“And the editor, who is a Methodist preacher, presently adds, after explaining the enormity of the offence with which the victim was charged—‘We unhesitatingly affirm that the punishment was unequal to the crime. Had we been there we should have taken a part, and even suggested the pinching of pieces out of him with red-hot pincers—the cutting off of a limb at a time, and then burning them all in a heap. The possibility of his escaping from jail forbids the idea of awaiting the tardy movements of the law.’ [Although one thousand trusty citizens volunteered to guard him at the stake.]
“How much more horrible than the deed are these apologies for it. They make it manifest that it was not accidental in its character, but a phenomenon of general and fundamental significance. They explain the paralytic effect upon the popular conscience of the great calamity of the South. They indicate a necessary tendency of people living under such circumstances to return in their habits of thought to the dark ages of mankind. For who, from the outside, can fail to see that the real reason why men in the middle of the nineteenth century, and in the centre of the United States, are publicly burned at the stake, is one much less heathenish, less disgraceful to the citizens than that given by the more zealous and extemporaneous of their journalistic exponents—the desire to torture the sinner proportionately to the measure of his sin. Doubtless, this reverend gentleman expresses the utmost feeling of the ruling mind of his community. But would a similar provocation have developed a similar avenging spirit in any other nominally Christian or civilized people? Certainly not. All over Europe, and in every Free State—California, for significant reasons, temporarily excepted—in similar cases, justice deliberately takes its course; the accused is systematically assisted in defending or excusing himself. If the law demands his life, the infliction of unnecessary suffering, and the education of the people in violence and feelings of revenge, is studiously avoided. Go back to the foundation of the custom which thus neutralizes Christianity among the people of the South, which carries them backward blindly against the tide of civilization, and what do we find it to be? The editor who still retains moral health enough to be suspected—as men more enlightened than their neighbours usually are—of heterodoxy, answers. To follow the usual customs of civilization elsewhere would not be felt safe. To indulge in feelings of humanity would not be felt safe. To be faithful to the precepts of Christ would not be felt safe. To act in a spirit of cruel, inconsiderate, illegal, violent, and pitiless vengeance, must be permitted, must be countenanced, must be defended by the most conservative, as a ‘means of absolute, necessary self-defence.’ To educate the people practically otherwise would be felt to be suicidal. Hence no free press, no free pulpit, no free politics can be permitted in the South. Hence every white stripling in the South may carry a dirk-knife in his pocket, and play with a revolver before he has learned to swim.”[68]
I happened to pass through Tennessee shortly after this tragedy, and conversed with a man who was engaged in it—a mild, common-sense native of the country. He told me that there was no evidence against the negro but his own confession. I suggested that he might have been crazy. “What if he was?” he asked with a sudden asperity. What if he was, to be sure? The slaves who were brought together to witness his torture were not insane. They were at least capable of instruction. That day they were given a lesson; were taught to know their masters better; were taught that when ordinary and legal discipline failed, resort would be had to more potent means of governing them. A better informed man, having regard to the ignorance of a stranger, might have answered me: “It was of no consequence, practically, whether he were sane or mad. We do not wish our slaves to study the right and the wrong of every exciting occurrence. To say that being mad the negro was not responsible, therefore not guilty of a crime, therefore not to be punished, would be proclaiming to them that only that which is wrong is to be dreaded. Whatever offends us, whatever is against our will and pleasure, is what a slave must be made to dread.”
Constantly, and everywhere throughout the South, are there occurrences of this significance; I do not say as horrible, though I can answer for it, that no year in the last ten has passed without something as bad;[69] but constantly and everywhere of the same nature, of the same impulse, the same reasoning, the same purposes, the same disregard of principles of society, which no people can ever set aside and not have reason to feel their situation insecure. It is false, it is the most dangerous mistake possible to assume that this feeling of insecurity, this annihilation of the only possible basis of security in human society, is, in the slightest degree, the result of modern agitation. It is the fundamental law of slavery, as distinctly appears in the decision of Justice Ruffin, of North Carolina, in the case of the State v. Mann.[70] The American system of slavery from its earliest years (as shown p. 496, “Seaboard Slave States”), and without cessation to the present time, has had this accompaniment. Less in the last twenty years, if anything, than before. Would it not be more just to say that this element of the present system was the cause of agitation? Must not the determined policy of the South to deal with slavery on the assumption that it is, in its present form, necessary, just, good, and to be extended, strengthened, and perpetuated indefinitely, involve constant agitation as a necessary incident of the means used to carry it out? I do not say with you or with me, reader, but with a goodly number of any civilized community? Do you not, who wish to think otherwise, consider that it will always require what you must deem a superior mind not to be overcome by incidents necessary to the carrying out of this determination? And will not such agitation give renewed sense of danger, and occasion renewed demands for assurance from us?
I have remarked before that in no single instance did I find an inquiry of the owner or the overseer of a large plantation about the poor whites of its vicinity fail to elicit an expression indicating habitual irritation with them. This equally with the polished and tranquil gentleman of South Carolina and the rude pioneer settler of Texas, himself born a dirt-eating sand-hiller. It was evident in most cases, and in one it was distinctly explained to me by a Louisianian planter, that the reason of this was not merely the bad effect upon the discipline of the plantation, which was had by the intercourse between these people and the slaves, but that it was felt that the contrast between the habits of the former—most of the time idle, and when working, working only for their own benefit and without a master—constantly offered suggestions and temptations to the slaves to neglect their duty, to run away and live a vagabond life, as these poor whites were seen to. Hence, one of the acknowledged advantages of very large and isolated plantations, and hence, in part, the desire of every planter to get possession of the land of any poor non-slaveholding neighbour.
As few Southern writers seem to have noticed this, I suppose that few Southerners are aware how universal with planters is this feeling. My attention being early directed to the causes of the condition of the poor whites, I never failed to make inquiries of planters, and of intelligent men especially, about those in their neighbourhood; and being soon struck by the constant recurrence of similar expressions with regard to them, I was the more careful to introduce the subject at every proper opportunity, and, I repeat, always with the same result. I am afraid that the feeling of the South to the North is (more or less defined in individual minds) of the same nature, and that the contiguity of a people whose labourers take care of themselves, and labour industriously without being owned, can never be felt to be safe by slaveholders. That it must always be looked upon with apprehension, with a sense of danger, more or less vague, more or less well defined, but always sufficient to lead to efforts intended to counteract its natural influence—its influence not so much with slaves, certainly not alone with the slaves, but also with that important element of population which reaps no profit from the good behaviour of the slaves.
In De Bow’s “Review” for January, 1850, will be found the following passage in an article discussing the practicability of employing the non-slaveholding whites in factories, the argument being that there will be less danger of their becoming “Abolitionists” under such circumstances than at present exists:-
“The great mass of our poor white population begin to understand that they have rights, and that they, too, are entitled to some of the sympathy which falls upon the suffering. They are fast learning that there is an almost infinite world of industry opening before them by which they can elevate themselves and their families from wretchedness and ignorance to competence and intelligence. It is this great upheaving of our masses that we have to fear, so far as our institutions are concerned.”
It is, in the nature of things, while slaveholders refuse the slightest concession to the spirit of the age—while, in their legislation, they refuse to recognize, in the slightest degree, the principles of social science under which we live, and must live, and which every civilized people has fully adopted, that they should endeavour to make it appear the fault of others that they do not feel assured of safety and at ease with themselves; that they should try to make their own ignorant people believe that it is from without all danger is to be apprehended—all assurance of safety to be clamoured for—that they should endeavour to make themselves believe it.[71]
Those who seriously propose to stop all agitation on the subject of slavery, by causing the Abolitionists to refrain from proceedings which cause apprehension at the South, by silencing all who entertain sentiments the utterance of which is deemed a source of “danger to Southern institutions,” by refraining themselves from all proceedings which will be looked upon with alarm by their fellow-citizens of the Slave States, can know very little of what would be required before the South were satisfied. The destruction of some million dollars’ cost in school and text books would be one of the first things, and yet but a small item in the undertaking. Books which directly comment upon slavery are considered comparatively safe, because their purpose being defined, they can be guarded against. As is well understood, it is the insidious attacks of a free press that are most feared. But is it well understood what are felt to be “insidious attacks?” Some idea may be formed from the following passages which I take, not from the heated columns of a daily newspaper, but from the cool pages of the deliberate De Bow’s “Review.” The apprehension they express is not of to-day; in the first article from which I quote (which was published in the middle of Mr. Pierce’s presidential term), reference is made to warnings of the same character which have been sounded from time to time before; and this very number of the “Review” contains a testimonial from fifty-five Southern senators and representatives in Congress to the “ability and accuracy” of its “exposition of the working of the system of polity of the Southern States.”