every one of these cases, this property

is recoverable by suits at law, and admits of being transmuted for

money, just as any other possession. When the husband is killed by the

culpable negligence of a railroad company which had engaged to

transport him for hire, the wife sues and recovers money damages. When

the daughter is seduced from her father's house, he may sue for

compensation, and the court will assess the value of her remaining

services until her majority, at such a sum as they judge proper. How

is this to be explained, save by regarding the wife as having lawful

property in the industry of her husband, and the father as having

property in the labour of his daughter? The labour of a minor son is

often sold by the father, and thus becomes the property of the

purchaser. It is of no avail to say that this labour is voluntary, and

that the property originates in the virtual compact between the

parties; for this is not true of the parental relation. Still another

striking instance of lawful property in the involuntary labour of a

fellow-man, appears in the apprenticeship of the children of paupers.

Pauperism is not a crime; yet these children are, with undisputed

moral propriety, indentured to householders, during their minority;

and the labour thus conveyed is hired, sold, bequeathed, just as any

other property. Dr. Wayland argues that there cannot be ownership in

man, because ownership as he defines it, consists in our "_right to

use the property as we please!_" This definition was made to suit

abolitionism, and is not the truth. May we, because we have property

in our horses, use them living as we would our logs of wood, for fuel?

The ethics of common sense, as that of all true science, (what Dr. W.

should have known, if he had been fit to do what he assumed, teach

science,) define ownership to be _a right to use our property

according to its nature_. Thus defined, property in man presents no

solecism whatever, inconsistent with righteousness.

§ 6. _The Slave Received due Wages._

But it is charged that the injustice of our system is apparent in

this, that it takes the slave's labour without compensation. It is

simply untrue. Southern slaves received, on the average, better and

more certain compensation than any labouring people of their capacity

in the world. It came to them in the form of that maintenance, which

the master was bound by the laws,[91] as well as his own interests, to

bestow upon them. During childhood, they were reared at his expense;

in sickness they received maintenance, nursing, and the same medical

advice which he provided for his own children; all at his expense.

When they married and had children, (which all did, single-blessedness

was unknown among them,) their families were provided for by the

masters without one additional toil or anxiety on their part. When

they died, their orphans had, in the master's estate, an unfailing

provision against destitution; and if old age overtook them, they

received, without labour, the same supplies and comforts which were

allotted to them in their prime. How many of the sons of toil in

nominally free countries would seize with rapture the offer of such

wages for their labour, if the name of slavery were detached from

them? To be able to secure, by the moderate labours of their active

years, a certain and liberal provision for their daily wants, for

their families, however large, and for sickness and old age, would be

a contract so advantageous, in comparison with the hardships and

uncertainties of the peasant's usual life, that few thoughtful persons

of that class would hesitate, from love of novelty or dim hope of a

more lucky career, to embrace it. But this is just what our laws and

customs gave to our slaves, as wages of their easy labour.

[Footnote 91: See Code of Va., 1849, Chap. 10 § 6.]

But the anti-slavery man objects, that the adjustment of this

compensation is made at the will of the master alone, while the slave

has no power to influence it. This is precisely the same objection, in

effect, with the one that the labour is involuntary. We have already

shown that this circumstance alone does not make the claim on the

labour unjust. And if the system makes for the slave, on the average,

a better bargain than he could make for himself, where is his

hardship? Is he injured by being restrained of the liberty of injuring

himself? Surely, the fairness of any system should be judged by the

fairness of its average results. If some masters withhold a part of

the due wages, by failing to "render to their servants that which is

just and equal," this is their individual fault, not that of the

system. St. Paul, in the passage quoted, manifestly thought that we

might hold the involuntary labour of our slaves, and yet be no

robbers.

But our enemies return to the charge, urging that we robbed our

slaves, because we engrossed to ourselves the lion's share of the

bondsman's labour. The master and his family, say they, who did no

work, rolled in luxury, while the poor slaves, who did all, got only

such a pittance as was needed to preserve their capacity for toil.

This is false in every part. Masters and their families were not

idlers. Their life was not relatively luxurious. The slave's share was

not a pittance, but much more like the lion's share. But, they

exclaim: "Let the masters stand aside and allow the slaves to enjoy

the whole fruits of the estates they cultivate: then only will the

former cease to be robbers." This astonishing folly is exposed by

simply asking, whether capital and superintending skill are not

entitled to wages, as well as labour? The crops of the Southern

plantation were the joint fruit of the master's capital, the master's

labour and skill of oversight, and the slaves' labour. If capital be

denied all remuneration, the wheels of productive industry would stop

everywhere, to the especial ruin of the labouring classes. Does the

anti-slavery manufacturer of Lowell or Manchester think it fair, after

investing his thousands in fixtures and material, and bestowing his

anxious superintendence, that his operatives should claim the whole

profits of the factory, leaving him not a penny, because, forsooth, he

never spun or wove a thread? Away with the nonsense! Southern slaves

enjoyed a larger share of the proceeds of conjoined capital,

superintending skill, and labour, than any operatives in the world.

This is not only allowed, but virtually asserted, by anti-slavery men,

when they reason that slavery is an economical evil, because the

maintenance of slaves is more costly, in proportion to the value of

their labour, than that of free labourers. Thus, in one place, they

object that slaves receive too much compensation, and in another, that

they receive too little. Nor is it true that Southern masters usually

make no contribution of labour to the products of their farms. There

is nowhere a population of equal wealth, more industrious than

slaveholders. The master usually contributes far more to the common

production than the strongest labourer on his estate; and the mistress

more than the most industrious female servant, partly in the labours

of superintendence, but also in actual toil.

§ 7. _Effects of Slavery on Moral Character._

It is argued by abolitionists, that slavery regularly exerts many

influences tending to degrade the moral character of both masters and

servants. Their charge cannot be better stated than in the Words of

Dr. Wayland. ["Moral Science," Personal Liberty, Ch. I., § 2.]

"Its effects must be disastrous upon the morals of both parties. By

presenting objects on whom passion may be satiated without resistance,

and without redress, it tends to cultivate in the master, pride,

anger, cruelty, selfishness, and licentiousness. By accustoming the

slave to subject his moral principles to the will of another, it

tends to abolish in him all moral distinctions, and thus fosters in

him, lying, deceit, hypocrisy, dishonesty, and a willingness to yield

himself up to minister to the appetites of his master. That in all

slaveholding countries there are exceptions to this remark, and that

there are principles in human nature which, in many cases, limit the

effect of these tendencies, may be gladly admitted. Yet that such is

the tendency of slavery as slavery, we think no reflecting person can

for a moment hesitate to allow."

This is a flattering picture of us, truly! By good fortune, it is

drawn by one who knows nothing of us. Just such are the current

representations which Yankees have made of Southern morals, down to

the notable instance of Senator Sumner's speech on the "Barbarism of

Slavery." The question whether the system of slave labour deteriorates

the morals of master and servant, as compared with that of free

labour, may be treated as one of deduction and reasoning, or one of

fact. The latter is the more trustworthy way to decide it. Dr. Wayland

undertakes to settle it solely by the former. And it is manifest to

the first glance, that his whole reasoning begs the question. If the

very relation is wicked, if every act of authority on the master's

part is a wrong, and of submission on the servant's part is a

surrender of his right, then the reasoning is plausible. But let us

suppose, for argument's sake, (what may be true, as it is the very

point undecided,) that the relation may be right, the authority

exercised lawful, and the things our servants are usually enjoined to

do, innocent acts. Then, the fact that there is authority on one side

and obedience on the other, cannot tend, of itself, to degrade ruler

and ruled: for if this were so, the parental relation itself (ordained

by God as His school of morals for young human beings) would be a

school of vice. But the argument is a sophism, in a yet more audacious

and insulting sense. Its author argues the degradation of the slave,

chiefly because his wicked master compels him by fear to do so many

wicked things. But suppose the master to be a gentleman, and not a

brute, so that the things he customarily compels the slave to do, are

right things; where, then, is the argument? Which of the two

characters masters usually bear, is the question to be solved at the

conclusion of the reasoning, and, yet more, to be decided by the surer

testimony of fact. But Dr. Wayland chooses to begin by presuming, _à

priori_, that masters are generally rascals.

Wisdom would infer, on the contrary, that the habitual exercise of

authority, approved as righteous by the ruler's conscience, tends to

elevate his character. He who would govern others must first govern

himself. Hence, we should expect to find him who is compelled to

exercise a hereditary and rightful authority, a man more

self-governed, thoughtful, considerate, firm, and dignified, than

other men. The habit of providing constantly for a number of persons,

whom he is impelled by the strongest self-interest to care for

efficiently, should render a man considerate of others, and

benevolent. Experience will soon teach the head of such an estate,

that his relation with his dependents must be any thing else than a

carnival of self-indulgence, violence, and tyranny; for such a life

will speedily leave him no servants to abuse. On the contrary, the

very necessities of his position compel him to be, to a certain

extent, provident, methodical, and equitable. Without these virtues,

his estate slips rapidly away. And who, that knows human nature, can

fail to see the powerful effects of the institution in developing, in

the ruling caste, a higher sentiment of personal honour, chivalry, and

love of liberty? This was asserted of the slaveholders of Virginia and

the Carolinas by the sagacious Burke. It is very true, that if every

man in the country were under the vital influence of Christian

sanctification, he would not need these more human influences to

elevate his character. But the wise statesman takes men as they are,

not as they should be. Until the _millennium_, the elevating

influences of social position will continue to be of great practical

value. Yankeedom, at least, continues thus far to exhibit a great want

of them.

But now, in considering the actual influences of slavery on the morals

of the Africans, let the reader remember what they actually were

before they were placed under this tutelage. He may be sure they were

not what abolitionism loves to picture them, a sort of Ebony

Arcadians, full of simple, pastoral purity, and of what infidels

vainly prate as the dignity of native virtue. It is not slavery which

has degraded them from that imaginary elevation. On the contrary, they

were what God's word declares human depravity to be under the

degrading effects of paganism. Let the reader see the actual and true

picture, in the first chapter of Romans, and in authentic descriptions

of the negro in his own jungles, such as the invaluable work of Dr.

John Leighton Wilson, on the tribes of the Guinea coast. And here,

moreover, he will find proof, that the type of savage life brought to

America originally by the slave trade, was far below that witnessed in

Africa among the more noticeable tribes; because the great bulk of the

slaves were either the Pariahs of that barbarous society, or the

kidnapped members of the feeble fragments of bush tribes, who had

nearly perished before the comparative civilization of the Mandingoes

and Greboes, living but one remove above the apes around them. Now

cannot common sense see the moral advantage to such a people, of

subjection to the will of a race elevated above them, in morals and

intelligence, to an almost measureless degree? Is it no moral

advantage to be compelled to wear decent clothing, and to observe at

least the outward proprieties which should obtain between the sexes?

None to be taught industry, in place of pagan laziness; and methodical

habits, in place of childish waste and unthrift? The destructive

effects of the savage's common vices, lying, theft, drunkenness,

laziness, waste, upon business and pecuniary interests, will of course

prompt masters to repress those vices, if no higher motive does. Is

this no gain for the poor pagan? Especially does the matter of

drunkenness illustrate, in a splendid manner, the benign effects of

our system on African character and happiness. Place any savage race

beside a civilized and commercial people, and leave them free; and the

speedy result is, that the "fire-water" consumes and depopulates them.

Witness the North American Indians. But here was just such a race, in

the midst of the temptation and opportunity, and yet preserved from

all appreciable evil from this source, and advancing in physical

comfort, manners, and numbers, more rapidly than any white race in

Christendom. While numbers of Africans exhibited just that weakness

for ardent spirits, which is to be expected in people lately

barbarians, yet so wholesome were the restraints of that regular and

constant occupation enforced upon them, it was the rarest thing in the

world that a farm-servant filled a drunkard's grave among us. But now

the flood-gates are opened. Was not Dr. Wayland a temperance man?

Southern slavery was the most efficient temperance society in the

world.

Once more, was it nothing, that this race, morally inferior, should be

brought into close relations to a nobler race, so that the propensity

to imitation should be stimulated by constant and intimate

observation, by domestic affection, by the powerful sentiment of

allegiance and dependence? And above all, was it nothing that they

should be brought, by the relation of servitude, under the consciences

and Christian zeal of a Christian people, in circumstances which most

powerfully enlisted their sense of responsibility, and gave free scope

to their labour of love? Let the blessed results answer, of a nation

of four millions lifted, in four generations, out of idolatrous

debasement, "sitting clothed, and in their right mind;" of more than

half a million adult communicants in Christian churches! And all this

glorious work has been done exclusively by Southern masters; for never

did foreign or Yankee abolitionist find leisure from the more

congenial work of slandering the white, to teach or bless the black

man in any practical way. This much-abused system has thus

accomplished for the Africans, amidst universal opposition and

obloquy, more than all the rest of the Christian world together has

accomplished for the rest of the heathen.

It is the delight of abolitionists to impute to slavery a result

peculiarly corrupting as to sins of unchastity. Witness the

repetitions charges by Dr. Wayland, of these sins, as contaminating

both masters and slaves, in consequence of slavery. The evidence of

facts has been already given as to the comparative justice of this

charge. But reason itself would suggest to the least reflection, that

Southern households are not the only ones where young men and female

domestics are thrown together, amidst all the temptations and

opportunities of privacy and domestic intimacy; that the power of

corporal punishment, unlawful here for this end, is not the only power

which a superior may apply to an inferior to overcome her chastity,

nor the most effective. But, on the other hand, reason would suggest

that the employment of free persons of the same colour and race would

greatly enhance the force of those temptations; while among us, the

differences of colour, race, and personal attractions, would greatly

diminish them; while the very sentiment of superior caste would render

the intercourse more repulsive and unnatural.

The testimony of facts, however, is the conclusive evidence on the

question, whether our system is relatively more corrupting than that

of free labour. In this department of the discussion, Providence has

given us a refutation against the Yankees so terribly biting, as fully

to satisfy any indignation which their arrogant railings may have

excited in our bosoms. We were placed together at the beginning of

our national existence, under the same Federal government, and under

similar religious and State institutions. Our union presented a common

field for constant meeting and comparison. And what were the results

disclosed? It has been shown that while the South, as a great section

of the Union, never, in one single instance, made any general or

united movement to pervert Federal laws and powers for unfair local

purposes; while the South ever manifested a chivalrous patriotism

against any assaults upon the common rights; the North has never

failed, from the first year of the government, to use it as a machine

for legislative extortion and local advantage; and the North has

usually played the traitor to the common cause when assailed from

without, even when, as in the second war with England, the interests

assailed by the foreign enemy, and generously defended by the South,

were more peculiarly her own. It has appeared that when at last

legislative peculation grew so foul that the publick demanded inquiry,

every member of the Congress convicted of that disgraceful iniquity,

was from the North, and not one from the South. If we pass to personal

comparisons, the publick men of the South have shown themselves, on

the federal _arena_, superior, in general, in the talent of command,

in personal honour, in dignity, in the amenities of life, in

forbearance and self-controul; while that very petulance, wilfulness,

and love of arbitrary power, which, abolition philosophers infer, must

be the peculiar fruits of slaveholding, were exhibited in marked

contrast, by the few Northern Presidents who had the fortune to reach

that high position. Compare, for instance, the benign Washington, a

great slaveholder, with that petty tyrant, the elder Adams; or

Jefferson, Madison and Monroe with his son, (worthy son of such a

sire,) John Quincy Adams; or Jefferson Davis with Abraham Lincoln; or

our Lee, Johnstons, Jackson and Beauregard, with a McNeill and a

Butler! So well proved are the superior courtesy, liberality, and

humanity of the Southern gentleman, that the very porters on the

wharves, and waiters in the hotels, of Northern cities, recognize them

by these traits. It has been the fashion of a certain type of

poltroons among the Yankees, who wish to indulge the anger and

malignity of the bully, along with the safety and impunity of the

Quaker, to represent the resort of Southerners to the code of honour,

as a peculiar proof of their uncivilized condition. They exclaim

triumphantly that we fight duels, while Yankees do not. Now the code

of honour is certainly irrational, unchristian, and wicked. But there

is another thing that is greatly more wicked; and this is the

disposition to inflict upon a fellow-man the injuries and insults

which that code proposes to prevent; and then cloak one's self under

the cowardly pretence of a conscience which forbids to fight. The

duellist sins by anger and revenge: these sneaking hypocrites sin by

anger and revenge, and cowardice and lying, at once. The truly good

man is forbidden by his conscience from seeking retaliation; but the

same conscience equally forbids him to inflict on others the injuries

which provoke retaliation. The man who wilfully injures his fellow,

has therefore no right to plead conscience, for refusing satisfaction.

It is not conscience, but cowardice. While, then, we mourn the crimes

of violent retaliation which sometimes occur at the South, the

citizens of the North have occasion for a deeper blush, at the crimes

of malignant slander and vituperation which their people are

accustomed to launch at us from the vile hiding-place of their

hypocritical puritanism.

It will be seen by every one, that the females of the ruling class

must be very intimately concerned in the duties of the relation of

master and servant. It is properly termed _domestic_ slavery; and

woman's functions are wholly domestic. If then, slavery is morally

corrupting, Southern ladies should show the sad result very plainly.

But what says fact? Its testimony is one which fills the heart of

every Southern man with grateful pride; that the Southern lady is

proverbially eminent for all that adorns female character, for grace,

for purity and refinement, for benevolence, for generous charity, for

dignified kindness and forbearance to inferiours, for chivalrous moral

courage, and for devout piety.

We might safely submit the comparative soundness of Southern society

to this test: that it has never generated any of those loathsome

_isms_, which Northern soil breeds, as rankly as the slime of Egypt

its spawn of frogs. While the North has her Mormons, her various sects

of Communists, her Free Lovers, her Spiritualists, and a multitude of

corrupt visionaries whose names and crimes are not even known among

us, our soil has never proved congenial to the birth or introduction

of a single one of these inventions.

But the crowning refutation of this slander against Southern morals,

is presented by the great war lately concluded--a refutation whose

glory repays us for long years of reproach. Dispassionate spectators

abroad have passed their verdict of disgust upon the combination of

feebleness in the field, boasting and falsehood at home, venality and

peculation towards their own treasury and the property of private

citizens, with ruthless violation of all the laws of humanity.

Dispassionate spectators! No; there were none such: but from ignorant

and prejudiced minds stuffed with misconceptions by our interested

assailants, the splendid disclosure of civic and military genius,

bravery, fortitude under incredible hardships, magnanimity under

unspeakable provocations, and dignity under defeat, which appeared at

the South, drew a general acclaim of admiration from the whole

civilized world. This war, among its many evils, has done us this

good, that it has settled for this century the charge of the

"barbarism of Southern slavery."

But it may not be amiss to reveal those vices which are peculiarly

opposed to the Yankees' own boasts, as the inhabitants of "the land of

steady habits." Our soldiers who have been prisoners of war among

them, all report that their camps were _Pandemoniums_, for their

resounding blasphemies and profanities. Nothing was more common than

the capture from them of prisoners of war, too drunk to walk steadily.

The mass of the letters found upon their slain, and about their

captured camps, disclosed a shocking prevalence of prurient and

licentious thought, both in their armies and at home. And our

unfortunate servants seduced away by their armies, usually found, to

their bitter cost, that lust for the African women was a far more

prevalent motive, than their pretended humanity, for their liberating

zeal. Such was the monstrous abuse to which these poor creatures were

subjected, that decent slave fathers often hid their daughters in the

woods, from their pretended liberators, as from beasts of prey.

We freely avow that the line of argument which occupies this section

is not to our taste; nor, as was intimated in the introduction, do we

regard it as the safest means of ascertaining the moral influences of

the two systems. But it has not been by our choice that it has been

introduced. The slanders of our accusers have thrust it upon us. We

now gladly dismiss it with this general concluding remark; that the

comparative general virtue of Southern masters, and the purity of

Southern Christianity, are a strong evidence that we were not living

in a criminal relation, as to the African race. For sins are always

gregarious. One sin, permanently established in the heart and life,

always introduces its foul kindred. Sin is contagious. An unsound spot

in the character ultimately taints the whole. The misguided gentleman

who first yields to the passion of gaming, solely for its amusement

and excitement, cannot continue a habitual gamester and a gentleman.

The ingenuous youth who harbours the habit of intoxication, in due

time ceases to be even ingenuous. These unhallowed passions, once

established, introduce fraud, selfishness, meanness, falsehood. So, we

argue, if slaveholding were a sin, its practice would surely tell upon

the honour and integrity of those who continue in it. But Southern

character exhibits no such general effect.

§ 8. _Slavery and the African Slave Trade._