Page images
PDF
EPUB

forced by solemn injunctions and appeals to with the utmost degree of moral excellence; this the authority and power of God. Masters is only to say that prudence and virtue are not are ordered to give unto their servants that incompatible. But the doctrine of expediency which is just and equal; and servants are com- in its most liberal application can never justify a manded to obey in all things, their masters, ac- connivance at crime, much less an encouragement cording to the flesh, nor with eye-service as to commit it. This explanation of our author men-pleasers, but in singleness of heart fearing destroys all consistency of conduct, as well as all God. These injunctions were repeated over inflexibility of principle in the Apostles, makes and over, and are invariably enforced by the will them truckle to fear in a single instance, while and authority of God. The inference moves the daily dared death in every other; and besides with stern precision from such premises to the this, it does not affect the real difficulty in the conclusion that slavery is not a crime or anything case. If they had merely failed to denounce that approaches it. But the argument is pro- the sin, they would have been inexcusably redigiously strengthened by the fact that the apos- creant to their high commission; but to suppose tles, while demanding the surrender of all things them as not merely failing to denounce, but acfor the sake of Christ, and declaring that with- tually regulating by law, and enforcing it by the out holiness no man should see God, yet admitted solemn sanctions of religion, is to imagine a deslave-holding Jews and Gentiles in crowds to the gree of absurdity hardly consistent with the rite of baptism and the full privilege of commu- frailest virtue-much less with the stern integrity nism in the Church, styled them brethren faith- of the commissioned ambassadors of God. Wayful and beloved, admitted them to their entire land also attempts to evade the force of this plea, confidence, and by the whole course of their pol- by stating that if the Apostles did sanction slavery icy confirmed the existing order of society in re- in the Roman Empire they thereby sanctioned all lation to slavery. Yet modern churches have the absurd and inhuman laws of the Roman slave cast out of the synagogue and delivered over to code. But this argument is of a piece with his the polite and tender attentions of the devil, plea against the testimony of the slave laws of those whom Paul and his coadjutors would have Moses, to the morality of slavery. We do not received to the full confidence of Christian affec- argue that the Apostles sanctioned slavery and tion. Is it possible to desire a more convincing everything connected with it in the Roman laws; proof that the spirit which animates the moderns we assert that they sanctioned it, even in spite of is a very different spirit from the guide of the that terrible code; nor can the most acute ingeancient church? Now sum up the substance nuity torture a sanction of a thing, into a perof this argument, and consider it at a glance. mission of any thing not essential to the original At the time of the early rise of Christianity subject of the sanction. The argument simply slavery universally prevailed in the world; yet states that the Apostles could not sanction a sin the Apostles of Christ went forth denouncing per se; but they did sanction slavery, and thereevery form of vice, waging extinguishable war- fore slavery is not a sin, as the abolition theories fare upon all the popular superstitions of the assert it to be. The savage character of the times, daring the vengeance of noble and priest, Roman slave code adds strength to the argument magistrates and populace in unsparing assaults from the New Testament writers; if they allowed upon every shape and degree of sin and irreli- a relation when covered with such barbarous adgiou; and so far from denouncing this enormous juncts, much more would they approve it in a and disgraceful sin of slavery, they framed laws for its regulation, gave new sanctions, drawn from the principles of religion to enforce its duties, and admitted slaveholders to all the privileges of the Church they were commissioned to erect. If slavery is a sin, per se, the inspiration of the New Testameut is absurd.

milder type. Dr. Wayland should have remembered that the Apostles were prevented by the inspiration of God from committing the blunder, which penetrates the whole of his argument with absurdity-of confounding the adjuncts of slavery with slavery itself, and blending in one undistinguishable condemnation, the relation itself and the objectionable laws that governed and controlled it.

The explanation which Wayland attempts to make of this most extraordinary procedure of the Apostle, actually increases, instead of remo- Our anti-slavery philosopher makes a third atving the difficulty it creates on the abolition the-tempt to evade the force of the argument from ory; he declares they failed to denounce it from the mutual duties defined and enforced upon motives of expediency,† and are not to be consid-master and servant in the Epistles of Paul, by ered as giving their sanction to the relation. No stating that the patience and meekness, the fideldoubt expediency may be sometimes consistent ity and charity required by the Apostle are obligatory upon all men, and of course upon masters;

* Col. iv. 1 and iii. 22.

† See Fuller and Wayland, pp. 63–70.

* See Fuller and Wayland, pp. 86-87.

One of the most common and popular arguments against slavery consists in the charge that it reduces the slave from a man to a brute, from a person to a thing, and divests him of all the essential characteristics of humanity at the same time that it arms the master with unlimited power over the body, mind, soul, and every right of the slave. This plea has not only been the universal reliance of the multitude, but what is surpassing strange it has imposed upon some of the finest thinkers of the country and forms a standing proof of the absurdities into which even high intellect may be seduced by preconceived prejudice and opinion. We must permit Dr. Thornwell to assist us in replying to this folly:

and by inquiring whether our obligations to prac-slave and the humanity of the master, not only tise honesty and charity, and avoid purloining as fatal to his cause, but as affording a most triand eye-service, depend on the justice of the au- umphant vindication of the morality of the thority which the master claims over the ser- slavery relation. If God will be honored by the vant. The fatuity and confusion of this ques- discharge of its duties, then those duties must be tion are really amazing. The obligation to hon-worthy of his approval; nor can any ingenuity esty and zeal in the abstract depends solely upon separate the connection between his smile of apthe authority of God; but the obligation to be dili-proval, and the worthiness of its object. gent and faithful in discharging the duties of a particular relation, does most certainly depend upon the moral character of the relation itself. No man is under obligation to be faithful in discharging the duties of an unholy relationship; on the contrary he is under the highest obligations not to perform them at all. We may assert that with a propriety identical with that exhibited by our author that the law of fidelity is binding upon all, and upon adulterers among others. Surely if fidelity and zeal in the discharge of duty operate with out regard to the moral nature of the relation, then the moral law becomes the warrant for the most extraordinary zeal and fidelity in carrying out the business of a thief and receiver, or of an adulterer and adulteress. The obligation to "If this be a just description of slavery, the fidelity is one thing, and the relation to which it wonder is, not that the civilized world is now is to be applied is another; fidelity in the abstract indignant at its outrages and wrongs, but that it is moral; but fidelity in discharging the duties of has been so slow in detecting its enormities, that a sinful relation is only faithfulness in crime, of mankind, for so many centuries, acquiesced in a which the most treacherous desertion is the only system which contradicted every impulse of navirtue. The duty to be faithful in discharging a ture, every whisper of conscience, every dictate of religion-a system as monstrously unnatural relation necessarily sanctions the relation itself; as a general effort to walk upon the head or think it is impossible to make a moral application of the with the feet. I have however no hesitation in obligations of virtue to a sinful or criminal rela- saying, that whatever may be the technical lantion; such a supposition is to say in effect that it is guage of the law, in relation to certain aspects duty to be faithful in crime, and the more faithful in which slavery is contemplated, the ideas of and consistent is the criminal career, the more vade the whole system. It is a relation of mau personal rights and personal responsibility percompletely are the claims of duty fulfilled; a to man-a form of civil society of which persons paradox in which it is impossible to distinguish are the only elements, and not a relation of man between the superior claims of folly and wicked- to things. Under the Roman code, in which When the President of Brown University more offensive language thau that employed by informs us that Christ is honored by the obedience of the slave,f but that the right of the master is not recognized by the law which enforces his rights to the services of the slave, he is utterly unconscious that he is really uttering a most detestable insinuation against the Saviour. The assertion that Christ is honored by the discharge of the duties of a positively sinful relation, is an insult to his honor; it is the same as to say he is honored by the performance of what is wrong in itself, and is all the more honored as the wrong is more consistently and perseveringly committed. It is a simple and absolute impossibility to distinguish in point of morality between a relation, and the offices which are necessary and peculiar to it. We regard this admission of Wayland's that Christ is honored by the obedience of the

ness.

* Fuller and Wayland, pp. 81-82. † See Fuller and Wayland, p. 81.

ourselves was used in reference to the subject, slave as lost or swallowed up in the propriety of the Apostles did not regard the personality of the the master. They treat him as a man possessed of certain rights, which it is injustice to disregard, and made it the office of Christianity to protect these rights by the solemn sanctions of religion-to enforce upon masters the moral necessity, the moral obligation, of rendering to their bondmen that which is just and equal. Paul treats the services of slaves as duties-not like the toil of the ox or the ass-a labor extracted by the stringency of discipline-but a moral debt in the payment of which they were rendering a social and political economy, in which relations homage to God. He considered slavery as a subsisted betwixt moral, intelligent, responsible beings, involving reciprocal rights and reciprocal obligations. There was a right to command ou one hand-an obligation to obey on the other. Both parties might be guilty of injustice and of wrong-the master might prostitute his power by tyranny, cruelty, and iniquitous exactions—

the servant might evade his duty from indolence, a jat claim of one to the perpetual services of treachery, or obstinate self-will. Religion held the other. It is a contradiction in terms to say the scales of justice between them and enforced that slavery is not a relation of property. The fidelity upon each by the awful sanctions of eternity. This was clearly the aspect in which the Apostle contemplated the subject."*

property character of slavery is fully recognized in those passages where slaves are numbered with other articles of property, and where they In addition to this it may be said that the idea are said to be a possession taken as an inheritance of slavery making a brute of a man, and chang-for children. There is a peculiar effrontery in ing him from a person to a thing, is an absolute the denunciation of chattel slavery as an offence absurdity; there is no meaning or sense what- against God, when the tenth commandment forever in the expression; the absurdity is so mon- bids one man to covet the servants of his neighstrous as to set all comprehension at defiance. bor, on the very ground that they are property. How can a man be reduced into any other na- Should it be said that the prohibition to covet ture than the human; how can he be metamorthe man-servant or the maid-servant, no more phosed from a person into a thing? No circum- proves them to be articles of property, than the stances can alter the essential nature of a par- prohibition to covet the wife of our neighbor, ticular form of existence. It is mere folly of the proves a wife to be a proper article of property— most transparent description to say that the sub-it will be enough to reply that the question jection of the slave to the will of his master, so whether the servants are to be properly classed changes the nature of things as to make his obe- with the wife or with the houses and cattle is dience of the identical nature of the obedience of fully settled by interpreting the passage, in the a tool to the hand of a workman, or the obedi- light of those passages which expressly number ence of a horse to the rein and spur of the rider. slaves with oxen and sheep, and those which deDr. Thornwell very properly remarks, that "obe- fine slaves to be possessions liable to inheritance dience, except as a figured term, can never be and devise. But the effrontery in the denunciaapplied to any, but rational, intelligent, respontion of chattel slavery is surpassed by its absurdsible agents." If the action of one man under ity; there is but one kind of slavery, and if the the direction of another essentially changes the property character of the relation is destroyed, very nature of the agent, we should witness the the relation itself is annihilated. All the commost extraordinary demissions of humanity every plaints and invectives urged against slavery as time an agent acted for a principal; and every involving a right of property, are drawn from a time a lawyer yielded to the suggestions of a cli- definition of slavery and a definition of property, ent he would immediately become a very curious which are marvels of inaccuracy and want of specimen of legal machinery, in which motions and demurrers moved with the precision of a cog-wheel, and clattered with all the noisy vehemence of a cotton-gin. We have already seen in this review that while slavery might share responsibility in one sense between the master and the slave, yet in another, it not only preserved, but enlarged the just accountability of both for the proper observance of the mutual duties growing out of their new relation. It would be as much as any man's reputation for sense or sanity was worth, to say that the acting of one man under to one man over another. Hence we are inthe direction of another, changed the essential formed with a gravity and earnestness that strip nature of the agent; yet men have been allowed the absurdity of ridicule and convert it into a to assert this very absurdity in relation to slavery fearful fanaticism, that slavery gives a man a with entire impunity. But the most triumphant refutation of this celebrated argument is to be found in the proper character of slavery; to this we would now solicit the attention of our readers.

precision. Slavery is commonly defined to be a property in man, and when Wayland defines property to be the right to use something as one chooses, provided the use of it does not interfere with the rights of his neighbor, it is immediately perceived that a property in man gives the master a right to do as he chooses with the slave. When this portentous conclusion is thus inevitatably fastened upon the institution of slavery, heaven and earth are called to witness against a relation which gives such unprecedented power

right to blind the mind, debauch the morals, destroy the life or ruin the soul of his servant, or whatever else his caprice or passion may dictate. Hence it is said that slavery changes the nature of the slave, and works that incomprehensible Slavery is the property right of one man to mystery of changing a person into a thing. the services of another; or it is such a relation This contemptible sophistry has imposed upon between two individuals, as forms the basis for some of the first philosophical writers of the

*Thornwell's Discourse, pp. 19-20-21.

t Sermon p. 20. See previous remarks.

VOL. XVII-51

*Lev. xxv. 44-46. Gen. xx. 14.

+ Elements of Moral Science. p. 229.

Northern States; Channing, Whewell, and Way- property forbids that the right of slavery should laud have all fallen into the blunder, and when we extend farther than the mere use of the man acsee the philosophical and discriminating minds cording to his nature, or his employment in of the country run wild on an absurdity so prepos- agreement with the rational and just way of terous, we cease to wonder at the rage aud ha- making his labor subservient to the interest of the tred with which the masses of the Northeru peo-master. This simple conception of the nature of ple are taught to regard the institutions of the property cuts through the whole of those pathetic South. If such a couception of slavery were declamations of Wayland and his abolition coadjust, the only wonder is that the opposition to it jutors over the power of slavery to change the has been confined to political and moral weapons; nature of a man, and make a person a thing. It the sword of indignant humanity should sweep is really a pity that people will not condescend the curse from the earth. to understand what they mean themselves, before But the horrible conclusions, which we have they undertake to become the teachers of the just reviewed, cannot be escaped if the premises public. The finishing clause of Wayland's defiof the argument are admitted to be true. If nition gives the finishing stroke to its precision property is the right to do as one chooses with and correctness; it is not true in every case that the article of property, and slavery be a property property essentially implies non-interference with in man, we are not able to perceive what it is that the master may not do with the slave, whether it be to use him for service, or torture him at the stake, or cook him for the fox hound. The conclusions are inevitable from the premises, and if the premises contain the essential and necessary elements of slavery, the conclusions they produce prove beyond all doubt that slavery is the most atrocious of all possible relations among

men.

It is absolutely marvellous that the enormity of these conclusions did not throw suspicion upon the soundness of the premises.

the rights of others. For instance, a parent may disinherit his children and convey his estate to an indifferent party; the title of the legatee would be valid, although the real rights of the children were utterly exploded; he forgets that there are rights of different kinds and that the right of one may successfully oppose a different and less forcible right of his neighbor.

But this is not all the folly comprehended in that sententious logic by which a property in man gives one man such tremendous power over the fate and fortunes of another. Admitting the defiWayland's definition of property is exceedingly nition of Wayland to be correct, the term prodefective; he declares it to be the right to do as perty in man, which is sufficiently precise for orone chooses with the article of property, unless it dinary purposes of allusion and remark on the interfere with the rights of his neighbor.* This subject of slavery, will never answer as a term is inaccurate and untrue in every particular. The of debate; for when subjected to the rigid aualrights of men do not pertain to things themselves, sis necessary to the success of abstract discusbut to the use of them; men are simply stewards, sion, it is discovered to present no tangible idea not absolute proprietors; even the right to life is to the most eager and minute attempt at comprevested in the use of it, and by no means allows a hension. In what does the property claim of a man to destroy it when he pleases. It is there- right in man actually consist,―is it located in the fore false to say that it gives the owner the right mind, the body, or the moral nature of the slave; to do as he chooses with the article of property, where can it be lodged in the servant so as to bealthough it may not interfere with the rights of come tangible to the owner? A right must be any other man. Property is a right to use the ar- something tangible to the possessor; if it is even ticle of property according to the nature of the ar- a purely speculative or metaphysical right, it must ticle itself. A man has no right to set fire to his at least be tangible to the understanding; where house, to destroy his money or kill his cattle in then can a property right in man be located upon wanton butchery, even though no one else should him. If it exist in the body of the slave, then it be injured but himself. A man has no right to gives license to cannibalism; if it exist in the use an animal in the same manner in which he mind, the master may reduce the intellect to may use a piece of inanimate property; nor has idiocy; if it exist in the moral nature, then the a man the right to use a man in a way which master may lawfully debauch the morals and would be pardonable towards a brute. Property and ruin the soul of his servant. Such is the gives no man a right to destroy it with wanton definition of slavery and such the results which or unreasonable usage; the only right it con- have kindled such fierce enthusiasm against it. fers is a right to use according to the nature of the The utter incomprehensibility of the phrase article itself. So then, even admitting that property in man, and the disastrous consequences there is any sense or meaning in the definition of that flowed necessarily from it, induced those slavery as a property in man, the very nature of writers upon moral and metaphysical science, * See Wayland's Elements of Moral Science, p. 229. who have been chiefly instrumental in producing

and lawful claim, just in proportion to the nature and force of the cause that endangers it. These measures of precaution and defence based upon the collateral rights of the master must necessarily be controlled by circumstances, and are to

the existing sentiment on the subject of slavery, to be endangered, then it is the right of the master brand the relation as founded upon a negation of to use precautionary measures to guard his just reason, as an absurdity too monstrous to admit of comprehension at all, and as only surpassed in its natural outrage of reason, by the infamous crimes it made lawful and right. It is useless to argue in proof that this representation is as pure a fiction of a distempered imagination as ever in- be continued not one whit longer than is absofested the reveries of a maniac. It is true that this definition coutains no manner of meaning; it is is true it conveys no intelligible idea to the mind; but the man who confounds it with slavery itself, and infers from it that slavery is the bloody and stupid absurdity it is proved to be by such a definition, has reason to fear lest his own brain is becoming as stupid as slavery itself, when he is not able immediately to perceive that the conclusions which grow out of the definition are themselves incontestable evidence that the definition is false.

lutely necessary. Thus the agitation of the slavery question in all its aspects by the meddlers of the North has endangered the property of the Southern slave-holder, and made it necessary to deprive the slaves of many a privilege which their relation to their masters did not necessarily forbid, and which their owners would have had neither the right nor the inclination to forbid, except under the pressure of necessity. For instance, slavery is charged with giving the master an absolute right to control the mental nature of the slave, and consign him to perpetual ignorance and imbecility; but this does not form a part of the relation itself; if it exist at all, it exists in the collateral rights of the master. But the movements of the abolition party have made it a measure of police essential to the tranquillity, nay to the existence of Southern society, to prevent the general instruction of the negroes in the arts of reading and writing. While therefore the necessity of the case demands the withdrawal of this mode of instruction, it does not remove the right of the servant to claim or the obligation of the master to afford such instruction by oral com

Although the notion of a property in man is so mysterious and incomprehensible, yet the idea of a right to the services of a man, or a property claim upon his producing energies, is level to the apprehension of a child; and this is all of the property character of slavery. It is one thing to have an absolute right to use a man as one chooses, and a very different thing to have a right to use his services according to his nature, in obedience to the rules of reason, and the dictates of moral law. The one right would give the master liberty to abuse his slave to any extent to which his passions might hurry him; the munication, as will at least form the negro to other not merely confines the right of the master honesty and conscientiousness in this world and to the services of the slave, but commands him fit him for eternity. The suppression of one to use those services in accordance with the na- claim of the slave, by the stern hand of social ture of man, forbids him to confound the service necessity, does not necessarily extinguish all owed by a man, as of the same character with others or all forms even of the claim suppressed, the service of a brute; and in every possible and the sermon of Dr. Thornwell gives a pleasway guards strictly the rights of the slave ing testimony to the accuracy with which the as well the rights of the master. good people of Charleston discriminate between perty right of slavery rests directly in the the effect of circumstances upon the rights of claim to service, and collaterally in every thing their slaves, and affords an instance of self-posnecessary to secure that claim. Slavery secures session and resolute devotion to duty, amid the to the slave all the rights of other men, except tremendous storm of execration and invective the right to control his services and appropriate that thunders from every civilized quarter of the the proceeds, and the main evils connected with globe, against the States of the South,-which slavery, the injustice and oppression for which fully merits the modest self-gratulation with slavery is so frequently held responsible are by which Dr. Thornwell alludes to it. The citi no means necessary to the relation itself, arise zens alluded to, satisfied of the impropriety of from a neglect of this great distinction and from giving to their slaves the means of acquiring a a trespass upon those rights of the slave, of which knowledge of the gospel by reading the Bible for his relation to the master has not properly de-themselves, have justly decided, that a loss of the prived him. We said the right of property right to receive religious instruction in one way vested directly in the claim to service, and col-did not deprive them of the right to receive it in laterally in everything necessary to secure that right. If therefore the relation be undisturbed the property right of the master rests simply and alone in the service of the slave, but if this right

The prop

another; and hence the special effort to have them orally informed of the great facts they had no right to acquire by reading for themselves. We

*Thornwell's Sermon, p. 6.

« PreviousContinue »