master is tempted to inflict cruelties, not merely to wreak his own vengeance upon him, and to make the slave more circumspect in future, but to sustain his authority over the other slaves, to restrain them from like practices, and to preserve his own property.
A multitude of facts, illustrating the position that slaveholders treat their slaves _worse_ than they do their cattle, will occur to all who are familiar with slavery. When cattle break through their owners’ inclosures and escape, if found, they are driven back and fastened in again; and even slaveholders would execrate as a wretch, the man who should tie them up, and bruise and lacerate them for straying away; but when _slaves_ that have escaped are caught, they are flogged with the most terrible severity. When herds of cattle are driven to market, they are suffered to go in the easiest way, each by himself; but when slaves are driven to market, they are fastened together with handcuffs, galled by iron collars and chains, and thus forced to travel on foot hundreds of miles, sleeping at night in their chains. Sheep, and sometimes horned cattle are marked with their owners’ initials–but this is generally done with paint, and of course produces no pain. Slaves, too, are often marked with their owners’ initials, but the letters are stamped into their flesh with a hot iron. Cattle are suffered to graze their pastures without stint; but the slaves are restrained in their food to a fixed allowance. The slaveholders’ horses are notoriously far better fed, more moderately worked, have fewer hours of labor, and longer intervals of rest than their slaves; and their valuable horses are far more comfortably housed and lodged, and their stables more effectually defended from the weather, than the slaves’ huts. We have here merely _begun_ a comparison, which the reader can easily carry out at length, from the materials furnished in this work.
We will, however, subjoin a few testimonies of slaveholders, and others who have resided in slave states, expressly asserting that slaves are treated _worse than brutes_.
The late Dr. GEORGE BUCHANAN, of Baltimore, Maryland, a member of the American Philosophical Society, in an oration delivered in Baltimore, July 4, 1791, page 10, says:
“The Africans whom you despise, whom you _more inhumanly treat than brutes_, are equally capable of improvement with yourselves.”
The Rev. GEORGE WHITEFIELD, in his celebrated letter to the slaveholders of Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia, written one hundred years ago, (See Benezet’s Caution to Great Britain and her Colonies, page 13), says:
“Sure I am, it is sinful to use them as bad, nay worse than if they were brutes; and whatever particular _exceptions_ there may be, (as I would charitably hope there are _some_) I fear the _generality_ of you that own negroes, _are liable to such a charge_.”
Mr. RICE, of Kentucky in his speech in the Convention that formed the Constitution of that state, in 1790, says:
“He [the slave] is a rational creature, reduced by the power of legislation to the _state of a brute_, and thereby deprived of every privilege of humanity…. The brute may steal or rob, to supply his hunger; but the slave, though in the most starving condition, _dare not do either, on penalty of death, or some severe punishment_.”
Rev. HORACE MOULTON, a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church, in Marlborough, Mass. who lived some years in Georgia, says:
“The southern horses and dogs have enough to eat, and good care is taken of them; but southern negroes–who can describe their misery and their wretchedness, their nakedness and their cruel scourgings! None but God. Should we _whip our horses_ as they whip their slaves, even for small offences, we should expose ourselves to the penalty of the law.”
Rev. PHINEAS SMITH, Centerville, Allegany county, New York, who has resided four years in the midst of southern slavery–
“Avarice and cruelty are twin sisters; and I do not hesitate to declare before the world, as my deliberate opinion, that there is _less compassion_ for working slaves at the south, than for working oxen at the north.”
STEVEN SEWALL, Esq. Winthrop, Maine, a member of the Congregational Church, and late agent of the Winthrop Manufacturing Company, who resided five years in Alabama, says–
“I do not think that brutes, not even horses, are treated with _so much cruelty_ as American slaves.”
If the preceding considerations are insufficient to remove incredulity respecting the cruelties suffered by slaves, and if northern objectors still say, ‘We might believe such things of savages, but that civilized men, and republicans, in this Christian country, can openly and by system perpetrate such enormities, is impossible’;–to such we reply, that this incredulity of the people of the free states, is not only discreditable to their intelligence, but to their consistency.
Who is so ignorant as not to know, or so incredulous as to disbelieve, that the early Baptists of New England were fined, imprisoned, scourged, and finally banished by our puritan forefathers?–and that the Quakers were confined in dungeons, publicly whipped at the cart-tail, had their ears cut off, cleft sticks put upon their tongues, and that five of them, four men and one woman, were hung on Boston Common, for propagating the sentiments of the Society of Friends? Who discredits the fact, that the civil authorities in Massachusetts, less than a hundred and fifty years ago, confined in the public jail a little girl of four years old, and publicly hung the Rev. Mr. Burroughs, and eighteen other persons, mostly women, and killed another, (Giles Corey,) by extending him upon his back, and piling weights upon his breast till he was crushed to death [17]–and this for no other reason than that these men and women, and this little child, were accused by others of _bewitching_ them.
[Footnote 17: Judge Sewall, of Mass. in his diary, describing this horrible scene, says that when the tongue of the poor sufferer had, in the extremity of his dying agony, protruded from his mouth, a person in attendance took his cane and thrust it back into his mouth.]
Even the children in Connecticut, know that the following was once a law of that state:
“No food or lodging shall be allowed to a Quaker. If any person turns Quaker, he shall be banished, and not be suffered to return on pain of death.”
These objectors can readily believe the fact, that in the city of New York, less than a hundred years since, thirteen persons were publicly burned to death, over a slow fire: and that the legislature of the same State took under its paternal care the African slave-trade, and declared that “all encouragement should be given to the _direct_ importation of slaves; that all _smuggling_ of slaves should be condemned, as _an eminent discouragement to the fair trader_.”
They do not call in question the fact that the African slave-trade was carried on from the ports of the free states till within thirty years; that even members of the Society of Friends were actively engaged in it, shortly before the revolutionary war; [18] that as late as 1807, no less than fifty-nine of the vessels engaged in that trade, were sent out from the little state of Rhode Island, which had then only about seventy thousand inhabitants; that among those most largely engaged in these foul crimes, are the men whom the people of Rhode Island delight to honor: that the man who dipped most deeply in that trade of blood (James De Wolf,) and amassed a most princely fortune by it, was not long since their senator in Congress; and another, who was captain of one of his vessels, was recently Lieutenant Governor of the state.
[Footnote 18: See Life and Travels of John Woolman, page 92.]
They can believe, too, all the horrors of the middle passage, the chains, suffocation, maimings, stranglings, starvation, drownings, and cold blooded murders, atrocities perpetrated on board these slave-ships by their own citizens, perhaps by their own townsmen and neighbors–possibly by their own _fathers_: but oh! they ‘can’t believe that the slaveholders can be so hard-hearted towards their slaves as to treat them with great cruelty.’ They can believe that his Holiness the Pope, with his cardinals, bishops and priests, have tortured, broken on the wheel, and burned to death thousands of Protestants–that eighty thousand of the Anabaptists were slaughtered in Germany–that hundreds of thousands of the blameless Waldenses, Huguenots and Lollards, were torn in pieces by the most titled dignitaries of church and state, and that _almost every professedly Christian sect, has, at some period of its history, persecuted unto blood_ those who dissented from their creed. They can believe, also, that in Boston, New York, Utica, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Alton, and in scores of other cities and villages of the free states, ‘gentlemen of property and standing,’ led on by civil officers, by members of state legislatures, and of Congress, by judges and attorneys-general, by editors of newspapers, and by professed ministers of the gospel, have organized mobs, broken up lawful meetings of peaceable citizens, committed assault and battery upon their persons, knocked them down with stones, led them about with ropes, dragged them from their beds at midnight, gagged and forced them into vehicles, and driven them into unfrequented places, and there tormented and disfigured them–that they have rifled their houses, made bonfires of their furniture in the streets, burned to the ground, or torn in pieces the halls or churches in which they were assembled–attacked them with deadly weapons, stabbed some, shot others, and killed one. They can believe all this–and further, that a majority of the citizens in the places where these outrages have been committed, connived at them; and by refusing to indict the perpetrators, or, if they were indicted, by combining to secure their acquittal, and rejoicing in it, have publicly adopted these felonies as their own. All these things they can believe without hesitation, and that they have even been done by their own acquaintances, neighbors, relatives; perhaps those with whom they interchange courtesies, those for whom they _vote_, or to whose _salaries they contribute_–but yet, oh! they can never believe that slaveholders inflict cruelties upon their slaves!
They can give full credence to the kidnapping, imprisonment, and deliberate murder of WILLIAM MORGAN, and that by men of high standing in society; they can believe that this deed was aided and abetted, and the murderers screened from justice, by a large number of influential persons, who were virtually accomplices, either before or after the fact; and that this combination was so effectual, as successfully to defy and triumph over the combined powers of the government;–yet that those who constantly rob men of their time, liberty, and wages, and all their _rights_, should rob them of bits of flesh, and occasionally of a tooth, make their backs bleed, and put fetters on their legs, is too monstrous to be credited! Further these same persons, who ‘can’t believe’ that slaveholders are so iron-hearted as to ill-treat their slaves, believe that the very _elite_ of these slaveholders, those most highly esteemed and honored among them, are continually daring each other to mortal conflict, and in the presence of mutual friends, taking deadly aim at each other’s hearts, with settled purpose to _kill_, if possible. That among the most distinguished governors of slave states, among their most celebrated judges, senators, and representatives in Congress, there is hardly _one_, who has not either killed, or tried to kill, or aided and abetted his friends in trying to kill, one or more individuals. That pistols, dirks, bowie knives, or other instruments of death are generally carried throughout the slave states–and that deadly affrays with them, in the streets of their cities and villages, are matters of daily occurrence; that the sons of slaveholders in southern colleges, bully, threaten, and fire upon their teachers, and their teachers upon them; that during the last summer, in the most celebrated seat of science and literature in the south, the University of Virginia, the professors were attacked by more than seventy armed students, and, in the words of a Virginia paper, were obliged ‘to conceal themselves from their fury;’ also that almost all the riots and violence that occur in northern colleges, are produced by the turbulence and lawless passions of southern students. That such are the furious passions of slaveholders, no considerations of personal respect, none for the proprieties of life, none for the honor of our national legislature, none for the character of our country abroad, can restrain the slaveholding members of Congress from the most disgraceful personal encounters on the floor of our nation’s legislature–smiting their fists in each other’s faces, throttling and even _kicking_ and trying to _gouge_ each other–that during the session of the Congress just closed, no less than six slaveholders, taking fire at words spoken in debate, have either rushed at each other’s throats, or kicked, or struck, or attempted to knock each other down; and that in all these instances, they would doubtless have killed each other, if their friends had not separated them. Further, they know full well, these were not insignificant, vulgar blackguards, elected because they were the head bullies and bottle-holders in a boxing ring, or because their constituents went drunk to the ballot box; but they were some of the most conspicuous members of the House–one of them a former speaker.
Our newspapers are full of these and similar daily occurrences among slaveholders, copied verbatim from their own accounts of them in their own papers and all this we fully credit; no man is simpleton enough to cry out ‘Oh, I can’t believe that slaveholders do such things;’–and yet when we turn to the treatment which these men mete out to their _slaves_, and show that they are in the habitual practice of striking, kicking, knocking down and shooting _them_ as well as each other–the look of blank incredulity that comes over northern dough-faces, is a study for a painter: and then the sentimental outcry, with eyes and hands uplifted, ‘Oh, indeed, I can’t believe the slaveholders are so cruel to their slaves.’ Most amiable and touching charity! Truly, of all Yankee notions and free state products, there is nothing like a ‘_dough face_’–the great northern staple for the southern market–‘made to order,’ in any quantity, and _always on hand_. ‘Dough faces!’ Thanks to a slaveholder’s contempt for the name, with its immortality of truth, infamy and scorn.[19]
[Footnote 19: “_Doe_ face,” which owes its paternity to John Randolph, age has mellowed into “_dough_ face”–a cognomen quite as expressive and appropriate, if not as classical.]
Though the people of the free states affect to disbelieve the cruelties perpetrated upon the slaves, yet slaveholders believe _each other_ guilty of them, and speak of them with the utmost freedom. If slaveholders disbelieve any statement of cruelty inflicted upon a slave, it is not on account of its _enormity_. The traveler at the south will hear in Delaware, and in all parts of Maryland and Virginia, from the lips of slaveholders, statements of the most horrible cruelties suffered by the slaves _farther_ south, in the Carolinas and Georgia; when he finds himself in those states he will hear similar accounts about the treatment of the slaves in _Florida_ and _Louisiana_; and in Missouri, Kentucky, and Tennessee he will hear of the tragedies enacted on the plantations in Arkansas, Alabama and Mississippi. Since Anti-Slavery Societies have been in operation, and slaveholders have found themselves on trial before the world, and put upon their good behavior, northern slaveholders have grown cautious, and now often substitute denials and set defences, for the voluntary testimony about cruelty in the far south, which, before that period, was given with entire freedom. Still, however, occasionally the ‘truth will out,’ as the reader will see by the following testimony of an East Tennessee newspaper, in which, speaking of the droves of slaves taken from the upper country to Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, etc., the editor says, they are ‘traveling to a region where their condition through time WILL BE SECOND ONLY TO THAT OF THE WRETCHED CREATURES IN HELL.’ See “Maryville Intelligencer,” of Oct, 4, 1835. Distant cruelties and cruelties _long past_, have been till recently, favorite topics with slaveholders. They have not only been ready to acknowledge that their _fathers_ have exercised great cruelty toward their slaves, but have voluntarily, in their official acts, made proclamation of it and entered it on their public records. The Legislature of North Carolina, in 1798, branded the successive legislatures of that state for more than thirty years previous, with the infamy of treatment towards their slaves, which they pronounce to be ‘disgraceful to humanity, and degrading in the highest degree to the laws and principles of a free, Christian, and enlightened country.’ This treatment was the enactment and perpetuation of a most barbarous and cruel law.
But enough. As the objector can and does believe all the preceeding facts, if he still ‘_can’t_ believe’ as to the cruelties of slaveholders, it would be barbarous to tantalize his incapacity either with evidence or argument. Let him have the benefit of the act in such case made and provided.
Having shown that the incredulity of the objector respecting the cruelty inflicted upon the slaves, is discreditable to his consistency, we now proceed to show that it is equally so to his _intelligence_.
Whoever disbelieves the foregoing statements of cruelties, on the ground of their enormity, proclaims his own ignorance of the nature and history of man. What! incredulous about the atrocities perpetrated by those who hold human beings as property, to be used for their pleasure, when history herself has done little else in recording human deeds, than to dip her blank chart in the blood shed by arbitrary power, and unfold to human gaze the great red scroll? That cruelty is the natural effect of arbitrary power, has been the result of all experience, and the voice of universal testimony since the world began. Shall human nature’s axioms, six thousand years old, go for nothing? Are the combined product of human experience, and the concurrent records of human character, to be set down as ‘old wives’ fables?’ To disbelieve that arbitrary power naturally and habitually perpetrates cruelties, where it can do it with impunity, is not only ignorance of man, but of _things_. It is to be blind to innumerable proofs which are before every man’s eyes; proofs that are stereotyped in the very words and phrases that are on every one’s lips. Take for example the words _despot_ and _despotic_. Despot, signifies etymologically, merely one who _possesses_ arbitrary power, and at first, it was used to designate those alone who _possessed_ unlimited power over human beings, entirely irrespective of the way in which they exercised it, whether mercifully or cruelly. But the fact, that those who possessed such power, made their subjects their _victims_, has wrought a total change in the popular meaning of the word. It now signifies, in common parlance, not one who _possesses_ unlimited power over others, but one who exercises the power that he has, whether little or much, _cruelly_. So _despotic_, instead of meaning what it once did, something pertaining to the _possession_ of unlimited power, signifies something pertaining to the _capricious, unmerciful and relentless exercise_ of such power.
The word tyrant, is another example–formerly it implied merely a _possession_ of arbitrary power, but from the invariable abuse of such power by its possessors, the proper and entire meaning of the word is lost, and it now signifies merely one who _exercises power to the injury of others_. The words tyrannical and tyranny follow the same analogy. So the word arbitrary; which formerly implied that which pertains to the will of one, independently of others; but from the fact that those who had no restraint upon their wills, were invariably capricious, unreasonable and oppressive, these words convey accurately the present sense of _arbitrary_, when applied to a person.
How can the objector persist in disbelieving that cruelty is the natural effect of arbitrary power, when the very words of every day, rise up on his lips in testimony against him–words which once signified the _mere possession_ of arbitrary power, but have lost their meaning, and now signify merely its cruel _exercise_; because such a use of it has been proved by the experience of the world, to be inseparable from its _possession_–words now frigid with horror, and never used even by the objector without feeling a cold chill run over him.
Arbitrary power is to the mind what alcohol is to the body; it intoxicates. Man loves power. It is perhaps the strongest human passion; and the more absolute the power, the stronger the desire for it; and the more it is desired, the more its exercise is enjoyed: this enjoyment is to human nature a fearful temptation,–generally an overmatch for it. Hence it is true, with hardly an exception, that arbitrary power is abused in proportion as it is _desired_. The fact that a person intensely desires power over others, _without restraint_, shows the absolute necessity of restraint. What woman would marry a man who made it a condition that he should have the power to divorce her whenever he pleased? Oh! he might never wish to exercise it, but the _power_ he would have! No woman, not stark mad, would trust her happiness in such hands.
Would a father apprentice his son to a master, who insisted that his power over the lad should be _absolute_? The master might perhaps, never wish to commit a battery upon the boy, but if he should, he insists upon having full swing! He who would leave his son in the, clutches of such a wretch, would be bled and blistered for a lunatic as soon as his friends could get their hands upon him.
The possession of power, even when greatly restrained, is such a fiery stimulant, that its lodgement in human hands is always perilous. Give men the handling of immense sums of money, and all the eyes of Argus and the hands of Briarcus can hardly prevent embezzlement.
The mutual and ceaseless accusations of the two great political parties in this country, show the universal belief that this tendency of human nature to abuse power, is so strong, that even the most powerful legal restraints are insufficient for its safe custody. From congress and state legislatures down to grog-shop caucuses and street wranglings, each party keeps up an incessant din about _abuses of power_. Hardly an officer, either of the general or state governments, from the President down to the ten thousand postmasters, and from governors to the fifty thousand constables, escapes the charge of ‘_abuse of power_.’ ‘Oppression,’ ‘Extortion,’ ‘Venality,’ ‘Bribery,’ ‘Corruption,’ ‘Perjury,’ ‘Misrule,’ ‘Spoils,’ ‘Defalcation,’ stand on every newspaper. Now without any estimate of the lies told in these mutual charges, there is truth enough to make each party ready to believe of the other, and _of their best men too,_ any abuse of power, however monstrous. As is the State, so is the Church. From General Conferences to circuit preachers; and from General Assemblies to church sessions, abuses of power spring up as weeds from the dunghill.
All legal restraints are framed upon the presumption, that men will abuse their power if not hemmed in by them. This lies at the bottom of all those checks and balances contrived for keeping governments upon their centres. If there is among human convictions one that is invariable and universal, it is, that when men possess unrestrained power over others, over their time, choice, conscience, persons, votes, or means of subsistence, they are under great temptations to abuse it; and that the intensity with which such power is desired, generally measures the certainty and the degree of its abuse.
That American slaveholders possess a power over their slaves which is virtually absolute, none will deny.[20] That they _desire_ this absolute power, is shown from the fact of their holding and exercising it, and making laws to confirm and enlarge it. That the desire to possess this power, every tittle of it, is _intense_, is proved by the fact, that slaveholders cling to it with such obstinate tenacity, as well as by all their doings and sayings, their threats, cursings and gnashings against all who denounce the exercise of such power as usurpation and outrage, and counsel its immediate abrogation.
[Footnote 20: The following extracts from the laws of slave-states are proofs sufficient.
“The slave is ENTIRELY subject to the WILL of his master.”–Louisiana Civil Code, Art. 273.
“Slaves shall be deemed, sold, taken, reputed and adjudged in law to be _chattels personal,_ in the hands of their owner and possessors, and their executors, administrators and assigns, TO ALL INTENTS, CONSTRUCTIONS, AND PURPOSES, WHATSOEVER.”–Laws of South Carolina, 2 Brev. Dig. 229; Prince’s Digest, 446, &c.]
From the nature of the case–from the laws of mind, such power, so intensely desired, griped with such a death-clutch, and with such fierce spurnings of all curtailment or restraint, _cannot but be abused._ Privations and inflictions must be its natural, habitual products, with ever and anon, terror, torture, and despair let loose to do their worst upon the helpless victims.
Though power over others is in every case liable to be used to their injury, yet, in almost all cases, the subject individual is shielded from great outrages by strong safeguards. If he have talents, or learning, or wealth, or office, or personal respectability, or influential friends, these, with the protection of law and the rights of citizenship, stand round him as a body guard: and even if he lacked all these, yet, had he the same color, features, form, dialect, habits, and associations with the privileged caste of society, he would find in _them_ a shield from many injuries, which would be _invited,_ if in these respects he differed widely from the rest of the community, and was on that account regarded with disgust and aversion. This is the condition of the slave; not only is he deprived of the artificial safeguards of the law, but has none of those _natural_ safeguards enumerated above, which are a protection to others. But not only is the slave destitute of those peculiarities, habits, tastes, and acquisitions, which by assimilating the possessor to the rest of the community, excite their interest in him, and thus, in a measure, secure for him their protection; but he possesses those peculiarities of bodily organization which are looked upon with deep disgust, contempt, prejudice, and aversion. Besides this, constant contact with the ignorance and stupidity of the slaves, their filth, rags, and nakedness; their cowering air, servile employments, repulsive food, and squalid hovels, their purchase and sale, and use as brutes–all these associations, constantly mingling and circulating in the minds of slaveholders, and inveterated by the hourly irritations which must assail all who use human beings as things, produce in them a permanent state of feeling toward the slave, made up of repulsion and settled ill-will. When we add to this the corrosions produced by the petty thefts of slaves, the necessity of constant watching, their reluctant service, and indifference to their master’s interests, their ill concealed aversion to him, and spurning of his authority; and finally, that fact, as old as human nature, that men always hate those whom they oppress, and oppress those whom they hate, thus oppression and hatred mutually begetting and perpetuating each other–and we have a raging compound of fiery elements and disturbing forces, so stimulating and inflaming the mind of the slaveholder against the slave, that _it cannot but break forth upon him with desolating fury._
To deny that cruelty is the spontaneous and uniform product of arbitrary power, and that the natural and controlling tendency of such power is to make its possessor cruel, oppressive, and revengeful towards those who are subjected to his control, is, we repeat, to set at nought the combined experience of the human race, to invalidate its testimony, and to reverse its decisions from time immemorial.
A volume might be filled with the testimony of American slaveholders alone, to the truth of the preceding position. We subjoin a few illustrations, and first, the memorable declaration of President Jefferson, who lived and died a slaveholder. It has been published a thousand times, and will live forever. In his “Notes on Virginia,” sixth Philadelphia edition, p. 251, he says,–
“The WHOLE COMMERCE between master and slave, is a PERPETUAL EXERCISE of the most _boisterous passions_, the most unremitting DESPOTISM on the one part, and degrading submission on the other….. The parent _storms_, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of _wrath_, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, GIVES LOOSE TO THE WORST OF PASSIONS; and thus _nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny,_ cannot but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities.”
Hon. Lewis Summers, Judge of the General Court of Virginia, and a slaveholder, said in a speech before the Virginia legislature in 1832; (see Richmond Whig of Jan. 26, 1832,)
“A slave population exercises _the most pernicious influence_ upon the manners, habits and character, of those among whom it exists. Lisping infancy learns the vocabulary of abusive epithets, and struts the _embryo tyrant_ of its little domain. The consciousness of superior destiny takes possession of his mind at its earliest dawning, and love of power and rule, ‘grows with his growth, and strengthens with his strength.’ Unless enabled to rise above the operation of those powerful causes, he enters the world with miserable notions of self-importance, and under the government of an unbridled temper.”
The late JUDGE TUCKER of Virginia, a slaveholder, and Professor of Law in the University of William and Mary, in his “Letter to a Member of the Virginia Legislature,” 1801, says,–
“I say nothing of the baneful effects of slavery on our _moral character_, because I know you have been long sensible of this point.”
The Presbyterian Synod of South Carolina and Georgia, consisting of all the clergy of that denomination in those states, with a lay representation from the churches, most, if not all of whom are slaveholders, published a report on slavery in 1834, from which the following is an extract.
“Those only who have the management of servants, know what the _hardening effect_ of it is upon _their own feelings towards them._ There is no necessity to dwell on this point, as all _owners_ and _managers_ fully understand it. He who commences to manage them with tenderness and with a willingness to favor them in every way, must be watchful, otherwise he will settle down in _indifference, if not severity.”_
GENERAL WILLIAM H. HARRISON, now of Ohio, son of the late Governor Harrison of Virginia, a slaveholder, while minister from the United States to the Republic of Colombia, wrote a letter to General Simon Bolivar, then President of that Republic, just as he was about assuming despotic power. The letter is dated Bogota, Sept. 22, 1826. The following is an extract.
“From a knowledge of your own disposition and present feelings, your excellency will not be willing to believe that you could ever be brought to an act of tyranny, or even to execute justice with unnecessary rigor. But trust me, sir, there is nothing more corrupting, nothing more _destructive of the noblest and finest feelings of our nature than the exercise of unlimited power_. The man, who in the beginning of such a career, might shudder at the idea of taking away the life of a fellow-being, might soon have his conscience so seared by the repetition of crime, that the agonies of his murdered victims might become music to his soul, and the drippings of the scaffold afford blood to swim in. History is full of such excesses.”
WILLIAM H. FITZHUGH, Esq. of Virginia, a slaveholder, says,–“Slavery, in its mildest form, is cruel and unnatural; _its injurious effects on our morals and habits are mutually felt.”_
HON. SAMUEL S. NICHOLAS, late Judge of the Court of Appeals of Kentucky, and a slaveholder, in a speech before the legislature of that state, Jan. 1837, says,–
“The deliberate convictions of the most matured consideration I can give the subject, are, that the institution of slavery is a _most serious injury to the habits, manners and morals_ of our white population–that it leads to sloth, indolence, dissipation, and vice.”
Dr. THOMAS COOPER, late President of the College of South Carolina, in a note to his edition of the “Institutes of Justinian” page 413, says,–
“All absolute power has a direct tendency, not only to detract from the happiness of the persons who are subject to it, but to DEPRAVE THE GOOD QUALITIES of those who possess it….. the whole history of human nature, in the present and every former age, will justify me in saying that _such is the tendency of power_ on the one hand and slavery on the other.”
A South Carolina slaveholder, whose name is with the executive committee of the Am. A.S. Society, says, in a letter, dated April 4, 1838:–
“I think it (slavery) _ruinous to the temper_ and to our spiritual life; it is a thorn in the flesh, for ever and for ever goading us on to say and to do what the Eternal God cannot but be displeased with. I speak from experience, and oh! my desire is to be delivered from it.”
Monsieur C.C. ROBIN, who was a resident of Louisiana from 1802 to 1806, published a work on that country; in which, speaking of the effect of slaveholding on masters and their children, he says:–
“The young creoles make the negroes who surround them the play-things of their whims: they flog, for pastime, those of their own age, just as their fathers flog others at their will. These young creoles, arrived at the age in which the passions are impetuous, do not _know how to bear contradiction_; they will have every thing done which they command, _possible or not_; and in default of this, they avenge their offended pride by multiplied punishments.”
Dr. GEORGE BUCHANAN, of Baltimore, Maryland, member of the American Philosophical Society, in an oration at Baltimore, July 4, 1791, said:–
“For such are the effects of subjecting man to slavery, that it _destroys every humane principle_, vitiates the mind, instills ideas of unlawful cruelties, and eventually subverts the springs of government.”–_Buchanan’s Oration_, p. 12.
President EDWARDS the younger, in a sermon before the Connecticut Abolition Society, in 1791, page 8, says:–
“Slavery has a most direct tendency to haughtiness, and a _domineering spirit_ and conduct in the proprietors of the slaves, in their children, and in all who have the control of them. A man who has been bred up in domineering over negroes, can scarcely avoid contracting such a habit of haughtiness and domination as will express itself in his general treatment of mankind, whether in his private capacity, or in any office, civil or military, with which he may be invested.”
The celebrated MONTESQUIEU, in his “Spirit of the Laws,” thus describes the effect of slaveholding upon the master:–
“The master contracts all sorts of bad habits; and becomes _haughty, passionate, obdurate, vindictive, voluptuous, and cruel_.”
WILBERFORCE, in his speech at the anniversary of the London Anti-Slavery Society, in March, 1828, said:–
“It is _utterly impossible_ that they who live in the administration of the petty despotism of a slave community, whose minds have been _warped_ and _polluted_ by that contamination, should not _lose that respect_ for their fellow creatures over whom they tyrannize, which is essential in the nature and moral being of man, to rescue them from the abuse of power over their prostrate fellow creatures.”
In the great debate, in the British Parliament, on the African slave-trade, Mr. WHITBREAD said:
“Arbitrary power would spoil the hearts of the best.”
But we need not multiply proofs to establish our position: it is sustained by the concurrent testimony of sages, philosophers, poets, statesmen, and moralists, in every period of the world; and who can marvel that those in all ages who have wisely pondered men and things, should be unanimous in such testimony, when the history of arbitrary power has come down to us from the beginning of time, struggling through heaps of slain, and trailing her parchments in blood.
Time would fail to begin with the first despot and track down the carnage step by step. All nations, all ages, all climes crowd forward as witnesses, with their scars, and wounds, and dying agonies.
But to survey a multitude bewilders; let us look at a single nation. We instance Rome; both because its history is more generally known, and because it furnishes a larger proportion of instances, in which arbitrary power was exercised with comparative mildness, than any other nation ancient or modern. And yet, her whole existence was a tragedy, every actor was an executioner, the curtain rose amidst shrieks and fell upon corpses, and the only shifting of the scenes was from blood to blood. The whole world stood aghast, as under sentence of death, awaiting execution, and all nations and tongues were driven, with her own citizens, as sheep to the slaughter. Of her seven kings, her hundreds of consuls, tribunes, decemvirs, and dictators, and her fifty emperors, there is hardly one whose name has come down to us unstained by horrible abuses of power; and that too, notwithstanding we have mere shreds of the history of many of them, owing to their antiquity, or to the perturbed times in which they lived; and these shreds gathered from the records of their own partial countrymen, who wrote and sung their praises. What does this prove? Not that the Romans were worse than other men, nor that their rulers were worse than other Romans, for history does not furnish nobler models of natural character than many of those same rulers, when first invested with arbitrary power. Neither was it mainly because the martial enterprise of the earlier Romans and the gross sensuality of the later, hardened their hearts to human suffering. In both periods of Roman history, and in both these classes, we find men, the keen sympathies, generosity, and benevolence of whose general character embalmed their names in the grateful memories of multitudes. _They were human beings, and possessed power without restraint_–this unravels the mystery.
Who has not heard of the Emperor Trajan, of his moderation, his clemency, his gashing sympathies, his forgiveness of injuries and forgetfulness of self, his tearing in pieces his own robe, to furnish bandages for the wounded–called by the whole world in his day, “the best emperor of Rome;” and so affectionately regarded by his subjects, that, ever afterwards, in blessing his successors upon their accession to power, they always said, “May you have the virtue and goodness of Trajan!” yet the deadly conflicts of gladiators who were trained to kill each other, to make sport for the spectators, furnished his chief pastime. At one time he kept up those spectacles for 123 days in succession. In the tortures which he inflicted on Christians, fire and poison, daggers and dungeons, wild beasts and serpents, and the rack, did their worst. He threw into the sea, Clemens, the venerable bishop of Rome, with an anchor about his neck; and tossed to the famished lions in the amphitheatre the aged Ignatius.
Pliny the younger, who was proconsul under Trajan, may well be mentioned in connection with the emperor, as a striking illustration of the truth, that goodness and amiableness towards one class of men is often turned into cruelty towards another. History can hardly show a more gentle and lovely character than Pliny. While pleading at the bar, he always sought out the grievances of the poorest and most despised persons, entered into their wrongs with his whole soul, and never took a fee. Who can read his admirable letters without being touched by their tenderness and warmed by their benignity and philanthropy: and yet, this tender-hearted Pliny coolly plied with excruciating torture two spotless females, who had served as deaconesses in the Christian church, hoping to extort from them matter of accusation against the Christians. He commanded Christians to abjure their faith, invoke the gods, pour out libations to the statues of the emperor, burn incense to idols, and curse Christ. If they refused, he ordered them to execution.
Who has not heard of the Emperor Titus–so beloved for his mild virtues and compassionate regard for the suffering, that he was named “The Delight of Mankind;” so tender of the lives of his subjects that he took the office of high priest, that his hands might never be defiled with blood; and was heard to declare, with tears, that he had rather die than put another to death. So intent upon making others happy, that when once about to retire to sleep, and not being able to recall any particular act of beneficence performed during the day, he cried out in anguish, “Alas! I have lost a day!” And, finally, whom the learned Kennet, in his Roman Antiquities, characterizes as “the only prince in the world that has the character of _never doing an ill action_.” Yet, witnessing the mortal combats of the captives taken to war, killing each other in the amphitheatre, amidst the acclamations of the populace, was a favorite amusement with Titus. At one time he exhibited shows of gladiators, which lasted one hundred days, during which the amphitheatre was flooded with human blood. At another of his public exhibitions he caused five thousand wild beasts to be baited in the amphitheatre. During the siege of Jerusalem, he set ambushes to seize the famishing Jews, who stole out of the city by night to glean food in the valleys: these he would first dreadfully scourge, then torment them with all conceivable tortures, and, at last, crucify them before the wall of the city. According to Josephus, not less than five hundred a day were thus tormented. And when many of the Jews, frantic with famine, deserted to the Romans, Titus cut off their hands and drove them back. After the destruction of Jerusalem, he dragged to Rome one hundred thousand captives, sold them as slaves, and scattered them through every province of the empire.
The kindness, condescension, and forbearance of Adrian were proverbial; he was one of the most eloquent orators of his age; and when pleading the cause of injured innocence, would melt and overwhelm the auditors by the pathos of his appeals. It was his constant maxim, that he was an Emperor, not for his own good, but for the benefit of his fellow creatures. He stooped to relieve the wants of the meanest of his subjects, and would peril his life by visiting them when sick of infectious diseases; he prohibited, by law, masters from killing their slaves, gave to slaves legal trial, and exempted them from torture; yet towards certain individuals and classes, he showed himself a monster of cruelty. He prided himself on his knowledge of architecture, and ordered to execution the most celebrated architect of Rome, because he had criticised one of the Emperor’s designs. He banished all the Jews from their native land, and drove them to the ends of the earth; and unloosed the bloodhounds of persecution to rend in pieces his Christian subjects.
The gentleness and benignity of the Emperor Aurelius, have been celebrated in story and song. History says of him, ‘Nothing could quench his desire of being a blessing to mankind;’ and Pope’s eulogy of him is in the mouth of every schoolboy–‘Like good Aurelius, let him reign;’ and yet, ‘_good_ Aurelius,’ lifted the flood gates of the fourth, and one of the most terrible persecutions against Christians that ever raged. He sent orders into different parts of his empire, to have the Christians murdered who would not deny Christ. The blameless Polycarp, trembling under the weight of a hundred years, was dragged to the stake and burned to ashes. Pothinus, Bishop of Lyons, at the age of ninety, was dragged through the streets, beaten, stoned, trampled upon by the soldiers, and left to perish. Tender virgins were put into nets, and thrown to infuriated wild bulls; others were fastened in red hot iron chairs; and venerable matrons were thrown to be devoured by dogs.
Constantine the Great has been the admiration of Christendom for his virtues. The early Christian writers adorn his justice, benevolence and piety with the most exalted eulogy. He was baptized, and admitted to the Christian church. He abrogated Paganism, and made Christianity the religion of his empire; he attended the councils of the early fathers of the church, consulted with the bishops, and devoted himself with the most untiring zeal to the propagation of Christianity, and to the promotion of peace and love among its professors; he convened the Council of Nice, to settle disputes which had long distracted the church, appeared in the assembly with admirable modesty and temper, moderated the heats of the contending parties, implored them to exercise mutual forbearance, and exhorted them to love unfeigned, to forgive one another, as they hoped to be forgiven by Christ. Who would not think it uncharitable to accuse such a man of barbarity in the exercise of power?–and yet he drove Arius and his associates into banishment, for opinion’s sake, denounced death against all with whom his books should afterwards be found, and prohibited, on pain of death, the exercise, however peaceably, of the functions of any other religion than Christianity. In a fit of jealousy and rage, he ordered his innocent son, Crispus, to execution, without granting him a hearing; and upon finding him innocent, killed his own wife, who had falsely accused him.
To the preceding maybe added Theodosius the Great, the last Roman emperor before the division of the empire. He was a member of the Christian church, and in his zeal against paganism, and what he deemed heresy, surpassed all who were before him. The Christian writers of his time speak of him as a most illustrious model of justice, generosity, magnanimity, benevolence, and every virtue. And yet Theodosius denounced capital punishments against those who held ‘heretical’ opinions, and commanded inter-marriage between cousins to be punished by burning the parties alive. On hearing that the people of Antioch had demolished the statues set up in that city, in honor of himself, and had threatened the governor, he flew into a transport of fury, ordered the city to be laid in ashes, and all the inhabitants to be slaughtered; and upon hearing of a resistance to his authority in Thessalonica, in which one of his lieutenants was killed, he instantly ordered a _general massacre_ of the inhabitants; and in obedience to his command, seven thousand men, women and children were butchered in the space of three hours.
The foregoing are a few of many instances in the history of Rome, and of a countless multitude in the history of the world, illustrating the truth, that the lodgement of arbitrary power, in the best human hands, is always a fearfully perilous experiment; that the mildest tempers, the most humane and benevolent dispositions, the most blameless and conscientious previous life, with the most rigorous habits of justice, are no security, that, in a moment of temptation, the possessors of such power will not make their subjects their victims; illustrating also the truth, that, while men may exhibit nothing but honor, honesty, mildness, justice, and generosity, in their intercourse with those of their own grade, or language, or nation, or hue, they may practice towards others, for whom they have contempt and aversion, the most revolting meanness, perpetrate robbery unceasingly, and inflict the severest privations, and the most barbarous cruelties. But this is not all: history is full of examples, showing not only the effects of arbitrary power on its victims, but its terrible reaction on those who exercise it; blunting their sympathies, and hardening to adamant their hearts toward _them_, at least, if not toward the human race generally. This is shown in the fact, that almost every tyrant in the history of the world, has entered upon the exercise of absolute power with comparative moderation; multitudes of them with marked forbearance and mildness, and not a few with the most signal condescension, magnanimity, gentleness and compassion. Among these last are included those who afterwards became the bloodiest monsters that ever cursed the earth. Of the Roman Emperors, almost every one of whom perpetrated the most barbarous atrocities, Vitellius seems to have been the only one who cruelly exercised his power from the _outset_. Most of the other emperors, sprung up into fiends in the hot-bed of arbitrary power. If they had not been plied with its fiery stimulants, but had lived under the legal restraints of other men, instead of going to the grave under the curses of their generation, multitudes might have called them blessed.
The moderation which has generally distinguished absolute monarchs at the commencement of their reigns, was doubtless in some cases assumed from policy; in the greater number, however, as is manifest from their history, it has been the natural workings of minds held in check by previous associations, and not yet hardened into habits of cruelty, by being accustomed to the exercise of power without restraint. But as those associations have weakened, and the wielding of uncontrolled sway has become a habit, like other evil doers, they have, in the expressive language of Scripture, ‘waxed worse and worse.’
For eighteen hundred years an involuntary shudder has run over the human race, at the mention of the name of Nero; yet, at the commencement of his reign, he burst into tears when called upon to sign the death-warrant of a criminal, and exclaimed, ‘Oh, that I had never learned to write!’ His mildness and magnanimity won the affections of his subjects; and it was not till the poison of absolute power had worked within his nature for years, that it swelled him into a monster.
Tiberius, Claudius, and Caligula, began the exercise of their power with singular forbearance, and each grew into a prodigy of cruelty. So averse was Caligula to bloodshed, that he refused to look at a list of conspirators against his own life, which was handed to him; yet afterwards, a more cruel wretch never wielded a sceptre. In his thirst for slaughter, he wished all the necks in Rome _one_, that he might cut them off at a blow.
Domitian, at the commencement of his reign, carried his abhorrence of cruelty to such lengths, that he forbad the sacrificing of oxen, and would sit whole days on the judgment-seat, reversing the unjust decisions of corrupt judges; yet afterwards, he surpassed even Nero in cruelty. The latter was content to torture and kill by proxy, and without being a spectator; but Domitian could not be denied the luxury of seeing his victims writhe, and hearing them shriek; and often with his own hand directed the instrument of torture, especially when some illustrious senator or patrician was to be killed by piece-meal. Commodus began with gentleness and condescension, but soon became a terror and a scourge, outstripping in his atrocities most of his predecessors. Maximin too, was just and generous when first invested with power, but afterwards rioted in slaughter with the relish of a fiend. History has well said of this monarch, ‘the change in his disposition may readily serve to show how dangerous a thing is power, that could transform a person of such rigid virtues into such a monster.’
Instances almost innumerable might be furnished in the history of every age, illustrating the blunting of sympathies, and the total transformation of character wrought in individuals by the exercise of arbitrary power. Not to detain the reader with long details, let a single instance suffice.
Perhaps no man has lived in modern times, whose name excites such horror as that of Robespierre. Yet it is notorious that he was naturally of a benevolent disposition, and tender sympathies.
“Before the revolution, when as a judge in his native city of Arras he had to pronounce judgment on an assassin, he took no food for two days afterwards, but was heard frequently exclaiming, ‘I am sure he was guilty; he is a villain; but yet, to put a human being to death!!’ He could not support the idea; and that the same necessity might not recur, he relinquished his judicial office.–(See Laponneray’s Life of Robespierre, p. 8.) Afterwards, in the Convention of 1791, he urged strongly the abolition of the punishment of death; and yet, for sixteen months, in 1793 and 1794, till he perished himself by the same guillotine which he had so mercilessly used on others, no one at Paris consigned and caused so many fellow-creatures to be put to death by it, with more ruthless insensibility.”–_Turner’s Sacred history of the World_, vol. 2 p. 119.
But it is time we had done with the objection, “such cruelties are INCREDIBLE.” If the objector still reiterates it, he shall have the last word without farther molestation.
An objection kindred to the preceding now claims notice. It is the profound induction that slaves _must_ be well treated because _slaveholders say they are!_
OBJECTION. II.–‘SLAVEHOLDERS PROTEST THAT THEY TREAT THEIR SLAVES WELL.’
Self-justification is human nature; self-condemnation is a sublime triumph over it, and as rare as sublime. What culprits would be convicted, if their own testimony were taken by juries as good evidence? Slaveholders are on trial, charged with cruel treatment to their slaves, and though in their own courts they can clear themselves _by their own oaths_,[21] they need not think to do it at the bar of the world. The denial of crimes, by men accused of them, goes for nothing as evidence in all _civilized_ courts; while the voluntary confession of them, is the best evidence possible, as it is testimony _against themselves_, and in the face of the strongest motives to conceal the truth. On the preceding pages, are hundreds of just such testimonies; the voluntary and explicit testimony of slaveholders against themselves, their families and ancestors, their constituents and their rulers; against their characters and their memories; against their justice, their honesty, their honor and their benevolence. Now let candor decide between those two classes of slaveholders, which is most entitled to credit; that which testifies in its own favor, just as self-love would dictate, or that which testifies against all selfish motives and in spite of them; and though it has nothing to gain, but every thing to lose by such testimony, still utters it.
But if there were no counter testimony, if all slaveholders were unanimous in the declaration that the treatment of the slaves is _good_, such a declaration would not be entitled to a feather’s weight as testimony; it is not _testimony_ but _opinion_. Testimony respects matters of _fact_, not matters of opinion: it is the declaration of a witness as to _facts_, not the giving of an opinion as to the nature or qualities of actions, or the _character_ of a course of conduct. Slaveholders organize themselves into a tribunal to adjudicate upon their own conduct, and give us in their decisions, their estimate of their own character; informing us with characteristic modesty, that they have a high opinion of themselves; that in their own judgment they are very mild, kind, and merciful gentlemen! In these conceptions of their own merits, and of the eminent propriety of their bearing towards their slaves, slaveholders remind us of the Spaniard, who always took off his hat whenever he spoke of himself, and of the Governor of Schiraz, who, from a sense of justice to his own character added to his other titles, those of, ‘Flower of Courtesy,’ ‘Nutmeg of Consolation,’ and ‘Rose of Delight.’
[Footnote 21: The law of which the following is an extract, exists in South Carolina. “If any slave shall suffer in life, limb or member, when no white person shall be present, or being present, shall refuse to give evidence, the owner or other person, who shall have the care of such slave, and in whose power such slave shall be, shall be deemed guilty of such offence, _unless_ such owner or other person shall make the contrary appear by good and sufficient evidence, or shall BY HIS OWN OATH CLEAR AND EXCULPATE HIMSELF. Which oath every court where such offence shall be tried, is hereby compared to administer, and to _acquit the offender_, if clear proof of the offence be not made by _two_ witnesses at least.”–2 Brevard’s Digest, 242. The state of Louisiana has a similar law.]
The _sincerity_ of those worthies, no one calls in question; their real notions of their own merits doubtless ascended into the sublime: but for aught that appears, they had not the arrogance to demand that their own notions of their personal excellence, should be taken as the _proof_ of it. Not so with our slaveholders. Not content with offering incense at the shrine of their own virtues, they have the effrontery to demand, that the rest of the world shall offer it, because _they_ do; and shall implicitly believe the presiding divinity to be a good Spirit rather than a Devil, because _they_ call him so! In other words, since slaveholders profoundly appreciate their own gentle dispositions toward their slaves, and their kind treatment of them, and everywhere protest that they do truly show forth these rare excellencies, they demand that the rest of the world shall not only believe that they _think_ so, but that they think _rightly_; that these notions of themselves are _true_, that their taking off their hats to themselves proves them worthy of homage, and that their assumption of the titles of, ‘Flower of Kindness,’ and ‘Nutmeg of Consolation,’ is conclusive evidence that they deserve such appellations!
Was there ever a more ridiculous doctrine, than that a man’s opinion of his own actions is the true standard for measuring them, and the certificate of their real qualities!–that his own estimate of his treatment of others; is to be taken as the true one, and such treatment be set down as _good_ treatment upon the strength of his judgment. He who argues the good treatment of the slave, from the slaveholder’s _good opinion_ of such treatment, not only argues against human nature and all history, his own common sense, and even the testimony of his senses, but refutes his own arguments by his daily practice. Every body acts on the presumption that men’s feelings will vary with their _practices_; that the light in which they view individuals and classes, and their feelings towards them, will modify their opinions of the treatment which they receive. In any case of treatment that affects himself, his church, or his political party, no man so stultifies himself as to argue that such treatment must be good, because the _author_ of it thinks so.
Who would argue that the American Colonies were well treated by the mother country, because parliament thought so? Or that Poland was well treated by Russia, because Nicholas thought so? Or that the treatment of the Cherokees by Georgia is proved good by Georgia notions of it? Or that of the Greeks by the Turks, by Turkish opinions of it? Or that of the Jews by almost all nations, by the judgment of their persecutors? Or that of the victims of the Inquisition, by the opinions of the Inquisitor general, or of the Pope and his cardinals? Or that of the Quakers and Baptists, at the hands of the Puritans,–to be judged of by the opinions of the legislatures that authorized, and the courts that carried it into effect. All those classes of persons did not, in their own opinion, abuse their victims. If charged with perpetrating outrageous cruelty upon them, all those oppressors would have repelled the charge with indignation.
Our slaveholders chime lustily the same song, and no man with human nature within him, and human history before him, and with sense enough to keep him out of the fire, will be gulled by such professions, unless his itch to be humbugged has put on the type of a downright chronic incurable. We repeat it–when men speak of the treatment of others as being either good or bad, their declarations are not generally to be taken as testimony to matters of _fact_, so much as expressions of _their own feelings_ towards those persons or classes who are the subjects of such treatment. If those persons are their fellow citizens; if they are in the same class of society with themselves; of the same language, creed, and color; similar in their habits, pursuits, and sympathies; they will keenly feel any wrong done to them, and denounce it as base, outrageous treatment; but let the same wrongs be done to persons of a condition in all respects the reverse, persons whom they habitually despise, and regard only in the light of mere conveniences, to be used for their pleasure, and the idea that such treatment is barbarous will be laughed at as ridiculous. When we hear slaveholders say that their slaves are _well treated_, we have only to remember that they are not speaking of _persons_, but of _property_; not of men and women, but of _chattels_ and _things_; not of friends but of _vassals_ and _victims_; not of those whom they respect and honor, but of those whom they _scorn_ and trample on; not of those with whom they sympathize, and co-operate, and interchange courtesies, but of those whom they regard with contempt and aversion and disdainfully set with the dogs of their flock. Reader, keep this fact in your mind, and you will have a clue to the slaveholder’s definition of “_good treatment_.” Remember also, that a part of this “good treatment” of which the slaveholders boast, is plundering the slaves of all their inalienable rights, of the ownership of their own bodies, of the use of their own limbs and muscles, of all their time, liberty, and earnings, of the free exercise of choice, of the rights of marriage and parental authority, of legal protection, of the right to be, to do, to go, to stay, to think, to feel, to work, to rest, to eat, to sleep, to learn, to teach, to earn money, and to expend it, to visit, and to be visited, to speak, to be silent, to worship according to conscience, in fine, their right to be protected by just and equal laws, and to be _amenable to such only_. Of _all these rights the slaves are plundered_; and this is a _part_ of that “good treatment” of which their plunderers boast! What then is the _rest_ of it? The above is enough for a sample, at least a specimen-brick from the kiln. Reader, we ask you no questions, but merely tell you what _you know_, when we say that men and women who can habitually do such things to human beings, _can do_ ANY THING _to them_.
The declarations of slaveholders, that they treat their slaves well, will put no man in a quandary, who keeps in mind this simple principle, that the state of mind towards others, which leads one to inflict cruelties on them _blinds the inflicter to the real nature of his own acts_. To him, they do not _seem_ to be cruelties; consequently, when speaking of such treatment toward such persons, he will protest that it is not cruelty; though if inflicted upon himself or his friends, he would indignantly stigmatize it as atrocious barbarity. The objector equally overlooks another every-day fact of human nature, which is this, that cruelties invariably cease to _seem_ cruelties when the _habit_ is formed though previously the mind regarded them as such, and shrunk from them with horror.
The following fact, related by the late lamented THOMAS PRINGLE, whose Life and Poems have published in England, is an appropriate illustration. Mr. Pringle states it on the authority of Captain W. F. Owen, of the Royal Navy.
“When his Majesty’s ships, the Leven and the Barracouta, employed in surveying the coast of Africa, were at Mozambique, in 1823, the officers were introduced to the family of Senor Manuel Pedro d’Almeydra, a native of Portugal, who was a considerable merchant settled on that coast; and it was an opinion agreed in by all, that Donna Sophia d’Almeydra was the most superior woman they had seen since they left England, Captain Owen, the leader of the expedition, expressing to Senor d’Almeydra his detestation of slavery, the Senor replied, ‘You will not be long here before you change your sentiments. Look at my Sophia there. Before she would marry me, she made me promise that I should give up the slave trade. When we first settled at Mozambique, she was continually interceding for the slaves, and she _constantly wept when I punished them_; and now she is among the slaves front morning to night; she regulates the whole of my slave establishment; she inquires into every offence committed by them, pronounces sentence upon the offender, and _stands by and sees them punished_.’
“To this, Mr. Pringle, who was himself for six years a resident of the English settlement at the Cape of Good Hope, adds, ‘The writer of this article has seen, in the course of five or six years, as great a change upon English ladies and gentleman of respectability, as that described to have taken place in Donna Sophia d’Almeydra; and one of the individuals whom he has in his eye, while he writes this passage, lately confessed to him this melancholy change, remarking at the same time, ‘how altered I am in my feelings with regard to slavery. I do not appear to myself the same person I was on my arrival in this colony, and if I would give the world for the feelings I then had, I could not recall them.'”
Slaveholders know full well that familiarity with slavery produces indifference to its cruelties and reconciles the mind to them. The late Judge Tucker, a Virginia slaveholder and professor of law in the University of William and Mary, in the appendix to his edition of Blackstone’s Commentaries, part 2, pp. 56, 57, commenting on the law of Virginia previous to 1792, which outlawed fugitive slaves, says:
“Such are the cruelties to which slavery gives rise, such the horrors to which the mind becomes _reconciled_ by its adoption.”
The following facts from the pen of CHARLES STUART, happily illustrate the same principle:
“A young lady, the daughter of a Jamaica planter, was sent at an early age to school to England, and after completing her education, returned to her native country.
“She is now settled with her husband and family in England. I visited her near Bath, early last spring, (1834.) Conversing on the above subject, the paralyzing effects of slaveholding on the heart, she said:
“‘While at school in England, I often thought with peculiar tenderness of the kindness of a slave who had nursed and carried me about. Upon returning to my father’s, one of my first inquiries was about him. I was deeply afflicted to find that he was on the point of undergoing a “law flogging for having run away.” I threw myself at my father’s feet and implored with tears, his pardon; but my father steadily replied, that it would ruin the discipline of the plantation, and that the punishment must take place. I wept in vain, and retired so grieved and disgusted, that for some days after, I could scarcely bear with patience, the sight of my own father. But many months had not elapsed ere _I was as ready as any body_ to seize the domestic whip, _and flog my slaves without hesitation_.’
“This lady is one of the most Christian and noble minds of my acquaintance. She and her husband distinguished themselves several years ago, in Jamaica, by immediately emancipating their slaves.”
“A lady, now in the West Indies, was sent in her infancy, to her friends, near Belfast, in Ireland, for education. She remained under their charge from five to fifteen years of age, and grew up every thing which her friends could wish. At fifteen, she returned to the West Indies–was married–and after some years paid her friends near Belfast, a second visit. Towards white people, she was the same elegant, and interesting woman as before; apparently full of every virtuous and tender feeling; but towards the colored people she was like a tigress. If Wilberforce’s name was mentioned, she would say, ‘Oh, I wish we had the wretch in the West Indies, I would be one of the first to help to tear his heart out!’–and then she would tell of the manner in which the West Indian ladies used to treat their slaves. ‘I have often,’ she said, ‘when my women have displeased me, snatched their baby from their bosom, and running with it to a well, have tied my shawl round its shoulders and pretended to be drowning it: oh, it was so funny to hear the mother’s screams!’–and then she laughed almost convulsively at the recollection.”
Mr. JOHN M. NELSON, a native of Virginia, whose testimony is on a preceding page, furnishes a striking illustration of the principle in his own case. He says:
“When I was quite a child, I recollect it grieved me very much to see one tied up to be whipped, and I used to intercede _with tears in their behalf_, and _mingle my cries with theirs_, and feel almost willing to take part of the punishment. Yet such is the hardening nature of such scenes, that from this kind of commiseration for the suffering slave, I became so blunted that I could not only witness their stripes with composure, but _myself_ inflict them, and that without remorse. When I was perhaps fourteen or fifteen years of age, I undertook to correct a young fellow named Ned, for some supposed offence, I think it was leaving a bridle out of its proper place; he being larger and stronger than myself took hold of my arms and held me, in order to prevent my striking him; this I considered the height of insolence, and cried for help, when my father and mother both came running to my rescue. My father stripped and tied him, and took him into the orchard, where switches were plenty, and directed me to whip him; when one switch wore out he supplied me with others. After I had whipped him a while, he fell on his knees to implore forgiveness, and I kicked him in the face; my father said, ‘don’t kick him but whip him,’ this I did until his back was literally covered with _welts_.”
W.C. GILDERSLEEVE, Esq., a native of Georgia, now elder of the Presbyterian church, Wilkes-barre, Penn. after describing the flogging of a slave, in which his hands were tied together, and the slave hoisted by a rope, so that his feet could not touch the ground; in which condition one hundred lashes were inflicted, says:
“I stood by and witnessed the whole without feeling the least compassion; so _hardening_ is the influence of slavery that it _very much destroys feeling for the slave_.”
Mrs. CHILD, in her admirable “Appeal,” has the following remarks:
“The ladies who remove from the free States into the slaveholding ones almost invariably write that the sight of slavery was at first exceedingly painful; but that they soon become habituated to it; and after a while, they are very apt to vindicate the system, upon the ground that it is extremely convenient to have such submissive servants. This reason was actually given by a lady of my acquaintance, who is considered an unusually fervent Christian. Yet Christianity expressly teaches us to love our neighbor as ourselves. This shows how dangerous it is, for even the best of us, to become _accustomed_ to what is wrong.
“A judicious and benevolent friend lately told me the story of one of her relatives, who married a slave owner, and removed to his plantation. The lady in question was considered very amiable, and had a serene, affectionate expression of countenance. After several years residence among her slaves, she visited New England. ‘Her history was written in her face,’ said my friend; ‘its expression had changed into that of a fiend. She brought but few slaves with her; and those few were of course compelled to perform additional labor. One faithful negro woman nursed the twins of her mistress, and did all the washing, ironing, and scouring. If, after a sleepless night with the restless babes, (driven from the bosom of their mother,) she performed her toilsome avocations with diminished activity, her mistress, with her own lady-like hands, applied the cowskin, and the neighborhood resounded with the cries of her victim. The instrument of punishment was actually kept hanging in the entry, to the no small disgust of her New England visitors. ‘For my part,’ continued my friend, ‘I did not try to be polite to her; for I was not hypocrite enough to conceal my indignation.'”
The fact that the greatest cruelties may be exercised quite unconsciously when cruelty has become a habit, and that at the same time, the mind may feel great sympathy and commiseration towards other persons and even towards irrational animals, is illustrated in the case of Tameriane the Great. In his Life, written by himself, he speaks with the greatest sincerity and tenderness of his grief at having accidentally crushed an ant; and yet he ordered melted lead to be poured down the throats of certain persons who drank wine contrary to his commands. He was manifestly sincere in thinking himself humane, and when speaking of the most atrocious cruelties perpetrated by himself, it does not seem to ruffle in the least the self-complacency with which he regards his own humanity and piety. In one place he says, “I never undertook anything but I commenced it placing my faith on God”–and he adds soon after, “the people of Shiraz took part with Shah Mansur, and put my governor to death; I therefore ordered _a general massacre of all the inhabitants_.”
It is one of the most common caprices of human nature, for the heart to become by habit, not only totally insensible to certain forms of cruelty, which at first gave it inexpressible pain, but even to find its chief amusement in such cruelties, till utterly intoxicated by their stimulation; while at the same time the mind seems to be pained as keenly as ever, at forms of cruelty to which it has not become accustomed, thus retaining _apparently_ the same general susceptibilities. Illustrations of this are to be found every where; one happens to lie before us. Bourgoing, in his history of modern Spain, speaking of the bull fights, the barbarous national amusement of the Spaniards, says:
“Young ladies, old men, people of all ages and of all characters are present, and yet the habit of attending these bloody festivals does not correct their weakness or their timidity, nor injure the sweetness of their manners. I have moreover known foreigners, distinguished by the gentleness of their manners, who experienced at first seeing a bull-fight such very violent emotions as made them turn pale, and they became ill; but, notwithstanding, this entertainment became afterwards an irresistible attraction, without operating any revolution in their characters.” Modern State of Spain, by J. F. Bourgoing, Minister Plenipotentiary from France to the Court of Madrid, Vol ii., page 342.
It is the _novelty_ of cruelty, rather than the _degree_, which repels most minds. Cruelty in a _new_ form, however slight, will often pain a mind that is totally unmoved by the most horrible cruelties in a form to which it is _accustomed_. When Pompey was at the zenith of his popularity in Rome, he ordered some elephants to be tortured in the amphitheatre for the amusement of the populace; this was the first time they had witnessed the torture of those animals, and though for years accustomed to witness in the same place, the torture of lions, tigers, leopards, and almost all sorts of wild beasts, as well as that of men of all nations, and to shout acclamations over their agonies, yet, this _novel form_ of cruelty so shocked the beholders, that the most popular man in Rome was execrated as a cruel monster, and came near falling a victim to the fury of those who just before were ready to adore him.
We will now briefly notice another objection, somewhat akin to the preceding, and based mainly upon the same and similar fallacies.
OBJECTION III.–‘SLAVEHOLDERS ARE PROVERBIAL FOR THEIR KINDNESS, HOSPITALITY, BENEVOLENCE, AND GENEROSITY.’
Multitudes scout as fictions the cruelties inflicted upon slaves, because slaveholders are famed for their courtesy and hospitality. They tell us that their generous and kind attentions to their guests, and their well-known sympathy for the suffering, sufficiently prove the charges of cruelty brought against them to be calumnies, of which their uniform character is a triumphant refutation.
Now that slaveholders are proverbially hospitable to their guests, and spare neither pains nor expense in ministering to their accommodation and pleasure, is freely admitted and easily accounted for. That those who make their inferiors work for them, without pay, should be courteous and hospitable to those of their equals and superiors whose good opinions they desire, is human nature in its every-day dress. The objection consists of a fact and an inference: the fact, that slaveholders have a special care to the accommodation of their _guests;_ the inference, that therefore they must seek the comfort of their _slaves_–that as they are bland and obliging to their equals, they must be mild and condescending to their inferiors–that as the wrongs of their own grade excite their indignation, and their woes move their sympathies, they must be touched by those of their chattels–that as they are full of pains-taking toward those whose good opinions and good offices they seek, they will, of course, show special attention to those to whose good opinions they are indifferent, and whose good offices they can _compel_–that as they honor the literary and scientific, they must treat with high consideration those to whom they deny the alphabet–that as they are courteous to certain _persons_, they must be so to “property”–eager to anticipate the wishes of visitors, they cannot but gratify those of their vassals–jealous for the rights of the Texans, quick to feel at the disfranchisement of Canadians and of Irishmen, alive to the oppressions of the Greeks and the Poles, they must feel keenly for their _negroes!_ Such conclusions from such premises do not call for serious refutation. Even a half-grown boy, who should argue, that because men have certain feelings toward certain persons in certain circumstances, they must have the same feelings toward all persons in all circumstances, or toward persons in opposite circumstances, of totally different grades, habits, and personal peculiarities, might fairly be set down as a hopeless simpleton: and yet, men of sense and reflection on other subjects, seem bent upon stultifying themselves by just such shallow inferences from the fact, that slaveholders are hospitable and generous to certain persons in certain grades of society belonging to their own caste. On the ground of this reasoning, all the crimes ever committed may be disproved, by showing, that their perpetrators were hospitable and generous to those who sympathized and co-operated with them. To prove that a man does not hate one of his neighbors, it is only necessary to show that he loves another; to make it appear that he does not treat contemptuously the ignorant, he has only to show that he bows respectfully to the learned; to demonstrate that he does not disdain his inferiors, lord it over his dependents, and grind the faces of the poor, he need only show that he is polite to the rich, pays deference to titles and office, and fawns for favor upon those above him! The fact that a man always smiles on his customers, proves that he never scowls at those who dun him! and since he has always a melodious “good morning!” for “gentlemen of property and standing,” it is certain that he never snarls at beggars. He who is quick to make room for a doctor of divinity, will, of course, see to it that he never runs against a porter; and he who clears the way for a lady, will be sure never to rub against a market woman, or jostle an apple-seller’s board. If accused of beating down his laundress to the lowest fraction, of making his boot-black call a dozen times for his pay, of higgling and screwing a fish boy till he takes off two cents, or of threatening to discharge his seamstress unless she will work for a shilling a day, how easy to brand it all as slander, by showing that he pays his minister in advance, is generous in Christmas presents, gives a splendid new-year’s party, expends hundreds on elections, and puts his name with a round sum on the subscription paper of the missionary society.
Who can forget the hospitality of King Herod, that model of generosity “beyond all ancient fame,” who offered half his kingdom to a guest, as a compensation for an hour’s amusement.–Could such a noble spirit have murdered John the Baptist? Incredible! Joab too! how his soft heart was pierced at the exile of Absalom! and how his bowels yearned to restore him to his home! Of course, it is all fiction about his assassinating his nephew, Amasa, and Abner the captain of the host! Since David twice spared the life of Saul when he came to murder him, wept on the neck of Jonathan, threw himself upon the ground in anguish when his child sickened, and bewailed, with a broken heart, the loss of Absalom–it proves that he did not coolly plot and deliberately consummate the murder of Uriah! As the Government of the United States generously gave a township of land to General La Fayette, it proves that they have never defrauded the Indians of theirs! So the fact, that the slaveholders of the present Congress are, to a man, favorable to recognizing the independence of Texas, with her fifty or sixty thousand inhabitants, _before she has achieved it_, and before it is recognized by any other government, proves that these same slaveholders do _not oppose_ the recognition of Hayti, with her million of inhabitants, whose independence was achieved nearly half a century ago, and which is recognized by the most powerful governments on earth!
But, seriously, no man is so slightly versed in human nature as not to know that men habitually exercise the most opposite feelings, and indulge in the most opposite practices toward different persons or different classes of persons around them. No man has ever lived who was more celebrated for his scrupulous observance of the most exact justice, and for the illustration furnished in his life of the noblest natural virtues, than the Roman Cato. His strict adherence to the nicest rules of equity–his integrity, honor, and incorruptible faith–his jealous watchfulness over the rights of his fellow citizens, and his generous devotion to their interest, procured for him the sublime appellation of “The Just.” Towards _freemen_ his life was a model of every thing just and noble: but to his slaves he was a monster. At his meals, when the dishes were not done to his liking, or when his slaves were careless or inattentive in serving, he would seize a thong and violently beat them, in presence of his guests.–When they grew old or diseased, and were no longer serviceable, however long and faithfully they might have served him, he either turned them adrift and left them to perish, or starved them to death in his own family. No facts in his history are better authenticated than these.
No people were ever more hospitable and munificent than the Romans, and none more touched with the sufferings of others. Their public theatres often rung with loud weeping, thousands sobbing convulsively at once over fictitious woes and imaginary sufferers: and yet these same multitudes would shout amidst the groans of a thousand dying gladiators, forced by their conquerors to kill each other in the amphitheatre for the _amusement_ of the public.[22]
[Footnote 22: Dr. Leland, in his “Necessity of a Divine Revelation,” thus describes the prevalence of these shows among the Romans:–“They were exhibited at the funerals of great and rich men, and on many other occasions, by the Roman consuls, praetors, aediles, senators, knights, priests, and almost all that bore great offices in the state, as well as by the emperors; and in general, by all that had a mind to make an interest with the people, who were extravagantly fond of those kinds of shows. Not only the men, but the women, ran eagerly after them; who were, by the prevalence of custom, so far divested of that compassion and softness which is natural to the sex, that they took a pleasure in seeing them kill one another, and only desired that they should fall genteelly, and in an agreeable attitude. Such was the frequency of those shows, and so great the number of men that were killed on those occasions, that Lipsius says, no war caused such slaughter of mankind, as did these sports of pleasure, throughout the several provinces of the vast Roman empire.”–_Leland’s Neces. of Div. Rev._ vol. ii. p. 51.]
Alexander, the tyrant of Phaeres, sobbed like a child over the misfortunes of the Trojan queens, when the tragedy of Andromache and Hecuba was played before him; yet he used to murder his subjects every day for no crime, and without even setting up the pretence of any, but merely _to make himself sport_.
The fact that slaveholders may be full of benevolence and kindness toward their equals and toward whites generally, even so much so as to attract the esteem and admiration of all, while they treat with the most inhuman neglect their own slaves, is well illustrated by a circumstance mentioned by the Rev. Dr. CHANNING, of Boston, (who once lived in Virginia,) is his work on slavery, p. 162, 1st edition:–
“I cannot,” says the doctor, “forget my feelings on visiting a hospital belonging to the plantation of a gentleman _highly esteemed for his virtues_, and whose manners and conversation expressed much _benevolence_ and _conscientiousness_. When I entered with him the hospital, the first object on which my eye fell was a young woman very ill, probably approaching death. She was stretched on the floor. Her head rested on something like a pillow, but her body and limbs were extended on the hard boards. The owner, I doubt not, had, at least, as much kindness as myself; but he was so used to see the slaves living without common comforts, that the idea of unkindness in the present instance did not enter his mind.”
Mr. GEORGE A. AVERY, an elder of a Presbyterian church in Rochester, N.Y. who resided some years in Virginia, says:–
“On one occasion I was crossing the plantation and approaching the house of a friend, when I met him, _rifle in hand_, in pursuit of one of his negroes, declaring he would shoot him in a moment if he got his eye upon him. It appeared that the slave had refused to be flogged, and ran off to avoid the consequences; _and yet the generous hospitality of this man to myself, and white friends generally, scarcely knew any bounds._
“There were amongst my slaveholding friends and acquaintances, persons who were as _humane_ and _conscientious_ as men can be, and persist in the impious claim of _property_ in a fellow being. Still I can recollect but _one instance_ of corporal punishment, whether the subject were male or female, in which the infliction was not on the _bare back_ with the _raw hide_, or a similar instrument, the subject being _tied_ during the operation to a post or tree. The _exception_ was under the following circumstances. I had taken a walk with a friend on his plantation, and approaching his gang of slaves, I sat down whilst he proceeded to the spot where they were at work; and addressing himself somewhat earnestly to a female who was wielding the hoe, in a moment caught up what I supposed a _tobacco stick_, (a stick some three feet in length on which the tobacco, when out, is suspended to dry.) about the size of a _man’s wrist_, and laid on a number of blows furiously over her head. The woman crouched, and seemed stunned with the blows, but presently recommenced the motion of her hoe.”
Dr. DAVID NELSON, a native of Tennessee, and late president of Marion College, Missouri, in a lecture at Northampton, Mass. in January, 1839, made the following statement:–
“I remember a young lady who played well on the piano, and was very ready to weep over any fictitious tale of suffering. I was present when one of her slaves lay on the floor in a high fever, and we feared she might not recover. I saw that young lady _stamp upon her with her feet;_ and the only remark her mother made was, ‘I am afraid Evelina is too _much_ prejudiced against poor Mary.'”
General WILLIAM EATON, for some years U.S. Consul at Tunis, and commander of the expedition against Tripoli, in 1895, thus gives vent to his feelings at the sight of many hundreds of Sardinians who had been enslaved by the Tunisians:
“Many have died of grief, and the others linger out a life less tolerable than death. Alas! remorse seizes my whole soul when I reflect, that this is indeed but a copy of the very barbarity which _my eyes have seen_ in my own native country. _How frequently_, in the southern states of my own country, have I seen _weeping mothers_ leading the guiltless infant to the sales with as _deep anguish_ as if they led them to the slaughter; and _yet felt my bosom tranquil_ in the view of these aggressions on defenceless humanity. But when I see the same enormities practised upon beings whose complexions and blood claim kindred with my own, _I curse the perpetrators, and weep over the wretched victims of their rapacity._ Indeed, truth and justice demand from me the confession, that the Christian slaves among the barbarians of Africa are treated with more humanity than the African slaves among professing Christians of civilized America; and yet _here_ [in Tunis] sensibility _bleeds at every pore_ for the wretches whom fate has doomed to slavery.”
Rev. H. LYMAN, late pastor of the free Presbyterian Church, Buffalo, N.Y. who spent the winter of 1832-3 at the south, says:–
“In the interior of Mississippi I was invited to the house of a planter, where I was received with great cordiality, and entertained with marked hospitality.
“There I saw a master in the midst of his household slaves. The evening passed most pleasantly, as indeed it must, where assiduous hospitalities are exercised towards the guest.
“Late in the morning, when I had gained the tardy consent of my host to go on my way, as a final act of kindness, he called a slave to show me across the fields by a nearer route to the main road. ‘David,’ said he, ‘go and show this gentleman as far as the post-office. Do you know the big bay tree?’ ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘Do you know where the cotton mill is?’ ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘Where Squire Malcolm’s old field is?’ ‘Y–e–s, sir,’ said David, (beginning to be bewildered). ‘Do you know where Squire Malcolm’s cotton field is?’ ‘No, sir.’ ‘No, sir,’ said the enraged master, _levelling his gun at him_. ‘What do you stand here, saying, Yes, yes, yes, for, when you don’t know?’ All this was accompanied with _threats_ and _imprecations_, and a manner that contrasted strangely with the _religious conversation and gentle manners_ of the previous evening.”
The Rev. JAMES H. DICKEY, formerly a slaveholder in South Carolina, now pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Hennepin, Ill. in his “Review of Nevins’ Biblical Antiquities,” after asserting that slaveholding tends to beget “a spirit of cruelty and tyranny, and to destroy every generous and noble feeling,” (page 33,) he adds the following as a note:–
“It may be that this will be considered censorious, and the proverbial generosity and hospitality of the south will be appealed to as a full confutation of it. The writer thinks he can appreciate southern kindness and hospitality. Having been born in Virginia, raised and educated in South Carolina and Kentucky, he is altogether southern in his feelings, and habits, and modes of familiar conversation. He can say of the south as Cowper said of England, ‘With all thy faults I love thee still, my country.’ And nothing but the abominations of slavery could have induced him willingly to forsake a land endeared to him by all the associations of childhood and youth.
“Yet it is candid to admit that it is not all gold that glitters. There is a fictitious kindness and hospitality. The famous Robin Hood was kind and generous–no man more hospitable–he robbed the rich to supply the necessities of the poor. Others rob the poor to bestow gifts and lavish kindness and hospitality on their rich friends and neighbors. It is an easy matter for a man to appear kind and generous, when he bestows that which others have earned.
“I said, there is a fictitious kindness and hospitality. I once knew a man who left his wife and children three days, without fire-wood, without bread-stuff and without shoes, while the ground was covered with snow–that he might indulge in his cups. And when I attempted to expostulate with him, he took the subject out of my hands, and expatiating on the evils of intemperance more eloquently than I could, concluded by warning me, _with tears_, to avoid the snares of the latter. He had tender feelings, yet a hard heart. I once knew a young lady of polished manners and accomplished education, who would weep with sympathy over the fictitious woes exhibited in a novel. And waking from her reverie of grief, while her eye was yet wet with tears, would call her little waiter, and if she did not appear at the first call, would rap her head with her thimble till my head ached.
“I knew a man who was famed for kindly sympathies. He once took off his shirt and gave it to a poor white man. The same man hired a black man, and gave him for his _daily task_, through the winter, to feed the beasts, keep fires, and make one hundred rails: and in case of failure the lash was applied so freely, that, in the spring, his back was _one continued sore, from his shoulders to his waist_. Yet this man was a professor of religion, and famous for his tender sympathies to white men!”
OBJECTION IV.–‘NORTHERN VISITORS AT THE SOUTH TESTIFY THAT THE SLAVES ARE NOT CRUELLY TREATED.’
ANSWER:–Their knowledge on this point must have been derived, either from the slaveholders and overseers themselves, or from the slaves, or from their own observation. If from the slaveholders, _their_ testimony has already been weighed and found wanting; if they derived it from the slaves, they can hardly be so simple as to suppose that the _guest, associate and friend of the master_, would be likely to draw from his _slaves_ any other testimony respecting his treatment of them, than such as would please _him_. The great shrewdness and tact exhibited by slaves in _keeping themselves out of difficulty_, when close questioned by strangers as to their treatment, cannot fail to strike every accurate observer. The following remarks of CHIEF JUSTICE HENDERSON, a North Carolina slaveholder, in his decision (in 1830,) in the case of the State _versus_ Charity, 2 Devereaux’s North Carolina Reports, 513, illustrate the folly of arguing the good treatment of slaves from their own declarations, _while in the power of their masters_. In the case above cited, the Chief Justice, in refusing to permit a master to give in evidence, declarations made to him by his slave, says of masters and slaves generally–
“The master has an almost _absolute control_ over the body and _mind_ of his slave. The master’s _will_ is the slave’s _will_. All his acts, _all his sayings_, are made with a view to propitiate his master. His confessions are made, not from a love of truth, not from a sense of duty, not to speak a falsehood, but to _please his master_–and it is in vain that his master tells him to speak the truth and conceals from him how he wishes the question answered. The slave _will_ ascertain, or, which is the same thing, think that he has ascertained _the wishes of his master,_ and MOULD HIS ANSWER ACCORDINGLY. We therefore more often get the wishes of the master, or the slave’s belief of his wishes, than the truth.”
The following extract of a letter from the Hon. SETH M. GATES, member elect of the next Congress, furnishes a clue by which to interpret the looks, actions, and protestations of slaves, when in the presence of their masters’ guests, and the pains sometimes taken by slaveholders, in teaching their slaves the art of _pretending_ that they are treated well, love their masters, are happy, &c. The letter is dated Leroy, Jan. 4, 1839.
“I have sent your letter to Rev. Joseph M. Sadd, Castile, Genesee county, who resided five years in a slave state, and left, disgusted with slavery. I trust he will give you some facts. I remember one fact, which his wife witnessed. A relative, where she boarded, returning to his plantation after a temporary absence, was not met by his servants with such demonstrations of joy as was their wont. He ordered his horse put out, took down his whip, ordered his servants to the barn, and gave them a most cruel beating, because they did not run out to meet him, and pretend great attachment to him. Mrs. Sadd had overheard the servants agreeing not to go out, before his return, as they said _they did not love him_–and this led her to watch his conduct to them. This man was a professor of religion!”
If these northern visitors derived their information that the slaves are _not_ cruelly treated from _their own observation_, it amounts to this, _they did not see_ cruelties inflicted on the slaves. To which we reply, that the preceding pages contain testimony from hundreds of witnesses, who testify that they _did see_ the cruelties whereof they affirm. Besides this, they contain the solemn declarations of scores of slaveholders themselves, in all parts of the slave states, that the slaves are cruelly treated. These declarations are moreover fully corroborated, by the laws of slave states, by a multitude of advertisements in their newspapers, describing runaway slaves, by their scars, brands, gashes, maimings, cropped ears, iron collars, chains, &c. &c.
Truly, after the foregoing array of facts and testimony, and after the objectors’ forces have one after another filed off before them, now to march up a phalanx of northern _visitors_, is to beat a retreat. ‘Visitors!’ What insight do casual visitors get into the tempers and daily practices of those whom they visit, or of the treatment that their slaves receive at their hands, especially if these visitors are strangers, and from a region where there are no slaves, and which claims to be opposed to slavery? What opportunity has a stranger, and a temporary guest, to learn the every-day habits and caprices of his host? Oh, these northern visitors tell us they have visited scores of families at the south and never saw a master or mistress whip their slaves. Indeed! They have, doubtless, visited hundreds of families at the north–did they ever see, on such occasions, the father or mother whip their children? If so, they must associate with very ill-bred persons. Because well-bred parents do not whip their children in the presence, or within the hearing of their guests are we to infer that they never do it _out_ of their sight and hearing? But perhaps the fact that these visitors do not _remember_ seeing slaveholders strike their slaves, merely proves, that they had so little feeling for them, that though they might be struck every day in their presence, yet as they were only slaves and ‘niggers,’ it produced no effect upon them; consequently they have no impressions to recall. These visitors have also doubtless _rode_ with scores of slaveholders. Are they quite certain they ever saw them whip their _horses_? and can they recall the persons, times, places, and circumstances? But even if these visitors regarded the slaves with some kind feelings, when they first went to the south, yet being constantly with their oppressors, seeing them used as articles of property, accustomed to hear them charged with all kinds of misdemeanors, their ears filled with complaints of their laziness, carelessness, insolence, obstinacy, stupidity, thefts, elopements, &c. and at the same time, receiving themselves the most gratifying attentions and caresses from the same persons, who, while they make to them these representations of their slaves, are giving them airings in their coaches, making parties for them, taking them on excursions of pleasure, lavishing upon them their choicest hospitalities, and urging them to protract indefinitely their stay–what more natural than for the flattered guest to admire such hospitable people, catch their spirit, and fully sympathize with their feelings toward their slaves, regarding with increased disgust and aversion those who can habitually tease and worry such loveliness and generosity[23]. After the visitor had been in contact with the slave-holding spirit long enough to have imbibed it, (no very tedious process,) a cuff, or even a kick administered to a slave, would not be likely to give him such a shock that his memory would long retain the traces of it. But lest we do these visitors injustice, we will suppose that they carried with them to the south humane feelings for the slave, and that those feelings remained unblunted; still, what opportunity could they have to witness the actual condition of the slaves? They come in contact with the house-servants only, and as a general thing, with none but the select ones of these, the _parlor_-servants; who generally differ as widely in their appearance and treatment from the cooks and scullions in the kitchen, as parlor furniture does from the kitchen utensils. Certain servants are assigned to the parlor, just as certain articles of furniture are selected for it, _to be seen_–and it is no less ridiculous to infer that the kitchen scullions are clothed and treated like those servants who wait at the table, and are in the presence of guests, than to infer that the kitchen is set out with sofas, ottomans, piano-fortes, and full-length mirrors, because the parlor is. But the house-slaves are only a fraction of the whole number. The _field-hands_ constitute the great mass of the slaves, and these the visitors rarely get a glimpse at. They are away at their work by day-break, and do not return to their huts till dark. Their huts are commonly at some distance from the master’s mansion, and the fields in which they labor, generally much farther, and out of sight. If the visitor traverses the plantation, care is taken that he does not go alone; if he expresses a wish to see it, the horses are saddled, and the master or his son gallops the rounds with him; if he expresses a desire to see the slaves at work, his conductor will know _where_ to take him, and _when_, and _which_ of them to show; the overseer, too, knows quite too well the part he has to act on such occasions, to shock the uninitiated ears of the visitors with the shrieks of his victims. It is manifest that visitors can see only the least repulsive parts of slavery, inasmuch as it is wholly at the option of the master, what parts to show them; as a matter of necessity, he can see only the _outside_–and that, like the outside of doorknobs and andirons is furbished up to be _looked at_. So long as it is human nature to wear _the best side out_, so long the northern guests of southern slaveholders will see next to nothing of the reality of slavery. Those visitors may still keep up their autumnal migrations to the slave states, and, after a hasty survey of the tinsel hung before the curtain of slavery, without a single glance behind it, and at the paint and varnish that _cover up_ dead men’s bones, and while those who have hoaxed them with their smooth stories and white-washed specimens of slavery, are tittering at their gullibility, they return in the spring on the same fool’s-errand with their predecessors, retailing their lesson, and mouthing the praises of the masters, and the comforts of the slaves. They now become village umpires in all disputes about the condition of the slaves, and each thence forward ends all controversies with his oracular, “I’ve _seen_, and sure I ought to know.”
[Footnote 23: Well saith the Scripture, “A gift blindeth the eyes.” The slaves understand this, though the guest may not; they know very well that they have no sympathy to expect from their master’s guests; that the good cheer of the “big house,” and the attentions shown them, will generally commit them in their master’s favor, and against themselves. Messrs. Thome and Kimball, in their late work, state the following fact, in illustration of this feeling among the negro apprentices in Jamaica.
“The governor of one of the islands, shortly after his arrival, dined with one of the wealthiest proprietors. The next day one of the negroes of the estate said to another, “De new gubner been _poison’d_.” “What dat you say?” inquired the other in astonishment, “De gubner been _poison’d_! Dah, now!–How him poisoned?” “_Him eat massa’s turtle soup last night_,” said the shrewd negro. The other took his meaning at once; and his sympathy for the governor was turned into concern for himself, when he perceived that the poison was one from which he was likely to suffer more than his excellency.”–_Emancipation in the West Indies_, p. 334.]
But all northern visitors at the south are not thus easily gulled. Many of them, as the preceding pages show, have too much sense to be caught with chaff.
We may add here, that those classes of visitors whose representations of the treatment of slaves are most influential in moulding the opinions of the free states, are ministers of the gospel, agents of benevolent societies, and teachers who have traveled and temporarily resided in the slave states–classes of persons less likely than any others to witness cruelties, because slaveholders generally take more pains to keep such visitors in ignorance than others, because their vocations would furnish them fewer opportunities for witnessing them, and because they come in contact with a class of society in which fewer atrocities are committed than in any other, and that too, under circumstances which make it almost impossible for them to witness those which are actually committed.
Of the numerous classes of persons from the north who temporarily reside in the slave states, the mechanics who find employment on the _plantations_, are the only persons who are in circumstances to look “behind the scenes.” Merchants, pedlars, venders of patents, drovers, speculators, and almost all descriptions of persons who go from the free states to the south to make money see little of slavery, except _upon the road_, at public inns, and in villages and cities.
Let not the reader infer from what has been said, that the _parlor_-slaves, chamber-maids, &c. in the slave states are not treated with cruelty–far from it. They often experience terrible inflictions; not generally so terrible or so frequent as the field-hands, and very rarely in the presence of guests[24] House-slaves are for the most part treated far better than plantation-slaves, and those under the immediate direction of the master and mistress, than those under overseers and drivers. It is quite worthy of remark, that of the thousands of northern men who have visited the south, and are always lauding the kindness of slaveholders and the comfort of the slaves, protesting that they have never seen cruelties inflicted on them, &c. each perhaps, without exception, has some story to tell which reveals, better perhaps than the most barbarous butchery could do, a public sentiment toward slaves, showing that the most cruel inflictions must of necessity be the constant portion of the slaves.
[Footnote 24: Rev. JOSEPH M. SADD, a Presbyterian clergyman, in Castile, Genesee county, N.Y. recently from Missouri, where he has preached five years, in the midst of slaveholders, says, in a letter just received, speaking of the pains taken by slaveholders to conceal from the eyes of strangers and visitors, the cruelties which they inflict upon their slaves–
“It is difficult to be an eye-witness of these things; the master and mistress, almost invariably punish their slaves only in the presence of themselves and other slaves.”]
Though facts of this kind lie thick in every corner, the reader will, we are sure, tolerate even a needless illustration, if told that it is from the pen of N.P. Rogers, Esq. of Concord, N.H. who, whatever he writes, though it be, as in this case, a mere hasty letter, always finds readers to the end.
“At a court session at Guilford, Stafford county, N.H. in August, 1837, the Hon. Daniel M. Durell, of Dover, formerly Chief Justice of the Common Pleas for that state, and a member of Congress, was charging the abolitionists, in presence of several gentlemen of the bar, at their boarding house, with exaggerations and misrepresentations of slave treatment at the south. ‘One instance in particular,’ he witnessed, he said, where he ‘knew they misrepresented. It was in the Congregational meeting house at Dover. He was passing by, and saw a crowd entering and about the door; and on inquiry, found that _abolition was going on in there_. He stood in the entry for a moment, and found the Englishman, Thompson, was holding forth. The fellow was speaking of the treatment of slaves; and he said it was no uncommon thing for masters, when exasperated with the slave, to hang him up by the two thumbs, and flog him. I knew the fellow lied there,’ said the judge, ‘for I had traveled through the south, from Georgia north, and I never saw a single instance of the kind. The fellow said it was a common thing.’ ‘Did you see any _exasperated masters_, Judge,’ said I, ‘in your journey?’ ‘No sir,’ said he, ‘not an individual instance.’ ‘You hardly are able to convict Mr. Thompson of falsehood, then, Judge,’ said I, ‘if I understood you right. He spoke, as I understood you, of _exasperated masters_–and you say you did not see any. Mr. Thompson did not say it was common for masters in good humor to hang up their slaves.’ The Judge did not perceive the materiality of the distinction. ‘Oh, they misrepresent and lie about this treatment of the niggers,’ he continued. ‘In going through all the states I visited, I do not now remember a single instance of cruel treatment. Indeed, I remember of seeing but one nigger struck, during my whole journey. There was one instance. We were riding in the stage, pretty early one morning, and we met a black fellow, driving a span of horses, and a load (I think he said) of hay. The fellow turned out before we got to him, clean down into the ditch, as far as he could get. He knew, you see, what to depend on, if he did not give the road. Our driver, as we passed the fellow, fetched him a smart crack with his whip across the chops. He did not make any noise, though I guess it hurt him some–he grinned.–Oh, no! these fellows exaggerate. The niggers, as a general thing, are kindly treated. There may be exceptions, but I saw nothing of it.’ (By the way, the Judge did not know there were any abolitionists present.) ‘What did you _do_ to the driver, Judge,’ said I, ‘for striking that man?’ ‘Do,’ said he, ‘I did nothing to him, to be sure.’ ‘What did you _say_ to him, sir?’ said I. ‘Nothing,’ he replied: ‘I said nothing to him.’ ‘What did the other passengers do?’ said I. ‘Nothing, sir,’ said the Judge. ‘The fellow turned out the white of his eye, but he did not make any noise.’ ‘Did the driver say any thing, Judge, when he struck the man?’ ‘Nothing,’ said the Judge, ‘only he _damned him_, and told him he’d learn him to keep out of the reach of his whip.’ ‘Sir,’ said I, ‘if George Thompson had told this story, in the warmth of an anti-slavery speech, I should scarcely have credited it. I have attended many anti-slavery meetings, and I never heard an instance of such _cold-blooded, wanton, insolent_, DIABOLICAL cruelty as this; and, sir, if I live to attend another meeting, I shall relate this, and give Judge Durell’s name as the witness of it.’ An infliction of the most insolent character, entirely unprovoked, on a perfect stranger, who had showed the utmost civility, in giving all the road, and only could not get beyond the long reach of the driver’s whip–and he a stage driver, a class _generous_ next to the sailor, in the sober hour of morning–and _borne in silence_–and _told to show that the colored man of the south was kindly treated_–all evincing, to an unutterable extent, that the temper of the south toward the slave is merciless, even to _diabolism_–and that the north regards him with, if possible, a more fiendish indifference still!”
It seems but an act of simple justice to say, in conclusion, that many of the slaveholders from whom our northern visitors derive their information of the “good treatment” of the slave, may not design to deceive them. Such visitors are often, perhaps generally brought in contact with the better class of slaveholders, whose slaves are really better fed, clothed, lodged, and housed; more moderately worked; more seldom whipped, and with less severity, than the slaves generally. Those masters in speaking of the good condition of their slaves, and asserting that they are treated _well_, use terms that are not _absolute_ but _comparative_: and it may be, and doubtless often is true that their stares are treated well _as slaves_, in comparison with the treatment received by slaves generally. So the overseers of such slaves, and the slaves themselves, may, without lying or designing to mislead, honestly give the same testimony. As the great body of slaves within their knowledge _fare worse_, it is not strange that, when speaking of the treatment on their own plantation, they should call it _good_.
OBJECTION V.–‘IT IS FOR THE INTEREST OF THE MASTERS TO TREAT THEIR SLAVES WELL.’
So it is for the interest of the drunkard to quit his cups; for the glutton to curb his appetite; for the debauchee to bridle his lust; for the sluggard to be up betimes; for the spendthrift to be economical, and for all sinners to stop sinning. Even if it were for the interest of masters to treat their slaves well, he must be a novice who thinks _that_ a proof that the slaves _are_ well treated. The whole history of man is a record of real interests sacrificed to present gratification. If all men’s actions were consistent with their best interests, folly and sin would be words without meaning.
If the objector means that it is for the pecuniary interests of masters to treat their slaves well, and thence infers their good treatment, we reply, that though the love of money is strong, yet appetite and lust, pride, anger and revenge, the love of power and honor, are each an overmatch for it; and when either of them is roused by a sudden stimulant, the love of money worsted in the grapple with it. Look at the hourly lavish outlays of money to procure a momentary gratification for those passions and appetites. As the desire for money is, in the main, merely a desire for the means of gratifying _other_ desires, or rather for one of the means, it must be the _servant_ not the sovereign of those desires, to whose gratification its only use is to minister. But even if the love of money were the strongest human passion, who is simple enough to believe that it is all the time so powerfully excited, that no other passion or appetite can get the mastery over it? Who does not know that gusts of rage,