Lands of the Slave and the Free; Or, Cuba, the United States, and Canada

by Henry A. Murray

Let me now for a moment touch upon the treatment of slaves. The farms of the wealthy planters, and the chapels with negro minister and negro congregation, bear bright evidence to the fact that negroes have their bodily and spiritual wants attended to, not forgetting also the oral teaching they often receive from the wife of the planter. But is that system universal? Those who would answer that question truthfully need not travel to the Southern States for documentary evidence. Is any human being fit to be trusted with absolute power over one of his fellow-creatures, however deeply his public reputation and his balance at the banker's may be benefited by the most moderate kindness to them? If every man were a Howard or a Wilberforce, and every woman a Fry or a Nightingale, the truth would be ever the same, and they would be the first to acknowledge it.—Man is unfit for irresponsible power.

Now the only bar before which the proprietor of slaves is likely to be arraigned, is the bar of public opinion; and the influence which that knowledge will have upon his conduct is exactly in the inverse ratio to its need; for the hardened brute, upon whom its influence is most wanted, is the very person who, if he can escape lynching, is indifferent to public opinion. No Southerner can be affronted, if I say that he is not more Christian, kind-hearted, and mild-tempered than his fellow-man in the Northern States, in France, or in England; and yet how constantly do we find citizens of those communities evincing unrestrained passions in the most brutal acts, and that with the knowledge that the law is hanging over their heads, and that their victims can give evidence against them; whereas, in the Slave States, provided the eye of a white man is excluded, there is scarce a limit to the torture which a savage monster may inflict upon the helpless slave, whose word cannot be received in evidence. It is as absurd to judge of the condition of the slave by visiting an amiable planter and his lady, as it would be to judge of the clothing, feeding, and comfort of our labouring population by calling at the town-house of the Duke of Well-to-do and carefully noting the worthy who fills an arm-chair like a sentry-box, and is yclept the porter. Look at him, with his hair powdered and fattened down to the head; behold him as the bell rings, using his arms as levers to force his rotundity out of its case; then observe the pedestals on which he endeavours to walk; one might imagine he had been tapped for the dropsy half-a-dozen times, and that all the water had run into the calves of his legs. Is that a type of the poorer classes?

Where, then, are we to look for true data on which to form an opinion of the treatment of the slave?—Simply by studying human nature and weighing human passions, and then inquiring by what laws they are held in check. Now, as to the laws, they amount to nothing, inasmuch as slave evidence is not admissible, and the possibility of any oppression, even to death itself, must frequently be, without any fear of punishment, in the hands of the owner. If law, then, affords the negro no efficient protection from human passions, where are we to look for it in human nature, except it be in the influences of Christianity, self-interest, or public opinion? The last of these, we have seen, is upon a sliding-scale of an inefficiency which increases in proportion to the necessity for its influence, and is therefore all but impotent for good.

Let us now consider self-interest. Will any one assert that self-interest is sufficient to restrain anger? How many a hasty word does man utter, or how many a hasty act does man commit, under the influence of passion he cannot or will not restrain—and that among his equals, who may be able to resent it, or in the face of law ready to avenge it! How prone are we all, if things go wrong from some fault of our own, to lose our temper and try to throw the blame on others, rather than admit the failure to be our own fault! Without dwelling upon the serious injury people often do to themselves by unrestrained passion, think for a moment of the treatment frequently inflicted upon the poor animals over whom they rule absolute. Is not kindness to a horse the interest as well as the duty of the owner? and yet how often is he the unfortunate victim of the owner's rage or cruel disposition, while faithfully and willingly expending all his powers in the service of his tyrant master! If these things be so among equals, or comparative equals, and also in man's dealings with the lower orders of the creation, what chance has the poor slave, with the arm of legislative justice paralysed, and an arm nerved with human passion his only hope of mercy?—for self-defence, that first law of nature, is the highest crime he can be guilty of: and, while considering the mercenary view of self-interest, let it not be forgotten that an awful amount of human suffering is quite compatible with unimpaired health, and that a slave may be frequently under the lash and yet fully able to do his day's work.

The last influence we have to consider is indeed the brightest and best of all—Christianity: high on the brotherly arch of man's duty to his fellow-man, and forming its enduring keystone, we read, traced by Jehovah in imperishable letters, radiant with love, "Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you;" "Love thy neighbour as thyself." Surely it needs no words of mine to show, that a faithful history of the most Christian country in the most Christian times the world ever witnessed, would contain, fearful evidence of the cruelty of man setting at nought the above blessed precept. Nay, more—I question if, viewed in its entire fulness, there is any one single command in Scripture more habitually disregarded. Proverbs are generally supposed to be a condensation of facts or experiences. Whence comes "Every one for himself, and God for us all"? or, the more vulgar one, "Go ahead, and the d----l take the hindmost?" What are they but concentrations of the fact that selfishness is man's ruling passion? What are most laws made for, but to restrain men by human penalties from a broach of the law of love? and, if these laws be needful in communities, all the members of which are equal in the eyes of the law, and even then be found inefficient for their purpose, as may be daily witnessed in every country, who will say that the influence of Christianity is sufficient protection to the poor slave?

There is only one other influence that I shall mention—that is habit; it acts for and against the slave. Thus, the kind and good, brought up among slaves, very often nursed by them, and grown up in the continual presence of their gentleness and faithfulness, repay them with unmeasured kindness, and a sympathy in all their sickness and their sorrows, to a degree which I feel quite certain the most tender-hearted Christian breathing could never equal, if landed among slaves, for the first time, at years of maturity. The Christian planter's wife or daughter may be seen sitting up at night, cooking, nursing, tending an old sick and helpless slave, with nearly, if not quite, the same affectionate care she would bestow upon a sick relation, the very friendlessness of the negro stimulating the benevolent heart. This is, indeed, the bright side of the influence of habit.—But the other side is not less true; and there the effect is, that a coarse, brutal mind, trained up among those it can bully with impunity, acquires a heartlessness and indifference to the negro's wants and sufferings, that grow with the wretched possessor's growth. This is the dark side of the influence of habit.

Let two examples suffice, both of which I have upon the very best authority. A faithful slave, having grown up with his master's rising family, obtained his freedom as a reward for his fidelity, and was entrusted with the management of the property; realizing some money, he became the owner of slaves himself, from among whom he selected his wife, and to all of whom he showed the greatest consideration. Some time after, lying upon his deathbed, he made his will, in which he bequeathed his wife and all his other negroes to his old master, giving as his reason, that, from his own lively recollections of his master's unvarying kindness to himself and the other slaves, he felt certain that in so doing he was taking the best means in his power of securing their future happiness. What stronger evidence of the growth of kindness in the master's heart could possibly be desired? Here, then, is the effect of habit in a benevolent owner.—Now, turn to the opposite picture. A lady of New Orleans was accustomed to strip and flog a slave for the pleasure of witnessing sufferings which she endeavoured to render more acute by rubbing soft soap into the broken skin. Here you have the effect of habit upon a brutal mind.

To the credit of New Orleans be it recorded, that the knowledge of this atrocity having come to white ears, her house was broken open, every article it contained pulled out in the street and burnt, and, had she not succeeded in eluding search, the she-devil would have been most assuredly reduced to ashes with her own goods. America became too hot for her, and Providence alone knows the demon's cave of concealment.

Having thus passed in review the various influences bearing upon the treatment of the slave, and seen how utterly inadequate they are to protect him from ill-treatment, who can wonder that the tales of real or supposed cruelty inflicted upon slaves by the Southerners are received with indignation by both parties in the States?—the virtuous and kind master, indignant at the thought of being included in the category of monsters, and the real savage, if possible, still more indignant, because his conscience brings home to his seared heart the truthfulness of the picture, even if it be overdrawn almost to caricature. And here it is curious to observe the different action of these two parties: the former, in the consciousness of a kind heart and a real desire for the negro's good, calmly states what has been done and is doing for the negro, and throws a natural veil of doubt over horrors so utterly repulsive to the feelings that their existence is discredited; the latter, with a shallowness which Providence sometimes attaches to guilt, aware that some such accusations come too painfully and truthfully home, pronounce their own condemnation by their line of defence—recrimination.

Take, for example, the following extract from an article in a Slave State paper, entitled "A Sequel to Uncle Tom's Cabin," and in which Queen Victoria, under the guidance of a "genius," has the condition of her subjects laid bare before her. After various other paragraphs of a similar nature comes the following:—