Volume III Part 43 (1/2)
”Those only who have the management of servants, know what the _hardening effect_ of it is upon _their own feelings towards them._ There is no necessity to dwell on this point, as all _owners_ and _managers_ fully understand it. He who commences to manage them with tenderness and with a willingness to favor them in every way, must be watchful, otherwise he will settle down in _indifference, if not severity.”_
GENERAL WILLIAM H. HARRISON, now of Ohio, son of the late Governor Harrison of Virginia, a slaveholder, while minister from the United States to the Republic of Colombia, wrote a letter to General Simon Bolivar, then President of that Republic, just as he was about a.s.suming despotic power. The letter is dated Bogota, Sept. 22, 1826.
The following is an extract.
”From a knowledge of your own disposition and present feelings, your excellency will not be willing to believe that you could ever be brought to an act of tyranny, or even to execute justice with unnecessary rigor. But trust me, sir, there is nothing more corrupting, nothing more _destructive of the n.o.blest and finest feelings of our nature than the exercise of unlimited power_. The man, who in the beginning of such a career, might shudder at the idea of taking away the life of a fellow-being, might soon have his conscience so seared by the repet.i.tion of crime, that the agonies of his murdered victims might become music to his soul, and the drippings of the scaffold afford blood to swim in. History is full of such excesses.”
WILLIAM H. FITZHUGH, Esq. of Virginia, a slaveholder, says,--”Slavery, in its mildest form, is cruel and unnatural; _its injurious effects on our morals and habits are mutually felt.”_
HON. SAMUEL S. NICHOLAS, late Judge of the Court of Appeals of Kentucky, and a slaveholder, in a speech before the legislature of that state, Jan. 1837, says,--
”The deliberate convictions of the most matured consideration I can give the subject, are, that the inst.i.tution of slavery is a _most serious injury to the habits, manners and morals_ of our white population--that it leads to sloth, indolence, dissipation, and vice.”
Dr. THOMAS COOPER, late President of the College of South Carolina, in a note to his edition of the ”Inst.i.tutes of Justinian” page 413, says,--
”All absolute power has a direct tendency, not only to detract from the happiness of the persons who are subject to it, but to DEPRAVE THE GOOD QUALITIES of those who possess it..... the whole history of human nature, in the present and every former age, will justify me in saying that _such is the tendency of power_ on the one hand and slavery on the other.”
A South Carolina slaveholder, whose name is with the executive committee of the Am. A.S. Society, says, in a letter, dated April 4, 1838:--
”I think it (slavery) _ruinous to the temper_ and to our spiritual life; it is a thorn in the flesh, for ever and for ever goading us on to say and to do what the Eternal G.o.d cannot but be displeased with. I speak from experience, and oh! my desire is to be delivered from it.”
Monsieur C.C. ROBIN, who was a resident of Louisiana from 1802 to 1806, published a work on that country; in which, speaking of the effect of slaveholding on masters and their children, he says:--
”The young creoles make the negroes who surround them the play-things of their whims: they flog, for pastime, those of their own age, just as their fathers flog others at their will. These young creoles, arrived at the age in which the pa.s.sions are impetuous, do not _know how to bear contradiction_; they will have every thing done which they command, _possible or not_; and in default of this, they avenge their offended pride by multiplied punishments.”
Dr. GEORGE BUCHANAN, of Baltimore, Maryland, member of the American Philosophical Society, in an oration at Baltimore, July 4, 1791, said:--
”For such are the effects of subjecting man to slavery, that it _destroys every humane principle_, vitiates the mind, instills ideas of unlawful cruelties, and eventually subverts the springs of government.”--_Buchanan's Oration_, p. 12.
President EDWARDS the younger, in a sermon before the Connecticut Abolition Society, in 1791, page 8, says:--
”Slavery has a most direct tendency to haughtiness, and a _domineering spirit_ and conduct in the proprietors of the slaves, in their children, and in all who have the control of them. A man who has been bred up in domineering over negroes, can scarcely avoid contracting such a habit of haughtiness and domination as will express itself in his general treatment of mankind, whether in his private capacity, or in any office, civil or military, with which he may be invested.”
The celebrated MONTESQUIEU, in his ”Spirit of the Laws,” thus describes the effect of slaveholding upon the master:--
”The master contracts all sorts of bad habits; and becomes _haughty, pa.s.sionate, obdurate, vindictive, voluptuous, and cruel_.”
WILBERFORCE, in his speech at the anniversary of the London Anti-Slavery Society, in March, 1828, said:--
”It is _utterly impossible_ that they who live in the administration of the petty despotism of a slave community, whose minds have been _warped_ and _polluted_ by that contamination, should not _lose that respect_ for their fellow creatures over whom they tyrannize, which is essential in the nature and moral being of man, to rescue them from the abuse of power over their prostrate fellow creatures.”
In the great debate, in the British Parliament, on the African slave-trade, Mr. WHITBREAD said:
”Arbitrary power would spoil the hearts of the best.”
But we need not multiply proofs to establish our position: it is sustained by the concurrent testimony of sages, philosophers, poets, statesmen, and moralists, in every period of the world; and who can marvel that those in all ages who have wisely pondered men and things, should be unanimous in such testimony, when the history of arbitrary power has come down to us from the beginning of time, struggling through heaps of slain, and trailing her parchments in blood.
Time would fail to begin with the first despot and track down the carnage step by step. All nations, all ages, all climes crowd forward as witnesses, with their scars, and wounds, and dying agonies.