THE
W O R K S
WILLIAM E. CHANNING, D. D.
SECOND COMPLETE EDITION,
WITH
AN INTRODUCTION.
VOL II.
_____________
B O S T O N :
JAMES MUNROE AND COMPANY.
_____
1843.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1841, by
GEORGE G. CHANNING
in the Clerk's office of the District Court for the District of
Massachusetts.
CAMBRIDGE:
METCALF, KEITH, AND NICHOLS,
PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY.
CONTENTS OF VOL. II.
PAGE
SLAVERY. ............................... 5
INTRODUCTION. ......................... 7
CHAPTER I.-- PROPERTY. .................. 17
II.-- RIGHTS. .................... 31
III.-- EXPLANATIONS ...... ......... 51
IV.-- THE EVILS OF SLAVERY. ........ 58
V.-- SCRIPTURE ............. 99
VI.-- MEANS OF REMOVING SLAVERY ... 106
VII.-- ABOLITIONISM ............... 123
VIII.-- DUTIES ...................... 138
NOTES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
THE ABOLITIONIST, &c. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
ON THE ANNEXATION OF TEXAS TO THE UNITED STATES. 181
ON CATHOLICISM, &c. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
ON CREEDS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289
ADDRESS ON TEMPERANCE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299
SELF-CULTURE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347
S L A V E R Y.
S L A V E R Y.
INTRODUCTION.
THE first question to be proposed by a rational being is, not
what is profitable, but what is Right. Duty must be primary,
prominent, most conspicuous among the objects of human thought
and pursuit. If we cast it down from its supremacy, if we inquire
first for our interests, and then for our duties, we shall
certainly err. We can never see the right clearly and fully, but
by making it our first concern. No judgment can be just or wise,
but that which is built on the conviction of the paramount worth
and importance of duty. This is the fundamental truth, the
supreme law of reason; and the mind which does not start from
this, in its inquiries into human affairs, is doomed to great,
perhaps fatal error.
The right is the supreme good, and includes all other goods.
In seeking and adhering to it, we secure our true and only
happiness. All prosperity, not founded on it, is built on sand.
If human affairs are controlled, as we believe, by Almighty
Rectitude and Impartial Goodness, then to hope for happiness from
wrong-doing
8 SLAVERY.
is as insane as to seek health and prosperity by rebelling
against the laws of nature, by sowing our seed on the ocean, or
making poison our common food. There is but one unfailing good;
and that is, fidelity to the Everlasting Law written on the
heart, and re-written and republished in God's Word.
Whoever places this faith in the everlasting law of
rectitude must, of course, regard the question of slavery first
and chiefly as a moral question. All other considerations will
weigh little with him, compared with its moral character and
moral influences. The following remarks, therefore, are designed
to aid the reader in forming a just moral judgment of slavery.
Great truths, inalienable rights, everlasting duties, these will
form the chief subjects of this discussion. There are times when
the assertion of great principles is the best service a man can
render society. The present is a moment of bewildering
excitement, when men's minds are stormed and darkened by strong
passions and fierce conflicts; and also a moment of absorbing
worldliness, when the moral law is made to bow to expediency, and
its high and strict requirements are denied, or dismissed as
metaphysical abstractions or impracticable theories. At such a
season, to utter great principles without passion, and in the
spirit of unfeigned and universal good-will, and to engrave them
deeply and durably on men's minds, is to do more for the world,
than to open mines of wealth, or to frame the most successful
schemes of policy.
Of late our country has been convulsed by the question of
slavery; and the people, in proportion as they have felt
vehemently, have thought superficially, or hardly thought at all;
and we see the results in a singular want of well-defined
principles, in a strange vagueness
SLAVERY. 9
and inconsistency of opinion, and in the proneness to excess
which belongs to unsettled minds. The multitude have been called,
now to contemplate the horrors of slavery, and now to shudder at
the ruin and blood-shed which must follow emancipation. The word
Massacre has resounded through the land, striking terror into
strong as well as tender hearts, and awakening indignation
against whatever may seem to threaten such a consummation. The
consequence is, that not a few dread all discussion of the
subject, and, if not reconciled to the continuance of slavery, at
least believe that they have no duty to perform, no testimony to
bear, no influence to exert, no sentiments to cherish and spread,
in relation to this evil. What is still worse, opinions either
favoring or extenuating it are heard with little or no
disapprobation. Concessions are made to it, which would once
have shocked the community; whilst to assail it is pronounced
unwise and perilous. No stronger reason for a calm exposition of
its true character can be given, than this very state of the
public mind. A community can suffer no greater calamity than the
loss of its principles. Lofty and pure sentiment is the life and
hope of a people. There was never such an obligation to discuss
slavery as at this moment, when recent events have done much to
unsettle and obscure men's minds in regard to it. This result is
to be ascribed in part to the injudicious vehemence of those who
have taken into their hands the cause of the slave. Such ought to
remember, that to espouse a good cause is not enough. We must
maintain it in a spirit answering to its dignity. Let no man
touch the great interests of humanity, who does not strive to
sanctify himself for the work by cleansing his heart of all wrath
and un-
10 SLAVERY.
charitableness, who cannot hope that he is in a measure baptized
into the spirit of universal love. Even sympathy with the injured
and oppressed may do harm, by being partial, exclusive, and
bitterly indignant. How far the declension of the spirit of
freedom is to be ascribed to the cause now suggested, I do not
say. The effect is plain, and whoever sees and laments the evil
should strive to arrest it.
Slavery ought to be discussed. We ought to think, feel,
speak, and write about it. But whatever we do in regard to it
should be done with a deep feeling of responsibility, and so done
as not to put in jeopardy the peace of the Slave-holding States.
On this point public opinion has not been and cannot be too
strongly pronounced. Slavery, indeed, from its very nature, must
be a ground of alarm wherever it exists. Slavery and security can
by no device be joined together. But we may not, must not, by
rashness and passion increase the peril. To instigate the slave
to insurrection is a crime, for which no rebuke and no punishment
can be too severe. This would be to involve slave and master in
common ruin. It is not enough to say, that the Constitution is
violated by any action endangering the slave-holding portion of
our country. A higher law than the Constitution forbids this
unholy interference. Were our national union dissolved, we ought
to reprobate, as sternly as we now do, the slightest
manifestation of a disposition to stir up a servile war. Still
more, were the Free and the Slave-holding States not only
separated, but engaged in the fiercest hostilities, the former
would deserve the abhorrence of the world and the indignation of
Heaven, were they to resort to insurrection and massacre as means
of victory. Better
SLAVERY. 11
were it for us to bare our own breasts to the knife of the slave,
than to arm him with it against his master.
It is not by personal, direct action on the mind of the
slave that we can do him good. Our concern is with the free. With
the free we are to plead his cause. And this is peculiarly our
duty, because we have bound ourselves to resist his own efforts
for his emancipation. We suffer him to do nothing for himself.
The more, then, should be done for him. Our physical power is
pledged against him in case of revolt. Then our moral power
should be exerted for his relief. His weakness, which we
increase, gives him a claim to the only aid we can afford, to our
moral sympathy, to the free and faithful exposition of his
wrongs. As men, as Christians, as citizens, we have duties to the
slave, as well as to every other member of the community. On this
point we have no liberty. The eternal law binds us to take the
side of the injured; and this law is peculiarly obligatory when
we forbid him to lift an arm in his own defence.
Let it not be said we can do nothing for the slave. We can
do much. We have a power mightier than armies, the power of
truth, of principle, of virtue, of right, of religion, of love.
We have a power, which is growing with every advance of
civilization, before which the slave-trade has fallen, which is
mitigating the sternest despotisms, which is spreading education
through all ranks of society, which is bearing Christianity to
the ends of the earth, which carries in itself the pledge of
destruction to every
institution which debases humanity. Who can measure the power of
Christian philanthropy, of enlightened goodness, pouring itself
forth in prayers and persuasions, from the press and
12 SLAVERY.
pulpit, from the lips and hearts of devoted men, and more and
more binding together the wise and good in the cause of their
race? All other powers may fail. This must triumph. It is
leagued with God's omnipotence. It is God himself acting in the
hearts of his
children. It has an ally in every conscience, in every human
breast, in the wrong-doer himself. This spirit has but begun its
work on earth. It is breathing itself more and more through
literature, education, institutions, and opinion. Slavery cannot
stand before it. Great moral principles, pure and generous
sentiments, cannot be confined to this or that spot. They cannot
be shut out by territorial lines, or local legislation. They are
divine inspirations, and partake of the omnipresence of their
Author. The deliberate, solemn conviction of good men through the
world, that slavery is a grievous wrong to human nature, will
make itself felt. To increase this moral power is every man's
duty. To embody and express this great truth is in every man's
power; and thus every man can do something to break the chain of
the slave.
There are not a few persons, who, from vulgar modes of
thinking, cannot be interested in this subject. Because the slave
is a degraded being, they think slavery a low topic, and wonder
how it can excite the attention and sympathy of those who can
discuss or feel for any thing else. Now the truth is, that
slavery, regarded only in a philosophical light, is a theme
worthy of the highest minds. It involves the gravest questions
about human nature and society. It carries us into the problems
which have exercised for ages the highest understandings. It
calls us to inquire into the foundation, nature, and extent of
human rights, into the distinction
SLAVERY. 13
between a person and a thing, into the true relations of man to
man, into the obligations of the community to each of its
members, into the ground and laws of property, and, above all,
into the true dignity and indestructible claims of a moral being.
I venture to say, there is no subject, now agitated by the
community, which can compare in philosophical dignity with
slavery; and yet to
multitudes the question falls under the same contempt with the
slave himself. To many, a writer seems to lower himself who
touches it. The falsely refined, who want intellectual force to
grasp it, pronounce it unworthy of their notice.
But this subject has more than philosophical dignity. It
has an important bearing on character. Our interest in it is one
test by which our comprehension of the distinctive spirit of
Christianity must be judged. Christianity is the manifestation
and inculcation of Universal Love. The great teaching of
Christianity is, that we must recognise and respect human nature
in all its forms in the poorest, most ignorant, most fallen. We
must look beneath "the flesh," to "the spirit." The spiritual
principle in man is what entitles him to our brotherly regard. To
be just to this is the great injunction of our religion. To
overlook this, on account of condition or color, is to violate
the great Christian law. We have reason to think that it is one
design of God, in appointing the vast diversities of human
condition, to put to the test, and to bring out most distinctly,
the principle of spiritual love. It is wisely ordered, that human
nature is not set before us in a few forms of beauty,
magnificence, and outward glory. To be dazzled and attracted by
these would be no sign of reverence for what is interior and
spiritual in human
VOL. II. 2
14 SLAVERY.
nature. To lead us to discern and love this, we are brought into
connection with fellow-creatures whose outward circumstances are
repulsive. To recognise our own spiritual nature and God's image
in these humble forms, to recognise as brethren those who want
all outward distinctions, is the chief way in which we are to
manifest the spirit of Him who came to raise the fallen and to
save the lost. We see, then, the moral importance of the question
of slavery. According to our decision of it, we determine our
comprehension of the Christian law. He who cannot see a brother,
a child of God, a man possessing all the rights of humanity,
under a skin darker than his own, wants the vision of a
Christian. He worships the Outward. The spirit is not yet
revealed to him. To look unmoved on the degradation and wrongs of
a fellow-creature, because burned by a fiercer sun, proves us
strangers to justice and love, in those universal forms which
characterize Christianity. The greatest of all distinctions, the
only enduring one, is moral goodness, virtue, religion. Outward
distinctions cannot add to the dignity of this. The wealth of
worlds is "not sufficient for a burnt-offering " on its altar. A
being capable of this is invested by God with solemn claims on
his fellow-creatures. To exclude millions of such beings from our
sympathy, because of outward disadvantages, proves, that in
whatever else we surpass them, we are not their superiors in
Christian virtue.
The spirit of Christianity, I have said, is distinguished by
Universality. It is universal justice. It respects all the rights
of all beings. It suffers no being, however obscure, to be
wronged, without condemning the wrong-doer. Impartial,
uncompromising, SLAVERY. 15
fearless, it screens no favorites, is dazzled by no power,
spreads its shield over the weakest, summons the mightiest to its
bar, and speaks to the conscience in tones under which the
mightiest have quailed. It is also universal love, comprehending
those that are near and those that are far off, the high and the
low, the rich and poor, descending to the fallen, and especially
binding itself to those in whom human nature is trampled under
foot. Such is the spirit of Christianity; and nothing but the
illumination of this spirit can prepare us to pass judgment on
slavery.
These remarks are intended to show the spirit in which
slavery ought to be approached, and the point of view from which
it will be regarded in the present discussion. My plan may be
briefly
sketched.
1. I shall show that man cannot be justly held and used
as Property.
2. I shall show that man has sacred rights, the gifts of
God, and inseparable from human nature, of which slavery is the
infraction.
3. I shall offer some explanations, to prevent
misapplication of these principles.
4. I shall unfold the evils of slavery.
5. I shall consider the argument which the Scriptures
are thought to furnish in favor of slavery.
6. I shall offer some remarks on the means of removing
it. 7. I shall offer some remarks on abolitionism.
8. I shall conclude with a few reflections on the duties
belonging to the times.
In the first two sections, I propose to show that
slavery is a great wrong, but I do not intend to pass sen-
16 SLAVERY.
tence on the character of the shave-holder. These two subjects
are distinct. Men are not always to be interpreted by their acts
or institutions. The same acts in different circumstances admit,
and even require, very different constructions. I offer this
remark that the subject may be approached without prejudice or
personal reference. The single object is to settle great
principles. Their bearing on individuals will be a subject of
distinct consideration.
SLAVERY. 17
CHAPTER I.
_____
PROPERTY.
THE slave-holder claims the slave as his Property. The
very idea of a slave is, that he belongs to another, that he is
bound to live and labor for another, to be another's instrument,
and to make another's will his habitual law, however adverse to
his own. Another owns him, and, of course, has a right to his
time and strength, a right to the fruits of his labor, a right to
task him without his consent, and to determine the kind and
duration of his toil, a right to confine him to any bounds, a
right to extort the required work by stripes, a right, in a word,
to use him as a tool, without contract, against his will, and in
denial of his right to dispose of himself, or to use his power
for his own good. "A slave," says the Louisiana code, "is in the
power of the master to whom he belongs. The master may sell him,
dispose of his person, his industry, his labor; he can do
nothing, possess nothing, nor acquire any thing, but which must
belong to his master." "Slaves shall be deemed, taken, reputed,
and adjudged," say the South-Carolina laws, "to be chattels
personal in the hands of their masters, and possessions to all
intents and purposes whatsoever." Such is slavery, a claim to man
as property.
Now this claim of property in a human being is alto-
18 SLAVERY.
gether false, groundless. No such right of man in man can exist.
A human being cannot be justly owned. To hold and treat him as
property is to inflict a great wrong, to incur the guilt of
oppression.
This position there is a difficulty in maintaining, on
account of its exceeding obviousness. It is too plain for proof.
To defend it is like trying to confirm a self-evident truth. To
find
arguments is not easy, because an argument is something clearer
than the proposition to be sustained. The man who, on hearing the
claim to property in man, does not see and feel distinctly that
it is a cruel usurpation, is hardly to be reached by reasoning,
for it is hard to find any plainer principles than what he begins
with denying. I will endeavour, however, to illustrate the truth
which I have stated.
1. It is plain, that, if one man may be held as property,
then every other man may be so held. If there be nothing in human
nature, in our common nature, which excludes and forbids the
conversion of him who possesses it into an article of property;
if the right of the free to liberty is founded, not on their
essential attributes as rational and moral beings, but on
certain
adventitious, accidental circumstances, into which they have been
thrown; then every human being, by a change of circumstances, may
justly be held and treated by another as property. If one man may
be rightfully reduced to slavery, then there is not a human being
on whom the same chain may not be imposed. Now let every reader
ask himself this plain question: Could I, can I, be rightfully
seized, and made an article of property; be made a passive
instrument of another's will and pleasure; be subjected to
another's
irresponsible
SLAVERY.
19
power; be subjected to stripes at another's will; be denied the
control and use of my own limbs and faculties for my own good?
Does any man, so questioned, doubt, waver, look about him for an
answer? Is not the reply given immediately, intuitively, by his
whole inward being? Does not an unhesitating, unerring
conviction spring up in my breast, that no other man can acquire
such a right in myself? Do we not repel, indignantly and with
horror, the thought of being reduced to the condition of tools
and chattels to a fellow-creature? Is there any moral truth more
deeply rooted in us, than that such a degradation would be an
infinite wrong? And, if this impression be a delusion, on what
single moral conviction can we rely? This deep assurance, that
we cannot be rightfully made another's property, does not rest on
the hue of our skins, or the place of our birth, or our strength,
or wealth. These things do not enter our thoughts. The
consciousness of indestructible rights is a part of our moral
being. The consciousness of our humanity involves the
persuasion, that we cannot be owned as a tree or a brute. As
men, we cannot justly be made slaves. Then no man can be
rightfully enslaved. In casting the yoke from ourselves as an
unspeakable wrong, we condemn ourselves as wrong-doers and
oppressors in laying it on any who share our nature. --It is not
necessary to inquire whether a man, by extreme guilt, may not
forfeit the rights of his nature, and be justly punished with
slavery. On this point crude notions prevail. But the discussion
would be foreign to the present subject. We are now not speaking
of criminals. We speak of innocent men, who have given us no hold
on them by guilt; and our own consciousness is a proof that such
20 SLAVERY
cannot rightfully be seized as property by a fellow-creature.
2. A man cannot be seized and held as property, because he
has Rights. What these rights are, whether few or many, or
whether all men have the same, are questions for future
discussion. All that is assumed now is, that every human being
has some rights. This truth cannot be denied, but by denying to a
portion of the race that moral nature which is the sure and only
foundation of rights. This truth has never, I believe, been
disputed. It is even recognised in the very codes of slave
legislation, which, while they strip a man of liberty, affirm his
right to life, and threaten his murderer with punishment. Now, I
say, a being having rights cannot justly be made property; for
this claim over him virtually annuls all his rights. It strips
him of all power to assert them. It makes it a crime to assert
them. The very essence of slavery is, to put a man defenceless
into the hands of another. The right claimed by the master, to
task, to force, to imprison, to whip, and to punish the slave, at
discretion, and especially to prevent the least
resistance to his will, is a virtual denial and subversion of all
the rights of the victim of his power. The two cannot stand
together. Can we doubt which of them ought to fall?
3. Another argument against property is to be found in the
Essential Equality of men. I know that this doctrine, so
venerable in the eyes of our fathers, has lately been denied.
Verbal logicians, have told us that men are "born equal" only in
the sense of being equally born. They have asked whether all are
equally tall,
SLAVERY. 21
strong, or beautiful; or whether nature, Procrustes-like, reduces
all her children to one standard of intellect and virtue. By such
arguments it is attempted to set aside the principle of equality,
on which the soundest moralists have reared the structure of
social duty; and in these ways the old foundations of despotic
power, which our fathers in their simplicity thought they had
subverted, are laid again by their sons.
It is freely granted, that there are innumerable diversities
among men; but be it remembered, they are ordained to bind men
together, and not to subdue one to the other; ordained to give
means and occasions of mutual aid, and to carry forward each and
all, so that the good of all is equally intended in this
distribution of various gifts. Be it also remembered, that these
diversities among men are as nothing in comparison with the
attributes in which they agree; and it is this which constitutes
their essential equality. All men have the same rational nature
and the same power of conscience, and all are equally made for
indefinite improvement of these divine faculties, and for the
happiness to be found in their virtuous use. Who, that
comprehends these gifts, does not see that the diversities of
the race vanish before them? Let it be added, that the natural
advantages, which distinguish one man from another, are so
bestowed as to
counterbalance one another, and bestowed without regard to rank
or condition in life. Whoever surpasses in one endowment is
inferior in others. Even genius, the greatest gift, is found in
union with strange infirmities, and often places its possessors
below ordinary men in the conduct of life. Great learning is
often put to shame by the mother-wit and keen good sense of
uneducated men. Nature, indeed, pays
22 SLAVERY.
no heed to birth or condition in bestowing her favors. The
noblest spirits sometimes grow up in the obscurest spheres. Thus
equal are men; and among these equals, who can substantiate his
claim to make others his property, his tools, the mere
instruments of his private interest and gratification? Let this
claim begin, and where will it stop? If one may assert it, why
not all? Among these partakers of the same rational and moral
nature, who can make good a right over others, which others may
not establish over himself? Does he insist on superior strength
of body or mind? Who of us has no superior in one or the other
of these endowments? Is it sure that the slave or the slave's
child may not surpass his master in intellectual energy, or in
moral worth? Has nature conferred distinctions, which tell us
plainly who shall be owners and who be owned? Who of us can
unblushingly lift his head and say, that God has written "Master"
there? or who can show the word "Slave" engraven on his brother's
brow? The equality of nature makes slavery a wrong. Nature's
seal is affixed to no instrument by which property in a single
human being is conveyed.
4. That a human being cannot be justly held and used as
property, is apparent from the very nature of property. Property
is an exclusive right. It shuts out all claim but that of the
possessor. What one man owns, cannot belong to another. What,
then, is the consequence of holding a human being as property?
Plainly this. He can have no right to himself. His limbs are, in
truth, not morally his own. He has not a right to his own
strength. It belongs to another. His will, intellect, and
muscles, all the powers of body and
SLAVERY. 23
mind which are exercised in labor, he is bound to regard as
another's. Now, if there be property in any thing, it is that of
a man in his own person, mind, and strength. All other rights are
weak, unmeaning, compared with this, and, in denying this, all
right is denied. It is true, that an individual may forfeit by
crime his right to the use of his limbs, perhaps to his limbs,
and even to life. But the very idea of forfeiture implies, that
the right was originally possessed. It is true, that a man may by
contract give to another a limited right to his strength. But he
gives only because he possesses it, and gives it for
considerations which he deems beneficial to himself; and the
right conferred ceases at once on violation of the conditions on
which it was bestowed. To deny the right of a human being to
himself, to his own limbs and faculties, to his energy of body
and mind, is an absurdity too gross to be confuted by any thing
but a simple statement. Yet this absurdity is involved in the
idea of his belonging to another.
5. We have a plain recognition of the principle now laid
down, in the universal indignation excited towards a man who
makes another his slave. Our laws know no higher crime than that
of reducing a man to slavery. To steal or to buy an African on
his own shores, is piracy. In this act the greatest wrong is
inflicted, the most sacred right violated. But if a human being
cannot without infinite injustice be seized as property, then he
cannot without equal wrong be held and used as such. The wrong in
the first seizure lies in the destination of a human being to
future bondage, to the criminal use of him as a chattel or brute.
Can that very use, which makes the original seizure an enormous
wrong,
24 SLAVERY.
become gradually innocent? If the slave receive injury without
measure at the first moment of the outrage, is he less injured by
being held fast the second or the third? Does the duration of
wrong, the increase of it by continuance, convert it into right?
It is true, in many cases, that length of possession is
considered as giving a right, where the goods were acquired by
unlawful means. But in these cases, the goods were such as might
justly be
appropriated to individual use. They were intended by the Creator
to be owned. They fulfill their purpose by passing into the
hands of an exclusive possessor. It is essential to rightful
property in a thing, that the thing from its nature may be
rightfully
appropriated. If it cannot originally be made one's own without
crime, it certainly cannot be continued as such without guilt.
Now the ground, on which the seizure of the African on his own
shore is condemned, is, that he is a man, who has by his nature a
right to be free. Ought not, then, the same condemnation to light
on the continuance of his yoke? Still more. Whence is it, that
length of possession is considered by the laws as conferring a
right? I answer, from the difficulty of determining the original
proprietor, and from the apprehension of unsettling all property
by carrying back inquiry beyond a certain time. Suppose, however,
an article of property to be of such a nature that it could bear
the name of the true original owner stamped on it in bright and
indelible
characters. In this case, the whole ground, on which length of
possession bars other claims, would fail. The proprietor would
not be concealed, or rendered doubtful by.the lapse of time.
Would not he, who should receive such an article from a robber or
a
succession of robbers, be involved in their guilt? Now
SLAVERY. 25
the true owner of a human being is made manifest to all. It is
Himself. No brand on the slave was ever so conspicuous as the
mark of property which God has set on him. God, in making him a
rational and moral being, has put a glorious stamp on him, which
all the slave legislation and slave-markets of worlds cannot
efface. Hence, no right accrues to the master from the length of
the wrong which has been done to the slave.
6. Another argument against the right of property in man,
may be drawn from a very obvious principle of moral science. It
is a plain truth, universally received, that every right supposes
or involves a corresponding obligation. If, then, a man has a
right to another's person or powers, the latter is under
obligation to give himself up as a chattel to the former. This
is his duty. He is bound to be a slave; and bound not merely by
the Christian law, which enjoins submission to injury, not merely
by prudential considerations, or by the claims of public order
and peace; but bound because another has a right of ownership,
has a moral claim to him, so that he would be guilty of
dishonesty, of robbery, in withdrawing himself from this other's
service. It is his duty to work for his master, though all
compulsion were withdrawn; and in deserting him he would commit
the crime of taking away another man's property, as truly as if
he were to carry off his owner's purse. Now do we not instantly
feel, can we help feeling, that this is false? Is the slave thus
morally bound? When the African was first brought to these
shores, would he have violated a solemn obligation by slipping
his chain, and flying back to his native home? Would he not have
been bound to seize the precious
opportunity of escape?
VOL. II. 3
26 SLAVERY.
Is the slave under a moral obligation to confine himself, his
wife, and children, to a spot where their union in a moment may
be forcibly dissolved? Ought he not, if he can, to place himself
and his family under the guardianship of equal laws? Should we
blame him for leaving his yoke? Do we not feel, that, in the
same condition, a sense of duty would quicken our flying steps?
Where, then, is the obligation which would necessarily be
imposed, if the right existed which the master claims? The
absence of obligation proves the want of the right. The claim is
groundless. It is a cruel wrong.
7. I come now to what is to my own mind the great argument
against seizing and using a man as property. He cannot be
property in the sight of God and justice, because he is a
Rational, Moral, Immortal Being; because created in God's image,
and therefore in the highest sense his child; because created to
unfold godlike faculties, and to govern himself by a Divine Law
written on his heart, and republished in God's Word. His whole
nature forbids that he should be seized as property. From his
very nature it follows, that so to seize him is to offer an
insult to his Maker, and to inflict aggravated social wrong. Into
every human being God has breathed an immortal spirit, more
precious than the whole outward creation. No earthly or celestial
language can exaggerate the worth of a human being. No matter
how obscure his condition. Thought, Reason, Conscience, the
capacity of Virtue, the capacity of Christian Love, an immortal
Destiny, an intimate moral connection with God, --here are
attributes of our common humanity which reduce to insignificance
all outward distinctions, and make every human being un-
SLAVERY. 27
speakably dear to his Maker. No matter how ignorant he may be.
The capacity of Improvement allies him to the more instructed of
his race, and places within his reach the knowledge and happiness
of higher worlds. Every human being has in him the germ of the
greatest idea in the universe, the idea of God; and to unfold
this is the end of his existence. Every human being has in his
breast the elements of that Divine Everlasting Law, which the
highest orders of the creation obey. He has the idea of Duty,
and to unfold, revere, obey this, is the very purpose for which
life was given. Every human being has the idea of what is meant
by that word, Truth; that is, he sees, however dimly, the great
object of Divine and created intelligence, and is capable of
ever-enlarging perceptions of truth. Every human being has
affections, which may be purified and expanded into a Sublime
Love. He has, too, the idea of Happiness, and a thirst for it
which cannot be appeased. Such is our nature. Wherever we see a
man, we see the possessor of these great capacities. Did God
make such a being to be owned as a tree or a brute? How plainly
was he made to exercise, unfold, improve his highest powers, made
for a moral, spiritual good! and how is he wronged, and his
Creator opposed, when he is forced and broken into a tool to
another's physical enjoyment!
Such a being was plainly made for an End in Himself. He is a
Person, not a Thing. He is an End, not a mere Instrument or
Means. He was made for his own virtue and happiness. Is this end
reconcilable with his being held and used as a chattel? The
sacrifice of such a being to another's will, to another's
present, outward, ill-comprehended good, is the greatest
28 SLAVERY.
violence which can be offered to any creature of God. It is to
degrade him from his rank in the universe, to make him a means,
not an end, to cast him out from God's spiritual family into the
brutal herd.
Such a being was plainly made to obey a Law within Himself.
This is the essence of a moral being. He possesses, as a part of
his nature, and the most essential part, a sense of Duty, which
he is to reverence and follow, in opposition to all pleasure or
pain, to all interfering human wills. The great purpose of all
good education and discipline is, to make a man Master of
Himself, to excite him to act from a principle in his own mind,
to lead him to propose his own perfection as his supreme law and
end. And is this highest purpose of man's nature to be reconciled
with entire subjection to a foreign will, to an outward,
overwhelming force, which is satisfied with nothing but complete
submission?
The end of such a being as we have described, is,
manifestly, Improvement. Now it is the fundamental law of our
nature, that all our powers are to improve by free exertion.
Action is the
indispensable condition of progress to the intellect, conscience,
and heart. Is it not plain, then, that a human being cannot,
without wrong, be owned by another, who claims, as proprietor,
the right to repress the powers of his slaves, to withhold from
them the means of development, to keep them within the limits
which are necessary to contentment in chains, to shut out every
ray of light and every generous sentiment, which may interfere
with entire subjection to his will?
No man, who seriously considers what human nature is, and
what it was made for, can think of setting up a claim to a
fellow-creature. What! own a spiritual being,
SLAVERY. 29
a being made to know and adore God, and who is to outlive the sun
and stars! What! chain to our lowest uses a being made for truth
and virtue! convert into a brute instrument that intelligent
nature, on which the idea of Duty has dawned, and which is a
nobler type of God than all outward creation! Should we not deem
it a wrong which no punishment could expiate, were one of our
children seized as property, and driven by the whip to toil? And
shall God's child, dearer to him than an only son to a human
parent, be thus degraded? Every thing else may be owned in the
universe; but a moral, rational being cannot be property. Suns
and stars may be owned, but not the lowest spirit. Touch any
thing but this. Lay not your hand on God's rational offspring.
The whole spiritual world cries out, Forbear! The highest
intelligences recognise their own nature, their own rights, in
the humblest human being. By that priceless, immortal spirit
which dwells in him, by that likeness of God which he wears,
tread him not in the dust, confound him not with the brute.
We have thus seen, that a human being cannot rightfully be
held and used as property. No legislation, not that of all
countries or worlds, could make him so. Let this be laid down,
as a first, fundamental truth. Let us hold it fast, as a most
sacred, precious truth. Let us hold it fast against all customs,
all laws, all rank, wealth, and power. Let it be armed with the
whole authority of the civilized and Christian world.
I have taken it for granted that no reader would be so
wanting in moral discrimination and moral feeling, as to urge,
that men may rightfully be seized and held as property, because
various
governments have so or-
30 SLAVERY.
dained. What! is human legislation the measure of right? are
God's laws to be repealed by man's? Can government do no wrong?
To what a mournful extent is the history of human governments a
record of wrongs! How much does the progress of civilization
consist in the substitution of just and humane, for barbarous and
oppressive laws! The individual, indeed, is never authorized to
oppose physical force to unrighteous ordinances of government, as
long as the community choose to sustain them. But criminal
legislation ought to be freely and earnestly exposed. Injustice
is never so
terrible, and never so corrupting, as when armed with the
sanctions of law. The authority of government, instead of being a
reason for silence under wrongs, is a reason for protesting
against wrong with the undivided energy of argument, entreaty,
and solemn admonition. SLAVERY.
31
CHAPTER II.
RIGHTS.
I now proceed to the second division of the subject. I am
to show, that man has sacred Rights, the gifts of God, and
inseparable from human nature, which are violated by slavery.
Some important principles, which belong to this head, were
necessarily anticipated under the preceding; but they need a
fuller exposition. The whole subject of Rights needs to be
reconsidered. Speculations and reasonings about it have lately
been given to the public, not only false, but dangerous to
freedom, and there is a strong tendency to injurious views.
Rights are made to depend on circumstances, so that pretences may
easily be made or created for violating them successively, till
none shall remain. Human rights have been represented as so
modified and circumscribed by men's entrance into the social
state, that only the shadows of them are left. They have been
spoken of as absorbed in the public good; so that a man may be
innocently enslaved, if the public good shall so require. To
meet fully all these errors, for such I hold them, a larger work
than the present is required. The nature of man, his relations to
the state, the limits of civil government, the elements of the
public good, and the degree to which the individual must be
surrendered to
32 SLAVERY.
this good, these are the topics which the present subject
involves. I cannot enter into them particularly, but shall lay
down what seem to me the great and true principles in regard to
them. I shall show, that man has rights from his very nature, not
the gifts of society, but of God; that they are not surrendered
on entering the social state; that they must not be taken away
under the plea of public good; that the Individual is never to be
sacrificed to the Community; that the idea of Rights is to
prevail above all the interests of the state.
Man has rights by nature. The disposition of some to deride
abstract rights, as if all rights were uncertain, mutable, and
conceded by society, shows a lamentable ignorance of human
nature. Whoever understands this must see in it an immovable
foundation of rights. These are gifts of the Creator, bound up
indissolubly with our moral constitution. In the order of things,
they precede society, lie at its foundation, constitute man's
capacity for it, and are the great objects of social
institutions. The
consciousness of rights is not a creation of human art, a
conventional sentiment, but essential to and inseparable from the
human soul.
Man's rights belong to him as a Moral Being, as capable of
perceiving moral distinctions, as a subject of moral obligation.
As soon as he becomes conscious of Duty, a kindred consciousness
springs up, that he has a Right to do what the sense of duty
enjoins, and that no foreign will or power can obstruct his moral
action without crime. He feels, that the sense of duty was given
to him as a Law, that it makes him responsible for himself, that
to exercise, unfold, and obey it is the end of his being, and
that he has a right to exercise and obey it without hindrance or
opposition. A conscious-
SLAVERY. 33
ness of dignity, however obscure, belongs also to this divine
principle; and, though he may want words to do justice to his
thoughts, he feels that he has that within him which makes him
essentially equal to all around him.
The sense of duty is the fountain of human rights. In other
words, the same inward principle, which teaches the former, bears
witness to the latter. Duties and Rights must stand or fall
together. It has been too common to oppose them to one another;
but they are indissolubly joined together. That same inward
principle, which teaches a man what he is bound to do to others,
teaches equally, and at the same instant, what others are bound
to do to him. That same voice, which forbids him to injure a
single fellow-creature, forbids every fellow-creature to do him
harm. His conscience, in revealing the moral law, does not reveal
a law for himself only, but speaks as a Universal Legislator. He
has an intuitive conviction, that the obligations of this divine
code press on others as truly as on himself. That principle,
which teaches him that he sustains the relation of brotherhood to
all human beings, teaches him that this relation is reciprocal,
that it gives indestructible claims, as well as imposes solemn
duties, and that what he owes to the members of this vast family,
they owe to him in return. Thus the moral nature involves rights.
These enter into its very essence. They are taught by the very
voice which enjoins duty. Accordingly there is no deeper
principle in human nature, than the consciousness of rights. So
profound, so
ineradicable is this sentiment, that the oppressions of ages have
nowhere wholly stifled it.
Having shown the foundation of human rights in hu-
34 SLAVERY.
man nature, it may be asked what they are. Perhaps they do not
admit very accurate definition, any more than human duties; for
the Spiritual cannot be weighed and measured like the Material.
Perhaps a minute criticism may find fault with the most guarded
exposition of them; but they may easily be stated in language
which the unsophisticated mind will recognise as the truth.
Volumes could not do justice to them; and yet, perhaps they may
be comprehended in one sentence. They may all be comprised in the
right, which belongs to every rational being, to exercise his
powers for the promotion of his own and others' Happiness and
Virtue. These are the great purposes of his existence. For
these his powers were given, and to these he is bound to devote
them. He is bound to make himself and others better and happier,
according to his ability. His ability for this work is a sacred
trust from God, the greatest of all trusts. He must answer for
the waste or abuse of it. He consequently suffers an unspeakable
wrong, when stripped of it by others, or forbidden to employ it
for the ends for which it is given; when the powers, which God
has given for such generous uses, are impaired or destroyed by
others, or the means for their action and growth are forcibly
withheld. As every human being is bound to employ his faculties
for his own and others' good, there is an obligation on each to
leave all free for the accomplishment of this end; and whoever
respects this obligation, whoever uses his own, without invading
others' powers, or obstructing others' duties, has a sacred,
indefeasible right to be unassailed, unobstructed, unharmed by
all with whom he may be connected. Here is the grand, all-
comprehending right of human nature. Every man should revere it,
should
SLAVERY 35
assert it for himself and for all, and should bear solemn
testimony against every infraction of it, by whomsoever made or
endured.
Having considered the great fundamental right of human
nature, particular rights may easily be deduced. Every man has a
right to exercise and invigorate his intellect or the power of
knowledge, for knowledge is the essential condition of successful
effort for every good; and whoever obstructs or quenches the
intellectual life in another, inflicts a grievous and
irreparable wrong. Every man has a right to inquire into his
duty, and to conform himself to what he learns of it. Every man
has a right to use the means, given by God and sanctioned by
virtue, for bettering his condition. He has a right to be
respected according to his moral worth; a right to be regarded as
a member of the community to which he belongs, and to be
protected by impartial laws; and a right to be exempted from
coercion, stripes, and punishment, as long as he respects the
rights of others. He has a right to an equivalent for his labor.
He has a right to sustain domestic relations, to discharge their
duties, and to enjoy the happiness which flows from fidelity in
these and other domestic relations. Such are a few of human
rights; and if so, what a grievous wrong is slavery!
Perhaps nothing has done more to impair the sense of the
reality and sacredness of human rights, and to sanction
oppression, than loose ideas as to the change made in man's
natural rights by his entrance into civil society. It is commonly
said, that men part with a portion of these by becoming a
community, a body politic; that government consists of powers
surrendered by the individual; and it is said, "If certain rights
and powers
36 SLAVERY.
may be surrendered, why not others? why not all? what limit is to
be set? The good of the community, to which a part is given up,
may demand the whole; and in this good, all private rights are
merged." This is the logic of despotism. We are grieved that it
finds its way into republics, and that it sets down the great
principles of freedom as abstractions and metaphysical theories,
good enough for the cloister, but too refined for practical and
real life.
Human rights, however, are not to be so reasoned away. They
belong, as we have seen, to man as a moral being, and nothing can
divest him of them but the destruction of his nature. They are
not to be given up to society as a prey. On the contrary, the
great end of civil society is to secure them. The great end of
government is to repress ALL WRONG. Its highest function is to
protect the weak against the powerful, so that the obscurest
human being may enjoy his rights in peace. Strange that an
institution, built on the idea of Rights, should be used to
unsettle this idea, to confuse our moral perceptions, to sanctify
wrongs as means of general good!
It is said, that, in forming civil society, the individual
surrenders a part of his rights. It would be more proper to say,
that he adopts new modes of securing them. He consents, for
example, to desist from self-defence, that he and all may be more
effectually defended by the public force. He consents to submit
his cause to an umpire or tribunal, that justice may be more
impartially awarded, and that he and all may more certainly
receive their due. He consents to part with a portion of his
property in taxation, that his own and others' property may be
the more secure. He
SLAVERY. 37
submits to certain restraints, that he and others may enjoy more
enduring freedom. He expects an equivalent for what he
relinquishes, and insists on it as his right. He is wronged by
partial laws, which compel him to contribute to the state beyond
his proportion, his ability, and the measure of benefits which he
receives. How absurd is it to suppose, that, by consenting to be
protected by the state, and by yielding it the means, he
surrenders the very rights which were the objects of his
accession to the social compact!
The authority of the state to impose laws on its members I
cheerfully allow; but this has limits, which are found to be more
and more narrow in proportion to the progress of moral science.
The state is equally restrained with individuals by the Moral
Law. For example, it may not, must not, on any account, put an
innocent man to death, or require of him a dishonorable or
criminal service. It may demand allegiance, but only on the
ground of the protection it affords. It may levy taxes, but only
because it takes all property and all interests under its
shield. It may pass laws, but only impartial ones, framed for the
whole, and not for the few. It must not seize, by a special act,
the property of the humblest
individual, without making him an equivalent. It must regard
every man, over whom it extends its authority, as a vital part of
itself, as entitled to its care and to its provisions for liberty
and happiness. If, in an emergency, its safety, which is the
interest of each and all, may demand the imposition of peculiar
restraints on one or many, it is bound to limit these
restrictions to the precise point which its safety prescribes, to
remove the necessity of them as far and as fast as possible, to
compensate by peculiar
VOL. II. 4
38 SLAVERY.
protection such as it deprives of the ordinary means of
protecting themselves, and, in general, to respect and provide
for liberty in the very acts which for a time restrain it. The
idea of Rights should be fundamental and supreme in civil
institutions. Government becomes a nuisance and scourge, in
proportion as it sacrifices these to the many or the few.
Government, I repeat it, is equally bound with the individual by
the Moral Law. The ideas of Justice and Rectitude, of what is due
to man from his fellow-creatures, of the claims of every moral
being, are far deeper and more primitive than Civil Polity.
Government, far from originating them, owes to them its strength.
Right is older than human law. Law ought to be its voice. It
should be built on, and should correspond to, the principle of
justice in the human breast, and its weakness is owing to nothing
more than to its clashing with our indestructible moral
convictions.
That government is most perfect, in which Policy is most
entirely subjected to Justice, or in which the supreme and
constant aim is to secure the rights of every human being. This
is the beautiful idea of a free government, and no government is
free but in proportion as it realizes this. Liberty must not be
confounded with popular institutions. A representative
government may be as despotic as an absolute monarchy. In as far
as it tramples on the rights, whether of many or one, it is a
despotism. The sovereign power, whether wielded by a single hand
or several hands, by a king or a congress, which spoils one human
being of the immunities and privileges bestowed on him by God, is
so far a tyranny. The great argument in favor of representative
institutions is, that a people's rights are safest in
SLAVERY 39
their own hands, and should never be surrendered to an
irresponsible power. Rights, Rights, lie at the foundation of a
popular government; and when this betrays them, the wrong is more
aggravated than when they are crushed by despotism.
Still the question will be asked, "Is not the General Good
the supreme Law of the state? -Are not all restraints on the
individual just, which this demands? When the rights of the
individual clash with this, must they not yield? Do they not,
indeed, cease to be rights? Must not every thing give place to
the General Good?" I have started this question in various forms,
because I deem it worthy of particular examination. Public and
private morality, the freedom and safety of our national
institutions, are greatly concerned in settling the claims of the
"General Good." In
monarchies, the Divine Right of kings swallowed up all others. In
republics, the General Good threatens the same evil. It is a
shelter for the abuses and usurpations of government, for the
profligacies of statesmen, for the vices of parties, for the
wrongs of slavery. In considering this subject, I take the hazard
of repeating principles already laid down; but this will be
justified by the importance of reaching and determining the
truth. Is the General Good, then, the supreme law, to which
every thing must bow?
This question may be settled at once by proposing another.
Suppose the public good to require, that a number of the members
of a state, no matter how few, should perjure themselves, or
should disclaim their faith in God and virtue. Would their right
to follow conscience and God be annulled? Would they be bound to
sin? Suppose a conqueror to menace a state with
40 SLAVERY.
ruin, unless its members should insult their parents, and stain
themselves with crimes at which nature revolts. Must the public
good prevail over purity and our holiest affections? Do we not
all feel that there are higher goods than even the safety of the
state? that there is a higher law than that of mightiest empires?
that the idea of Rectitude is deeper in human nature than that of
private or public interest? and that this is to bear sway over
all private and public acts?
The supreme law of a state is not its safety, its power, its
prosperity, its affluence, the flourishing state of agriculture,
commerce, and the arts. These objects, constituting what is
commonly called the Public Good, are indeed proposed, and ought
to be proposed, in the constitution and administration of states.
But there is a higher law, even Virtue, Rectitude, the voice of
Conscience, the Will of God. Justice is a greater good than
property, not greater in degree, but in kind. Universal
benevolence is infinitely superior to prosperity. Religion, the
love of God, is worth incomparably more than all his outward
gifts. A community, to secure or aggrandize itself, must never
forsake the Right, the Holy, the Just.
Moral Good, Rectitude in all its branches, is the Supreme
Good; by which I do not intend, that it is the surest means to
the security and prosperity of the state. Such, indeed, it is,
but this is too low a view. It must not be looked upon as a
Means, an Instrument. It is the Supreme End, and states are bound
to subject to it all their legislation, be the apparent loss of
prosperity ever so great. National wealth is not the End. It
derives all its worth from national virtue. If accumulated by
rapacity, conquest, or any degrading means, or if
SLAVERY. 41
concentrated in the hands of the few, whom it strengthens to
crush the many, it is a curse. National wealth is a blessing,
only when it springs from and represents the intelligence and
virtue of the community; when it is a fruit and expression of
good habits, of respect for the rights of all, of impartial and
beneficent
legislation; when it gives impulse to the higher faculties, and
occasion and incitement to justice and beneficence. No greater
calamity can befall a people than to prosper by crime. No success
can the a compensation for the wound inflicted on a nation's mind
by renouncing Right as its Supreme Law.
Let a people exalt Prosperity above Rectitude, and a more
dangerous end cannot be proposed. Public Prosperity, General
Good, regarded by itself, or apart from the moral law, is
something vague, unsettled, and uncertain, and will infallibly be
so
construed by the selfish and grasping as to secure their own
aggrandizement. It may be made to wear a thousand forms,
according to men's interests and passions. This is illustrated by
every day's history. Not a party springs up, which does not
sanctify all its projects for monopolizing power by the plea of
General Good. Not a measure, however ruinous, can be proposed,
which cannot be shown to favor one or another national interest.
The truth is, that, in the uncertainty of human affairs, an
uncertainty growing out of the infinite and very subtile causes
which are acting on communities, the consequences of no measure
can be foretold with certainty. The best concerted schemes of
policy often fail; whilst a rash and profligate administration
may, by unexpected concurrences of events, seem to advance a
nation's glory. In regard to the means of national prosperity,
42 SLAVERY.
the wisest are weak judges. For example, the present rapid growth
of this country, carrying, as it does, vast multitudes beyond the
institutions of religion and education, may be working ruin,
whilst the people exult in it as a pledge of greatness. We are
too short-sighted to find our law in outward interests. To
states, as to individuals, Rectitude is the Supreme Law. It was
never designed that the public good, as disjoined from this, as
distinct from justice and reverence for all rights, should be
comprehended and made our end. Statesmen work in the dark, until
the idea of Right towers above expediency or wealth. Woe to that
people which would found its prosperity in wrong! It is time
that the low maxims of policy, which have ruled for ages, should
fall. It is time that public interest should no longer hallow
injustice, and fortify government in making the weak their prey.
In this discussion, I have used the phrase, Public or
General Good, in its common acceptation, as signifying the safety
and prosperity of a state. Why can it not be used in a larger
sense? Why can it not be made to comprehend inward and moral, as
well as outward good? And why cannot the former be understood to
be incomparably the most important element of the public weal?
Then, indeed, I should assent to the proposition, that the
General Good is the Supreme Law. So construed, it would support
the great truths which I have maintained. It would condemn the
infliction of wrong on the humblest individual, as a national
calamity. It would plead with us to extend to every individual
the means of improving his character and lot.
If the remarks under this head be just, it will follow, that
the good of the Individual is more important than
SLAVERY. 43
the outward prosperity of the State. The former is not vague and
unsettled, like the latter, and it belongs to a higher order of
interests. It consists in the free exertion and expansion of the
individual's powers, especially of his higher faculties; in the
energy of his intellect, conscience, and good affections; in
sound judgment; in the acquisition of truth; in laboring honestly
for himself and his family; in loving his Creator, and subjecting
his own will to the Divine; in loving his fellow creatures, and
making cheerful sacrifices to their happiness; in friendship; in
sensibility to the beautiful, whether in nature or art; in
loyalty to his principles; in moral courage; in self-respect; in
understanding and asserting his rights; and in the Christian hope
of immortality. Such is the good of the Individual; a more
sacred, exalted, enduring interest, than any accessions of wealth
or power to the State. Let it not be sacrificed to these. He
should find, in his connexion with the community, aids to the
accomplishment of these purposes of his being, and not be chained
and subdued by it to the inferior interests of any fellow-
creature.
In all ages the Individual has, in one form or another, been
trodden in the dust. In monarchies and aristocracies, he has
been sacrificed to One or to the Few; who, regarding government
as an heirloom in their families, and thinking of the people as
made only to live and die for their glory, have not dreamed that
the
sovereign power was designed to shield every man, without
exception, from wrong. In the ancient Republics, the Glory of the
State, especially Conquest, was the end to which the individual
was expected to offer himself a victim, and in promoting which,
no cruelty was to be declined, no human right revered. He was
merged in
44 SLAVERY.
a great whole, called the Commonwealth, to which his whole nature
was to be immolated. It was the glory of the American people,
that, in their Declaration of Independence, they took the ground
of the indestructible rights of every human being. They declared
all men to be essentially equal, and each born to be free. They
did not, like the Greek or Roman, assert for themselves a
liberty, which they burned to wrest from other states. They spoke
in the name of humanity, as the representatives of the rights of
the feeblest, as well as mightiest of their race. They published
universal,
everlasting principles, which are to work out the deliverance of
every human being. Such was their glory. Let not the idea of
Rights be erased from their children's minds by false ideas of
public good. Let not the sacredness of Individual Man be
forgotten in the feverish pursuit of property. It is more
important that the Individual should respect himself, and be
respected by others, than that the wealth of both worlds should
be accumulated on our shores. National wealth is not the end of
society. It may exist where large classes are depressed and
wronged. It may undermine a nation's spirit, institutions, and
independence. It can have no value and no sure foundation, until
the supremacy of the Rights of the
Individual is the first article of a nation's faith, and until
reverence for them becomes the spirit of public men.
Perhaps it will be replied to all which has now been said,
that there is an argument from experience, which invalidates the
doctrines of this section. It may be said, that human rights,
notwithstanding what has been said of their sacredness, do and
must yield to the exigencies of real life; that there is often a
stern necessity in human
SLAVERY. 45
affairs to which they bow. I may be asked, whether, in the
history of nations, circumstances do not occur, in which the
rigor of the principles now laid down must be relaxed; whether,
in seasons of imminent peril to the state, private rights must
not give way. I may be asked, whether the establishment of
martial law and a dictator has not sometimes been justified and
demanded by public danger; and whether, of course, the rights and
liberties of the individual are not held at the discretion of the
state. I admit, in reply, that extreme cases may occur, in which
the exercise of rights and freedom may be suspended; but
suspended only for their ultimate and permanent security. At such
times, when the frantic fury of the many, or the usurpations of
the few, interrupt the administration of law, and menace property
and life, society, threatened with ruin, puts forth instinctively
spasmodic efforts for its own preservation. It flies to an
irresponsible dictator for its protection. But in these cases,
the great idea of Rights predominates amidst their apparent
subversion. A power above all laws is conferred, only that the
empire of law may be restored. Despotic restraints are imposed,
only that liberty may be rescued from ruin. All rights are
involved in the safety of the state; and hence, in the cases
referred to, the safety of the state becomes the supreme law. The
individual is bound for a time to forego his freedom, for the
salvation of institutions, without which liberty is but a name.
To argue from such sacrifices, that he may be permanently made a
slave, is as great an insult to reason as to humanity. It may be
added, that sacrifices, which may be demanded for the safety, are
not due from the individual to the prosperity 46 SLAVERY.
of the state. The great end of civil society is to secure rights,
not accumulate wealth; and to merge the former in the latter is
to turn political union into degradation and a scourge. The
community is bound to take the rights of each and all under its
guardianship. It must substantiate its claim to universal
obedience by redeeming its pledge of universal protection. lt
must immolate no man to the prosperity of the rest. Its laws
should be made for all, its tribunals opened to a]l. It cannot
without guilt abandon any of its members to private oppression,
to irresponsible power.
We have thus established the reality and sacredness of human
rights; and that slavery is an infraction of these, is too plain
to need any labored proof. Slavery violates, not one, but all;
and violates them, not incidentally, but necessarily,
systematically, from its very nature. In starting with the
assumption, that the slave is property, it sweeps away every
defence of human rights, and lays them in the dust. Were it
necessary, I might enumerate them, and show how all fall before
this terrible usurpation; but a few remarks will suffice.
Slavery strips man of the fundamental right to inquire into,
consult, and seek his own happiness. His powers belong to
another, and for another they must be used. He must form no
plans, engage in no enterprises, for bettering his condition.
Whatever be his capacities, however equal to great improvements
of his lot, he is chained for life, by another's will, to the
same unvaried toil. He is forbidden to do, for himself or others,
the work for which God stamped him with his own image, and
endowed him with his own best gifts. --Again, the slave is
stripped of the right to acquire property.
SLAVERY. 47
Being himself owned, his earnings belong to another. He can
possess nothing but by favor. That right, on which the
development of men's powers so much depends, the right to make
accumulations, to gain exclusive possessions by honest industry,
is withheld. "The slave can acquire nothing," says one of the
slave codes, "but what must belong to his master;" and however
this definition, which moves the indignation of the free, may be
mitigated by favor, the spirit of it enters into the very essence
of slavery. --Again, the slave is stripped of his right to his
wife and children. They belong to another, and may be torn from
him, one and all, at any moment, at his master's pleasure. --
Again, the slave is stripped of the right to the culture of his
rational powers. He is in some cases deprived by law of
instruction, which is placed within his reach by the improvements
of society and the philanthropy of the age. He is not allowed to
toil, that his children may enjoy a better education than
himself. The most sacred right of human nature, that of
developing his best faculties, is denied. Even should it be
granted, it would be conceded as a favor, and might at any moment
be withheld by the capricious will of another. --Again, the slave
is deprived of the right of self-defence. No injury from a white
man is he suffered to repel, nor can he seek redress from the
laws of his country. If accumulated insult and wrong provoke him
to the slightest retaliation, this effort for self-protection,
allowed and commended to others, is a crime, for which he must
pay a fearful penalty. --Again, the slave is stripped of the
right to be exempted from all harm, except for wrong-doing. He is
subjected to the lash by those, whom he has never
48 SLAVERY.
consented to serve, and whose claim to him as property we have
seen to be a usurpation; and this power of punishment, which, if
justly claimed, should be exercised with a fearful care, is often
delegated to men in whose hands there is a moral certainty of its
abuse.
I will add but one more example of the violation of human
rights by slavery. The slave virtually suffers the wrong of
robbery, though with utter unconsciousness on the part of those
who inflict it. It may, indeed, be generally thought, that, as he
is suffered to own nothing, he cannot fall, at least, under this
kind of violence. But it is not true that he owns nothing.
Whatever he may be denied by man, he holds from nature the most
valuable property, and that from which all other is derived, I
mean his strength. His labor is his own, by the gift of that God,
who nerved his arm, and gave him intelligence and conscience to
direct the use of it to his own and others' happiness. No
possession is so precious as a man's force of body and mind. The
exertion of this in labor is the great foundation and source of
property in outward things. The worth of articles of traffic is
measured by the labor expended in their production. To the great
mass of men, in all countries, their strength or labor is their
whole fortune. To seize on this would be to rob them of their
all. In truth, no robbery is so great, as that to which the slave
is habitually subjected. To take by force a man's whole estate,
the fruit of years of toil, would, by universal consent, be
denounced as a great wrong; but what is this, compared with
seizing the man himself, and
appropriating to our use the limbs, faculties, strength, and
labor, by which all property is won and held fast? The right
SLAVERY. 49
of property in outward things is as nothing, compared with our
right to ourselves. Were the slave-holder stripped of his
fortune, he would count the violence slight, compared with what
he would suffer, were his person seized and devoted as a chattel
to
another's use. Let it not be said, that the slave receives an
equivalent, that he is fed and clothed, and is not, therefore,
robbed. Suppose another to wrest from us a valued possession, and
to pay us his own price. Should we not think ourselves robbed?
Would not the laws pronounce the invader a robber? Is it
consistent with the right of property, that a man should
determine the equivalent for what he takes from his neighbour?
Especially is it to be hoped, that the equivalent due to the
laborer will be scrupulously weighed, when he himself is held as
property, and all his earnings are declared to be his master's.
So great an
infraction of human right is slavery!
In reply to these remarks, it may be said, that the theory
and practice of slavery differ; that the rights of the slave are
not as wantonly sported with as the claims of the master might
lead us to infer; that some of his possessions are sacred; that
not a few slave-holders refuse to divorce husband and wife, to
sever parent and child; and that, in many cases, the power of
punishment is used so reluctantly, as to encourage insolence and
insubordination. All this I have no disposition to deny. Indeed,
it must be so. It is not in human nature to wink wholly out of
sight the rights of a fellow-creature. Degrade him as we may, we
cannot altogether forget his claims. In every slave-country,
there are, undoubtedly, masters, who desire and purpose to
VOL. II. 5
50 SLAVERY.
respect these, to the full extent which the nature of the
relation will allow. Still, human rights are denied. They lie
wholly at another's mercy; and we must have studied history in
vain, if we need be told that they will be continually the prey
of this absolute power. --The evils, involved in and flowing
from the denial and infraction of the rights of the slave, will
form the subject of a subsequent chapter.
SLAVERY. 51
CHAPTER III.
_____
EXPLANATIONS.
I have endeavoured to show, in the preceding sections, that
slavery is a violation of sacred rights, the infliction of a
great wrong. And here a question arises. It may be asked,
whether, by this language, I intend to fasten on the slave-holder
the charge of peculiar guilt. On this point, great explicitness
is a duty. Sympathy with the slave has often degenerated into
injustice towards the master. I wish, then, to be understood,
that, in ranking slavery among the greatest wrongs, I speak of
the injury endured by the slave, and not of the character of the
master. These are distinct points. The former does not
determine the latter. The wrong is the same to the slave, from
whatever motive or spirit it may be inflicted. But this motive
or spirit
determines wholly the character of him who inflicts it. Because
a great injury is done to another, it does not follow, that he
who does it is a depraved man; for he may do it unconsciously,
and, still more, may do it in the belief that he confers a good.
We have learned little of moral science and of human nature, if
we do not know, that guilt is to be measured, not by the outward
act, but by unfaithfulness to conscience; and that the
consciences of men are often darkened by education, and other
inau-
52 SLAVERY.
spicious influences. All men have partial consciences, or want
comprehension of some duties. All partake, in a measure, of the
errors of the community in which they live. Some are betrayed
into moral mistakes by the very force with which conscience acts
in regard to some particular duty. As the intellect, in grasping
one truth, often loses its hold of others, and, by giving itself
up to one idea, falls into exaggeration; so the moral sense, in
seizing on a particular exercise of philanthropy, forgets other
duties, and will even violate many important precepts, in its
passionate eagerness to carry one to perfection. Innumerable
illustrations may be given of the liableness of men to moral
error. The
practice, which strikes one man with horror, may seem to another,
who was born and brought up in the midst of it, not only
innocent, but meritorious. We must judge others, not by our
light, but by their own. We must take their place, and consider
what allowance we in their position might justly expect. Our
ancestors at the North were concerned in the slave-trade. Some
of us can recollect individuals of the colored race, who were
torn from Africa, and grew old under our parental roofs. Our
ancestors committed a deed now branded as piracy. Were they,
therefore, the offscouring of the earth? Were not some of them
among the best of their times. The administration of religion,
in almost all past ages, has been a violation of the sacred
rights of conscience. How many sects have persecuted and shed
blood! Were their members, therefore, monsters of depravity?
The history of our race is made up of wrongs, many of which were
committed without a suspicion of their true character, and many
from an urgent sense of duty. A man, born among slaves,
accustomed
SLAVERY. 53
to this relation from his birth, taught its necessity by
venerated parents, associating it with all whom he reveres, and
too familiar with its evils to see and feel their magnitude, can
hardly be expected to look on slavery as it appears to more
impartial and distant observers. Let it not be said, that, when
new light is offered him, he is criminal in rejecting it. Are we
all willing to receive new light? Can we wonder that such a man
should be slow to be convinced of the criminality of an abuse
sanctioned by
prescription, and which has so interwoven itself with all the
habits, employments, and economy of life, that he can hardly
conceive of the existence of society without this all-pervading
element? May he not be true to his convictions of duty in other
relations, thought he grievously err in this? If, indeed,
through cupidity and selfishness, he stifles the monitions of
conscience, warp his judgment, and repel the light, he incurs
great guilt. But who of us can look into his heart? To whom are
the secret workings there revealed?
Still more. There are masters, who have thrown off the
natural prejudices of their position, who see slavery as it is,
and who hold the slave chiefly, if not wholly, from disinterested
considerations; and these deserve great praise. They deplore and
abhor the institution; but believing that partial emancipation,
in the present condition of society, would bring unmixed evil on
bond and free, they think themselves bound to continue the
relation, until it shall be dissolved by comprehensive and
systematic measures of the state. There are many of them who
would shudder as much as we at reducing a freeman to bondage, but
who are appalled by what
54 SLAVERY.
seem to them the perils and difficulties of liberating
multitudes, born and brought up to that condition. There are
many, who, nominally holding the slave as property, still hold
him for his own good, and for the public order, and would blush
to retain him on other grounds. Are such men to be set down
among the unprincipled? Am I told, that by these remarks I
extenuate slavery? I reply, slavery is still a heavy yoke, and
strips man of dearest rights, be the master's character what it
may. Slavery is not less a curse, because long use may have
blinded most, who support it, to its evils. Its influence is
still blighting, though conscientiously upheld. Absolute
monarchy is still a scourge, though among despots there have been
good men. It is possible to abhor and oppose bad institutions,
and yet to abstain from indiscriminate condemnation of those who
cling to them, and even to see in their ranks greater virtue than
in ourselves. It is true, and ought to be cheerfully
acknowledged, that in the slave-holding States may be found some
of the greatest names of our history, and, what is still more
important, bright examples of private virtue and Christian love.
There is, however, there must be, in slave-holding
communities, a large class, which cannot be too severely
condemned. There are many, we fear, very many, who hold their
fellow-creatures in bondage from selfish, base motives. They
hold the slave for gain, whether justly or unjustly, they neither
ask nor care. They cling to him as property, and have not faith
in the principles which will diminish a man's wealth. They hold
him, not for his own good, or the safety of the state, but with
precisely the same views, with which they hold a labor-
SLAVERY. 55
ing horse, that is, for the profit which they can wring from him.
They will not hear a word of his wrongs; for, wronged or not,
they will not let him go. He is their property, and they mean
not to be poor for righteousness' sake. Such a class there
undoubtedly is among slave-holders; how large, their own
consciences must
determine. We are sure of it; for, under such circumstances,
human nature will and must come to this mournful result. Now, to
men of this spirit, the explanations we have made do in no degree
apply. Such men ought to tremble before the rebukes of outraged
humanity and indignant virtue. Slavery upheld for gain, is a
great crime. He, who has nothing to urge against emancipation,
but that it will make him poorer, is bound to Immediate
Emancipation. He has no excuse for wresting from his brethren
their rights. The plea of benefit to the slave and state avails
him nothing. He extorts, by the lash, that labor to which he has
no claim, through a base selfishness. Every morsel of food, thus
forced from the injured, ought to be bitterer than gall. His
gold is cankered. The seat of the slave taints the luxuries for
which it streams. Better were it for the selfish wrong-doer, of
whom I speak, to live as the slave. to clothe himself in the
slave's raiment, to eat the slave's coarse food, to till his
fields with his own hands, than to pamper himself by day, and
pillow his head on down at night, at the cost of wantonly injured
fellow-creature. No fellow-creature can be so injured without
taking terrible vengeance. He is terribly avenged even now. The
blight which falls on the soul of the wrong-doer, the desolation
of his moral nature, is a more terrible calamity than he
inflicts. In deadening his moral feeling, he dies to the proper
happiness of
56 SLAVERY.
a man. In hardening his heart against his fellow-creatures, he
sears it to all true joy. In shutting his ear against the voice
of justice, he shuts out all the harmonies of the universe, and
turns the voice of God within him into rebuke. He may prosper,
indeed, and hold faster the slave by whom he prospers; but he
rivets heavier and more ignominious chains on his own soul than
he lays on others. No punishment is so terrible as prosperous
guilt. No fiend, exhausting on us all his power of torture, is
so fearful as an oppressed fellow-creature. The cry of the
oppressed, unheard on earth, is heard in heaven. God is just,
and if justice reign, then the unjust must terribly suffer. Then
no being can profit by evil-doing. Then all laws of the universe
are ordinances against guilt. Then every enjoyment gained by
wrong-doing will be turned into a curse. No laws of nature are
so irrepealable as that law which binds guilt and misery. God is
just. Then all the defences, which the oppressor rears against
the consequences of wrong-doing, are vain, as vain as would be
his strivings to arrest by his single arm the ocean or whirlwind.
He may disarm the slave. Can he disarm that slave's Creator? He
can crush the spirit of insurrection in a fellow-being. Can he
crush the awful spirit of justice and retribution in the
Almighty? He can still the murmur of discontent in his victim.
Can he silence that voice which speaks in thunder, and is to
break the sleep of the grave? Can he always still the reproving,
avenging voice in his own breast?
I know it will be said, "You would make us poor." Be poor,
then, and thank God for your honest poverty. Better be poor than
unjust. Better beg than steal. Better live in an alms-house,
better die, than trample on
SLAVERY 57
a fellow-creature and reduce him to a brute, for selfish
gratification. What! Have we yet to learn, that "it profits us
nothing to gain the whole world, and lose our souls"?
Let it not be replied, in scorn, that we of the North,
notorious for love of money, and given to selfish calculation,
are not the people to call others to resign their wealth. I have
no desire to shield the North; though I might say, with truth,
that a community, more generally controlled by the principles of
morality and religion, cannot be found. We have, without doubt,
a great multitude, who, were they slave-holders, would sooner die
than relax their iron grasp, than yield their property in men to
justice and the commands of God. We have those who would fight
against abolition, if by this measure the profit of their
intercourse with the South should be materially impaired. The
present excitement among us is, in part, the working of mercenary
principles. But because the North joins hands with the South,
shall iniquity go unpunished or unrebuked? Can the league of the
wicked, the revolt of worlds, repeal the everlasting law of
heaven and earth? Has God's throne fallen before Mammon's? Must
duty find no voice, no organ, because corruption is universally
diffused? Is not this a fresh motive to solemn warning, that,
everywhere, Northward and Southward, the rights of human beings
are held so cheap, in comparison with worldly gain?
58 SLAVERY.
CHAPTER IV.
_____
THE EVILS OF SLAVERY.
The subject of this section is painful and repulsive. We
must not, however, turn away from the contemplation of human
sufferings and guilt. Evil is permitted by the Creator, that we
should strive against it, in faith, and hope, and charity. We
must never quail before it because of its extent and duration,
never feel as if its power were greater than that of goodness.
It is meant to call forth deep sympathy with human nature, and
unwearied sacrifices for human redemption. One great part of the
mission of every man on earth is to contend with evil in some of
its forms; and there are some so dependent on opinion, that every
man, in judging and reproving them faithfully, does something
towards their removal. Let us not, then, shrink from the
contemplation of human
sufferings. Even sympathy, if we have nothing more to offer, is
a tribute acceptable to the Universal Father. --On this topic,
exaggeration should be conscientiously shunned; and, at the same
time, humanity requires that the whole truth should be honestly
spoken.
In treating of the evils of slavery, I, of course, speak of
its general, not universal effects, of its natural tendencies,
not unfailing results. There are the same
SLAVERY. 59
natural differences among the bond as the free, and there is a
great diversity in the circumstances in which they are placed.
The house-slave, selected for ability and faithfulness, placed
amidst the habits, accommodations, and improvements of civilized
life, admitted to a degree of confidence and familiarity, and
requiting these privileges with attachment, is almost necessarily
more enlightened and respectable than the field-slave, who is
confined to monotonous toils, and to the society and influences
of beings as degraded as himself. The mechanics in this class
are sensibly benefited by occupation which give a higher action
to the mind. Among the bond, as the free, will be found those to
whom nature seems partial, and who are carried almost
instinctively towards what is good. I speak of the natural,
general influences of slavery. Here, as everywhere else, there
are exceptions to the rule, and exceptions which multiply with
the moral improvements of the community in which the slave is
found. But these do not determine the general character of the
institution. It has general tendencies, founded in its very
nature, and which predominate vastly wherever it exists. These
tendencies it is my present purpose to unfold.
1. The first rank among the evils of slavery must be given
to its Moral influence. This is throughout debasing. Common
language teaches this. We can say nothing more insulting of
another, than that he is slavish. To possess the spirit of a
slave is to have sunk to the lowest depths. We can apply to
slavery no worse name than its own. Men have always shrunk
instinctively from this state, as the most degraded. No
punishment, save death, has been more dreaded, and to avoid it
death has often been endured.
60 SLAVERY.
In expressing the moral influence of slavery, the first and
most obvious remark is, that it destroys the proper consciousness
and spirit of a Man. The slave, regarded and treated as property,
bought and sold like a brute, denied the rights of humanity,
unprotected against insult, made a tool, and systematically
subdued, that he may be a manageable, useful tool, how can he
help regarding himself as fallen below his race? How must his
spirit be crushed! How can he respect himself? He becomes bowed
to servility. This word, borrowed from his condition, expresses
the ruin wrought by slavery within him. The idea, that he was
made for his own virtue and happiness, scarcely dawns on his
mind. To be an
instrument of the physical, material good of another, whose will
is his highest law, he is taught to regard as the great purpose
of his being. Here lies the evil of slavery. Its whips,
imprisonments, and even the horrors of the middle passage from
Africa to America, these are not to be named, in comparison with
this extinction of the proper consciousness of a human being,
with the degradation of a man into a brute.
It may be said, that the slave is used to his yoke; that his
sensibilities are blunted; that he receives, without a pang or a
thought, the treatment which would sting other men to madness.
And to what does this apology amount? It virtually declares, that
slavery has done its perfect work, has quenched the spirit of
humanity, that the Man is dead within the slave. Is slavery,
therefore, no wrong? It is not, however, true, that this work of
debasement is ever so effectually done as to extinguish all
feeling. Man is too great a creature to be wholly ruined by man.
When he seems dead,
SLAVERY. 61
he only sleeps. There are occasionally some sullen murmurs in the
calm of slavery, showing that life still beats in the soul, that
the idea of Rights cannot be wholly effaced from the human being.
It would be too painful, and it is not needed, to detail the
processes by which the spirit is broken in slavery. I refer to
one only, the selling of slaves. The practice of exposing fellow-
creatures for sale, of having markets for men as for cattle, of
examining the limbs and muscles of a man and a woman as of a
brute, of putting human beings under the hammer of an auctioneer,
and delivering them, like any other articles of merchandise, to
the highest bidder, all this is such an insult to our common
nature, and so infinitely degrading to the poor victim, that it
is hard to conceive of its existence, except in a barbarous
country.
That slavery should be most unpropitious to the slave as a
moral being will be farther apparent, if we consider that his
condition is throughout a Wrong, and that consequently it must
tend to unsettle all his notions of duty. The violation of his
own rights, to which he is inured from birth, must throw
confusion over his ideas of all human rights. He cannot
comprehend them; or, if he does, how can he respect them,
seeing.them, as he does, perpetually trampled on in his own
person? The injury to the character, from living in an
atmosphere of wrong, we can all understand. To live in a state of
society, of which injustice is the chief and all-pervading
element, is too severe a trial for human nature,
especially when no means are used to counteract its influence.
Accordingly, the most common distinctions of morality are
faintly apprehended by the slave. Respect
VOL. II. 6
62 SLAVERY.
for property, that fundamental law of civil society, can hardly
be instilled into him. His dishonesty is proverbial. Theft from
his master passes with him for no crime. A system of force is
generally found to drive to fraud. How necessarily will this be
the result of a relation in which force is used to extort from a
man his labor, his natural property, without any attempt to win
his consent! Can we wonder, that the uneducated conscience of the
man who is daily wronged should allow him in reprisals to the
extent of his power? Thus the primary social virtue, justice, is
undermined in the slave.
That the slave should yield himself to intemperance,
licentiousness, and, in general, to sensual excess, we must also
expect. Doomed to live for the physical indulgences of others,
unused to any pleasures but those of sense, stripped of self-
respect, and having nothing to gain in life, how can he be
expected to govern himself? How naturally, I had almost said
necessarily, does he become the creature of sensation, of
passion, of the present moment! What aid does the future give him
in withstanding desire? That better condition, for which other
men postpone the cravings of appetite, never opens before him.
The sense of
character, the power of opinion, another restraint on the free,
can do little or nothing to rescue so abject a class from excess
and debasement. In truth, power over himself is the last virtue
we should expect in the slave, when we think of him as subjected
to absolute power, and made to move passively from the impulse of
a foreign will. He is trained to cowardice, and cowardice links
itself naturally with low vices. Idleness, to his apprehension,
is paradise, for he works without hope of reward. Thus slav-
SLAVERY. 63
ery robs him of moral force, and prepares him to fall a prey to
appetite and passion.
That the slave finds in his condition little nutriment for
the social virtues we shall easily understand, if we consider,
that his chief relations are to an absolute master, and to the
companions of his degrading bondage; that is, to a being who
wrongs him, and to associates whom he cannot honor, whom he sees
debased. His
dependence on his owner loosens his ties to all other beings. He
has no country to love, no family to call his own, no objects of
public utility to espouse, no impulse to generous exertion. The
relations, dependences, and responsibilities, by which Providence
forms the soul to a deep, disinterested love, are almost struck
out of his lot. An arbitrary rule, a foreign, irresistible will,
taking him out of his own hands, and placing him beyond the
natural influences of society, extinguishes in a great degree the
sense of what is due to himself, and to the human family around
him.
The effects of slavery on the character are so various, that
this part of the discussion might be greatly extended; but I will
touch only on one topic. Let us turn, for a moment, to the great
Motive by which the slave is made to labor. Labor, in one form or
another, is appointed by God for man's improvement and happiness,
and absorbs the chief part of human life, so that the Motive
which excites to it has immense influence on character. It
determines very much, whether life shall serve or fail of its
end. The man, who works from honorable motives, from domestic
affections, from desire of a condition which will open to him
greater happiness and usefulness, finds in labor an exercise and
invigoration of virtue. The day-laborer, who earns,
64 SLAVERY.
with horny hand and the sweat of his face, coarse food for a wife
and children whom he loves, is raised, by this generous motive,
to true dignity; and, though wanting the refinements of life, is
a nobler being than those who think themselves absolved by wealth
from serving others. Now the slave's labor brings no dignity, is
an exercise of no virtue, but throughout a degradation; so that
one of God's chief provisions for human improvement becomes a
curse. The motive from which he acts debases him. It is the whip.
It is corporal punishment. It is physical pain inflicted by a
fellow-creature. Undoubtedly labor is mitigated to the slave, as
to all men, by habit. But this is not the motive. Take away the
whip, and he would be idle. His labor brings no new comforts to
wife or child. The motive which spurs him is one, by which it is
base to be swayed. Stripes are, indeed, resorted to by civil
government, when no other consideration will deter from crime;
but he, who is deterred from wrong-doing by the whipping-post, is
among the most fallen of his race. To work in sight of the whip,
under menace of blows, is to be exposed to perpetual insult and
degrading
influences. Every motion of the limbs, which such a menace
urges, is a wound to the soul. How hard must it be for a man,
who lives under the lash, to respect himself! When this motive
is
substituted for all the nobler ones which God ordains, is it not
almost necessarily death to the better and higher sentiments of
our nature? It is the part of a man to despise pain in comparison
with disgrace, to meet it fearlessly in well-doing, to perform
the work of life from other impulses. It is the part of a brute
to be governed by the whip. Even the brute is seen to act from
more generous incitements. The
SLAVERY. 65
horse of a noble breed will not endure the lash. Shall we sink
man below the horse?
Let it not be said, that blows are seldom inflicted. Be it
so. We are glad to know it. But this is not the point. The
complaint now urged is not of the amount of the pain inflicted,
but of its influence on the character, when made the great motive
to human labor. It is not the endurance, but the dread of the
whip, it is the substitution of this for natural and honorable
motives to action, which we abhor and condemn. It matters not,
whether few or many are whipped. A blow given to a single slave
is a stripe on the souls of all who see or hear it. It makes all
abject, servile. It is not the wound given to the flesh, of which
we now complain. Scar the back, and you have done nothing,
compared with the wrong done to the soul. You have either stung
that soul with infernal passions, with thirst for revenge; or,
what perhaps is more discouraging, you have broken and brutalized
it. The human spirit has perished under your hands, as far as it
can be destroyed by human force.
I know it is sometimes said, in reply to these: remarks,
that all men, as well as slaves, act from necessity; that we have
masters in hunger and thirst; that no man loves labor for itself;
that the pains, which are inflicted on us by the laws of nature,
the elements and seasons, are so many lashes driving us to our
daily task. Be it so. Still the two cases are essentially
different. The necessity laid on us by natural wants is most
kindly in its purpose. It is meant to awaken all our faculties,
to give full play to body and mind, and thus to give us a new
consciousness of the powers derived to us from God. We are,
indeed, subjected to a stern nature;
66 SLAVERY.
we are placed amidst warring elements, scorching heat, withering
cold, storms, blights, sickness, death. And what is the design?
To call forth our powers, to lay on us great duties, to make us
nobler beings. We are placed in the midst of a warring nature,
not to yield to it, not to be its slaves, but to conquer it, to
make it the monument of our skill and strength, to arm ourselves
with its elements, its heat, winds, vapors, and mineral
treasures, to find, in its painful changes, occasions and
incitements to invention, courage, endurance, mutual and
endearing dependences, and religious trust. The developement of
human nature, in all its powers and affections, is the end of
that hard necessity which is laid on us by nature. Is this one
and the same thing with the whip laid on the slave? Still more;
it is the design of nature, that, by energy, skill, and self-
denial, we should so far anticipate our wants, or accumulate
supplies, as to be able to diminish the toil of the hands, and to
mix with it more intellectual and liberal
occupations. Nature does not lay on us an unchangeable task, but
one which we may all lighten by honest, self-denying industry.
Thus she invites us to throw off her yoke, and to make her our
servant. Is this the invitation which the master gives his
slaves? Is it his aim to awaken the powers of those on whom he
lays his burdens, and to give them increasing mastery over
himself? Is it not his aim to curb their wills, break their
spirits, and shut them up for ever in the same narrow and
degrading work? Oh, let not nature be profaned, let not her
parental rule be blasphemed, by comparing with her the slave-
holder!
2. Having considered the moral influence of slavery, SLAVERY. 67
I proceed to consider its Intellectual influence, another great
topic. God gave us intellectual power, that it should be
cultivated; and a system which degrades it, and can only be
upheld by its depression, opposes one of his most benevolent
designs. Reason is God's image in man, and the capacity of
acquiring truth is among his best aspirations. To call forth the
intellect is a principal purpose of the circumstances in which we
are placed, of the child's connection with the parent, and of the
necessity laid on him in maturer life to provide for himself and
others. The education of the intellect is not confined to youth;
but the various experience of later years does vastly more than
books and colleges to ripen and invigorate the faculties.
Now the whole lot of the slave is fitted to keep his mind in
childhood and bondage. Though living in a land of light, few
beams find their way to his benighted understanding. No parent
feels the duty of instructing him. No teacher is provided for
him, but the Driver, who breaks him, almost in childhood, to the
servile tasks which are to fill up his life. No book is opened
to his youthful curiosity. As he advances in years, no new
excitements supply the place of teachers. He is not cast on
himself, made to depend on his own energies. No stirring prizes
in life awaken his dormant faculties. Fed and clothed by others
like a child, directed in every step, doomed for life to a
monotonous round of labor, he lives and dies without a spring to
his powers, often brutally unconscious of his spiritual nature.
Nor is this all. When
benevolence would approach him with instruction, it is repelled.
He is not allowed to be taught. The light is jealously barred
out. The voice, which would speak to him as a man, is put to
silence. He
68 SLAVERY.
must not even be enabled to read the Word of God. His immortal
spirit is systematically crushed.
It is said, I know, that the ignorance of the slave is
necessary to the security of the master, and the quiet of the
state; and this is said truly. Slavery and knowledge cannot live
together. To enlighten the slave is to break his chain. To make
him harmless, he must be kept blind. He cannot be left to read,
in an enlightened age, without endangering his master; for what
can he read, which will not give, at least, some hint of his
wrongs? Should his eye chance to fall on the "Declaration of
Independence," how would the truth glare on him, that "All men
are born free and equal!" All knowledge furnishes arguments
against slavery. From every subject, light would break forth to
reveal his inalienable and outraged rights. The very exercise of
his intellect would give him the consciousness of being made for
something more than a slave. I agree to the necessity laid on his
master to keep him in darkness. And what stronger argument
against slavery can be conceived? It compels the master to
degrade systematically the mind of the slave; to war against
human intelligence; to resist that improvement which is the end
of the Creator. "Woe to him that taketh away the key of
knowledge!" To kill the body is a great crime. The spirit we
cannot kill, but we can bury it in death-like lethargy; and is
this a light crime in the sight of its Maker?
Let it not be said, that almost eveywhere the laboring
classes are doomed to ignorance, deprived of the means of
instruction. The intellectual advantages of the laboring freeman,
who is intrusted with the care of himself, raise him far above
the slave; and, accordingly,
SLAVERY. 69
superior minds are constantly seen to issue from the less
educated classes. Besides, in free communities, philanthropy is
not
forbidden to labor for the improvement of the ignorant. The
obligation of the prosperous and instructed to elevate their less
favored brethren is taught, and not taught in vain. Benevolence
is making perpetual encroachments on the domain of ignorance and
crime. In communities, on the other hand, cursed with slavery,
half the population, sometimes more, are given up, intentionally
and systematically, to hopeless ignorance. To raise this mass to
intelligence and self-government is a crime. The sentence of
perpetual degradation is passed on a large portion of the human
race. In this view, how great the ill-desert of slavery!
3. I proceed, now, to the Domestic influences of slavery;
and here we must look for a dark picture. Slavery virtually
dissolves the domestic relations. It ruptures the most sacred
ties on earth. It violates home. It lacerates the best
affections. The domestic relations precede, and, in our present
existence, are worth more than all our other social ties. They
give the first throb to the heart, and unseal the deep fountains
of its love. Home is the chief school of human virtue. Its
responsibilities, joys, sorrows, smiles, tears, hopes, and
solicitudes, form the chief interests of human life. Go where a
man may, home is the centre to which his heart turns. The thought
of his home nerves his arm and lightens his toil. For that his
heart yearns, when he is far off. There he garners up his best
treasures. God has ordained for all men alike the highest earthly
happiness, in providing for all the sanctuary of home. But the
slave's home does not merit
70 SLAVERY.
the name. To him it is no sanctuary. It is open to violation,
insult, outrage. His children belong to another, are provided for
by another, are disposed of by another. The most precious burden
with which the heart can be charged, the happiness of his child,
he must not bear. He lives not for his family, but for a
stranger. He cannot improve their lot. His wife and daughter he
cannot shield from insult. They may be torn from him at another's
pleasure, sold as beasts of burden, sent he knows not whither,
sent where he cannot reach them, or even interchange inquiries
and messages of love. To the slave marriage has no sanctity. It
may be dissolved in a moment at another's will. His wife, son,
and daughter may be lashed before his eyes, and not a finger must
be lifted in their defence. He sees the scar of the lash on his
wife and child. Thus the slave's home is desecrated. Thus the
tenderest relations, intended by God equally for all, and
intended to be the chief springs of happiness and virtue, are
sported with wantonly and cruelly. What outrage so great as to
enter a man's house, and tear from his side the beings whom God
has bound to him by the holiest ties? Every man can make the
case his own. Every mother can bring it home to her own heart.
And let it not be said, that the slave has not the
sensibilities of other men. Nature is too strong even for slavery
to conquer. Even the brute has the yearnings of parental love.
But suppose that the conjugal and parental ties of the slave may
be severed without a pang. What a curse must be slavery, if it
can so blight the heart with more than brutal insensibility, if
it can sink the human mother below the Polar she-bear, which
"howls and dies for her sundered cub!" But it does
SLAVERY. 71
not and cannot turn the slave to stone. It leaves, at least,
feeling enough to make these domestic wrongs occasions of
frequent and deep suffering. Still it must do much to quench the
natural affections. Can the wife, who has been brought up under
influences most unfriendly to female purity and honor, who is
exposed to the whip, who may be torn away at her master's will,
and whose support and protection are not committed to a husband's
faithfulness, can such a wife, if the name may be given her, be
loved and honored as a woman should be? Or can the love, which
should bind together man and his offspring, be expected under an
institution which subverts, in a great degree, filial dependence
and parental authority and care? Slavery withers the affections
and happiness of home at their very root, by tainting female
purity. Woman, brought up in degradation, placed under another's
power and at another's
disposal, and never taught to look forward to the happiness of an
inviolate, honorable marriage, can hardly possess the feelings
and virtues of her sex. A blight falls on her in her early years.
Those who have daughters can comprehend her lot. In truth,
licentiousness among bond and free is the natural issue of all-
polluting slavery. Domestic happiness perishes under its touch,
both among bond and free.
How wonderful is it, that, in civilized countries, men can
be so steeled by habit as to invade without remorse the peace,
purity, and sacred relations of domestic life, as to put asunder
those whom God has joined together, as to break up households by
processes more painful than death! And this is done for pecuniary
profit! What! Can men, having human feeling, grow rich by the
desolation of families? We hear of some of the
72 SLAVERY.
Southern States enriching themselves by breeding slaves for sale.
Of all the licensed occupations of society this is the most
detestable. What! Grow men like cattle! Rear human families,
like herds of swine, and then scatter them to the four winds for
gain! Among the imprecations uttered by man on man, is there one
more fearful, more ominous, than the sighing of the mother bereft
of her child by unfeeling cupidity? If blood cry to God, surely
that sigh will be heard in heaven.
Let it not be said, that members of families are often
separated in all conditions of life. Yes, but separated under the
influence of love. The husband leaves wife and children, that he
may provide for their support, and carries them with him in his
heart and hopes. The sailor, in his lonely night-watch, looks
homeward, and well-known voices come to him amidst the roar of
the waves. The parent sends away his children, but sends them to
prosper, and to press them again to his heart with a joy enhanced
by separation. Are such the separations which slavery makes? And
can he, who has scattered other families, ask God to bless his
own?
4. I proceed to another important view of the evils of
slavery. Slavery produces and gives license to Cruelty. By this
it is not meant, that cruelty is the universal, habitual,
unfailing result. Thanks to God, Christianity has not entered the
world in vain. Where it has not cast down, it has mitigated bad
institutions. Slavery in this country differs widely from that of
ancient times, and from that which the Spaniards imposed on the
aboriginals of South America. There is here an increasing
disposition to multiply the comforts of the slaves, and in this
let us rejoice. At the same time,
SLAVERY. 73
we must remember, that, under the light of the present day, and
in a country where Christianity and the rights of men are
understood, a diminished severity may contain more guilt than the
ferocity of darker ages. Cruelty in its lighter forms is now a
greater crime than the atrocious usages of antiquity at which we
shudder. "The times of that ignorance God winked at, but NOW he
calleth men everywhere to repent." It should also be considered,
that the slightest cruelty to the slave is an aggravated wrong,
because he is unjustly held in bondage, unjustly held as
property. We condemn the man who enforces harshly a righteous
claim. What, then, ought we to think of lashing and scarring
fellow-creatures, for the purpose of upholding an unrighteous,
usurped power, of extorting labor which is not our due.
I have said, that cruelty is not the habit of the Slave
States of this country. Still, that it is frequent we cannot
doubt. Reports, which harrow up our souls, come to us from that
quarter; and we know that they must be essentially correct,
because it is impossible that a large part, perhaps the majority,
of the
population of a country can be broken to passive, unlimited
submission, without examples of terrible severity.
Let it not be said, as is sometimes done, that cruel deeds
are perpetrated everywhere else, as well as in slave-countries.
Be it so; but in all civilized nations unscourged by slavery, a
principal object of legislation is to protect every man from
cruelty, and to bring every man to punishment, who wantonly
tortures or wounds another; whilst slavery plucks off restraint
from the ferocious, or leaves them to satiate their rage with
impunity. --Let it not be said, that these barbarities are
regarded nowhere with more horror than at the South.
VOL. 11. 7
74 SLAVERY.
Be it so. They are abhorred, but allowed. The power of
individuals to lacerate their fellow-creatures is given to them
by the
community. The community abhors the abuse, but confers the power
which will certainly be abused, and thus strips itself of all
defence before the bar of Almighty Justice. It must answer for
the crimes which are shielded by its laws. --Let it not be said,
that these cruelties are checked by the private interest of the
slave-holder. Does regard to private interest save from brutal
treatment the draught-horse in our streets? And may not a vast
amount of suffering be inflicted, which will not put in peril the
life or strength of the slave? To substantiate the charge of
cruelty, I shall not, as I have said, have recourse to current
reports, however well established. I am willing to dismiss them
all as false. I stand on other ground. Reports may lie, but our
daily experience of human nature cannot lie. I summon no
witnesses, or rather I appeal to a witness everywhere present, a
witness in every heart. Who, that has watched his own heart, or
observed others, does not feel that man is not fit to be trusted
with absolute, irresponsible power over man? It must be abused.
The selfish passions and pride of our nature will as surely abuse
it, as the storm will ravage, or the ocean swell and roar under
the whirlwind. A being, so ignorant, so headstrong, so
passionate, as man, ought not to be trusted with this terrible
dominion. He ought not to desire it. He ought to dread it. He
ought to cast it from him, as most perilous to himself and
others.
Absolute power was not meant for man. There is, indeed, an
exception to this rule. There is one case, in which God puts a
human being wholly defenceless
SLAVERY.
75
into another's hands. I refer to the child, who is wholly
subjected to the parent's will. But observe how carefully, I
might almost say anxiously, God has provided against the abuse of
this power. He has raised up for the child in the heart of the
parent, a guardian, whom the mightiest on earth cannot resist.
He has fitted the parent for this trust, by teaching him to love
his offspring better than himself. No eloquence on earth is so
subduing as the moaning of the infant when in pain. No reward is
sweeter than that infant's smile. We say, God has put the infant
into the parent's hands. Might we not more truly say, that he
has put the parent into the child's power? That little being
sends forth his father to toil, and makes the mother watch over
him by day, and fix on him her sleepless eyes by night. No
tyrant lays such a yoke. Thus God has fenced and secured from
abuse the power of the parent; and yet even the parent has been
known, in a moment of passion, to be cruel to his child. Is man,
then, to be trusted with absolute power over a fellow-creature,
who, instead of being commended by nature to his
tenderest love, belongs to a despised race, is regarded as
property, is made the passive instrument of his gratification and
gain? I ask no documents to prove the abuses of this power, nor
do I care what is said to disprove them. Millions may rise up
and tell me that the slave suffers little from cruelty. I know
too much of human nature, human history, human passion, to
believe them. I acquit slave-holders of all peculiar depravity. I
judge them by myself. I say, that absolute power always corrupts
human nature more or less. I say, that extraordinary, almost
miraculous self-control is necessary to secure the slave-holder
from provocation and passion;
76 SLAVERY.
and is self-control the virtue which, above all others, grows up
amidst the possession of irresponsible dominion? Even when the
slave-holder honestly acquits himself of cruelty, he may be
criminal. His own consciousness is to be distrusted. Having begun
with wronging the slave, with wresting from him sacred rights, he
may be expected to multiply wrongs, without thought. The
degraded state of the slave may induce in the master a mode of
treatment essentially inhuman and insulting, but which he never
dreams to be cruel. The influence of slavery in indurating the
moral feeling and blinding men to wrong, is one of its worst
evils.
But suppose the master to be ever so humane. Still, he is
not always watching over his slave. He has his pleasures to
attend to. He is often absent. His terrible power must be
delegated. And to whom is it delegated? To men prepared to
govern others, by having learned to govern themselves? To men
having a deep interest in the slaves? To wise men, instructed in
human nature? To Christians, trained to purity and love? Who
does not know, that the office of Overseer is among the last
which an enlightened, philanthropic, self-respecting man would
choose? Who does not know, how often the overseer pollutes the
plantation by his licentiousness, as well as scourges it by his
severity? In the hands of such a man, the lash is placed. To
such a man is committed the most fearful trust on earth! For his
cruelties, the master must answer, as truly as if they were his
own. Nor is this all. The master does more than delegate his
power to the overseer. How often does he part with it wholly to
the slave-dealer! And has he weighed the responsibility of such
a transfer? Does he not know, that, in selling his SLAVERY.
77
slaves into merciless bands, he is merciless himself, and must
give an account to God for every barbarity of which they become
the victims? The notorious cruelty of the slave-dealers, can be
no false report, for it belongs to their vocation. These are the
men, who throng and defile our Seat of Government, whose slave-
markets and slave-dungeons turn to mockery the language of
freedom in the halls of Congress, and who make us justly the by-
word and the scorn of the nations. Is there no cruelty in putting
slaves under the bloody lash of the slave-dealers, to be driven
like herds of cattle to distant regions, and there to pass into
the hands of strangers, without a pledge of their finding justice
or mercy? What heart, not seared by custom, would not recoil
from such barbarity?
It has been seen, that I do not ground my argument at all on
cases of excessive cruelty. I should attach less importance to
these than do most persons, even were they more frequent. They
form a very, very small amount of suffering, compared with what
is inflicted by abuses of power too minute for notice. Blows,
insults, privations, which make no noise, and leave no scar, are
incomparably more destructive of happiness than a few brutal
violences, which move general indignation. A weak, despised
being, having no means of defence or redress, living in a
community armed against his rights, regarded as property, and as
bound to entire, unresisting compliance with another's will, if
not subjected to inflictions of ferocious cruelty, is yet exposed
to less striking and shocking forms of cruelty, the amount of
which must be a fearful mass of suffering.
But could it be proved, that there are no cruelties in
slave-countries, we ought not then to be more recon-
7 #
78 SLAVERY.
ciled to slavery than we now are. For what would this show? That
cruelty is not needed. And why not needed? Because the slave is
entirely subdued to his lot. No man will be wholly unresisting in
bondage, but he who is thoroughly imbued with the spirit of a
slave. If the colored race never need punishment, it is because
the feelings of men are dead within them, because they have no
consciousness of rights, because they are cowards, without
respect for themselves, and without confidence in the sharers of
their degraded lot. The quiet of slavery is like that which the
Roman legions left in ancient Britain, the stillness of death.
Why were the Romans accustomed to work their slaves in chains by
day, and confine them in dungeons by night? Not because they
loved cruelty for its own sake; but because their slaves were
stung with a consciousness of degradation, because they brought
from the forests of Dacia some rude ideas of human dignity, or
from civilized countries some experience of social improvements,
which naturally issued in violence and exasperation. They needed
cruelty, for their own wills were not broken to another's, and
the spirit of freemen was not wholly gone. The slave must meet
cruel treatment either inwardly or outwardly. Either the soul or
the body must receive the blow. Either the flesh must be
tortured, or the spirit be struck down. Dreadful alternative to
which slavery is reduced!
5. I proceed to another view of the evils of slavery. I
refer to its influence on the Master. This topic cannot, perhaps,
be so handled as to avoid giving offence; but without it an
imperfect view of the subject would be given. I will pass over
many views. I will say noth-
SLAVERY. 79
ing of the tendency of slavery to unsettle the ideas of right in
the slave-holder, to impair his convictions of Justice and
Benevolence; or of its tendency to associate with labor ideas of
degradation, and to recommend idleness as an honorable exemption.
I will confine myself to two considerations.
The first is, that slavery, above all other influences,
nourishes the passion for power and its kindred vices. There is
no passion which needs a stronger curb. Men's worst crimes have
sprung from the desire of being masters, of bending others to
their yoke. And the natural tendency of bringing others into
subjection to our absolute will, is to quicken into fearful
activity the imperious, haughty, proud, self-seeking
propensities of our nature. Man cannot, without imminent peril
to his virtue, own a fellow-
creature, or use the word of absolute command to his brethren.
God never delegated this power. It