Volume III Part 44 (1/2)
[Footnote 21: The law of which the following is an extract, exists in South Carolina. ”If any slave shall suffer in life, limb or member, when no white person shall be present, or being present, shall refuse to give evidence, the owner or other person, who shall have the care of such slave, and in whose power such slave shall be, shall be deemed guilty of such offence, _unless_ such owner or other person shall make the contrary appear by good and sufficient evidence, or shall BY HIS OWN OATH CLEAR AND EXCULPATE HIMSELF. Which oath every court where such offence shall be tried, is hereby compared to administer, and to _acquit the offender_, if clear proof of the offence be not made by _two_ witnesses at least.”--2 Brevard's Digest, 242. The state of Louisiana has a similar law.]
The _sincerity_ of those worthies, no one calls in question; their real notions of their own merits doubtless ascended into the sublime: but for aught that appears, they had not the arrogance to demand that their own notions of their personal excellence, should be taken as the _proof_ of it. Not so with our slaveholders. Not content with offering incense at the shrine of their own virtues, they have the effrontery to demand, that the rest of the world shall offer it, because _they_ do; and shall implicitly believe the presiding divinity to be a good Spirit rather than a Devil, because _they_ call him so! In other words, since slaveholders profoundly appreciate their own gentle dispositions toward their slaves, and their kind treatment of them, and everywhere protest that they do truly show forth these rare excellencies, they demand that the rest of the world shall not only believe that they _think_ so, but that they think _rightly_; that these notions of themselves are _true_, that their taking off their hats to themselves proves them worthy of homage, and that their a.s.sumption of the t.i.tles of, 'Flower of Kindness,' and 'Nutmeg of Consolation,' is conclusive evidence that they deserve such appellations!
Was there ever a more ridiculous doctrine, than that a man's opinion of his own actions is the true standard for measuring them, and the certificate of their real qualities!--that his own estimate of his treatment of others; is to be taken as the true one, and such treatment be set down as _good_ treatment upon the strength of his judgment. He who argues the good treatment of the slave, from the slaveholder's _good opinion_ of such treatment, not only argues against human nature and all history, his own common sense, and even the testimony of his senses, but refutes his own arguments by his daily practice. Every body acts on the presumption that men's feelings will vary with their _practices_; that the light in which they view individuals and cla.s.ses, and their feelings towards them, will modify their opinions of the treatment which they receive. In any case of treatment that affects himself, his church, or his political party, no man so stultifies himself as to argue that such treatment must be good, because the _author_ of it thinks so.
Who would argue that the American Colonies were well treated by the mother country, because parliament thought so? Or that Poland was well treated by Russia, because Nicholas thought so? Or that the treatment of the Cherokees by Georgia is proved good by Georgia notions of it?
Or that of the Greeks by the Turks, by Turkish opinions of it? Or that of the Jews by almost all nations, by the judgment of their persecutors? Or that of the victims of the Inquisition, by the opinions of the Inquisitor general, or of the Pope and his cardinals?
Or that of the Quakers and Baptists, at the hands of the Puritans,--to be judged of by the opinions of the legislatures that authorized, and the courts that carried it into effect. All those cla.s.ses of persons did not, in their own opinion, abuse their victims. If charged with perpetrating outrageous cruelty upon them, all those oppressors would have repelled the charge with indignation.
Our slaveholders chime l.u.s.tily the same song, and no man with human nature within him, and human history before him, and with sense enough to keep him out of the fire, will be gulled by such professions, unless his itch to be humbugged has put on the type of a downright chronic incurable. We repeat it--when men speak of the treatment of others as being either good or bad, their declarations are not generally to be taken as testimony to matters of _fact_, so much as expressions of _their own feelings_ towards those persons or cla.s.ses who are the subjects of such treatment. If those persons are their fellow citizens; if they are in the same cla.s.s of society with themselves; of the same language, creed, and color; similar in their habits, pursuits, and sympathies; they will keenly feel any wrong done to them, and denounce it as base, outrageous treatment; but let the same wrongs be done to persons of a condition in all respects the reverse, persons whom they habitually despise, and regard only in the light of mere conveniences, to be used for their pleasure, and the idea that such treatment is barbarous will be laughed at as ridiculous. When we hear slaveholders say that their slaves are _well treated_, we have only to remember that they are not speaking of _persons_, but of _property_; not of men and women, but of _chattels_ and _things_; not of friends but of _va.s.sals_ and _victims_; not of those whom they respect and honor, but of those whom they _scorn_ and trample on; not of those with whom they sympathize, and co-operate, and interchange courtesies, but of those whom they regard with contempt and aversion and disdainfully set with the dogs of their flock. Reader, keep this fact in your mind, and you will have a clue to the slaveholder's definition of ”_good treatment_.” Remember also, that a part of this ”good treatment” of which the slaveholders boast, is plundering the slaves of all their inalienable rights, of the owners.h.i.+p of their own bodies, of the use of their own limbs and muscles, of all their time, liberty, and earnings, of the free exercise of choice, of the rights of marriage and parental authority, of legal protection, of the right to be, to do, to go, to stay, to think, to feel, to work, to rest, to eat, to sleep, to learn, to teach, to earn money, and to expend it, to visit, and to be visited, to speak, to be silent, to wors.h.i.+p according to conscience, in fine, their right to be protected by just and equal laws, and to be _amenable to such only_. Of _all these rights the slaves are plundered_; and this is a _part_ of that ”good treatment” of which their plunderers boast! What then is the _rest_ of it? The above is enough for a sample, at least a specimen-brick from the kiln. Reader, we ask you no questions, but merely tell you what _you know_, when we say that men and women who can habitually do such things to human beings, _can do_ ANY THING _to them_.
The declarations of slaveholders, that they treat their slaves well, will put no man in a quandary, who keeps in mind this simple principle, that the state of mind towards others, which leads one to inflict cruelties on them _blinds the inflicter to the real nature of his own acts_. To him, they do not _seem_ to be cruelties; consequently, when speaking of such treatment toward such persons, he will protest that it is not cruelty; though if inflicted upon himself or his friends, he would indignantly stigmatize it as atrocious barbarity. The objector equally overlooks another every-day fact of human nature, which is this, that cruelties invariably cease to _seem_ cruelties when the _habit_ is formed though previously the mind regarded them as such, and shrunk from them with horror.
The following fact, related by the late lamented THOMAS PRINGLE, whose Life and Poems have published in England, is an appropriate ill.u.s.tration. Mr. Pringle states it on the authority of Captain W. F.
Owen, of the Royal Navy.
”When his Majesty's s.h.i.+ps, the Leven and the Barracouta, employed in surveying the coast of Africa, were at Mozambique, in 1823, the officers were introduced to the family of Senor Manuel Pedro d'Almeydra, a native of Portugal, who was a considerable merchant settled on that coast; and it was an opinion agreed in by all, that Donna Sophia d'Almeydra was the most superior woman they had seen since they left England, Captain Owen, the leader of the expedition, expressing to Senor d'Almeydra his detestation of slavery, the Senor replied, 'You will not be long here before you change your sentiments.
Look at my Sophia there. Before she would marry me, she made me promise that I should give up the slave trade. When we first settled at Mozambique, she was continually interceding for the slaves, and she _constantly wept when I punished them_; and now she is among the slaves front morning to night; she regulates the whole of my slave establishment; she inquires into every offence committed by them, p.r.o.nounces sentence upon the offender, and _stands by and sees them punished_.'
”To this, Mr. Pringle, who was himself for six years a resident of the English settlement at the Cape of Good Hope, adds, 'The writer of this article has seen, in the course of five or six years, as great a change upon English ladies and gentleman of respectability, as that described to have taken place in Donna Sophia d'Almeydra; and one of the individuals whom he has in his eye, while he writes this pa.s.sage, lately confessed to him this melancholy change, remarking at the same time, 'how altered I am in my feelings with regard to slavery. I do not appear to myself the same person I was on my arrival in this colony, and if I would give the world for the feelings I then had, I could not recall them.'”
Slaveholders know full well that familiarity with slavery produces indifference to its cruelties and reconciles the mind to them. The late Judge Tucker, a Virginia slaveholder and professor of law in the University of William and Mary, in the appendix to his edition of Blackstone's Commentaries, part 2, pp. 56, 57, commenting on the law of Virginia previous to 1792, which outlawed fugitive slaves, says:
”Such are the cruelties to which slavery gives rise, such the horrors to which the mind becomes _reconciled_ by its adoption.”
The following facts from the pen of CHARLES STUART, happily ill.u.s.trate the same principle:
”A young lady, the daughter of a Jamaica planter, was sent at an early age to school to England, and after completing her education, returned to her native country.
”She is now settled with her husband and family in England. I visited her near Bath, early last spring, (1834.) Conversing on the above subject, the paralyzing effects of slaveholding on the heart, she said:
”'While at school in England, I often thought with peculiar tenderness of the kindness of a slave who had nursed and carried me about. Upon returning to my father's, one of my first inquiries was about him. I was deeply afflicted to find that he was on the point of undergoing a ”law flogging for having run away.” I threw myself at my father's feet and implored with tears, his pardon; but my father steadily replied, that it would ruin the discipline of the plantation, and that the punishment must take place. I wept in vain, and retired so grieved and disgusted, that for some days after, I could scarcely bear with patience, the sight of my own father. But many months had not elapsed ere _I was as ready as any body_ to seize the domestic whip, _and flog my slaves without hesitation_.'
”This lady is one of the most Christian and n.o.ble minds of my acquaintance. She and her husband distinguished themselves several years ago, in Jamaica, by immediately emanc.i.p.ating their slaves.”
”A lady, now in the West Indies, was sent in her infancy, to her friends, near Belfast, in Ireland, for education. She remained under their charge from five to fifteen years of age, and grew up every thing which her friends could wish. At fifteen, she returned to the West Indies--was married--and after some years paid her friends near Belfast, a second visit. Towards white people, she was the same elegant, and interesting woman as before; apparently full of every virtuous and tender feeling; but towards the colored people she was like a tigress. If Wilberforce's name was mentioned, she would say, 'Oh, I wish we had the wretch in the West Indies, I would be one of the first to help to tear his heart out!'--and then she would tell of the manner in which the West Indian ladies used to treat their slaves.
'I have often,' she said, 'when my women have displeased me, s.n.a.t.c.hed their baby from their bosom, and running with it to a well, have tied my shawl round its shoulders and pretended to be drowning it: oh, it was so funny to hear the mother's screams!'--and then she laughed almost convulsively at the recollection.”
Mr. JOHN M. NELSON, a native of Virginia, whose testimony is on a preceding page, furnishes a striking ill.u.s.tration of the principle in his own case. He says:
”When I was quite a child, I recollect it grieved me very much to see one tied up to be whipped, and I used to intercede _with tears in their behalf_, and _mingle my cries with theirs_, and feel almost willing to take part of the punishment. Yet such is the hardening nature of such scenes, that from this kind of commiseration for the suffering slave, I became so blunted that I could not only witness their stripes with composure, but _myself_ inflict them, and that without remorse. When I was perhaps fourteen or fifteen years of age, I undertook to correct a young fellow named Ned, for some supposed offence, I think it was leaving a bridle out of its proper place; he being larger and stronger than myself took hold of my arms and held me, in order to prevent my striking him; this I considered the height of insolence, and cried for help, when my father and mother both came running to my rescue. My father stripped and tied him, and took him into the orchard, where switches were plenty, and directed me to whip him; when one switch wore out he supplied me with others. After I had whipped him a while, he fell on his knees to implore forgiveness, and I kicked him in the face; my father said, 'don't kick him but whip him,' this I did until his back was literally covered with _welts_.”
W.C. GILDERSLEEVE, Esq., a native of Georgia, now elder of the Presbyterian church, Wilkes-barre, Penn. after describing the flogging of a slave, in which his hands were tied together, and the slave hoisted by a rope, so that his feet could not touch the ground; in which condition one hundred lashes were inflicted, says: