The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus · Chapter 15Part 15
This chapter is not translated yet. You are reading the original.
1st. There is no valid excuse to be found, either in man's laws or any where else, for transgressing God's laws. Whatever may be thought, or said to the contrary, it still remains, and for ever will remain true, that under all circumstances, "sin is the transgression of the (Divine) law."
2d. In every instance in which a commandment of God is transgressed, under the cover and plea of a human law, purporting to permit what that commandment forbids, there is, in proportion to the authority and influence of the transgressor, a fresh sanction imparted to that law; and consequently, in the same proportion the public habit of setting up a false standard of right and wrong is promoted. It is this habit—this habit of graduating our morality by the laws of the land in which we live—that makes the "mischief framed by a law" so much more pernicious than that which has no law to countenance it, and to commend it to the conscience. Who is unaware, that nothing tends so powerfully to keep the traffic in strong drink from becoming universally odious, as the fact, that this body and soul destroying business finds a sanction in human laws? Who has not seen the man, authorized by these laws to distribute the poison amongst his tippling neighbors, proof against all the shafts of truth, under the self-pleasing and self-satisfying consideration, that his is a lawful business.
This habit of setting up man's law, instead of God's law, as the standard of conduct, is strikingly manifested in the fact, that on the ground, that the Federal Constitution binds the citizens of the United States to perpetuate slavery, or at least, not to meddle with it, we are, both at the North and the South, called on to forbear from all efforts to abolish it. The exertions made to discover in that instrument, authority for slavery, and authority against endeavors to abolish it, are as great, anxious, and unwearied, as if they who made them, thought that the fortunate discovery would settle for ever the great question which agitates our country—would nullify all the laws of God against slavery—and make the oppression of our colored brethren, as long as time shall last, justifiable and praiseworthy. But this discovery will never be made; for the Constitution is not on the side of the slaveholder. If it were, however, it would clothe him with no moral right to act in opposition to the paramount law of God. It is not at all necessary to the support of my views, in this communication, to show that the Constitution was not designed to favor slavery; and yet, a few words to this end may not be out of place.
A treaty between Great Britain and Turkey, by the terms of which the latter should be prohibited from allowing slaves to be brought within her dominions, after twenty years from its date, would, all will admit, redound greatly to the credit of Great Britain. To be sure, she would not have done as much for the cause of humanity, as if she had succeeded in bringing the further indulgence of the sin within the limits of a briefer period, and incomparably less than if she had succeeded in reconciling the Sublime Porte to her glorious and emphatically English doctrines of immediate emancipation. But still she would deserve some praise—much more than if she had done nothing in this respect. Now, for my present purpose, and many of our statesmen say, for nearly all purposes, the Federal Constitution is to be regarded as a treaty between sovereign States. But how much more does this treaty do for the abolition of slavery, than that on which we were, a moment since, bestowing our praise! It imposes a prohibition similar to that in the supposed treaty between Great Britain and Turkey, so that no slaves have been allowed to be introduced into the United States since the year 1808. It goes further, and makes ample provision for the abolition and prevention of slavery in every part of the nation, save these States; so that the District of Columbia and the national territories can be cleared forever of slavery, whenever a majority of the parties, bound by the treaty, shall desire it. And it goes still farther, and clothes this majority with the power of regulating commerce between the States, and consequently, of prohibiting their mutual traffic in "the bodies and souls of men." Had this treaty gone but one step farther, and made an exception, as it should have done, in behalf of slaves, in the clause making necessary provision for the return of fugitives held to service in the States from which they flee, none but those who think it is fairly held responsible for the twenty years indulgence of the unholy traffic, would have claimed any thing more from it in relation to slavery. Now, this instrument, which contains nothing more, bearing on the subject of slavery, than what I have referred to, and whose pages are not once polluted with the words "slave" and "slavery," is abundantly and triumphantly cited, as conclusive authority in favor of slavery, and against endeavors to abolish it. Whilst we regret, that the true-hearted sons of freedom in the Convention which formed it, could obtain no more concessions from the advocates of slavery, let us honor their sacred memory, and thank God for those they did obtain.
I have supposed it possible, that you might number yourself with those, who defend slavery on the ground of its alleged conformity with human laws. It occurs to me, that you may, also, take hope, that slavery is defensible in the supposed fact, that a considerable share of the professing Christians, in the free States, are in favor of it. "Let God be true, but every man a liar." If all professing Christians were for slavery, yet, if God is against it, that is reason enough why you also should be against it. It is not true, however, that a considerable share of our professing Christians are on the side of slavery. Indeed, until I read Professor Hodge's article, I had not supposed that any of them denied its sinfulness. It is true, that a large proportion of them refuse to take a stand against it. Let them justify to their consciences, and to their God, as they can, the equivocal silence and still more equivocal action on this subject, by which they have left their Southern brethren to infer, that Northern piety sanctions slavery. It is the doctrine of expediency, so prevalent and corrupting in the American Church, which has deceived you into the belief, that a large share of the professing Christians in the free States, think slavery to be sinless. This share, which you have in your eye, is, as well as the remainder, convinced that slavery is sinful—only they think it inexpedient to say so. In relation to other sins, they are satisfied with God's way of immediate abandonment. But, in relation to slavery, they flatter themselves that they have discovered "a more excellent way"—that of leaving the sin untouched, and simply hoping for its cessation, at some indefinite period in the distant future. I say hoping, instead of praying, as prayer for an object is found to be accompanied by corresponding efforts. But for this vile doctrine of expediency, which gives to our ecclesiastical bodies, whenever the subject of such a giant and popular sin as slavery is broached in them, the complexion of a political caucus steeped in unprincipled policy, rather than that of a company of the Saviour's disciples, inquiring "in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom," the way of the Lord;—but for this doctrine, I say, you would, long ago, have heard the testimony of Northern Christians against Southern slavery;—and not only so, but you would long ago have seen this Dagon fall before the power of that testimony. I trust, however, that this testimony will not long be withheld; and that Northern Christians will soon perceive, that, in relation to slavery, as well as every other sin, it is the safest and wisest, as well as the holiest course, to drop all carnal policy—to "trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not unto thine own understanding."
Not only are Northern Christians, with very rare exceptions, convinced of the sin of slavery; but even your slaveholders were formerly accustomed, with nearly as great unanimity, to admit, that they themselves thought it to be sinful. It is only recently, and since they have found that their system must be tested by the Bible, thoroughly and in earnest—not merely for the purpose, as formerly, of determining without any practical consequences of the determination, what is the moral character of slavery—but, for the purpose of settling the point, whether the institution shall stand or fall,—it is only, I say, since the civilized world has been fast coming to claim that it shall be decided by the Bible, and by no lower standard, whether slavery shall or shall not exist—that your slaveholders have found it expedient to take the ground, that slavery is not sin.
It probably has not occurred to you, how fairly and fully you might have been stopped, upon the very threshold of your defence of slavery. The only witness you have called to the stand to sustain your sinking cause, is the Bible. But this is a witness, which slavery has itself impeached, and of which, therefore, it is not entitled to avail itself. It is a good rule in our civil courts, that a party is not permitted to impeach his own witness; and it is but an inconsiderable variation of the letter of this rule, and obviously no violation of its spirit and policy to say, that no party is permitted to attempt to benefit his cause by a witness whom he has himself impeached. Now, the slaveholder palpably violates this rule, when he presumes to offer the Bible as a witness for his cause:—for he has previously impeached it, by declaring, in his slave system, that it is not to be believed—that its requirements are not to be obeyed—that they are not even to be read (though the Bible expressly directs that they shall be)—that concubinage shall be substituted for the marriage it enjoins—and that its other provisions for the happiness, and even the existence, of the social relations, shall be trampled under foot. The scene, in which a lawyer should ask the jury to believe what his witness is saying at one moment, and to reject what he is saying at another, would be ludicrous enough. But what more absurdity is there in it than that which the pro-slavery party are guilty of, when they would have us deaf, whilst their witness is testifying in favor of marriage and searching the Scriptures; and, all ears, whilst that same witness is testifying, as they construe it, in favor of slavery! No—before it will be competent for the American slaveholder to appeal to the Bible for justification of his system, that system must be so modified, as no longer to make open, shameless war upon the Bible. I would recommend to slaveholders, that, rather than make so unhallowed a use of the Bible as to attempt to bolster up their hard beset cause with it, they should take the ground, which a very distinguished slaveholding gentleman of the city of Washington took, in a conversation with myself on the subject of slavery. Feeling himself uncomfortably plied by quotations from the word of God, he said with much emphasis, "Stop, Sir, with that, if you please—SLAVERY IS A SUBJECT, WHICH HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE BIBLE."
This practice of attempting to put the boldest and most flagrant sins under the wing and sanction of the Bible, is chargeable on others as well as on the advocates of slavery. Not to speak of other instances of it—it is sought to justify by this blessed book the most despotic forms of civil government, and the drinking of intoxicating liquors. There are two evils so great, which arise from this perversion of the word of God, that I cannot forbear to notice them. One is, that the consciences of men are quieted, when they imagine that they have found a justification in the Bible for the sins of which they are guilty. The other is, that infidels are multiplied by this perversion. A respectable gentleman, who edits a newspaper in this neighborhood, and who, unhappily, is not established in the Christian faith, was asked, a few months since, to attend a meeting of a Bible Society. "I am not willing," said he, in reply, "to favor the circulation of a volume, which many of its friends claim to be on the side of slavery." Rely on it, Sir, that wherever your book produces the conviction that the Bible justifies slavery, it there weakens whatever of respect for that blessed volume previously existed. Whoever is brought to associate slavery with the Bible, may, it is true, think better of slavery; but he will surely think worse of the Bible. I hope, therefore, in mercy to yourself and the world, that the success of your undertaking will be small.
But oftentimes the same providence has a bright, as well as a gloomy, aspect. It is so in the case before us. The common attempt, in our day, to intrench great sins in the authority of the Bible, is a consoling and cheering evidence, that this volume is recognised as the public standard of right and wrong; and that, whatever may be their private opinions of it who are guilty of these sins, they cannot hope to justify themselves before the world, unless their lives are, apparently, at least, conformed, in some good degree, to this standard. We may add, too, that, as surely as the Bible is against slavery, every pro-slavery writer, who like yourself appeals to it as the infallible and only admissible standard of right and wrong, will contribute to the overthrow of the iniquitous system. His writings may not, uniformly, tend to this happy result. In some instances, he may strengthen confidence in the system of slavery by producing conviction, that the Bible sanctions it;—and then his success will be, as before remarked, at the expense of the claims and authority of the Bible:—but these instances of the pernicious effects of his writings will be very rare, quite too rare we may hope, to counterbalance the more generally useful tendency of writings on the subject of slavery, which recognise the paramount authority of God's law.
Having completed the examination of your book, I wish to hold up to you, in a single view, the substance of what you have done. You have come forth, the unblushing advocate of American slavery;—a system which, whether we study its nature in the deliberate and horrid enactments of its code, or in the heathenism and pollution and sweat and tears and blood, which prove, but too well, the agreement of its practical character with its theory—is, beyond all doubt, more oppressive and wicked than any other, which the avaricious, sensual, cruel heart of man ever devised. You have come forth, the unblushing advocate of a system under which parents are daily selling their children; brothers and sisters, their brothers and sisters; members of the Church of Christ, their fellow-members—under which, in a word, immortal man, made "in the image of God," is more unfeelingly and cruelly dealt with, than the brute. I know that you intimate that this system would work well, were it in the hands of none but good men. But with equal propriety might you say, that the gaming-house or the brothel would work well in such hands. You have attempted to sustain this system by the testimony of the Bible. The system, a part only of the crimes of which, most of the nations of Christendom have declared to be piracy;—against which, the common sense, the philosophy, the humanity, the conscience of the world, are arrayed;—this system, so execrable and infamous, you have had the presumption to attempt to vindicate by that blessed book, whose Author "is of purer eyes than to behold evil, and (who) cannot look upon iniquity"—and who "has magnified his word above all his name."
And now, Sir, let me solemnly inquire of you, whether it is right to do what you have done?—whether it is befitting a man, a Christian, and a minister of the gospel?—and let me, further, ask you, whether you have any cheering testimony in your heart that it is God's work you have been doing? That you and I may, in every future work of our hands, have the happiness to know, that the approbation of our employer comes from the upper, and not from the under world, is the sincere desire of
Your friend,
GERRIT SMITH.
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The spirit of slavery never takes refuge in the Bible of its own accord. The horns of the altar are its last resort. It seizes them, if at all, only in desperation—rushing from the terror of the avenger's arm. Like other unclean spirits, it "hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest its deeds should be reproved." Goaded to phrenzy in its conflicts with conscience and common sense, denied all quarter, and hunted from every covert, it breaks at last into the sacred enclosure, and courses up and down the Bible, "seeking rest, and finding none." THE LAW OF LOVE, streaming from every page, flashes around it an omnipresent anguish and despair. It shrinks from the hated light, and howls under the consuming touch, as demons recoiled from the Son of God, and shrieked, "Torment us not." At last, it slinks away among the shadows of the Mosaic system, and thinks to burrow out of sight among its types and shadows. Vain hope! Its asylum is its sepulchre; its city of refuge, the city of destruction. It rushes from light into the sun; from heat, into devouring fire; and from the voice of God into the thickest of His thunders.
If we would know whether the Bible is the charter of slavery, we must first determine just what slavery is. The thing itself must be separated from its appendages. A constituent element is one thing; a relation another; an appendage another. Relations and appendages presuppose other things, of which there are relations and appendages. To regard them as the things to which they pertain, or as constituent parts of them, leads to endless fallacies. A great variety of conditions, relations, and tenures, indispensable to the social state, are confounded with slavery; and thus slaveholding is deemed quite harmless, if not virtuous. We will specify some of the things which are often confounded with slavery.
1. Privation of the right of suffrage. Then minors are slaves.
2. Ineligibility to office. Then females are slaves.
3. Taxation without representation. Then three-fourths of the people of Rhode Island are slaves, and all in the District of Columbia.
4. Privation of one's oath in law. Then the free colored people of Ohio are slaves. So are disbelievers in a future retribution, generally.
5. Privation of trial by jury. Then all in France and Germany are slaves.
6. Being required to support a particular religion. Then the people of England are slaves. [To the preceding may be added all other disabilities, merely political.]
7. Cruelty and oppression. Wives are often cruelly treated; hired domestics are often oppressed; but these forms of oppression are not slavery.
8. Apprenticeship. The rights and duties of master and apprentice are correlative and reciprocal. The claim of each upon the other results from the obligation of each to the other. Apprenticeship is based on the principle of equivalent for value received. The rights of the apprentice are secured, and his interests are promoted equally with those of the master. Indeed, while the law of apprenticeship is just to the master, it is benevolent to the apprentice. Its main design is rather to benefit the apprentice than the master. It promotes the interests of the former, while it guards from injury those of the latter in doing it. It secures to the master a mere legal compensation, while it secures to the apprentice both a legal compensation, and a virtual gratuity in addition, the apprentice being of the two decidedly the greatest gainer. The law not only recognizes the right of the apprentice to a reward for his labor, but appoints the wages, and enforces the payment. The master's claim covers only the services of the apprentice. The apprentice's claim covers equally the services of the master. The master cannot hold the apprentice as property, nor the apprentice the master; but each holds property in the services of the other, and BOTH EQUALLY. Is this slavery?
9. Filial subordination and parental claims. Both are nature's dictates, and indispensable to the existence of the social state; their design the promotion of mutual welfare; and the means, those natural affections created by the relation of parent and child, and blending them in one by irrepressible affinities; and thus, while exciting each to discharge those offices incidental to the relation, they constitute a shield for mutual protection. The parent's legal claim to the services of his children, while minors, is a slight boon for the care and toil of their rearing, to say nothing of outlays for support and education. This provision for the good of the whole, is, with the greater part of mankind, indispensable to the preservation of the family state. The child, in helping his parents, helps himself—increases a common stock, in which he has a share; while his most faithful services do but acknowledge a debt that money cannot cancel.
10. Bondage for crime, or governmental claims on criminals. Must innocence be punished because guilt suffers penalties? True, the criminal works for the government without pay; and well he may. He owes the government. A century's work would not pay its drafts on him. He is a public defaulter, and will die so. Because laws make men pay their debts, shall those be forced to pay who owe nothing? Besides, the law makes no criminal, PROPERTY. It restrains his liberty; it makes him pay something, a mere penny in the pound, of his debt to the government; but it does not make him a chattel. Test it. To own property is to own its product. Are children born of convicts government property? Besides, can property be guilty? Are chattels punished?
11. Restrictions upon freedom. Children are restrained by parents, wards by guardians, pupils by teachers, patients by physicians and nurses, corporations by charters, and legislators by constitutions. Embargoes, tariffs, quarantine, and all other laws, keep men from doing as they please. Restraints are the web of civilized society, warp and woof. Are they slavery? then civilized society is a mammoth slave—a government of LAW, the climax of slavery, and its executive a king among slaveholders.
12. Involuntary or compulsory service. A juryman is empannelled against his will, and sit he must. A sheriff orders his posse; bystanders must turn in. Men are compelled to remove nuisances, pay fines and taxes, support their families, and "turn to the right as the law directs," however much against their wills. Are they therefore slaves? To confound slavery with involuntary service is absurd. Slavery is a condition. The slave's feelings toward it, are one thing; the condition itself, the object of these feelings, is another thing; his feelings cannot alter the nature of that condition. Whether he desire or detest it, the condition remains the same. The slave's willingness to be a slave is no palliation of his master's guilt in holding him. Suppose the slave verily thinks himself a chattel, and consents that others may so regard him, does that make him a chattel, or make those guiltless who hold him as such? I may be sick of life, and I tell the assassin so that stabs me; is he any the less a murderer because I consent to be made a corpse? Does my partnership in his guilt blot out his part of it? If the slave were willing to be a slave, his voluntariness, so far from lessening the guilt of the "owner," aggravates it. If slavery has so palsied his mind and he looks upon himself as a chattel, and consents to be one, actually to hold him as such, falls in with his delusion, and confirms the impious falsehood. These very feelings and convictions of the slave, (if such were possible) increase a hundred fold the guilt of the master in holding him as property, and call upon him in thunder, immediately to recognize him as a MAN, and thus break the sorcery that binds his soul, cheating it of its birth-right, and the consciousness of its worth and destiny.
Many of the foregoing conditions and relations are appendages of slavery, and some of them inseparable from it. But no one, nor all of them together, constitute its intrinsic unchanging element.
We proceed to state affirmatively that,
ENSLAVING MEN IS REDUCING THEM TO ARTICLES OF PROPERTY, making free agents chattels, converting persons into things, sinking intelligence, accountability, immortality, into merchandise. A slave is one held in this condition. He is a mere tool for another's use and benefit. In law "he owns nothing, and can acquire nothing." His right to himself is abrogated. He is another's property. If he say my hands, my feet, my body, my mind, MYself; they are figures of speech. To use himself for his own good is a CRIME. To keep what he earns is stealing. To take his body into his own keeping is insurrection. In a word, the> profit of his master is the END of his being, and he, a mere means to that end, a mere means to an end into which his interests do not enter, of which they constitute no portionA. MAN sunk to a thing! the intrinsic element, the principle of slavery; MEN sold, bartered, leased, mortgaged, bequeathed, invoiced, shipped in cargoes, stored as goods, taken on executions, and knocked off at public outcry! Their rights another's conveniences, their interests, wares on sale, their happiness, a household utensil; their personal inalienable ownership, a serviceable article, or plaything, as best suits the humor of the hour; their deathless nature, conscience, social affections, sympathies, hopes, marketable commodities! We repeat it, the reduction of persons to things; not robbing a man of privileges, but of himself; not loading with burdens, but making him a beast of burden; not restraining liberty, but subverting it; not curtailing rights, but abolishing them; not inflicting personal cruelty, but annihilating personality; not exacting involuntary labor, but sinking him into an implement of labor; not abridging his human comforts, but abrogating his human nature; not depriving an animal of immunities, but despoiling a rational being of attributes, uncreating a MAN to make room for a thing!
A: Whatever system sinks man from an END to a means, or in other words, whatever transforms him from an object of instrumentality into a mere instrumentality to an object, just so far makes him a slave. Hence West India apprenticeship retains in one particular the cardinal principle of slavery. The apprentice, during three-fourths of his time, is still forced to labor, and robbed of his earnings; just so far forth he is a mere means, a slave. True, in all other respects slavery is abolished in the British West Indies. Its bloodiest features are blotted out—but the meanest and most despicable of all—forcing the poor to work for the rich without pay three-fourths of their time, with a legal officer to flog them if they demur at the outrage, is one of the provisions of the "Emancipation Act!" For the glories of that luminary, abolitionists thank God, while they mourn that it rose behind clouds, and shines through an eclipse.
That this is American slavery, is shown by the laws of slave states. Judge Stroud, in his "Sketch of the Laws relating to Slavery," says, "The cardinal principle of slavery, that the slave is not to be ranked among sentient beings, but among things—is an article of property, a chattel personal, obtains as undoubted law in all of these states," (the slave states.) The law of South Carolina thus lays down the principle, "Slaves shall be deemed, held, taken, reputed, and adjudged in law to be chattels personal in the hands of their owners and possessors, and their executors, administrators, and assigns, to ALL INTENTS, CONSTRUCTIONS, AND PURPOSES WHATSOEVER." Brevard's Digest, 229. In Louisiana, "a slave is one who is in the power of a master to whom he belongs; the master may sell him, dispose of his person, his industry, and his labor; he can do nothing, possess nothing, nor acquire any thing, but what must belong to his master." Civil Code of Louisiana, Art. 35.
This is American slavery. The eternal distinction between a person and a thing, trampled under foot—the crowning distinction of all others—their centre and circumference—the source, the test, and the measure of their value—the rational, immortal principle, embalmed by God in everlasting remembrance, consecrated to universal homage in a baptism of glory and honor, by the gift of His Son, His Spirit, His Word, His presence, providence, and power; His protecting shield, upholding staff, and sheltering wing; His opening heavens, and angels ministering, and chariots of fire, and songs of morning stars, and a great voice in heaven, proclaiming eternal sanctions, and confirming the word with signs following.