CHAPTER VI.
I will now say something of slavery. I shall say nothing but what I know to be true. Slavery is a cruel system. The effects of it are scattered abroad throughout the land. It is the reigning evil of the country; yea, the mother of all evil. Why is it the mother of all evil? I answer in the language of Holy Writ, which saith, “Do unto all men as you would have them do unto you.” It is not done. Again: “Love thy neighbor as thyself. This is the law and the prophets.” It is not done. Reader,—where is the slaveholder who would wish his slaves to do to him as he does to them? There are none. Hence, then, the enormity of the evil.
Dear reader: understand one thing. The slaves are taught ignorance as we teach our children knowledge. They are kept in darkness, and are borne down under a cruel, cruel oppression! All human rights are denied them as citizens! They are not recognized as men! My old master frequently said, “he did not believe a d——d nigger had any soul!” They are made to undergo everything as a beast. Having a full, perfect, undeniable right to stand out before God as MEN, the cruel, God-defying white man, without semblance of right, with no pretence but might, has prostituted them to the base purpose of his cupidity, and his baser beastly passions, reducing them to mere things, mere chattels, to be bought and sold like hogs and sheep! Born, like the white man, to an individual responsibility to the Father of mercies, the treatment of the white man to the poor African, unmixed with mercy, has curtained his mind to all knowledge, aye, even to the knowledge of the God of heaven and earth, and thus removed from him the accountability! But, where does this terrible accountability rest? Let the hardened slave-tyrant, when he stands quivering before the Almighty bar of retribution, answer this question! Well might Thomas Jefferson remark, when his deep, penetrating mind was reflecting upon the stupendous wrongs of slavery, “I tremble for my country, when I remember that God is just, and that his justice cannot slumber forever?” I appeal, then, to every rational, intelligent mind, if slavery be not an abomination in the sight of the Lord.
It has been said that slaves have no intellect. I deny it. God has given them minds capable of cultivation. Uncultivated ground will not bring forth fruit. All the slave requires is cultivation, for he is possessed of all the qualities of the white man.
Reader: we have heard of the wisdom of King Solomon, son of David, the grandson of ancient Jesse. The Queen of Basheba has declared that half had never been told her. History informs us that Solomon was as black as black satin, with handsome features and smooth skin.
I could refer to many of the colored race whose mental endowments are superior to many of those arrogant white men who abhor a colored man and pretend to be his superior in knowledge.
The language of Jesus Christ to his apostles should teach us not to despise the workmanship of God. “He that despiseth you, despiseth me.” Do men, I ask, realize the awful evil of slavery? Are they aware of its terrible calamities? Has it not become so familiar, from its long existence, as almost to reconcile the tender conscience to its infamous enormities? It must be so. There is no other mode of accounting for the fact, that men, good christians in other respects, quietly hold slaves at the south, while their equally guilty brethren of the north assent to it, and participate in its profits.
Should we not remember them that are in bondage as bound with them? Say not only slaves be obedient to your masters according to the flesh, but also say, masters, render unto your servants that which is right; and if that principle were carried out, slavery would be abolished.
How do the masters teach the slaves ignorance? Having been a slave, I answer the question. When the master asks the slave, Tom, Harry, Dick or Bill, “Do you love your master?” he answers, “Yes, massa, I lub you.” “Come here and get a dram; drink us a treat, you son of a b ...h.” Why does the slave say “Yes, sir?” Because he is afraid to say any thing else. He is crushed under the iron heel of the slave-tyrant!
The time is coming when the wrongs of the slave will be redressed. Yes, the time is coming when their blood will cry unto the Lord for deliverance.
It is very customary to magnify the evils of emancipation. It is said by very many persons that the slaves, if liberated, would become an idle, vagabond set. This remark, doubtless, is sometimes made in sincerity; but no doubt it is frequently used as a sort of salve to quiet the conscience for inaction. It is most unquestionably true that here and there a case would exist of improvidence, just as they exist among the white population; but such cases would form the exception, not the rule. Persons who indulge in such remarks seem entirely unacquainted with the views and feelings of slaves, and to suppose that they are utterly incapable of appreciating, even to a small extent, the blessings and enjoyments of freedom. But this is a mistake, and operates powerfully on some minds to prevent wholesome action in favor of the liberation of the slave. It is to be hoped that all true men and women who are held back from engaging in the cause of the slave by this consideration, will take pains to examine the subject with care, ere they yield to this pernicious opinion. As to those who have better knowledge, and make use of this assumed fact as a scape-goat for their lethargy, not having independence enough to confess the truth, I commend them, together with their meanness, to such particles of conscience as are yet left unscathed by the searing iron of hypocrisy.
It is further averred, both honestly and for selfish purposes, as in the case just stated, that the slaves, if liberated, would rush for the north, overwhelming the workingmen in this region with misery and despair. This I know to be untrue, both from observation and my own experience. The climate of the balmy south is much better adapted to the nature of the colored man, than the more rigorous one of greater northern latitude. It is not the south we abhor. It is slavery we abhor. God has made the south and blessed it. Man, in his selfishness, has cursed it. Remove slavery, and we join hearts and hands with the south. Give us equal rights. Give us justice. Make us MEN. Give us pay for our toil, and we will work at the south.
It is a matter of astonishment that slavery has so long existed, and yet that its enormities have taken so little hold on a people professing to be Christians. In a country whose inhabitants dipped their hands in blood to establish Freedom, there are over two and a half millions of human beings, entitled to all the rights of white men, held in absolute bondage. Are the people of this nation aware of this fact? Thousands of times has this awful truth been reiterated in the ears of American Christians, and yet from the profound indifference which yet generally exists on the subject, we are led to ask, Do the people of this nation realize the fact? More than any other nation on earth we boast of our liberty, our refinement, our advancement in the arts and sciences, our railroads, our various facilities for intercommunication, and all the outward appliances to render life comfortable. We have seized upon the very lightning of Heaven, and commanded it to bear our messages from one distant point to another without the intervention of time, literally annihilating all space: and we not only boast of these things, but we aver in the face of the abhorrent fact of slavery, that we are the most virtuous nation on earth! To the enormity of slavery we are, indeed, spiritually dead. Were slavery about to commence, were we to summon the voters of this nation to the polls to decide whether two and a half millions of human beings should be subjected to this bondage, what think you, reader, would be the result? Can there be a man found who would vote for the measure, unless indeed the love of money had so blunted all humanity as to render his better feelings entirely inactive?
It is in vain for apologists of slavery to defend it by such arguments as this: They will tell you that the slaves of the south are better fed and clothed than the colored people of the north. The fact is not admitted. But, suppose it were a fact. Is man to be considered as a mere ox, to be bowed up and stall fed? Is he a mere victuals grinder and clothes horse? Or, has he a higher nature? Has he not a mind capable of rising higher and higher in all that is expansive, pure and holy? Has he not within him a spark of pure Divinity, which, when he is surrounded with high and ennobling influences, is fanned into a light so bright as to lead us to respond to the glorious truth, Man is indeed made in the image of his God?
Do you talk of selling a man? You might as well talk of selling immortality or sunshine! You might as well talk of your right to monopolise the atmosphere, to determine how much air a man should breathe, and to retail it out to him by the jaw-full!
Again, it is said the slave has a maintenance guaranteed to him in old age, and is thus rendered free from those corroding cares in reference to his support which wear upon the poor free man. Is this provision of so high a consequence that men voluntarily submit to slavery? Are the masters willing to exchange the advantages derived from the unrequited labor of the slave for a freedom from this guarantee? The slave-holders of the south cannot make us believe they are so verdant as thus to have mistaken their interest. Away, then, with the argument that a God-created MAN should be made a man-created thing!
American fathers, let me ask you, are the advantages of slavery sufficient to induce you to submit to the terrible wrong of being separated from your wives and children, and sold to a distant owner? American mothers, do you desire that your husbands should be torn from the hearth-stone, and sold from your presence forever? Do you wish your children snatched from your cradles, knocked off at auction to the highest bidder, to go away from you forever? If not, then let your apologies for slavery cease.
Reader, I take my leave of you, with the fond hope, that the recuperative moral energies both of the north and the south will soon herald the dawn of that glorious day when the sweat and blood of the unfortunate African shall no longer be struck into coin for the use of the cruel, unrelenting white man.
Errata.—On page 13, second line from the bottom, for “writing” read writhing.