Dr. Channing continues his view of the evils of slavery, and says, p.
80, 81—
“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 man than the love of gain, is next
to inevitable. Accordingly, in such a community, the reins are given to
youthful licentiousness. Youth, everywhere in peril, 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 amid such habits, such temptations, such
facilities to vice as are involved in slavery, needs no exposition. So
sure and terrible is retribution even in this life! Domestic happiness
is not blighted in the slave’s hut alone. The master’s infidelity sheds
a blight over his own domestic affections and joys. Home, without purity
and constancy, is spoiled of its holiest charm and most blessed
influences. I need not say, after the preceding explanations, that this
corruption is far from being universal. Still, 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 connections,
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 been 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 sells them to undergo the miseries of a 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 to 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.”
The owner of slaves who acts in conformity to the foregoing picture, to
our mind displays proofs of very great debasement, and his offspring,
stained with the blood of Ham, we should deem most likely to be quite
fit subjects of slavery: we cannot therefore regret that the laws do not
punish nor restrain him from selling them as slaves; we should rather
regret that the laws did not compel him to go with them.
That there are instances in the Slave States where the owner of female
slaves cohabits with them, and has offspring by them, is true. There may
be instances where such parent has sold them into slavery,—they, in law,
being his slaves; yet we aver we have never known an instance in which
it has been done. That such offspring have been sold as slaves, by the
operation of law, must certainly be acknowledged; and that such
instances have been more frequent since the action of the abolitionists
has aroused the Slave States to a sense of their danger, and thereby
caused the laws to be more stringent on the subject of emancipation, is
also true. And are you, ye agitators of the slave question, willing to
acknowledge this fact? And that your conduct—even you yourselves—are
even now the cause, under God, of the present condition of slavery,
which many such persons now endure? Is not he who places the obstruction
on the highway, whereby the traveller is plunged in death, the guilty
one? In what light, think ye, must this class of slaves view you and
your conduct? But we wish not to upbraid you. If you are ignorant, words
are useless. If you are honest men and know the truth, we prefer to
leave you in the hands of God and your own conscience.
We hold that cohabitation with the blacks, on the part of the whites, is
a great sin, and is proof of a great moral debasement; nor will we say
but that the conservative influences of God’s providence may have moved
the abolitionists to the action of for ever placing a bar to the
emancipation of this class of slaves, such coloured offspring, in order
that the enormity of the sin of such cohabitation may be brought home,
in a more lively sense, to the minds of their debased parents.
“I saw the Lord sitting upon his throne, and the host of heaven standing
on his right hand and on his left.
“And the Lord said, Who will entice Ahab, king of Israel, that he may go
up and fall at Ramoth Gilead? And one spake after this manner, and
another saying after that manner.
“Then there came out a spirit, and stood before the Lord, and said, I
will entice him; and the Lord said unto him, Wherewith?
“And he said, I will go out and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all
his prophets. And the Lord said, Thou shalt entice him.” 2 _Chron._
xviii. 18–21; 1 _Kings_, xxii. 19.
We wish to state a fact which may not be generally known to the
disciples of Dr. Channing: we speak of Louisiana, where we live. Here is
a floating population, emigrants from all parts of the world, especially
from free countries and states, nearly or quite equal in number to the
native-born citizens who have been raised up and grown to maturity amid
slaves or as the owners of slaves. If the cohabitation complained of is
at all indicated by the mixed-blooded offspring, then the proof of this
cohabitation will be far overbalancing on the side of this floating
population.
But again, there are instances where an individual from this class, who
thus cohabits with some master’s slave, and has offspring, and,
succeeding in some business, buys her, probably with the intention of
emancipation; but, as he becomes a proprietor and fixed citizen,
procrastination steals upon him, and he finds himself enthralled by a
coloured family for life.
Let the number of these instances be compared with those where the
delinquents have been habituated, from the earliest youth, to the
incidents of slavery, and the former class is found to be entitled to
the same pre-eminence. From this class also there are instances where
the white man, so cohabiting with the slave whom he has purchased for
the purpose of emancipation, sends her and his offspring to some free
State, often to Cincinnati, the Moab of the South! “Let mine outcasts
dwell with thee, Moab.” _Isa._ xvi. 4.
Let such instances as this last named be contrasted with like instances
emanating from among the native-born, or those raised among slaves, and
the former class are still far in the majority. In short, the fact is
found to be, that those who have been born, raised, and educated among
them, and as the owners of slaves, are found more seldom to fall into
this cohabitation than those who are by chance among slaves, but had not
been educated from youth among them.
Far be it from us to recriminate. Our object alone, in presenting these
facts, is to show, to give proof, that slavery is not the cause of the
debasement which urges the white man on to cohabitation with the negro.
We will ask no questions as to the frequency of such intercourse in some
of the large Northern cities, in which blacks are numerous as well as
free, between them and the debased of the whites. What if we should be
told, in answer, if the charge were established, that such whites acted
from _conscience_, under a sense of the essential equality of the negro
with the white man, and under the religious teaching of the advocates of
amalgamation!
He who writes on and describes moral influences, must be expected to
view them as he has been in the habit of seeing them manifested. We
therefore regret exceedingly to see that Dr. Channing has made the
assertion that, “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.”
If this assertion is warranted by the moral condition of society as
displayed before him, may we not find in it a solution of the fact, that
those who have been reared up under all the influences of slavery on the
master, are far less frequently found to fall into the odious
cohabitation with the negro than are those who have not.
However, we have among us some very wicked and debased men, who own
slaves, and who have been born and educated in the midst of the
influences of the institution of slavery, and who yet cohabit with their
female negroes. But the moral sense of the community, from day to day
and from year to year, more and more distinctly gives reproof, more and
more emphatically points to such the finger of contempt and scorn, and
continues to increase in energy, expressing its loathing and abhorrence;
and all this is taking place under the influences of slavery on the
master. Do all these things give proof that slavery is the progenitor of
this debasement, or the reverse?
Dr. Channing was mistaken; his mind was in error: he substituted the
consequent for the cause.
We deem it useless to spend time or argument with those who will
pertinaciously deny and refuse to listen to facts, unless they shall be
in support of their previously conceived views or prejudices. We are
aware that the numerical proportion which we have ascribed to what we
call “a floating population” may seem incredible to those in other
countries, where the facts are quite different. Yet we are sure that
such estimate is within the truth.
Here, as everywhere else, the government, the legislative power of the
country, is in the hands of the permanent and more elevated and wealthy
classes; in the hands of slave-owners. Would such a class consent to
laws throwing difficulties in the way of emancipation, if the effect of
such laws were to be expended on their own offspring? To the more
elevated and cultivated class of community in any country (and here such
are all slave-owners) is to be ascribed the tone of moral feeling. Does
any man covet for himself the loathing and scorn of community?
The family of the slave-owner is taught to regard the negro as a race of
man radically inferior, in moral capacity, in mental power, and even in
physical ability, to the white man; that, although he is susceptible of
improvement in all these things, and even does improve in the state of
slavery to the white man, yet that it would require untold generations
to elevate him and his race to the present standing of the white races.
The child, the mere youth, and those of more experience, see proofs of
these facts in every comparison. The master feels them to be true, and
is taught, that, while he governs with compassion, forbearance, and
mercy, and as having regard to their improvement, any familiarity on
terms of equality, beyond that of command on his side, and obedience on
theirs, is, and must be, disgrace to him. He is taught to consider the
negro race, from some cause, to have deteriorated to such extent that
his safety and happiness demand the control of a superior; he regards
him as a man, entitled to receive the protection of such control; and
that he, like every other man, will be called to account unto God,
according to the talents God has given him. He is taught, by every
hour’s experience, to know that slavery to the negro is a blessing. He
is taught to feel it a duty to teach, as he would an inferior, the negro
his moral duty, his obligations to God, the religion of the Bible, the
gospel of Christ.
But the man born and educated in the Free States is taught that “he who
cannot see a _brother_, a child of God, a man possessing all the rights
of humanity, under a skin darker than his own, wants the vision of a
Christian.” _Channing_, vol. ii. p. 14. “To recognise as brethren those
who want all outward distinctions, is the chief way in which we are to
manifest the spirit of him who came to raise the fallen and save the
lost.” _Ibidem._
Vol. ii. pp. 20, 21, 22, he says—“Another argument against property (in
slaves) is to be found in the essential equality of men.” * * * “Nature
indeed pays no heed to birth or condition in bestowing her favours. The
noblest spirits sometimes grow up in the obscurest spheres. Thus equal
are men;—and among these equals, who can substantiate his claim to make
others his property, his tools, the mere instruments of his private
interest and gratification?” * * * “Is it sure that the slave, or the
slave’s child, may not surpass his master in intellectual energy, or in
moral worth? Has nature conferred distinctions, which tell us plainly
who shall be owners and who shall be owned? Who of us can unblushingly
lift up his head and say that God has written ‘master’ there? Or who can
show the word ‘slave’ engraven on his brother’s brow? The equality of
nature makes slavery a wrong.”
May we aid the disciples of Dr. Channing by referring them to _Prov._
xvii. 2, “A wise _servant_ (עֶֽבֶד _ebed_, _slave_) shall have rule over
a son that causeth shame, and shall have part of the inheritance among
the brethren?” And will the doctor and his disciples believe the proverb
any the more true, when we inform them that it is a matter of frequent
occurrence in slave-holding communities. Vol. v. p. 89, 90, he says—“But
we have not yet touched the great cause of the conflagration of the Hall
of Freedom. Something worse than fanaticism or separation of the Union
was the impulse to this violence. We are told that white people and
black sat together on the benches of the hall, and were even seen
walking together in the streets! This was the unheard-of atrocity which
the virtues of the people of Philadelphia could not endure. They might
have borne the dissolution of the national tie; but this junction of
black and white was too much for human patience to sustain. And has it
indeed come to this? For such a cause are mobs and fires to be let loose
on our persons and most costly buildings? What! Has not an American
citizen a right to sit and walk with whom he will? Is this common
privilege denied us? Is society authorized to choose our associates?
Must our neighbour’s tastes as to friendship and companionship control
our own? Have the feudal times come back to us, when to break the law of
caste was a greater crime than to violate the laws of God? What must
Europe have thought, when the news crossed the ocean of the burning of
the Hall of Freedom, because white and coloured people walked together
in the streets?
“Europe might well open its eyes in wonder. On that continent, with all
its aristocracy, the coloured man mixes freely with his
fellow-creatures. He sometimes receives the countenance of the rich, and
has even found his way into the palaces of the great. In Europe, the
doctrine would be thought to be too absurd for refutation, that a
coloured man of pure morals and piety, of cultivated intellect and
refined manners, was not a fit companion for the best in the land. What
must Europe have said, when brought to understand that, in a republic,
founded on the principles of human rights and equality, people are
placed beyond the laws for treating the African as a man. This
Philadelphia doctrine deserves no mercy. What an insult is thrown on
human nature, in making it a heinous crime to sit or walk with a human
being, whoever it may be? It just occurs to me, that I have forgotten
the circumstance which filled to overflowing the cup of abolitionist
wickedness in Philadelphia. The great offence was this, that certain
young women of anti-slavery faith were seen to walk the streets with
coloured young men!”
Such are the lessons taught the youth as well as the aged of the Free
States, even by Dr. Channing himself. We now ask, under the teachings of
which school will the pupils be the best prepared for this cohabitation
with the negro?
The burning of the Hall of Freedom was, no doubt, a very great outrage,
well meriting severe condemnation. Yet we cannot but notice, that Dr.
Channing has nowhere, in all his works, said one word about the burning
of the Convent on Mount Benedict, by his own townsmen, the good people
of Boston.
We care not with what severity he punishes such outrages. But it is the
influence of his lesson in palliating the familiarity, and mitigating
the evil consequences of a coalition of the white man with the negro,
that we present to view. It is with grief that we find him infusing into
his disciples this nauseating, disgusting, moral poison; preparing their
minds to feel little or no shame in a cohabitation with the negro, so
degrading to the white man, and so disgraceful in all Slave States. Yea
further, what are we to think of the judgment, of the taste,—may we not
add, habits, of a man who could unblushingly publish to the world his
partiality to the negro of Jamaica, after his visit there, as follows:
“I saw too, on the plantation where I resided, a gracefulness and
dignity of form and motion, rare in my own native New England.” Vol. vi.
p. 51.
Again, page 52. “The African countenance seldom shows that coarse,
brutal sensuality which is so common in the face of the white man.”
May we be pardoned for feeling a strong desire,—rather, a curiosity,—to
be made acquainted with the faces of the white men with whom he was the
most familiar!
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