Volume II Part 5 (1/2)
Have the free States bound themselves by an oath never to profit by the lessons of experience? If lost to reason, are they dead to _instinct_ also? Can nothing rouse them to cast about for self preservation? And shall a life of tame surrenders be terminated by suicidal sacrifice?
A ”COMPROMISE!” Bitter irony! Is the plucked and hoodwinked North to be wheedled by the sorcery of another Missouri compromise? A compromise in which the South gained all, and the North lost all, and lost it forever.
A compromise which embargoed the free laborer of the North and West, and, clutched at the staff he leaned upon, to turn it into a bludgeon and fell him with its stroke. A compromise which wrested from liberty her boundless birthright domain, stretching westward to the sunset, while it gave to slavery loose reins and a free coa.r.s.e, from the Mississippi to the Pacific.
The resolution, as it finally pa.s.sed, is here inserted.
”Resolved, That the interference by the citizens of any of the states, with the view to the abolition of slavery in the District, is endangering the rights and security of the people of the District; and that any act or measure of Congress designed to abolish slavery in the District, would be a violation of the faith implied in the cessions by the states of Virginia and Maryland, a just cause of alarm to the people of the slaveholding states, and have a direct and inevitable tendency to disturb and endanger the Union.”
The vote upon the resolution stood as follows:
_Yeas_.--Messrs. Allen, Bayard, Benton, Black, Buchanan, Brown, Calhoun, Clay of Alabama, Clay of Kentucky, Clayton, Crittenden, Cuthbert, Fulton, Grundy, Hubbard, King, Lumpkin, Lyon, Nicholas. Niles, Norvell, Pierce, Preston, Rives, Roane, Robinson, Sevier, Smith, of Connecticut, Strange, Tallmadge, Tipton, Walker, White, Williams, Wright, Young--36.
_Nays_.--Messrs. DAVIS, KNIGHT, McKEAN, MORRIS, PRENTISS, RUGGLES, SMITH, of Indiana, SWIFT, WEBSTER--9.
ANTI-SLAVERY EXAMINER. NO. 6.
NARRATIVE OF JAMES WILLIAMS, AN AMERICAN SLAVE.
ONE DOLLAR PER 100] [143 Na.s.sAU ST. N.Y.
PREFACE.
”American Slavery,” said the celebrated John Wesley, ”is the _vilest_ beneath the sun!” Of the truth of this emphatic remark, no other proof is required, than an examination of the statute books of the American slave states. Tested by its own laws, in all that facilitates and protects the hateful process of converting a man into a ”_chattel personal_;” in all that stamps the law-maker, and law-upholder with meanness and hypocrisy, it certainly has no present rival of its ”bad eminence,” and we may search in vain the history of a world's despotism for a parallel. The civil code of Justinian never acknowledged, with that of our democratic despotisms, the essential equality of man. The dreamer in the gardens of Epicurus recognized neither in himself, nor in the slave who ministered to his luxury, the immortality of the spiritual nature. Neither Solon nor Lycurgus taught the inalienability of human rights. The Barons of the Feudal System, whose maxim was emphatically that of Wordsworth's robber,
”That he should take who had the power, And he should keep who can.”
while trampling on the necks of their va.s.sals, and counting the life of a man as of less value than that of a wild beast, never appealed to G.o.d for the sincerity of their belief, that all men were created equal. It was reserved for American slave-holders to present to the world the hideous anomaly of a code of laws, beginning with the emphatic declaration of the inalienable rights of all men to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and closing with a deliberate and systematic denial of those rights, in respect to a large portion of their countrymen; engrossing on the same parchment the antagonist laws of liberty and tyranny. The very nature of this unnatural combination has rendered it necessary that American slavery, in law and in practice, should exceed every other in severity and cool atrocity. The masters of Greece and Rome permitted their slaves to read and write and wors.h.i.+p the G.o.ds of paganism in peace and security, for there was nothing in the laws, literature, or religion of the age to awaken in the soul of the bondman a just sense of his rights as a man. But the American slaveholder cannot be thus lenient. In the excess of his benevolence, as a political propagandist, he has kindled a fire for the oppressed of the old world to gaze at with hope, and for crowned heads and dynasties to tremble at; but a due regard to the safety of his ”peculiar inst.i.tution,” compels him to put out the eyes of his own people, lest they too should see it. Calling on all the world to shake off the fetters of oppression, and wade through the blood of tyrants to freedom, he has been compelled to smother, in darkness and silence, the minds of his own bondmen, lest they too should hear and obey the summons, by putting the knife to his own throat.--Proclaiming the truths of Divine Revelation, and sending the Scriptures to the four quarters of the earth, he has found it necessary to maintain heathenism at home by special enactments; and to make the second offence of teaching his slaves the message of salvation punishable with _death_!
What marvel then that American slavery even on the _statute book_ a.s.sumes the right to transform moral beings into brutes:[A] that it legalizes man's usurpation of Divine authority; the subst.i.tution of the will of the master, for the moral government of G.o.d: that it annihilates the rights of conscience; debars from the enjoyment of religious rights and privileges by specific enactments; and enjoins disobedience to the Divine lawgiver: that it discourages purity and chast.i.ty, encourages crime, legalizes concubinage; and, while it places the slave entirely in the hands of his master, provides no real protection for his life or his person.
[Footnote A: The _cardinal principle_ of slavery, that a slave is not to be ranked among sentient beings, but among things, as an article of property, a chattel personal, obtains as undoubted law, in all the slave states. (Judge Stroud's Sketch of Slave Laws, p. 22.)]
But it may be said, that these laws afford no certain evidence of the actual condition of the slaves: that, in judging the system by its code, no allowance is made for the humanity of individual masters. It was a just remark of the celebrated Priestley, that ”_no people ever were found to be better than their laws, though many have been known to be worse._” All history and common experience confirm this. Besides, admitting that the legal severity of a system may be softened in the practice of the humane, may it not also be aggravated by that of the avaricious and cruel?
But what are the testimony and admissions of slaveholders themselves on this point? In an Essay published in Charleston, S.C., in 1822, and ent.i.tled ”A Refutation of the Calumnies circulated against the Southern and Western States,” by the late Edwin C. Holland, Esq., it is stated, that ”all slaveholders have laid down non-resistance, and perfect and uniform _obedience_ to their orders as fundamental principles in the government of their slaves:” that this is ”a _necessary_ result of the relation,” and ”_unavoidable_.” Robert J. Turnbull, Esq., of South Carolina, in remarking upon the management of slaves, says, ”The only principle upon which may authority over them, (the slaves,) can be maintained is _fear_, and he who denies this has little knowledge of them.” To this may be added the testimony of Judge Ruffin, of North Carolina, as quoted in Wheeler's Law of Slavery, p. 217. ”The slave, to remain a slave, must feel that there is _no appeal from his master_. No man can antic.i.p.ate the provocations which the slave would give, nor the consequent wrath of the master, prompting him to b.l.o.o.d.y VENGEANCE on the turbulent traitor, a vengeance _generally_ practised with impunity by reason of its _privacy_.”
In an Essay on the ”improvement of negroes on plantations,” by Rev.
Thomas S. Clay, a slaveholder of Bryan county, Georgia, and Printed at the request of the Georgia Presbytery, in 1833, we are told ”that the present economy of the slave system is _to get all you can_ from the slave, and give him in return _as little as will barely support him in a working condition_!” Here, in a few words, the whole enormity of slavery is exposed to view: ”to _get all you can_ from the slave”--by means of whips and forks and irons--by every device for torturing the body, without destroying its capability of labor; and in return give him as little of his coa.r.s.e fare as will keep him, like a mere beast of burden, in a ”_working condition_;” this is slavery, as explained by the slaveholder himself. Mr. Clay further says: ”_Offences against the master_ are more severely punished than violations of the law of G.o.d, a fault which affects the slave's personal character a good deal. As examples we may notice, that _running away_ is more severely punished than adultery.” ”He (the slave) only knows his master as lawgiver and executioner, and the _sole object of punishment_ held up to his view, is to make him _a more obedient and profitable slave_.”
Hon. W.B. Seabrook, in an address before the Agricultural Society of St.
John's, Colleton, published by order of the Society, at Charleston, in 1834, after stating that ”as Slavery exists in South Carolina, the action of the citizens should rigidly conform to that state of things:”