The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus

by American Anti-Slavery Society

This, however, is but one of many doctrines of ruinous tendency to the cause of civil liberty, advanced by pro-slavery writers to sustain their system of oppression.

It would surely be superfluous to go into proofs, that the Roman government was vicious and wicked in its constitution and nature. Nevertheless, the Apostle enjoined submission to it, and taught its subjects how to demean themselves under it. Here, then, we have an instance, in which we cannot argue the sinlessness of a relation, from the fact of Apostolic injunctions on those standing in it. Take another instance. The Chaldeans went to a foreign land, and enslaved its people—as members of your guilty partnership have done for some of the slaves you now own, and for the ancestors of others. And God destroyed the Chaldeans expressly "for all their evil that they had done in Zion." But, wicked as they were, for having instituted this relation between themselves and the Jews, God, nevertheless, tells the Jews to submit to it. He tells them, "Serve the King of Babylon." He even says, "seek the peace of the city, whither I have caused you to be carried away captives, and pray unto the Lord for it; for, in the peace thereof, shall ye have peace." Here then, we have another instance, in addition to that of the Roman despot and his subjects, in which the Holy Spirit prescribed regulations for wicked relations. You will, at least, allow, that the relation established by the Chaldeans between themselves and the captive Jews, was wicked. But, you will perhaps say, that this is not a relation coming within the contemplation of your rule. Your rule speaks of a civil relation, and also of the existing relations of life. But, the relation in question, being substantially that of slaveholder and slave, is, according to your own showing, a civil relation. Perhaps you will say, it is not an "existing relation of life." But what do you mean by "an existing relation of life?" Do you mean, that it is a relation approved of God? If you do, and insist that the relation of slaveholder and slave is "an existing relation of life," then you are guilty of begging the great question between us. Your rule, therefore, can mean nothing more than this—that any relation is rightful, for which the Bible prescribes regulations. But the relation referred to between the Chaldeans and Jews, proves the falsity of the rule. Again, when a man compels me to go with him, is not the compelled relation between him and me a sinful one? And the relation of robber and robbed, which a man institutes between himself and me, is not this also sinful? But, the Bible has prescribed regulations for the relations in both these cases. In the one, it requires me to "go with him twain;" and, in the other, to endure patiently even farther spoliation and, "let him have (my) cloak also." In these cases, also, do we see the falsity of your rule—and none the less clearly, because the relations in question are of brief duration.

Before concluding my remarks on this topic, let me say, that your doctrine, that God has prescribed no rules for the behaviour of persons in any other than the just relations of life, reflects no honor on His compassion. Why, even we "cut-throat" abolitionists are not so hard-hearted as to overlook the subjects of a relation, because it is wicked. Pitying, as we do, our poor colored brethren, who are forced into a wicked relation, which, by its very nature and terms, and not by its abuses, as you would say, has robbed them of their all—even we would, nevertheless, tell them to "resist not evil"—to be obedient unto their own masters"—not purloining, but showing all good fidelity." We would tell them, as God told the captive Jews, to "seek the peace of those, whither they are carried away captives, and to pray unto the Lord" for them: and our hope of their emancipation is not, as it is most slanderously and wickedly reported to be, in their deluging the South with blood: but, it is, to use again those sweet words of inspiration, that "in the peace thereof they shall have peace." We do not communicate with the slave; but, if we did, we would teach him, that our hope of his liberation is grounded largely in his patience, and that, if he would have us drop his cause from our hands, he has but to take it into his own, and attempt to accomplish by violence, that which we seek to effect through the power of truth and love on the understanding and heart of his master.

Having disposed of your reasons in favor of the rightfulness of the relation of slaveholder and slave, I will offer a few reasons for believing that it is not rightful.

1st. My strongest reason is, that the great and comprehensive principles, and the whole genius and spirit of Christianity, are opposed to slavery.

2d. In the case of Pharoah and his Jewish slaves, God manifested his abhorrence of the relation of slavery. The fact that the slavery in this case was political, instead of domestic, and, therefore, of a milder type than that of Southern slavery, does not forbid my reasoning from the one form to the other. Indeed, if I may receive your declaration on this point, for the truth, I need not admit that the type of the slavery in question is milder than that of Southern slavery;—for you say, that "their (the Jews) condition was that of the most abject bondage or slavery." But the supposition that it is milder, being allowed to be correct, would only prove, that God's abhorrence of Southern bondage as much exceeds that which he expressed of Egyptian bondage, as the one system is more full than the other of oppression and cruelty.

We learn from the Bible, that it was not because of the abuses of the Egyptian system of bondage, but, because of its sinful nature, that God required its abolition. He did not command Pharaoh to cease from the abuses of the system, and to correct his administration of it, but to cease from the system itself. "I have heard," says God, "the groaning of the children of Israel, whom the Egyptians keep in bondage;"—not whom the Egyptians, availing themselves of their absolute power, compel to make brick without straw, and seek to waste and exterminate by the murder of their infant children;—but simply "whom the Egyptians keep in bondage." These hardships and outrages were but the leaves and branches. The root of the abomination was the bondage itself, the assertion of absolute and slaveholding power by "a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph." In the next verse God says: "I will rid you"—not only from the burdens and abuses, as you would say, of bondage,—but "out of their (the Egyptians) bondage" itself—out of the relation in which the Egyptians oppressively and wickedly hold you.

God sends many messages to Pharaoh. In no one of them does He reprove him for the abuses of the relation into which he had forced the Jews. In no one of them is he called on to correct the evils which had grown out of that relation. But, in every one, does God go to the root of the evil, and command Pharaoh, "let my people go"—"let my people go, that they may serve me." The abolitionist is reproachfully called an "ultraist" and "an immediatist." It seems that God was both, when dealing with this royal slaveholder:—for He commanded Pharaoh, not to mitigate the bondage of the Israelites, but to deliver them from it—and that, too, immediately. The system of slavery is wicked in God's sight, and, therefore, did He require of Pharaoh its immediate abandonment. The phrase, "let my people go, that they may serve me," shows most strikingly one feature of resemblance between Egyptian and American slavery. Egyptian slavery did not allow its subjects to serve God, neither does American. The Egyptian master stood between his slave and their God: and how strikingly and awfully true is it, that the American master occupies the like position! Not only is the theory of slavery, the world over, in the face of God's declaration; "all souls are mine:" but American slaveholders have brought its practical character to respond so fully to its theory—they have succeeded, so well, in excluding the light and knowledge of God from the minds of their slaves—that they laugh at His claim to "all souls."

3d. Paul, in one of his letters to the Corinthian Church, tells servants—say slaves, to suit your views—if they may be free, to prefer freedom to bondage. But if it be the duty of slaves to prefer freedom to bondage, how clearly is it the correlative duty of the master to grant it to him! You interpret the Apostle's language, in this case, as I do; and it is not a little surprising, that, with your interpretation of it, you can still advocate slavery. You admit, that Paul says—I use your own words—"a state of freedom, on the whole, is the best." Now, it seems to me, that this admission leaves you without excuse, for defending slavery. You have virtually yielded the ground. And this admission is especially fatal to your strenuous endeavors to class the relation of master and slave with the confessedly proper relations of life, and to show that, like these, it is approved of God. Would Paul say to the child, "a state of freedom" from parental government "on the whole is the best?" Would he say to the wife, "a state of freedom from your conjugal bonds" on the whole is the best? Would he say to the child and wife, in respect to this freedom, "use it rather?" Would he be thus guilty of attempting to annihilate the family relation?

Does any one wonder, that the Apostle did not use stronger language, in advising to a choice and enjoyment of freedom? It is similar to that which a pious, intelligent, and prudent abolitionist would now use under the like circumstances. Paul was endeavoring to make the slave contented with his hard lot, and to show him how unimportant is personal liberty, compared with liberation from spiritual bondage: and this explains why it is, that he spoke so briefly and moderately of the advantages of liberty. His advice to the slave to accept the boon of freedom, was a purely incidental remark: and we cannot infer from it, how great stress he would have laid on the evils of slavery, and on the blessings of liberty, in a discourse treating directly and mainly of those subjects. What I have previously said, however, shows that it would, probably, have been in vain, and worse than in vain, for him to have come out, on any occasion whatever, with an exposition of the evils of slavery.