The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Part 1 of 4 · Chapter 16* * * * * THIRD EDITION. Price 6 1-4 cents single, 62 1-2 cents per dozen, $4 per hundred. No. 3. THE ANTI-SLAVERY EXAMINER. * * * * * LETTER OF GERRIT SMITH TO REV. JAMES SMYLIE, OF THE STATE OF MISS
This chapter is not translated yet. You are reading the original.
You ridicule the idea of the abolition of slavery, because it would make the slaveholder "so poor, as to oblige him to take hold of the maul and wedge himself—he must catch, curry, and saddle his own horse—he must black his own brogans (for he will not be able to buy boots)—his wife must go herself to the wash-tub—take hold of the scrubbing broom, wash the pots, and cook all that she and her rail-mauler will eat." If Paul were, as you judge he was, opposed to the abolition of slavery, it is at least certain, from what he says of the character of his life in his address to the Elders, that his opposition did not spring from such considerations as array you against it. In his estimation, manual labor was honorable. In a slaveholding community, it is degrading. It is so in your own judgment, or you would not hold up to ridicule those humble employments, which reflect disgrace, only where the moral atmosphere is tainted by slavery. That the pernicious influences of slavery in this respect are felt more or less, in every part of this guilty nation, is but too true. I put it to your candor, sir, whether the obvious fact, that slavery makes the honest labor of the hands disreputable, is not a weighty argument against the supposition that God approves it? I put it to your candor, sir, whether the fact, which you, at least, cannot gain-say, that slavery makes even ministers of the gospel despise the employments of seven-eighths of the human family, and, consequently, the humble classes, who labor in them—I put it to your candor, whether the institution, which breeds such contempt of your fellow-men and fellow Christians, must not be offensive to Him, who commands us to "Honor all men, and love the brotherhood?"
In another argument, you attempt to show, that Paul's letter to Philemon justifies slaveholding, and also the apprehension and return of fugitive slaves. After having recited the Resolution of the Chilicothe Presbytery—"that to apprehend a slave who is endeavoring to escape from slavery, with a view to restore him to his master, is a direct violation of the Divine law, and, when committed by a member of the church, ought to subject him to censure"—you undertake to make your readers believe, that Paul's sending Onesimus to Philemon, is a case coming fairly within the purview of the resolution. Let us see if it does. A man by the name of Onesimus was converted to Christianity, under Paul's ministry at Rome. Paul learnt that he had formerly been a servant—say a slave—of Philemon, who was a "dearly beloved" Christian: and believing that his return to his old master would promote the cause of Christ, and beautifully exemplify its power, he advised him to return to him. He followed the Apostle's advice and returned. Now, from this example, you attempt to derive a justification for "a member of a Church" to be engaged in forcibly apprehending and restoring fugitive slaves. I say forcibly—as the apprehension and return, referred to in the Resolution, are clearly forcible. I cannot refrain, sir, from saying, that you greatly wrong the memory of that blessed Apostle of the Lord Jesus, in construing his writings to authorize such violence upon the persons and rights of men. And greatly, also, do you wrong the Resolution in question, by your endeavor to array the Bible against it. The Resolution is right; it is noble—it denotes in the source whence it emanated, a proper sense of the rights and dignity of man. It is all the better for being marked with an honorable contempt of wicked and heaven-daring laws. May I, having the suspicion, or even the certain knowledge, that my fellow man was once held in slavery, and is still legally a slave, seize upon him and reduce him again to slavery? May I thus deal with a guiltless and unaccused brother? Human laws may, it is true, bear me out in this man-stealing, which is not less flagrant than that committed on the coast of Africa:—but, says the Great Law-giver, "The word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day:"—and, it is a part of this "word," that "he that stealeth a man shall surely be put to death." In that last day, the mayors, recorders, sheriffs, and others, who have been engaged, whether in their official or individual capacity, in slave-catching and man-stealing, will find human laws but a flimsy protection against the wrath of Him, who judges his creatures by his own and not by human laws. In that "last day," all who have had a part, and have not repented of it, in the sin of treating man as property; all, I say, whether slaveholders or their official or unofficial assistants, the drivers upon their plantations, or their drivers in the free States—all, who have been guilty of throwing God's "image" into the same class with the brutes of the field—will find, that He is the avenger of his poorest, meanest ones—and that the crime of transmuting His image into property, is but aggravated by the fact and the plea that it was committed under the sanction of human laws.
But, to return—wherein does the letter of Paul to Philemon justify slaveholding? What evidence does it contain, that Philemon was a slaveholder at the time it was written? He, who had been his slave "in time past," had, very probably, escaped before Philemon's conversion to Christ. This "time past," may have been a long "time past." The word in the original, which is translated "in time past," does not forbid the supposition. Indeed, it is the same word, which the Apostle uses in the thirteenth verse of the first chapter of Galatians; and there it denotes a long "time past"—as much as from fifteen to eighteen years. Besides, Onesimus' escape and return both favor the supposition, that it was between the two events that Philemon's conversion took place. On the one hand, he fled to escape from the cruelties of an unconverted master; on the other, he was encouraged to follow the Apostle's advice, by the consideration, that on his return to Philemon he should not have to encounter again the unreasonableness and rage of a heathen, but that he should meet with the justice and tenderness of a Christian—qualities, with the existence and value of which, he had now come to an experimental acquaintance. Again, to show that the letter in question does not justify slaveholding—in what character was it, that Paul sent Onesimus to Philemon? Was it in that of a slave? Far from it. It was, in that of "a brother beloved," as is evident from his injunction to Philemon to "receive him forever—not now as a slave, but above a slave—a brother beloved."
It is worthy of remark, that Paul's message to Philemon, shows, not only that he himself was not in favor of slaveholding, but, that he believed the gospel had wrought such an entire change on this subject, in the heart of Philemon, that Onesimus would find on his return to him, the tyrant and the slaveholder sunk in the brother and the Christian.
Paul's course in relation to Onesimus was such, as an abolitionist would deem it proper to adopt, under the like circumstances. If a fugitive slave, who had become a dear child of God, were near me, and, if I knew that his once cruel master had also become a "dearly beloved" Christian; and if, therefore, I had reason to believe, as Paul had, in the case of Philemon, that he would "receive him forever—not now as a slave, but above a slave, a brother beloved," I would advise him to revisit his old master, provided he could do so, without interference and violence from others. Such interference and violence did not threaten Onesimus in his return to Philemon. He was not in danger of being taken up, imprisoned, and sold for his jail fees, as a returning Onesimus would be in parts of this nation.
On the 72d page of your book, you utter sentiments, which, I trust, all your readers will agree, are unworthy of a man, a republican, and a Christian. You there endeavor again to make it appear, that it is not the relation of master and slave, but only the abuse of it, which is to be objected to.—You say: "Independence is a charming idea, especially to Americans: but what gives it the charm? Is it the thing in itself? or is it because it is a release from the control of a bad master? Had Great Britain been a kind master, our ancestors were willing to remain her slaves." In reply to this I would say, that it must be a base spirit which does not prize "independence" for its own sake, whatever privation and suffering may attend it; and much more base must be that spirit, which can exchange that "independence" for a state of slavish subjection—even though that state abound in all sensual gratifications. To talk of "a kind master" is to talk of a blessing for a dog, but not for a man, who is made to "call no man master." Were the people of this nation like yourself, they would soon exchange their blood-bought liberties for subjection to any despot who would promise them enough to eat, drink, and wear. But, I trust, that we at the North are "made of sterner stuff." They, who make slaves of others, can more easily become slaves themselves: for, in their aggressions upon others, they have despised and trampled under foot those great, eternal principles of right, which not only constitute the bulwark of the general freedom; but his respect for which is indispensable to every man's valuation and protection of his individual liberties. This train of thought associates with itself in my mind, the following passage in an admirable speech delivered by the celebrated William Pinckney, in the Maryland House of Delegates in 1789. Such a speech, made at the present time in a slave State, would probably cost the life of him who should make it; nor could it be delivered in a free States at any less sacrifice, certainly, than that of the reputation of the orator. What a retrograde movement has liberty made in this country in the last fifty years!
"Whilst a majority of your citizens are accustomed to rule with the authority of despots, within particular limits—while your youths are reared in the habit of thinking that the great rights of human nature are not so sacred, but they may with innocence be trampled on, can it be expected, that the public mind should glow with that generous ardor in the cause of freedom, which can alone save a government, like ours, from the lurking demon of usurpation? Do you not dread the contamination of principle? Have you no alarms for the continuance of that spirit, which once conducted us to victory and independence, when the talons of power were unclasped for our destruction? Have you no apprehension left, that when the votaries of freedom sacrifice also at the gloomy altars of slavery, they will, at length, become apostates from them for ever? For my own part, I have no hope, that the stream of general liberty will flow for ever, unpolluted, through the foul mire of partial bondage, or that they, who have been habituated to lord it over others, will not be base enough, in time, to let others lord it over them. If they resist, it will be the struggle of pride and selfishness, not of principle."
Had Edmund Burke known slaveholders as well as Mr. Pinckney knew them, he would not have pronounced his celebrated eulogium on their love of liberty;—he would not have ascribed to them any love of liberty, but the spurious kind which the other orator, impliedly, ascribes to them—that which "pride and selfishness" beget and foster. Genuine love of liberty, as Mr. Pinckney clearly saw, springs from "principle," and is found no where but in the hearts of those who respect the liberties and the rights of others.
I had reason, in a former part of this communication, to charge some of the sentiments of Professor Hodge with being alike reproachful to the memory of our fathers, and pernicious to the cause of civil liberty. There are sentiments on the 72d page of your book, obnoxious to the like charge. If political "independence"—if a free government—be the poor thing—the illusive image of an American brain—which you sneeringly represent it, we owe little thanks to those who purchased it for us, even though they purchased it with their blood; and little pains need we take in that case to preserve it. When will the people of the Northern States see, that the doctrines now put forth so industriously to maintain slavery, are rapidly undermining liberty?
On the 43d page of your book you also evince your low estimate of man's rights and dues. You there say, "the fact that the planters of Mississippi and Louisiana, even while they have to pay from twenty to twenty-five dollars per barrel for pork the present season, afford to their slaves from three to four and a half pounds per week, does not show, that they are neglectful in rendering to their slaves that which is just and equal." If men had only an animal, and not a spiritual and immortal nature also, it might do for you to represent them as well provided for, if but pork enough were flung to them. How preposterous to tell us, that God approves a system which brings a man, as slavery seems to have brought you, to regard his fellow man as a mere animal!
I am happy to find that you are not all wrong. You are no "gradualist." You are not inconsistent, like those who admit that slavery is sinful, and yet refuse to treat it as sinful. I hope our Northern "gradualists" will profit by the following passage in your book: "If I were convinced by that word (the Bible) that slavery is itself a sin, I trust that, let it cost what it would, I should be an abolitionist, because there is no truth, more clear to my mind, than that the gospel requires an immediate abandonment of sin."
You have no doubt of your right to hold your fellow men, as slaves. I wish you had given your readers more fully your views of the origin of this right. I judge from what you say, that you trace it back to the curse pronounced by Noah upon Canaan. But was that curse to know no end? Were Canaan's posterity to endure the entailment of its disabilities and woes, until the end of time? Was Divine mercy never to stay the desolating waves of this curse? Was their harsh and angry roar to reach, even into the gospel dispensation, and to mingle discordantly with the songs of "peace on earth and good will to men?" Was the captivity of Canaan's race to be even stronger than He, who came "to bind up the broken-hearted, and proclaim liberty to the captives?" But who were Canaan and his descendants? You speak of them, and with singular unfairness, I think, as "the posterity of Ham, from whom, it is supposed, sprang the Africans." They were, it is true, a part of Ham's posterity; but to call them "the posterity of Ham," is to speak as though he had no other child than Canaan. The fifteenth to nineteenth verses of the tenth chapter of Genesis teach us, beyond all question, that Canaan's descendants inhabited the land of Canaan and adjacent territory, and that this land is identical with the country afterwards occupied by the Jews, and known, in modern times, by the name of Palestine, or the Holy Land. Therefore, however true it may be, that a portion of Ham's posterity settled in Africa, we not only have no evidence that it was the portion cursed, but we have conclusive evidence that it was not.
But, was it a state of slavery to which Canaanites were doomed? I will suppose, for a moment, that it was: and, then, how does it appear right to enslave them? The curse in question is prophecy. Now prophecy does not say what ought to come to pass: nor does it say, that they who have an agency in the production of the foretold event, will be innocent in that agency. If the prediction of an event justifies those who are instrumental in producing it, then was Judas innocent in betraying our Saviour. "It must needs be that offences come, but wo to that man by whom the offence cometh." Prophecy simply tells what will come to pass. The question, whether it was proper to enslave Canaanites, depends for its solution not on the curse or prophecy in question. If the measure were in conformity with the general morality of the Bible, then it was proper. Was it in conformity with it? It was not. The justice, equity and mercy which were, agreeable to the Divine command, to characterize the dealings of the Jews with each other, are in such conformity, and these are all violated by slavery. If those dealings were all based on the general morality of the Bible, as they certainly were, then slavery, which, in its moral character, is completely opposite to them, cannot rest on that morality. If that morality did not permit the Jews to enslave Canaanites, how came they to enslave them? You will say, that they had special authority from God to do so, in the words, "Both thy bondmen and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are around about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids." Well, I will admit that God did in one instance, and that He may have done so in others, give special authority to the Jews to do that, which, without such authority, would have been palpably and grossly immoral. He required them to exterminate some of the tribes of the Canaanites. He may have required them to bring other Heathens under a form of servitude violative of the general morality of his word.—Of course, no blame attaches to the execution of such commands. When He specially deputes us to kill for Him, we are as innocent in the agency, notwithstanding the general law, "thou shalt not kill," as is the earthquake or thunderbolt, when commissioned to destroy. Samuel was as innocent in hewing "Agag in pieces," as is the tree that falls upon the traveler. It may be remarked, in this connexion, that the fact that God gave a special statute to destroy some of the tribes of the Canaanites, argues the contrariety of the thing required to the morality of the Bible. It argues, that this morality would not have secured the accomplishment of what was required by the statute. Indeed, it is probable that it was, sometimes, under the influence of the tenderness and mercy inculcated by this morality, that the Jews were guilty of going counter to the special statute in question, and sparing the devoted Canaanites, as in the instance when they "spared Agag." We might reason, similarly to show that a special statute, if indeed there were such a one, authorizing the Jews to compel the Heathen to serve them, argues that compulsory service is contrary to fundamental morality. We will suppose that God did; in the special statute referred to, clothe the Jews with power to enslave Heathens, and now let me ask you, whether it is by this same statute to enslave, that you justify your neighbors and yourself for enslaving your fellow men? But this is a special statute, conferring a power on the Jews only—a power too, not to enslave whomsoever they could; but only a specified portion of the human family, and this portion, as we have seen, of a stock, other than that from which you have obtained your slaves. If the special statutes, by which God clothed the Jews with peculiar powers, may be construed to clothe you with similar powers, then, inasmuch as they were authorized and required to kill Canaanites, you may hunt up for destruction the straggling descendants of such of the devoted ones, as escaped the sword of the Jews. Or, to make a different interpretation of your rights, under this supposition; since the statute in question authorized and required the Jews to kill the heathen, within the borders of what was properly the Jews' country, then you are also authorized and required to kill the heathens within the limits of your country:—and these are not wanting, if the testimony of your ecclesiastical bodies, before referred to, can be relied on; and, if it be as they say, that the millions of the poor colored brethren in the midst of you are made heathens by the operation of the system, to which, with unparalleled wickedness, they are subjected.
If then, neither Noah's curse, nor the special statute in question, authorize you to enslave your fellow men, there is, probably, but one ground on which you will contend for authority to do so—and this is the ground of the general morality of the Christian religion—of the general principles of right and duty, in the word of God. Do you find your authority on this ground? If you do, then, manifestly, you have a right to enslave me, and I a right to enslave you, and every man has a right to enslave whomsoever he can;—a right as perfect, as is the right to do good to one another. Indeed, the enslavement of each other would, under this construction of duty, be the doing of good to one another. Think you, sir, that the universal exercise of this right would promote the fulfilment of the "new commandment that ye love one another?" Think you, it would be the harbinger of millenial peace and blessedness? Or, think you not, rather, that it would fully and frightfully realize the prophet's declaration: "They all lie in wait for blood: they hunt every man his neighbor with a net."
If any people have a right to enslave their fellow men, it must be the Jews, if they once had it. But if they ever had it, it ceased, when all their peculiar rights ceased. In respect to rights from the Most High, they are now on the same footing with other races of men. When "the vail of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom," then that distinction from the Gentile, in which the Jew had gloried, ceased, and the partition wall between them was prostrate for ever. The Jew, as well as the Gentile, was never more to depart from the general morality of the Bible. He was never again to be under any special statutes, whose requirements should bring him into collision with that morality: He was no more to confine his sympathies and friendships within the narrow range of the twelve tribes: but every son and daughter of Adam were thenceforth entitled to claim from him the heart and hand of a brother. "Under the glorious dispensation of the gospel," says the immortal Granville Sharp, "we are absolutely bound to consider ourselves as citizens of the world; every man whatever, without any partial distinction of nation, distance, or complexion, must necessarily be esteemed our neighbor and our brother; and we are absolutely bound, in Christian duty, to entertain a disposition towards all mankind, as charitable and benevolent, at least, as that which was required of the Jews under the law towards their brethren; and, consequently, it is absolutely unlawful for those who call themselves Christians, to exact of their brethren (I mean their brethren of the universe) a more burthensome service, than that to which the Jews were limited with respect to their brethren of the house of Israel; and the slavery or involuntary bondage of a brother Israelite was absolutely forbid."
It occurs to me, that after all which has been said to satisfy you, that compulsory servitude, if such there were among the Jews, cannot properly be pleaded in justification of yours; a question may still be floating in your mind whether, if God directed his chosen people to enslave the Heathen, slavery should not be regarded as a good system of servitude? Just as pertinently may you ask, whether that is not a good system of servitude, which is found in some of our state prisons. Punishment probably—certainly not labor—is the leading object in the one case as well as the other: and the labor of the bondman in the one, as well as of the convict in the other, constitutes but a subordinate consideration. To suppose that God would, with every consideration out of view, but that of having the best relation of employer and laborer, make choice of slavery—to suppose that He believes that this state of servitude operates most beneficially, both for the master and the servant—is a high impeachment of the Divine wisdom and goodness. But thus guilty are you, if you are unwilling to believe, that, if He chose the severe servitude in question, He chose it for the punishment of his enemies, or from some consideration, other than its suitableness for the ordinary purposes of the relation of master and servant.
But it has been for the sake of argument only, that I have admitted that God authorized the Jews to enslave the heathen. I now totally deny that He did so. You will, of course, consent that if He did so, it was in a special statute, as was the case when He authorized them to exterminate other heathen: and you will as readily consent that He enacted the statutes, in both instances, with the view of punishing his enemies. Now, in killing the Canaanites, the Jew was constituted, not the owner of his devoted fellow man, but simply the executioner of God's vengeance: and evidently, such and no other was his character when he was reducing the Canaanite to involuntary servitude—that he did so reduce him, and was commissioned by God to do so, is the supposition we make for the sake of argument. Had the Jews been authorized by God to shut up in dungeons for life those of the heathen, whom they were directed to have for bondmen and bondmaids, you would not claim, that they, any more than sheriffs and jailers in our day, are to be considered in the light of owners of the persons in their charge. Much less then, can the Jews be considered as the owners of any person whom they held in servitude: for, however severe the type of that servitude, the liberty of its subject was not restricted, as was that of the prisoners in question:—most certainly, the power asserted over him is not to be compared in extent with that asserted by the Jew over the Canaanite, whom he slew;—a case in which he was, indisputably, but the executioner of the Divine wrath. The Canaanite, whether devoted to a violent death or to an involuntary servitude, still remained the property of God: and God no more gave him up to be the property of the executioner of his wrath, than the people of the State of New York give up the offender against public justice to be the property of the ministers of that justice. God never suspends the accountability of his rational creatures to himself: and his rights to them, He never transfers to others. He could not do so consistently with his attributes, and his indissoluble relations to man. But slavery claims, that its subjects are the property of man. It claims to turn them into mere chattels, and to make them as void of responsibility to God, as other chattels. Slavery, in a word, claims to push from his throne the Supreme Being, who declares, "all souls are mine." That it does not succeed in getting its victim out of God's hand, and in unmanning and chattelizing him—that God's hold upon him remains unbroken, and that those upward tendencies of the soul, which distinguish man from the brute, are not yet entirely crushed in him—is no evidence in favor of its nature:—it simply proves, that its power is not equal to its purposes. We see, then, that the Jews—if it be true that they reduced their fellow men to involuntary servitude, and did so as the Heaven-appointed ministers of God's justice,—are not to be charged with slaveholding for it. There may be involuntary servitude where there is no slavery. The essential and distinguishing feature of slavery is its reduction of man to property—to a thing. A tenant of one of our state prisons is under a sentence of "hard labor for life." But he is not a slave. That is, he is not the thing which slavery would mark its subject. He is still a man. Offended justice has placed him in his present circumstances, because he is a man: and, it is because he is a man and not a thing—a responsible, and not an irresponsible being, that he must continue in his present trials and sufferings.
God's commandments to the Jews, respecting servants and strangers, show that He not only did not authorize them to set up the claim of property in their fellow men, but that He most carefully guarded against such exercises of power, as might lead to the assumption of a claim so wrongful to Himself. Some of these commandments I will bring to your notice. They show that whatever was the form of servitude under which God allowed the Jews to hold the heathen, it was not slavery. Indeed, if all of the Word of God which bears on this point were cited and duly explained, it would, perhaps, appear that He allowed no involuntary servitude whatever amongst the Jews. I give no opinion whether he allowed it or not. There are strong arguments which go to show, that He did not allow it; and with these arguments the public will soon be made more extensively acquainted. It is understood, that the next number of the Anti-Slavery Examiner will be filled with them.