Volume I Part 11 (2/2)

Were Canaan's posterity to endure the entailment of its disabilities and woes, until the end of time? Was Divine mercy never to stay the desolating waves of this curse? Was their harsh and angry roar to reach, even into the gospel dispensation, and to mingle discordantly with the songs of ”peace on earth and good will to men?” Was the captivity of Canaan's race to be even stronger than He, who came ”to bind up the broken-hearted, and proclaim liberty to the captives?” But who were Canaan and his descendants? You speak of them, and with singular unfairness, I think, as ”_the_ posterity of Ham, from whom, it is supposed, sprang the Africans.” They were, it is true, a part of Ham's posterity; but to call them ”_the_ posterity of Ham,” is to speak as though he had no other child than Canaan. The fifteenth to nineteenth verses of the tenth chapter of Genesis teach us, beyond all question, that Canaan's descendants inhabited the land of Canaan and adjacent territory, and that this land is identical with the country afterwards occupied by the Jews, and known, in modern times, by the name of Palestine, or the Holy Land. Therefore, however true it may be, that a portion of Ham's posterity settled in Africa, we not only have no evidence that it was the portion cursed, but we have conclusive evidence that it was not.

But, was it a state of slavery to which Canaanites were doomed? I will suppose, for a moment, that it was: and, then, how does it appear right to enslave them? The curse in question is prophecy. Now prophecy does not say what ought to come to pa.s.s: nor does it say, that they who have an agency in the production of the foretold event, will be innocent in that agency. If the prediction of an event justifies those who are instrumental in producing it, then was Judas innocent in betraying our Saviour. ”It must needs be that offences come, but wo to that man by whom the offence cometh.” Prophecy simply tells what will come to pa.s.s.

The question, whether it was proper to enslave Canaanites, depends for its solution not on the curse or prophecy in question. If the measure were in conformity with the general morality of the Bible, then it was proper. Was it in conformity with it? It was not. The justice, equity and mercy which were, agreeable to the Divine command, to characterize the dealings of the Jews with each other, are in such conformity, and these are all violated by slavery. If those dealings were all based on the general morality of the Bible, as they certainly were, then slavery, which, in its moral character, is completely opposite to them, cannot rest on that morality. If that morality did not permit the Jews to enslave Canaanites, how came they to enslave them? You will say, that they had special authority from G.o.d to do so, in the words, ”Both thy bondmen and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are around about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids.” Well, I will admit that G.o.d did in one instance, and that He may have done so in others, give special authority to the Jews to do that, which, without such authority, would have been palpably and grossly immoral. He required them to exterminate some of the tribes of the Canaanites. He may have required them to bring other Heathens under a form of servitude violative of the general morality of his word.--Of course, no blame attaches to the execution of such commands. When He specially deputes us to kill for Him, we are as innocent in the agency, notwithstanding the general law, ”thou shalt not kill,” as is the earthquake or thunderbolt, when commissioned to destroy. Samuel was as innocent in hewing ”Agag in pieces,” as is the tree that falls upon the traveler. It may be remarked, in this connexion, that the fact that G.o.d gave a special statute to destroy some of the tribes of the Canaanites, argues the contrariety of the thing required to the morality of the Bible. It argues, that this morality would not have secured the accomplishment of what was required by the statute. Indeed, it is probable that it was, sometimes, under the influence of the tenderness and mercy inculcated by this morality, that the Jews were guilty of going counter to the special statute in question, and sparing the devoted Canaanites, as in the instance when they ”spared Agag.” We might reason, similarly to show that a special statute, if indeed there were such a one, authorizing the Jews to compel the Heathen to serve them, argues that compulsory service is contrary to fundamental morality. We will suppose that G.o.d did; in the special statute referred to, clothe the Jews with power to enslave Heathens, and now let me ask you, whether it is by this same statute to enslave, that you justify your neighbors and yourself for enslaving your fellow men? But this is a special statute, conferring a power on the Jews only--a power too, not to enslave whomsoever they could; but only a specified portion of the human family, and this portion, as we have seen, of a stock, other than that from which you have obtained your slaves. If the special statutes, by which G.o.d clothed the Jews with peculiar powers, may be construed to clothe you with similar powers, then, inasmuch as they were authorized and required to kill Canaanites, you may hunt up for destruction the straggling descendants of such of the devoted ones, as escaped the sword of the Jews. Or, to make a different interpretation of your rights, under this supposition; since the statute in question authorized and required the Jews to kill the heathen, within the borders of what was properly the Jews' country, then you are also authorized and required to kill the heathens within the limits of your country:--and these are not wanting, if the testimony of your ecclesiastical bodies, before referred to, can be relied on; and, if it be as they say, that the millions of the poor colored brethren in the midst of you are made heathens by the operation of the system, to which, with unparalleled wickedness, they are subjected.

If then, neither Noah's curse, nor the special statute in question, authorize you to enslave your fellow men, there is, probably, but one ground on which you will contend for authority to do so--and this is the ground of the general morality of the Christian religion--of the general principles of right and duty, in the word of G.o.d. Do you find your authority on this ground? If you do, then, manifestly, you have a right to enslave me, and I a right to enslave you, and every man has a right to enslave whomsoever he can;--a right as perfect, as is the right to do good to one another. Indeed, the enslavement of each other would, under this construction of duty, _be_ the doing of good to one another. Think you, sir, that the universal exercise of this right would promote the fulfilment of the ”new commandment that ye love one another?” Think you, it would be the harbinger of millenial peace and blessedness? Or, think you not, rather, that it would fully and frightfully realize the prophet's declaration: ”They all lie in wait for blood: they hunt every man his neighbor with a net.”

If any people have a right to enslave their fellow men, it must be the Jews, if they once had it. But if they ever had it, it ceased, when all their peculiar rights ceased. In respect to rights from the Most High, they are now on the same footing with other races of men. When ”the vail of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom,” then that distinction from the Gentile, in which the Jew had gloried, ceased, and the part.i.tion wall between them was prostrate for ever. The Jew, as well as the Gentile, was never more to depart from the general morality of the Bible. He was never again to be under any special statutes, whose requirements should bring him into collision with that morality: He was no more to confine his sympathies and friends.h.i.+ps within the narrow range of the twelve tribes: but every son and daughter of Adam were thenceforth ent.i.tled to claim from him the heart and hand of a brother.

”Under the glorious dispensation of the gospel,” says the immortal Granville Sharp, ”we are absolutely bound to consider ourselves as citizens of the world; every man whatever, without any partial distinction of nation, distance, or complexion, must necessarily be esteemed our neighbor and our brother; and we are absolutely bound, in Christian duty, to entertain a disposition towards all mankind, as charitable and benevolent, at least, as that which was required of the Jews under the law towards their brethren; and, consequently, it is absolutely unlawful for those who call themselves Christians, to exact of their brethren (I mean their brethren of the universe) a more burthensome service, than that to which the Jews were limited with respect to their brethren of the house of Israel; and the slavery or involuntary bondage of a brother Israelite was absolutely forbid.”

It occurs to me, that after all which has been said to satisfy you, that compulsory servitude, if such there were among the Jews, cannot properly be pleaded in justification of yours; a question may still be floating in your mind whether, if G.o.d directed his chosen people to enslave the Heathen, slavery should not be regarded as a good system of servitude?

Just as pertinently may you ask, whether that is not a good system of servitude, which is found in some of our state prisons. Punishment probably--certainly not labor--is the leading object in the one case as well as the other: and the labor of the bondman in the one, as well as of the convict in the other, const.i.tutes but a subordinate consideration. To suppose that G.o.d would, with every consideration out of view, but that of having the best relation of employer and laborer, make choice of slavery--to suppose that He believes that this state of servitude operates most beneficially, both for the master and the servant--is a high impeachment of the Divine wisdom and goodness. But thus guilty are you, if you are unwilling to believe, that, if He chose the severe servitude in question, He chose it for the punishment of his enemies, or from some consideration, other than its suitableness for the ordinary purposes of the relation of master and servant.

But it has been for the sake of argument only, that I have admitted that G.o.d authorized the Jews to enslave the heathen. I now totally deny that He did so. You will, of course, consent that if He did so, it was in a special statute, as was the case when He authorized them to exterminate other heathen: and you will as readily consent that He enacted the statutes, in both instances, with the view of punis.h.i.+ng his enemies.

Now, in killing the Canaanites, the Jew was const.i.tuted, not the owner of his devoted fellow man, but simply the executioner of G.o.d's vengeance: and evidently, such and no other was his character when he was reducing the Canaanite to involuntary servitude--that he did so reduce him, and was commissioned by G.o.d to do so, is the supposition we make for the sake of argument. Had the Jews been authorized by G.o.d to shut up in dungeons for life those of the heathen, whom they were directed to have for bondmen and bondmaids, you would not claim, that they, any more than sheriffs and jailers in our day, are to be considered in the light of owners of the persons in their charge. Much less then, can the Jews be considered as the owners of any person whom they held in servitude: for, however severe the type of that servitude, the liberty of its subject was not restricted, as was that of the prisoners in question:--most certainly, the power a.s.serted over him is not to be compared in extent with that a.s.serted by the Jew over the Canaanite, whom he slew;--a case in which he was, indisputably, but the executioner of the Divine wrath. The Canaanite, whether devoted to a violent death or to an involuntary servitude, still remained the property of G.o.d: and G.o.d no more gave him up to be the property of the executioner of his wrath, than the people of the State of New York give up the offender against public justice to be the property of the ministers of that justice. G.o.d never suspends the accountability of his rational creatures to himself: and his rights to them, He never transfers to others. He could not do so consistently with his attributes, and his indissoluble relations to man. But slavery claims, that its subjects are the property of man. It claims to turn them into mere chattels, and to make them as void of responsibility to G.o.d, as other chattels. Slavery, in a word, claims to push from his throne the Supreme Being, who declares, ”all souls are mine.” That it does not succeed in getting its victim out of G.o.d's hand, and in unmanning and _chattelizing_ him--that G.o.d's hold upon him remains unbroken, and that those upward tendencies of the soul, which distinguish man from the brute, are not yet entirely crushed in him--is no evidence in favor of its nature:--it simply proves, that its power is not equal to its purposes. We see, then, that the Jews--if it be true that they reduced their fellow men to involuntary servitude, and did so as the Heaven-appointed ministers of G.o.d's justice,--are not to be charged with slaveholding for it. There may be involuntary servitude where there is no slavery. The essential and distinguis.h.i.+ng feature of slavery is its reduction of man to property--to a thing. A tenant of one of our state prisons is under a sentence of ”hard labor for life.” But he is not a slave. That is, he is not the _thing_ which slavery would mark its subject. He is still a man. Offended justice has placed him in his present circ.u.mstances, because he is a man: and, it is because he is a _man_ and not a _thing_--a responsible, and not an irresponsible being, that he must continue in his present trials and sufferings.

G.o.d's commandments to the Jews, respecting servants and strangers, show that He not only did not authorize them to set up the claim of property in their fellow men, but that He most carefully guarded against such exercises of power, as might lead to the a.s.sumption of a claim so wrongful to Himself. Some of these commandments I will bring to your notice. They show that whatever was the form of servitude under which G.o.d allowed the Jews to hold the heathen, it was not slavery. Indeed, if all of the Word of G.o.d which bears on this point were cited and duly explained, it would, perhaps, appear that He allowed no involuntary servitude whatever amongst the Jews. I give no opinion whether he allowed it or not. There are strong arguments which go to show, that He did not allow it; and with these arguments the public will soon be made more extensively acquainted. It is understood, that the next number of the Anti-Slavery Examiner will be filled with them.

1st. So galling are the bonds of Southern slavery, that it could not live a year under the operation of a law forbidding the restoration of fugitive servants to their masters. How few of the discontented subjects of this oppressive servitude would agree with Hamlet, that it is better to

--”bear those ills we have, Than fly to others that we know not of.”

What a running there would be from the slave States to the free!--from one slave State to another!--from one plantation to another! Now, such a law--a solemn commandment of G.o.d--many writers on slavery are of the opinion, perhaps too confident opinion, was in force in the Jewish nation (Deut. xxiii, 15); and yet the system of servitude on which it bore, and which you cite as the pattern and authority for your own, lived in spite of it. How could it? Manifestly, because its genius was wholly unlike that of Southern slavery; and because its rigors and wrongs, if rigors and wrongs there were in it, bear no comparison to those which characterize Southern slavery; and which would impel nine-tenths of its adult subjects to fly from their homes, did they but know that they would not be obliged to return to them. When Southern slaveholders shall cease to scour the land for fugitive servants, and to hunt them with guns and dogs, and to imprison, and scourge, and kill them;--when, in a word, they shall subject to the bearing of such a law as that referred to their system of servitude, then we shall begin to think that they are sincere in likening it to the systems which existed among the Jews. The law, enacted in Virginia in 1705, authorizing any two justices of the peace ”by proclamation to _outlaw_ runaways, who might thereafter be killed and destroyed by any person whatsoever, by such ways and means as he might think fit, without accusation or impeachment of any crime for so doing,” besides that it justifies what I have just said about hunting fugitive servants, shows, 1st. That the American Anti-Slavery Society is of too recent an origin to be the occasion, as slaveholders and their apologists would have us believe, of all the cruel laws enacted at the South. 2d. That Southern slaveholders would be very unwilling to have their system come under the operation of such a law as that which allowed the Jewish servant to change his master. 3d. That they are monsters, indeed, into which men may be turned by their possession of absolute power.

You, perhaps, suppose, (and I frankly admit to you, that there is some room for the supposition,) that the servants referred to in the 15th and 16th verses of the 23d chapter of Deuteronomy, were such as had escaped from foreign countries to the country of the Jews. But, would this view of the matter help you? By taking it, would you not expose yourself to be most pertinently and embarra.s.singly asked, for what purpose these servants fled to a strange and most odious people?--and would not your candid reply necessarily be, that it was to escape from the galling chains of slavery, to a far-famed milder type of servitude?--from Gentile oppression, to a land in which human rights were protected by Divine laws? But, as I have previously intimated, I have not the strongest confidence in the anti-slavery argument, so frequently drawn from this pa.s.sage of the Bible. I am not sure that a Jewish servant is referred to: nor that on the supposition of his being a foreigner, the servant came under any form of servitude when entering the land of the Jews. Before leaving the topic, however, let me remark, that the pa.s.sage, under any construction of it, makes against Southern slavery.

Admit that the fugitive servant was a foreigner, and that he was not reduced to servitude on coming among the Jews, let me ask you whether the law in question, under this view of it, would be tolerated by the spirit of Southern slavery?--and whether, before obedience would be rendered to it, you would not need to have a different type of servitude, in the place of slavery? You would--I know you would--for you have been put to the trial. When, by a happy providence, a vessel was driven, the last year, to a West India island, and the chains of the poor slaves with which it was filled fell from around them, under freedom's magic power, the exasperated South was ready to go to war with Great Britain. _Then_, the law against delivering up foreign servants to their masters was not relished by you. The given case comes most strikingly within the supposed policy of this law. The Gentile was to be permitted to remain in the land to which he had fled, and where he would have advantages for becoming acquainted with the G.o.d of the Bible. Such advantages are they enjoying who escaped from the confessed heathenism of Southern slavery to the island in question. They are now taught to read that ”Book of life,” which before, they were forbidden to read. But again, suppose a slave were to escape from a West India island into the Southern States--would you, with your ”domestic inst.i.tutions,” of which you are so jealous, render obedience to this Divine law? No; you would subject him _for ever_ to a servitude more severe than that, from which he had escaped. Indeed, if a _freeman_ come within a certain portion of our Southern country, and be so unhappy as to bear a physical resemblance to the slave, he will be punished for that resemblance, by imprisonment, and even by a reduction to slavery.

2d. Southern slaveholders, who, by their laws, own men as absolutely as they own cattle, would have it believed, that Jewish masters thus owned their fellow-men. If they did, why was there so wide a difference between the commandment respecting the stray man, and that respecting the stray ox or a.s.s? The man was not, but the beasts were, to be returned; and that too, even though their owner was the enemy of him who met them. (Ex. 23. 4.) I repeat the question;--why this difference? The only answer is, because G.o.d made the brute to be the _property_ of man; but He never gave us our n.o.ble nature for such degradation. Man's t.i.tle deed, in the eighth Psalm, extends his right of property to the inanimate and brute creation only--not to the flesh and bones and spirit of his fellow-man.

3d. The very different penalties annexed to the crime of stealing a man, and to that of stealing a thing, shows the eternal and infinite difference which G.o.d has established between a man and property. The stealing of a man was _surely_ to be punished with death; whilst mere property was allowed to atone for the offence of stealing property.

4th. Who, if not the slave, can be said to be vexed and oppressed! But G.o.d's command to his people was, that they should neither ”vex a stranger, nor oppress him.”

5th. Such is the nature of American slavery, that not even its warmest friends would claim that it could recover itself after such a ”year of jubilee” as G.o.d appointed. One such general delivery of its victims would be for ever fatal to it. I am aware that you deny that all the servants of the Jews shared in the blessings of the ”year of jubilee.”

But let me ask you, whether if one third or one half of your servants were discharged from servitude every fiftieth year--and still more, whether if a considerable proportion of them were thus discharged every sixth year--the remainder would not be fearfully discontented? Southern masters believe, that their only safety consists in keeping down the discontent of their servants. Hence their anxious care to withhold from them the knowledge of human rights. Hence the abolitionist who is caught in a slave state, must be whipped or put to death. If there were a cla.s.s of servants amongst the Jews, who could bear to see all their fellow servants go free, whilst they themselves were retained in bondage, then that bondage was of a kind very different from what you suppose it to have been. Had its subjects worn the galling chains of American slavery, they would have struggled with b.l.o.o.d.y desperation for the deliverance which they saw accorded to others.

I scarcely need say, that the Hebrew words rendered ”bondmen” and ”bondmaids,” do not, in themselves considered, and independently of the connexion in which they are used, any more than the Greek words _doulos_ and _doule_, denote a particular kind of servant. If the servant was a slave, because he was called by the Hebrew word rendered ”bondman,” then was Jacob a slave also:--and even still greater absurdities could be deduced from the position.

I promised, in a former part of this communication, to give you my reasons for denying that you are at liberty to plead in behalf of slavery, the example of any compulsory servitude in which Jews may have held foreigners. My promise is now fulfilled, and I trust that the reasons are such as not to admit of an answer.

Driven, as you now are, from every other conceivable defence of slaveholding it may be (though I must hope better things of you), that you will fly to the ground taken by the wicked mult.i.tude--that there is authority in the laws of man for being a slaveholder. But, not only is the sin of your holding slaves undiminished by the consideration, that they are held under human laws; but, your claiming to hold them under such laws, makes you guilty of an additional sin, which, if measured by its pernicious consequences to others, is by no means inconsiderable.

The truth of these two positions is apparent from the following considerations.

1st. There is no valid excuse to be found, either in man's laws or any where else, for transgressing G.o.d's laws. Whatever may be thought, or said to the contrary, it still remains, and for ever will remain true, that under all circ.u.mstances, ”sin is the transgression of the (Divine) law.”

2d. In every instance in which a commandment of G.o.d is transgressed, under the cover and plea of a human law, purporting to permit what that commandment forbids, there is, in proportion to the authority and influence of the transgressor, a fresh sanction imparted to that law; and consequently, in the same proportion the public habit of setting up a false standard of right and wrong is promoted. It is this habit--this habit of graduating our morality by the laws of the land in which we live--that makes the ”mischief framed by a law” so much more pernicious than that which has no law to countenance it, and to commend it to the conscience. Who is unaware, that nothing tends so powerfully to keep the traffic in strong drink from becoming universally odious, as the fact, that this body and soul destroying business finds a sanction in human laws? Who has not seen the man, authorized by these laws to distribute the poison amongst his tippling neighbors, proof against all the shafts of truth, under the self-pleasing and self-satisfying consideration, that his is a lawful business.

This habit of setting up man's law, instead of G.o.d's law, as the standard of conduct, is strikingly manifested in the fact, that on the ground, that the Federal Const.i.tution binds the citizens of the United States to perpetuate slavery, or at least, not to meddle with it, we are, both at the North and the South, called on to forbear from all efforts to abolish it. The exertions made to discover in that instrument, authority for slavery, and authority against endeavors to abolish it, are as great, anxious, and unwearied, as if they who made them, thought that the fortunate discovery would settle for ever the great question which agitates our country--would nullify all the laws of G.o.d against slavery--and make the oppression of our colored brethren, as long as time shall last, justifiable and praiseworthy. But this discovery will never be made; for the Const.i.tution is not on the side of the slaveholder. If it were, however, it would clothe him with no moral right to act in opposition to the paramount law of G.o.d. It is not at all necessary to the support of my views, in this communication, to show that the Const.i.tution was not designed to favor slavery; and yet, a few words to this end may not be out of place.

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