“As you are going into a slave-holding state, I should like to know your views of slavery.”
“In principle I think it is wrong; but I know little of its practical effects. I shall be better able to judge of it practically at some future time.”
“Morally I regard it wrong; nearly all the Southern people so view it. But that slavery is a benefit to the blacks, there can be no doubt. As an evidence of this, contrast the condition of the negroes in Africa with their condition in the Southern states. In this country they are far better off than their brethren are in Africa.”
“They doubtless are in some respects, but I am not sure that slavery has improved them. Living in this country, and associating, to some extent, with a superior race, has improved them; but I cannot admit that slavery has done it. You admit slavery to be an evil, and we have the best authority for asserting, that an evil tree cannot produce good fruit. It seems to me that you condemn slavery in principle and practice when you admit it to be an evil. What effect do you think it has on the whites?”
“Decidedly a beneficial effect. There is more refinement and high-toned character in the slave states than in the free states. The people in the South have leisure to cultivate the better sentiments of their nature.”
“I repeat, you must be mistaken. If slavery is a upas tree—is an evil as you admit—it cannot produce such heavenly fruit. It is not true that the Southern people are more intelligent, moral and refined than the Eastern people. Statistics, from which there can be no appeal, show that there are more school houses, academies, colleges and meeting houses in the East, than in the South, in proportion to the population. There are more persons in Virginia, the best of the slave states, who cannot read or write, than there are in six of the most Eastern states. Facts are against you.”
I proceeded to Baltimore, and S. P. Skinner, who afterwards resided, preached and published the New Covenant, in Chicago, advised me to go to the eastern shore of Maryland. This portion of the state, and part of Delaware, lies between the Chesapeake and Delaware bays. Most of this neck of land is level and sandy, having been, at a comparatively recent period, reclaimed from the sea. Went in a small vessel to Centerville. While running down, I had some conversation, on religious subjects, with an Episcopal clergyman.
“The doctrine of endless punishment is taught in the Old Testament.”
“That is your opinion, but some of the wisest and most learned men of your school differ from you. I will read some extracts from their writings on this subject. Your Bishop Warburton, in his Divine Legation of Moses, says:—‘In the Jewish Republic, both the rewards and punishments promised by heaven were temporal only. Such as health, long life, peace, plenty, and dominion, etc. Disease, premature death, war, famine, want, subjections, and captivity, etc. And in no one place in the Mosaic Institutes is there the least mention, or any intelligible hint, of the rewards and punishments of another life.’
“Milman, in his History of the Jews, testifies thus:—‘The sanction on which the Hebrew Law was founded is extraordinary. The lawgiver (Moses) maintains a profound silence on that fundamental article, if not of political, at least of religious legislation—rewards and punishments in another life. He substituted temporal chastisements and temporal blessings. On the violation of the constitution followed inevitably blighted harvests, famine, pestilence, defeat, captivity; on its maintenance, abundance, health, fruitfulness, victory, independence. How wonderfully the event verified the prediction of the inspired legislator! how invariably apostasy led to adversity—repentance and reformation to prosperity!’