marrying a slave, becomes a slave for life, except mulattoes born of
white women.
DELAWARE.--_Laws._--More than six men slaves, meeting together, not
belonging to one master, unless on lawful business of their owners, may
be whipped to the extent of twenty-one lashes each.--p. 104.
UNITED STATES.--_Constitution._--The chief pro-slavery provisions of
the constitution, as is generally known, are, 1st, that by virtue of
which the slave states are represented in congress for three-fifths
of their slaves;[7] 2nd, that requiring the giving up of any runaway
slaves to their masters; 3rd, that pledging the physical force of
the whole country to suppress insurrections, i. e., attempts to gain
freedom by such means as the framers of the instrument themselves used.
Act of Feb. 12, 1793--Provides that any master or his agent may seize
any person whom he claims as a "fugitive from service," and take
him before a judge of the U. S. court, or magistrate of the city or
county where he is taken, and the magistrate, on proof, in support of
the claim, to his satisfaction, must give the claimant a certificate
authorizing the removal of such fugitive to the state he fled from.[8]
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA.--The act of congress incorporating Washington
city, gives the corporation power to prescribe the terms and conditions
on which free negroes and mulattoes may reside in the city. _City
Laws_, 6 and 11. By this authority, the city in 1827 enacted that any
free colored person coming there to reside, should give the mayor
satisfactory evidence of his freedom, and enter into bond with two
freehold sureties, in the sum of five hundred dollars, for his good
conduct, to be renewed each year for three years; or failing to do so,
must leave the city, or be committed to the workhouse, for not more
than one year, and if he still refuse to go, may be again committed for
the same period, and so on.--_Ib._ 198.
Colored persons residing in the city, who cannot prove their title to
freedom, shall be imprisoned as absconding slaves.--_Ib._ 198.
Colored persons found without free papers may be arrested as runaway
slaves, and after two months' notice, if no claimant appears, must be
advertised ten days, and sold to pay their jail fees.[9]--_Stroud_, 85,
note.
The city of Washington grants a license to _trade in slaves_, for
profit, as agent, or otherwise, for four hundred dollars.--_City Laws_,
p. 249.
Reader, you uphold these laws _while you do nothing for their repeal_.
You _can do_ much. You can take and read the anti-slavery journals.
They will give you an impartial history of the cause, and arguments
with which to convert its enemies. You can countenance and aid
those who are laboring for its promotion. You can petition against
slavery; you can refuse to vote for slaveholders or pro-slavery men,
constitutions and compacts; can abstain from products of slave labor;
and can use your social influence to spread right principles and awaken
a right feeling. Be as earnest for freedom as its foes are for slavery,
and you can diffuse an anti-slavery sentiment through your whole
neighborhood, and merit "the blessing of them that are ready to perish."
The following is from the old colonial law of North Carolina:
Notice of the commitment of runaways--viz., 1741, c. 24, § 29. "An act
concerning servants and slaves."
Copy of notice containing a full description of such runaway and his
clothing.--The sheriff is to "cause a copy of such notice to be sent
to the clerk or reader of each church or chapel within his county, who
are hereby required to make publication thereof by setting up the same
in some open and convenient place, near the said church or chapel, on
every Lord's day, during the space of two months from the date thereof."
1741, c. 24, § 45.--"Which proclamation shall be published on a Sabbath
day at the door of every church or chapel, or, for want of such, at the
place where divine service shall be performed in the said county, by
the parish clerk or reader, immediately after divine service; and if
any slave or slaves, against whom proclamation hath been thus issued,
stay out and do not immediately return home, it shall be lawful for any
person or persons whatsoever to kill and destroy such slave or slaves
by such way or means as he or she shall think fit, without accusation
or impeachment of any crime for the same."
It is well known that slavery makes labor disreputable in the slave
states. Laboring men of the north, hear how contemptibly slaveholders
speak of you.
Mr. Robert Wickliffe of Kentucky, in a speech published in the
Louisville Advertiser, in opposition to those who were averse to the
importation of slaves from the states, thus discourseth:
"Gentlemen wanted to drive out the black population that they may
obtain WHITE NEGROES in their place. WHITE NEGROES have this advantage
over black negroes, they can be converted into voters; and the men
who live upon the sweat of their brow, and pay them but a dependent
and scanty subsistence, can, if able to keep ten thousand of them in
employment, come up to the polls and change the destiny of the country.
"How improved will be our condition when we have such white negroes as
perform the servile labors of Europe, of old England, and he would add
now of _New England_, when our body servants and our cart drivers, and
our street sweepers, are _white negroes_ instead of black. Where will
be the independence, the proud spirit, and chivalry of the Kentuckians
then?"
"We believe the servitude which prevails in the south far preferable
to that of the _north_, or in Europe. Slavery will exist in all
communities. There is a class which may be nominally free, but they
will be virtually _slaves_."--_Mississippian, July 6th, 1838._
"Those who depend on their daily labor for their daily subsistence can
never enter into political affairs, they never do, never will, never
can."--_B. W. Leigh in Virginia Convention, 1829._
"All society settles down into a classification of capitalists and
laborers. The former will _own_ the latter, either collectively through
the government, or individually in a state of domestic servitude as
exists in the southern states of this confederacy. If LABORERS
ever obtain the political power of a country, it is in fact in a state
of REVOLUTION. The capitalists north of Mason and Dixon's
line have precisely the same interest in the labor of the country
that the capitalists of England have in their labor. Hence it is,
that they must have a strong federal government (!) _to control_ the
labor of the nation. But it is precisely the reverse with us. We
have already not only a right to the proceeds of our laborers, but
we OWN a _class of laborers_ themselves. But let me say to
gentlemen who represent the great class of capitalists in the north,
beware that you do not drive us into a separate system, for if you do,
as certain as the decrees of heaven, you will be compelled to _appeal
to the sword to maintain yourselves at home_. It may not come in your
day; but your children's children will be covered with the blood of
domestic factions, and _a plundering mob contending for power and
conquest_."--_Mr. Pickens, of South Carolina, in Congress, 21st Jan.,
1836._
"In the very nature of things there must be classes of persons to
discharge all the different offices of society from the highest to the
lowest. Some of these offices are regarded as _degraded_, although
they must and will be performed. Hence those manifest forms of
dependent servitude which produce a sense of superiority in the masters
or employers, and of inferiority on the part of the servants. Where
these offices are performed by _members of the political community_, a
DANGEROUS ELEMENT is obviously introduced into the body politic. Hence
the alarming tendency to violate the rights of property by agrarian
legislation which is beginning to be manifest in the older states where
UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE _prevails without_ DOMESTIC SLAVERY.
"In a word, the institution of domestic slavery supersedes the
_necessity_ of AN ORDER OF NOBILITY AND ALL THE OTHER APPENDAGES OF
A HEREDITARY SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT."--_Gov. M'Duffie's Message to
the South Carolina Legislature, 1836._
"We of the south have cause now, and shall soon have greater, to
congratulate ourselves on the existence of a population among us which
excludes the POPULACE which in effect rules some of our
northern neighbors, and is rapidly gaining strength wherever slavery
does not exist--a populace made up of the dregs of Europe, and the most
worthless portion of the native population."--_Richmond Whig, 1837._
"Would you do a benefit to the horse or the ox by giving him a
cultivated understanding, a fine feeling! So far as the MERE
LABORER has the pride, the knowledge or the aspiration of a
freeman, he is unfitted for his situation. If there are sordid,
servile, _laborious_ offices to be performed, is it not better that
there should be sordid, servile, laborious beings to perform them?
"Odium has been cast upon our legislation on account of its forbidding
the elements of education being communicated to slaves. But in truth
what injury is done them by this? _He who works during the day with his
hands_, does not read in the intervals of leisure for his amusement
or the improvement of his mind, or the exception is so very rare as
scarcely to need the being provided for."--_Chancellor Harper, of
South Carolina._--_Southern Lit. Messenger._
"Our slave population is decidedly preferable, as an orderly and
laboring class, to a northern laboring class, that have just learning
enough to make them wondrous wise, and make them the most dangerous
class to well regulated liberty under the sun."--_Richmond (Virginia)
Enquirer._
FOOTNOTES:
[1] In accordance with this doctrine, an act of Maryland, 1798,
enumerates among articles of property, "_slaves, working beasts,
animals of any kind, stock, furniture, plate, and so forth_."--_Ib._ 23.
[2] A slave is not admonished for incontinence, punished for adultery,
nor prosecuted for bigamy.--_Attorney General of Maryland, Md. Rep.
Vol. I._ 561.
[3] The legal meaning of assault is to _offer_ to do personal violence.
[4] A court for the trial of slaves consists of one justice of the
peace, and three freeholders, and the justice and one freeholder,
i. e., _one half the court, may convict, though the other two are for
acquittal_.--_Martin's Dig., I._ 646.
[5] A slave may be out-lawed when he runs away, conceals himself,
and, to sustain life, kills a hog, or any animal of the cattle
kind.--_Haywood's Manual_, p. 521.
[6] In South Carolina, _any_ person may seize such freed man and keep
him as his property.
[7] By the operation of this provision, twelve slaveholding states,
whose white population only equals that of New York and Ohio, send to
congress 24 senators and 102 representatives, while these two states
only send 4 senators and 59 representatives.
[8] Thus it may be seen that a _man_ may be doomed to slavery by an
authority not considered sufficient to settle a claim of _twenty
dollars_.
[9] The prisons of the district, built with the money of the nation,
are used as store-houses of the slaveholder's human merchandize. "From
the statement of the keeper of a jail at Washington, it appears that
in five years, upwards of 450 colored persons were committed to the
national prison in that city, for safekeeping, i. e., until they could
be disposed of in the course of the _slave trade_, besides nearly 300
who had been taken up as runaways."--_Miner's Speech in H. Rep._, 1829.