Part 10

But this fivefold combination becomes yet more hateful when its _single motive_ is considered; and here Slavery paints itself finally. The Senator from Mississippi [Mr. JEFFERSON DAVIS] says that it is “but a form of civil government for those who by their nature are not fit to govern themselves.” The Senator is mistaken. It is an outrage, where five different pretensions all concur in one single object, looking only to the profit of the master, and constituting its ever-present motive power, which is simply _to compel the labor of fellow-men without wages_. If I pronounce this object not only barbarous, but brutal, I follow the judgment of Luther’s Bible, in the book “Jesus Sirach,” known in our translation as Ecclesiasticus, where it is said: “He that giveth not his wages to the laborer, _he is a bloodhound_.”[45]

Slavery is often exposed as degrading Humanity. On this fruitful theme nobody has expressed himself with the force and beautiful eloquence of our own Channing. His generous soul glowed with indignation at the thought of man, supremest creature of earth, and first of God’s works, despoiled of manhood and changed to a thing. But earlier than Channing was Jean Jacques Rousseau, who, with similar eloquence and the same glowing indignation, vindicated Humanity. How grandly he insists that nobody can consent to be a slave, or can be born a slave! Believing Liberty the most noble of human attributes, this wonderful writer will not stop to consider if descent to the condition of beasts be not to degrade human nature, if renunciation of the most precious of all God’s gifts be not to offend the Author of our being; but he demands only by what right those who degrade themselves to this depth can subject their posterity to this same ignominy, renouncing for them goods which do not depend upon any ancestors, and without which life itself is to all worthy of it a burden; and he justly concludes, that, as, to establish Slavery, it is necessary to violate Nature, so, to perpetuate this claim, it is necessary to change Nature. His final judgment, being the practical conclusion of this outburst, holds up jurisconsults, gravely pronouncing that the child of a slave is born a slave, as deciding, in other terms, that a man is not born a man,[46]--thus exposing the peculiar absurdity of that pretension by which Slavery is transmitted from the mother to her offspring, as expressed in the Latin scrap on which the Senator from Virginia [Mr. MASON] relies: _Partus sequitur ventrem_.

If the offence of Slavery were less extended, if it were confined to some narrow region, if it had less of grandeur in its proportions, if its victims were counted by tens and hundreds instead of millions, the five-headed enormity would find little indulgence; all would rise against it, while Religion and Civilization would lavish choicest efforts in the general warfare. But what is wrong when done to one man cannot be right when done to many. If it is wrong thus to degrade a single soul, if it is wrong thus to degrade you, Mr. President, it cannot be right to degrade a whole race. And yet this is denied by the barbarous logic of Slavery, which, taking advantage of its own wrong, claims immunity because its usurpation has assumed a front of audacity that cannot be safely attacked. Unhappily, there is Barbarism elsewhere in the world; but American Slavery, as defined by existing law, stands forth as the greatest organized Barbarism on which the sun now looks. It is without a single peer. Its author, after making it, broke the die.

If curiosity carries us to the origin of this law,--and here I approach a topic often considered in this Chamber,--we shall again confess its Barbarism. It is not derived from the Common Law, that fountain of Liberty; for this law, while unhappily recognizing a system of servitude known as villeinage, secured to the bondman privileges unknown to the American slave,--guarded his person against mayhem,--protected his wife against rape,--gave to his marriage equal validity with the marriage of his master,--and surrounded his offspring with generous presumptions of Freedom, unlike that rule of yours by which the servitude of the mother is necessarily stamped upon the child. It is not derived from the Roman Law, that fountain of Tyranny, for two reasons: first, because this law, in its better days, when its early rigors were spent, like the Common Law itself, secured to the bondman privileges unknown to the American slave,--in certain cases of cruelty rescued him from his master, prevented separation of parents and children, also of brothers and sisters, and even protected him in the marriage relation; and, secondly, because the Thirteen Colonies were not derived from any of those countries which recognized the Roman Law, while this law, even before the discovery of this continent, had lost all living efficacy. It is not derived from the Mohammedan Law; for, under the mild injunctions of the Koran, a benignant servitude, unlike yours, has prevailed,--where the lash is not allowed to lacerate the back of a female,--where no knife or branding-iron is employed upon any human being, to mark him as the property of his fellow-man,--where the master is expressly enjoined to favor the desires of his slave for emancipation,--and where the blood of the master, mingling with that of his bondwoman, takes from her the transferable character of chattel, and confers complete freedom upon their offspring. It is not derived from the Spanish Law; for this law contains humane elements unknown to your system, borrowed, perhaps, from Mohammedan Moors who so long occupied Spain; and, besides, our Thirteen Colonies had no umbilical connection with Spain. Nor is it derived from English statutes or American statutes; for we have the positive and repeated averment of the Senator from Virginia [Mr. MASON], and also of other Senators, that in not a single State of the Union can any such statutes establishing Slavery be found. From none of these does it come.

No, Sir, not from any land of Civilization is this Barbarism derived. It comes from Africa, ancient nurse of monsters,--from Guinea, Dahomey, and Congo. There is its origin and fountain. This benighted region, we are told by Chief-Justice Marshall in a memorable judgment,[47] still asserts a right, discarded by Christendom, to enslave captives taken in war; and this African Barbarism is the beginning of American Slavery. The Supreme Court of Georgia, a Slave State, has not shrunk from this conclusion. “Licensed to hold slave property,” says the Court, “the Georgia planter held the slave as a chattel, either directly from the slave-trader or from those who held under him, and he from the slave-captor in Africa. The property of the planter in the slave became thus the property of the original captor.”[48] It is natural that a right thus derived in defiance of Christendom, and openly founded on the most vulgar Paganism, should be exercised without mitigating influence from Christianity,--that the master’s authority over the person of his slave, over his conjugal relations, over his parental relations, over the employment of his time, over all his acquisitions, should be recognized, while no generous presumption inclines to Freedom, and the womb of the bondwoman can deliver only a slave.

From its home in Africa, where it is sustained by immemorial usage, this Barbarism, thus derived and thus developed, traversed the ocean to American soil. It entered on board that fatal slave-ship,

“Built in the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark,”

which in 1620 landed its cruel cargo at Jamestown, in Virginia; and it has boldly taken its place in every succeeding slave-ship, from that early day till now,--helping to pack the human freight, regardless of human agony,--surviving the torments of the middle passage,--surviving its countless victims plunged beneath the waves; and it has left the slave-ship only to travel inseparable from the slave in his various doom, sanctioning by its barbarous code every outrage, whether of mayhem or robbery, lash or lust, and fastening itself upon his offspring to the remotest generation. Thus are barbarous prerogatives of barbarous half-naked African chiefs perpetuated in American Slave-Masters, while the Senator from Virginia [Mr. MASON], perhaps unconscious of their origin, perhaps desirous to secure for them the appearance of a less barbarous pedigree, tricks them out with a phrase of the Roman Law, discarded by the Common Law, which simply renders into ancient Latin an existing rule of African Barbarism, recognized as an existing rule of American Slavery.

Such is the plain juridical origin of the American slave code, now vaunted as a badge of Civilization. But all law, whatever its juridical origin, whether Christian or Mohammedan, Roman or African, may be traced to other and ampler influences in Nature, sometimes of Right and sometimes of Wrong. Surely the law which stamped the slave-trade as piracy punishable with death had a different inspiration from that other law which secured immunity for the slave-trade throughout an immense territory, and invested its supporters with political power. As there is a nobler law above, so there is a meaner law below, and each is felt in human affairs.

* * * * *

Thus far we have seen Slavery only in pretended law, and in the origin of that law. Here I might stop, without proceeding in the argument; for on the letter of the law alone must Slavery be condemned. But the tree is known by its fruits, which I shall now exhibit: and this brings me to the second stage of the argument.

* * * * *

(2.) In considering _the practical results of Slavery_, the materials are so obvious and diversified that my chief care will be to abridge and reject: and here I put the Slave States and Free States face to face, showing at each point the blasting influence of Slavery.

Before proceeding with these details, I would for one moment expose that degradation of free labor, which is one of the general results. Where there are slaves, whose office is work, it is held disreputable for a white man to soil his skin or harden his hands with honest toil. The Slave-Master of course declines work, and his pernicious example infects all others. With impious resolve, they would reverse the Almighty decree appointing labor as the duty of man, and declaring that in the sweat of his face shall he eat his bread. The Slave-Master says, “No! this is true of the slave, of the black man, but not of the white man: he shall not eat his bread in the sweat of his face.” Thus is the brand of degradation stamped upon that daily toil which contributes so much to a true Civilization. It is a constant boast in the Slave States, that white men there will not perform work performed in the Free States. Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Waddy Thompson made this boast. Let it be borne in mind, then, that, where Slavery prevails, there is not only despair for the black man, but inequality and ignominy for the white laborer. By necessary consequence, the latter, whether emigrating from our Free States or fleeing from oppression and wretchedness in his European home, avoids a region disabled by such a social law. Hence a twofold injustice: practically he is excluded from the land, while the land itself becomes a prey to that paralysis which is caused by a violation of the laws of God. And now for the testimony.

The States where this Barbarism exists excel the Free States in all natural advantages. Their territory is more extensive, stretching over 851,448 square miles, while the Free States, including California, embrace only 612,597 square miles. Here is a difference of more than 238,000 square miles in favor of the Slave States, showing that Freedom starts in this great rivalry with a field more than a quarter less than that of Slavery. In happiness of climate, adapted to productions of special value,--in exhaustless motive power distributed throughout its space,--in natural highways, by more than fifty navigable rivers, never closed by the rigors of winter,--and in a stretch of coast, along Ocean and Gulf, indented by hospitable harbors,--the whole presenting incomparable advantages for that true Civilization, where agriculture, manufactures, and commerce, both domestic and foreign, blend,--in all these respects the Slave States excel the Free States, whose climate is often churlish, whose motive power is less various, whose navigable rivers are fewer and often sealed by ice, and whose coast, while less in extent and with fewer harbors, is often perilous from storm and cold.

But Slavery plays the part of a Harpy, and defiles the choicest banquet. See what it does with this territory, thus spacious and fair.

An important indication of prosperity is in the growth of _population_. In this respect the two regions started equal. In 1790, at the first census under the Constitution, the population of the present Slave States was 1,961,372, of the present Free States 1,968,455, showing a difference of only 7,083 in favor of the Free States. This difference, at first merely nominal, has been constantly increasing since, showing itself more strongly in each decennial census, until, in 1850, the population of the Slave States, swollen by the annexation of three foreign Territories, Louisiana, Florida, and Texas, was only 9,612,969, while that of the Free States, without such large annexations, reached 13,434,922, showing a difference of 3,821,953 in favor of Freedom. But this difference becomes still more remarkable, if we confine our inquiries to the white population, which at this period was only 6,184,477 in the Slave States, while it was 13,238,670 in the Free States, showing a difference of 7,054,193, in favor of Freedom, and showing also that the white population of the Free States had not only doubled, but, while occupying a smaller territory, commenced to triple, that of the Slave States. The comparative sparseness of the two populations furnishes another illustration. In the Slave States the average number of inhabitants to a square mile was 11.29, while in the Free States it was 21.93, or almost two to one in favor of Freedom.

These results are general; but if we take any particular Slave State, and compare it with a Free State, we shall find the same marked evidence for Freedom. Take Virginia, with a territory of 61,352 miles, and New York, with a territory of 47,000, or over 14,000 square miles less than her sister State. New York has one seaport, Virginia some three or four; New York has one noble river, Virginia has several; New York for 400 miles runs along the frozen line of Canada, Virginia basks in a climate of constant felicity. But Freedom is better than climate, river, or seaport. In 1790 the population of Virginia was 748,308, and in 1850 it was 1,421,661. In 1790 the population of New York was 340,120, and in 1850 it was 3,097,394. That of Virginia had not doubled in sixty years, while that of New York had multiplied more than nine-fold. A similar comparison may be made between Kentucky, with 37,680 square miles, admitted into the Union as long ago as 1792, and Ohio, with 39,964 square miles, admitted into the Union in 1802. In 1850, the Slave State had a population of only 982,405, while Ohio had a population of 1,980,329, showing a difference of nearly a million in favor of Freedom.

As in population, so also in _the value of property, real and personal_, do the Free States excel the Slave States. According to the census of 1850, the value of property in the Free States was $4,102,162,098, while in the Slave States it was $2,936,090,737; or, if we deduct the asserted property in human flesh, only $1,655,945,137,--showing an enormous difference of billions in favor of Freedom. In the Free States the valuation per acre was $10.46, in the Slave States only $3.04. This disproportion was still greater in 1855, when, according to the Report of the Secretary of the Treasury, the valuation of the Free States was $5,770,197,679, or $14.71 per acre; and of the Slave States, $3,977,354,046, or, if we deduct the asserted property in human flesh, $2,505,186,446, or $4.59 per acre. Thus in five years from 1850 the valuation of property in the Free States received an increase of more than the whole accumulated valuation of the Slave States in 1850.

Looking at details, we find the same disproportions. Arkansas and Michigan, nearly equal in territory, were organized as States by simultaneous Acts of Congress; and yet in 1855 the whole valuation of Arkansas, including its asserted property in human flesh, was only $64,240,726, while that of Michigan, without a single slave, was $116,593,580. The whole accumulated valuation of all the Slave States, deducting the asserted property in human flesh, in 1850, was only $1,655,945,137; but the valuation of New York alone, in 1855, reached the nearly equal sum of $1,401,285,279. The valuation of Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and Texas, all together, in 1850, deducting human flesh, was $559,224,920, or simply $1.96 per acre,--being less than that of Massachusetts alone, which was $573,342,286, or $114.85 per acre.

The Slave States boast of _agriculture_; but here again, notwithstanding superior natural advantages, they must yield to the Free States at every point,--in the number of farms and plantations, in the number of acres improved, in the cash value of farms, in the average value per acre, and in the value of farming implements and machinery. Here is a short table.

Free States. Slave States.

Number of farms, 873,608 569,201 Acres of improved land, 57,720,494 54,970,327 Cash value of farms, $2,147,218,478 $1,117,649,649 Average value per acre, $19.17 $6.18 Value of farming implements $85,840,141 $65,345,625

Such is the mighty contrast. But it does not stop here. Careful tables place the agricultural products of the Free States, for the year ending June, 1850, at $888,634,334, while those of the Slave States were $631,277,417; the product per acre in the Free States at $7.94, and the product per acre in the Slave States at $3.49; the average product of each agriculturist in the Free States at $342, and in the Slave States at $171. Thus the Free States, with a smaller population engaged in agriculture than the Slave States, and with smaller territory, show an annual sum total of agricultural products surpassing those of the Slave States by two hundred and twenty-seven millions of dollars, while twice as much is produced by each agriculturist, and more than twice as much is produced on an acre. The monopoly of cotton, rice, and cane-sugar, with a climate granting two and sometimes three crops in the year, is thus impotent in competition with Freedom.

In _manufactures, mining, and the mechanic arts_ the failure of the Slave States is greater still. It appears at all points,--in the capital employed, in the value of the raw material, in the annual wages, and in the annual product. A short table will show the contrast.

Free States. Slave States.

Capital, $430,240,051 $95,029,877 Value of raw material, 465,844,092 86,190,639 Annual wages, 195,436,453 33,247,560 Annual product, 842,586,058 165,423,027

This might be illustrated by details with regard to different manufactures,--as shoes, cotton, woollens, pig iron, wrought iron, and iron castings,--all showing the contrast. It might also be illustrated by comparison between different States,--showing, for instance, that the manufactures of Massachusetts, during the last year, exceeded those of all the Slave States combined.

In _commerce_ the failure of the Slave States is on a yet larger scale. Under this head the census does not supply proper statistics, and we are left to approximations from other sources; but these are enough for our purpose. It appears, that, of products which enter into commerce, the Free States had an amount valued at $1,377,199,968, the Slave States an amount valued only at $410,754,992; that, of persons engaged in trade, the Free States had 136,856, and the Slave States 52,622; and that, of tonnage employed, the Free States had 2,791,096 tons, and the Slave States only 726,284. This was in 1850. But in 1855 the disproportion was still greater, the Free States having 4,320,768 tons, and the Slave States 855,510 tons, being a difference of five to one,--and the tonnage of Massachusetts alone being 979,210 tons, an amount larger than that of all the Slave States together. The tonnage built during this year by the Free States was 528,844 tons, by the Slave States 52,938 tons. Maine alone built 215,905 tons, or more than four times the whole built in the Slave States.

The foreign commerce of the Free States, in 1855, as indicated by exports and imports, was $404,365,503; of the Slave States, $132,062,196. The exports of the Free States were $167,520,693; of the Slave States, including the vaunted cotton crop, $107,475,668. The imports of the Free States were $236,844,810; of the Slave States, $24,586,528. The foreign commerce of New York alone was more than twice as large as that of all the Slave States; her imports were larger, and her exports were larger also. Add to this evidence of figures the testimony of a Virginian, Mr. Loudon, in a letter written just before the sitting of a Southern Commercial Convention. Thus he complains and testifies:--

“There are not half a dozen vessels engaged in our own trade that are owned in Virginia; and I have been unable to find a vessel at Liverpool loading for Virginia within three years, during the height of our busy season.”

_Railroads and canals_ are the avenues of commerce; and here again the Free States excel. Of railroads in operation in 1854, there were 13,105 miles in the Free States, and 4,212 in the Slave States. Of canals there were 3,682 miles in the Free States, and 1,116 in the Slave States.

The _Post-Office_, which is the agent not only of commerce, but of civilization, joins in the uniform testimony. According to the tables for 1859, the postage collected in the Free States was $5,581,749, and the expense of carrying the mails $6,945,545, leaving a deficit of $1,363,796. In the Slave States the amount collected was only $1,936,167, and the expense of carrying the mails $5,947,076, leaving the enormous deficit of $4,010,909,--the difference between the two deficits being $2,647,113. The Slave States did not pay one third of the expense in transporting their own mails; and not a single Slave State paid for transporting its own mails, not even the small State of Delaware. Massachusetts, besides paying for hers, had a surplus larger by one half than the whole amount collected in South Carolina.

According to the census of 1850, the value of _churches_ in the Free States was $66,177,586; in the Slave States, $20,683,265.

The _voluntary charity_ contributed in 1855, for certain leading purposes of Christian benevolence, was, in the Free States, $955,511; for the same purposes in the Slave States, $193,885. For the Bible cause the Free States contributed $321,365; the Slave States, $67,226. For the Missionary cause the former contributed $502,174; and the latter, $101,934. For the Tract Society the former contributed $131,972; and the latter, $24,725. The amount contributed for Missions by Massachusetts was greater than that contributed by all the Slave States, and more than eight times that contributed by South Carolina.