Volume II Part 78 (2/2)
I add, that we of the North must feel concerned about slavery in the slave states, because of our obligation to pity the deluded, hard-hearted, and b.l.o.o.d.y oppressors in those states: and to manifest our love for them by rebuking their unsurpa.s.sed sin. And, notwithstanding pro-slavery statesmen at the North, who wink at the iniquity of slave holding, and pro-slavery clergymen at the North, who cry, ”peace, peace”
to the slaveholder, and sew ”pillows to armholes,” tell us, that by our honest and open rebuke of the slaveholder, we shall incur his enduring hatred; we, nevertheless, believe that ”open rebuke is better than secret love,” and that, in the end, we shall enjoy more Southern favor than they, whose secret love is too prudent and spurious to deal faithfully with the objects of its regard. ”He that rebuketh a man, afterward shall find more favor than he that flattereth with the tongue.” The command, ”thou shall in any wise rebuke thy neighbor and not suffer sin upon him,” is one, which the abolitionist feels, that he is bound to obey, as well in the case of the slaveholder, as in that of any other sinner. And the question: ”who is my neighbor,” is so answered by the Savior, as to show, that not he of our vicinity, nor even he of our country, is alone our ”neighbor.”
The abolitionists of the North hold, that they have certainly as much ”just concern” with slavery in the slave states, as the temperance men of the North have with ”intemperance” at the South. And I would here remark, that the weapons with which the abolitionists of the North attack slavery in the slave states are the same, and no other than the same, with those, which the North employs against the vice of intemperance at the South. I add too, that were you to say, that northern temperance men disregard ”the deficiency of the powers of the General Government,” and also ”the acknowledged and incontestable powers of the states;” your charge would be as suitable as when it is applied to northern abolitionists.
You ascribe to us ”the purpose to manumit the three millions of negro slaves.” Here again you greatly misrepresent us, by holding us up as employing coercive, instead of persuasive, means for the accomplishment of our object. Our ”purpose” is to persuade others to ”manumit.” The slaveholders themselves are to ”manumit.” It is evident, that others cannot ”manumit” for them. If the North were endeavoring to persuade the South to give up the growing of cotton, you would not say, it is the purpose of the North to give it up. But, as well might you, as to say, that it is the ”purpose” of the abolitionists to ”manumit.” It is very much by such misrepresentations, that the prejudices against abolitionists are fed and sustained. How soon they would die of atrophy, if they, who influence the public mind and mould public opinion, would tell but the simple truth about abolitionists.
You say, that the abolitionists would have the slaves manumitted ”without compensation and without moral preparation.” I have already said enough on the point of ”compensation.” It is true, that they would have them manumitted immediately:--for they believe slavery is sin, and that therefore the slaveholder has no right to protract the bondage of his slaves for a single year, or for a single day or hour;--not even, were he to do so to afford them ”a moral preparation” for freedom, or to accomplish any other of the kindest and best purposes. They believe, that the relation of slaveholder, as it essentially and indispensably involves the reduction of men to chattels.h.i.+p, cannot, under any plea whatever, be continued with innocence, for a single moment. If it can be--if the plain laws of G.o.d, in respect to marriage and religious instruction and many other blessings, of which chattelized man is plundered, can be innocently violated--why credit any longer the a.s.sertion of the Bible, that ”sin is the transgression of the law?”--why not get a new definition of sin?
Another reason with abolitionists in favor of immediate manumission, is, that the slaves do not, as a body, acquire, whilst in slavery, any ”moral preparation” for freedom. To learn to swim we must be allowed the use of water. To learn the exercises of a freeman, we must enjoy he element of liberty. I will not say, that slaves cannot be taught, to some extent, the duties of freemen. Some knowledge of the art of swimming may be acquired before entering the water. I have not forgotten what you affirm about the ”progressive melioration in the condition of slaves,” and the opening of ”schools of instruction” for them ”prior to the agitation of the subject of abolition;” nor, have I forgotten, that I could not read it without feeling, that the creations of your fancy, rather than the facts of history, supplied this information. Instances, rare instances, of such ”melioration” and of such ”schools of instruction,” I doubt not there have been: but, I am confident, that the Southern slaves have been sunk in depths of ignorance proportioned to the profits of their labor. I have not the least belief, that the proportion of readers amongst them is one half so great, as it was before the invention of Whitney's cotton gin.
Permit me to call your attention to a few of the numberless evidences, that slavery is a poor school for ”moral preparation” for freedom. 1st.
Slavery turns its victims into thieves. ”Who should be astonished,” says Thomas S. Clay, a very distinguished slaveholder of Georgia, ”if the negro takes from the field or corn-house the supplies necessary for his craving appet.i.te and then justifies his act, and denies that it is stealing?” What debas.e.m.e.nt in the slave does the same gentleman's remedy for theft indicate? ”If,” says he, ”the negro is informed, that if he does not steal, he shall receive rice as an allowance; and if he does steal, he shall not, a motive is held out which will counteract the temptation to pilfer.” 2nd. Slavery reeks with licentiousness. Another son of the South says, that the slaveholder's kitchen is a brothel, and a southern village a Sodom. The elaborate defence of slavery by Chancellor Harper of South Carolina justifies the heaviest accusations, that have been brought against it on the score of licentiousness. How could you blame us for deeply abhorring slavery, even were we to view it in no other light than that in which the Dews and Harpers and its other advocates present it? 3rd. Slavery puts the master in the place of G.o.d, and the master's law in the place of G.o.d's law! ”The negro,” says Thomas S. Clay, ”is seldom taught to feel, that he is punished for breaking G.o.d's law! He only knows his master as law-giver and executioner, and the sole object held up to his view is to make him a more obedient and profitable slave. He oftener hears that he shall be punished if he steals, than if he breaks the Sabbath or swears; and thus he sees the very threatenings of G.o.d brought to bear on his master's interests. It is very manifest to him, that his own good is very far from forming the primary reason for his chastis.e.m.e.nt: his master's interests are to be secured at all events;--G.o.d's claims are secondary, or enforced merely for the purpose of advancing those of his owner. His own benefit is the residuum after this double distillation of moral motive--a mere accident.” 4th. The laws of nearly all the slave-states forbid the teaching of the slaves to read. The abundant declarations, that those laws are without exception, a consequence of the present agitation of the question of slavery are glaringly false. Many of these laws were enacted long before this agitation; and some of them long before you and I were born. Say the three hundred and fifty-three gentlemen of the District of Abbeville and Edgefield in South Carolina, who, the last year, broke up a system of oral religious instruction, which the Methodist Conference of that State had established amongst their slaves: ”Intelligence and slavery have no affinity for each other.” And when those same gentlemen declare, that ”verbal and lecturing instruction will increase a desire with the black population to learn”--that ”the progress and diffusion of knowledge will be a consequence”--and that ”a progressive system of improvement will be introduced, that will ultimately revolutionize our civil inst.i.tutions,” they admit, that the prohibition of ”intelligence” to the slaves is the settled and necessary policy of slavery, and not, as you would have us believe, a temporary expedient occasioned by the present ”agitation of this subject of abolition.” 5th. Slavery--the system, which forbids marriage and the reading of the Bible--does of necessity turn its subjects into heathens.
A Report of the Synod of South Carolina and Georgia, made five years ago, says: ”Who could credit it, that in these years of revival and benevolent effort--that, in this Christian Republic, there are over two millions of human beings in the condition of heathen, and in some respects in a worse condition? They may be justly considered the heathen of this Christian country, and will bear comparison with heathen in any country in the world.” I will finish what I have to say on this point of ”moral preparation” for freedom, with the remark, that the history of slavery in no country warrants your implication, that slaves acquire such ”moral preparation.” The British Parliament subst.i.tuted an apprentices.h.i.+p for slavery with the express design, that it should afford a ”moral preparation” for freedom. And yet, if you will read the reports of late visitors to the British West Indies, you will find, that the planters admit, that they made no use of the advantages of the apprentices.h.i.+p to prepare their servants for liberty. Their own gain--not the slaves'--was their ruling motive, during the term of the apprentices.h.i.+p, as well as preceding it.
Another of your charges is, _that the abolitionists ”have increased the rigors of legislation against slaves in most if not all the slave States_.”
And suppose, that our principles and measures have occasioned this evil--are they therefore wrong?--and are we, therefore, involved in sin?
The principles and measures of Moses and Aaron were the occasion of a similar evil. Does it follow, that those principles and measures were wrong, and that Moses and Aaron were responsible for the sin of Pharaoh's increased oppressiveness? The truth, which Jesus Christ preached on the earth, is emphatically peace: but its power on the depravity of the human heart made it the occasion of division and violence. That depravity was the guilty cause of the division and violence. The truth was but the innocent occasion of them. To make it responsible for the effects of that depravity would be as unreasonable, as it is to make the holy principles of the anti-slavery cause responsible for the wickedness which they occasion: and to make the great Preacher Himself responsible for the division and violence, would be but to carry out the absurdity, of which the public are guilty, in holding abolitionists responsible for the mobs, which are got up against them. These mobs, by the way, are called ”abolition mobs.” A similar misnomer would p.r.o.nounce the mob, that should tear down your house and shoot your wife, ”Henry Clay's mob.” Harriet Martineau, in stating the fact, that the mobs of 1834, in the city of New York, were set down to the wrong account, says, that the abolitionists were told, that ”they had no business to scare the city with the sight of their burning property and demolished churches!”
No doubt the light of truth, which the abolitionists are pouring into the dark den of slavery, greatly excites the monster's wrath: and it may be, that he vents a measure of it on the helpless and innocent victims within his grasp. Be it so;--it is nevertheless, not the Ithuriel spear of truth, that is to be held guilty of the harm:--it is the monster's own depravity, which cannot
”endure Touch of celestial temper, but returns Of force to its own likeness.”[A]
[Footnote A: This is a reference to a pa.s.sage in Milton's Paradise Lost, in which Satan in disguise is touched by the spear of the archangel Ithuriel and is thereby forced to return to his own form.]
I am, however, far from believing, that the treatment of the slaves is rendered any more rigorous and cruel by the agitation of the subject of slavery. I am very far from believing, that it is any harsher now than it was before the organization of the American Anti-Slavery Society.
Fugitive slaves tell us, it is not: and, inasmuch as the slaveholders are, and, by both words and actions, abundantly show, that they feel that they are, arraigned by the abolitionists before the bar of the civilized world, to answer to the charges of perpetrating cruelties on their slaves, it would, unless indeed, they are of the number of those ”whose glory is in their shame,” be most unphilosophical to conclude, that they are multiplying proofs of the truth of those charges, more rapidly than at any former stage of their barbarities. That slaveholders are not insensible to public opinion and to the value of a good character was strikingly exhibited by Mr. Calhoun, in his place in the Senate of the United States, when he followed his frank disclaimer of all suspicion, that the abolitionists are meditating a war against the slaveholder's person, with remarks evincive of his sensitiveness under the war, which they are waging against the slaveholder's character.
A fact occurs to me, which goes to show, that the slaveholders feel themselves to be put upon their good behavior by the abolitionists.
Although slaves are murdered every day at the South, yet never, until very recently, if at all, has the case occurred, in which a white man has been executed at the South for the murder of a slave. A few months ago, the Southern newspapers brought us copies of the doc.u.ment, containing the refusal of Governor Butler of South Carolina to pardon a man, who had been convicted of the murder of a slave. This doc.u.ment dwells on the protection due to the slave; and, if I fully recollect its character, an abolitionist himself could hardly have prepared a more appropriate paper for the occasion. Whence such a doc.u.ment--whence, in the editorial captions to this doc.u.ment, the exultation over its triumphant refutations of the slanders of the abolitionists against the South--but, that Governor Butler feels--but, that the writes of those captions feel--that the abolitionists have put the South upon her good behavior.
Another of your charges is, _that the abolitionists oppose ”the project of colonisation.”_
Having, under another head, made some remarks on this ”project,” I will only add, that we must oppose the American Colonization Society, because it denies the sinfulness of slavery, and the duty of immediate, unqualified emanc.i.p.ation. Its avowed doctrine is, that, unless emanc.i.p.ation he accompanied by expatriation, perpetual slavery is to be preferred to it. Not to oppose that Society, would be the guiltiest treachery to our holy religion, which requires immediate and unconditional repentance of sin. Not to oppose it, would be to uphold slavery. Not to oppose it, would be to abandon the Anti-Slavery Society.
Do you ask, why, if this be the character of the American Colonization Society, many, who are now abolitionists, continued in it so long? I answer for myself, that, until near the period of my withdrawal from it, I had very inadequate conceptions of the wickedness, both of that Society, and of slavery. For having felt the unequalled sin of slavery no more deeply--for feeling it now no more deeply, I confess myself to be altogether without excuse. The great criminality of my long continuance in the Colonization Society is perhaps somewhat palliated by the fact, that the strongest proofs of the wicked character and tendencies of the Society were not exhibited, until it spread out its wing over slavery to shelter the monster from the earnest and effective blows of the American Anti-Slavery Society.
Another of your charges is, that the abolitionists, in declaring ”that their object is not to stimulate the action of the General Government, _but to operate upon the States themselves, in which the inst.i.tution of domestic slavery exists,” are evidently insincere, since the ”abolition societies and movements are all confined to the free Slates_.”
I readily admit, that our object is the abolition of slavery, as well in the slave States, as in other portions of the Nation, where it exists.
But, does it follow, because only an insignificant share of our ”abolition societies and movements” is in those States, that we therefore depend for the abolition of slavery in them on the General Government, rather than on moral influence? I need not repeat, that the charge of our looking to the General Government for such abolition is refuted by the language of the Const.i.tution of the Anti-Slavery Society.
You may, however, ask--”why, if you do not look to the General Government for it, is not the great proportion of your means of moral influence in the slave States, where is the great body of the slaves?” I answer that, in the first place, the South does not permit us to have them there; and that, in the words of one of your fellow Senators, and in the very similar words of another--both uttered on the floor of the Senate--”if the abolitionists come to the South, the South will hang them.” Pardon the remark, that it seems very disingenuous in you to draw conclusions unfavorable to the sincerity of the abolitionists from premises so notoriously false, as are those which imply, that it is entirely at their own option, whether the abolitionists shall have their ”societies and movements” in the free or slave States. I continue to answer your question, by saying, in the second place, that, had the abolitionists full liberty to multiply their ”societies and movements”
in the slave States, they would probably think it best to have the great proportion of them yet awhile in the free States. To rectify public opinion on the subject of slavery is a leading object with abolitionists. This object is already realized to the extent of a thorough anti-slavery sentiment in Great Britain, as poor Andrew Stevenson, for whom you apologise, can testify. Indeed, the great power and pressure of that sentiment are the only apology left to this disgraced and miserable man for uttering a bald falsehood in vindication of Virginia morals. He above all other men, must feel the truth of the distinguished Thomas Fowel Buxton's declaration, that ”England is turned into one great Anti-Slavery Society.” Now, Sir, it is such a change, as abolitionists have been the instruments of producing in Great Britain, that we hope to see produced in the free States. We hope to see public sentiment in these States so altered, that such of their laws, as uphold and countenance slavery, will be repealed--so altered, that the present brutal treatment of the colored population in them will give place to a treatment dictated by justice, humanity, and brotherly and Christian love;--so altered, that there will be thousands, where now there are not hundreds, to cla.s.s the products of slave labor with other stolen goods, and to refuse to eat and to wear that, which is wet with the tears, and red with the blood of ”the poor innocents,” whose bondage is continued, because men are more concerned to buy what is cheap, than what is honestly acquired;--so altered, that our Missionary and other religious Societies will remember, that G.o.d says: ”I hate robbery for burnt-offering,” and will forbear to send their agents after that plunder, which, as it is obtained at the sacrifice of the body and soul of the plundered, is infinitely more unfit, than the products of ordinary theft, to come into the Lord's treasury. And, when the warm desires of our hearts, on these points, shall be realized, the fifty thousand Southerners, who annually visit the North, for purposes of business and pleasure, will not all return to their homes, self-complacent and exulting, as now, when they carry with them the suffrages of the North in favor of slavery: but numbers of them will return to pursue the thoughts inspired by their travels amongst the enemies of oppression--and, in the sequel, they will let their ”oppressed go free.”
It were almost as easy for the sun to call up vegetation by the side of an iceberg, as for the abolitionists to move the South extensively, whilst their influence is counteracted by a pro-slavery spirit at the North. How vain would be the attempt to reform the drunkards of your town of Lexington, whilst the sober in it continue to drink intoxicating liquors! The first step in the reformation is to induce the sober to change their habits, and create that total abstinence-atmosphere, in the breathing of which, the drunkard lives,--and, for the want of which, he dies. The first step, in the merciful work of delivering the slaveholder from his sin, is similar. It is to bring him under the influence of a corrected public opinion--of an anti-slavery sentiment:--and they, who are to be depended on to contribute to this public opinion--to make up this anti-slavery sentiment--are those, who are not bound up in the iron habits, and blinded by the mighty interests of the slaveholder. To depend on slaveholders to give the lead to public opinion in the anti-slavery enterprise, would be no less absurd, than to begin the temperance reformation with drunkards, and to look to them to produce the influences, which are indispensable to their own redemption.
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