“Now, it is exceedingly difficult to use them as money; to treat them as property, and at the same time render to them that which is just and equal as immortal and accountable beings, and as heirs of the grace of life, equally with ourselves. They are associated in our business, and thoughts, and feelings, with labour, and interest, and gain, and wealth. Under the influence of the powerful feeling of self-interest, there is a tendency to view and to treat them as instruments of labour, as a means of wealth, and to forget or pass over lightly, the fact that they are what they are, under the eye and government of God. There is a tendency to rest satisfied with very small and miserable efforts for their moral improvement, and to give one’s self but little trouble to correct immoralities and reform wicked practices and habits, should they do their work quietly and profitably, and enjoy health, and go on to multiply and increase upon the earth.”
This is addressed to a body of “professing evangelical Christians,” in a district in which more is done for the elevation of the slaves than in any other of the South. What they are called to witness from their own experience, as the tendency of a system which recognizes slaves as absolute property, mere instruments of labour and means of wealth, “exceedingly difficult” for them to resist, is, I am well convinced, the entirely irresistible effect upon the mass of slaveholders. Fearing that moral and intellectual culture may injure their value as property, they oftener interfere to prevent than they endeavour to assist their slaves from using the poor opportunities that chance may throw in their way.
Moreover, the missionary adds:—
“The current of the conversation and of business in society, in respect to negroes, runs in the channel of interest, and thus increases the blindness and insensibility of owners. * * * And this custom of society acts also on the negroes, who, seeing, and more than seeing, feeling and knowing, that their owners regard and treat them as their money—as property only—are inclined to lose sight of their better character and higher interests, and, in their ignorance and depravity, to estimate themselves, and religion, and virtue, no higher than their owners do.”
Again, from the paramount interest of owners in the property quality of these beings, they provide them only such accommodations for spending the time in which they are not actively employed, as shall be favourable to their bodily health, and enable them to comply with the commandment, to “increase and multiply upon the earth,” without regard to their moral health, without caring much for their obedience to the more pure and spiritual commands of the Scriptures.
“The consequent mingling up of husbands and wives, children and youths, banishes the privacy and modesty essential to domestic peace and purity, and opens wide the door to dishonesty, oppression, violence, and profligacy. The owner may see, or hear, or know little of it. His servants may appear cheerful, and go on in the usual way, and enjoy health, and do his will, yet their actual moral state may be miserable. * * * If family relations are not preserved and protected, we cannot look for any considerable degree of moral and religious improvement.”
It must be acknowledged of slavery, as a system, not only in Liberty county, but as that system finds the expression of the theory on which it is based in the laws of every Southern State, that family relations are not preserved and protected under it. As we should therefore expect, the missionary finds that
“One of the chief causes of the immorality of negroes arises from the indifference both of themselves and of their owners to family relations.”
Large planters generally do not allow their negroes to marry off the plantation to which they belong, conceiving “that their own convenience and interest, and,” says the missionary, “the comfort and real happiness of their people” are thereby promoted. Upon this point, however, it is but just to quote the views of the editor of the Southern Agriculturist, who, in urging planters to adopt and strictly maintain such a regulation, says: “If a master has a servant, and no suitable one of the other sex for a companion, he had better give an extra price for such an one as his would be willing to marry, than to have one man owning the husband, and the other the wife.”
But this mode of arranging the difficulty seems not to have occurred to the Liberty county missionary; and while arguing against the course usually pursued, he puts the following, as a pertinent suggestion:—