Volume III Part 42 (1/2)

Mr. RICE, of Kentucky in his speech in the Convention that formed the Const.i.tution of that state, in 1790, says:

”He [the slave] is a rational creature, reduced by the power of legislation to the _state of a brute_, and thereby deprived of every privilege of humanity.... The brute may steal or rob, to supply his hunger; but the slave, though in the most starving condition, _dare not do either, on penalty of death, or some severe punishment_.”

Rev. HORACE MOULTON, a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church, in Marlborough, Ma.s.s. who lived some years in Georgia, says:

”The southern horses and dogs have enough to eat, and good care is taken of them; but southern negroes--who can describe their misery and their wretchedness, their nakedness and their cruel scourgings! None but G.o.d. Should we _whip our horses_ as they whip their slaves, even for small offences, we should expose ourselves to the penalty of the law.”

Rev. PHINEAS SMITH, Centerville, Allegany county, New York, who has resided four years in the midst of southern slavery--

”Avarice and cruelty are twin sisters; and I do not hesitate to declare before the world, as my deliberate opinion, that there is _less compa.s.sion_ for working slaves at the south, than for working oxen at the north.”

STEVEN SEWALL, Esq. Winthrop, Maine, a member of the Congregational Church, and late agent of the Winthrop Manufacturing Company, who resided five years in Alabama, says--

”I do not think that brutes, not even horses, are treated with _so much cruelty_ as American slaves.”

If the preceding considerations are insufficient to remove incredulity respecting the cruelties suffered by slaves, and if northern objectors still say, 'We might believe such things of savages, but that civilized men, and republicans, in this Christian country, can openly and by system perpetrate such enormities, is impossible';--to such we reply, that this incredulity of the people of the free states, is not only discreditable to their intelligence, but to their consistency.

Who is so ignorant as not to know, or so incredulous as to disbelieve, that the early Baptists of New England were fined, imprisoned, scourged, and finally banished by our puritan forefathers?--and that the Quakers were confined in dungeons, publicly whipped at the cart-tail, had their ears cut off, cleft sticks put upon their tongues, and that five of them, four men and one woman, were hung on Boston Common, for propagating the sentiments of the Society of Friends? Who discredits the fact, that the civil authorities in Ma.s.sachusetts, less than a hundred and fifty years ago, confined in the public jail a little girl of four years old, and publicly hung the Rev. Mr. Burroughs, and eighteen other persons, mostly women, and killed another, (Giles Corey,) by extending him upon his back, and piling weights upon his breast till he was crushed to death [17]--and this for no other reason than that these men and women, and this little child, were accused by others of _bewitching_ them.

[Footnote 17: Judge Sewall, of Ma.s.s. in his diary, describing this horrible scene, says that when the tongue of the poor sufferer had, in the extremity of his dying agony, protruded from his mouth, a person in attendance took his cane and thrust it back into his mouth.]

Even the children in Connecticut, know that the following was once a law of that state:

”No food or lodging shall be allowed to a Quaker. If any person turns Quaker, he shall be banished, and not be suffered to return on pain of death.”

These objectors can readily believe the fact, that in the city of New York, less than a hundred years since, thirteen persons were publicly burned to death, over a slow fire: and that the legislature of the same State took under its paternal care the African slave-trade, and declared that ”all encouragement should be given to the _direct_ importation of slaves; that all _smuggling_ of slaves should be condemned, as _an eminent discouragement to the fair trader_.”

They do not call in question the fact that the African slave-trade was carried on from the ports of the free states till within thirty years; that even members of the Society of Friends were actively engaged in it, shortly before the revolutionary war; [18] that as late as 1807, no less than fifty-nine of the vessels engaged in that trade, were sent out from the little state of Rhode Island, which had then only about seventy thousand inhabitants; that among those most largely engaged in these foul crimes, are the men whom the people of Rhode Island delight to honor: that the man who dipped most deeply in that trade of blood (James De Wolf,) and ama.s.sed a most princely fortune by it, was not long since their senator in Congress; and another, who was captain of one of his vessels, was recently Lieutenant Governor of the state.

[Footnote 18: See Life and Travels of John Woolman, page 92.]

They can believe, too, all the horrors of the middle pa.s.sage, the chains, suffocation, maimings, stranglings, starvation, drownings, and cold blooded murders, atrocities perpetrated on board these slave-s.h.i.+ps by their own citizens, perhaps by their own townsmen and neighbors--possibly by their own _fathers_: but oh! they 'can't believe that the slaveholders can be so hard-hearted towards their slaves as to treat them with great cruelty.' They can believe that his Holiness the Pope, with his cardinals, bishops and priests, have tortured, broken on the wheel, and burned to death thousands of Protestants--that eighty thousand of the Anabaptists were slaughtered in Germany--that hundreds of thousands of the blameless Waldenses, Huguenots and Lollards, were torn in pieces by the most t.i.tled dignitaries of church and state, and that _almost every professedly Christian sect, has, at some period of its history, persecuted unto blood_ those who dissented from their creed. They can believe, also, that in Boston, New York, Utica, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Alton, and in scores of other cities and villages of the free states, 'gentlemen of property and standing,' led on by civil officers, by members of state legislatures, and of Congress, by judges and attorneys-general, by editors of newspapers, and by professed ministers of the gospel, have organized mobs, broken up lawful meetings of peaceable citizens, committed a.s.sault and battery upon their persons, knocked them down with stones, led them about with ropes, dragged them from their beds at midnight, gagged and forced them into vehicles, and driven them into unfrequented places, and there tormented and disfigured them--that they have rifled their houses, made bonfires of their furniture in the streets, burned to the ground, or torn in pieces the halls or churches in which they were a.s.sembled--attacked them with deadly weapons, stabbed some, shot others, and killed one. They can believe all this--and further, that a majority of the citizens in the places where these outrages have been committed, connived at them; and by refusing to indict the perpetrators, or, if they were indicted, by combining to secure their acquittal, and rejoicing in it, have publicly adopted these felonies as their own. All these things they can believe without hesitation, and that they have even been done by their own acquaintances, neighbors, relatives; perhaps those with whom they interchange courtesies, those for whom they _vote_, or to whose _salaries they contribute_--but yet, oh! they can never believe that slaveholders inflict cruelties upon their slaves!

They can give full credence to the kidnapping, imprisonment, and deliberate murder of WILLIAM MORGAN, and that by men of high standing in society; they can believe that this deed was aided and abetted, and the murderers screened from justice, by a large number of influential persons, who were virtually accomplices, either before or after the fact; and that this combination was so effectual, as successfully to defy and triumph over the combined powers of the government;--yet that those who constantly rob men of their time, liberty, and wages, and all their _rights_, should rob them of bits of flesh, and occasionally of a tooth, make their backs bleed, and put fetters on their legs, is too monstrous to be credited! Further these same persons, who 'can't believe' that slaveholders are so iron-hearted as to ill-treat their slaves, believe that the very _elite_ of these slaveholders, those most highly esteemed and honored among them, are continually daring each other to mortal conflict, and in the presence of mutual friends, taking deadly aim at each other's hearts, with settled purpose to _kill_, if possible. That among the most distinguished governors of slave states, among their most celebrated judges, senators, and representatives in Congress, there is hardly _one_, who has not either killed, or tried to kill, or aided and abetted his friends in trying to kill, one or more individuals. That pistols, dirks, bowie knives, or other instruments of death are generally carried throughout the slave states--and that deadly affrays with them, in the streets of their cities and villages, are matters of daily occurrence; that the sons of slaveholders in southern colleges, bully, threaten, and fire upon their teachers, and their teachers upon them; that during the last summer, in the most celebrated seat of science and literature in the south, the University of Virginia, the professors were attacked by more than seventy armed students, and, in the words of a Virginia paper, were obliged 'to conceal themselves from their fury;' also that almost all the riots and violence that occur in northern colleges, are produced by the turbulence and lawless pa.s.sions of southern students. That such are the furious pa.s.sions of slaveholders, no considerations of personal respect, none for the proprieties of life, none for the honor of our national legislature, none for the character of our country abroad, can restrain the slaveholding members of Congress from the most disgraceful personal encounters on the floor of our nation's legislature--smiting their fists in each other's faces, throttling and even _kicking_ and trying to _gouge_ each other--that during the session of the Congress just closed, no less than six slaveholders, taking fire at words spoken in debate, have either rushed at each other's throats, or kicked, or struck, or attempted to knock each other down; and that in all these instances, they would doubtless have killed each other, if their friends had not separated them. Further, they know full well, these were not insignificant, vulgar blackguards, elected because they were the head bullies and bottle-holders in a boxing ring, or because their const.i.tuents went drunk to the ballot box; but they were some of the most conspicuous members of the House--one of them a former speaker.

Our newspapers are full of these and similar daily occurrences among slaveholders, copied verbatim from their own accounts of them in their own papers and all this we fully credit; no man is simpleton enough to cry out 'Oh, I can't believe that slaveholders do such things;'--and yet when we turn to the treatment which these men mete out to their _slaves_, and show that they are in the habitual practice of striking, kicking, knocking down and shooting _them_ as well as each other--the look of blank incredulity that comes over northern dough-faces, is a study for a painter: and then the sentimental outcry, with eyes and hands uplifted, 'Oh, indeed, I can't believe the slaveholders are so cruel to their slaves.' Most amiable and touching charity! Truly, of all Yankee notions and free state products, there is nothing like a '_dough face_'--the great northern staple for the southern market--'made to order,' in any quant.i.ty, and _always on hand_. 'Dough faces!' Thanks to a slaveholder's contempt for the name, with its immortality of truth, infamy and scorn.[19]

[Footnote 19: ”_Doe_ face,” which owes its paternity to John Randolph, age has mellowed into ”_dough_ face”--a cognomen quite as expressive and appropriate, if not as cla.s.sical.]

Though the people of the free states affect to disbelieve the cruelties perpetrated upon the slaves, yet slaveholders believe _each other_ guilty of them, and speak of them with the utmost freedom. If slaveholders disbelieve any statement of cruelty inflicted upon a slave, it is not on account of its _enormity_. The traveler at the south will hear in Delaware, and in all parts of Maryland and Virginia, from the lips of slaveholders, statements of the most horrible cruelties suffered by the slaves _farther_ south, in the Carolinas and Georgia; when he finds himself in those states he will hear similar accounts about the treatment of the slaves in _Florida_ and _Louisiana_; and in Missouri, Kentucky, and Tennessee he will hear of the tragedies enacted on the plantations in Arkansas, Alabama and Mississippi. Since Anti-Slavery Societies have been in operation, and slaveholders have found themselves on trial before the world, and put upon their good behavior, northern slaveholders have grown cautious, and now often subst.i.tute denials and set defences, for the voluntary testimony about cruelty in the far south, which, before that period, was given with entire freedom. Still, however, occasionally the 'truth will out,' as the reader will see by the following testimony of an East Tennessee newspaper, in which, speaking of the droves of slaves taken from the upper country to Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, etc., the editor says, they are 'traveling to a region where their condition through time WILL BE SECOND ONLY TO THAT OF THE WRETCHED CREATURES IN h.e.l.l.' See ”Maryville Intelligencer,” of Oct, 4, 1835. Distant cruelties and cruelties _long past_, have been till recently, favorite topics with slaveholders. They have not only been ready to acknowledge that their _fathers_ have exercised great cruelty toward their slaves, but have voluntarily, in their official acts, made proclamation of it and entered it on their public records. The Legislature of North Carolina, in 1798, branded the successive legislatures of that state for more than thirty years previous, with the infamy of treatment towards their slaves, which they p.r.o.nounce to be 'disgraceful to humanity, and degrading in the highest degree to the laws and principles of a free, Christian, and enlightened country.' This treatment was the enactment and perpetuation of a most barbarous and cruel law.

But enough. As the objector can and does believe all the preceeding facts, if he still '_can't_ believe' as to the cruelties of slaveholders, it would be barbarous to tantalize his incapacity either with evidence or argument. Let him have the benefit of the act in such case made and provided.

Having shown that the incredulity of the objector respecting the cruelty inflicted upon the slaves, is discreditable to his consistency, we now proceed to show that it is equally so to his _intelligence_.

Whoever disbelieves the foregoing statements of cruelties, on the ground of their enormity, proclaims his own ignorance of the nature and history of man. What! incredulous about the atrocities perpetrated by those who hold human beings as property, to be used for their pleasure, when history herself has done little else in recording human deeds, than to dip her blank chart in the blood shed by arbitrary power, and unfold to human gaze the great red scroll? That cruelty is the natural effect of arbitrary power, has been the result of all experience, and the voice of universal testimony since the world began. Shall human nature's axioms, six thousand years old, go for nothing? Are the combined product of human experience, and the concurrent records of human character, to be set down as 'old wives'

fables?' To disbelieve that arbitrary power naturally and habitually perpetrates cruelties, where it can do it with impunity, is not only ignorance of man, but of _things_. It is to be blind to innumerable proofs which are before every man's eyes; proofs that are stereotyped in the very words and phrases that are on every one's lips. Take for example the words _despot_ and _despotic_. Despot, signifies etymologically, merely one who _possesses_ arbitrary power, and at first, it was used to designate those alone who _possessed_ unlimited power over human beings, entirely irrespective of the way in which they exercised it, whether mercifully or cruelly. But the fact, that those who possessed such power, made their subjects their _victims_, has wrought a total change in the popular meaning of the word. It now signifies, in common parlance, not one who _possesses_ unlimited power over others, but one who exercises the power that he has, whether little or much, _cruelly_. So _despotic_, instead of meaning what it once did, something pertaining to the _possession_ of unlimited power, signifies something pertaining to the _capricious, unmerciful and relentless exercise_ of such power.