The second argument put forward for this pretension, and twice repeated by the Senator from Mississippi, is, that the Africans are the posterity of Ham, the son of Noah, through Canaan, who was cursed by Noah, to be the “servant”—that is the word employed—of his brethren, and that this malediction has fallen upon all his descendants, who are accordingly devoted by God to perpetual bondage, not only in the third and fourth generations, but throughout all succeeding time. Surely, when the Senator quoted Scripture to enforce the claim of Slave-Masters, he did not intend a jest. And yet it is hard to suppose him in earnest. The Senator is Chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs, where he is doubtless experienced. He may, perhaps, set a squadron in the field; but, evidently, he has considered very little the text of Scripture on which he relies. The Senator assumes that it has fixed the doom of the colored race, leaving untouched the white race. Perhaps he does not know, that, in the worst days of the Polish aristocracy, this same argument was adopted as excuse for holding white serfs in bondage, precisely as it is now put forward by the Senator, and that even to this day the angry Polish noble addresses his white peasant as “Son of Ham.”
It hardly comports with the gravity of this debate to dwell on such an argument; and yet I cannot go wrong, if, for the sake of a much injured race, I brush it away. To justify the Senator in his application of this ancient curse, he must maintain at least five different propositions, as essential links in the chain of the Afric-American slave: first, that by this malediction Canaan himself was actually changed into a “chattel,”—whereas he is simply made the “servant” of his brethren; secondly, that not merely Canaan, but all his posterity, to the remotest generation, was so changed,—whereas the language has no such extent; thirdly, that the Afric-American actually belongs to the posterity of Canaan,—an ethnological assumption absurdly difficult to establish; fourthly, that each of the descendants of Shem and Japheth has a right to hold an Afric-American fellow-man as a “chattel,”—a proposition which finds no semblance of support; and, fifthly, that every Slave-Master is truly descended from Shem or Japheth,—a pedigree which no anxiety can establish. This plain analysis, which may fitly excite a smile, shows the fivefold absurdity of an attempt to found this pretension on any
“successive title, long and dark,
Drawn from the mouldy rolls of Noah’s ark.”[126]
From the character of these two arguments for property in man, I am brought to its denial.
It is natural that Senators who pretend, that, by the Law of Nature, man may hold property in man, should find this pretension in the Constitution. But the pretension is as much without foundation in the Constitution as it is without foundation in Nature. It is not too much to say that there is not one sentence, phrase, or word, not a single suggestion, hint, or equivocation, even, out of which any such pretension can be implied,—while great national acts and important contemporaneous declarations in the Convention which framed the Constitution, in different forms of language, and also controlling rules of interpretation, render this pretension impossible. Partisans, taking counsel of their desires, find in the Constitution, as in the Scriptures, what they incline to find; and never was this more apparent than when Slave-Masters deceive themselves so far as to find in the Constitution a pretension which exists only in their own minds.
Looking for one moment juridically at this question, we are brought to the conclusion, according to the admission of courts and jurists, first in Europe, and then in our own country, that Slavery can be derived from no doubtful word or mere pretension, but only from clear and special recognition. “The state of Slavery,” said Lord Mansfield, pronouncing judgment in the great case of Somerset, “is of such a nature that it is incapable of being introduced on any reasons, moral or political, but only by positive law. It is so odious that nothing can be suffered to support it but POSITIVE LAW,”—that is, express words of a written text; and this principle, which commends itself to the enlightened reason, is adopted by several courts in the Slave States. Of course every leaning must be against Slavery. A pretension so peculiar and offensive, so hostile to reason, so repugnant to the Laws of Nature and the inborn Rights of Man, which, in all its fivefold wrong, has no other object than to compel fellow-men to work without wages,—such a pretension, so tyrannical, so unjust, so mean, so barbarous, can find no place in any system of Government, unless by virtue of positive sanction. It can spring from no doubtful phrase. It must be declared by unambiguous words, incapable of a double sense.