Do you say the slave is _sold and bought?_ So is the wife the world over.
Everywhere, always, and now as the general fact, however done away or
modified by Christianity. The savage buys her. The barbarian buys her. The
Turk buys her. The Jew buys her. The Christian buys her,--Greek, Armenian,
Nestorian, Roman Catholic, Protestant. The Portuguese, the Spaniard, the
Italian, the German, the Russian, the Frenchman, the Englishman, the New
England man, the New Yorker,--especially the upper ten,--_buy the
wife_--in many, very many cases. She is seldom bought in the South, and
never among the slaves themselves; for they always marry for love.
(Continued laughter.) Sir, I say the wife is bought in the highest
circles, too often, as really as the slave is bought. Oh, she is not sold
and purchased in the public market. But come, sir, with me, and let us
take the privilege of spirits out of the body to glide into that gilded
saloon, or into that richly comfortable family room, of cabinets, and
pictures, and statuary: see the parties, there, to sell and buy that human
body and soul, and make her a chattel! See how they sit, and bend towards
each other, in earnest colloquy, on sofa of rosewood and satin,--_Turkey_
carpet (how befitting!) under feet, sunlight over head, softened through
stained windows: or it is night, and the gas is turned nearly off, and the
burners gleam like stars through the shadow from which the whisper is
heard, in which that old ugly brute, with gray goatee--how fragrant!--bids
one, two, five, ten hundred thousand dollars, and _she_ is knocked off to
him,--that beautiful young girl asleep up there, amid flowers, and
innocent that she is sold and bought. Sir, that young girl would as soon
permit a baboon to embrace her, as that old, ignorant, gross, disgusting
wretch to approach her. Ah, has she not been sold and bought for money?
But--But what? But, you say, she freely, and without parental authority,
accepted him. Then she sold herself for money, and was guilty of _that_
which is nothing better than legal prostitution. I know what I say; you
know what I say. Up there in the gallery you know: you nod to one another.
Ah! you know the parties. Yes, you say: All true, true, true. (Laughter.)
Now, Mr. Moderator, I will clinch all I have said by nails sure, and
fastened from the word of God.
There is King James's English Bible, with its magnificent dedication. I
bring the English acknowledged translation. And just one word more to
push gently aside--for I am a kind man to those poor, deluded anti-slavery
people--their last argument. It is _that_ this English Bible, in those
parts which treat of slavery, don't give the ideas which are found in the
original Hebrew and Greek. Alas for the common people!--alas for this good
old translation! Are its days numbered? No, sir; no, sir. The Unitarian,
the Universalist, the Arminian, the Baptist, when pressed by this
translation, have tried to find shelter for their false isms by making or
asking for a new rendering. And now the anti-slavery men are driving hard
at the same thing. (Laughter.) Sir, shall we permit our people everywhere
to have their confidence in this noble translation undermined and
destroyed by the isms and whims of every or any man in our pulpits? I
affirm, whatever be our perfect liberty of examination into God's meaning
in all the light of the original languages, that there is a respect due to
this received version, and that great caution should be used, lest we
teach the people to doubt its true rendering from the original word of
God. I protest, sir, against having a Doctor-of-Divinity _priest_, Hebrew
or Greek, to tell the people what God has spoken on the subject of
slavery or any other subject. (Laughter.) I would as soon have a Latin
priest,--I would as soon have Archbishop Hughes,--I would as soon go to
Rome as to Jerusalem or Athens,--I would as soon have the Pope at once in
his fallible infallibility,--as ten or twenty, little or big, anti-slavery
Doctor-of-Divinity priests, each claiming to give his infallible
rendering, however differing from his peer. (Laughter.) I never yet
produced this Bible, in its plain unanswerable authority, for the relation
of master and slave, but the anti-slavery man ran away into the fog of
_his_ Hebrew or Greek, (laughter,) or he jabbered the nonsense that God
permitted the _sin_ of slaveholding among the Jews, but that he don't do
it now! Sir, God sanctioned slavery then, and sanctions it now. He made it
right, they know, then and now. Having thus taken the last puff of wind
out of the sails of the anti-slavery phantom ship, turn to the
twenty-first chapter of Exodus, vs. 2-5. God, in these verses, gave the
Israelites his command how they should buy and hold the Hebrew
servant,--how, under certain conditions, he went free,--how, under other
circumstances, he might be held to service forever, with his wife and her
children. There it is. Don't run into the Hebrew. (Laughter.)
But what have we here?--vs. 7-11:--"And if a man sell his daughter to be a
maid-servant, she shall not go out as the men-servants do. If she please
not her master, who hath betrothed her to himself, then shall he let her
be redeemed: to sell her unto a strange nation he shall have no power,
seeing he hath dealt deceitfully with her. And if he hath betrothed her
unto his son, he shall deal with her after the manner of daughters. If he
take him another wife, her food, her raiment, and her duty of marriage
shall he not diminish. And if he do not these three unto her, then shall
she go out free without money." Now, sir, the wit of man can't dodge that
passage, unless he runs away into the Hebrew. (Great laughter.) For what
does God say? Why, this:--that an Israelite might sell his own daughter,
not only into servitude, but into polygamy,--that the buyer might, if he
pleased, give her to his son for a wife, or take her to himself. If he
took her to himself, and she did not please him, he should not sell her
unto a strange nation, but should allow her to be redeemed by her family.
But, if he took him another wife before he allowed the first one to be
redeemed, he should continue to give the first one _food_, her _raiment_,
and her _duty of marriage_; that is to say, _her right to his bed_. If he
did not do _these three things_, she should go out free; _i.e._ cease to
be his slave, without his receiving any money for her. There, sir, God
sanctioned the Israelite father in selling his daughter, and the Israelite
man to buy her, into slavery and into polygamy. And it was then right,
because God made it right. In verses 20 and 21, you have these
words:--"And if a man smite his servant or his maid with a rod, and he die
under his hand, he shall be surely punished; notwithstanding, if he
continue a day or two, he shall not be punished: for he is his money."
What does this passage mean? Surely this:--if the master gave his slave a
hasty blow with a rod, and he died under his hand, he should be punished.
But, if the slave lived a day or two, it would so extenuate the act of the
master he should not be punished, inasmuch as he would be in that case
sufficiently punished in losing his money in his slave. Now, sir, I affirm
that God was more lenient to the degraded Hebrew master than Southern laws
are to the higher Southern master in like cases. But there you have what
was the divine will. Find fault with God, ye anti-slavery men, if you
dare. In Leviticus, xxv. 44-46, "Both thy bondmen and thy bondmaids, which
thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them
shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids. Moreover, of the children of the
strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their
families that are with you, which they beget in your land: and they shall
be your possession. And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your
children after you, to inherit them for a possession; they shall be your
bondmen forever."
Sir, I do not see how God could tell us more plainly that he did command
his people to buy slaves from the heathen round about them, and from the
stranger, and of their families sojourning among them. The passage has no
other meaning. Did God merely permit sin?--did he merely tolerate a
dreadful evil? God does not say so anywhere. He gives his people law to
buy and hold slaves of the heathen forever, on certain conditions, and to
buy and hold Hebrew slaves in variously-modified particulars. Well, how
did the heathen, then, get slaves to sell? Did they capture them in
war?--did they sell their own children? Wherever they got them, they sold
them; and God's law gave his people the right to buy them.
God in the New Testament made no law prohibiting the relation of master
and slave. But he made law regulating the relation under Greek and Roman
slavery, which was the most oppressive in the world.
God saw that these regulations would ultimately remove the evils in the
Greek and Roman systems, and do it away entirely from the fitness of
things, as there existing; for Greek and Roman slaves, for the most part,
were the equals in all respects of their masters. Æsop was a slave;
Terence was a slave. The precepts in Colossians iv. 18, 23, 1 Tim. vi.
1-6, and other places, show, unanswerably, that God as really sanctioned
the relation of master and slave as those of husband and wife, and parent
and child; and that all the obligations of the moral law, and Christ's law
of love, might and must be as truly fulfilled in the one relation as in
the other. The fact that he has made the one set of relations permanent,
and the other more or less dependent on conditions of mankind, or to pass
away in the advancement of human progress, does not touch the question. He
sanctioned it under the Old Testament and the New, and ordains it now
while he sees it best to continue it, and he now, as heretofore, proclaims
the duty of the master and the slave. Dr. Parker's admirable explanation
of Colossians, and other New Testament passages, saves me the necessity of
saying any thing more on the Scripture argument.
One word on the Detroit resolutions, and I conclude. Those resolutions of
the Assembly of 1850 decide that slavery is sin, unless the master holds
his slave as a guardian, or under the claims of humanity.
Mr. Moderator, I think we had on this floor, yesterday, proof conclusive
that those resolutions mean any thing or nothing; that they are a fine
specimen of Northern skill in platform-making; that it put in a plank
here, to please this man,--a plank there, to please that man,--a plank for
the North, a broad board for the South. It is Jackson's judicious tariff.
It is a gum-elastic conscience, stretched now to a charity covering all
the multitude of our Southern sins, contracted now, giving us hardly a
fig-leaf of righteousness. It is a bowl of punch,--
A little sugar to make it sweet,
A little lemon to make it sour,
A little water to make it weak,
A little brandy to give it power. (Laughter.)
As a Northern argument against us, it is a mass of lead so heavy that it
weighed down even the strong shoulders of Judge Jessup. For, sir, when he
closed his speech, I asked him a single question I had made ready for him.
It was this:--"Do you allow that Mr. Aiken, of South Carolina, may, under
the claims of humanity, hold three thousand slaves, or must he emancipate
them?" The Judge staggered, and stammered, and said, "No man could rightly
hold so many." I then asked, "How many may he hold, in humanity?" The
Judge saw his fatal dilemma. He recovered himself handsomely, and fairly
said, "Mr. Aiken might hold three thousand slaves, in harmony with the
Detroit action." I replied, "Then, sir, you have surrendered the whole
question of Southern slavery." And, sir, the Judge looked as if he felt he
had surrendered it. And every man in this house, capable of understanding
the force of that question, felt it had shivered the whole anti-slavery
argument, on those resolutions, to atoms. Why, sir, if a man can hold
three slaves, with a right heart and the approbation of God, he may hold
thirty, three hundred, three thousand, or thirty thousand. It is a mere
question of heart, and capacity to govern. The Emperor of Russia holds
sixty millions of slaves: and is there a man in this house so much of a
fool as to say that God regards the Emperor of Russia a sinner because he
is the master of sixty millions of slaves? Sir, that Emperor has certainly
a high and awful responsibility upon him. But, if he is good as he is
great, he is a god of benevolence on earth. And so is every Southern
master. His obligation is high, and great, and glorious. It is the same
obligation, in kind, he is under to his wife and children, and in some
respects immensely higher, by reason of the number and the tremendous
interests involved for time and eternity in connection with this great
country, Africa, and the world. Yes, sir, _I know_, whether Southern
masters fully know it or not, that _they hold from God_, individually and
collectively, _the highest and the noblest responsibility ever given by
Him to individual private men on all the face of the earth._ For God has
intrusted to them to train millions of the most degraded in form and
intellect, but, at the same time, the most gentle, the most amiable, the
most affectionate, the most imitative, the most susceptible of social and
religious love, of all the races of mankind,--to train them, and to give
them civilization, and the light and the life of the gospel of Jesus
Christ. And I thank God he has given this great work to that type of the
noble family of Japheth best qualified to do it,--to the Cavalier
stock,--the gentleman and the lady of England and France, born to command,
and softened and refined under our Southern sky. May they know and feel
and fulfil their destiny! Oh, may they "know that they also have a Master
in heaven."
Letter from Dr. Ross.
I need only say, in reference to this letter, that my friends
having questioned my position as to the good of the agitation, I
wrote the following letter to vindicate that point, as given, in
the New York speech:--
HUNTSVILLE, ALA., July 14, 1856.
_Brother Blackburn_:--I affirmed, in my New York speech, that the Slavery
agitation has done, and will accomplish, good.
Your very kind and courteous disagreement on that point I will make the
occasion to say something more thereon, without wishing you, my dear
friend, to regard what I write as inviting any discussion.
I said _that_ agitation has brought out, and would reveal still more
fully, the Bible, in its relation to slavery and liberty,--also the
infidelity which long has been, and is now, leavening with death the whole
Northern mind. And that it would result in the triumph of the _true_
Southern interpretation of the Bible; to the honor of God, and to the
good of the master, the slave, the stability of the Union, and be a
blessing to the world. To accomplish this, the sin _per se_ doctrine will
be utterly demolished. That doctrine is the difficulty in every _Northern
mind,_ (where there is any difficulty about slavery,) whether they confess
it or not. Yes, the difficulty with every Northern man is, that _the
relation of_ master and slave is felt _to be_ sin. I know that to be the
fact. I have talked with all grades of Northern men, and come in contact
with all varieties of Northern mind on this subject. And I know that the
man who says and tries to believe, and does, partially in sober judgment,
believe, that slavery is not sin, yet, _in his feelings, in his educated
prejudices_, he feels that slavery is sin.
Yes, _that_ is the difficulty, and _that_ is the whole of the difficulty,
_between the North and the South_, so far as the question is one of the
Bible and morals. Now, I again say, that that _sin per se_ doctrine will,
in this agitation, be utterly demolished. And when that is done,--when the
North will know and feel fully, perfectly, that the relation of master and
slave is not sin, but sanctioned of God,--then, and not till then, the
North and South can and will, without anger, consider the following
questions:--Whether slavery, as it exists in the United States, all
things considered, be or be not a great good, and the greatest good for a
time, notwithstanding its admitted evils? Again, whether these evils can
or cannot be modified and removed? Lastly, whether slavery itself can or
cannot pass away from this land and the world? Now, sir, the moment the
sin question is settled, then all is peace. For these other questions
belong entirely to another category of morals. They belong entirely to the
category of _what is_ wise _to realize_ good. This agitation will bring
this great result. And therefore I affirm the agitation to be good.
There is another fact also, the result, in great measure, of this
agitation, which in my view proves it to have been and to be of great
good. I mean the astonishing rise and present stability of the slave-power
of the United States. This fact, when examined, is undeniable. And it is
equally undeniable that it has been caused, in great part, by the slavery
question in all its bearings. It is a wonderful development made by God.
And I must believe he intends thereby either to destroy or bless this
great Union. But, as I believe he intends to bless, therefore I am
fortified in affirming the good there has been and is in this agitation.
Let me bring out to view this astonishing fact.
1. Twenty-five years ago, and previously, the whole slave-holding South
and West had a strong tendency to emancipation, in some form. But the
abolition movement then began, and arrested that Southern and Western
leaning to emancipation. Many people have said, and do say, that that
_arrest_ was and is a great evil. I say it was and is a great good. Why?
Answer: It was and would now be premature. Had it been carried out, it
would have been and would now be evil, immense, inconceivable,--to master,
slave, America, Africa, and the world; because neither master, slave,
America, Africa, the world, were, or are, ready for emancipation. God has
a great deal to do before he is ready for emancipation. He tells us so by
this _arrest_ put upon that tendency to emancipation years ago. For He put
it into the hearts of abolitionists _to make the arrest_. And He stopped
the Southern movement all the more perfectly by permitting Great Britain
to emancipate Jamaica, and letting that experiment prove, as it has, a
perfect failure and a terrible warning. JAMAICA IS DESTROYED. And now,
whatever be done for its negroes must be done with the full admission that
what has been attempted was in violation of the duty Britain owed to
those negroes. But her failure in seeing and doing her duty, God has given
to us to teach us knowledge; and, through us, to instruct the world in the
demonstration of the problem of slavery.
2. God put it into the hearts of Northern men--especially
abolitionists--to give Texas to the South. Texas, a territory so vast that
a bird, as Webster said, can't fly over it in a week. Many in the South
did not want Texas. But many longer-headed ones did want it. And Northern
men voted and gave to the South exactly what these longer-headed Southern
statesmen wanted. This, I grant, was Northern anti-slavery fatuity,
utterly unaccountable but that God made them do it.
3. God put it into the hearts of Northern men--especially
abolitionists--to vote for Polk, Dallas, and Texas. This gave us the
Mexican War; and that immense territory, its spoil,--a territory which,
although it may not be favorable for slave-labor, has increased, and will,
in many ways, extend the slave-power.
4. This leads me to say that God put it into the hearts of many Northern
men--especially abolitionists--to believe what Great Britain
said,--namely, that _free trade_ would result in slave-emancipation. _But
lo! the slave-holder wanted free trade_. So Northern abolitionists helped
to destroy the _tariff policy_, and thus to expand the demand for, and the
culture of, cotton. Now, see, the gold of California has _perpetuated free
trade_ by enabling our merchants to meet the enormous demand for specie
created by free trade. So California helps the slave-power. But the
abolitionists gave us Polk, the Mexican War, and California.
5. God put it into the hearts of the North, and especially abolitionists,
to stimulate the settlement of new free States, and to be the ardent
friends of an immense foreign emigration. The result has been to send down
to the South, with railroad speed and certainty, corn, wheat, flour, meal,
bacon, pork, beef, and every other imaginable form of food, in quantity
amazing, and so cheap that the planter can spread wider and wider the
culture of cotton.
6. God has, by this growth of the Northwest, made the demand for cotton
enormous in the North and Northwest. Again, he has made English and French
experiments to procure cotton somewhere else than from the United States
_dead failures_,--in the East Indies, Egypt, Algeria, Brazil. God has
thus given to the Southern planter an absolute monopoly. A monopoly so
great that he, the Southern planter, sits now upon his throne of cotton
and wields the commercial sceptre of the world. Yes, it is the Southern
planter who says to-day to haughty England, Go to war, if you dare;
dismiss Dallas, if you dare. Yes, he who sits on the throne of the
cotton-bag has triumphed at last over him who sits on the throne of the
wool-sack. England is prostrate at his feet, as well as the abolitionists.
7. God has put it into the hearts of abolitionists to prevent half a
million of free negroes from going to Liberia; and thereby the
abolitionists have made them consumers of slave-products to the extension
of the slave-power. And, by thus keeping them in America, the
abolitionists have so increased their degradation as to prove all the more
the utter folly of emancipation in the United States.
8. God has permitted the anti-slavery men in the North, in England, in
France, and everywhere, so to blind themselves in hypocrisy as to give the
Southern slave-holder his last perfect triumph over them; for God tells
the planter to say to the North, to England, to France, to all who buy
cotton, "Ye men of Boston, New York, London, Paris,--ye hypocrites,--ye
brand me as a pirate, a kidnapper, a murderer, a demon, fit only for hell,
and yet ye buy my blood-stained cotton. O ye hypocrites!--ye Boston
hypocrites! why don't ye throw the cotton in the sea, as your fathers did
the tea? Ye Boston hypocrites! ye say, _if we had been in the days of our
fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the
slave-trade!_ Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves that ye are the
children of them who, in fact, kidnapped and bought in blood, and sold the
slave in America! for now, ye hypocrites, ye buy the blood-stained cotton
in quantity so immense, that _ye_ have run up the price of slaves to
be more than a thousand dollars,--the average of old and young! O ye
hypocrites! ye denounce slavery; then ye bid it live, and not die,--in
that ye buy sugar, rice, tobacco, and, above all, cotton! Ye hypocrites!
ye abuse the devil, and then fall down and worship him!--ye
hypocrites,--ye New England hypocrites,--ye Old England hypocrites,--ye
French hypocrites,--ye Uncle Tom's Cabin hypocrites,--ye Beecher
hypocrites,--ye Rhode Island Consociation hypocrites! Oh, your holy
twaddle stinks in the nostrils of God, and he commands me to lash you
with my scorn, and his scorn, so long as ye gabble about the sin of
slavery, and then bow down to me, and buy and spin cotton, and thus work
for me as truly as my slaves! O ye fools and blind, fill ye up the measure
of your folly, and blindness, and shame! And this ye are doing. Ye have,
like the French infidels, made _reason_ your goddess, and are exalting her
above the Bible; and, in your unitarianism and neology and all modes of
infidelity, ye are rejecting and crucifying the Son of God."
Now, my brother, this controlling slave-power is a world-wide fact. Its
statistics of bales count by millions; its tonnage counts by hundreds of
thousands; its manufacture is reckoned by the workshops of America and
Europe; its supporters are numbered by all who must thus be clothed in the
world. This tremendous power has been developed in great measure by the
abolition agitation, controlled by God. I believe, then, as I have already
said, that God intends one of two things. He either intends to destroy the
United States by this slave-power, or he intends to bless my country and
the world by the unfoldings of his wisdom in this matter. I believe he
will bless the world in the working out of this slavery. I rejoice, then,
in the agitation which has so resulted, and will so terminate, to reveal
the Bible, and bless mankind.
Your affectionate friend,
F.A. Ross.