SLAVERY AND FOUR YEARS OF WAR
CHAPTER I SLAVERY: ITS POLITICAL HISTORY IN THE UNITED STATES (I.) Introductory—(II.) Introduction of Slavery into the Colonies —(III.) Declaration of Independence—(IV.) Continental Congress: Articles of Confederation—(V.) Ordinance of 1787—(VI.) Constitution of the United States—(VII.) Causes of Growth of Slavery—(VIII.) Fugitive-Slave Law, 1793—(IX.) Slave Trade Abolished—(X.) Louisiana Purchase—(XI.) Florida—(XII.) Missouri Compromise—(XIII.) Nullification—(XIV.) Texas—(XV.) Mexican War, Acquisition of California and New Mexico—(XVI.) Compromise Measures, 1850—(XVII.) Nebraska Act—(XVIII.) Kansas Struggle for Freedom—(XIX.) Dred Scott Case—(XX.) John Brown Raid—(XXI.) Presidential Elections, 1856-1860—(XXII.) Dissolution of the Union—(XXIII.) Secession of States—(XXIV.) Action of Religious Denominations—(XXV.) Proposed Concessions to Slavery—(XXVI.) Peace Conference—(XXVII.) District of Columbia—(XXVIII.) Slavery Prohibited in Territories—(XXIX.) Benton's Summary—(XXX.) Prophecy as to Slavery and Disunion.
I INTRODUCTORY
Slavery is older than tradition—older than authentic history, and doubtless antedates any organized form of human government. It had its origin in barbaric times. Uncivilized man never voluntarily performed labor even for his own comfort; he only struggled to gain a bare subsistence. He did not till the soil, but killed wild animals for food and to secure a scant covering for his body; and cannibalism was common. Tribes were formed for defence, and thus wars came, all, however, to maintain mere savage existence. Through primitive wars captives were taken, and such as were not slain were compelled to labor for their captors. In time these slaves were used to domesticate useful animals and, later, were forced to cultivate the soil and build rude structures for the comfort and protection of their masters. Thus it was that mankind was first forced to toil and ultimately came to enjoy labor and its incident fruits, and thus human slavery became a first step from barbarism towards the ultimate civilization of mankind.
White slavery existed in the English-American colonies antecedent to black or African slavery, though at first only intended to be conditional and not to extend to offspring. English, Scotch, and Irish alike, regardless of ancestry or religious faith, were, for political offenses, sold and transported to the dependent American colonies. They were such persons as had participated in insurrections against the Crown; many of them being prisoners taken on the battle- field, as were the Scots taken on the field of Dunbar, the royalist prisoners from the field of Worcester; likewise the great leaders of the Penruddoc rebellion, and many who were taken in the insurrection of Monmouth.
Of these, many were first sold in England to be afterwards re-sold on shipboard to the colonies, as men sell horses, to the highest bidder.
There was also, in some of the colonies, a conditional servitude, under indentures, for servants, debtors, convicts, and perhaps others. These forms of slavery made the introduction of negro and perpetual slavery easy.
Australasia alone, of all inhabited parts of the globe, has the honor, so far as history records, of never having a slave population.
Egyptian history tells us of human bondage; the patriarch Abraham, the founder of the Hebrew nation, owned and dealt in slaves. That the law delivered to Moses from Mt. Sinai justified and tolerated human slavery was the boast of modern slaveholders.
Moses, from "Nebo's heights," saw the "land of promise," where flowed "milk and honey" in abundance, and where slavery existed. The Hebrew people, but forty years themselves out of bondage, possessed this land and maintained slavery therein.
The advocates of slavery and the slave trade exultingly quoted:
"And I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hands of the children of Judah, and they shall sell them to the Sabeans, to a people far off; for the Lord hath spoken it."—Joel iii, 8.
They likewise claimed that St. Paul, while he preached the gospel to slaveholders and slaves alike in Rome, yet used his calling to enable him to return to slavery an escaped human being—Onesimus.( 1)
The advocates of domestic slavery justified it as of scriptural and divine origin.
From the Old Testament they quoted other texts, not only to justify the holding of slaves in perpetual bondage, but the continuance of the slave trade with all its cruelties.
"And he said, I am Abraham's servant."—Gen. xxiv., 34.
"And there was of the house of Saul a servant whose name was Ziba. And when they had called him unto David, the King said unto him, Art thou Ziba? And he said, Thy servant is he. . . .
"Then the King called to Ziba, Saul's servant, and said unto him, I have given unto thy master's son all that pertained to Saul, and to all his house.
"Thou, therefore, and thy sons, and they servants shall till the land for him, and thou shalt bring in the fruits, that thy master's son may have food to eat," etc. "Now Ziba had fifteen sons and twenty servants."—2 Samuel ix., 2, 9-10.
"I got me servants and maidens and had servants born in my house; also I had great possessions of great and small cattle above all that were in Jerusalem before me."—Eccles. ii., 7.
"And he said, Hagar, Sarai's maid, whence comest thou? and she said, I flee from the face of my mistress Sarai.
"And the angel of the Lord said unto her, Return to thy mistress, and submit thyself to her hands."—Gen. xvi., 8, 9.
"A servant will not be corrected by words; for though he understand, he will not answer."—Prov. xxix., 19.
And from the New Testament they triumphantly quoted:
"Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was called. Art thou called being a servant? care not for it; but if thou mayest be made free, use it rather."—I Cor., vii., 20-22.
"Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ," etc.
"And, ye masters, do the same things unto them, forbearing threatening: knowing that your Master also is in heaven; neither is there respect of persons with him."—Eph., vi., 5-9.
"Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh, not with eye service, as men pleasers; but in singleness of heart, fearing God."—Col. iii., 22.
"Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal; knowing that ye also have a Master in heaven."—Col. iv., 1.
"Let as many servants as are under the yoke count their own masters worthy of all honor, that the name of God and his doctrines be not blasphemed," etc.—I Tim., vi., 1, 2.
"Exhort servants to be obedient unto their own masters, and to please them well in all things; not answering again; not purloining, but showing all good fidelity; that they may adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things."—Titus ii., 9, 10.
"Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear; not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward."—I. Pet. ii, 18.
The advocates of slavery maintained that Christ approved the calling as a slaveholder as well as the faith of the Roman centurion, whose servant, "sick of a palsy," Christ miraculously healed by saying: "I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel."—Matt. viii., 10.
They also cited Dr. Adam Clark, the great Bible commentator; Dr. Neander's work, entitled Planting and Training the Church, and Dr. Mosheim's Church History, as evidence that the Bible not only sanctioned slavery but authorized its perpetuation through all time.( 2) In other words, pro-slavery advocates in effect affirmed that these great writers:
"Torture the hollowed pages of the Bible,
To sanction crime, and robbery, and blood,
And, in oppression's hateful service, libel
Both man and God."
While the teachings of neither the Old nor the New Testament, nor of the Master, were to overthrow or to establish political conditions as established by the temporal powers of the then age, yet it must be admitted that large numbers of people, of much learning and a high civilization, believed human slavery was sanctioned by divine authority.
The deductions made from the texts quoted were unwarranted. The principles of justice and mercy, on which the Christian religion is founded, cannot be tortured into even a toleration (as, possibly, could the law of Moses) of the existence of the unnatural and barbaric institution of slavery, or the slave trade.
Slavery was wrong per se; wholly unjustifiable on the plainest principles of humanity and justice; and the consciences of all unprejudiced, enlightened, civilized people led them in time to believe that it had no warrant from God and ought to have no warrant from man to exist on the face of the earth.
The friends of freedom and those who believed slavery sinful never for a moment assented to the claim that it was sanctioned by Holy Writ, or that it was justified by early and long-continued existence through barbaric or semi-barbaric times. They denied that it could thus even be sanctified into a moral right; that time ever converted cruelty into a blessing, or a wrong into a right; that any human law could give it legal existence, or rightfully perpetuate it against natural justice; they maintained that a Higher Law, written in God's immutable decrees of mercy, was paramount to all human law or practice, however long continuing; that the lessons taught by Christ in the Sermon on the Mount and in all his life and teachings were a condemnation of it; and that an enlightened, progressive civilization demanded its final overthrow.
In America: Slavery is dead. We return to its history.
Greece had her slaves before tradition blended into history, though, four centuries before Christ, Alcidamas proclaimed: "God has sent forth all men free: Nature has made no man slave."
Alexander, the mighty Macedonian (fourth century B.C.), sold captives taken at Tyre and Gaza, the most accomplished people of that time, into slavery.( 3)
Rome had her slaves; and her slave-marts were open at her principal ports for traffic in men and women of all nationalities, especially Christians and captives taken in war.
The German nations of the shores of the Baltic carried on the desolating traffic. Russia recognized slavery and carried on a slave trade through her merchantmen.
The Turks forbade the enslaving of Mussulmans, but sold Christian and other captives into slavery. Christian and Moor, for seven hundred years in the doubtful struggle in Western Europe, respectively, doomed their captives to slavery.
Contemporary with the discovery of America, the Moors were driven from Granada, their last stronghold in Spain, to the north of Africa; there they became corsairs, privateers, and holders of Christian slaves. Their freebooter life and cruelty furnished the pretext, not only to enslave the people of the Moorish dominion, but of all Africa. The oldest accounts of Africa bear testimony to the existence of domestic slavery—of negro enslaving negro, and of caravans of dealers in negro slaves.
Columbus, whose glory as the discoverer of this continent we proclaim, on a return voyage (1494) carried five hundred native Americans to Spain, a present to Queen Isabella, and American Indians were sold into foreign bondage, as "spoils of war," for two centuries.
The Saxon carried slavery in its most odious form into England, where, at one time, not half the inhabitants were absolutely free, and where the price of a man was but four times the price of an ox.
He sold his own kindred into slavery. English slaves were held in
Ireland till the reign of Henry II.
In time, however, the spirit of Christianity, pleading the cause of humanity, stayed slavery's progress, and checked the slave traffic by appeals to conscience.
Alexander III, Pope of Rome in the twelfth century, proclaimed against it, by writing: "Nature having made no slaves, all men have an equal right to liberty."
Efficacious as the Christian religion has been to destroy or mitigate evil, it has failed to render the so-called Christian slaveholder better than the pagan, or to improve the condition of the bondsmen.
It may be observed that when slavery seemed to be firmly planted in the Republic of the United States of America, Egypt, as one of the powers of the earth, had passed away; her slavery, too, was gone—only her Pyramids, Sphinx, and Monoliths have been spared by time and a just judgment. Greece, too, had perished, only her philosophy and letters survive; Israel's people, though the chosen of God, had, as a nation, been bodily carried into oriental Babylonian captivity, and in due time had, in fulfillment of divine judgment, been dispersed through all lands. God in his mighty wrath also thundered on Babylon's iniquity, and it, too, passed away forever, and the prophet gives as a reason for this, that Babylon dealt in "slaves and the souls of men."
Rome, once the mistress of the world, cased as a nation to live; her greatness and her glory, her slave markets and her slaves, all gone together and forever.
Germany, France, Spain, and other slave nations renounced slavery barely in time to escape the general national doom.
Russia, though her mighty Czars possessed absolute power to rule, trembled before the mighty insurrections of peasant-serfs that swept over the bodies of slain nobles and slave-masters from remote regions to the very gates of Moscow. Catherine II., Alexander I., Nicholas I., and Alexander II. listened to the threatened doom, and, to save their empire, put forth decrees to loosen and finally to break the chains of twenty millions of slaves and serfs. Even Moorish slavery in Northern Africa in large part passed away. Mohammedan,( 4) Brahmin, and Buddhist had no sanction for human slavery.
England heard the warning cry just in time to save the kingdom from the impending common destiny of slave nations.
It was not, however, until 1772, that Lord Mansfield, from the Court of the King's Bench of Great Britain, announced that no slave could be held under the English Constitution. This decision was of binding force in her American colonies when the Declaration of Independence was adopted, and the "Liberty Bell" proclaimed "Liberty throughout all the land to all the inhabitants thereof."
The argument that the institution of slavery was sanctified by age ceased, long since, to be satisfying to those who learned justice and mercy in the light of Christian love, and who could read, not only that human slavery had existed from the earliest times, but that it had existed without right, only by the power of might, not sanctioned by reason and natural justice, and that in its train a myriad of coincident evils, crimes, and immoralities had taken birth and flourished, blasting both master and slave and the land they inhabited, and that God's just and retributive judgment has universally been visited on all nations and peoples continuing to maintain and perpetuate it.
Murder has existed in the world since Cain and Abel met by the altar of God, yet no sane person for that reason justifies it. So slavery has stalked down the long line of centuries, cursing and destroying millions with its damning power, but time has not sanctioned it into a right. The longer it existed the more foul became the blot upon history's pages, and the deeper the damnation upon humanity it wrought.
When all the civilized nations of Europe, as well as the nations and even tribes of Asia, had either abolished slavery and taken steps effectually to do so, it remained for the United States to stand alone upholding it in its direst form.
The nations of the ancient world either shook off slavery in attempts to wash away its bloody stain, or slavery wiped them from the powers of the earth. So of the more modern nations.
Our Republic, boastful of its free institutions, of its constitutional liberty, of its free schools and churches, of its glories in the cause of humanity, its patriotism, resplendent history, inventive genius, wealth, industry, civilization, and Christianity, maintained slavery until it was only saved from its common doom of slave nations by the atoning sacrifice of its best blood and the mercy of an offended God.
More than two centuries (1562) before Lord Mansfield judicially announced freedom to be the universal law of England, Sir John Hawkins acquired the infamous distinction of being the first Englishman to embark in the slave trade, and the depravity of public sentiment in England then approved his action. He then seized, on the African coast, and transported a large cargo of negroes to Hispaniola and bartered them for sugar, ginger, and pearls, at great profit.( 5) Here commenced a traffic in human beings by English-speaking people (scarcely yet ceased) that involved murder, arson, theft, and all the cruelty and crimes incident to the capture, transportation, and subjection of human beings to the lust, avarice, and power of man.
Sir John Hawkins' success coming to the notice of the avaricious and ambitious Queen Elizabeth, she, five years later (1567), became the open protector of a new expedition and sharer in the nefarious traffic, thus becoming a promoter, abettor, and participant in all its crimes.
To the "African Company," for a long period, was granted by England a monopoly of the slave trade, but it could not be confined to this company. In 1698, England exacted a tariff on the slave cargoes of her subjects engaged in the trade.
From 1680 to 1700, by convention with Spain, the English, it is estimated, stole from Africa 300,000 negroes to supply the Spanish West Indies with slaves. By the treaty of Utrecht (1713) Spain granted to England, during thirty years, the absolute monopoly of supplying slaves to the Spanish colonies. By this treaty England agreed to take to the West Indies not less than 144,000 negroes, or 4800 each year; and, to guard against scandal to the Roman Catholic religion, heretical slave-traders were forbidden. This monopoly was granted by England to the "South Sea Company."
England did not confine her trade to the West Indies. In 1750, it was shown in the English Parliament that 46,000 negroes were annually sold to English colonies.( 6)
As early as 1565, Sir John Hawthorne and Menendez imported negroes as slaves into Florida, then a Spanish possession, and with Spain's sanction many were carried into the West Indies and sold into slavery.
( 1) Epistle to Philemon.
( 2) The references to the Bible are taken from the most learned advocates of the divinity of slavery, in its last years. Ought American Slavery to be Perpetuated? (Brownlow and Pryne debate), p. 78, etc. Slavery Ordained of God (Ross), 146, etc., 176, etc.
Rev. Frederick A. Ross, D. D. (the author), a celebrated Presbyterian minister, was arrested in 1862 at Huntsville, Alabama, while it was occupied by the Union forces, for praying from the pulpit for the success of secession.
Parson Brownlow was a Union man in 1861, was much persecuted at his home in Knoxville, Tenn., later advocated emancipation.
( 3) It is interesting to note that more than fifteen hundred years (twelfth century) after Alexander's conquests, Saladin, the great Sultan, and other Mohammedan rulers, and Richard Coeur de Lion, and other crusade leaders in Syria, respectively, doomed their captives to slavery, regardless of nationality or color.— Saladin (Heroes of Nations, Putnams), 229-232, 338.
( 4) Slavery and the slave trade, in spite of the teachings of the Koran, grew up in Mohammedan countries. The traffic in slaves, however, had been frequently proclaimed against by the Ottoman Porte.
( 5) But the first trace of negro slavery in America came in 1502, only ten years after its discovery, through a decree of Ferdinand and Isabella permitting negro slaves born in Spain, descendants of natives brought from Guinea, to be transported to Hispaniola.— Life of Columbus, by Irving (Putnams), p. 275.
( 6) History for Ready Reference, vol. iv., p. 2923.