In reflection upon the leading ideas that present themselves in the
review of the subjects of this study, we may notice that slavery has
been introduced to the world as a mercy in favour of life. That, in its
operation, its general tendency is to place the weak, deteriorated, and
degraded under the control and government of a wisdom superior to their
own; from whence the intellectual, moral, and physical improvement of
the enslaved, to some extent, is a consequence as certain as that cause
produces its effect.
The world never has, nor will it ever witness a case where the moral,
intellectual, and physical superior has been in slavery, as a fixed
state, to an inferior race or grade of human life. The law giving
superior rule and government to the moral, intellectual, and physical
superior is as unchangeable as the law of gravitation. No seeming
exception can be imagined which does not lend proof of the existence of
such law. The human intellect can make no distinction between the
establisher of such law and the author and establisher of all other laws
which we perceive to be established and in operation, and which we
attribute to God. No one has ever yet denied that obedience to the laws
of God effects and produces mental and physical benefits to the
obedient, or that their disregard and contempt are necessarily followed
by a deterioration of the condition of the disobedient; nor can any one
deny that the neglect of obedience to the laws of God, which, in its
product, yields to the disobedient mental and physical deterioration, or
any one of them, is sin,—and in proportion to its magnitude, so will be
its consequent degradation. To be degraded is sin, because the law is
improve. No one will pretend that the relation of master and slave is
not often attended with sin on the part of the master, on the account of
his disobedience to the law of God in his government of his slave; or on
the part of the slave, on the account of his disobedience to the same
law in his conduct towards his master. Therefore, such master is not as
much benefited, not the slave as much improved by the relation, as would
otherwise be the case. It is therefore incumbent on the master to search
out and exclude all such abuses from the intercourse and reciprocal
duties between him and his slave. Placed upon him is the responsible
charge of governing both himself and his slave. The responsibility of
the master in this respect is of the same order as that of a guardian
and that of a parent.
The want of a less affectionate regard in the master towards the slave
is supplied and secured to the safety of the slave by the increased
watchfulness of the master over the slave from the consideration that
the slave is his property. For where affection cannot be supposed
sufficiently strong to stimulate a calm and wise action, interest steps
in to produce the effect.
That every mind will see and comprehend these truths, where prejudice
and education are in contradiction, is not to be expected. The
influences of a false philosophy on the mind, like stains of crime on
the character, are often of difficult removal. Some forbearance towards
those who honestly entertain opposing ideas on this subject, can never
disgrace the Christian character,—and we think it particularly the duty
of the men of the South, towards the men, women, and children of the
Northern States, especially of the unlearned classes. For even among
ourselves of the South, we sometimes hear the announcement of doctrines
that declare all the most rabid fanatic at the North need claim, on the
subject of immediate abolition. We refer to and quote from Walker’s
Reports of Cases adjudged in the Supreme Court of Mississippi, at the
June term, 1818, page 42: “Slavery is condemned by reason and the laws
of nature.” This false and suicidal assertion, most unnecessarily and
irrelevantly introduced, still stands on the records of the Supreme
Court of that State, and is an epitaph of the incapacity and stupidity
of him who wrote it and engraved it on this monument of Southern
heedlessness. We were at first surprised at the silence of the reporter,
but, at that day, any criticism by that officer would have been
contempt. Yet we may infer that the ingenious and talented gentleman
contrived to express his most expunging reprobation, by wholly omitting
all allusion to the point in his syllabus of the case.
If in the course of these Studies we shall not have shown that slavery
as it exists in the world is commanded by “reason” and the laws of
“nature,” we shall have laboured in vain; and even now an array of
battle is formed, and our enemy has chosen human “reason” for the “bolt
of Jove,” as wrought from strands of Northern colds, Southern heats, and
Eastern winds; in their centre, bound by cloudy fears and avenging
fires; for their ægis, “_the laws of nature_” supply Minerva’s shield,
upon which fanaticism has already inscribed its government over thirty
States, far exceeding in purity, they think, that of the God of Israel.
And we have come up to the war!—armed neither with the rod of Hermes nor
the arrows of Latona’s son; but with a word from him of Bethlehem:
“Sanctify them through thy truth; thy word is truth.”
------------------------------------
Study V.
------------------