EXPLANATIONS.
I have endeavoured to show in the preceding sections that slavery is a
violation of sacred rights, the infliction of a great wrong. And here a
question arises. It may be asked, whether, by this language, I intend to
fasten on the slave-holder the charge of peculiar guilt. On this point
great explicitness is a duty. Sympathy with the slave has often
degenerated into injustice towards the master. I wish it, then, to be
understood, that, in ranking slavery among the greatest wrongs, I speak
of the injury endured by the slave, and not of the character of the
master. These are distinct points. The former does not determine the
latter. The wrong is the same to the slave, from whatever motive or
spirit it may be inflicted. But this motive or spirit determines wholly
the character of him who inflicts it. Because a great injury is done to
another, it does not follow that he who does it is a depraved man; for
he may do it unconsciously, and, still more, may do it in the belief
that he confers a good. We have learned little of moral science and of
human nature, if we do not know that guilt is to be measured, not by the
outward act, but by unfaithfulness to conscience; and that the
consciences of men are often darkened by education, and other
inauspicious influences. All men have partial consciences, or want
comprehension of some duties. All partake, in a measure, of the errors
of the community in which they live. Some are betrayed into moral
mistakes by the very force with which conscience acts in regard to some
particular duty. As the intellect, in grasping one truth, often loses
its hold of others, and by giving itself up to one idea, falls into
exaggeration; so the moral sense, in seizing on a particular exercise of
philanthropy, forgets other duties, and will even violate many important
precepts in its passionate eagerness to carry one to perfection.
Innumerable illustrations may be given of the liableness of men to moral
error. The practice, which strikes one man with horror, may seem to
another, who was born and brought up in the midst of it, not only
innocent, but meritorious. We must judge others, not by our light, but
by their own. We must take their place, and consider what allowance we
in their position might justly expect. Our ancestors at the North were
concerned in the slave-trade. Some of us can recollect individuals of
the colored race, who were torn from Africa, and grew old under our
parental roofs. Our ancestors committed a deed now branded as piracy.
Were they, therefore, the offscouring of the earth? Were not some of
them among the best of their times? The administration of religion in
almost all past ages has been a violation of the sacred rights of
conscience. How many sects have persecuted and shed blood! Were their
members, therefore, monsters of depravity? The history of our race is
made up of wrongs, many of which were committed without a suspicion of
their true character, and many from an urgent sense of duty. A man born
among slaves, accustomed to this relation from his birth, taught its
necessity by venerated parents, associating it with all whom he reveres,
and too familiar with its evils to see and feel their magnitude, can
hardly he expected to look on slavery as it appears to more impartial
and distant observers? Let it not be said that when new light is offered
him he is criminal in rejecting it. Are we all willing to receive new
light? Can we wonder that such a man should be slow to be convinced of
the criminality of an abuse sanctioned by prescription, and which has so
interwoven itself with all the habits, employments, and economy of life,
that he can hardly conceive of the existence of society without this
all-pervading element? May he not be true to his convictions of duty in
other relations, though he grievously err in this? If, indeed, through
cupidity and selfishness, he stifle the monitions of conscience, warp
his judgment, and repel the light, he incurs great guilt. If he want
virtue to resolve on doing right, though at the loss of every slave, he
incurs great guilt. But who of us can look into his heart? To whom are
the secret workings there revealed?
Still more. There are masters who have thrown off the natural prejudices
of their position, who see slavery as it is, and who hold the slave
chiefly, if not wholly, from disinterested considerations; and these
deserve great praise. They deplore and abhor the institution; but
believing that partial emancipation, in the present condition of
society, would bring unmixed evil on bond and free, they think
themselves bound to continue the relation, until it shall be dissolved
by comprehensive and systematic measures of the state. There are many of
them who would shudder as much as we at reducing a freeman to bondage,
but who are appalled by what seem to them the perils and difficulties of
liberating multitudes, born and brought up to that condition. There are
many, who, nominally holding the slave as property, still hold him for
his own good and for the public order, and would blush to retain him on
other grounds. Are such men to be set down among the unprincipled? Am I
told that by these remarks I extenuate slavery? I reply, slavery is
still a heavy yoke, and strips man of his dearest rights, be the
master's character what it may. Slavery is not less a curse, because
long use may have blinded most, who support it, to its evils. Its
influence is still blighting, though conscientiously upheld. Absolute
monarchy is still a scourge, though among despots there have been good
men. It is possible to abhor and oppose bad institutions, and yet to
abstain from indiscriminate condemnation of those who cling to them, and
even to see in their ranks greater virtue than in ourselves. It is true,
and ought to be cheerfully acknowledged, that in the slave-holding
States may be found some of the greatest names of our history, and, what
is still more important, bright examples of private virtue and Christian
love.
There is, however, there must be, in slaveholding communities a large
class which cannot be too severely condemned. There are many, we fear,
very many, who hold their fellow-creatures in bondage, from selfish,
base motives. They hold the slave for gain, whether justly or unjustly
they neither ask nor care. They cling to him as property, and have no
faith in the principles which will diminish a man's wealth. They hold
him, not for his own good or the safety of the state, but with precisely
the same views with which they hold a laboring horse, that is, for the
profit which they can wring from him. They will not hear a word of his
wrongs; for, wronged or not, they will not let him go. He is their
property, and they mean not to be poor for righteousness' sake. Such a
class there undoubtedly is among slaveholders; how large their own
consciences must determine. We are sure of it; for under such
circumstances human nature will and must come to this mournful result.
Now, to men of this spirit, the explanations we have made do in no
degree apply. Such men ought to tremble before the rebukes of outraged
humanity and indignant virtue. Slavery, upheld for gain, is a great
crime. He, who has nothing to urge against emancipation, but that it
will make him poorer, is bound to Immediate Emancipation. He has no
excuse for wresting from his brethren their rights. The plea of benefit
to the slave and the state avails him nothing. He extorts, by the lash,
that labor to which he has no claim, through a base selfishness. Every
morsel of food, thus forced from the injured, ought to be bitterer than
gall. His gold is cankered. The sweat of the slave taints the luxuries
for which it streams. Better were it for the selfish wrong doer of whom
I speak, to live as the slave, to clothe himself in the slave's raiment,
to eat the slave's coarse food, to till his fields with his own hands,
than to pamper himself by day, and pillow his head on down at night, at
the cost of a wantonly injured fellow-creature. No fellow-creature can
be so injured without taking terrible vengeance. He is terribly avenged
even now. The blight which falls on the soul of the wrong doer, the
desolation of his moral nature, is a more terrible calamity than he
inflicts. In deadening his moral feelings, he dies to the proper
happiness of a man. In hardening his heart against his fellow-creatures,
he sears it to all true joy. In shutting his ear against the voice of
justice, he shuts out all the harmonies of the universe, and turns the
voice of God within him into rebuke. He may prosper, indeed, and hold
faster the slave by whom he prospers; but he rivets heavier and more
ignominious chains on his own soul than he lays on others. No punishment
is so terrible as prosperous guilt. No fiend, exhausting on us all his
power of torture, is so terrible as an oppressed fellow-creature. The
cry of the oppressed, unheard on earth, is heard in heaven. God is just,
and if justice reign, then the unjust must terribly suffer. Then no
being can profit by evil doing. Then all the laws of the universe are
ordinances against guilt. Then every enjoyment, gained by wrong doing,
will be turned into a curse. No laws of nature are so irrepealable as
that law which binds guilt and misery. God is just. Then all the
defences, which the oppressor rears against the consequences of wrong
doing, are vain, as vain as would be his strivings to arrest by his
single arm the ocean or whirlwind. He may disarm the slave. Can he
disarm that slave's Creator? He can crush the spirit of insurrection in
a fellow-being. Can he crush the awful spirit of justice and retribution
in the Almighty? He can still the murmur of discontent in his victim.
Can he silence that voice which speaks in thunder, and is to break the
sleep of the grave? Can he always still the reproving, avenging voice in
his own breast?
I know it will be said, "You would make us poor." Be poor, then, and
thank God for your honest poverty. Better be poor than unjust. Better
beg than steal. Better live in an almshouse, better die, than trample on
a fellow-creature and reduce him to a brute, for selfish gratification.
What! Have we yet to learn that "it profits us nothing to gain the whole
world, and lose our souls?"
Let it not be replied, in scorn, that we of the North, notorious for
love of money, and given to selfish calculations, are not the people to
call others to resign their wealth. I have no desire to shield the
North. We have, without doubt, a great multitude, who, were they
slave-holders, would sooner die than relax their iron grasp, than yield
their property in men to justice and the commands of God. We have those
who would fight against abolition, if by this measure the profit of
their intercourse with the South should be materially impaired. The
present excitement among us is, in part, the working of mercenary
principles. But because the North joins hands with the South, shall
iniquity go unpunished or unrebuked? Can the league of the wicked, the
revolt of worlds, repeal the everlasting law of heaven and earth? Has
God's throne fallen before Mammon's? Must duty find no voice, no organ,
because corruption is universally diffused? Is not this a fresh motive
to solemn warning, that, every where, Northward and Southward, the
rights of human beings are held so cheap, in comparison with worldly
gain?