CONSEQUENCES OF THIS EXCLUSION.
Thus do decisions of courts, as well as statutes, conspire to exhibit this rule in revolting features. If we glance for one moment at its consequences, there will be new occasion to condemn it.
Looking at it in a single aspect, consequences appear which baffle the imagination to picture. Throughout the States where this exclusion prevails, any white person may torture and maltreat a slave in any conceivable manner and to any extent, or he may overwork and starve him, or he may whip him to death, murder him in cold blood, or burn him alive; and so long as he is the only white person present, the laws afford him the most complete immunity from punishment, except in Delaware and Louisiana, where also he is safe, if only slaves are present. It is true that the same laws profess to punish the murder of a slave as a capital offence, and also to punish severely any mutilation or other cruel treatment of him. But such laws are nothing. So long as the slave himself is not allowed to testify, so long the laws will be justly obnoxious to the charge of actually authorizing a white person to inflict any outrage upon him, even to the extent of taking life with impunity. Every white person with only slaves about him, or, it may be, with only colored persons, slave or free, has a letter of license to commit any outrage which passion or wickedness may prompt.
The exposed condition of slaves, on account of incapacity to testify, was recognized in the early legislation of South Carolina. The preamble to Section 39 of the Act of 1740 begins as follows: “And whereas, by reason of the extent and distance of plantations in this Province, the inhabitants are far removed from each other, and many cruelties may be committed on slaves, because no white person may be present to give evidence of the same.”[67] Thus, even out of the mouth of South Carolina, before this State had learned to sacrifice everything to Slavery, we learn that “many cruelties may be committed on slaves” under operation of this rule. But no such confession was needed. The truth is apparent to the most superficial observer. Had South Carolina, at that early day, followed the suggestion of her own statute, she would have begun a career of civilization under which Slavery itself must have disappeared.
The exposed condition of slaves on this account is curiously attested by other statutes of the Slave States, showing that plantations far removed from cities, and at considerable distance from each other, are committed to the direction of a single white overseer, who, from the circumstance that he is the only white person present, is placed beyond all restraint or correction. Thus, in South Carolina,[68] in Florida,[69] in Georgia,[70] and in Louisiana,[71] the statutes exact the continued residence of one white person on every plantation, with a specified number of working slaves. These statutes had their origin in no sentiment of justice or humanity, but, as appears in early declarations, in a desire to prevent the harboring of fugitive slaves, who might find asylum among those exclusively of their own color. If, however, it was thought necessary for any purpose to require by penalties the continued residence of even one white person on a slave plantation, it is reasonable to infer that there must be many plantations where there is only one white person. And to one white person thus situated, and thus removed from all check or observation, the law commits the government and guardianship of slaves on a plantation, and promises him in advance the most complete impunity for all that he does, even to the extent of cold-blooded murder, provided only that he is careful to let no white person see the deed.
This proscription is not confined to slaves. Free colored persons, under operation of this rule, are exposed to the same fearful wrongs. A white person may treat them as he treats a slave, and they are absolutely without remedy. It would be difficult to point out any law, the spawn of cruelty or tyranny, in ancient or modern times, exceeding in atrocity that by which a free population is thus despoiled of protection on account of color. It was one of the boasts of Magna Charta that justice should be denied to no person,—“Nulli negabimus justitiam”; but under this rule it is denied to a whole race.
Of course, the race, whether bond or free, which is thus despoiled, suffers. But this is not all. Justice itself also suffers. Crime, even against white persons in the presence of colored persons, must go unpunished.
And yet this proscription is adopted and enforced in the courts of the United States.
There are other aspects of this subject which invite attention. History has her lessons. Reason also speaks with a voice that must be heard. It becomes important, therefore, to consider this proscription, first, in its origin and the examples of history, and, secondly, in the grounds on which it is founded.