Part 2

All these I put aside,--not because I do not regard them of moment in exhibiting the true character of Slavery, but because I desire to present this argument on grounds above all controversy, impeachment, or suspicion, even from slave-masters themselves. Not on triumphant story, not even on indisputable fact, do I now accuse Slavery, but on its character, as revealed in its own simple definition of itself. Out of its own mouth do I condemn it. By the _Law of Slavery_, man, created in the image of God, is divested of the human character, and declared to be a mere chattel. That this statement may not seem to be put forward without precise authority, I quote the law of two different States. The Civil Code of Louisiana thus defines a slave:--

“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 anything but what must belong to his master.”[3]

The law of another polished Slave State gives this definition:--

“Slaves shall be deemed, sold, 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.”[4]

And a careful writer, Judge Stroud, in a work of juridical as well as philanthropic merit, thus sums up the law:--

“The cardinal principle of Slavery, that the slave is not to be ranked among _sentient beings_, but among _things_, is an article of property, a chattel personal, obtains as undoubted law in all of these [Slave] States.”[5]

Sir, this is enough. As out of its small egg crawls forth the slimy, scaly, reptile crocodile, so out of this simple definition crawls forth the whole slimy, scaly, reptile monstrosity by which a man is changed into a chattel, a person is converted into a thing, a soul is transmuted into merchandise. According to this very definition, the slave is held simply for the good of his master, to whose behest his life, liberty, and happiness are devoted, and by whom he may be bartered, leased, mortgaged, bequeathed, invoiced, shipped as cargo, stored as goods, sold on execution, knocked off at public auction, and even staked at the gaming-table on the hazard of a card or die. The slave may seem to have a wife; but he has not, for his wife belongs to his master. He may seem to have a child; but he has not, for his child is owned by his master. He may be filled with desire of knowledge, opening to him the gates of joy on earth and in heaven; but the master may impiously close all these gates. Thus is he robbed, not merely of privileges, but of himself,--not merely of money and labor, but of wife and children,--not merely of time and opportunity, but of every assurance of happiness,--not merely of earthly hope, but of all those divine aspirations that spring from the Fountain of Light. He is not merely restricted in liberty, but totally deprived of it,--not merely curtailed in rights, but absolutely stripped of them,--not merely loaded with burdens, but changed into a beast of burden,--not merely bent in countenance to the earth, but sunk in law to the level of a quadruped,--not merely exposed to personal cruelty, but deprived of his character as a person,--not merely compelled to involuntary labor, but degraded to a rude thing,--not merely shut out from knowledge, but wrested from his place in the human family. _And all this, Sir, is according to the simple Law of Slavery._

And even this is not all. The law, by cumulative provisions, positively forbids that a slave shall be taught to read. Hear this, fellow-citizens, and confess that no barbarity of despotism, no extravagance of tyranny, no excess of impiety can be more blasphemous or deadly. “Train up a child in the way he should go” is the lesson of Divine Wisdom; but the Law of Slavery boldly prohibits any such training, and dooms the child to hopeless ignorance and degradation. “Let there be light” was the Divine behest at the dawn of Creation,--and this commandment, travelling with the ages and the hours, still speaks with the voice of God; yet the Law of Slavery says, “Let there be darkness.”

But it is earnestly averred that slave-masters are humane, and slaves are treated with kindness. These averments, however, I properly put aside, precisely as I have already put aside the multitudinous illustrations from the cruelty of Slavery. On the simple _letter of the law_ I take my stand, and do not go beyond what is there nominated. The masses of men are not better than their laws, and, whatever may be the eminence of individual virtue, it is not reasonable to infer that the body of slave-masters is better than the Law of Slavery. And since this law submits the slave to their irresponsible control, with power to bind and to scourge, to shut the soul from knowledge, to separate families, to unclasp the infant from a mother’s breast, and the wife from a husband’s arms, it is natural to conclude that such enormities are sanctioned by them, while the supplementary denial of instruction gives conclusive evidence of their full complicity. And this conclusion must exist unquestioned, just so long as the law exists unrepealed. Cease, then, to blazon the humanity of slave-masters. Tell me not of the lenity with which this cruel law is tempered to its unhappy subjects. Tell me not of the sympathy which overflows from the mansion of the master to the cabin of the slave. In vain you assert these instances. In vain you show that there are individuals who do not exert the wickedness of the law. The law still endures. Slavery, which it defines and upholds, continues to outrage Public Opinion, and, within the limits of our Republic, more than three millions of human beings, guilty only of a skin not colored like your own, are left the victims of its unrighteous, irresponsible power.

Power divorced from right is devilish; power without the check of responsibility is tyrannical; and I need not go back to the authority of Plato, when I assert that the most complete injustice is that erected into the form of law. But all these things concur in Slavery. It is, then, on the testimony of slave-masters, solemnly, legislatively, judicially attested in the very law itself, that I now arraign this institution as an outrage upon man and his Creator. And herein is the necessity of the Antislavery Enterprise. A wrong so transcendent, so loathsome, so direful, must be encountered, _wherever it can be reached_; and the battle must be continued without truce or compromise, until the field is entirely won. Freedom and Slavery can hold no divided empire; nor can there be any true repose, until Freedom is everywhere established.

* * * * *

To the _necessity_ of the Antislavery Enterprise there are two, and only two, main objections,--one founded on the alleged distinction of race, and the other on the alleged sanction of Christianity. All other objections are of inferior character, or are directed logically at its _practicability_. Of these two main objections let me briefly speak.

* * * * *

1. I begin with the alleged _distinction of race_. This objection assumes two different forms,--one founded on a prophetic malediction in the Old Testament, and the other on professed observations of recent science. Its importance is apparent in the obvious fact, that, unless such distinction be clearly and unmistakably established, every argument by which our own freedom is vindicated, every applause awarded to the successful rebellion of our fathers, every indignant word ever hurled against the enslavement of white fellow-citizens by Algerine corsairs, must plead trumpet-tongued against the deep damnation of Slavery, black as well as white.

It is said that Africans are the posterity of Ham, son of Noah, through Canaan cursed by Noah, to be the servant of his brethren, and that this malediction has fallen upon all his descendants, including the unhappy Africans,--who are accordingly devoted by God, through unending generations, to unending bondage. Such is the favorite argument at the South, and more than once directly addressed to myself. Here, for instance, is a passage from a letter recently received. “You need not persist,” says the writer, “in confounding Japheth’s children with Ham’s, and making both races one, and arguing on their rights as those of man broadly.” And I have been seriously assured, that, until this objection is answered, it will be vain to press my views upon Congress or the country. Listen now to the texts of the Old Testament which are so strangely employed.

“And he [Noah] said, Cursed be Canaan: a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. And he said, Blessed be the Lord God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem, and Canaan shall be his servant.”[6]

That is all; and I need only read these words in order to expose the whole--transpicuous humbug. I am tempted to add, that, to justify this objection, it is necessary to maintain at least five different propositions, as essential links in the chain of the African slave: _first_, that by this malediction Canaan himself was actually changed into a _chattel_,--whereas he is simply made the servant of his brethren; _secondly_, that not merely Canaan, but all his posterity, to the remotest generation, was so changed,--whereas the language has no such extent; _thirdly_, that the African actually belongs to the posterity of Canaan,--an ethnographical assumption absurdly difficult to establish; _fourthly_, that each descendant of Shem and Japheth has a right to hold an African fellow-man as chattel,--a proposition which finds no semblance of support; and, _fifthly_, that every slave-master is truly descended from Shem or Japheth,--a pedigree which no anxiety or assurance can prove. This plain analysis, which may fitly excite a smile, shows the fivefold absurdity of an attempt to found this revolting wrong on any

“successive title, long and dark, Drawn from the mouldy rolls of Noah’s ark.”[7]

The small bigotry which finds comfort in these texts has been exalted lately by the voice of Science, undertaking to suggest that the different races of men are not derived from a single pair, but from several distinct stocks, according to their several distinct characteristics; and it is haughtily argued, that the African is so far inferior as to lose all title to that liberty which is the birthright of the lordly white. Now I have neither time nor disposition, on this occasion, to discuss the question of the unity of races; nor is it necessary to my present purpose. It may be that the different races of men proceeded from different stocks; but there is but _one_ great Human Family, in which Caucasian and African, Chinese and Indian, are all brothers, children of _one_ Father, and heirs to _one_ happiness,--alike on earth and in heaven. “Star-eyed Science” cannot shake this everlasting truth. It may exhibit peculiarities in the African, by which he is distinguishable from the Caucasian. In his physical form and intellectual character it may presume to find the stamp of permanent inferiority. But by no reach of learning, no torture of fact, no effrontery of dogma, can any science show that he is not _a man_. And as a man he stands before you an unquestionable member of the Human Family, entitled to _all the rights of man_. You can claim nothing for yourself, _as man_, which you must not accord to him. _Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness_, which you proudly declare to be your own inalienable, God-given rights, and to the support of which your fathers pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor, are his by the same immortal title that they are yours.

* * * * *

2. From the objection founded on alleged distinction of race, I pass to that other founded on alleged _sanction of Slavery by Christianity_. Striving to be brief, I shall not undertake to reconcile texts often quoted from the Old Testament, which, whatever their import, are all absorbed in the New; nor shall I stop to consider the precise interpretation of the familiar phrase, _Servants, obey your masters_, nor seek to weigh any such imperfect injunction in the scales against those grand commandments on which hang all the Law and the Prophets. Surely, in the example and teachings of the Saviour, who lifted up the down-trodden, who enjoined purity of life, and overflowed with tenderness even to little children, human ingenuity can find no apology for an institution which tramples on man, which defiles woman, and sweeps little children beneath the hammer of the auctioneer. If to any one these things seem to have the license of Christianity, it is only because they have first secured a license in his own soul. Men are prone in uncertain, disconnected texts to find confirmation of their own personal prejudices or prepossessions. And I--who am no theologian, but only a simple layman--make bold to say, that whoever finds in the Gospel any sanction of Slavery finds there merely a reflection of himself. On a matter so irresistibly clear authority is superfluous; but an eminent character, who as poet makes us forget his high place as philosopher, and as philosopher makes us forget his high place as theologian, exposes the essential antagonism between Christianity and Slavery in a few pregnant words, which, by recalling the spirit of our Faith, are more satisfactory than whole volumes of ingenious discussion. “By a principle essential to Christianity,” says Coleridge, “a _person_ is eternally differenced from a _thing_; so that _the idea of a Human Being necessarily excludes the idea of property in that Being_.”[8]

With regret, though not with astonishment, I learn that a Boston divine has sought to throw the seamless garment of Christ over this shocking wrong. But I am patient, and see clearly how vain is his effort, when I call to mind, that, within this very century, other divines in another country sought to throw the same sacred vesture over the more shocking slave-trade,--and that, among many publications, a little book was then put forth by a reverend clergyman, with the title, “The African Trade for Negro Slaves shewn to be consistent with Principles of Humanity and with the Laws of Revealed Religion.”[9] Thinking of these things, I am ready to say, with Shakespeare,--

“In religion, What damnèd error, but some sober brow Will bless it, and approve it with a text?”

In support of Slavery, it is the habit to pervert texts and to invent authority. Even St. Paul is vouched for a wrong which his Christian life rebukes. Much stress is now laid on his example, as it appears in the Epistle to Philemon, written at Rome, and sent by Onesimus, a servant. From the single chapter constituting the entire epistle I take the following ten verses, most strangely invoked for Slavery.

“_I beseech thee for my son Onesimus_, whom I have begotten in my bonds; which in time past was to thee unprofitable, but now profitable to thee and to me; whom I have sent again. Thou, therefore, receive him, that is, mine own bowels: whom I would have retained with me, that in thy stead he might have ministered unto me in the bonds of the gospel; but without thy mind would I do nothing; that thy benefit should not be as it were of necessity, but willingly. For perhaps he therefore departed for a season that thou shouldest receive him forever; _not now as a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved_, specially to me, but how much more unto thee, both in the flesh and in the Lord! _If thou count me, therefore, a partner, receive him as myself._ If he hath wronged thee, or oweth thee aught, put that on mine account: I Paul have written it with mine own hand, I will repay it: albeit I do not say to thee how thou owest unto me even thine own self besides.”[10]

Out of this affectionate epistle, where St. Paul calls the converted servant, Onesimus, his _son_, precisely as in another epistle he calls Timothy his son, Slavery is elaborately vindicated, and the great Apostle to the Gentiles made the very tutelary saint of the Slave-Hunter. Now, without invoking his real judgment of Slavery from his condemnation on another occasion of “men-stealers,” or what I prefer to call _slave-hunters_, in company with “murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers,” and without undertaking to show that the present epistle, when truly interpreted, is a protest against Slavery and a voice for Freedom,--all of which might be done,--I content myself with calling attention to two things, apparent on its face, and in themselves an all-sufficient response. _First_, while it appears that Onesimus had been in some way the servant of Philemon, it does not appear that he was ever held as _chattel_; and how gross and monstrous is the effort to derive such a wrong out of words, whether in the Constitution of our country or in the Bible, which do not explicitly, unequivocally, and exclusively define this wrong! _Secondly_, in charging Onesimus with this epistle to Philemon, the Apostle recommends him as “not now a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved,” and he enjoins upon his correspondent the hospitality due to a freeman, saying expressly, “If thou count me, therefore, a partner, _receive him as myself_”: ay, Sir, not as slave, not even as servant, but as brother beloved, even as the Apostle himself. Thus, with apostolic pen, wrote Paul to his disciple, Philemon. In these words of gentleness, benediction, and equal rights, dropping with celestial, soul-awakening power, there can be no justification for a conspiracy, which, beginning with the treachery of Iscariot and the temptation of pieces of silver, seeks, by fraud, brutality, and violence, through officers of the law armed to the teeth, like pirates, and amidst soldiers who degrade their uniform, to hurl a fellow-man back into the lash-resounding den of American Slavery; and when any one thus perverts this beneficent example, allow me to say that he gives too much occasion to doubt his intelligence or his sincerity.

Certainly I am right in stripping from Slavery the apology of Christianity, which it has tenaciously hugged; and here I leave the first part of my subject, asserting, against every objection, the Necessity of our Enterprise.

II.

I am now brought, in the _second_ place, to the PRACTICABILITY of the Enterprise. And here the way is easy. In showing its necessity, I have already demonstrated its practicability; for the former includes the latter, as the greater includes the less. Whatever is necessary must be practicable. By a decree which is a proverb of tyranny, the Israelites were compelled to make bricks without straw; but it is not according to the ways of a benevolent Providence that man should be constrained to do what cannot be done. Besides, the Antislavery Enterprise is right; and the right is always practicable.

I know well the little faith of the world in the triumph of principles, and I readily imagine the despair with which our object is regarded; but not on this account am I disheartened. That exuberant writer, Sir Thomas Browne, breaks into ecstatic wish for some new difficulty in Christian belief, that his faith may have a new victory; and an eminent enthusiast went so far as to say, “I believe because it is impossible,”--_Credo quia impossibile_. No such exalted faith is now required. Here is no impossibility; nor is there any difficulty which will not yield to faithful, well-directed endeavor. If to any timid soul the Enterprise seems impossible because it is too beautiful, then do I say at once that it is too beautiful not to be possible.

Descending from these summits, let me show plainly the object it seeks to accomplish; and here you will see and confess its complete practicability. While discountenancing all prejudice of color and every establishment of caste, the Antislavery Enterprise--at least so far as I may speak for it--does not undertake to change human nature, or to force any individual into relations of life for which he is not morally, intellectually, and socially adapted; nor does it necessarily assume that a race, degraded for long generations under the iron heel of bondage, can be taught at once all the political duties of an American citizen. But, Sir, it does confidently assume, against all question, contradiction, or assault whatever, _that every man is entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and, with equal confidence, it asserts that every individual who wears the human form, whether black or white, should be recognized at once as man_. When this is done, I know not what other trials may be in wait for the unhappy African; but this I do know, that the Antislavery Enterprise will then have triumphed, and the institution of Slavery, _as defined by existing law_, will no longer shock mankind.

In this work, the first essential, practical requisite is, that the question shall be openly and frankly confronted. Do not put it aside. Do not blink it out of sight. Do not dodge it. Approach it. Study it. Ponder it. Deal with it. Let it rest in the illumination of speech, conversation, and the press. Let it fill the thoughts of the statesman and the prayers of the pulpit. When Slavery is thus regarded, its true character will be recognized, _as a hateful assemblage of unquestionable wrongs under sanction of existing law_, and good men will be moved to apply the remedy. Already even its zealots admit that its “abuses” should be removed. This is their word, not mine. Alas! alas! Sir, it is these very “abuses” that constitute its component parts, without which it would not exist,--even as the scourges in a bundle with the axe constituted the dread fasces of the Roman lictor. Take away these, and the whole embodied outrage disappears. Surely that central assumption--more deadly than axe itself--by which man is changed into a chattel, may be abandoned; and is not this practicable? The associate scourges by which that transcendent “abuse” is surrounded may, one by one, be subtracted. The “abuse” which substitutes concubinage for marriage, the “abuse” which annuls the parental relation, the “abuse” which closes the portals of knowledge, the “abuse” which tyrannically usurps all the labor of another, now upheld by positive law, may by positive law be abolished. To say that this is not practicable, in the nineteenth century, is a scandal upon mankind, and just in proportion as these “abuses” cease to have the sanction of law will the institution of Slavery cease to exist. The African, whatever may be then his condition, will no longer be the _slave_ over whose wrongs and sorrows the world throbs at times fiercely indignant, and at times painfully sad, while with outstretched arms he sends forth the piteous cry, “Am I not a man and a brother?”