The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus · Chapter 29Part 29
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11. RESTRAINTS UPON FREEDOM. Children are restrained by parents, pupils, by teachers, patients, by physicians, corporations, by charters, and legislatures, 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 a government of LAW, is the climax of slavery!
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 cannot alter its nature. Whether he desires or detests it, the condition remains the same. The slave's willingness to be a slave is no palliation of the slaveholder's guilt. Suppose he should really believe himself a chattel, and consent to be so regarded by others, would 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? Does my consent to his crime, atone for it? my partnership in his guilt, blot out his part of it? The slave's willingness to be a slave, so far from lessening the guilt of his "owner," aggravates it. If slavery has so palsied his mind that 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, and call upon him in thunder, immediately to recognize him as a MAN, and thus break the sorcery that cheats him out of his birthright—the consciousness of his worth and destiny.
Many of the foregoing conditions are appendages of slavery, but no one, nor all of them together, constitute its intrinsic unchanging element.
ENSLAVING MEN IS REDUCING THEM TO ARTICLES OF PROPERTY—making free agents, chattels—converting persons into things—sinking immortality into merchandize. A slave is one held in this condition. In law, "he owns nothing, and can acquire nothing." His right to himself is abrogated. If he say my hands, 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 made 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, bartered, leased, mortgaged, bequeathed, invoiced, shipped in cargoes, stored as goods, taken on executions, and knocked off at a 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 a plaything, as best suits the humour 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 him 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 man into an implement of labor; not abridging human comforts, but abrogating 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: To deprive human nature of any of its rights is oppression; to take away the foundation of its rights is slavery. In other words, whatever sinks man from an END to a mere means, just so far makes him a slave. Hence West-India apprenticeship retained the cardinal principle of slavery. The apprentice, during three-fourths of his time, was forced to labor, and robbed of his earnings; just so far forth he was a mere means, a slave. True in other respects slavery was abolished in the British West Indies August, 1834. Its bloodiest features were 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 demurred at the outrage, was one of the provisions of the "Emancipation Act!" For the glories of that luminary, abolitionists thanked God, while they mourned that it rose behind clouds and shone through an eclipse.
[West India apprenticeship is now (August 1838) abolished. On the first of the present month, every slave in every British island and colony stood up a freeman!—Note to fourth edition.]
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—obtains as undoubted law in all of these [the slave] states." The law of South Carolina says, "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." Brev. Dig., 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."—Civ. Code, Art. 35.
This is American slavery. The eternal distinction between a person and a thing, trampled under foot—the crowning distinction of all others—alike the source, the test, and the measure of their value—the rational, immortal principle, consecrated by God 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 shield, and 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.
Having stated the principle of American slavery, we ask, DOES THE BIBLE SANCTION SUCH A PRINCIPLE?A "To the law and the testimony?"
A: The Bible record of actions is no comment on their moral character. It vouches for them as facts, not as virtues. It records without rebuke, Noah's drunkenness, Lot's incest, and the lies of Jacob and his mother—not only single acts, but usages, such as polygamy and concubinage, are entered on the record without censure. Is that silent entry God's endorsement? Because the Bible in its catalogue of human actions, does not stamp on every crime its name and number, and write against it, this is a crime—does that wash out its guilt, and bleach it into a virtue?
Just after the Israelites were emancipated from their bondage in Egypt, while they stood before Sinai to receive the law, as the trumpet waxed louder, and the mount quaked and blazed, God spake the ten commandments from the midst of clouds and thunderings. Two of those commandments deal death to slavery. "THOU SHALT NOT STEAL," or, "thou shalt not take from another what belongs to him." All man's powers are God's gift to HIM. Each of them is a part of himself, and all of them together constitute himself. All else that belongs to man, is acquired by the use of these powers. The interest belongs to him, because the principal does; the product is his, because he is the producer. Ownership of any thing, is ownership of its use. The right to use according to will, is itself ownership. The eighth commandment presupposes and assumes the right of every man to his powers, and their product. Slavery robs of both. A man's right to himself, is the only right absolutely original and intrinsic—his right to anything else is merely relative to this, is derived from it, and held only by virtue of it. SELF-RIGHT is the foundation right—the post in the middle, to which all other rights are fastened. Slaveholders, when talking about their RIGHT to their slaves, always assume their own right to themselves. What slave-holder ever undertook to prove his right to himself? He knows it to be a self-evident proposition, that a man belongs to himself—that the right is intrinsic and absolute. In making out his own title, he makes out the title of every human being. As the fact of being a man is itself the title, the whole human family have one common title deed. If one man's title is valid, all are valid. If one is worthless, all are. To deny the validity of the slave's title is to deny the validity of his own; and yet in the act of making a man a slave, the slaveholder asserts the validity of his own title, while he seizes him as his property who has the same title. Further, in making him a slave, he does not merely disfranchise of humanity one individual, but UNIVERSAL MAN. He destroys the foundations. He annihilates all rights. He attacks not only the human race, but universal being, and rushes upon JEHOVAH. For rights are rights; God's are no more—man's are no less.
The eighth commandment forbids the taking of any part of that which belongs to another. Slavery takes the whole. Does the same Bible which prohibits the taking of any thing from him, sanction the taking of every thing! Does it thunder wrath against the man who robs his neighbor of a cent, yet commission him to rob his neighbour of himself? Slaveholding is the highest possible violation of the eight commandment. To take from a man his earnings, is theft. But to take the earner, is a compound, life-long theft—supreme robbery that vaults up the climax at a leap—the dread, terrific, giant robbery, that towers among other robberies a solitary horror. The eight commandment forbids the taking away, and the tenth adds, "Thou shalt not covet any thing that is thy neighbor's;" thus guarding every man's right to himself and property, by making not only the actual taking away a sin, but even that state of mind which would tempt to it. Who ever made human beings slaves, without coveting them? Why take from them their time, labor, liberty, right of self-preservation and improvement, their right to acquire property, to worship according to conscience, to search the Scriptures, to live with their families, and their right to their own bodies, if they do not desire them? They COVET them for purposes of gain, convenience, lust of dominion, of sensual gratification, of pride and ostentation. THEY BREAK THE TENTH COMMANDMENT, and pluck down upon their heads the plagues that are written in the book. Ten commandments constitute the brief compend of human duty. Two of these brand slavery as sin.
The giving of the law at Sinai, immediately preceded the promulgation of that body of laws called the "Mosaic system." Over the gateway of that system, fearful words were written by the finger of God—"HE THAT STEALETH A MAN AND SELLETH HIM, OR IF HE BE FOUND IN HIS HAND, HE SHALL SURELY BE PUT TO DEATHA." Ex. xxi. 16.
A: A writer in the American Quarterly Review, commenting on this passage, thus blasphemes. "On this passage an impression has gone abroad that slave-owners are necessarily menstealers; how hastily, any one will perceive who consults the passage in its connection. Being found in the chapter which authorizes this species of property among the Hebrews, it must of course relate to its full protection from the danger of being enticed away from its rightful owner."—Am. Quart. Review for June, 1833. Article "Negro slavery."
The oppression of the Israelites in Egypt, and the wonders wrought for their deliverance, proclaim the reason for such a law at such a time. They had just been emancipated. The tragedies of their house of bondage were the realities of yesterday, and peopled their memories with thronging horrors. They had just witnessed God's testimony against oppression in the plagues of Egypt—the burning blains on man and beast; the dust quickened into loathsome life, and swarming upon every living thing; the streets, the palaces, the temples, and every house heaped up with the carcases of things abhorred; the kneading troughs and ovens, the secret chambers and the couches, reeking and dissolving with the putrid death; the pestilence walking in darkness at noonday, the devouring locusts, and hail mingled with fire, the first-born death-struck, and the waters blood; and last of all, that dread high hand and stretched-out arm, that whelmed the monarch and his hosts, and strewed their corpses on the sea. All this their eyes had looked upon; earth's proudest city, wasted and thunder-scarred, lying in desolation, and the doom of oppressors traced on her ruins in the hand-writing of God, glaring in letters of fire mingled with blood—a blackened monument of wrath to the uttermost against the stealers of men. No wonder that God, in a code of laws prepared for such a people at such a time, should uprear on its foreground a blazing beacon to flash terror on slaveholders. "He that stealeth a man and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death." Ex. xxi. 16. Deut. xxiv, 7A. God's cherubim and flaming sword guarding the entrance to the Mosaic system!
A: Jarchi, the most eminent of the Jewish Commentators, who wrote seven hundred years ago, in his comment on this stealing and making merchandize of men, gives the meaning thus:—"Using a man against his will, as a servant lawfully purchased; yea, though he should use his services ever so little, only to the value of a farthing, or use but his arm to lean on to support him, if he be forced so to act as a servant, the person compelling him but once to do so, shall die as a thief, whether he has sold him or not."
The word Gānābh here rendered stealeth, means, the taking of what belongs to another, whether by violence or fraud; the same word is used in the eight commandment, and prohibits both robbery and theft.
The crime specified, is that of depriving SOMEBODY of the ownership of a man. Is this somebody a master? and is the crime that of depriving a master of his servant? Then it would have been "he that stealeth" a servant, not "he that stealeth a man." If the crime had been the taking of an individual from another, then the term used would have been expressive of that relation, and most especially if it was the relation of property and proprietor!
The crime is stated in a three-fold form—man stealing, selling, and holding. All are put on a level, and whelmed under one penalty—DEATHA. This somebody deprived of the ownership of a man, is the man himself, robbed of personal ownership. Joseph said, "Indeed I was stolen away out of the land of the Hebrews." Gen. xl. 15. How stolen? His brethren sold him as an article of merchandize. Contrast this penalty for man-stealing with that for property-stealing, Ex. xxii. 14. If a man had stolen an ox and killed or sold it, he was to restore five oxen; if he had neither sold nor killed it, two oxen. But in the case of stealing a man, the first act drew down the utmost power of punishment; however often repeated or aggravated the crime, human penalty could do no more. The fact that the penalty for man-stealing was death, and the penalty for property-stealing, the mere restoration of double, shows that the two cases were adjudicated on totally different principles. The man stolen might be diseased or totally past labor, consequently instead of being profitable to the thief, he would be a tax upon him, yet death was still the penalty, though not a cent's worth of property-value was taken. The penalty for stealing property was a mere property-penalty. However large the theft, the payment of double wiped out the score. It might have a greater money value than a thousand men, yet death was not the penalty, nor maiming, nor braiding, nor even stripes, but double of the same kind. Why was not the rule uniform? When a man was stolen why was not the thief required to restore double of the same kind—two men, or if he had sold him, five men? Do you say that the man-thief might not have them? So the ox-thief might not have two oxen, or if he had killed it, five. But if God permitted men to hold men as property, equally with oxen, the man-thief, could get men with whom to pay the penalty, as well as the ox-thief, oxen. Further, when property was stolen, the legal penalty was a compensation to the person injured. But when a man was stolen, no property compensation was offered. To tender money as an equivalent, would have been to repeat the outrage with intolerable aggravations. Compute the value of a MAN in money! Throw dust into the scale against immortality! The law recoiled from such supreme insult and impiety. To have permitted the man-thief to expiate his crime by restoring double, would have been making the repetition of crime its atonement. But the infliction of death for man-stealing exacted the utmost possibility of reparation. It wrung from the guilty wretch as he gave up the ghost, the testimony of blood, and death-groans, to the infinite dignity and worth of man,—a proclamation to the universe, voiced in mortal agony, "MAN IS INVIOLABLE."—a confession shrieked in phrenzy at the grave's mouth—"I die accursed, and God is just."
A: "Those are men-stealers who abduct, keep, sell, or buy slaves or freemen." GROTIUS.
If God permitted man to hold man as property, why did he punish for stealing that kind of property infinitely more than for stealing any other kind of property? Why punish with death for stealing a very little of that sort of property, and make a mere fine the penalty for stealing a thousand times as much, of any other sort of property—especially if by his own act, God had annihilated the difference between man and property, by putting him on a level with it?
The guilt of a crime, depends much upon the nature, character, and condition of the victim. To steal is a crime, whoever the thief, or whatever the plunder. To steal bread from a full man, is theft; to steal it from a starving man, is both theft and murder. If I steal my neighbor's property, the crime consists not in altering the nature of the article, but in taking as mine what is his. But when I take my neighbor himself, and first make him property, and then my property, the latter act, which was the sole crime in the former case, dwindles to nothing. The sin in stealing a man, is not the transfer from its owner to another of that which is already property, but the turning of personality into property. True, the attributes of man remain, but the rights and immunities which grow out of them are annihilated. It is the first law both of reason and revelation, to regard things and beings as they are; and the sum of religion, to feel and act toward them according to their value. Knowingly to treat them otherwise is sin; and the degree of violence done to their nature, relations, and value, measures its guilt. When things are sundered which God has indissolubly joined, or confounded in one, which he has separated by infinite extremes; when sacred and eternal distinctions, which he has garnished with glory, are derided and set at nought, then, if ever, sin reddens to its "scarlet dye." The sin specified in the passage, is that of doing violence to the nature of a man—to his intrinsic value as a rational being. In the verse preceding the one under consideration, and in that which follows, the same principle is laid down. Verse 15, "He that smiteth his father or his mother shall surely be put to death." Verse. 17, "He that curseth his father or his mother, shall surely be put to death." If a Jew smote his neighbor, the law merely smote him in return; but if the blow was given to a parent, it struck the smiter dead. The parental relation is the centre of human society. God guards it with peculiar care. To violate that, is to violate all. Whoever tramples on that, shows that no relation has any sacredness in his eyes—that he is unfit to move among human relations who violates one so sacred and tender. Therefore, the Mosaic law uplifted his bleeding corpse, and brandished the ghastly terror around the parental relation to guard it from impious inroads.
Why such a difference in penalties, for the same act? Answer. 1. The relation violated was obvious—the distinction between parents and others self-evident, dictated by a law of nature. 2. The act was violence to nature—a suicide on constitutional susceptibilities. 3. The parental relation then, as now, was the focal point of the social system, and required powerful safe-guards. "Honor thy father and thy mother," stands at the head of those commands which prescribe the duties of man to man; and throughout the Bible, the parental state is God's favorite illustration of his own relations to the human family. In this case, death was to be inflicted not for smiting a man, but a parent—a distinction made sacred by God, and fortified by a bulwark of defence. In the next verse, "He that stealeth a man," &c., the SAME PRINCIPLE is wrought out in still stronger relief. The crime to be punished with death was not the taking of property from its owner, but violence to an immortal nature, the blotting out of a sacred distinction—making MEN "chattels."
The incessant pains taken in the Old Testament to separate human beings from brutes and things, shows God's regard for this, his own distinction. "In the beginning" he proclaimed it to the universe as it rose into being. Creation stood up at the instant of its birth, to do it homage. It paused in adoration while God ushered forth its crowning work. Why that dread pause and that creating arm held back in mid career and that high conference in the godhead? "Let us make man in OUR IMAGE after OUR LIKENESS, and let him have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle and over all the earth." Then while every living thing, with land, and sea, and firmament, and marshalled worlds, waited to swell the shout of morning stars—then God created man IN HIS OWN IMAGE; IN THE IMAGE OF GOD created he him." This solves the problem, IN THE IMAGE OF GOD, CREATED HE HIM. This distinction is often repeated and always with great solemnity. In Gen. i. 26-28, it is expressed in various forms. In Gen. v. 1, we find it again, "IN THE LIKENESS OF GOD MADE HE HIM." In Gen. ix. 6, again. After giving license to shed the blood of "every moving thing that liveth," it is added, "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed, for IN THE IMAGE OF GOD MADE HE MAN." As though it had been said, "All these creatures are your property, designed for your use—they have the likeness of earth, and their spirits go downward; but this other being, MAN, has my own likeness: IN THE IMAGE OF GOD made I man; an intelligent, moral, immortal agent, invited to all that I can give and he can be. So in Lev. xxiv. 17, 18, 21, "He that killeth any MAN shall surely be put to death; and he that killeth a beast shall make it good, beast for beast; and he that killeth a MAN he shall be put to death." So in Ps. viii. 5, 6, we have an enumeration of particulars, each separating infinitely MEN from brutes and things! 1. "Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels." Slavery drags him down among brutes. 2. "And hast crowned him with glory and honor." Slavery tears off his crown, and puts on a yoke. 3. "Thou madest him to have dominionA OVER the works of thy hands." Slavery breaks his sceptre, and cast him down among those works—yea, beneath them. 4. "Thou hast put all things under his feet." Slavery puts HIM under the feet of an "owner." Who, but an impious scorner, dare thus strive with his Maker, and mutilate HIS IMAGE, and blaspheme the Holy One, who saith, "Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these, ye did it unto ME."
A: "Thou madest him to have dominion." In Gen. i. 28, God says to man, "Have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth," thus vesting in every human being the right of ownership over the earth, its products and animal life, and in each human being the same right. By so doing God prohibited the exercise of ownership by man over man; for the grant to all men of equal ownership, for ever shut out the possibility of their exercising ownership over each other, as whoever is the owner of a man, is the owner of his right of property—in other words, when one man becomes the property of another his rights become such too, his right of property is transferred to his "owner," and thus as far as himself is concerned, is annihilated. Finally, by originally vesting all men with dominion or ownership over property, God proclaimed the right of all to exercise it, and pronounced every man who takes it away a robber of the highest grade. Such is every slaveholder.
In further prosecuting this inquiry, the Patriarchal and Mosaic systems will be considered together, as each reflects light upon the other, and as many regulations of the latter are mere legal forms of Divine institutions previously existing. As a system, the latter alone is of Divine authority. Whatever were the usages of the patriarchs God has not made them our exemplars.B The question to be settled by us, is not what were Jewish customs, but what were the rules that God gave for the regulation of those customs.
B: Those who insist that the patriarchs held slaves, and sit with such delight under their shadow, hymning the praises of "those good old slaveholders and patriarchs," might at small cost greatly augment their numbers. A single stanza celebrating patriarchal concubinage, winding off with a chorus in honor of patriarchal drunkenness, would be a trumpet-call, summoning from brothels, bush and brake, highway and hedge, and sheltering fence, a brotherhood of kindred affinities, each claiming Abraham or Noah as his patron saint, and shouting, "My name is legion." A myriad choir and thunderous song!
Before entering upon an analysis of the condition of servants under these two states of society, we will consider the import of certain terms which describe the mode of procuring them.
As the Israelites were commanded to "buy" their servants, and as Abraham had servants "bought with money," it is argued that servants were articles of property! The sole ground for this belief is the terms themselves! How much might be saved, if in discussion, the thing to be proved were always assumed! To beg the question in debate, is vast economy of midnight oil, and a wholesale forestaller of wrinkles and gray hairs. Instead of protracted investigation into Scripture usage, painfully collating passages, to settle the meaning of terms, let every man interpret the oldest book in the world by the usages of his own time and place, and the work is done. And then instead of one revelation, they might be multiplied as the drops of the morning, and every man have an infallible clue to the mind of the Spirit, in the dialect of his own neighborhood! What a Babel-jargon, to take it for granted that the sense in which words are now used, is the inspired sense. David says, "I prevented the dawning of the morning, and cried." What, stop the earth in its revolution! Two hundred years ago, prevent was used in its strict Latin sense, to come before, or anticipate. It is always used in this sense in the Old and New Testaments. David's expression, in the English of the nineteenth century, would be "Before the dawning of the morning I cried." In almost every chapter of the Bible, words are used in a sense now nearly, or quite obsolete, and sometimes in a sense totally opposite to their present meaning. A few examples follow: "I purposed to come to you, but was let (hindered) hitherto." "And the four beasts (living ones) fell down and worshiped God,"—"Whosoever shall offend (cause to sin) one of these little ones,"—Go out into the highways and compel (urge) them to come in,"—Only let your conversation (habitual conduct) be as becometh the Gospel,"—"The Lord Jesus Christ who shall judge the quick (living) and the dead,"—They that seek me early (earnestly) shall find me," So when tribulation or persecution ariseth by-and-by (immediately) they are offended." Nothing is more mutable than language. Words, like bodies, are always throwing off some particles and absorbing others. So long as they are mere representatives, elected by the whims of universal suffrage, their meaning will be a perfect volatile, and to cork it up for the next century is an employment sufficiently silly (to speak within bounds) for a modern Bible-Dictionary maker. There never was a shallower conceit than that of establishing the sense attached to a word centuries ago, by showing what it means now. Pity that fashionable mantuamakers were not a little quicker at taking hints from some Doctors of Divinity. How easily they might save their pious customers all qualms of conscience about the weekly shiftings of fashion, by proving that the last importation of Parisian indecency now "showing off" on promenade, was the very style of dress in which the modest and pious Sarah kneaded cakes for the angels. Since such a fashion flaunts along Broadway now, it must have trailed over Canaan four thousand years ago!