Lastly. Abolitionists are like infidels, wholly unaddicted to martyrdom for opinion’s sake. Let them understand that they will be caught [Lynched] if they come among us, and they will take good heed to keep out of our way. There is not one man among them who has any more idea of shedding his blood in this cause than he has of making war on the Grand Turk.
The Rev. Dr. Hill, of Virginia, said, in the New School Assembly:
The abolitionists have made the servitude of the slave harder. If I could tell you some of the dirty tricks which these abolitionists have played, you would not wonder. Some of them have been Lynched, and it served them right.
These things sufficiently show the estimate which the Southern clergy and church have formed and expressed as to the relative value of slavery and the right of free inquiry. It shows, also, that they consider slavery as so important that they can tolerate and encourage acts of lawless violence, and risk all the dangers of encouraging mob law, for its sake. These passages and considerations sufficiently show the stand which the Southern church takes upon this subject.
For many of these opinions, shocking as they may appear, some apology may be found in that blinding power of custom and all those deadly educational influences which always attend the system of slavery, and which must necessarily produce a certain obtuseness of the moral sense in the mind of any man who is educated from childhood under them.
There is also, in the habits of mind formed under a system which is supported by continual resort to force and violence, a necessary deadening of sensibility to the evils of force and violence, as applied to other subjects. The whole style of civilization which is formed under such an institution has been not unaptly denominated by a popular writer “the bowie-knife style;” and we must not be surprised at its producing a peculiarly martial cast of religious character, and ideas very much at variance with the spirit of the gospel. A religious man, born and educated at the South, has all these difficulties to contend with, in elevating himself to the true spirit of the gospel.
It was said by one that, after the Reformation, the best of men, being educated under a system of despotism and force, and accustomed from childhood to have force, and not argument, made the test of opinion, came to look upon all controversies very much in a Smithfield light,—the question being not as to the propriety of burning heretics, but as to which party ought to be burned.
The system of slavery is a simple retrogression of society to the worst abuses of the middle ages. We must not therefore be surprised to find the opinions and practices of the middle ages, as to civil and religious toleration, prevailing.
However much we may reprobate and deplore those unworthy views of God and religion which are implied in such declarations as are here recorded,—however blasphemous and absurd they may appear,—still, it is apparent that their authors uttered them with sincerity: and this is the most melancholy feature of the case. They are as sincere as Paul when he breathed out threatenings and slaughter, and when he thought within himself that he ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus. They are as sincere as the Brahmin or Hindoo, conscientiously supporting a religion of cruelty and blood. They are as sincere as many enlightened, scholarlike and Christian men in modern Europe, who, born and bred under systems of civil and religious despotism, and having them entwined with all their dearest associations of home and country, and having all their habits of thought and feeling biased by them, do most conscientiously defend them.