"It is also a fact, that there is no allowed intercourse between the families and servants, after the work of the day is over. The family, assembled for the evening, enjoy a conversation elevating and instructive. But the poor slaves are thrust out. No ties of sacred home thrown around them; no moral instruction to compensate for the toils of the day; no intercourse as of man with man; and should one of the younger members of the family, led by curiosity, steal out into the filthy kitchen, the child is speedily called back, thinking itself happy if it escape an angry rebuke. Why is this? The dread of moral contamination. Most excellent reason; but it reveals a horrid picture. THE SLAVE CUT OFF FROM ALL COMMUNITY OF FEELING WITH THEIR MASTER, ROAM OVER THE VILLAGE STREETS, SHOCKING THE EAR WITH THEIR VULGAR JESTINGS, AND VOLUPTUOUS SONGS, OR OPENING THEIR KITCHENS TO THE RECEPTION OF THE NEIGHBORING BLACKS, THEY PASS THE EVENING IN GAMBLING, DANCING, DRINKING, AND THE MOST OBSCENE CONVERSATION, KEPT UP UNTIL THE NIGHT IS FAR SPENT, THEN CROWN THE SCENE WITH INDISCRIMINATE DEBAUCHERY. WHERE DO THESE THINGS OCCUR? IN THE KITCHENS OF CHURCH MEMBERS AND ELDERS!
I shall now take the liberty of reading two letters from highly respectable gentlemen in the South, to friends in New England. The first is from a clergyman in North Carolina, to one of the Professors in Bowdoin College, Maine.
"You remember that when I was with you last summer, I was much opposed to the Anti-Slavery Society, and contended that the colonization scheme was a full, and the only remedy, for the evils of slavery, and that I made a sort of talk before the students on the subject of slavery. It was a poor talk, for it was a miserable theme. I do not think what I said had any effect against the Anti-Slavery people, or at all strengthened the cause of the Colonization Society. Be this as it may, I feel it a duty I owe both to myself and to the friends I have with you, to say, that my views and feelings, which were then wavering, have since, after mature deliberation and much prayer, been entirely changed, and that I am now a strong Anti-Slavery man. Yes, after mature reflection, I am the sworn enemy of slavery in all its forms, with all its evils. Henceforth it is a part of my religion to oppose slavery. I am greatly surprised, that I should in any form have been the apologist of a system, so full of deadly poison to all holiness and benevolence as slavery, the concocted essence of fraud, selfishness, and cold-hearted tyranny, and the fruitful parent of unnumbered evils, both to the oppressor and the oppressed, the one thousandth part of which has never been brought to light.
"Do you ask, why this change, after residing in a slave country for twenty years. You recollect the lines of Pope, beginning,
'Vice is a monster of such frightful mein,
That to be hated, needs but to be seen.'
I had become so familiar with the loathsome features of slavery, that they ceased to offend; besides, I had become a Southern man in all my feelings, and it is a part of our creed to defend slavery. I had also considered it was impossible to free the slaves in this country. But it is unnecessary to investigate the ground of my former opinions. As to the Colonization Society, I have this among many objections that it has two faces, one for the North, and a very different one for the South. If the agents of the Colonization Society will come here and say what I heard them say in New York, I will insure them a good coat of tar and feathers for their labor. That Society has few friends here, a few large slaveholders who by it hope to send off the free people in their neighborhood, and a few others, whose consciences are not quite easy, get a salvo by advocating the Colonization Society. These last are many of them ministers. The mass of the people regard it as a Yankee plan, and hate it of course. I remember, among other things, I told the students in my address, that the only way to do away slavery was to give us more religion. This argument then seemed to be good. Send us preachers said I, and as religion spreads, slavery will melt away, it cannot stand the gospel. I did not reflect that the religion we have here, justifies and upholds slavery. Our religion does not permit the preacher to touch the subject. It is not the whole gospel. I have not yet seen the man who would venture to take for his text, 'Masters, give to your servants that which is just and equal.' If every man in the country was a professor of religion, the religion we have, it would not much help the cause. I think that I can safely say that as a general thing, the Presbyterians are by far the best masters, and give more attention to the religious instruction of their slaves than others, but I know one of these, an elder, who contends that slavery is no violation of the law, 'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,' and whose slaves are driven in the field with the long whip! But it is just to add, that they are not over-worked, and they are well fed and clothed. You are at liberty to inform the students, and others who heard me on that occasion, that I am now an anti-slavery man; but I do not wish the letter published with my name to it, as it would be copied by other papers, and find its way back, and do me injury, for no man is free, fully to express his thoughts in this country."
The next is from a merchant in St. Louis, Missouri, to a Clergyman in New Hampshire.
Saint Louis, Jan. 18, 1835.
Very Dear Brother.
I want to say a good deal to you, Brother, on the subject, which seems to interest you much at this time. I am now, and was before I left Hartford, an abolitionist; and that too, from deep and thorough conviction that the eternal rule of right requires the immediate freedom of every bond-man in this and every other country. Since my residence in this slaveholding State, I have seen nothing which should tend to alter my previous sentiments on this subject, on the contrary much to confirm me in them. You, who reside in happy New England, can have but very faint conceptions of the blighting and corrupting influence of Slavery on a community. Although in Missouri we witness Slavery in its mildest form, yet it is enough to sicken the heart of benevolence to witness its effects on society generally, and its awfully demoralizing influence on the slaves themselves: being counted as property among the cattle and flocks of their possessors, (forgive the word,) their standard of morality and virtue is on a level (generally) with the beasts with which they are classed: and I am credibly informed that many emigrants from the slave states, who own plantations on the Missouri River, finding themselves disqualified by their former habits of indolence to compete with emigrants of another character in enterprize, turn their attention to the raising of slaves as they would cattle, to be sold to the Negro dealers to go down the river. What sort of standard of virtue, think you, will have place on such a plantation; and at what period in the history of our country will these degraded sons of Africa be christianized under existing circumstances.