This assumption may be described as an attempt to Africanize the Constitution, by introducing into it the barbarous Law of Slavery, originally derived, as we have seen, from barbarous Africa,—and then, through such Africanization of the Constitution, to Africanize the Territories, and Africanize the National Government. In using this language to express the obvious effect of this assumption, I borrow a suggestive term, first employed by a Portuguese writer at the beginning of this century, when protesting against the spread of Slavery in Brazil.[124] Analyze the assumption, and it is found to stand on two pretensions, either of which failing, the assumption fails also. These two are, first, the peculiar African pretension of property in man,—and, secondly, the pretension that such property is recognized in the Constitution.
With regard to the first of these pretensions, I might simply refer to what has been said at an earlier stage of this argument. But I should do injustice to the part it plays in this controversy, if I did not again notice it. Then I sought particularly to show its Barbarism; now I shall show something more.
Property implies an owner and a thing owned. On the one side is a human being, and on the other side a thing. But the very idea of a human being necessarily excludes the idea of property in that being, just as the very idea of a thing necessarily excludes the idea of a human being. It is clear that a thing cannot be a human being, and it is equally clear that a human being cannot be a thing. And the law itself, when it adopts the phrase, “relation of master and slave,” confesses its reluctance to sanction the claim of property. It shrinks from the pretension of Senators, and satisfies itself with a formula which does not openly degrade human nature.
If this property does exist, out of what title is it derived? Under what ordinance of Nature or of Nature’s God is one human being stamped an owner and another stamped a thing? God is no respecter of persons. Where is the sanction for this respect of certain persons to a degree which becomes outrage to other persons? God is the Father of the Human Family, and we all are his children. Where, then, is the sanction of this pretension by which a brother lays violent hands upon a brother? To ask these questions is humiliating; but it is clear there can be but one response. There is no sanction for such pretension, no ordinance for it, no title. On all grounds of reason, and waiving all questions of “positive” statute, the Vermont Judge was nobly right, when, rejecting the claim of a Slave-Master, he said, “No, not until you show a Bill of Sale from the Almighty.” Nothing short of this impossible link in the chain of title would do. I know something of the great judgments by which the jurisprudence of our country is illustrated; but I doubt if there is anything in the wisdom of Marshall, the learning of Story, or the completeness of Kent, which will brighten with time like this honest decree.
The intrinsic feebleness of this pretension is apparent in the intrinsic feebleness of the arguments by which it is maintained. These are twofold, and both were put forth in recent debate by the Senator from Mississippi [Mr. Jefferson Davis].
The first is the alleged inferiority of the African race,—an argument instructive to the Slave-Master. The law of life is labor. Slavery is a perpetual effort to evade this law by compelling the labor of others; and such an attempt at evasion is naturally supported by the pretension, that, because the African is inferior, therefore he may be enslaved. But this pretension, while surrendering to Slavery a whole race, leaves it uncertain whether the same principle may not be applied to other races, as to the polished Japanese who are now the guests of the nation,[125] and even to persons of obvious inferiority among the white race. Indeed, the latter pretension is openly set up in other quarters. The “Richmond Enquirer,” a leading journal of Slave-Masters, declares, “The principle of Slavery is in itself right, and does not depend on difference of complexion.” And a leading writer among Slave-Masters, George Fitzhugh, of Virginia, in his “Sociology for the South,” declares, “Slavery, black or white, is right and necessary. Nature has made the weak in mind or body for slaves.” In the same vein, a Democratic paper of South Carolina has said, “Slavery is the natural and normal condition of the laboring man, black or white.”
These more extravagant pretensions reveal still further the feebleness of the pretension put forth by the Senator, while instances, accumulating constantly, attest the difficulty of discriminating between the two races. Mr. Paxton, of Virginia, tells us that “the best blood in Virginia flows in the veins of the slaves”; and more than one fugitive has been advertised latterly as possessing “a round face,” “blue eyes,” “flaxen hair,” and as “escaping under the pretence of being a white man.”
This is not the time to enter upon the great question of race, in the various lights of religion, history, and science. Sure I am that they who understand it best will be least disposed to the pretension which, on an assumed ground of inferiority, would condemn one race to be the property of another. If the African race be inferior, as is alleged, then unquestionably a Christian Civilization must lift it from degradation, not by the lash and the chain, not by this barbarous pretension of ownership, but by a generous charity, which shall be measured precisely by the extent of inferiority.