It is but an act of justice to slaveholders for me to state, that the education of slaves in most of the slave States is barred by prohibitory laws. This is one of the fruits of abolition interference with slavery. I have remarked in Chapter 3, of this volume, that the abolition excitement in the North, about thirty-five years ago, cut off discussion in the South on the subject of slavery; and that the legislatures of the slave States in self-defence, or otherwise, in obedience to the imperious demands of self-preservation, enacted stringent laws in reference to the slave population, &c.; and that among them will be found enactments making the education of slaves a penal offense. It was the circulation of abolition tracts and papers among the slaves by Northern men, that first suggested this idea to the Southern legislatures. Previous to that time, many Christian slaveholders were educating their slaves. These laws are inoperative in many places in the South; and it affords me pleasure here to record the fact, that most of the slaves in Knoxville, Tennessee, the city in which I last resided while a citizen of the South, are able to read, and many of them can write. Well done, ye noble and generous sons and daughters of Knoxville.
The subject of slavery for the last thirty-five years has been an exciting one in the United States. There has been much discussion, and what is worse, much angry contention on the subject. It has been a hobby for demagogues, and a fire-brand in the hands of factious disorganizers. Fanatics and false philanthropists have rolled it as a sweet morsel under their tongues. It has furnished them with a pretext to cry liberty! liberty! from the rising to the setting sun. Their whole souls, bodies, and minds, appear to have been absorbed in the contemplation of African slavery. They appeared to be wholly engrossed with this one idea, to be engulphed! swallowed up! lost! confounded and bewildered in visionary abstractions, and ever and anon, their plaintive notes were heard throughout the hills and dales, liberty and oppression, the burden of their songs. They seemed to consider all crime, all oppression, all injustice, all wrong, as merged in African slavery and its concomitant evils, and themselves the peculiar, the special guardians of the rights of man. The North and the South have been hissed on each other with demoniac fury, and have glutted their vengeance in attempts to "bite and devour each other." Truth, justice, and righteousness have been lost sight of, and a fair and impartial statement of facts has seldom been placed before the public; but in its stead, crimination and recrimination have been hurled from North to South, and from South to North.
The North has arraigned the South, and the South has hurled defiance at the North; or, if the former set up a defense, it was little better than special pleading. Those who have read the foregoing pages are apprised, that it was no part of my design in this work, to exonerate either North or South, there is guilt enough everywhere to humble us all. But I have long considered the attacks of abolitionists on slaveholders, as devoid of truth and justice, and that their views on slavery, were in direct opposition to the revealed will of God. Abolitionism cannot be of God, because its views, plans, and machinations, are in direct opposition to the revealed will of God. Whosoever sows dissension or excites discontent among the slaves, and influences them to dishonor, despise, or forsake the service of their masters, in so doing, violates the positive injunctions of the Bible. Servants are commanded in the New Testament to obey, love, and serve their masters, and to resign themselves to the will of God, and be content with their lot. Servants are not only taught to obey their masters, but to account them worthy of all honor, and to endeavor to please them in all things. "If any man teach otherwise, (says the apostle), he is proud, knowing nothing." But abolitionists do teach otherwise; hence, we find many of the leaders of that party repudiating the Bible.
I do not suppose that Northern people, where slavery is not legalized, are any better than the Southern people where it is legalized. Each section of the Union has its virtues and vices. I do not suppose that England, where slavery is not legalized, is any better than America where it is legalized. There is more or less injustice and oppression everywhere. It looks well in England to talk about oppression in the United States. "Thou hypocrite, first cast the beam out of thine own eye." Look at down trodden Ireland, thou despotic tyrant. And ye dukes and lords, ye pinks of mortality, professing to be Christians, have ye forgotten the words of Divine inspiration? "He that hath of this worlds goods, and seeth his brother have need, how dwelleth the love of God in him?" Look at your tenantry, the millions of miserable wretches on your own soil, whose condition is far worse than that of the African slaves in the United States? And ye bishops! ye overseers of the flock of Christ? with your princely salaries! surrounded by wealth, splendor, and luxury! Have ye ever thought of the millions, that are starving around you, not only for the bread of eternal life, but also for that which is essential to the sustenance of animal life! Woe to you, ye hypocrites. Ye wolves in sheep's clothing! Bow your heads with shame, and repent in sack-cloth, or else as surely as there is a God in heaven, you will have "your portion in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone."
Some people at the North are constantly harping on the subject of slavery, and yet lo! when some one emancipates a slave in the South, and he straggles off to the North, every one with whom he meets gives him a kick. Benevolent souls, look at the treatment which the Randolph negroes received in the state of Ohio. If slaves are emancipated where are they to go? Where will they find an asylum? Not in the North? For Northern legislatures are already telling them by prohibitory enactments, here, you cannot come. "O consistency! thou art a jewel, a pearl of great price," a virtue rarely met with.
Abolitionists make a great noise about slavery, some of them, no doubt, conscientious and sincere; but there are many among them, should they remove to the South, that would in less than five years own a cotton farm or a sugar plantation well stocked with negroes. Facts have in many instances verified the truth of this assertion. Men have frequently emigrated from the free states to the South, professedly abolitionists, and after getting into one or two difficulties with the excitable Southerners, they would all at once throw off their garb of abolitionism, and then, they too, must have slaves. Perhaps they thought that a change of location justified a change of opinion; or, it may be, that they reasoned thus: poor creatures, they are in bondage, and why should they not as well belong to us as to any one else? We can treat them as well as any one. The Southern slaves, however, tell a different tale. They say that Northern men have no business with slaves, for the reason, that they are very hard masters. The negroes of the South have as little sympathy for the Yankees, as their pro-slavery masters.
I have said that we all are guilty; yes, England is guilty! America is guilty! The Northern states are guilty! The Southern states are guilty! There is guilt everywhere! We should therefore beware how we censure one another. Mother England furnished her American colonies with slaves, and pocketed the money, and now she tells us, that we have no right to that property which she forced on us, when we were a weak and defenceless people, and could not do otherwise than obey her commands. The eagle eyed, shrewd, and sagacious Yankees, ever alive to all that pertains to their own pecuniary interests, with that keen-witted penetration and over-reaching foresight, for which they are remarkable, soon made the discovery, that slave labor in a Northern latitude, and on a comparatively barren soil, must prove unproductive. Hence, they strike a bargain with their Southern neighbors. The Yankees say to the Southern planters, gentlemen, you can employ these slaves profitably in the cultivation of tobacco and cotton. Your climate and soil is adapted to slave labor, ours is not, take our slaves, and let us have in return, gold and silver. It will be a profitable investment on your part, and will relieve us of a species of property, which, to us, is unprofitable. The Southern planters accept their offer and purchase their slaves, and what next? The Yankees turn around and say to the Southern men, you have no right to hold these slaves as property. Kentucky and Tennessee might now, with equal propriety and consistency sell their slaves to the Texan planters, pocket the money, turn on their heels and say, why gentlemen, it is true that we sold you these slaves, and you have paid us for them; but you have no right to hold them in bondage. Refund our money, cry the Texan planters. If you have sold us property which we have no right to hold as property, refund our money? No, say the sturdy Kentuckian and the stalwart Tennessean, not we. Help yourselves the best way you can, we have got your money, and we shall hold on to it. We make no children's bargains, and thus the matter ends.
If slave labor had been profitable in the North, Northern men would have remained in possession of their slaves to the present day. No one, I suppose, doubts it, and it is a good and sufficient reason why they should be a little more modest in their denunciation of their Southern brethren. Slavery is perpetuated by selfishness. Northern men, to say the least, are as selfish as Southern men; and it would require nothing, but a change of location, to make them as oppressive task-masters. Where there is most selfishness, there we will find most oppression; provided, that surrounding circumstances are favorable. Most men, in this world, consult their own pecuniary interests. If they are enhanced by African slavery, African slaves they will have, provided they can get them; but if they cannot get African slaves, they will make slaves of unfortunate and ignorant individuals of their own color. It is the same dominant principle the world over. The Northern man with his leagues of land, surrounded by ignorant, indigent and impoverished families, is virtually a slaveholder. He gets all their labor, and what do they receive in return? A bare subsistence. Southern slaves get that. These tenants spend their lives in laboring for their landlords, and receive in return, barely a sufficiency of coarse food and coarse clothing, to keep soul and body together through a protracted and miserable existence; the condition of many of them being worse than that of a majority of Southern slaves. Most of operatives who live on their daily wages, do nothing more than earn their victuals and clothes, and slaves are generally as well clothed, and better fed than they are. It is clear to my mind, that a majority of slaves are better compensated for their labor, than the poorer class of people, North or South. I base this conclusion on the fact, that neither the one, nor the other, receive any thing more than their victuals and clothes, and the slave is better fed, and better clothed than the poor white man. This is neither a far-fetched conclusion, nor yet an exaggeration. It is literally true. I repeat, that the slaves of the South are generally better provided for, than the generality of the tenantry, North or South. Hence, the slave is better paid for his labor than the white man, under these circumstances, slaves are also exempt from those corroding cares, perplexities and anxieties, which embitter the lives of the poorer class of white people. He has but to finish his task, and eat and sleep; the cares of the family devolve on master and mistress. The storms of adversity, the losses and crosses incident to all families, pass over his humble hut. The poor white man has bread and meat to-day, but God only knows from whence it will come to-morrow. Not so with the slave, he knows well from whence his bread and meat is to come "for the morrow." Master is bound to make provision for him, and he feels no concern about the matter. "He takes no thought for the morrow." Well, but says one, the white man has liberty, poor as he may be. He can work to-day, and forbear to-morrow, if it suits his ease, convenience, or inclination. Very true, and the misfortune is, that he too often works to-day, and gets drunk to-morrow; or, otherwise, squanders away his time foolishly. Indigence and ignorance subject men to oppression in all countries, and under all circumstances, it matters not whether you call them slaves or freemen. There is oppression and injustice everywhere. It originates in the supreme selfishness of our natures—our self-love. It was the original design of Christianity to eradicate this principle from the human heart. "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." "Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them." This is the language of the author of our religion. The great apostle had direct reference to the selfishness of our hearts when he said, "the love of money is the root of all evil." While selfishness is the dominant principle of our hearts, we can neither love God, nor yet our neighbor. The Holy spirit can never enter our hearts, while this principle reigns supreme within. He has been trying to expel the monster from the hearts of the human family, for nearly two thousand years; but as yet he has accomplished his object but partially. He pleads for entrance, but too often pleads in vain. We must relinquish our self-love, before we can love God supremely, and our neighbor as ourselves.
Selfishness, self-love, or the love of money, as the apostle terms it, stands in the way of all that is noble, generous, and just, in our intercourse with our fellow creatures. It is "the root of all evil," all injustice, all oppression, all unrighteousness, all that mars our peace and happiness in this world, all tumults, all strife, all contention, all war, all blood-shed, all hatred, all misery in time, and all our woes to all eternity.