Multitudes scout as fictions the cruelties inflicted upon slaves, because slaveholders are famed for their courtesy and hospitality. They tell us that their generous and kind attentions to their guests, and their well-known sympathy for the suffering, sufficiently prove the charges of cruelty brought against them to be calumnies, of which their uniform character is a triumphant refutation.
Now that slaveholders are proverbially hospitable to their guests, and spare neither pains nor expense in ministering to their accommodation and pleasure, is freely admitted and easily accounted for. That those who make their inferiors work for them, without pay, should be courteous and hospitable to those of their equals and superiors whose good opinions they desire, is human nature in its every-day dress. The objection consists of a fact and an inference: the fact, that slaveholders have a special care to the accommodation of their guests; the inference, that therefore they must seek the comfort of their slaves—that as they are bland and obliging to their equals, they must be mild and condescending to their inferiors—that as the wrongs of their own grade excite their indignation, and their woes move their sympathies, they must be touched by those of their chattels—that as they are full of pains-taking toward those whose good opinions and good offices they seek, they will, of course, show special attention to those to whose good opinions they are indifferent, and whose good offices they can compel—that as they honor the literary and scientific, they must treat with high consideration those to whom they deny the alphabet—that as they are courteous to certain persons, they must be so to "property"—eager to anticipate the wishes of visitors, they cannot but gratify those of their vassals—jealous for the rights of the Texans, quick to feel at the disfranchisement of Canadians and of Irishmen, alive to the oppressions of the Greeks and the Poles, they must feel keenly for their negroes! Such conclusions from such premises do not call for serious refutation. Even a half-grown boy, who should argue, that because men have certain feelings toward certain persons in certain circumstances, they must have the same feelings toward all persons in all circumstances, or toward persons in opposite circumstances, of totally different grades, habits, and personal peculiarities, might fairly be set down as a hopeless simpleton: and yet, men of sense and reflection on other subjects, seem bent upon stultifying themselves by just such shallow inferences from the fact, that slaveholders are hospitable and generous to certain persons in certain grades of society belonging to their own caste. On the ground of this reasoning, all the crimes ever committed may be disproved, by showing, that their perpetrators were hospitable and generous to those who sympathized and co-operated with them. To prove that a man does not hate one of his neighbors, it is only necessary to show that he loves another; to make it appear that he does not treat contemptuously the ignorant, he has only to show that he bows respectfully to the learned; to demonstrate that he does not disdain his inferiors, lord it over his dependents, and grind the faces of the poor, he need only show that he is polite to the rich, pays deference to titles and office, and fawns for favor upon those above him! The fact that a man always smiles on his customers, proves that he never scowls at those who dun him! and since he has always a melodious "good morning!" for "gentlemen of property and standing," it is certain that he never snarls at beggars. He who is quick to make room for a doctor of divinity, will, of course, see to it that he never runs against a porter; and he who clears the way for a lady, will be sure never to rub against a market woman, or jostle an apple-seller's board. If accused of beating down his laundress to the lowest fraction, of making his boot-black call a dozen times for his pay, of higgling and screwing a fish boy till he takes off two cents, or of threatening to discharge his seamstress unless she will work for a shilling a day, how easy to brand it all as slander, by showing that he pays his minister in advance, is generous in Christmas presents, gives a splendid new-year's party, expends hundreds on elections, and puts his name with a round sum on the subscription paper of the missionary society.
Who can forget the hospitality of King Herod, that model of generosity "beyond all ancient fame," who offered half his kingdom to a guest, as a compensation for an hour's amusement.—Could such a noble spirit have murdered John the Baptist? Incredible! Joab too! how his soft heart was pierced at the exile of Absalom! and how his bowels yearned to restore him to his home! Of course, it is all fiction about his assassinating his nephew, Amasa, and Abner the captain of the host! Since David twice spared the life of Saul when he came to murder him, wept on the neck of Jonathan, threw himself upon the ground in anguish when his child sickened, and bewailed, with a broken heart, the loss of Absalom—it proves that he did not coolly plot and deliberately consummate the murder of Uriah! As the Government of the United States generously gave a township of land to General La Fayette, it proves that they have never defrauded the Indians of theirs! So the fact, that the slaveholders of the present Congress are, to a man, favorable to recognizing the independence of Texas, with her fifty or sixty thousand inhabitants, before she has achieved it, and before it is recognized by any other government, proves that these same slaveholders do not oppose the recognition of Hayti, with her million of inhabitants, whose independence was achieved nearly half a century ago, and which is recognized by the most powerful governments on earth!
But, seriously, no man is so slightly versed in human nature as not to know that men habitually exercise the most opposite feelings, and indulge in the most opposite practices toward different persons or different classes of persons around them. No man has ever lived who was more celebrated for his scrupulous observance of the most exact justice, and for the illustration furnished in his life of the noblest natural virtues, than the Roman Cato. His strict adherence to the nicest rules of equity—his integrity, honor, and incorruptible faith—his jealous watchfulness over the rights of his fellow citizens, and his generous devotion to their interest, procured for him the sublime appellation of "The Just." Towards freemen his life was a model of every thing just and noble: but to his slaves he was a monster. At his meals, when the dishes were not done to his liking, or when his slaves were careless or inattentive in serving, he would seize a thong and violently beat them, in presence of his guests.—When they grew old or diseased, and were no longer serviceable, however long and faithfully they might have served him, he either turned them adrift and left them to perish, or starved them to death in his own family. No facts in his history are better authenticated than these.
No people were ever more hospitable and munificent than the Romans, and none more touched with the sufferings of others. Their public theatres often rung with loud weeping, thousands sobbing convulsively at once over fictitious woes and imaginary sufferers: and yet these same multitudes would shout amidst the groans of a thousand dying gladiators, forced by their conquerors to kill each other in the amphitheatre for the amusement of the public.[[22]]
[Footnote [22]: Dr. Leland, in his "Necessity of a Divine Revelation," thus describes the prevalence of these shows among the Romans:—"They were exhibited at the funerals of great and rich men, and on many other occasions, by the Roman consuls, praetors, aediles, senators, knights, priests, and almost all that bore great offices in the state, as well as by the emperors; and in general, by all that had a mind to make an interest with the people, who were extravagantly fond of those kinds of shows. Not only the men, but the women, ran eagerly after them; who were, by the prevalence of custom, so far divested of that compassion and softness which is natural to the sex, that they took a pleasure in seeing them kill one another, and only desired that they should fall genteelly, and in an agreeable attitude. Such was the frequency of those shows, and so great the number of men that were killed on those occasions, that Lipsius says, no war caused such slaughter of mankind, as did these sports of pleasure, throughout the several provinces of the vast Roman empire."—Leland's Neces. of Div. Rev. vol. ii. p. 51.]
Alexander, the tyrant of Phaeres, sobbed like a child over the misfortunes of the Trojan queens, when the tragedy of Andromache and Hecuba was played before him; yet he used to murder his subjects every day for no crime, and without even setting up the pretence of any, but merely to make himself sport.
The fact that slaveholders may be full of benevolence and kindness toward their equals and toward whites generally, even so much so as to attract the esteem and admiration of all, while they treat with the most inhuman neglect their own slaves, is well illustrated by a circumstance mentioned by the Rev. Dr. CHANNING, of Boston, (who once lived in Virginia,) is his work on slavery, p. 162, 1st edition:—
"I cannot," says the doctor, "forget my feelings on visiting a hospital belonging to the plantation of a gentleman highly esteemed for his virtues, and whose manners and conversation expressed much benevolence and conscientiousness. When I entered with him the hospital, the first object on which my eye fell was a young woman very ill, probably approaching death. She was stretched on the floor. Her head rested on something like a pillow, but her body and limbs were extended on the hard boards. The owner, I doubt not, had, at least, as much kindness as myself; but he was so used to see the slaves living without common comforts, that the idea of unkindness in the present instance did not enter his mind."
Mr. GEORGE A. AVERY, an elder of a Presbyterian church in Rochester, N.Y. who resided some years in Virginia, says:—