Part 13

Surrounded by pernicious influences of all kinds, positive and negative, the first making him do that which he ought not to do, and the second making him leave undone that which he ought to have done,--through childhood, youth, and manhood, even unto age,--unable, while at home, to escape these influences, overshadowed constantly by the portentous Barbarism about him, the Slave-Master naturally adopts the bludgeon, the revolver, and the bowie-knife. Through these he governs his plantation, and secretly armed with these enters the world. These are his congenial companions. To wear these is his pride; to use them becomes a passion, almost a necessity. Nothing contributes to violence so much as wearing the instruments of violence, thus having them always at hand to obey a lawless instinct. A barbarous standard is established; the duel is not dishonorable; a contest peculiar to our Slave-Masters, known as a “street fight,” is not shameful; and modern imitators of Cain have a mark set upon them, not for reproach and condemnation, but for compliment and approval. In kindred spirit, the Count of Eisenburg, presenting to Erasmus a handsome dagger, called it “the pen with which he used to combat saucy fellows.”[81] How weak that dagger against the pen of Erasmus! I wish to keep within bounds; but unanswerable facts, accumulating in fearful quantities, attest that the social system so much vaunted by honorable Senators, which we are now asked to sanction and extend, takes its character from this spirit, and, with professions of Christianity on the lips, becomes Cain-like. And this is aggravated by the prevailing ignorance in the Slave States, where one in five of the adult white population of native birth is unable to read and write.

“The boldest they who least partake the light, As game-cocks in the dark are trained to fight.”

There are exceptions, which we all gladly recognize; but it is this spirit which predominates and gives the social law. Again we see the lordlings of France, as pictured by Camille Desmoulins, “ordinarily very feeble in arguments, since from the cradle they are accustomed to use their _will_ as right hand and their _reason_ as left hand.”[82] Violence ensues. And here mark an important difference. Elsewhere violence shows itself in _spite_ of law, whether social or statute; in the Slave States it is _because_ of law, both social and statute. Elsewhere it is pursued and condemned; in the Slave States it is adopted and honored. Elsewhere it is hunted as a crime; in the Slave States it takes its place among the honorable graces of society.

Let not these harsh statements stand on my authority. Listen to the testimony of two Governors of Slave States in messages to their respective Legislatures.

Said the Governor of Kentucky, in 1837:--

“We long to see the day when the law will assert its majesty, and stop the wanton destruction of life which almost _daily_ occurs within the jurisdiction of the Commonwealth. _Men slaughter each other with almost perfect impunity._ A species of Common Law has grown up in Kentucky, which, were it written down, would, in all civilized countries, cause it to be re-christened, in derision, _the Land of Blood_.”

Such was the official confession of a Slave-Master, Governor of Kentucky. And here is the official confession made the same year by the Slave-Master Governor of Alabama:--

“We hear of homicides in different parts of the State continually, and yet have few convictions, and still fewer executions. Why do we hear of _stabbings and shootings almost daily_ in some part or other of our State?”

A land of blood! Stabbings and shootings almost daily! Such is official language. It was natural that contemporary newspapers should repeat what found utterance in high places. Here is the confession of a newspaper in Mississippi:--

“The moral atmosphere in our State appears to be in a _deleterious and sanguinary condition_. Almost every exchange paper which reaches us contains _some inhuman and revolting case of murder or death by violence_.”[83]

Here is another confession, by a newspaper in New Orleans:--

“In view of the crimes which are daily committed, we are led to inquire whether it is owing to the inefficiency of our laws, or to the manner in which these laws are administered, _that this frightful deluge of human blood flows through our streets and our places of public resort_.”[84]

And here is testimony of a different character:--

“As I left my native State on account of Slavery, and deserted the home of my fathers to escape the sound of the lash and the shrieks of tortured victims, I would gladly bury in oblivion the recollection of those scenes with which I have been familiar; but this may not, cannot be.”[85]

These are the words of a Southern lady, daughter of the accomplished Judge Grimké, of South Carolina.

A catalogue of affrays between politicians, commonly known as “street fights,”--I use the phrase furnished by the land of Slavery,--would show that these authorities are not mistaken. That famous Dutch picture, admired particularly from successful engraving, and called _The Knife-Fighters_,[86] presents a scene less revolting than one of these. Two or more men, armed to the teeth, meet in the streets, at a court-house, or a tavern, shoot at each other with revolvers, then gash each other with knives, close, and roll upon the ground, covered with dirt and blood, struggling and stabbing, till death, prostration, or surrender puts an end to the conflict. Each instance tells its shameful story, and cries out against the social system tolerating such Barbarism. A catalogue of duels would testify again to the reckless disregard of life where Slavery exists, while it exhibited Violence flaunting in the garb of Honor, and prating of a barbarous code disowned equally by reason and religion. But you have already surfeited with horrors, and I hasten on.

Ancient Civilization did not condemn assassination. Statues were raised to Harmodius and Aristogeiton, who slew Hipparchus. Brutus and Cassius were glorified. Modern Civilization judges otherwise; but Slavery, not content with the Duel, which was unknown to Antiquity, rejoices in assassinations also,--rejoices in both.

Pardon me, if I stop for one moment to expose and denounce the Duel. I do it only because it belongs to the brood of Slavery. Long ago an enlightened Civilization rejected this relic of Barbarism, and never was one part of the argument against it put more sententiously than by Franklin. “A duel decides nothing,” said this patriot philosopher; and the person appealing to it “makes himself judge in his own cause, condemns the offender without a jury, and undertakes himself to be the executioner.”[87] To these emphatic words I add two brief propositions, which, if practically adopted, make the Duel impossible: first, that the acknowledgment of wrong, with apology or explanation, can never be otherwise than honorable; and, secondly, that, in the absence of such acknowledgment, no wrong can be repaired by gladiatorial contest, where brute force, or skill, or chance must decide the day. Iron and adamant are not stronger than these arguments; nor can any one attempt an answer without exposing his feebleness. And yet Slave-Masters, disregarding its irrational character, insensible to its folly, heedless of its impiety, and unconscious of its Barbarism, openly adopt the Duel as regulator of manners and conduct. Two voices from South Carolina have been raised against it, and I mention them with gladness as testimony from that land of Slavery. The first was Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, who, in the early days of the Republic, after asking if there were “no way of abolishing throughout the Union this absurd and _barbarous_ custom,” invoked the clergy of his State, “as a particular favor, at some convenient early day, to preach a sermon on the sin and folly of duelling.”[88] The other was Mr. Rhett, who, on this floor, openly declared, as his reason for declining the Duel, “that he feared God more than man.”[89] Generous words, for which many errors will be pardoned. But these voices condemn the social system of which the Duel is a natural product.

Looking at the broad surface of society where Slavery exists, we find its spirit actively manifest against all freedom of speech and the press, especially with regard to this wrong. Nobody in the Slave States can speak or print plainly about Slavery, except at peril of life or liberty; and a curious instance shows how this same spirit is carried by our Slave-Masters into foreign lands. As early as 1789, and in Paris, a poor play,[90] where Slavery was painted truthfully, excited the hostility of what Baron Grimm, who reports the incident, calls “an American cabal,” so that its failure was attributed by some to this influence, being the early prototype of that so strong among us. St. Paul could call upon the people of Athens to give up the worship of unknown gods; he could live in his own hired house at Rome, and preach Christianity in this Heathen metropolis; but no man can be heard against Slavery in Charleston or Mobile. We condemn the Inquisition, which subjects all within its influence to censorship and secret judgment; but this tyranny is repeated in American Slave-Masters. Truths as simple as the great discovery of Galileo are openly denied, and all who declare them are driven to recant. We condemn the “Index Expurgatorius” of the Roman Church; but American Slave-Masters have an Index where are inscribed all the generous books of the age. One book, the marvel of recent literature, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” is treated thus by the Church as by Slave-Masters, being honored by the same suppression at the Vatican as at Charleston.

Not to dwell on these instances, there is one which has a most instructive ridiculousness. A religious discourse of the late Dr. Channing on West India Emancipation--the last effort of his beautiful life--was offered for sale by a book agent at Charleston. A prosecution by the South Carolina Association ensued, and the agent was held to bail in the sum of one thousand dollars. Shortly afterward, the same agent received for sale a work by Dickens, “American Notes,” freshly published; but, determined not to expose himself again to the tyrannical Inquisition, he gave notice through the newspapers that the book would “be submitted to highly intelligent members of the South Carolina Association for _inspection_, and _if_ the sale is approved by them, it will be for sale,--if not, not.”[91]

Listen also to another recent instance, as recounted in the “Montgomery Mail,” a newspaper of Alabama.

“Last Saturday we devoted to the flames a large number of copies of Spurgeon’s Sermons, and the pile was graced at the top with a copy of ‘Graves’s Great Iron Wheel,’ which a Baptist friend presented for the purpose. We trust that the works of the greasy cockney vociferator may receive the same treatment throughout the South. And if the Pharisaical author should ever show himself in these parts, we trust that a stout cord may speedily find its way around his eloquent throat. He has proved himself a dirty, low-bred slanderer, and ought to be treated accordingly.”

Very recently we had the opportunity of reading in the journals, that the trustees of a college in Alabama resolved against Dr. Wayland’s admirable work on Moral Science, as containing “Abolition doctrine of the deepest dye,” and proceeded to denounce “the said book, and forbid its further use in the Institute.”

The speeches of Wilberforce in the British Parliament, and especially those magnificent efforts of Brougham, where he exposed “the wild and guilty fantasy that man can hold property in man,” were insanely denounced by the British planters in the West Indies; but our Slave-Masters go further. Speeches delivered in the Senate are stopped at the Post-Office; booksellers receiving them have been mobbed; and on at least one occasion the speeches were solemnly proceeded against by a Grand Jury.[92]

All this is natural, for tyranny is condemned to be consistent with itself. Proclaim Slavery a permanent institution, instead of a temporary Barbarism, soon to pass away, and then, by the unhesitating logic of self-preservation, all things must yield to its support. The safety of Slavery becomes the supreme law. And since Slavery is endangered by Liberty in any form, therefore all Liberty must be restrained. Such is the philosophy of this seeming paradox in a Republic. And our Slave-Masters show themselves apt. Violence and brutality are their ready instruments, quickened always by the wakefulness of suspicion, and perhaps often by the restlessness of uneasy conscience. The Lion’s Mouth of Venice is open everywhere in the Slave States; nor are wanting the gloomy cells and the Bridge of Sighs.

This spirit has recently shown itself with such intensity and activity as to constitute what is properly termed a Reign of Terror. Northern men, unless recognized as delegates to a Democratic Convention, are exposed in their travels, whether for business or health. They are watched and dogged, as in a land of Despotism,--are treated with the meanness of disgusting tyranny,--and live in peril always of personal indignity, often of life and limb. Complaint is sometimes made of wrongs to American citizens in Mexico; but the last year witnessed outrages on American citizens perpetrated in the Slave States exceeding those in Mexico. Here, again, I have no time for details, already presented in other quarters. Instances are from all conditions of life and in various quarters. In Missouri, a Methodist clergyman, suspected of being an Abolitionist, was taken to prison, amidst threats of tar and feathers. In Arkansas, a schoolmaster was driven from the State. In Kentucky, a plain citizen from Indiana, on a visit to his friends, was threatened with death by the rope. In Alabama, a simple person from Connecticut, peddling books, was thrust into prison, amidst cries of “Shoot him! Hang him!” In Virginia, a Shaker, from New York, peddling garden-seeds, was forcibly expelled from the State. In Georgia, a merchant’s clerk, Irish by birth, who simply asked the settlement of a just debt, was cast into prison, robbed of his pocket-book containing nearly one hundred dollars, and barely escaped with life. In South Carolina, a stone-cutter, also an Irishman, was stripped naked, and then, amidst cries of “Brand him!” “Burn him!” “Spike him to death!” scourged so that blood came at every stroke, while tar was poured upon the lacerated flesh. These atrocities, calculated, according to the words of a great poet, to “make a holiday in Hell,” were all ordained by Vigilance Committees, or that swiftest magistrate, Judge Lynch, inspired by the demon of Slavery.

“He let them loose, and cried, Halloo! How shall we yield him honor due?”[93]

In perfect shamelessness, and as if to blazon this fiendish spirit, we have this winter had an article in a leading newspaper of Virginia, offering twenty-five dollars each for the heads of citizens, mostly Members of Congress, known to be against Slavery, with fifty thousand dollars for the head of William H. Seward. In still another paper of Virginia we find a proposition to raise ten thousand dollars for the kidnapping, and delivery at Richmond, of a venerable citizen, Joshua R. Giddings, “or five thousand dollars for the production of his head.” These are fresh instances, but not alone. At a meeting of Slave-Masters in Georgia, in 1836, the Governor was recommended to issue a proclamation offering five thousand dollars as a reward for the apprehension of _either_ of ten persons named in the resolution, citizens of New York and Massachusetts, and one a subject of Great Britain,--neither of whom was it pretended had ever set foot on the soil of Georgia. The Milledgeville “Federal Union,” a newspaper of Georgia, in 1836, contained an offer of ten thousand dollars for kidnapping a clergyman residing in the city of New York. A Committee of Vigilance in Louisiana, in 1835, offered, in the “Louisiana Journal,” fifty thousand dollars to any person who would deliver into their hands Arthur Tappan, a liberty-loving merchant of New York; and during the same year a public meeting in Alabama, with a person entitled “Honorable” in the chair, offered a similar reward of fifty thousand dollars for the apprehension of the same Arthur Tappan, and of La Roy Sunderland, a clergyman of the Methodist Church in New York.

These manifestations are not without example in the history of the Antislavery cause elsewhere. From the beginning, Slave-Masters have encountered argument by brutality and violence. St. Jerome had before him their type, when he described certain persons “whose words are in their fists and syllogisms in their heels.”[94] If we go back to the earliest of Abolitionists, the wonderful Portuguese preacher, Vieyra, we find that his matchless eloquence and unquestioned piety did not save him from indignity. The good man was seized and imprisoned, while one of the principal Slave-Masters asked him, in mockery, “where were all his learning and all his genius now, if they could not deliver him in this extremity?”[95] He was of the Catholic Church. But the spirit of Slavery is the same in all churches. A renowned Quaker minister of the last century, Thomas Chalkley, while on a visit at Barbadoes, having simply recommended charity to the slaves, without presuming to breathe a word against Slavery itself, was first met by disturbance in the meeting, and afterward, on the highway, in open day, was shot at by one of the exasperated planters, with a fowling-piece “loaded with small shot, ten of which made marks, and several drew blood.”[96] In England, while the Slave-Trade was under discussion, the same spirit raged. Wilberforce, who represented the cause of Abolition in Parliament, was threatened with personal violence; Clarkson, who represented the same cause before the people, was assaulted by the infuriate Slave-Traders, and narrowly escaped being hustled into the dock; and Roscoe, the accomplished historian, on return to Liverpool from his seat in Parliament, where he had signalized himself as an opponent of the Slave-Trade, was met at the entrance of the town by a savage mob, composed of persons interested in the traffic, armed with _knives and bludgeons_, the distinctive arguments and companions of the partisans of Slavery.

Even in the Free States, these same partisans from the beginning acted under the inspiration of violence. The demon of Slavery entered into them, and through its influence they have behaved like Slave-Masters. Public meetings for the discussion of Slavery have been interrupted; public halls, dedicated to its discussion, have been destroyed or burned to the ground. In all our populous cities the great rights of speech and of the press have been assailed precisely as in the Slave States. In Boston, an early and most devoted Abolitionist was dragged through the streets with a halter about his neck; and in Illinois, another, while defending his press, was ferociously murdered. The former yet lives to speak for himself, while the latter lives in his eloquent brother, a Representative from Illinois in the other House.[97] Thus does Slavery show its natural character even at a distance.

Nor in the Slave States is this spirit confined to outbreaks of mere lawlessness. Too strong for restraint, it finds no limitations except in its own barbarous will. The Government becomes its tool, and in _official acts_ does its bidding. Here again the instances are numerous. I might dwell on the degradation of the Post-Office, when its official head consented that for the sake of Slavery the mails themselves should be rifled. I might dwell also on the cruel persecution of free persons of color, who, in the Slave States generally, and even here in the District of Columbia, are not allowed to testify where a white man is in question, and now in several States are menaced by legislative act with the alternative of expulsion from their homes or of reduction to Slavery. But I pass to two illustrative transactions, which a son of Massachusetts can never forget.

1. The first relates to a citizen of purest life and perfect integrity, whose name is destined to fill a conspicuous place in the history of Freedom, William Lloyd Garrison. Born in Massachusetts, bred to the same profession with Benjamin Franklin, and, like his great predecessor, becoming an editor, he saw with instinctive clearness the wrong of Slavery, and, at a period when the ardors of the Missouri Question had given way to indifference throughout the North, he stepped forward to denounce it. The jail at Baltimore, where he then resided, was the earliest reward. Afterward, January 1st, 1831, he published the first number of “The Liberator,” inscribing for his motto an utterance of Christian philanthropy, “Our country is the world, our countrymen are mankind,” and declaring, in the face of surrounding apathy: “I am in earnest,--I will not equivocate,--I will not excuse,--I will not retreat a single inch,--AND I WILL BE HEARD.” In this sublime spirit he commenced his labors for the Slave, proposing no intervention by Congress in the States, and on well-considered principle avoiding all appeals to the bond-men themselves. Such was his simple and thoroughly constitutional position, when, before the expiration of the first year, the Legislature of Georgia, by solemn act, a copy of which I have before me, “approved” by Wilson Lumpkin, Governor, appropriated five thousand dollars “to be paid to any person or persons who shall arrest, bring to trial, and prosecute to conviction under the laws of this State, the editor or publisher of a certain paper called _The Liberator_, published in the town of Boston and State of Massachusetts.”[98] This infamous statute, touching a citizen absolutely beyond the jurisdiction of Georgia and in no way amenable to its laws, constituted a plain bribe to the gangs of kidnappers engendered by Slavery. With this barefaced defiance of justice and decency Slave-Masters inaugurated the system of violence by which they have sought to crush every voice raised against Slavery.

* * * * *

2. Here is another illustration, of a different character. Free persons of color, citizens of Massachusetts, and, according to the institutions of this Commonwealth, entitled to equal privileges with other citizens, being in service as mariners, and touching at the port of Charleston, in South Carolina, have been seized, and, with no allegation against them, except of entering this port in the discharge of their rightful business, have been cast into prison, and there detained during the stay of the vessel. This is by virtue of a statute of South Carolina, passed in 1822, which further declares, that, in the failure of the captain to pay the expenses, these freemen “shall be deemed and taken as absolute slaves,” one moiety of the proceeds of their sale to belong to the sheriff. Against all remonstrance,--against the official opinion of Mr. Wirt, as Attorney-General of the United States, declaring it unconstitutional,--against the solemn judgment of Mr. Justice Johnson, of the Supreme Court of the United States, himself a Slave-Master and citizen of South Carolina, also pronouncing it unconstitutional,[99]--this statute, which is an obvious injury to Northern ship-owners, as it is an outrage to the mariners whom it seizes, has been upheld to this day by South Carolina.