The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus

by American Anti-Slavery Society

From the nature of the case—from the laws of mind, such power, so intensely desired, griped with such a death-clutch, and with such fierce spurnings of all curtailment or restraint, cannot but be abused. Privations and inflictions must be its natural, habitual products, with ever and anon, terror, torture, and despair let loose to do their worst upon the helpless victims.

Though power over others is in every case liable to be used to their injury, yet, in almost all cases, the subject individual is shielded from great outrages by strong safeguards. If he have talents, or learning, or wealth, or office, or personal respectability, or influential friends, these, with the protection of law and the rights of citizenship, stand round him as a body guard: and even if he lacked all these, yet, had he the same color, features, form, dialect, habits, and associations with the privileged caste of society, he would find in them a shield from many injuries, which would be invited, if in these respects he differed widely from the rest of the community, and was on that account regarded with disgust and aversion. This is the condition of the slave; not only is he deprived of the artificial safeguards of the law, but has none of those natural safeguards enumerated above, which are a protection to others. But not only is the slave destitute of those peculiarities, habits, tastes, and acquisitions, which by assimilating the possessor to the rest of the community, excite their interest in him, and thus, in a measure, secure for him their protection; but he possesses those peculiarities of bodily organization which are looked upon with deep disgust, contempt, prejudice, and aversion. Besides this, constant contact with the ignorance and stupidity of the slaves, their filth, rags, and nakedness; their cowering air, servile employments, repulsive food, and squalid hovels, their purchase and sale, and use as brutes—all these associations, constantly mingling and circulating in the minds of slaveholders, and inveterated by the hourly irritations which must assail all who use human beings as things, produce in them a permanent state of feeling toward the slave, made up of repulsion and settled ill-will. When we add to this the corrosions produced by the petty thefts of slaves, the necessity of constant watching, their reluctant service, and indifference to their master's interests, their ill concealed aversion to him, and spurning of his authority; and finally, that fact, as old as human nature, that men always hate those whom they oppress, and oppress those whom they hate, thus oppression and hatred mutually begetting and perpetuating each other—and we have a raging compound of fiery elements and disturbing forces, so stimulating and inflaming the mind of the slaveholder against the slave, that it cannot but break forth upon him with desolating fury.

To deny that cruelty is the spontaneous and uniform product of arbitrary power, and that the natural and controlling tendency of such power is to make its possessor cruel, oppressive, and revengeful towards those who are subjected to his control, is, we repeat, to set at nought the combined experience of the human race, to invalidate its testimony, and to reverse its decisions from time immemorial.

A volume might be filled with the testimony of American slaveholders alone, to the truth of the preceding position. We subjoin a few illustrations, and first, the memorable declaration of President Jefferson, who lived and died a slaveholder. It has been published a thousand times, and will live forever. In his "Notes on Virginia," sixth Philadelphia edition, p. 251, he says,—

"The WHOLE COMMERCE between master and slave, is a PERPETUAL EXERCISE of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting DESPOTISM on the one part, and degrading submission on the other.... The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, GIVES LOOSE TO THE WORST OF PASSIONS; and thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities."

Hon. Lewis Summers, Judge of the General Court of Virginia, and a slaveholder, said in a speech before the Virginia legislature in 1832; (see Richmond Whig of Jan. 26, 1832,)

"A slave population exercises the most pernicious influence upon the manners, habits and character, of those among whom it exists. Lisping infancy learns the vocabulary of abusive epithets, and struts the embryo tyrant of its little domain. The consciousness of superior destiny takes possession of his mind at its earliest dawning, and love of power and rule, 'grows with his growth, and strengthens with his strength.' Unless enabled to rise above the operation of those powerful causes, he enters the world with miserable notions of self-importance, and under the government of an unbridled temper."

The late JUDGE TUCKER of Virginia, a slaveholder, and Professor of Law in the University of William and Mary, in his "Letter to a Member of the Virginia Legislature," 1801, says,—

"I say nothing of the baneful effects of slavery on our moral character, because I know you have been long sensible of this point."

The Presbyterian Synod of South Carolina and Georgia, consisting of all the clergy of that denomination in those states, with a lay representation from the churches, most, if not all of whom are slaveholders, published a report on slavery in 1834, from which the following is an extract.