THE EVILS OF SLAVERY.
The subject of this section is painful and repulsive. We must not,
however, turn away from the contemplation of human sufferings and guilt.
Evil is permitted by the Creator, that we should strive against it in
faith, and hope, and charity. We must never quail before it because of
its extent and duration, never feel as if its power were greater than
that of goodness. It is meant to call forth deep sympathy with human
nature, and unwearied sacrifices for human redemption. One great part of
the mission of every man on earth is to contend with evil in some of its
forms; and there are some evils so dependent on opinion, that every man,
in judging and reproving them faithfully, does something towards their
removal. Let us not, then, shrink from the contemplation of human
sufferings. Even sympathy, if we have nothing more to offer, is a
tribute acceptable to the Universal Father.--On this topic exaggeration
should be conscientiously shunned; and, at the same time, humanity
requires that the whole truth should be honestly spoken.
In treating of the evils of slavery, I, of course, speak of its general,
not universal effects, of its natural tendencies, not unfailing results.
There are the same natural differences among the bond as the free, and
there is a great diversity in the circumstances in which they are
placed. The house-slave, selected for ability and faithfulness, placed
amidst the habits, accommodations, and improvements of civilized life,
admitted to a degree of confidence and familiarity, and requiting these
privileges with attachment, is almost necessarily more enlightened and
respectable than the field-slave, who is confined to monotonous toils,
and to the society and influences of beings as degraded as himself. The
mechanics in this class are sensibly benefited by occupations which give
a higher action to the mind. Among the bond, as the free, will be found
those to whom nature seems partial, and who are carried almost
instinctively towards what is good. I speak of the natural, general
influences of slavery. Here, as every where else, there are exceptions
to the rule, and exceptions which multiply with the moral improvements
of the community in which the slave is found. But these do not determine
the general character of the institution. It has general tendencies
founded in its very nature, and which predominate vastly wherever it
exists. These tendencies it is my present purpose to unfold.
1. The first rank among the evils of slavery must be given to its Moral
influence. This is throughout debasing. Common language teaches this. We
can say nothing more insulting of another, than that he is Slavish. To
possess the spirit of a slave is to have sunk to the lowest depths. We
can apply to slavery no worse name than its own. Men have always shrunk
instinctively from this state, as the most degraded. No punishment, save
death, has been more dreaded, and to avoid it death has often been
endured.
In expressing the moral influence of slavery the first and most obvious
remark is, that it destroys the proper consciousness and spirit of a
Man. The slave regarded and treated as property, bought and sold like a
brute, denied the rights of humanity, unprotected against insult, made a
tool, and systematically subdued, that lie may be a manageable, useful
tool, how can he help regarding himself as fallen below his race? How
must his spirit be crushed! How can he respect himself? He becomes bound
to Servility. This word, borrowed from his condition, expresses the ruin
wrought by slavery within him. The idea, that he was made for his own
virtue and happiness, scarcely dawns on his mind. To be an instrument of
the physical, material good of another, whose will is his highest law,
he is taught to regard as the great purpose of his being. Here lies the
evil of slavery. Its whips, imprisonments, and even the horrors of the
middle passage from Africa to America, these are not to be named, in
comparison with this extinction of the proper consciousness of a human
being, with the degradation of a man into a brute.
It may be said, that the slave is used to his yoke; that his
sensibilities are blunted; that he receives, without a pang or a
thought, the treatment which would sting other men to madness. And to
what does this apology amount? It virtually declares, that slavery has
done its perfect work, has quenched the spirit of humanity, that the Man
is dead within the Slave. Is slavery, therefore, no wrong? It is not,
however, true, that this work of debasement is ever so effectually done
as to extinguish all feeling. Man is too great a creature to be wholly
ruined by man. When he seems dead he only sleeps. There are occasionally
some sullen murmurs in the calm of slavery, showing that life still
beats in the soul, that the idea of Rights cannot be wholly effaced from
the human being.
It would be too painful, and it is not needed, to detail the processes
by which the spirit is broken in slavery. I refer to one only, the
selling of slaves. The practice of exposing fellow-creatures for sale,
of having markets for men as for cattle, of examining the limbs and
muscles of a man and a woman as of a brute, of putting human beings
under the hammer of an auctioneer, and delivering them, like any other
articles of merchandise, to the highest bidder, all this is such an
insult to our common nature, and so infinitely degrading to the poor
victim, that it is hard to conceive of its existence, except in a
barbarous country.
That slavery should be most unpropitious to the slave as a moral being
will be farther apparent, if we consider that his condition is
throughout a Wrong, and that consequently it must tend to unsettle all
his notions of duty. The violation of his own rights, to which he is
inured from birth, must throw confusion over his ideas of all human
rights. He cannot comprehend them; or, if he does, how can he respect
them, seeing them, as he does, perpetually trampled on in his own
person? The injury to the character from living in an atmosphere of
wrong, we can all understand. To live in a state of society, of which
injustice is the chief and all-pervading element, is too severe a trial
for human nature, especially when no means are used to counteract its
influence.
Accordingly the most common distinctions of morality are faintly
apprehended by the slave. Respect for property, that fundamental law of
civil society, can hardly be instilled into him. His dishonesty is
proverbial. Theft from his master passes with him for no crime. A system
of force is generally found to drive to fraud. How necessarily will this
be the result of a relation, in which force is used to extort from a man
his labor, his natural property, without an attempt to win his consent!
Can we wonder that the uneducated conscience of the man who is daily
wronged should allow him in reprisals to the extent of his power? Thus
the primary social virtue, justice, is undermined in the slave.
That the slave should yield himself to intemperance, licentiousness,
and, in general, to sensual excess, we must also expect. Doomed to live
for the physical indulgences of others, unused to any pleasures but
those of sense, stripped of self-respect, and having nothing to gain in
life, how can he be expected to govern himself? How naturally, I had
almost said necessarily, does he become the creature of sensation, of
passion, of the present moment! What aid does the future give him in
withstanding desire? That better condition, for which other men postpone
the cravings of appetite, never opens before him. The sense of
character, the power of opinion, another restraint on the free, can do
little or nothing to rescue so abject a class from excess and
debasement. In truth, power over himself is the last virtue we should
expect in the slave, when we think of him as subjected to absolute
power, and made to move passively from the impulse of a foreign will. He
is trained to cowardice, and cowardice links itself naturally with low
vices. Idleness to his apprehension is paradise, for he works without
hope of reward. Thus slavery robs him of moral force, and prepares him
to fall a prey to appetite and passion.
That the slave finds in his condition little nutriment for the social
virtues we shall easily understand, if we consider that his chief
relations are to an absolute master, and to the companions of his
degrading bondage, that is, to a being who wrongs him, and to associates
whom he cannot honor, whom he sees debased. His dependence on his owner
loosens his ties to all other beings. He has no country to love, no
family to call his own, no objects of public utility to espouse, no
impulse to generous exertion. The relations, dependencies, and
responsibilities, by which Providence forms the soul to a deep,
disinterested love, are almost struck out of his lot. An arbitrary rule,
a foreign, irresistible will, taking him out of his own hands, and
placing him beyond the natural influences of society, extinguishes in a
great degree the sense of what is due to himself, and to the human
family around him.
The effects of slavery on the character are so various, that this part
of the discussion might be greatly extended; but I will touch only on
one topic. Let us turn, for a moment, to the great Motive by which the
slave is made to labor. Labor, in one form or another, is appointed by
God for man's improvement and happiness, and absorbs the chief part of
human life, so that the Motive which excites to it has immense influence
on character. It determines very much, whether life shall serve or fail
of its end. The man, who works from honorable motives, from domestic
affections, from desire of a condition which will open to him greater
happiness and usefulness, finds in labor an exercise and invigoration of
virtue. The day-laborer, who earns, with horny hand and the sweat of his
face, coarse food for a wife and children whom he loves, is raised, by
this generous motive, to true dignity; and, though wanting the
refinements of life, is a nobler being than those who think themselves
absolved by wealth from serving others. Now the slave's labor brings no
dignity, is an exercise of no virtue, but throughout a degradation; so
that one of God's chief provisions for human improvement becomes a
curse. The motive from which he acts debases him. It is the Whip. It is
corporal punishment. It is physical pain inflicted by a fellow-creature.
Undoubtedly labor is mitigated to the slave, as to all men, by habit.
But this is not the motive. Take away the Whip, and he would be idle.
His labor brings no new comforts to wife or child. The motive which
spurs him is one by which it is base to be swayed. Stripes are, indeed,
resorted to by civil government, when no other consideration will deter
from crime; but he, who is deterred from wrong doing by the
whipping-post, is among the most fallen of his race. To work in sight of
the whip, under menace of blows, is to be exposed to perpetual insult
and degrading influences. Every motion of the limbs, which such a menace
urges is a wound to the soul. How hard must it be for a man who lives
under the lash to respect himself! When this motive is substituted for
all the nobler ones which God ordains, is it not almost necessarily
death to the better and higher sentiments of our nature? It is the part
of a man to despise pain, in comparison with disgrace, to meet it
fearlessly in well doing, to perform the work of life from other
impulses. It is the part of a brute to be governed by the whip. Even the
brute is seen to act from more generous incitements. The horse of a
noble breed will not endure the lash. Shall we sink man below the horse?
Let it not be said that blows are seldom inflicted. Be it so. We are
glad to know it. But this is not the point. The complaint now urged is
not of the amount of the pain inflicted, but of its influence on the
character when made the great motive to human labor. It is not the
endurance, but the dread of the whip, it is the substitution of this for
natural and honorable motives to action, which we abhor and condemn. It
matters not whether few or many are whipped. A blow given to a single
slave is a stripe on the souls of all who see or hear it. It makes all
abject, servile. It is not of the wound given to the flesh of which we
now complain. Scar the back, and you have done nothing, compared with
the wrong done to the soul. You have either stung that soul with
infernal passions, with thirst for revenge; or, what perhaps is more
discouraging, you have broken and brutalized it. The human spirit has
perished under your hands, as far as it can be destroyed by human force.
I know it is sometimes said, in reply to these remarks, that all men, as
well as slaves, act from necessity; that we have masters in hunger and
thirst; that no man loves labor for itself; that the pains, which are
inflicted on us by the laws of nature, the elements, and seasons, are so
many lashes driving us to our daily task. Be it so. Still the two cases
are essentially different. The necessity laid on us by natural wants is
most kindly in its purpose. It is meant to awaken all our faculties, to
give a full play to body and mind, and thus to give us a new
consciousness of the powers derived to us from God. We are, indeed,
subjected to a stern nature; we are placed amidst warring elements,
scorching heat, withering cold, storms, blights, sickness, death. And
what is the design? To call forth our powers, to lay on us great duties,
to make us nobler beings. We are placed in the midst of a warring
nature, not to yield to it, not to be its slaves, but to conquer it, to
make it the monument of our skill and strength, to arm ourselves with
its elements, its heat, winds, vapors, and mineral treasures, to find,
in its painful changes, occasions and incitements to invention, courage,
endurance, mutual and endearing dependencies, and religious trust. The
development of human nature, in all its powers and affections, is the
end of that hard necessity which is laid on us by nature. Is this one
and the same thing with the whip laid on the slave? Still more; it is
the design of nature that by energy, skill, and self-denial we should so
far anticipate our wants or accumulate supplies, as to be able to
diminish the toil of the hands, and to mix with it more intellectual and
liberal occupations. Nature does not lay on us an unchangeable task, but
one which we may all lighten by honest, self-denying industry. Thus she
invites us to throw off her yoke, and to make her our servant. Is this
the invitation which the master gives his slaves? Is it his aim to
awaken the powers of those on whom he lays his burdens, and to give them
increasing mastery over himself? Is it not his aim to curb their will,
break their spirits, and shut them up for ever in the same narrow and
degrading work? Oh, let not nature be profaned, let not her parental
rule be blasphemed, by comparing with her the slaveholder!
2. Having considered the moral influence of slavery, I proceed to
consider its Intellectual influence, another great topic. God gave us
intellectual power, that it should be cultivated; and a system which
degrades it, and can only be upheld by its depression, opposes one of
his most benevolent designs. Reason is God's image in man, and the
capacity of acquiring truth is among his best inspirations. To call
forth the intellect is a principal purpose of the circumstances in which
we are placed, of the child's connexion with the parent, and of the
necessity laid on him in maturer life to provide for himself and others.
The education of the intellect is not confined to youth; but the various
experience of later years does vastly more than books and colleges to
ripen and invigorate the faculties.
Now, the whole lot of the slave is fitted to keep his mind in childhood
and bondage. Though living in a land of light, few beams find their way
to his benighted understanding. No parent feels the duty of instructing
him. No teacher is provided for him, but the Driver, who breaks him,
almost in childhood, to the servile tasks which are to fill up his life.
No book is opened to his youthful curiosity. As he advances in years, no
new excitements supply the place of teachers. He is not cast on himself,
made to depend on his own energies. No stirring prizes in life awaken
his dormant faculties. Fed and clothed by others like a child, directed
in every step, doomed for life to a monotonous round of labor, he lives
and dies without a spring to his powers, often brutally unconscious of
his spiritual nature. Nor is this all. When benevolence would approach
him with instruction, it is repelled. He is not allowed to be taught.
The light is jealously barred out. The voice, which would speak to him
as a man, is put to silence. He must not even be enabled to read the
Word of God. His immortal spirit is systematically crushed.
It is said, I know, that the ignorance of the slave is necessary to the
security of the master, and the quiet of the state; and this is said
truly. Slavery and knowledge cannot live together. To enlighten the
slave is to break his chain. To make him harmless, he must be kept
blind. He cannot be left to read in an enlightened age, without
endangering his master; for what can he read which will not give, at
least, some hint of his wrongs? Should his eye chance to fall on "the
Declaration of Independence," how would the truth glare on him, "that
all men are born free and equal"! All knowledge furnishes arguments
against slavery. From every subject light would break forth to reveal
his inalienable and outraged rights. The very exercise of his intellect
would give him the consciousness of being made for something more than a
slave. I agree to the necessity laid on his master to keep him in
darkness. And what stronger argument against slavery can be conceived?
It compels the master to degrade, systematically, the mind of the slave;
to war against human intelligence; to resist that improvement which is
the end of the Creator. "Wo to him that taketh away the key of
knowledge!" To kill the body is a great crime. The Spirit we cannot
kill, but we can bury it in deathlike lethargy; and is this a light
crime in the sight of its Maker?
Let it not be said, that almost every where the laboring classes are
doomed to ignorance, deprived of the means of instruction. The
intellectual advantages of the laboring freeman, who is entrusted with
the care of himself, raise him far above the slave; and, accordingly,
superior minds are constantly seen to issue from the less educated
classes. Besides, in free communities, philanthropy is not forbidden to
labor for the improvement of the ignorant. The obligation of the
prosperous and instructed to elevate their less favored brethren is
taught, and not taught in vain. Benevolence is making perpetual
encroachments on the domain of ignorance and crime. In communities, on
the other hand, cursed with slavery, half the population, sometimes
more, are given up, intentionally and systematically, to hopeless
ignorance. To raise this mass to intelligence and self-government is a
crime. The sentence of perpetual degradation is passed on a large
portion of the human race. In this view, how great the ill desert of
slavery!
3. I proceed, now, to the Domestic influences of slavery; and here we
must look for a dark picture. Slavery virtually dissolves the domestic
relations. It ruptures the most sacred ties on earth. It violates home.
It lacerates the best affections. The domestic relations precede, and,
in our present existence, are worth more than all our other social ties.
They give the first throb to the heart, and unseal the deep fountains of
its love. Home is the chief school of human virtue. Its
responsibilities, joys, sorrows, smiles, tears, hopes, and solicitudes,
form the chief interests of human life. Go where a man may, home is the
centre to which his heart turns. The thought of his home nerves his arm
and lightens his toil. For that his heart yearns, when he is far off.
There he garners up his best treasures. God has ordained for all men
alike the highest earthly happiness, in providing for all the sanctuary
of home. But the slave's home does not merit the name. To him it is no
sanctuary. It is open to violation, insult, outrage. His children belong
to another, are provided for by another, are disposed of by another. The
most precious burden with which the heart can be charged, the happiness
of his child, he must not bear. He lives not for his family, but for a
stranger. He cannot improve their lot. His wife and daughter he cannot
shield from insult. They may be torn from him at another's pleasure,
sold as beasts of burden, sent he knows not whither, sent where he
cannot reach them, or even interchange inquiries and messages of love.
To the slave marriage has no sanctity. It may be dissolved in a moment
at another's will. His wife, son, and daughter may be lashed before his
eyes, and not a finger must be lifted in their defence. He sees the scar
of the lash on his wife and child. Thus the slave's home is desecrated.
Thus the tenderest relations, intended by God equally for all, and
intended to be the chief springs of happiness and virtue, are sported
with wantonly and cruelly. What outrage so great as to enter a man's
house, and tear from his side the beings whom God has bound to him by
the holiest ties? Every man can make the case his own. Every mother can
bring it home to her own heart.
And let it not be said that the slave has not the sensibilities of other
men. Nature is too strong even for slavery to conquer. Even the brute
has the yearnings of parental love. But suppose that the conjugal and
parental ties of the slave may be severed without a pang. What a curse
must be slavery, if it can so blight the heart with more than brutal
insensibility, if it can sink the human mother below the polar she-bear,
which "howls and dies for her sundered cub!" But it does not and cannot
turn the slave to stone. It leaves, at least, feeling enough to make
these domestic wrongs occasions of frequent and deep suffering. Still it
must do much to quench the natural affections. Can the wife, who has
been brought under influences most unfriendly to female purity and
honor, who is exposed to the whip, who may be torn away at her master's
will, and whose support and protection are not committed to a husband's
faithfulness, can such a wife, if the name may be given her, be loved
and honored as a woman should be? Or can the love, which should bind
together man and his offspring, be expected, under an institution, which
subverts, in a great degree, filial dependence and parental authority
and care? Slavery withers the affections and happiness of home at their
very root, by tainting female purity. Woman, brought up in degradation,
placed under another's power and at another's disposal, and never taught
to look forward to the happiness of an inviolate, honorable marriage,
can hardly possess the feelings and virtues of her sex. A blight falls
on her in her early years. Those who have daughters can comprehend her
lot. In truth, licentiousness among bond and free is the natural issue
of all-polluting slavery. Domestic happiness perishes under its touch,
both among bond and free.
How wonderful is it, that in civilized countries men can be so steeled
by habit as to invade without remorse the peace, purity, and sacred
relations of domestic life, as to put asunder those whom God has joined
together, as to break up households by processes more painful than
death! And this is done for pecuniary profit! What! Can men, having
human feeling, grow rich by the desolation of families? We hear of some
of the Southern States enriching themselves by breeding slaves for sale.
Of all the licensed occupations of society this is the most detestable.
What! Grow men, like cattle! Rear human families, like herds of swine,
and then scatter them to the four winds for gain! Among the imprecations
uttered by man on man, is there one more fearful, more ominous, than the
sighing of the mother bereft of her child by unfeeling cupidity? If
blood cry to God, surely that sigh will be heard in heaven.
Let it not be said that members of families are often separated in all
conditions of life. Yes, but separated under the influence of love. The
husband leaves wife and children, that he may provide for their support,
and carries them with him in his heart and hopes. The sailor, in his
lonely night-watch, looks homeward, and well known voices come to him
amidst the roar of the waves. The parent sends away his children, but
sends them to prosper, and to press them again to his heart with a joy
enhanced by separation. Are such the separations which slavery makes?
And can he, who has scattered other families, ask God to bless his own?
4. I proceed to another important view of the evils of slavery. Slavery
produces and gives license to Cruelty. By this it is not meant that
cruelty is the universal, habitual, unfailing result. Thanks to God,
Christianity has not entered the world in vain. Where it has not cast
down, it has mitigated bad institutions. Slavery in this country differs
widely from that of ancient times, and from that which the Spaniards
imposed on the aboriginals of South America. There is here an increasing
disposition to multiply the comforts of the slaves, and in this let us
rejoice. At the same time, we must remember, that, under the light of
the present day, and in a country where Christianity and the rights of
men are understood, a diminished severity may contain more guilt than
the ferocity of darker ages. Cruelty in its lighter forms is now a
greater crime than the atrocious usages of antiquity at which we
shudder. "The times of that ignorance God winked at, but _now_ he
calleth men every where to repent." It should also be considered that
the slightest cruelty to the slave is an aggravated wrong, because he is
unjustly held in bondage, unjustly held as property. We condemn the man
who enforces harshly a righteous claim. What, then, ought we to think of
lashing and scarring fellow-creatures, for the purpose of upholding an
unrighteous, usurped power, of extorting labor which is not our due?
I have said that cruelty is not the habit of the slave States of this
country. Still, that it is frequent we cannot doubt. Reports, which
harrow up our souls, come to us from that quarter; and we know that they
must be essentially correct, because it is impossible that a large part,
perhaps the majority, of the population of a country can be broken to
passive, unlimited submission, without examples of terrible severity.
Let it not be said, as is sometimes done, that cruel deeds are
perpetrated every where else, as well as in slave-countries. Be it so;
but in all civilized nations unscourged by slavery, a principal object
of legislation is to protect every man from cruelty, and to bring every
man to punishment, who wantonly tortures or wounds another; whilst
slavery plucks off restraint from the ferocious, or leaves them to
satiate their rage with impunity.--Let it not be said that these
barbarities are regarded no where with more horror than at the South. Be
it so. They are abhorred, but allowed. The power of individuals to
lacerate their fellow-creatures is given to them by the community. The
community abhors the abuse, but confers the power which will certainly
be abused, and thus strips itself of all defence before the bar of
Almighty Justice. It must answer for the crimes which are shielded by
its laws.--Let it not be said, that these cruelties are checked by the
private interest of the slaveholder. Does regard to private interest
save from brutal treatment the draught-horse in our streets? And may not
a vast amount of suffering be inflicted, which will not put in peril the
life or strength of the slave?
To substantiate the charge of cruelty, I shall not, as I have said, have
recourse to current reports, however well established. I am willing to
dismiss them all as false. I stand on other ground. Reports may lie, but
our daily experience of human nature cannot lie. I summon no witnesses,
or rather I appeal to a witness every where present, a witness in every
heart. Who that has watched his own heart, or observed others, does not
feel that man is not fit to be trusted with absolute, irresponsible
power over men? It must be abused. The selfish passions and pride of our
nature will as surely abuse it, as the storm will ravage, or the ocean
swell and roar under the whirlwind. A being, so ignorant, so headstrong,
so passionate, as man, ought not to be trusted with this terrible
dominion. He ought not to desire it. He ought to dread it. He ought to
cast it from him, as most perilous to himself and others.
Absolute power was not meant for man. There is, indeed, an exception to
this rule. There is one case, in which God puts a human being wholly
defenceless into another's hands. I refer to the child, who is wholly
subjected to the parent's will. But observe how carefully, I might
almost say anxiously, God has provided against the abuse of this power.
He has raised up in the heart of the parent a friend, a guardian, whom
the mightiest on earth cannot resist. He has fitted the parent for this
trust, by teaching him to love his child better than himself. No
eloquence on earth is so subduing as the moaning of the infant when in
pain. No reward is sweeter than that infant's smile. We say, God has put
the infant into the parent's hands. Might we not more truly say, that he
has put the parent into the child's power? That little being sends
forth his father to toil, and makes the mother watch over him by day,
and fix on him her sleepless eyes by night. No tyrant lays such a yoke.
Thus God has fenced and secured from abuse the power of the parent; and
yet even the parent has been known, in a moment of passion, to be cruel
to his child. Is man, then, to be trusted with absolute power over a
fellow-creature, who, instead of being commended by nature to his
tenderest love, belongs to a despised race, is regarded as property, is
made the passive instrument of his gratification and gain? I ask no
documents to prove the abuses of this power, nor do I care what is said
to disprove them. Millions may rise up and tell me that the slave
suffers little from cruelty. I know too much of human nature, human
history, human passion to believe them. I acquit slaveholders of all
peculiar depravity. I judge them by myself. I say, that absolute power
always corrupts human nature more or less. I say, that extraordinary,
almost miraculous self-control is necessary to secure the slaveholder
from provocation and passion; and is self-control the virtue which above
all others grows up amidst the possession of irresponsible dominion?
Even when the slaveholder honestly acquits himself of cruelty, he may be
criminal. His own consciousness is to be distrusted. Having begun with
wronging the slave, with wresting from him sacred rights, he may be
expected to multiply wrongs, without thought. The degraded state of the
slave may induce in the master a mode of treatment essentially inhuman
and insulting, but which he never dreams to be cruel. The influence of
slavery in indurating the moral feeling and blinding men to wrongs is
one of its worst evils.
But suppose the master to be ever so humane. Still, he is not always
watching over his slave. He has his pleasures to attend to. He is often
absent. His terrible power must be delegated. And to whom is it
delegated? To men prepared to govern others, by having learned to govern
themselves? To men having a deep interest in the slaves? To wise men,
instructed in human nature? To Christians, trained to purity and love?
Who does not know, that the office of Overseer is among the last, which
an enlightened, philanthropic, self-respecting man would choose? Who
does not know, how often the overseer pollutes the plantation by his
licentiousness, as well as scourges it by his severity? In the hands of
such a man the lash is placed. To such a man is committed the most
fearful trust on earth! For his cruelties the master must answer, as
truly as if they were his own. Nor is this all. The master does more
than delegate his power to the overseer. How often does he part with it
wholly to the slave-dealer! And has he weighed the responsibility of
such a transfer? Does he not know, that, in selling his slaves into
merciless hands, he is merciless himself, and must give an account to
God for every barbarity of which they become the victims? The notorious
cruelty of the slave-dealers can be no false report, for it belongs to
their vocation. These are the men, who throng and defile our Seat of
Government, whose slave-markets and slave-dungeons turn to mockery the
language of freedom in the halls of Congress, and who make us justly the
by-word and the scorn of the nations. Is there no cruelty in putting
slaves under the bloody lash of the slave-dealer, to be driven like
herds of cattle to distant regions, and there to pass into the hands of
strangers, without a pledge of their finding justice or mercy? What
heart, not seared by custom, would not recoil from such barbarity?
It has been seen that I do not ground my argument at all on cases of
excessive cruelty. I should attach less importance to these than do most
persons, even were they more frequent. They form a very, very small
amount of suffering, compared with what is inflicted by abuses of power
too minute for notice. Blows, insults, privations, which make no noise,
and leave no scar, are incomparably more destructive of happiness than a
few brutal violences which move general indignation. A weak, despised
being, having no means of defence or redress, living in a community
armed against his rights, regarded as property, and as bound to entire,
unresisting compliance with another's will, if not subjected to
inflictions of ferocious cruelty, is yet exposed to less striking and
shocking forms of cruelty, the amount of which must be a fearful mass of
suffering.
But could it be proved that there are no cruelties in slave-countries,
we ought not then to be more reconciled to slavery than we now are. For
what would this show? That cruelty is not needed. And why not needed?
Because the slave is entirely subdued to his lot. No man will be wholly
unresisting in bondage, but he who is thoroughly imbued with the spirit
of a slave. If the colored race never need punishment, it is because the
feelings of men are dead within them, because they have no consciousness
of rights, because they are cowards, without respect for themselves, and
without confidence in the sharers of their degraded lot. The quiet of
slavery is like that which the Roman legions left in ancient Britain,
the stillness of death. Why were the Romans accustomed to work their
slaves in chains by day, and confine them in dungeons by night? Not
because they loved cruelty for its own sake; but because their slaves
were stung with a consciousness of degradation, because they brought
from the forests of Dacia some rude ideas of human dignity, or from
civilized countries some experience of social improvements, which
naturally issued in violence and exasperation. They needed cruelty, for
their own wills were not broken to another's, and the spirit of freemen
was not wholly gone. The slave _must_ meet cruel treatment either
inwardly or outwardly. Either the soul or the body must receive the
blow. Either the flesh must be tortured or the spirit be struck down.
Dreadful alternative to which slavery is reduced!
5. I proceed to one more view of the evils of slavery. I refer to its
influence on the Master. This topic cannot, perhaps, be so handled as to
avoid giving offence; but without it an imperfect view of the subject
would be given. I will pass over many views. I will say nothing of the
tendency of slavery to unsettle the ideas of Right in the slaveholder,
to impair his convictions of Justice and Benevolence; or of its tendency
to associate with labor ideas of degradation, and to recommend idleness
as an honorable exemption. I will confine myself to two considerations.
The first is, that slavery, above all other influences, nourishes the
passion for power and its kindred vices. There is no passion which needs
a stronger curb. Men's worst crimes have sprung from the desire of being
masters, of bending others to their yoke. And the natural tendency of
bringing others into subjection to our absolute will is to quicken into
fearful activity the imperious, haughty, proud, self-seeking
propensities of our nature. Man cannot, without imminent peril to his
virtue, own a fellow-creature, or use the word of absolute command to
his brethren. God never delegated this power. It is an usurpation of the
Divine dominion, and its natural influence is to produce a spirit of
superiority to divine as well as to human laws.
Undoubtedly this tendency is in a measure counteracted by the spirit of
the age and the genius of Christianity, and in conscientious individuals
it may be wholly overcome; but we see its fruits in the corruptions of
moral sentiment which prevail among slaveholders. A quick resentment of
whatever is thought to encroach on personal dignity, a trembling
jealousy of reputation, vehemence of the vindictive passions, and
contempt of all laws, human and divine, in retaliating injury,--these
take rank among the virtues of men whose self-estimation has been fed by
the possession of absolute power.
Of consequence the direct tendency of slavery is to annihilate the
control of Christianity. Humility is by eminence the spirit of
Christianity. No vice was so severely rebuked by our Lord, as the
passion for ruling over others. A deference towards all human beings as
our brethren, a benevolence which disposes us to serve rather than to
reign, to concede our own rather than to encroach on others' rights, to
forgive, not avenge wrongs, to govern our own spirits instead of
breaking the spirit of an inferior or foe,--this is Christianity; a
religion too high and pure to be understood and obeyed any where as it
should be, but which meets singular hostility in the habits of mind
generated by slavery.
The slaveholder, indeed, values himself on his loftiness of spirit. He
has a consciousness of dignity, which imposes on himself and others. But
truth cannot stoop to this lofty mien. Truth, moral, Christian truth,
condemns it, and condemns those who bow to it. Self-respect, founded on
a consciousness of our moral nature and immortal destiny, is, indeed, a
noble principle; but this sentiment includes, as a part of itself,
respect for all who partake our nature. A consciousness of dignity,
founded on the subjection of others to our absolute will, is inhuman and
unjust. It is time that the teachings of Christ were understood. In
proportion as a man acquires a lofty bearing from the habit of command
over wronged and depressed fellow-creatures, so far he casts away true
honor, so far he has fallen in the sight of God and Virtue.
I approach a more delicate subject, and one on which I shall not
enlarge. To own the persons of others, to hold females in slavery, is
necessarily fatal to the purity of a people. That unprotected females,
stripped by their degraded condition of woman's self-respect, should be
used to minister to other passions in men than the love of gain, is next
to inevitable. Accordingly, in such a community the reins are given to
youthful licentiousness. Youth, every where in perils, is in these
circumstances urged to vice with a terrible power. And the evil cannot
stop at youth. Early licentiousness is fruitful of crime in mature life.
How far the obligation to conjugal fidelity, the sacredness of domestic
ties, will be revered amidst such habits, such temptations, such
facilities to vice, as are involved in slavery, needs no exposition. So
terrible is the connexion of crimes! They, who invade the domestic
rights of others, suffer in their own homes. The household of the slave
may be broken up arbitrarily by the master; but he finds his revenge, if
revenge he asks, in the blight which the master's unfaithfulness sheds
over his own domestic joys. A slave-country reeks with licentiousness.
It is tainted with a deadlier pestilence than the plague.
But the worst is not told. As a consequence of criminal connexions, many
a master has children born into slavery. Of these, most, I presume,
receive protection, perhaps indulgence, during the life of the fathers;
but at their death not a few are left to the chances of a cruel bondage.
These cases must have increased, since the difficulties of emancipation
have even multiplied. Still more, it is to be feared, that there are
cases, in which the master puts his own children under the whip of the
overseer, or else sells them to undergo the miseries of bondage among
strangers. I should rejoice to learn that my impressions on this point
are false. If they be true, then our own country, calling itself
enlightened and Christian, is defiled with one of the greatest
enormities on earth. We send missionaries to heathen lands. Among the
pollutions of heathenism I know nothing worse than this. The heathen,
who feasts on his country's foe, may hold up his head by the side of the
Christian who sells his child for gain, sells him to be a slave. God
forbid that I should charge this crime on a people! But however rarely
it may occur, it is a fruit of slavery, an exercise of power belonging
to slavery, and no laws restrain or punish it. Such are the evils which
spring naturally from the licentiousness generated by slavery.
I have now placed before the reader the chief evils of slavery. We are
told, however, that these are not without mitigation, that slavery has
advantages which do much to counterbalance its wrongs and pains. Not a
few are partially reconciled to the institution by the language of
confidence in which its benefits are sometimes announced. I shall
therefore close this chapter with a very brief consideration of what are
thought to be the advantages of slavery.
It is often said, that the slave does less work than the free laborer.
He bears a lighter burden than liberty would lay on him. Perhaps this is
generally true; yet when circumstances promise profit to the master from
the imposition of excessive labor, the slave is not spared. In the West
Indies, the terrible waste of life among the overworked cultivators
required large supplies from Africa to keep up the failing population.
In this country it is probably true that the slave works less than the
free laborer; but it does not therefore follow that his work is lighter.
For what is it that lightens toil? It is Hope; it is Love; it is Strong
Motive. That labor is light, which we do from the heart; to which a
great good quickens us; which is to better our lot. That labor is light,
which is to comfort, adorn, and cheer our homes, to give instruction to
our children, to solace the declining years of a parent, to give to our
grateful and generous sentiments the means of exertion. Great effort
from great motives is the best definition of a happy life. The easiest
labor is a burden to him who has no motive for performing it. How
wearisome is the task imposed by another, and wrongfully imposed? The
slave cannot easily be made to do a freeman's work; and why? because he
wants a freeman's spirit, because the spring of labor is impaired within
him, because he works as a machine, not a free agent. The compulsion,
under which he toils for another, takes from labor its sweetness, makes
the daily round of life arid and dull, makes escape from toil the chief
interest of life.
We are farther told that the slave is freed from all care, that he is
sure of future support, that when old he is not dismissed to the
poor-house, but fed and sheltered in his own hut. This is true; but it
is also true that nothing can be gained by violating the great laws and
essential rights of our nature. The slave, we are told, has no care, his
future is provided for. Yet God created him to provide for the future,
to take care of his own happiness; and he cannot be freed from this care
without injury to his moral and intellectual life. Why has God given
foresight and power over the future, but to be used? Is it a blessing to
a rational creature, to be placed in a condition which chains his
faculties to the present moment, which leaves nothing before him to
rouse the intellect or touch the heart? Be it also remembered, that the
same provision, which relieves the slave from anxiety, cuts him off from
hope. The future is not, indeed, haunted by spectres of poverty, nor is
it brightened by images of joy. It stretches before him sterile,
monotonous, expanding into no refreshing verdure, and sending no
cheering whisper of a better lot.
It is true that the free laborer may become a pauper; and so may the
free rich man, both of the North and the South. Still, our capitalists
never dream of flying to slavery as a security against the almshouse.
Freedom undoubtedly has its perils. It offers nothing to the slothful
and dissolute. Among a people left to seek their own good in their own
way, some of all classes fail from vice, some from incapacity, some from
misfortune. All classes will furnish members to the body of the poor.
But in this country the number is small, and ought constantly to
decrease. The evil, however lamentable, is not so remediless and
spreading as to furnish a motive for reducing half the population to
chains. Benevolence does much to mitigate it. The best minds are
inquiring how it may be prevented, diminished, removed. It is giving
excitement to a philanthropy which creates out of misfortune new bonds
of union between man and man.
Our slave-holding brethren, who tell us that the condition of the slave
is better than that of the free laborer at the North, talk ignorantly
and rashly. They do not, cannot know, what to us is matter of daily
observation, that from the families of our farmers and mechanics have
sprung our most distinguished men, men who have done most for science,
arts, letters, religion, and freedom; and that the noblest spirits among
us would have been lost to their country and mankind, had the laboring
class here been doomed to slavery. They do not know, what we rejoice to
tell them, that this class partakes largely of the impulse given to the
whole community; that the means of intellectual improvement are
multiplying to the laborious as fast as to the opulent; that our most
distinguished citizens meet them as brethren, and communicate to them in
public discourses their own most important acquisitions. Undoubtedly,
the Christian, republican spirit is not working, even here, as it
should. The more improved and prosperous classes have not yet learned
that it is their great mission to elevate morally and intellectually the
less advanced classes of the community; but the great truth is more and
more recognised, and accordingly a new era may be said to be opening on
society.
It is said, however, that the slave, if not to be compared to the free
laborer at the North, is in a happier condition than the Irish
peasantry. Let this be granted. Let the security of the peasant's
domestic relations, let his church, and his schoolhouse, and his faint
hope of a better lot pass for nothing. Because Ireland is suffering from
the misgovernment and oppression of ages, does it follow that a less
grinding oppression is a good? Besides, are not the wrongs of Ireland
acknowledged? Is not British legislation laboring to restore her
prosperity? Is it not true, that, whilst the slave's lot admits no
important change, the most enlightened minds are at work to confer on
the Irish peasant the blessings of education, of equal laws, of new
springs to exertion, of new sources of wealth? Other men, however
fallen, may be lifted up. An immovable weight presses on the slave.
But still we are told the slave is gay. He is not as wretched as our
theories teach. After his toil, he sings, he dances, he gives no signs
of an exhausted frame or gloomy spirit. The slave happy! Why, then,
contend for Rights? Why follow with beating hearts the struggles of the
patriot for freedom? Why canonize the martyr to freedom? The slave
happy! Then happiness is to be found in giving up the distinctive
attributes of a man; in darkening intellect and conscience; in quenching
generous sentiments; in servility of spirit; in living under a whip; in
having neither property nor rights; in holding wife and child at
another's pleasure; in toiling without hope; in living without an end!
The slave, indeed, has his pleasures. His animal nature survives the
injury to his rational and moral powers; and every animal has its
enjoyments. The kindness of Providence allows no human being to be
wholly divorced from good. The lamb frolics; the dog leaps for joy; the
bird fills the air with cheerful harmony; and the slave spends his
holiday in laughter and the dance. Thanks to Him who never leaves
himself without witness; who cheers even the desert with spots of
verdure; and opens a fountain of joy in the most withered heart! It is
not possible, however, to contemplate the occasional gayety of the slave
without some mixture of painful thought. He is gay, because he has not
learned to think; because he is too fallen to feel his wrongs; because
he wants just self-respect. We are grieved by the gayety of the insane.
There is a sadness in the gayety of him, whose lightness of heart would
be turned to bitterness and indignation, were one ray of light to awaken
in him the spirit of a man.
That there are those among the free, who are more wretched than slaves,
is undoubtedly true; just as there is incomparably greater misery among
men than among brutes. The brute never knew the agony of a human spirit
torn by remorse or wounded in its love. But would we cease to be human,
because our capacity for suffering increases with the elevation of our
nature? All blessings may be perverted, and the greatest perverted most.
Were we to visit a slave-country, undoubtedly the most miserable human
beings would be found among the free; for among them the passions have
wider sweep, and the power they possess may be used to their own ruin.
Liberty is not a necessity of happiness. It is only a means of good. It
is a trust which may be abused. Are all such trusts to be cast away? Are
they not the greatest gifts of Heaven?
But the slave, we are told, often manifests affection to his master,
grieves at his departure, and welcomes his return. I will not endeavour
to explain this, by saying that the master's absence places the slave
under the overseer. Nor will I object, that the slave's propensity to
steal from his master, his need of the whip to urge him to toil, and the
dread of insurrection which he inspires, are signs of any thing but
love. There is, undoubtedly, much more affection in this relation than
could be expected. Of all races of men, the African is the mildest and
most susceptible of attachment. He loves, where the European would hate.
He watches the life of a master, whom the North-American Indian, in like
circumstances, would stab to the heart. The African is affectionate. Is
this a reason for holding him in chains? We cannot, however, think of
this most interesting feature of slavery with unmixed pleasure. It is
the curse of slavery, that it can touch nothing which it does not
debase. Even love, that sentiment given us by God to be the germ of a
divine virtue, becomes in the slave a weakness, almost a degradation.
His affections lose much of their beauty and dignity. He ought, indeed,
to feel benevolence towards his master; but to attach himself to a man
who keeps him in the dust and denies him the rights of a man; to be
grateful and devoted to one who extorts his toil and debases him into a
chattel; this has a taint of servility, which makes us grieve whilst we
admire. However, we would not diminish the attachment of the slave. He
is the happier for his generosity. Let him love his master, and let the
master win love by kindness. We only say, let not this manifestation of
a generous nature in the slave be turned against him. Let it not be made
an answer to an exposition of his wrongs. Let it not be used as a weapon
for his perpetual degradation.
But the slave, we are told, is taught Religion. This is the most
cheering sound which comes to us from the land of bondage. We are
rejoiced to learn that any portion of the slaves are instructed in that
truth, which gives inward freedom. They hear at least one voice of deep,
genuine love, the voice of Christ; and read in his cross what all other
things hide from them, the unutterable worth of their spiritual nature.
This portion, however, is small. The greater part are still buried in
heathen ignorance. Besides, Religion, though a great good, can hardly
exert its full power on the slave. Will it not be taught to make him
obedient to his master, rather than to raise him to the dignity of a
man? Is slavery, which tends so proverbially to debase the mind, the
preparation for spiritual truth? Can the slave comprehend the principle
of Love, the essential principle of Christianity, when he hears it from
the lips of those whose relations to him express injustice and
selfishness? But suppose him to receive Christianity in its purity, and
to feel all its power. Is this to reconcile us to slavery? Is a being,
who can understand the sublimest truth which has ever entered the human
mind, who can love and adore God, who can conform himself to the
celestial virtue of the Saviour, for whom that Saviour died, to whom
heaven is opened, whose repentance now gives joy in heaven,--is such a
being to be held as property, driven by force as the brute, and denied
the rights of man by a fellow-creature, by a professed disciple of the
just and merciful Saviour? Has he a religious nature, and dares any one
hold him as a slave?
I have now completed my views of the evils of slavery, and have shown
how little they are mitigated by what are thought its advantages. In
this whole discussion I have cautiously avoided quoting particular
examples of its baneful influences. I have not brought together
accounts of horrible cruelty which come to us from the South. I have
confined myself to the natural tendencies of slavery, to evils bound up
in its very nature, which, as long as man is man, cannot be separated
from it. That these evils are unmixed or universal, I do not say. There
are and must be exceptions to them, and more or less of good may often
be found in connexion with them. No institution, be it what it may, can
make the life of a human being wholly evil, or cut off every means of
improvement. God's benevolence triumphs over all the perverseness and
folly of man's devices. He sends a cheering beam into the darkest abode.
The slave has his hours of exhilaration. His hut occasionally rings with
thoughtless mirth. Among this class, too, there are and must be,
occasionally, higher pleasures. God is no respecter of persons; and in
some slaves there is a happy nature which no condition can destroy, just
as among children we find some whom the worst education cannot spoil.
The African is so affectionate, imitative, and docile, that in favorable
circumstances he catches much that is good; and accordingly the
influence of a wise and kind master will be seen in the very countenance
and bearing of his slaves. Among this degraded people, there are,
occasionally, examples of superior intelligence and virtue, showing the
groundlessness of the opinion that they are incapable of filling a
higher rank than slavery, and showing that human nature is too generous
and hardy to be wholly destroyed in the most unpropitious state. We also
witness in this class, and very often, a superior physical development,
a grace of form and motion, which almost extorts a feeling approaching
respect. I mean not to affirm that slavery excludes all good, for human
life cannot long endure under the privation of every thing happy and
improving. I have spoken of its natural tendencies and results. These
are wholly and only evil.
I am aware that it will be replied to the views now given of slavery,
that persons living at a distance from it cannot comprehend it, that its
true character can be learned only from those, who, know it practically,
and are familiar with its operations. To this I will not reply, that I
have seen it near at hand. It is sufficient to reply, that men may lose
the power of seeing an object fairly, by being too near as well as by
being too remote. The slaveholder is too familiar with slavery to
understand it. To be educated in injustice, is almost necessarily to be
blinded by it more or less. To exercise usurped power from birth, is the
surest way to look upon it as a right and a good. The slaveholder tells
us that he only can instruct us about slavery. But suppose that we
wished to learn the true character of despotism; should we go to the
palace and take the despot as our teacher? Should we pay much heed to
his assurance, that he alone could understand the character of absolute
power, and that we in a republic could know nothing of the condition of
men subjected to irresponsible will? The sad influence of slavery, in
darkening the mind which is perpetually conversant with it, is disclosed
to us in the recent attempts made at the South to represent this
institution as a good. Freemen, who would sooner die than resign their
rights, talk of the happiness of those from whom every right is wrested.
They talk of the slave as "property," with the same confidence as if
this were the holiest claim. This is one of the mournful effects of
slavery. It darkens the moral sense of the master. And can men, whose
position is so unfavorable to just, impartial judgment, expect us to
acquiesce in their views?
There is another reply. If the slave-holding States expect us to admit
their views of this institution, they must allow it to be freely
discussed among themselves. Of what avail is their testimony in favor of
slavery, when not a tongue is allowed to say a word in its condemnation?
Of what use is the press, when it can publish only on one side? In the
slave-holding States freedom of speech is at an end. Whoever should
express among them the sentiments respecting slavery which are
universally adopted through the civilized world, would put his life in
jeopardy, would probably be flayed or hung. On this great subject, which
affects vitally their peace and prosperity, their moral and political
interests, no philanthropist, who has come to the truth, can speak his
mind. Even the minister of religion, who feels the hostility between
slavery and Christianity, dares not speak. His calling might not save
him from popular rage. Thus slavery avenges itself. It brings the
masters under despotism. It takes away that liberty which a freeman
prizes as life,--liberty of speech. All this, we are told, is necessary,
and so it may be; but an institution imposing such a necessity cannot be
a good; and one thing is plain; the testimony of men placed under such
restraints cannot be too cautiously received. We have better sources of
knowledge. We have the testimony of ages, and the testimony of the
unchangeable principles of human nature. These assure us that slavery is
"evil, and evil continually."
I ought not to close this head, without acknowledging, (what I
cheerfully do,) that in many cases the kindness of masters does much for
the mitigation of slavery. Could it be rendered harmless, the efforts of
many would not be spared to make it so. It is evil, not through any
singular corruption in the slaveholder, but from its own nature, and in
spite of all efforts to make it a good. It is evil, not because it
exists on this or that spot. Were it planted at the North, it would
become a greater curse, more hardening and depraving, than it now proves
under a milder sky. It is not of the particular form of slavery in this
country that I complain. I am willing to allow that it is here
comparatively mild; that on many plantations no abuses exist but such as
are inseparable from its very nature. The mischief lies in its very
nature. "Men do not gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles." An
institution so founded in wrong, so imbued with injustice, cannot be
made a good. It cannot like other institutions be perpetuated by being
improved. To improve it, is to prepare the way for its subversion. Every
melioration of the slave's lot is a step toward freedom. Slavery is thus
radically, essentially evil. Every good man should earnestly pray and
use every virtuous influence, that an institution so blighting to human
nature may be brought to an end.