Slavery: letters and speeches

by Horace Mann

Now, here, gentlemen, are four distinct legal provisions, all designed to protect slave property. By these provisions, four distinct legal offences are created. The law, by creating and defining these offences, has authoritatively declared that one of them is not either of the others of them. “Stealing” is one thing. “Counselling, hiring,” &c., a man to steal, is not stealing itself. “Enticing and persuading” a slave to run away from his master is not stealing. “Transporting” a slave out of the jurisdiction is not stealing. The inquiry for you, therefore, is whether the prisoner is guilty of any of these offences, and if of any, then, of which.

Now, gentlemen, let me take advantage of a map which is lying here accidentally before me, to illustrate this case. Four states,—Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina, are here represented. The boundaries between them are distinctly marked. Pennsylvania is not Maryland, nor either of the others. Maryland is not Virginia, nor either of the others; and so of the rest. Just so it is with the offences created by these statutes. Any one of them is not either of the others. It is as plain that the offence of “transporting” a slave out of the jurisdiction is as different from the offence of stealing a slave, as this geographical shape of Maryland is different from this geographical shape of Pennsylvania. As, therefore, if the geographical metes and bounds of the State of Maryland were shown to you, you could not say, upon your oaths, that it was a description of the State of Pennsylvania; so, if the offence of “transporting” be proved to you, you cannot say, on your oaths, that it is the offence of stealing.

Or take an illustration from other things. The object of a sun-dial, a watch, a clock, and a chronometer is the same. All are made for the measurement of time, as all these laws were made for the protection of slave property. But could you, therefore, on your oaths, convict a man of stealing a chronometer, when he had only taken a clock or a watch? No, you could find him guilty only of the thing proved to have been done.

Or, again, suppose a law should be made to protect a man’s property in his books; and the stealing of books, generally, should be punishable by five years’ confinement in the penitentiary. Such a general law would include all books. Suppose a subsequent law should inflict a lighter penalty for stealing an octavo volume, and a still lighter one for a duodecimo. Then it would be necessary, in an indictment, to set out the kind of book stolen, and no man could be lawfully punished for the weightier offence who had only committed the lighter. So here, the first law punished “stealing,” the next “enticing,” and the next “transporting.”

Now, gentlemen, I maintain that, at most, nothing but the offence of “transporting” has been proved against this prisoner. But he is arraigned for stealing. What then, let us inquire, are the ingredients which constitute the offence of stealing,—which are indispensable to its perpetration? They are, 1. That the property shall be taken by the thief from the possession of the owner. 2. That it shall be taken into the possession of the thief,—that is, that the taker shall exercise some act of control or ownership over it. And, 3. That this taking by the thief, from the possession of the owner, and into his own possession, shall be for the felonious purpose of converting the said property to his own use.

Now, I think it is not too much to say, that neither one of these three indispensable ingredients of larceny has been proved in this case.

1. It is not proved that the prisoner took the two slaves mentioned in the indictment from the possession of Andrew Hoover. Could not some other person besides the prisoner have put it into the heads of these slaves to leave their master? There are white men in this city hostile to the institution of slavery, and desiring the freedom of all slaves. Could they not have said to Hoover’s slaves, “Here is a schooner at the wharf; it is to sail at such a time; be there, and you may escape to a free state”? Here, too, are thousands of free negroes, or colored persons, in this District, with whom the slaves are in daily and open communication. Could they not have infused into the mind of these slaves the idea of liberty? Is it not a thousand times more probable that it was done by some citizen in the District, or by some colored acquaintance or friend of theirs, enjoying the means of constant communication with them, than that it was done by an entire stranger to them, as the prisoner was? Can aught be conceived more absurd or preposterous than that the prisoner should go round the streets of Washington, picking up a slave here and there, to complete his cargo, as the driver of a stage-coach goes round picking up passengers? Should he accost a colored man in the streets, and ask him if he were a slave, the chances are three to one that the person addressed would turn out to be a freeman; for I suppose the proportion, in this District, of the free colored persons to the slaves to be as great as this. If the fourth man or woman he might meet should prove to be a slave, how could he know but what he might be addressing one so attached to the place, to his home and relatives, and to his master, that even the sweets of freedom would not tempt him to leave; and that the consequence would be an immediate reporting of the interview, and sudden detection and punishment? But a person on the spot would know who were slaves, and what slaves were discontented with their condition; he could select the occasion when a slave had been punished by his master, when his body was smarting, and his mind was fired with indignation against him, and then sow the seeds of discontent and the hopes of escape in a fruitful soil. If, then, the slaves were, in fact, instigated to leave their master’s possession, the probabilities are a thousand to one that they were so instigated by some other person or persons resident here, and not by the prisoner. If this were so, and they came on board the prisoner’s schooner, after having absconded from their master, then he did not take them from Hoover’s possession, and so is not guilty of the first ingredient in the crime of larceny.

But is there not still another way in which slaves may be induced to leave the possession of their master? Though we may call men slaves, yet are they not human beings?—degraded from the natural dignity of manhood, it is true, and dwarfed in their mental stature, but still human beings; subject to the passions of our common nature, animated by its hopes, inflamed by its resentments, and shrinking and flying through fear from the uplifted rod. As human beings, could not the desire of escape from their master’s possession have originated with themselves?—prompted by the inward and instinctive longings for liberty, which spring perennial in the human breast.

The attorney for the government, in his opening, dwelt long and earnestly on the value of this species of property. He described it as the most valuable kind of property known in the District, and therefore most vigilantly to be guarded. Doubtless it has a certain pecuniary value; and, as it increases in intelligence, activity, and skill, its value is greatly enhanced. But with this enhanced value comes a per contra. With increased intelligence and mental development, the desires natural to manhood spring up;—the longing for liberty, and for the possession of free agency; the desire of selecting one’s own field of labor, and means of enjoyment; the desire of commanding the rewards of one’s own toil. So that, as the value of a slave increases, the strength of the tenure by which he is held becomes less secure. It is a weight of gold suspended by a cord. The master wishes to increase the mass. He adds little by little, until the weight snaps the cord, and he loses the whole.

Hoover says he had been offered $1400 for the two slaves mentioned in the indictment, and had refused the offer. Their services were probably worth to him a dollar a day each. One of them was employed in driving a cart about the city. As he saw a handful of money paid to his master every week, or every month, for his own earnings, think you he never asked himself, why that money could not be his? When three out of every four colored men whom he met, from day to day, were receiving their own earnings, and making those earnings minister to their comforts and their pleasures, might not Hoover’s slaves have said, “Why are not our earnings our own? and, if we cannot possess them here, why should we not go to a country where the laborer is deemed, in the language of Scripture, to be worthy of his hire?” and so have fled of their own accord? for, though we are prone to apply the precepts of the gospel to others rather than to ourselves, yet this is a passage which they would be likely to take home.