The Conflict with Slavery / Part 1 from The Works of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume VII

by John Greenleaf Whittier

I.

A FRIEND has banded me a late number of your paper, containing a brief notice of a pamphlet, which I have recently published on the subject of slavery.

From an occasional perusal of your paper, I have formed a favorable opinion of your talent and independence. Compelled to dissent from some of your political sentiments, I still give you full credit for the lofty tone of sincerity and manliness with which these sentiments are avowed and defended.

I perceive that since the adjustment of the tariff question a new subject of discontent and agitation seems to engross your attention.

The "accursed tariff" has no sooner ceased to be the stone of stumbling and the rock of offence, than the "abolition doctrines of the Northern enthusiasts," as you are pleased to term the doctrines of your own Jefferson, furnish, in your opinion, a sufficient reason for poising the "Ancient Dominion" on its sovereignty, and rousing every slaveowner to military preparations, until the entire South, from the Potomac to the Gulf, shall bristle with bayonets, "like quills upon the fretful porcupine."

In proof of a conspiracy against your "vested rights," you have commenced publishing copious extracts from the pamphlets and periodicals of the abolitionists of New England and New York. An extract from my own pamphlet you have headed "The Fanatics," and in introducing it to your readers you inform them that "it exhibits, in strong colors, the morbid spirit of that false and fanatical philanthropy, which is at work in the Northern states, and, to some extent, in the South."

Gentlemen, so far as I am personally concerned in the matter, I feel no disposition to take exceptions to any epithets which you may see fit to apply to me or my writings. A humble son of New England—a tiller of her rugged soil, and a companion of her unostentatious yeomanry—it matters little, in any personal consideration of the subject, whether the voice of praise or opprobrium reaches me from beyond the narrow limits of my immediate neighborhood.

But when I find my opinions quoted as the sentiment of New England, and then denounced as dangerous, "false and fanatical;" and especially when I see them made the occasion of earnest appeals to the prejudices and sectional jealousies of the South, it becomes me to endeavor to establish their truths, and defend them from illegitimate influences and unjust suspicions.

In the first place, then, let me say, that if it be criminal to publicly express a belief that it is in the power of the slave states to emancipate their slaves, with profit and safety to themselves, and that such is their immediate duty, a majority of the people of New England are wholly guiltless. Of course, all are nominally opposed to slavery; but upon the little band of abolitionists should the anathemas of the slave- holder be directed, for they are the agitators of whom you complain, men who are acting under a solemn conviction of duty, and who are bending every energy of their minds to the accomplishment of their object.

And that object is the overthrow of slavery in the United States, by such means only as are sanctioned by law, humanity, and religion.

I shall endeavor, gentlemen, as briefly as may be, to give you some of our reasons for opposing slavery and seeking its abolition; and, secondly, to explain our mode of operation; to disclose our plan of emancipation, fully and entirely. We wish to do nothing darkly; frank republicans, we acknowledge no double-dealing. At this busy season of the year, I cannot but regret that I have not leisure for such a deliberate examination of the subject as even my poor ability might warrant. My remarks, penned in the intervals of labor, must necessarily be brief, and wanting in coherence.

We seek the abolishment of slavery

1. Because it is contrary to the law of God.

In your paper of the 2d of 7th mo., the same in which you denounce the "false and fanatical philanthropy" of abolitionists, you avow yourselves members of the Bible Society, and bestow warm and deserved encomiums on the "truly pious undertaking of sending the truth among all nations."

You, therefore, gentlemen, whatever others may do, will not accuse me of "fanaticism," if I endeavor to sustain my first great reason for opposing slavery by a reference to the volume of inspiration:

"Therefore, all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you do ye even so to them."

"Wherefore now let the fear of the Lord be upon you, take heed and do it; for there is no iniquity with the Lord, nor respect of persons."

"Is not this the fast that I have chosen? To loose the bands of wickedness; to undo the heavy burdens and let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?"

"If a man be found stealing any of his brethren, and maketh merchandise of him, or selling him, that thief shall die."

"Of a truth, I perceive that God is no respecter of persons."

"And he that stealeth a man and selleth him, or if he be found in his hands, he shall surely be put to death."

2. Because it is an open violation of all human equality, of the laws of Nature and of nations.

The fundamental principle of all equal and just law is contained in the following extract from Blackstone's Commentaries, Introduction, sec. 2.

"The rights which God and Nature have established, and which are therefore called natural rights, such as life and liberty, need not the aid of human laws to be more effectually vested in every man than they are; neither do they receive any additional strength when declared by municipal laws to be inviolable: on the contrary, no human legislation has power to abridge or destroy there, unless the owner shall himself commit some act that amounts to a forfeiture."

Has the negro committed such offence? Above all, has his infant child forfeited its unalienable right?

Surely it can be no act of the innocent child.

Yet you must prove the forfeiture, or no human legislation can deprive that child of its freedom.

Its black skin constitutes the forfeiture!

What! throw the responsibility upon God! Charge the common Father of the white and the black, He, who is no respecter of persons, with plundering His unoffending children of all which makes the boon of existence desirable; their personal liberty!

"We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."— [Declaration of Independence, from the pen of Thomas Jefferson.]

In this general and unqualified declaration, on the 4th of July, 1776, all the people of the United States, without distinction of color, were proclaimed free, by the delegates of the people of those states assembled in their highest sovereign capacity.

For more than half a century we have openly violated that solemn declaration.

3. Because it renders nugatory the otherwise beneficial example of our free institutions, and exposes us to the scorn and reproach of the liberal and enlightened of other nations.

"Chains clank and groans echo around the walls of their spotless
Congress."—[Francis Jeffrey.]

"Man to be possessed by man! Man to be made property of! The image of the Deity to be put under the yoke! Let these usurpers show us their title-deeds!"—[Simon Boliver.]

"When I am indulging in my views of American prospects and American liberty, it is mortifying to be told that in that very country a large portion of the people are slaves! It is a dark spot on the face of the nation. Such a state of things cannot always exist."—[Lafayette.]

"I deem it right to raise my humble voice to convince the citizens of America that the slaveholding states are held in abomination by all those whose opinion ought to be valuable. Man is the property of man in about one half of the American States: let them not therefore dare to prate of their institutions or of their national freedom, while they hold their fellow-men in bondage! Of all men living, the American citizen who is the owner of slaves is the most despicable. He is a political hypocrite of the very worst description. The friends of humanity and liberty in Europe should join in one universal cry of shame on the American slave- holders! 'Base wretches!' should we shout in chorus; 'base wretches! how dare you profane the temple of national freedom, the sacred fane of republican rites, with the presence and the sufferings of human beings in chains and slavery!'"—[Daniel O'Connell.]

4. Because it subjects one portion of our American brethren to the unrestrained violence and unholy passions of another.

Here, gentlemen, I might summon to my support a cloud of witnesses, a host of incontrovertible, damning facts, the legitimate results of a system whose tendency is to harden and deprave the heart. But I will not descend to particulars. I am willing to believe that the majority of the masters of your section of the country are disposed to treat their unfortunate slaves with kindness. But where the dreadful privilege of slave-holding is extended to all, in every neighborhood, there must be individuals whose cupidity is unrestrained by any principle of humanity, whose lusts are fiercely indulged, whose fearful power over the bodies, nay, may I not say the souls, of their victims is daily and hourly abused.

Will the evidence of your own Jefferson, on this point, be admissible?

"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. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it. 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 fail to be stamped by it with odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy who can retain his morals and manners undepraved by such circumstances."—[Notes on Virginia, p. 241.]

"Il n'existe a la verite aucune loi qui protege l'esclave le mauvais traitement du maitre," says Achille Murat, himself a Floridian slave- holder, in his late work on the United States.

Gentlemen, is not this true? Does there exist even in Virginia any law limiting the punishment of a slave? Are there any bounds prescribed, beyond which the brutal, the revengeful, the intoxicated slave-master, acting in the double capacity of judge and executioner, cannot pass?

You will, perhaps, tell me that the general law against murder applies alike to master and slave. True; but will you point out instances of masters suffering the penalty of that law for the murder of their slaves? If you examine your judicial reports you will find the wilful murder of a slave decided to be only a trespass!—[Virginia Reports, vol. v. p. 481, Harris versus Nichols.]

It indeed argues well for Virginian pride of character, that latterly, the law, which expressly sanctioned the murder of a slave, who in the language of Georgia and North Carolina, "died of moderate correction," has been repealed. But, although the letter of the law is changed, its practice remains the same. In proof of this, I would refer to Brockenborough and Holmes' Virginia Cases, p. 258.

In Georgia and North Carolina the murder of a slave is tolerated and justified by law, provided that in the opinion of the court he died "of moderate correction!"

In South Carolina the following clause of a law enacted in 1740 is still in force:—

"If any slave shall suffer in his life, limbs, or members, when no white person shall be present, or being present shall neglect or refuse to give evidence concerning the same, in every such case the owner or other person who shall have the care and government of the slave shall be deemed and taken to be guilty of such offence; unless such owner or other person can 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 empowered to administer and to acquit the offender accordingly, if clear proof of the offence be not made by two witnesses at least, any law, usage, or custom to the contrary notwithstanding."

Is not this offering a reward for perjury? And what shall we think of that misnamed court of justice, where it is optional with the witnesses, in a case of life and death, to give or withhold their testimony.

5. Because it induces dangerous sectional jealousies, creates of necessity a struggle between the opposing interests of free and slave labor, and threatens the integrity of the Union.

That sectional jealousies do exist, the tone of your paper, gentlemen, is of itself an evidence, if indeed any were needed. The moral sentiment of the free states is against slavery. The freeman has declared his unwillingness that his labor should be reduced to a level with that of slaves. Harsh epithets and harsh threats have been freely exchanged, until the beautiful Potomac, wherever it winds its way to the ocean, has become the dividing line, not of territory only, but of feeling, interest, national pride, a moral division.

What shook the pillars of the Union when the Missouri question was agitated? What but a few months ago arrayed in arms a state against the Union, and the Union against a state?

From Maine to Florida, gentlemen, the answer must be the same, slavery.

6. Because of its pernicious influence upon national wealth and prosperity.

Political economy has been the peculiar study of Virginia. But there are some important truths connected with this science which she has hitherto overlooked or wantonly disregarded.

Population increasing with the means of subsistence is a fair test of national wealth.

By reference to the several censuses of the United States, it will be seen that the white population increases nearly twice as fast in states where there are few or no slaves as in the slave states.

Again, in the latter states the slave population has increased twice as fast as the white. Let us take, for example, the period of twenty years, from 1790 to 1810, and compare the increase of the two classes in three of the Southern states.

Per cent. of whites. Per cent. of blacks.

Maryland 13 31
Virginia 24 38
North Carolina 30 70

The causes of this disproportionate increase, so inimical to the true interests of the country, are very manifest.

A large proportion of the free inhabitants of the United States are dependent upon their labor for subsistence. The forced, unnatural system of slavery in some of the states renders the demand for free laborers less urgent; they are not so readily and abundantly supplied with the means of subsistence as those of their own class in the free states, and as the necessaries of life diminish population also diminishes.

There is yet another cause for the decline of the white population. In the free states labor is reputable. The statesman, whose eloquence has electrified a nation, does not disdain in the intervals of the public service to handle the axe and the hoe. And the woman whose beauty, talents, and accomplishments have won the admiration of all deems it no degradation to "look well to her household."

But the slave stamps with indelible ignominy the character of occupation. It is a disgrace for a highborn Virginian or chivalrous Carolinian to labor, side by side, with the low, despised, miserable black man. Wretched must be the condition of the poorer classes of whites in a slave-holding community! Compelled to perform the despised offices of the slave, they can hardly rise above his level. They become the pariahs of society. No wonder, then, that the tide of emigration flows from the slave-cursed shores of the Atlantic to the free valleys of the West.

In New England the labor of a farmer or mechanic is worth from $150 to $200 per annum. That of a female from $50 to $100. Our entire population, with the exception of those engaged in mercantile affairs, the professional classes, and a very few moneyed idlers, are working men and women. If that of the South were equally employed (and slavery apart, there is no reason why they should not be), how large an addition would be annually made to the wealth of the country? The truth is, a very considerable portion of the national wealth produced by Northern labor is taxed to defray the expenses of twenty-five representatives of Southern property in Congress, and to maintain an army mainly for the protection of the slave-master against the dangerous tendencies of that property.

In the early and better days of the Roman Republic, the ancient warriors and statesmen cultivated their fields with their own hands; but so soon as their agriculture was left to the slaves, it visibly declined, the once fertile fields became pastures, and the inhabitants of that garden of the world were dependent upon foreign nations for the necessaries of life. The beautiful villages, once peopled by free contented laborers, became tenantless, and, over the waste of solitude, we see, here and there, at weary distances, the palaces of the master, contrasting painfully with the wretched cottages and subterranean cells of the slave. In speaking of the extraordinary fertility of the soil in the early times of the Republic, Pliny inquires, "What was the cause of these abundant harvests? It was this, that men of rank employed themselves in the culture of the fields; whereas now it is left to wretches loaded with fetters, who carry in their countenances the shameful evidence of their slavery."

And what was true in the days of the Roman is now written legibly upon the soil of your own Virginia. A traveller in your state, in contemplating the decline of its agriculture, has justly remarked that, "if the miserable condition of the negro had left his mind for reflection, he would laugh in his chains to see how slavery has stricken the land with ugliness."

Is the rapid increase of a population of slaves in itself no evil? In all the slave states the increase of the slaves is vastly more rapid than that of the whites or free blacks. When we recollect that they are under no natural or moral restraint, careless of providing food or clothing for themselves or their children; when, too, we consider that they are raised as an article of profitable traffic, like the cattle of New England and the hogs of Kentucky; that it is a matter of interest, of dollars and cents, to the master that they should multiply as fast as possible, there is surely nothing at all surprising in the increase of their numbers. Would to heaven there were also nothing alarming!

7. Because, by the terms of the national compact, the free and the slave states are alike involved in the guilt of maintaining slavery, and the citizens of the former are liable, at any moment, to be called upon to aid the latter in suppressing, at the point of the bayonet, the insurrection of the slaves.

Slavery is, at the best, an unnatural state. And Nature, when her eternal principles are violated, is perpetually struggling to restore them to their first estate.

All history, ancient and modern, is full of warning on this point. Need I refer to the many revolts of the Roman and Grecian slaves, the bloody insurrection of Etruria, the horrible servile wars of Sicily and Capua? Or, to come down to later times, to France in the fourteenth century, Germany in the sixteenth, to Malta in the last? Need I call to mind the untold horrors of St. Domingo, when that island, under the curse of its servile war, glowed redly in the view of earth and heaven,—an open hell? Have our own peculiar warnings gone by unheeded,—the frequent slave insurrections of the South? One horrible tragedy, gentlemen, must still be fresh in your recollection,—Southampton, with its fired dwellings and ghastly dead! Southampton, with its dreadful associations, of the death struggle with the insurgents, the groans of the tortured negroes, the lamentations of the surviving whites over woman in her innocence and beauty, and childhood, and hoary age!

"The hour of emancipation," said Thomas Jefferson, "is advancing in the march of time. It will come. If not brought on by the generous energy of our own minds, it will come by the bloody process of St. Domingo!"

To the just and prophetic language of your own great statesman I have but a few words to add. They shall be those of truth and soberness.

We regard the slave system in your section of the country as a great evil, moral and political,—an evil which, if left to itself for even a few years longer, will give the entire South into the hands of the blacks.

The terms of the national compact compel us to consider more than two millions of our fellow-beings as your property; not, indeed, morally, really, de facto, but still legally your property! We acknowledge that you have a power derived from the United States Constitution to hold this "property," but we deny that you have any moral right to take advantage of that power. For truth will not allow us to admit that any human law or compact can make void or put aside the ordinance of the living God and the eternal laws of Nature.

We therefore hold it to be the duty of the people of the slave-holding states to begin the work of emancipation now; that any delay must be dangerous to themselves in time and eternity, and full of injustice to their slaves and to their brethren of the free states.

Because the slave has never forfeited his right to freedom, and the continuance of his servitude is a continuance of robbery; and because, in the event of a servile war, the people of the free states would be called upon to take a part in its unutterable horrors.

New England would obey that call, for she will abide unto death by the Constitution of the land. Yet what must be the feelings of her citizens, while engaged in hunting down like wild beasts their fellow-men—brutal and black it may be, but still oppressed, suffering human beings, struggling madly and desperately for their liberty, if they feel and know that the necessity of so doing has resulted from a blind fatality on the part of the oppressor, a reckless disregard of the warnings of earth and heaven, an obstinate perseverance in a system founded and sustained by robbery and wrong?

All wars are horrible, wicked, inexcusable, and truly and solemnly has Jefferson himself said that, in a contest of this kind, between the slave and the master, "the Almighty has no attribute which could take side with us."

Understand us, gentlemen. We only ask to have the fearful necessity taken away from us of sustaining the wretched policy of slavery by moral influence or physical force. We ask alone to be allowed to wash our hands of the blood of millions of your fellow-beings, the cry of whom is rising up as a swift witness unto God against us.

8. Because all the facts connected with the subject warrant us in a most confident belief that a speedy and general emancipation might be made with entire safety, and that the consequences of such an emancipation would be highly beneficial to the planters of the South.

Awful as may be their estimate in time and eternity, I will not, gentlemen, dwell upon the priceless benefits of a conscience at rest, a soul redeemed from the all-polluting influences of slavery, and against which the cry of the laborer whose hire has been kept back by fraud does not ascend. Nor will I rest the defence of my position upon the fact that it can never be unsafe to obey the commands of God. These are the old and common arguments of "fanatics" and "enthusiasts," melting away like frost-work in the glorious sunshine of expediency and utility. In the light of these modern luminaries, then, let us reason together.

A long and careful examination of the subject will I think fully justify me in advancing this general proposition.

Wherever, whether in Europe, the East and West Indies, South America, or in our own country, a fair experiment has been made of the comparative expense of free and slave labor, the result has uniformly been favorable to the former.

[See Brougham's Colonial Policy. Hodgdon's Letter to Jean Baptiste
Say. Waleh's Brazil. Official Letter of Hon. Mr. Ward, from
Mexico. Dr. Dickson's Mitigation of Slavery. Franklin on The
Peopling of Countries. Ramsay's Essay. Botham's Sugar Cultivation
in Batavia. Marsden's History of Sumatra. Coxe's Travels. Dr.
Anderson's Observations on Slavery. Storch's Political Economy.
Adam Smith. J. Jeremies' Essays. Humboldt's Travels, etc., etc.]

Here, gentlemen, the issue is tendered. Standing on your own ground of expediency, I am ready to defend my position.

I pass from the utility to the safety of emancipation. And here, gentlemen, I shall probably be met at the outset with your supposed consequences, bloodshed, rapine, promiscuous massacre!

The facts, gentlemen! In God's name, bring out your facts! If slavery is to cast over the prosperity of our country the thick shadow of an everlasting curse, because emancipation is dreaded as a remedy worse than the disease itself, let us know the real grounds of your fear.

Do you find them in the emancipation of the South American Republics? In Hayti? In the partial experiments of some of the West India Islands? Does history, ancient or modern, justify your fears? Can you find any excuse for them in the nature of the human mind, everywhere maddened by injury and conciliated by kindness? No, gentlemen; the dangers of slavery are manifest and real, all history lies open for your warning. But the dangers of emancipation, of "doing justly and loving mercy," exist only in your imaginations. You cannot produce one fact in corroboration of your fears. You cannot point to the stain of a single drop of any master's blood shed by the slave he has emancipated.

I have now given some of our reasons for opposing slavery. In my next letter I shall explain our method of opposition, and I trust I shall be able to show that there is nothing "fanatical," nothing "unconstitutional," and nothing unchristian in that method.

In the mean time, gentlemen, I am your friend and well-wisher.

HAVERHILL, MASS., 22d 7th Mo., 1833.