This is the protection thrown around the rights of American slaves by the 'public opinion,' of slaveholders; these the restraints that hold back their masters, overseers, and drivers, from inflicting injuries upon them!
In a Republican government, law is the pulse of its heart—as the heart beats the pulse beats, except that it often beats weaker than the heart, never stronger—or to drop the figure, laws are never worse than those who make them, very often better. If human history proves anything, cruelty of practice will always go beyond cruelty of law.
Law-making is a formal, deliberate act, performed by persons of mature age, embodying the intelligence, wisdom, justice and humanity, of the community; performed, too, at leisure, after full opportunity had for a comprehensive survey of all the relations to be affected, after careful investigation and protracted discussion. Consequently laws must, in the main, be a true index of the permanent feelings, the settled frame of mind, cherished by the community upon those subjects, and towards those persons and classes whose condition the laws are designed to establish. If the laws are in a high degree cruel and inhuman, towards any class of persons, it proves that the feelings habitually exercised towards that class of persons, by those who make and perpetuate those laws, are at least equally cruel and inhuman. We say at least equally so; for if the habitual state of feeling towards that class be unmerciful, it must be unspeakably cruel, relentless and malignant when provoked; if its ordinary action is inhuman, its contortions and spasms must be tragedies; if the waves run high when there has been no wind, where will they not break when the tempest heaves them!
Further, when cruelty is the spirit of the law towards a proscribed class, when it legalizes great outrages upon them, it connives at, and abets greater outrages, and is virtually an accomplice of all who perpetrate them. Hence, in such cases, though the degree of the outrage is illegal, the perpetrator will rarely be convicted, and, even if convicted, will be almost sure to escape punishment. This is not theory but history. Every judge and lawyer in the slave states knows, that the legal conviction and punishment of masters and mistresses, for illegal outrages upon their slaves, is an event which has rarely, if ever, occurred in the slave states; they know, also, that although hundreds of slaves have been murdered by their masters and mistresses in the slave states, within the last twenty-five years, and though the fact of their having committed those murders has been established beyond a doubt in the minds of the surrounding community, yet that the murderers have not, in a single instance, suffered the penalty of the law.
Finally, since slaveholders have deliberately legalized the perpetration of the most cold-blooded atrocities upon their slaves, and do pertinaciously refuse to make these atrocities illegal, and to punish those who perpetrate them, they stand convicted before the world, upon their own testimony, of the most barbarous, brutal, and habitual inhumanity. If this be slander and falsehood, their own lips have uttered it, their own fingers have written it, their own acts have proclaimed it; and however it may be with their morality, they have too much human nature to perjure themselves for the sake of publishing their own infamy.
Having dwelt at such length on the legal code of the slave states, that unerring index of the public opinion of slaveholders towards their slaves; and having shown that it does not protect the slaves from cruelty, and that even in the few instances in which the letter of the law, if executed, would afford some protection, it is virtually nullified by the connivance of courts and juries, or by popular clamor; we might safely rest the case here, assured that every honest reader would spurn the absurd falsehood, that the 'public opinion' of the slave states protects the slaves and restrains the master. But, as the assertion is made so often by slaveholders, and with so much confidence, notwithstanding its absurdity is fully revealed by their own legal code, we propose to show its falsehood by applying other tests.
We lay it down as a truth that can be made no plainer by reasoning, that the same 'public opinion,' which restrains men from committing outrages, will restrain them from publishing such outrages, if they do commit them;—in other words, if a man is restrained from certain acts through fear of losing his character, should they become known, he will not voluntarily destroy his character by making them known, should he be guilty of them. Let us look at this. It is assumed by slaveholders, that 'public opinion' at the south so frowns on cruelty to the slaves, that fear of disgrace would restrain from the infliction of it, were there no other consideration.
Now, that this is sheer fiction is shown by the fact, that the newspapers in the slaveholding states, teem with advertisements for runaway slaves, in which the masters and mistresses describe their men and women, as having been 'branded with a hot iron,' on their 'cheeks,' 'jaws,' 'breasts,' 'arms,' 'legs,' and 'thighs;' also as 'scarred,' 'very much scarred,' 'cut up,' 'marked,' &c. 'with the whip,' also with 'iron collars on,' 'chains,' 'bars of iron,' 'fetters,' 'bells,' 'horns,' 'shackles,' &c. They, also, describe them as having been wounded by 'buck-shot,' 'rifle-balls,' &c. fired at them by their 'owners,' and others when in pursuit; also, as having 'notches,' cut in their ears, the tops or bottoms of their ears 'cut off,' or 'slit,' or 'one ear cut off' or 'both ears cut off' &c. &c. The masters and mistresses who thus advertise their runaway slaves, coolly sign their names to their advertisements, giving the street and number of their residences, if in cities, their post office address, &c. if in the country; thus making public proclamation as widely as possible that they 'brand,' 'scar,' 'gash,' 'cut up,' &c. the flesh of their slaves; load them with irons, cut off their ears, &c.; they speak of these things with the utmost sang froid, not seeming to think it possible, that any one will esteem them at all the less because of these outrages upon their slaves; further, these advertisements swarm in many of the largest and most widely circulated political and commercial papers that are published in the slave states. The editors of those papers constitute the main body of the literati of the slave states; they move in the highest circle of society, are among the 'popular' men in the community, and as a class, are more influential than any other; yet these editors publish these advertisements with iron indifference. So far from proclaiming to such felons, homicides, and murderers, that they will not be their blood-hounds, to hunt down the innocent and mutilated victims who have escaped from their torture, they freely furnish them with every facility, become their accomplices and share their spoils; and instead of outraging 'public opinion,' by doing it, they are the men after its own heart, its organs, its representatives, its self.
To show that the 'public opinion' of the slave states, towards the slaves, is absolutely diabolical, we will insert a few, out of a multitude, of similar advertisements from a variety of southern papers now before us.
The North Carolina Standard, of July 18, 1838, contains the following:—