CHAPTER X.
THE FUTURE.
"It is heaven upon earth to have a man's mind rest in providence, move in charity, and turn upon the poles of truth."
LORD BACON.
"Slavery, as human nature now is, cannot be otherwise than one of the
Almighty's curses upon any race which is subject to bondage.
"True, it may nevertheless, be an amelioration of their original state; they may fall into the hands of a Christian people, and hundreds of thousands of them be civilized, and be converted to Christianity; redeemed from a barbarous condition they may contribute immensely to the general good of the race both as producers and consumers. Wherever commerce needs them, unquestionably they will do more good to the world by being compelled to work than by wearing out their miserable and useless existence in Africa.
"All this may be true; still, is it not a curse to be hewers of wood and drawers of water? Does not God say to Israel that if they sin, they 'shall be the tail and not the head?' National degradation, exposing a people to be the prey and the captives of a superior race, is, of course, a curse, though, like death itself, and even sin, it may, by the grace of God, turn to good. Still, it is a curse.
"But in governing a fallen world like ours, God now and then ordains the subjection of one race to another; and he makes bondage one of his ordinances as truly as war. The extermination of the Canaanites by the sword, was an ordinance of Heaven. War is a part of God's method in governing the world; as well as sickness and death.
"I never had any sympathy for that amiable but weak concern for the character of God which represents him as finding slavery in existence and merely legislating about it, and doing the best he can with an inevitable evil. This view belongs to a system which makes God, as it seems to me, the most unhappy Being, continually striving to destroy that which sprung up contrary to his plan. To dwell on this, however, would lead us too far into theological questions.
"I tremble to think of our responsibility as a nation in being put in charge of a people with whom God has some terrible controversy for their own sins and those of their ancestors.
"Through our abuse of power, God may say to us, 'I was a little angry, and ye helped on the affliction.' God's purposes in having the chastised nation afflicted, will be accomplished, but He will punish every one who inflicts the chastisement with a selfish, unchristian spirit.
"Our people generally take it for granted that slavery is like one of the self-limiting diseases of childhood, to be outgrown, and to cease forever, in process of time, and before many years have passed away.
"The ground of this conclusion is a doctrinal error, namely, that slave-holding, the relation of master and servant, ownership, property in man, or by whatever name slavery may be designated, is in itself wrong, and that as soon as practicable it will be abjured and no man will stand to another in the relation of master, or owner. But whether for good or for ill, slavery will be in existence at the last day. We read that 'every bondman and every freeman' will see the sign of the Son of Man.
"But should slavery be at any time, or in any country, or part of a country, utterly extinguished, it will ever remain true that ownership, or property in man is not in itself wrong, and that it may be benevolent to all concerned. It is interesting to recollect that in proportion as human relations are cardinal, or vital, they approach most nearly to ownership, as in the case of parent and child. The highest relation of all, that between man and God, finds its most perfect expression in terms conveying the idea of ownership on the part of God. 'For ye are not your own;—therefore glorify God in your body and spirit which are God's.' If God should send one of us to a distant part of the universe, under the charge of an angel, where superior intelligence and wisdom were needful for our safety in temptation and amid the bewildering excitements of new scenes, ownership for the time being, absolute dominion over us, on the part of the angel, would be in the highest measure benevolent. In those days when universal love reigns, it is just as likely as not that there will be more 'ownership' in man than ever before. By ownership I mean such relationships as we see in the households of those who are represented in the letter of the Southern lady to her father. There we see the weak, the unfortunate, the dependent nature clinging to the stronger, and receiving support and comfort, and even honor, from those who in rendering kindness and in receiving service have their whole being refined and cultivated to the highest degree. There are no rigors in those relationships; everything which contributes to the welfare and happiness of a serving class is enjoyed, and all its liabilities to care and sorrow are removed, to as great a degree as ever happens in this world.
"Allowing that there are always to be inequalities of mind and condition, and that what we call menial services will need to be performed; that there must be those who will have a disposition and taste to work over a fire all day and prepare food; and that men of business or study will not all be able to groom their own horses and wash their vehicles; and that possibly the Coleridges and Southeys, and their friends the Joseph Cottles, may, from being absorbed in their ideal pursuits, still be ignorant of the way to get off a collar from a horse's neck, and must call upon a servant-girl to help them, we shall need those who will be glad to be servants forever, and who will require for their own security that their employers shall 'own' them, and thus be made responsible for their support and protection. This may always be necessary for the highest welfare of all concerned. But the history of this relationship in connection with our human nature has been such, to a great extent, that we associate with it only the idea of pillage, oppression, cruelty. Already there are cases without number in which no such idea would ever be suggested to a spectator, and they will increase in proportion as Christianity prevails. There is more real 'freedom' in thousands of these cases of nominal slavery than in thousands who are nominally free. How did it happen that the Hebrew servant, who chose to stay with his master rather than leave his wife and children, was not made nominally free, and apprenticed or hired? Why was his ear bored, and perpetual relations secured between him and his master?"
"For the master's security, I presume," said Mr. North.
"I should say," said I, "for the mutual benefit of both. The master then became responsible for him; his support was a lien on his estate, the children must always be responsible for his maintenance. The awl made its record in the master's door-post, as well as in the servant's ear.
"Now, suppose," said I, "that God chooses to supply this nation with menial servants to the end of time. Suppose that he has designed that one race, the African, shall be the source from which he will draw this supply, and that down through long generations he proposes to make this black race our servants, seeking at the same time, by means of this, their elevation, by connecting them with us, and keeping up the relation; and that for the permanence of the relation, and for the security of all concerned, there should be 'ownership,' such as he himself ordained when he prescribed the boring of the ear? For my part, I cannot see in this 'the sum of all villanies,' 'an enormous wrong,' 'a stupendous injustice.' Yet this would be slavery. I am not arguing for such a constitution of things. As was before observed, the whole black race may, in a few years, be swept off from the country; but who will undertake to say that, as the people of other nations have been employed by Providence to make our railroads and canals, the black race may not be employed for a much longer term to be our servants, both North and South, both East and West? And who will say that the tenure of 'ownership' may not be the wisest and most benevolent arrangement for all concerned? I repeat it, I am not arguing for this; I am only trying to show you that the present abuses in slavery are no valid argument against the relation itself; that this may remain when the abuses cease, and therefore that at the present time we ought to discriminate in our arguments against slavery, and direct our assaults, if we continue to be assailers, against its abuses."
"On one disagreeable subject," I said to him aside, "I will make this general remark: The Southern slaves are, as a whole, a religious people; their religion, indeed, is of a type corresponding to their condition. But still, if the South were one festering pool of iniquity, as many at the North fancy, would the colored people show such evidences as they do of moral and spiritual improvement? Look at Hayti. A very large majority of the children are not born in wedlock. Slavery is a moral restraint upon the Southern colored people. Evil as slavery is, it is, in many things, taking the slaves as they are, a comparative blessing."
"But," said Mr. North, "our people generally insist that abuses, oppression, cruelty, are so inherent in slavery that they cannot be removed without destroying the relation itself."
"Here," said I, "is the mistake under which Southerners perceive that we labor, and which prevents us from having the least influence with them.
"This, however, is unquestionably true: as human nature is, we would not choose to give men unlimited power over their fellow-men who are slaves. If, in the course of events, it is found by good men that the abuses flowing from such power are inevitable, that legislative enactments and public opinion cannot control the relation, their consciences will not be quiet till it is abolished. I am willing to confide this to men as good as we, acting as they will on their responsibility to God. It may be, that the system, stripped of everything which can be taken away, will be perpetuated, for the best good of the slave and his master.
"But," said I, "while this perpetual relation of the black race to us is possible, and may be the design of a benevolent God for our happiness and that of the Africans, and while I love to use it in replying to those who, with short-sighted and somewhat passionate reasoning, as I think, contend that slavery must utterly be rooted out of the land, I confess that my own thoughts turn to the Continent of Africa as the great object for which an all-wise God has permitted slavery to exist on our shores.
"I love to look at American slavery in connection with the future history of that great African continent, containing one hundred and fifty millions of people. History and discovered relics make the Ethiopian race to be older even than Egypt. The once powerful nations of Northern Africa, Numidia, Mauratania, as well as the Egyptian builders of pyramids, have disappeared, or they exist only in a few Coptic tribes; and even they are of doubtful origin. But the Ethiopian people, notwithstanding the slave-trade which has extended its degrading influence far and wide among them, and though civilization long since departed from their tribes, have continued to increase till now they are the most numerous of the human families except the Chinese. The slave-holding nations which have pillaged them forages, have not been able to destroy them. Ethiopia may well say, stretching out her hands to God, 'Thy wrath lieth hard upon me, and thou hast afflicted me with all thy waves.' It is sublime to think what triumphs of redemption there are yet to be on that African continent. But how little, apparently, from all that they ever say, do some of our abolitionist friends seem to think about Africa as a future jewel in Immanuel's diadem! Utterly foreign from all their thoughts appears to be the great plan of Providence which by means even of slavery in this land, has done so much to extend the work of human salvation among the African race. And there are some ministers of the Gospel and professed Christians, I regret to observe, who reply to all that you say about the vast proportion, to white converts, of converts among the colored people, in a manner which would awaken great fears in the most charitable breast with regard to their own personal interest in the salvation by Christ, did we not all know how far we may be blinded by passion. If you visit in the South, you will find that African missions take the deepest hold on the hearts of Southern Christians. The time will come, God hasten it! when they and we will be united in plans and efforts for the good of the African race.
"But I am not in favor of stealing Africans from their native land to bring them here, even though it were certain that the majority of them would be converted to God. We are not to do evil that good may come. If Providence makes it plain that tribes of them shall be removed to new districts of our country, suitable measures can and will be devised for that purpose. That they are better off here, even in slavery, than in their own land, under present circumstances, I do not see how any one can question; but that does not justify man-stealing. I remember to have seen a letter from a Missionary in Africa, in which he says, speaking of the slaves and of the South, 'Would that all Africa were there; would that tribes of this unhappy people could be transferred to the privileges which the slaves at the South enjoy. I would rather take my chance of a good or bad master, and be a slave at the South, than be as one of these heathen people. In saying this, I refer both to this world and the next'. I need not say, he is an enemy to the slave-trade.
"A missionary who had spent much time among the Zulu people, was appealed to by a zealous anti-slavery person to commiserate our slaves as being so much worse off than the Zulus. 'Madam,' said he, 'if our Zulus were in the condition of your slaves, eternity would not be long enough to give thanks.'
"Mrs. North," said I, "you will not impute it to mere gallantry when I appeal to you if we may not generally measure the refinement and elevation of society by the position of woman, and by the sentiments and manners of the other sex with regard to yours. The deference, the delicate attentions, the gentleness, the refinement of behavior, in word and act, which you inspire, are both the means and the evidence of the highest cultivation. In public and in private life, in assemblies, public conveyances, at table, around the evening lamp, in all the intercourse of the family, the susceptibility of impression, the restraints and the chastised utterances, in word and action, of husbands, fathers, brothers and friends, which are due to the presence of woman, are a correct gauge of civilization and refinement."
"All right," said Mr. North, bowing very politely to his wife.
"Nowhere," said I, "do we see this more conspicuously than in Southern society. Chivalry there seems to blend with the genial influences of Christianity, and together they give a tone and manner to Southern life which is peculiar.
"I am often struck with a Southern gentleman's reverence, here at the North, for the female sex. He is displeased at seeing daughters serving at table in boarding-houses kept by their worthy parents or widowed mothers. We, indeed, respect a young woman who serves us in this manner, (if we reflect at all,) and we resent rudeness or an unfeeling mode of addressing those who are in such situations. But the Southern gentleman goes further. He has, perhaps, not been accustomed to see the daughter of a white family serve. When a respectable young woman, therefore, at a boarding-house, brings him his tea, he feels impelled to rise and ask her to be seated, and to wait upon her. I have been an eye-witness to scenes of this kind, and have been much pleased and not a little amused at some exhibitions of the feeling. If our sentiments toward the sex, and their position in social life, mark the degree of civilization and cultivation in a community, I am compelled to accord a high degree of it to Southern society, in its best estate.
"This is one effect of slavery. It takes mothers, wives, daughters, away from occupations which, though honorable, do not always elevate them in the eyes of the other sex. Perhaps there is no value (and some will say it) in all this; that every labor and service is right and good for woman; and that we are to prefer a state of society where woman does these things with her own hands, instead of having them done for her, and that this is our only safeguard against luxury and degeneracy. I will not debate it. I am only showing that, tried by an ordinary test,—the position of woman,—Southerners are really not barbarians."
"I verily believe," said Mrs. North, "that if you take the Southern constitution and give it a Northern training, the result is as perfect a specimen of man or woman as is to be found on earth."
"People at the North," said I, "may, in their zeal against slavery, make light of the abounding sustenance which the slaves enjoy, and call it a low and gross thing in comparison with 'freedom;' but, in the view of all political economists and publicists, how to feed the lower classes is a great problem. It is solved in slavery.
"There is another topic," I added, "which is interesting and important.
"Here," said I, taking a newspaper-slip from my wallet, "is something which fairly made me weep. It is a picture of one of our poor, virtuous, honest New England homes, in which I would rather dwell and suffer, than be an 'oppressor' with my hundreds of slaves, and wealth counted by hundreds of thousands. A slave-holder, blessed be God, is not a synonyme of 'oppressor;' nor are the slaves as a matter of course 'oppressed.' Our people to a great extent think otherwise, and it is useful to see how we appear to others when this error leads us into folly. This little picture in the newspaper-slip gives us a transient look into an abode whose honest poverty and want are made more painful by evil-doing under the influence of fanaticism."
I then read to my friends the following from a Southern paper;—I here omit the names which are given in full:—
"The touching letter which was found on the body of —— ——, one of the insurgents, from his sister in ——, ——, has been published. The following paragraph in that letter is a suggestive one:
"'Would you come home if you had the money to come with? Tell me what it would cost. Oh! I would be unspeakably happy if it were in my power to send you money, but we have been very poor this winter. I have not earned a half-dollar this winter. Mattie has had a very good place, where she has had seventy-five cents a week; she has not spent any of it in the family, only a very little for mother. Father has had very small pay, but I think he has more now; he is a watchman on the —— ——, that runs from here to ——.'
"Here, says the Southern editor, is a family, one of thousands of families in New England in similar circumstances, where one daughter thinks it a 'very good place' where she can get seventy-five cents a week; another has not earned a half-dollar during the winter, and all are 'very poor;' yet the son and brother goes off and deserts a mother and sisters thus situated,—a mother and sisters who, though poor, have evidently the most affectionate feelings and tender sensibilities,—for the purpose of liberating a class of people, not one of whom knows anything of the want or privation from which his own family is suffering, or who would not look without contempt upon such remuneration as seemed the height of good fortune to the destitute sisters and mother of this abolitionist. When we bear in mind the intelligence and sensibilities which characterize the wives and daughters of the poorest classes equally with the richest in New England, it is most amazing that men should overlook such misery at their own doors—nay, should forsake their own kith and kin who are suffering under it—the mother who bore them, the sisters who love them with all a sister's tender and solicitous love, and run off to emancipate the fattest, sleekest, most contented and unambitious race under heaven."
"This shows," said I, "how God has set one thing over against another, in this world. You and Mrs. Worth and myself would rather be the poor honest 'watchman,' or earn our 'seventy-five cents a week,' with 'Mattie,' or even, with the loving sister who writes this letter, 'not' have 'earned a half-dollar this winter,' than be the 'sleekest' of well-fed slaves.
"Yet, when we are summing up the evils of slavery in the form of indictments, we must honestly confess that it is no small thing to feed a whole laboring class in one half of a great country with bread enough and to spare."
Mrs. North asked if I had ever seen a slave-mart, or if I knew much by observation of the domestic slave-trade.
"Yes," said I, "and it is in connection with this feature of slavery that we at the North are most easily and most painfully affected. Some of the most agonizing scenes are enacted at these auctions. They are a part of slavery; so is the domestic slave-trade, which is the necessary removal of the slaves from places where they cannot have employment, to regions where their labor is in demand. In no other way can they be disposed of, unless they are at once freed; and with many the evils of the domestic slave-trade are the most powerful argument in favor of emancipation. That there are grievous trials and sorrows, as well as wrongs and violence, in the disposal of slaves, is known to all. As to those who are to remain within the State, we are told to go, if we will, and inquire into the history of slaves who are to be publicly sold, and take the number of cases in which a wanton disregard of a slave's feelings can be detected. An owner is compelled to part with his property in his slave; or, the slave is taken for debt; estates are to be divided; an owner dies intestate; titles are to be settled, mortgages foreclosed, the number of the household is to be reduced; and for these and numerous other reasons new owners are to be sought for the slaves. Here is a man and his wife and children to be sold. There is a general interest felt in arranging the sale so that the family may be in the same neighborhood. This is for the interest of the owners; it promotes contentment and cheerfulness in the servants. Cases of hardship are the exceptions to the general rule in disposing of servants. Admitting all that can properly be said of such cases, and of the various other evils connected with it, the question recurs, What is to be done but increasingly to mitigate the sorrows of the bondmen, to cultivate a kind and generous disposition toward them, and to prepare them, as far and as fast as the good of all concerned will warrant, for any other condition which Providence may in time point out? My belief is, that if you take four millions of laboring people anywhere under the sun, and put down in separate columns the good and the evil in their conditions, the balance of welfare and happiness, from the supply of their wants, will be found to be greater among our Southern slaves than elsewhere. But, still, this leaves them slaves. My reply to myself, when I say this, is, They were so in their own land; or, they were in a condition of fearful degradation and misery. Their God is their judge; we have not increased their degradation; woe to us if we add needless sorrows to their lot. But as for thrusting them up to an ideal state of elevation, before their time and ours has come, I am not disposed to aid in it. Moreover, Southern Christians are doing all that we would do if in their place; I will not affect to be more humane or just than they; this is our great error.
"Here," said I, "is another view of the subject":
"In the sale of slaves (in America) nothing but labor is transferred. It passes from master to master, as it passes, in countries of hired labor, from employer to employer. The mode in which the transfer is made differs in the two systems of labor. The slave-laborer is never compelled to hunt for work and starve till he finds it. Is this an evil to the laborer? Would it be thought an evil, by the hired man in Europe, that his employer should be obliged, by-law, to find him another employer before dismissing him from service?
"But, it is said, the slave is too much exposed to the master's abuse of power; he is liable to wrongs without a remedy; and, so far, his condition is below that of the hired laborer.
"If this be true at all, it is true as regards the able-bodied hired man only. But take into the account children and women, those, for example, that work naked in coal-mines, or wives whose sufferings from the brutal treatment of husbands daily fill the reports of police courts; take these into the reckoning, and the difference in the consequences of abused power will be very small. The negro-slave is as thoroughly protected as any laborer in Europe. He is protected from every other man's wrong-doing by the ready interference of his master; he is guarded from the master's abuse by the laws of the land, and a vigilant, earnest public opinion. Let all cruelty be punished; let all abuse of power be restrained; but to abolish the relation of master and slave, because there are bad masters and ill-treated slaves, would not be a whit wiser than to abolish marriage, because there are brutal husbands and murdered wives.
"Yet, surely, it will be said, it must be admitted, after all, that slavery is an evil. Yes, certainly, it is an evil; but in the same sense only in which servitude or hired labor is an evil. To gain one's bread by the sweat of one's brow, is a curse. But it is a curse attended with a blessing. It is an evil that shuts out a greater evil. Labor for wages, labor for subsistence, and subjection to the authority of employer or master, are the conditions on which alone the laboring masses, white or black, can live with advantage to themselves and to society."—De Bow's Review, Jan. 1860, pp. 56, 57.
Mr. North asked if I did not think that the colored people should be assisted in their efforts to get an education.
"There are collegiate institutions," I told him, "for colored people, in Oxford, Pa., and in Xenia, O. With great sorrow have I observed, that applications to aid these institutions and to endow others for similar purposes have been received with coldness and distrust by many who could have made liberal contributions, for no other reason than the suspicion that they were designed by Abolitionists to thrust forward the colored man in an offensive manner. I have known the name of a leading Abolitionist to be the death of a subscription-paper for such an institution. This was a bitter prejudice. When philanthropy with regard to the colored race among us falls into its natural channel, we shall see the South and the North opening wide the doors of usefulness in every department for which the colored people shall, any of them, manifest an aptitude. The idea that this race is to be debarred from any and every development of which it is capable, is not entertained by any respectable people at the South. The negro at the South is not doomed, by the Christian people, to an inexorable fate. They will help him rise as fast and as far as God, in his providence, shows it to be his will to employ any or all of that race in other ways than those of servitude.
"'If American slavery,' says one, 'be the horrid system of cruelty, ignorance, and wickedness represented by some writers of fiction and paid defamers of our institutions, how happens it that those who have been reared in the midst of it, when freed and planted in Africa at once exhibit such capacity for self-government and self-education, and set such examples of good morals?
"'Have the negroes under British care at Sierra Leone made similar progress in improvement? Do the free colored subjects of Britain in the West Indies show the capacity, industry, and intelligence manifested by the Liberians, whose training was in the school of American servitude? Nor have the best specimens of this tutelage been sent out. Thousands and tens of thousands of colored servants in the Southern States are church-members, instructed in their duties by faithful Christian teachers, and the children are trained in the fear and love of God.'—I then observed,
"I have come to this conclusion: if Southern Christians say to us, as they do, Auction-blocks, separation of families, and similar features of slavery, in the limited and decreasing extent to which they prevail, are as odious to us as to you;—we tolerate these things as parts of a system which we all feel to be an evil, and which we are constantly striving to ameliorate;—I will leave the whole subject in their hands; I will trust them in this as I would in anything and everything; I feel absolved from all responsibility to God or to them with regard to the matter."
"Pray tell me," said Mrs. North, "what is all this discussion about 'the territories,' and keeping slavery out of them?"
"I told her that slavery, which fifteen States of the Union maintain as a part of their domestic life, is, by many of the people in the Free States, regarded as they regard the plague and death; they prescribe certain degrees of latitude as barriers to it, as though they enacted thus: 'North of 36° 30' whooping-cough is prohibited, measles are forbidden, cholera-morbus is forever interdicted.' They regard slave-holders as living in a moral pestilence, and seeking to carry it with them into new districts.
"But, practically," I said, "the thing will now regulate itself, and both sides are contending very much for an abstract right. It is a war of feeling, and no one knows where it will end. If the North would say, 'Free labor, which cannot thrive where slavery exists, requires an amicable division and allotment of the territorial regions; let us agree where our respective systems shall prevail,'—there would be no difficulty. But the effort has been to shut out slavery, as men use sanitary legislation and quarantine to keep out a pestilence. This is treating fifteen States of the Union as polluted and polluting. Hence they say, We cannot live together as one people, and we will not."
* * * * *
"What do you honestly think," said Mr. North, "is the true cause of our present national calamities?"
"They are owing," said I, "originally, to the peculiar state of feeling on the part of the North toward the South. This was not in consequence of injury experienced; for slavery had not inflicted injury upon the North; but, right or wrong, Northern disapprobation of slavery, and the ways of manifesting it, are the fountain-head of our present national trouble. Let great numbers in one section of such a nation as this conscientiously disapprove of their brethren in another section, and not only so, but hold them guilty of an immoral and an inhuman system, and deal with them in such ways as Conscience, that most merciless of inquisitors and persecutors, alone employs, and if the indicted section be not exasperated, it will be because the accusation is true,—that their system has destroyed their manhood."
"But my hope and belief," said he, "are, that all these changes are to result in the overthrow of slavery."
"I can only say," said I, in answer to such a remark, "that he who expects relief from our trouble through the eradication of slavery, and urges on secession and division as the means to effect it, is in danger of having his enthusiasm counted as fanaticism, if not madness."
"How I wish," said he, "that we could join and buy up these slaves and set them free."
"Kind and well meant as this proposal is," said I, "nothing is really more offensive to the South. It implies that her conscience is debauched by self-interest, and that by offering to remunerate her if she will part with what we call her ill-gotten booty we shall assist her to become virtuous. Such a proposal makes her feel that fanaticism has assumed the calmness which is its most hopeless symptom."
"Then," said he, "is the North to change all its opinions?"
I said, "If this implies the abandonment of moral or religious principle in the least degree, Never. Our only hope lies in our possibly being in the wrong, and in magnanimously changing our views and feelings, and our behavior. This, upon conviction, it will be most noble to do for its own sake, leaving the effect of it to Him by whom actions are weighed, and to those who, we shall have concluded, are naturally as magnanimous and just as we, and who, if guilty of oppression, were liable to the very same accusation when we first confederated with them, and when Northern slave-importers put their hands with Southern slave-holders to the Declaration of Independence, both averring that all men are created free and equal.
"We seem now to have concluded that we have put ourselves entirely right, and that our Southern brethren are entirely wrong."
"I cannot feel," said Mr. North, "that we are to blame for having our opinions, and for expressing them honestly and fearlessly. What more have we done?"
I replied, "They say that we have held them up to universal execration; that we have quoted, with readiness, the testimony of foreign nations against them,—of nations who know nothing of domestic slavery like ours, mixed up with the qualifying influences of our own civilization; that our imaginative literature has made them odious, associating cruelty and vulgarity with the relation of slave-holding; that we have labored to cripple their Institution, hoping to destroy it; that we have striven to save the District of Columbia from their system as from corruption; that a thousand millions of dollars of their property we have treated as contraband, and have made it perilous for them to recover it; that we have lain in wait and molested them in their transit through our borders, with their servants, to embark for sea. We dispute their right to go with their servants into territories jointly acquired, and belonging by constitutional right equally to them as to ourselves. This, they say, has not been a just and sincere demand for an equitable division of territory in view of the naturally conflicting interests of slave labor and free, but rather a vindictive determination to hem in the slave-holder, to force the scorpion into fires where he shall die of his own sting, or,—to borrow the metaphor, with the language, of a present Senator from Massachusetts,—where the 'poisoned rat shall die in his own hole.'
"Two confederacies or one, our prospect is fearful if we continue to feel and act toward each other after this temper, and to cherish our respective grievances."
"There is another side to all this," said Mr. North. "I ascribe the excitement at the South to the loss on their part of political power, or to a grasping spirit which breaks compromises, and which requires that the national legislation be always shaped in its favor."
"But," said I, "if we can trust the convictions of just men, in private life, at the South,—men removed from all suspicion as to the purity of their motives,—it is certain that our Northern feelings toward slave-holders, and the expressions of those feelings in ways which have been applauded among us for many years, are the real causes of the irritation and exasperation which have brought us to the present brink.
"Now, as these two sections must continue to exist, side by side, they will go on to repel each other until either slavery ceases, or a change of feeling takes place in the non-slaveholding section. Secession and permanent division will not cure the trouble, but will increase it. Moreover, the contrariety of feeling between people in the non-slaveholding States, made intense by the departure of the Southern section, may inaugurate hostilities among ourselves more fearful than those which drive away the Southern people.
"Perhaps we are to be two nations. I cannot but regard this as the greatest calamity which will have happened to the cause of human improvement. Nor do I see how it will help Northern philanthropy, nor the negro; but it may be greatly for his injury. The truth is, we must live together for self-defence against each other, if from no other consideration. Israel began its downfall in secession, which was compelled by Rehoboam.
"But," said I, "let us contemplate a different issue. Let us think what a result it will be if such a government as ours, whose speedy ruin has been so often predicted and is still confidently looked for, shall pass through these trials and dangers without bloodshed, and we become again a united people. Self-government will then have vindicated itself; constitutional liberty will have triumphed; arms and coercion will lose their old authority and power; for there will be an example of a republican people recovering from convulsions which would have demolished any throne or power which trusted in the sword. The serf-boats in ports of the Bay of Bengal, which ride the swift, enormous surges, are not nailed, but their parts are lashed one to another, and thus the boats yield easily to the force of the water. Our government has been likened to them; and now, by yielding, one part to another, where a theoretically stronger government would have used coercion, we shall, if it please God, pass safely through these fearful hazards, furnishing a demonstration, which God may have been preparing by us for the instruction of mankind, that fraternal blood is not the best nourishment of the tree of liberty, and that 'wisdom,' resulting in the victories of peace, 'is better than weapons of war.'
"I look, therefore, toward some change in Northern feelings with regard to the South. A change in this respect will end our troubles. Opinions may not be wholly reversed; people born and bred under totally different institutions may not, for they cannot wholly, yield their convictions on controverted sectional topics, even when they cherish mutual respect and deference; but, the belief that the North will change its feelings toward the South and its institutions, under a modification of views entirely consistent with independence of judgment and self-respect, and that the South will not be wanting in a corresponding temper, rests on the same conviction as that God does not intend to destroy us by each other's hands, nor to make the life of the two sections weary with perpetual hatred and strife."
* * * * *
"Our form of government, Mr. North," said I, "is the very best on earth if it goes well, and the worst if it goes ill. We have no standing army to fight for an administration as for a throne or dynasty; so that if a State secedes, the question is how to coerce that people, if it be best to attempt it. Citizens do not like to march against their brethren. Think of our taking up arms against our correspondents; against people that have gone from our churches and settled in that State; against cousins, and brothers-in-law, and people who lived or did business under the same roofs with us."
"It is awkward, indeed," said Mr. North, "especially if they simply withdraw and hold the fortifications of the general government, in their own territory, to keep the government from destroying their lives."
"Why, yes," said Mrs. North, "it would be simple in them, after seceding, to suffer themselves to be bombarded. But have they any right to secede?"
"As to that," said Mr. North, "my mind has been much exercised of late with this thought: I have always advocated the right of the negroes to make insurrection, or to flee from oppression. But now their masters complain of being oppressed by the North. Why have not the masters the same right to secede from their government as the negro from his?"
"Well, husband," said his wife, "I think that you are getting on fast."
"Why," said I, "Mr. North, is not slavery 'the sum of all villanies?'
Did the negro ever consent to his form of government?"
"Well," said he, "I never consented to be born; I find myself in existence; I have no more consented to the government of the United States than I suppose the negroes, generally, have submitted to their civil condition. My question is, Who shall decide when the Southern masters say, We are intolerably oppressed; we are under a yoke; 'break every yoke!' 'let the oppressed go free!' If I interpose and say, 'You are not oppressed; you are better off as you now are,' is not this the reply of the masters when we seek to free their slaves? Do we not say that the oppressed must be the judges of their necessity? And why may I coerce the master, if it be wrong for him to coerce the negro?"
"I must let you, work out that question at your leisure, and on your own principles," said I.—"We were speaking of seizing and holding the forts and arsenals. The French proverb says, 'It is the first step that costs.' Seceding involves the necessity of seizing the forts. If they who do this embarrass other persons in their lawful rights, they must risk the consequences; but if they secede from the government, the question is, Do circumstances justify a revolution? for secession is revolution. Is revolution justifiable in the present case?
"But not to discuss that question," said I, "all that I wished to say was this, that our government seems admirably suited for a people who will behave well under it. We can take care of isolated cases of rebellion. But if any important part of the country rises up and departs, it is exceedingly difficult to know what to do. Prevention is excellent; but cure is next to impossible. So long as there is a general acquiescence in the exercise of executive power against insurrectionists, one or more, we have a general government; but when States depart, we are a house divided against itself. We find that we have been living, as it were, not so much under paternal authority, as under fraternal rule. If broken irretrievably, the alternative is to be divided, or for one part of the country to coerce its neighbors and brethren. This we find to be extremely inconvenient and really impracticable without civil war; and after the war,—whose horrors, in our case, can never be pictured,—we would either find ourselves in the same divided state as before, or if politically united, it will have been effected at a cost which it is fearful to contemplate.
"So that we are illustrating the question, whether such a government as ours is really practicable,—whether a people can govern themselves. Already we hear it said, 'We have no government.' The explanation is, We are not disposed to destroy each other's lives to preserve the confederation. We can have a monarchy, with its 'divine right,' and with its standing army, if we choose; or, if we remain as a republic, we must be liable to just our present exigency. Our only defence, then, consists in mutual conciliation and agreement.
"What a land this is," said I, "with its diversified interests and its unparalleled variety of products,—its agriculture, mechanic arts, science, and literature. Separation will embarrass every form of intercourse, and make us hostile."
"Jews and Samaritans," said Mrs. North. "And all for an idea!"
"Yes," said I, "and for an idea which to one whole section, and to a very large part of the people in the other section, is false.—Four millions of negroes are destroying us. As a foreign writer said, 'In trying to give liberty to the negro, we are losing our own.'"
Said Mrs. North, "Can nothing be done to save us?"
"Bishop Butler tells us, Mrs. North," said I, "that a nation may be insane as well as an individual. But reason seems to be returning in some quarters. Secession and its consequences are having a wonderful effect to open the eyes of people. John Brown's foray and its end were a providential demonstration of certain errors, which we may conclude will not soon be revived. Secession is now leading the world to look more narrowly into the subject of negro slavery. Let me read to you these extracts from a recent number of 'Le Pays,' Paris. The writer is arguing that Europe must recognize the Southern confederacy:
'But in awaiting these results which would flow from the cordial welcome given by Europe to the new confederation, let true philanthropists be assured that they are wonderfully mistaken in regard to the real condition of the blacks of the South. We willingly admit that their error is pardonable, for they have learned the relations of master and slave only from "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Shall we look for that condition in the lucubrations of that romance, raised to the importance of a philosophic dissertation, but leading public opinion astray, provoking revolution, and necessitating incendiarism and revolution? A romance is a work of fancy, which one cannot refute, and which cannot serve as a basis to any argument. In our discussion, we must seek elsewhere for authorities and material. Facts are eloquent, and statistics teach us that, under the superintendence of those masters,—so cruel and so terrible, if we are to believe "Uncle Tom,"—the black population of the South increases regularly in a greater proportion than the white; while in the Antilles, in Africa, and especially in the so very philanthropic States of the North, the black race decreases in a deplorable proportion.
'The condition of those blacks is assuredly better than that of the agricultural laborers in many parts of Europe. Their morality is far superior to that of the free negroes of the North; the planters encourage marriage, and thus endeavor to develop among them a sense of the family relation, with a view of attaching them to the domestic hearth, consequently to the family of the master. It will be then observed that in such a state of things the interests of the planter, in default of any other motive, promotes the advancement and well-being of the slave. Certainly, we believe it possible still to ameliorate their condition. It is with that view, even, that the South has labored for so long a time to prepare them for a higher civilization.
'In no part, perhaps, of the continent, regard being had to the population, do there exist men more eminent and gifted, with nobler or more generous sentiments, than in the Southern States. No country possesses lovelier, kinder hearted, and more distinguished women. To commence with the immortal Washington, the list of statesmen who have taken part in the government of the United States shows that all those who have shed a lustre on the country, and won the admiration of Europe, owed their being to that much abused South.
'Is it true that so much distinction, talent, and grandeur of soul could have sprung from all the vices, from the cruelty and corruption which one would fain attribute now to the Southern people? The laws of inflexible logic refute these false imputations. And—strange coincidence—while Southern men presided over the destinies of the Union, its gigantic prosperity was the astonishment of the world. In the hands of Northern men, that edifice, raised with so much care and labor by their predecessors, comes crashing down, threatening to carry with it in its fall the industrial future of every other nation. For long years the constant efforts of the North, and a certain foreign country, to spread among the blacks incendiary pamphlets and tracts have powerfully contributed to suspend every Southern movement towards emancipation. Its people have been compelled to close their ears to ideas which threatened their very existence.'"
"But," said Mr. North, "here we have been, for thirty years or more, living on an anti-slavery excitement. Grant that it is all wrong; will you ask or expect that we shall change all at once? in a week? or in a month? or in a year? We will not kneel to anybody; if we change, it must be upon conviction."
"I strike hands with you there," said I, "most heartily. Our Southern friends must understand this; they must now approach us once more with reason and persuasion. The people at large are in a frame to be reasoned with and persuaded; for if we can do anything within the bounds of reason to retain the South in the Union, it will be done. We will say of concession as the antithesis of secession, as was said of two other things: 'Millions for defence, but not a cent for tribute.' I think that both sections need forgiveness of God, and of each other."
"Well," said Mr. North, "after all we shall get along and get through, even if there should be a separation."
"Mr. Worth," said I, "when you were studying Cicero, could you understand—for I could not—how he and other patriots could feel so strongly about the fortunes of their country as to declare—which they frequently do—that they would rather die than survive their country's honor? It has come to me vividly of late. I see it and feel it. The sunshine will seem to have gone out of our life when we become two unfriendly nations.
"It is easy," said I, "for it gratifies some of the lower passions, to ridicule a whole section of the country for their act of secession or a disposition towards it; to boast that the South cannot do without us; to prophesy that they will get sick of it, and wish to return; to express wonder that they should feel so much hurt; to remind them that, if they will do as we have always counselled them, there would be no trouble; and there is a temptation to say, as friends in a quarrel will hastily say, Let them go. But when they are irrecoverably gone, justifiably or not, I tell you, Mr. North, there will be mourning in our streets. I know, indeed, that there are some among us to whom it will be a carnival; but—"
"They will have a long Lent after it," said Mrs. North; "pray excuse me."
"Ties of kindred," said I, "patriotism, Christian friendships, will not go down to hopeless graves without leaving behind them sorrows ending only with life.
"It appears to me," said I, "that our ship is where nothing but an immediate calm and then a change of the wind, can save us. If we become two nations, it may be for judgment and destruction; and it may be for some great, ultimate good. But it will be hard parting. To think of having no South! and of their having no North! We shall each become provincial. We are wonderfully fitted to qualify and improve each the other. How strange it would be to have these two sections love each other! No one among us under twenty-five years of age, has probably ever thought of us but as in controversy."
"Speaking of Southern life," said Mrs. North, "I have not seen our friend Grant since he came back from the South."
"I have seen him," said I, "and have heard his story. He made his home with an old friend, a clergyman. It was known that he was a stranger, and at once he was made to feel at home by many of the citizens. The morning after he arrived, Jack, a servant of a neighboring family, came into the breakfast-room, with a waiter filled with dishes, which he deposited on the side-board. 'Master and Missis send their compliments, and want to know how the family is, and how Mr. Grant is this morning.' Now they had never seen Mr. Grant; but they knew that he had arrived the night before. 'Well, Jack,' says Mrs. ——, 'I see you have got some good things for us.' 'O, not much, Missis; but they thought you and Mr. Grant would excuse 'em for sending it.' So there were deposited on the breakfast-table, 'big hominy' in one or two shapes, rare fish, puff-muffins, and several dishes which called for Jack's interpretations. 'And Master says, shall he send the carriage round for you this forenoon? and he will call himself.' The evening talk was interrupted by a black woman, all smiles, bearing a waiter of ice-cream and other refreshments, from another house; and so the visit was a succession of surprises from families who, at the South, count each other's guests their own. Mr. Grant was a strong anti-secessionist, and he spent much breath in arguing with the people in private. On his return to his room, one day, he found a glass dish on the table, filled with japonicas, camellias, roses, and other early flowers, with the card of a married lady,—with whom he had had a debate,—inscribed, 'From the hottest of the Secessionists.' He seems modified in his views a little about 'the sum of all villanies,' since his return."
"Yes," said Mrs. North, "and the people here explain it by saying, 'O, he was fêted, and flattered.'
"Yes," she continued, "some of our people will sacrifice their confidence in man or angel, rather than believe anything good about slavery."
I said to her, "Add the Bible to those witnesses, Mrs. North."
"Husband," said she, "please reach me that long, thin, brown-covered book on the what-not." She then read an extract from the sixty-third page; it was a book by one now deceased, called, "Experience as a Minister":
"I had not been long a minister, before I found this worship of the Bible as a fetish hindering me at every step. If I declared the Constancy of Nature's Laws, and sought therein great argument for the Constancy of God, all the miracles came and held their mythologic finger up. Even Slavery was 'of God,' for the divine statutes in the Old Testament admitted the principle that man might own a man, as well as a garden or an ox, and provided for the measure. Moses and the Prophets were on its side; and neither Paul of Tarsus, nor Jesus of Nazareth, uttered a direct word against it."
* * * * *
"But here is the sun!" said I.
"We are all more cheerful," said Mrs. North, "than we were when he left us; for we have been able to converse on a trying and perplexing subject with good feelings."
"Now," said I, "here is the Southern lady's letter, which has given occasion to all our conversation."
"It has also introduced us," said Mr. North, "to that goose, Gustavus, and to his good aunt."
"What shall I say to the Southern lady," said I, "if I write to her father?"
"Tell her," said Mrs. North, "that if she comes to the North she must come directly to our house and make it her home. If you will allow me, I will put a note into your envelope to that effect. I shall beg her to bring Kate with her. Wouldn't I love to see Kate!"
"My dear," said Mr. North, "do you know what a time there would be if the lady should bring Kate with her?"
"The good time coming! I think it would be," said his wife, "to see the
Southern lady and her Kate under our roof."
"Why," Paid he, "we should all have to go to court?"
"Well, that would be interesting," said she; "but for what?"
"Why," said he, "you know that this is free soil: Kate is a slave; she can have her freedom for nothing if she comes here. Some of our Massachusetts gentlemen are as chivalrous and attentive to Southern colored people, as our good friend tells us Southern gentlemen are to a white woman: a committee would wait on Kate, with an officer of the peace, and invite her to visit the court-house with them, to be presented with 'freedom'; and Kate's mistress must go with her, to show that she is not restraining Kate of her liberty."
"Why," said Mrs. North, "if I could not be allowed, in visiting Sharon Springs, to take Judith with me to give me my baths, because she is free, I should call it barbarism. Who was that gentleman that broke his collar-bone and seat to you, husband, to get him a nurse?"
Mr. North said it was a student in a medical school, from the South.
"Did you find him a nurse?" said she.
"Yes," he replied; "but he groaned and said, 'Mother wanted to send on my mammy that nursed me, but your laws will not allow her to come. Now,' said he, 'mammy will not tamper with your servants here, and entice them away, as free colored men might do to our slaves if they landed at the South from your vessels. O, mammy,' said he, 'if I had your 'arbs and your nursing, what a pleasure it would be to be sick.'"
"Poor fellow!" said Mrs. North. "What did you say to him?"
"O," said he, "I told him that we lived under different institutions; and that when we are among the Romans we must do as the Romans do."
"Well," said Mrs. North, "if all such prohibitions are not downright impertinence, then I will give up."
"It's the law of the land, here," said her husband.
"Is there no 'Higher Law' in such a case?" said she. "'Higher Law,' I believe, is sometimes the rule in Massachusetts."
"Some of our most estimable colored fellow-citizens would attend her," said I, "and tempt her by their own prosperity and happiness in freedom, at the North, to cast in her lot with them and abandon her Southern home, her mistress, and her little charge, Susan; and her own little Cygnet's grave. They would send her, if she wished, free of charge, to Canada, and leave her there. She could be perfectly free."
"Now, what is all this for?" said Mrs. North. "Do the people here really believe that Kate is 'oppressed?' that her mistress is a tyrant? that Kate is a victim to the 'sum of all villanies?' that she buffers an 'enormous wrong?' that her mistress does her a 'stupendous injustice?' If they wish for objects of charity, and will go with me, I will engage to supply them with 'the oppressed' in any quantity, with some of 'the down-trodden' also."
"But, my dear Mrs. North," said I, "''tis distance lends enchantment to the view.' Besides, to get a slave away from a Southerner is worth unspeakably more to the cause of human happiness than to help scores of Northern people."
"But to be serious," said Mr. North, "we are afraid that slave-holding may get a foothold in Massachusetts; so we have to challenge every one who comes here with a slave, to show proof that he or she is not holding the servant to involuntary servitude among us."
"But," said Mrs. North, "are the people so conscientiously fearful lest bondage should get established here in Massachusetts? Is that the true reason for hurrying every colored servant, who travels here with his or her invalid master or mistress, before a court to know if he or she would not prefer to quit the family and the South? It seems to me we are sadly wanting in good manners."
"Now, please do not smile at your good wife for her simplicity, Mr. North," said I, "for I suppose that you are thinking, What have 'good manners' to do with the 'cause of freedom'? She is right in her impressions; a lady's sense of propriety against all the world."
"Do publish the Southern lady's letter by all means," said Mrs. North.
"How surprised she would be," said I, "to see it in print, or to know that it had wandered here, and was taking part in the discussions about slavery."
"The letter," said Mrs. North, "would, just now, seem like Noah's poor little dove, wandering over wrecks and desolations."
"True," said I, "and to finish the illusion, it might come back to her after many days, and lo! in its mouth an olive-leaf plucked off!"
"Give my love to her," said Mrs. North; "her letter has made me a better and happier woman. Now I love my whole country. I do justice in my feelings to hundreds of thousands whom I have hitherto regarded as perverse. I now see God's wonder-working providence in connection with the slave. It seems plain to me in what way the Union can be saved, and that is, by the general prevalence at the North of such views about slavery as the very best people at the South declare to be just and right."
"You would be deemed simple for saying that, Mrs. North," said I. "But you are right."
"Three things," she continued, after a moment's pause, "are more strongly impressed on my mind; please see if I am right:—That the relation of master and slave is not in itself sinful; That good people at the South feel toward injustice and cruelty precisely like us; and, That Southern Christians can correct all the evils in slavery, or abolish it, if necessary, better without our aid than with it."
"Mrs. North," said I, "unless we accept those propositions, the North and South never can live together in peace; and if we separate, the Northern conscience will be in a worse condition than ever, and we shall have long wars."
"It is a marvellous thing to me," said she, "as I now view it, that our good Christian people here are not willing to confide in that which good Southern Christian people say about slavery. We should trust their judgments, their moral sentiments, their consciences, on any other subject. How is it that when men and women, who are the excellent of the earth, tell us the results of their observation, experience, and reflections, with regard to slavery, we treat them as we do? When ill-mannered people, who must be vituperative and saucy to every body and in every thing, behave thus, it is not surprising; but I cannot explain why truly good men should not either adopt the deliberate sentiments of good people at the South, or at least consent to leave the subject, if beyond their faith or discernment, to the responsibility of Southern Christians. I condemn myself in saying this. But having myself been converted, I have hope for everybody."
During this talk, Mr. North was affected somewhat as he said his wife was when he first read the Southern lady's letter to her. He was a little incoherent by reason of his emotions; but he made out to say something about the sweetness and the strength of reconciled affections, and of the happiness which there would be when it should be proclaimed that the North and the South are once more friends.
"What is your whole name, Mrs. North?" said I; "for I shall wish to speak of you to the Southern lady, if I write to her father."
"My Christian name," said she, "is Patience."
"PATIENCE NORTH!" I said to myself, once or twice, as I stood at the parlor door. I was musing upon the name perhaps ten or fifteen seconds, and when I looked up, they were each both smiling at me and crying.
We shook hands, and I went my way.