The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus

by American Anti-Slavery Society

But it is time we had done with the objection, "such cruelties are INCREDIBLE." If the objector still reiterates it, he shall have the last word without farther molestation.

An objection kindred to the preceding now claims notice. It is the profound induction that slaves must be well treated because slaveholders say they are!

OBJECTION. II.—'SLAVEHOLDERS PROTEST THAT THEY TREAT THEIR SLAVES WELL.'

Self-justification is human nature; self-condemnation is a sublime triumph over it, and as rare as sublime. What culprits would be convicted, if their own testimony were taken by juries as good evidence? Slaveholders are on trial, charged with cruel treatment to their slaves, and though in their own courts they can clear themselves by their own oaths,[[21]] they need not think to do it at the bar of the world. The denial of crimes, by men accused of them, goes for nothing as evidence in all civilized courts; while the voluntary confession of them, is the best evidence possible, as it is testimony against themselves, and in the face of the strongest motives to conceal the truth. On the preceding pages, are hundreds of just such testimonies; the voluntary and explicit testimony of slaveholders against themselves, their families and ancestors, their constituents and their rulers; against their characters and their memories; against their justice, their honesty, their honor and their benevolence. Now let candor decide between those two classes of slaveholders, which is most entitled to credit; that which testifies in its own favor, just as self-love would dictate, or that which testifies against all selfish motives and in spite of them; and though it has nothing to gain, but every thing to lose by such testimony, still utters it.

[Footnote [21]: The law of which the following is an extract, exists in South Carolina. "If any slave shall suffer in life, limb or member, when no white person shall be present, or being present, shall refuse to give evidence, the owner or other person, who shall have the care of such slave, and in whose power such slave shall be, shall be deemed guilty of such offence, unless such owner or other person shall make the contrary appear by good and sufficient evidence, or shall BY HIS OWN OATH CLEAR AND EXCULPATE HIMSELF. Which oath every court where such offence shall be tried, is hereby compared to administer, and to acquit the offender, if clear proof of the offence be not made by two witnesses at least."—2 Brevard's Digest, 242. The state of Louisiana has a similar law.]

But if there were no counter testimony, if all slaveholders were unanimous in the declaration that the treatment of the slaves is good, such a declaration would not be entitled to a feather's weight as testimony; it is not testimony but opinion. Testimony respects matters of fact, not matters of opinion: it is the declaration of a witness as to facts, not the giving of an opinion as to the nature or qualities of actions, or the character of a course of conduct. Slaveholders organize themselves into a tribunal to adjudicate upon their own conduct, and give us in their decisions, their estimate of their own character; informing us with characteristic modesty, that they have a high opinion of themselves; that in their own judgment they are very mild, kind, and merciful gentlemen! In these conceptions of their own merits, and of the eminent propriety of their bearing towards their slaves, slaveholders remind us of the Spaniard, who always took off his hat whenever he spoke of himself, and of the Governor of Schiraz, who, from a sense of justice to his own character added to his other titles, those of, 'Flower of Courtesy,' 'Nutmeg of Consolation,' and 'Rose of Delight.'

The sincerity of those worthies, no one calls in question; their real notions of their own merits doubtless ascended into the sublime: but for aught that appears, they had not the arrogance to demand that their own notions of their personal excellence, should be taken as the proof of it. Not so with our slaveholders. Not content with offering incense at the shrine of their own virtues, they have the effrontery to demand, that the rest of the world shall offer it, because they do; and shall implicitly believe the presiding divinity to be a good Spirit rather than a Devil, because they call him so! In other words, since slaveholders profoundly appreciate their own gentle dispositions toward their slaves, and their kind treatment of them, and everywhere protest that they do truly show forth these rare excellencies, they demand that the rest of the world shall not only believe that they think so, but that they think rightly; that these notions of themselves are true, that their taking off their hats to themselves proves them worthy of homage, and that their assumption of the titles of, 'Flower of Kindness,' and 'Nutmeg of Consolation,' is conclusive evidence that they deserve such appellations!

Was there ever a more ridiculous doctrine, than that a man's opinion of his own actions is the true standard for measuring them, and the certificate of their real qualities!—that his own estimate of his treatment of others; is to be taken as the true one, and such treatment be set down as good treatment upon the strength of his judgment. He who argues the good treatment of the slave, from the slaveholder's good opinion of such treatment, not only argues against human nature and all history, his own common sense, and even the testimony of his senses, but refutes his own arguments by his daily practice. Every body acts on the presumption that men's feelings will vary with their practices; that the light in which they view individuals and classes, and their feelings towards them, will modify their opinions of the treatment which they receive. In any case of treatment that affects himself, his church, or his political party, no man so stultifies himself as to argue that such treatment must be good, because the author of it thinks so.

Who would argue that the American Colonies were well treated by the mother country, because parliament thought so? Or that Poland was well treated by Russia, because Nicholas thought so? Or that the treatment of the Cherokees by Georgia is proved good by Georgia notions of it? Or that of the Greeks by the Turks, by Turkish opinions of it? Or that of the Jews by almost all nations, by the judgment of their persecutors? Or that of the victims of the Inquisition, by the opinions of the Inquisitor general, or of the Pope and his cardinals? Or that of the Quakers and Baptists, at the hands of the Puritans,—to be judged of by the opinions of the legislatures that authorized, and the courts that carried it into effect. All those classes of persons did not, in their own opinion, abuse their victims. If charged with perpetrating outrageous cruelty upon them, all those oppressors would have repelled the charge with indignation.

Our slaveholders chime lustily the same song, and no man with human nature within him, and human history before him, and with sense enough to keep him out of the fire, will be gulled by such professions, unless his itch to be humbugged has put on the type of a downright chronic incurable. We repeat it—when men speak of the treatment of others as being either good or bad, their declarations are not generally to be taken as testimony to matters of fact, so much as expressions of their own feelings towards those persons or classes who are the subjects of such treatment. If those persons are their fellow citizens; if they are in the same class of society with themselves; of the same language, creed, and color; similar in their habits, pursuits, and sympathies; they will keenly feel any wrong done to them, and denounce it as base, outrageous treatment; but let the same wrongs be done to persons of a condition in all respects the reverse, persons whom they habitually despise, and regard only in the light of mere conveniences, to be used for their pleasure, and the idea that such treatment is barbarous will be laughed at as ridiculous. When we hear slaveholders say that their slaves are well treated, we have only to remember that they are not speaking of persons, but of property; not of men and women, but of chattels and things; not of friends but of vassals and victims; not of those whom they respect and honor, but of those whom they scorn and trample on; not of those with whom they sympathize, and co-operate, and interchange courtesies, but of those whom they regard with contempt and aversion and disdainfully set with the dogs of their flock. Reader, keep this fact in your mind, and you will have a clue to the slaveholder's definition of "good treatment." Remember also, that a part of this "good treatment" of which the slaveholders boast, is plundering the slaves of all their inalienable rights, of the ownership of their own bodies, of the use of their own limbs and muscles, of all their time, liberty, and earnings, of the free exercise of choice, of the rights of marriage and parental authority, of legal protection, of the right to be, to do, to go, to stay, to think, to feel, to work, to rest, to eat, to sleep, to learn, to teach, to earn money, and to expend it, to visit, and to be visited, to speak, to be silent, to worship according to conscience, in fine, their right to be protected by just and equal laws, and to be amenable to such only. Of all these rights the slaves are plundered; and this is a part of that "good treatment" of which their plunderers boast! What then is the rest of it? The above is enough for a sample, at least a specimen-brick from the kiln. Reader, we ask you no questions, but merely tell you what you know, when we say that men and women who can habitually do such things to human beings, can do ANY THING to them.