[1] And in ‘Laird’s Expedition to Africa, &c.’ a work recently published in England, this assertion of the slave trader is fully sustained. Laird relates that ‘there is proof of the horrid fact, that several of the wretches engaged in this traffic, when hotly pursued, consigned whole cargoes to the deep.’ He then goes on to state several such instances, from which I select the following: ‘In 1833, the Black Joke and Fair Rosamond fell in with the Hercule and Regule, two slave vessels off the Bonny River. On perceiving the cruisers, they attempted to regain the port, and pitched overboard upwards of 500 human beings, chained together, before they were captured; from the abundance of sharks in the river, their track was literally a blood-stained one. The slaver not only does this, but glories in it: the first words uttered by the captain of the Maria Isabelle, seized by captain Rose, were, ‘that if he had seen the man of war in chase an hour sooner, he would have thrown every slave in his vessel overboard, as he was fully insured.’
LETTER IV.
CONNECTION BETWEEN THE NORTH AND SOUTH.
Danvers, Mass., 7th mo., 1837.
Dear Friend:—I thank thee for having furnished me with just such a simile as I needed to illustrate the connection which exists between the North and the South. Thou sayest, ‘Suppose two rival cities, one of which becomes convinced that certain practices in trade and business in the other are dishonest, and have an oppressive bearing on certain classes in that city. Suppose, also, that these are practices, which, by those who allow them, are considered as honorable and right. Those who are convinced of this immorality wish to alter the opinions and the practices of the citizens of their rival city, and to do this they commence the collection of facts, that exhibit the tendencies of these practices and the evils they have engendered. But, instead of going among the community in which the evil exists, and endeavoring to convince them, they proceed to form voluntary associations among their neighbors at home, and spend their time, money, and efforts to convince their fellow citizens that the inhabitants of their rival city are guilty of a great sin.’ Now I will take up the comparison here, and suppose a few other things about these two cities. Suppose that the people in one city were known never to pay the laborer his wages, but to be in the constant habit of keeping back the hire of those who reaped down their fields; and that, on examination, it was found that the people in the other city were continually going over to live with these gentlemen oppressors, and instead of rebuking them, were joining hands in wickedness with them, and were actually more oppressive to the poor than the native inhabitants. Suppose, too, it was found that many of the merchants in the city of Fairdealing, as it was called, were known to hold mortgages, not only upon the property which ought to belong to the unpaid laborers, but mortgages, too, on the laborers themselves, ay, and their wives and children also, a thing altogether contrary to the laws of their city, and the customs of their people, and the principles of fundamental morality. Suppose, too, it was found that the people in the city of Oppression were in the constant practice of sending over to the city of Fairdealing, and bribing their citizens to seize the poorest, most defenceless of their people for them, because they were so lazy they would not do their own work, and so mean they would not pay others for doing it, and chose thus to supply themselves with laborers, who, when they once got into the city, were placed under such severe laws, that it was almost impossible for them ever to return to their afflicted wives and children. Suppose, too, that whenever any of these oppressed, unpaid laborers happened to escape from the city of Oppression, and after lying out in the woods and fastnesses which lay between the two cities, for many weeks, ‘in weariness and painfulness, in watchings, in hunger and thirst, in cold and nakedness,’ that, as soon as they reached the city of Fairdealing, they were most unmercifully hunted out and sent back to their cruel oppressors, who it was well known generally treated such laborers with great cruelty, ‘stern necessity’ demanding that they should be punished and ‘rebuked before all, that others might fear’ the consequences of such elopement. In short, suppose that the city of Fairdealing was so completely connected with the city of Oppression, that the golden strands of their interests were twisted together so as to form a bond of Union stronger than death, and that by the intermarriages which were constantly taking place, there was also a silken cord of love tying up and binding together the tender feelings of their hearts with all the intricacies of the Gordian knot; and then, again, that the identity of the political interests of these cities were wound round and round them like bands of iron and brass, altogether forming an union so complicated and powerful, that it was impossible even to speak in the most solemn manner, in the city of Fairdealing, of the enormous crimes which were common in the city of Oppression, without having brickbats and rotten eggs hurled at the speaker’s head. Suppose, too, that although it was perfectly manifest to every reflecting mind, that a most guilty copartnership existed between these two cities, yet that the ‘gentlemen of property and standing’ of the city of Fairdealing were continually taunting the people who were trying to represent their iniquitous league with the city of Oppression in its true and sinful bearings, with the query of ‘Why don’t you go to the city of Oppression, and tell the people there, not to rob the poor?’ Might not these reformers very justly remark, we cannot go there until we have persuaded our own citizens to cease their unholy co-operation with them, for they will certainly turn upon us in bitter irony and say—‘Physician, heal thyself;’ go back to your own city, and tell your own citizens ‘to break off their sins by righteousness, and their transgressions by showing mercy to the poor,’ who fly from our city into the gates of theirs for protection, but receive it not. Would not common sense bear them out in refusing to go there, until they had first converted their own people from the error of their ways? I will leave thee and my other readers to make the application of this comparison; and if thou dost not acknowledge that abolitionists have been governed by the soundest common sense in the course they have pursued at the North with regard to slavery, then I am very much disappointed in thy professions of candor. With regard to the parallel thou hast drawn (p. 16,) between abolitionists, and the ‘men (who) are daily going into the streets, and calling all bystanders around them’ and pointing out certain men, some as liars, some as dishonest, some as licentious, and then bringing proofs of their guilt and rebuking them before all; at the same time exhorting all around to point at them the finger of scorn; thou sayest, ‘they persevere in this course till the whole community is thrown into an uproar; and assaults and even bloodshed ensue.’ But why, I should like to know, if these people are themselves guiltless of the crimes alleged against the others? I cannot understand why they should be so angry, unless, like the Jews of old, they perceived that the parable had been spoken ‘against them.’ To my own mind, the exasperation of the North at the discussion of slavery is an undeniable proof of her guilt, a certain evidence of the necessity of her plucking the beam out of her own eye, before she goes to the South to rebuke sin there. To thee, and to all who are continually crying out, ‘Why don’t you go to the South?’ I retort the question by asking, why don’t YOU go to the South? We conscientiously believe that this work must be commenced here at the North; this is an all-sufficient answer for US; but YOU, who are ‘as much anti-slavery as we are,’ and differ only as to the modus operandi, believing that the South and not the North ought to be the field of Anti-Slavery labors—YOU, I say, have no excuse to offer, and are bound to go there now.
But there is another view to be taken of this subject. By all our printing and talking at the North, we have actually reached the very heart of the disease at the South. They acknowledge it themselves. Read the following confession in the Southern Literary Review. ‘There are many good men even among us, who have begun to grow timid. They think that what the virtuous and high-minded men of the North look upon as a crime and a plague-spot, cannot be perfectly innocent or quite harmless in a slaveholding community.’ James Smylie, of Mississippi, a minister of the gospel, so called, tells us on the very first page of his essay, written to uphold the doctrines of Governor McDuffie, ‘that the abolition maxim, viz. that slavery is in itself sinful, had gained on and entwined itself among the religious and conscientious scruples of many in the community, so far as to render them unhappy.’ I could quote other southern testimony to the same effect, but will pass on to another fact just published in the New England Spectator; a proposition from a minister in Missouri ‘to have separate organizations for slavery and anti-slavery professors,’ and indeed ‘all over the slaveholding States.’ Has our labor then been in vain in the Lord? Have we failed to rouse the slumbering consciences of the South?
Thou inquirest—‘Have the northern States power to rectify evils at the South, as they have to remove their own moral deformities?’ I answer unhesitatingly, certainly they have, for moral evils can be removed only by moral power; and the close connection which exists between these two portions of our country, affords the greatest possible facilities for exerting a moral influence on it. Only let the North exert as much moral influence over the South, as the South has exerted demoralizing influence over the North, and slavery would die amid the flame of Christian remonstrance, and faithful rebuke, and holy indignation. The South has told us so. In the report of the committee on federal relations in the Legislature of South Carolina last winter, we find the following acknowledgement: ‘Let it be admitted, that by reason of an efficient police and judicious internal legislation, we may render abortive the designs of the fanatic and incendiary within our limits, and that the torrent of pamphlets and tracts which the abolition presses of the North are pouring forth with an inexhaustible copiousness, is arrested the moment it reaches our frontier. Are we to wait until our enemies have built up, by the grossest misrepresentations and falsehoods, a body of public opinion, which it would be impossible to resist, without separating ourselves from the social system of the rest of the civilized world?’ Here is the acknowledgement of a southern legislature, that it will be impossible for the South to resist the influence of that body of public opinion, which abolitionists are building up against them at the North. If further evidence is needed, that anti-slavery societies are producing a powerful influence at the South, look at the efforts made there to vilify and crush them. Why all this turmoil, and passion, and rage in the slaveholder, if we have indeed rolled back the cause of emancipation 200 years, as thy father has asserted? Why all this terror at the distant roar of free discussion, if they feel not the earth quaking beneath them? Does not the South understand what really will affect her interests and break down her domestic institution? Has she no subtle politicians, no far-sighted men in her borders, who can scan the practical bearings of these troublous times? Believe me, she has; and did they not know that we are springing a mine beneath the great bastile of slavery, and laying a train which will soon whelm it in ruin, she would not be quite so eager ‘to cut out our tongues, and hang us as high as Haman.’
I will just add, that as to the committee saying that abolitionists are building up a body of public opinion at the North ‘by the grossest misrepresentations and falsehoods,’ I think it was due to their character for veracity, to have cited and refuted some of these calumnies. Until they do, we must believe them; and as a Southerner, I can bear the most decided testimony against slavery as the mother of all abominations.