Slavery: letters and speeches

by Horace Mann

But admit the alleged statement, absurd and false as it is; admit that these three millions of slaves would have belonged to Africa if they had not belonged to America,—that they would have been born of the same fathers and mothers there as here, so that those of them who are American mulattoes would have been Ethiopian mulattoes; and admit, further, that their present condition is better than the alternative condition alleged,—and what then? Is your duty done? Is it enough if you have made the condition of a man or of a race a little better, or any better, if you have not made it as much better as you can? What standard of morals do gentlemen propose to themselves? If a fellow-being is suffering under a hundred diseases, and we can relieve him from them all, what kind of benevolence is that which boasts of relieving him from one, and permits him to suffer under the other ninety and nine? By the law of nature and of God, the slave, like every other man, is entitled “to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;” he is entitled to his earnings,—to the enjoyment of his social affections,—to the development of his intellectual and moral faculties,—to that cultivation of his religious nature which shall fit him, not merely to feel, but reason of righteousness, temperance, and a judgment to come;—he is entitled to all these rights, of which he has been cruelly despoiled; and when he catches some feeble glimmering of some of them, we withhold the rest, and defend ourselves and pride ourselves that he is better off than he would have been in some other country or in some other condition. Suppose the Samaritan had bound up a single wound, or relieved a single pang of the bleeding wayfarer who had fallen among thieves, and then had gone to the next inn and boasted of his benevolence. He would only have shown the difference between a “good Samaritan” and a “bigot Samaritan.” The thieves themselves might have done as much.

But there is another inquiry which the champions of slavery have got to answer before the world and before Heaven. If American slaves are better off than native Africans, who is to be thanked for it? Has their improved condition resulted from any purposed plan, any well-digested, systematized measure, carefully thought out, and reasoned out, and intended for their benefit? Not at all. In all the southern statute books, and legislative records, there is no trace of any such scheme. Laws, judicial decisions, the writing of political economists,—all treat the slave as a thing to make money with. Agricultural societies give rewards for the best crops. Horse-jockey societies improve the fleetness of the breed for the sports of the turf. Even the dogs have professional trainers. But not one thing is done to bring out the qualities of manhood that lie buried in a slave. Look through the southern statute books, and see what Draconian penalties are inflicted for teaching a slave to read,—see how he is lashed for attending a meeting to hear the Word of God. On every highroad patrols lie in wait to scourge him back if he attempts to visit father, mother, wife, child, or friend, on a neighboring plantation. By day and by night, at all times and every where, he is the victim of an energetic and comprehensive system of measures, which blot out his senses, paralyze his mind, degrade and brutify his nature, and suppress the instinctive workings of truth, generosity, and manhood in his breast. All the good that reaches him, reaches him in defiance of these privations and disabilities. If any light penetrates to his soul, it is because human art cannot weave a cloud dense and dark enough to be wholly impervious to it. There are some blessings which the goodness of God will bestow in spite of human efforts to intercept them. It is these only which reach the slave. And after having built up all barriers to forbid the access of improvement; after having sealed his senses by ignorance, and more than half obliterated his faculties by neglect and perversion, the oppressor turns round, and because there are some scanty, incidental benefits growing out of the very deplorableness of his condition, he justifies himself before the world, and claims the approval of Heaven, because the slave is better off here than he would be in Africa. Sir, such an argument as this is an offence to Heaven. I consider it to be as much worse than atheism as Christianity is better. And when such an argument comes from a gentleman belonging to a free state; when it comes from the gentleman from Pennsylvania, [Mr. Brown,] from a representative of the city of William Penn; when he, without motive, without inducement, offers such a gratuity to the devil, I can account for it only on the principle of the man who, having a keen relish for the flesh of swine, said he wished he were a Jew, that he might have the pleasure of eating pork and committing a sin at the same time.

But the subject presents a still more painful aspect. How are slaves made better, and from what motives are they made better, in this country? It is no secret that I am about to tell. There are certain virtues and sanctities which increase the pecuniary value of certain slaves; and there are certain vices and debasements which increase the market price of others. If a master wishes to repose personal confidence in his slave, he desires to have him honest and faithful to truth. But if he desires to make use of him to deceive and cajole and defraud, then he wishes to make him cunning and tricky and false. If the master trains the slave to take care of his own children, or of his favorite animals, then he wishes to have him kind; but if he trains him for a tasker or a field overseer, then he wishes to have him severe. Now, it is in this way that some of the Christian attributes of character, being directly convertible into money or money’s worth, enhance the value of a slave. Hence, it is said in advertisements that a slave is pious, and, at the auction block, the hardened and heartless seller dwells upon the Christian graces and religious character of some slaves with the unction of an apostle. The purchaser sympathizes, and only desires to know whether the article be a real or a sham Christian. If mere bones and muscles compacted into human shape be worth five hundred dollars, then, if the auctioneer can warrant the subject to have the meekness of Moses and the patience of Job, the same article may be worth seven hundred. If the slave will forgive injuries, not merely seventy times seven, but injuries inflicted all his life long, then an additional hundred may be bid for him. If he possesses all the attributes of religion and piety, the endurance of a hero, the constancy of a saint, the firmness of a martyr, the trustingness of a disciple,—all except those which go to make him feel like a man, and believe himself a man,—then that which as mere bone and muscle was worth five hundred dollars, is now worth a thousand. Sir, is not this selling the Holy Spirit? Is not this making merchandise of the Savior? Is not this the case of Judas selling his Master over again, with the important exception of the remorse that made the original culprit go and hang himself? But suppose the case to be that of a woman; suppose her ability to work and capacity for production to be worth five hundred dollars; suppose, in addition to this, she is young and sprightly and voluptuous; suppose the repeated infusion of Saxon blood has almost washed the darkness from her skin; and suppose she is not unwilling to submit herself to the libertine’s embrace; then, too, that which before was worth but five hundred dollars, will now bring two thousand. And thus infernal as well as celestial qualities are coined into money, according to the demands of the market and the uses of the purchaser.

Now, it is only in some such incidental way, and with regard to some individuals, that it can be said, that their condition is better here than it would be in Africa. And this improvement, where it exists, is not the result of any system of measures designed for their benefit, but is the product of selfish motives, turning godliness into gain; and where more gain or more gratification can be obtained by the debasement, the irreligion, the pollution of the slave, there the instincts of chastity, the sanctity of the marriage relation, the holiness of maternal love are all profaned to give security and zest to the guilty pleasures of the sensualist and debauchee. There are individual exceptions to what I have said,—exceptions which, amid surrounding iniquity, shine “like a jewel in an Ethiop’s ear,” but they are exceptions. Laws, institutions, and the prevailing public sentiment are as I have described.

I regard the argument, therefore, of the gentleman from Pennsylvania, [Mr. Brown,] not only as utterly unsound and false in its premises, but as blasphemous in its conclusions. Common blasphemy seldom reaches beyond exclamation. It is some fiery outburst of impious passion, that flashes and expires. But the gentleman reasons it out coolly. His is argumentative blasphemy, borrowing the forms of logic that it may appear to have its force, and transferring it from the passions to the intellect, to give it permanency.

But the gentleman from Pennsylvania retorts upon Massachusetts, and refers to certain things in her history which he regards as disreputable to her. In this he has been followed by the gentleman from Virginia, [Mr. Bedinger,] who has poured out a torrent of abuse upon my native state, and who has attempted to fortify his own intemperate accusations from a pro-slavery pamphlet which has been profusely scattered about this House within a few days past, and which is not merely full of falsehoods, but is composed of falsehoods; so that if one were to take the false assertions and the false arguments out of it, there would be nothing but the covers left.[5] Sir, I am very far from arrogating for Massachusetts all the merits and the virtues which she ought to possess. I mourn over her errors, and would die to reform, rather than spend one breath to defend them. The recital of her offences can fall more sadly upon no ear than upon my own. But it is as true of a state as of an individual, that repentance is the first step towards reformation. Massachusetts has committed errors; but when they were seen to be errors, she discarded them. She once held slaves; but when she saw that slavery was contrary to the rights of man and the law of God, she emancipated them. She was the first government in the civilized world,—in the whole world, ancient or modern,—to abolish slavery, wherever she had power to do so. This is an honor that no rival can ever snatch from her brow. Once,—I say it with humiliation,—she was engaged in the slave trade. But all the gold that could be earned by the accursed traffic, though spent in the splendors of luxury and the seductions of hospitality, could not save the trader himself from infamy and scorn; and I am sure I am right in saying that the slave trade ceased to be conducted by Massachusetts merchants, and to be carried on in Massachusetts ships, from Massachusetts ports, before it was abandoned by the merchants and discontinued in the ships and from the ports of any other commercial state or nation in the world. This, too, is an honor, which it will be hers, through all the immortality of the ages, alone to wear. But Massachusetts, it is still said, has her idolaters of Mammon in other forms. It is charged upon her that many of her children still wallow in the sty of intemperance; that her spiritualism runs wild in religious vagaries; and that something of the old leaven of persecution still clings to her heart. In vindicating what is right, I will not defend what is wrong. I cannot deny,—would to God that I could,—that we still have vices and vicious men amongst us. There are those there, as elsewhere, who, if they were to hear for the first time of the River of Life flowing fast by the throne of God, would instinctively ask whether there were any good mill sites on it. There are those there, as elsewhere, whose highest aspirations for heaven and for happiness, whether for this life or for another, are a distillery and a sugar-house, with steam machinery to mix the products. There, as elsewhere, there are religionists who are quick to imitate the Savior when he strikes, but despise his example when he heals.

But, sir, let me say this for Massachusetts, that whatever sins she may have committed in former times,—whatever dissenters she may have persecuted, or witches she may have hanged, or Africans she may have stolen and sold,—she has long since abandoned these offences, and is bringing forth fruits meet for repentance. And is a state to have no benefit from a statute of limitations? Is a crime committed by ancestors to be forever imputed to their posterity? This is worse than non-forgiveness; it is making punishment hereditary. Sir, of these offences, Massachusetts has repented and reformed; and she is giving that noblest of atonements or expiations, which consists in repairing the wrong that has been done; and where the victim of the wrong has himself passed away, and is beyond relief, then in paying, with large interest, the debt to humanity which the special creditor is no longer present to receive, by seeking out the objects of want and suffering wherever they may be found. Sir, our accusers unconsciously do us the highest honor, when, in their zeal to malign us, they seek for historical reproaches. If they could find present offences wherewith to upbraid us, they would not exhume the past. But they condemn themselves, for they show that even the resuscitation of the errors of the dead gives them more pleasure than a contemplation of the virtues of the living. One thing is certain: the moment the other states shall imitate our present example, they will cease to condemn us for our past offences. The sympathy of a common desire for improvement will destroy the pleasure of crimination.

And where, I ask, on the surface of the earth, is there a population of only eight hundred thousand, who are striving so earnestly, and doing so much, to advance the cause of humanity and civilization, as is doing by the people of Massachusetts? Where else, where universal suffrage is allowed, is a million of dollars voted every year, by the very men who have to pay it, for the public, free education of every child in the state?

Where else, by such a limited population, is another million of dollars voluntarily voted and paid each year for the salaries of clergymen alone? Where else, where the population is so small, and natural resources so few and scanty, is still another million of dollars annually given in charity?—the greater portion of which is sent beyond their own borders, flows into every state in the Union, and leaves not a nation on the globe, nor an island in the sea, unwatered by its fertilizing streams. Look into the statute book of Massachusetts, for the last twenty years, and you will see how the whole current of her legislation has set in the direction of human improvement,—for succoring disease or restoration from it, for supplying the privations of nature, for reclaiming the vicious, for elevating all,—a comprehensiveness of scope that takes in every human being, and an energy of action that follows every individual with a blessing to his home. When others will abandon their offences, then let the remembrance of them be blotted out.

But, sir, I think it proper to advert to the fact that I have had other proofs, during the present session of Congress, of the same spirit of crimination and obloquy which was so fully developed in the speeches of the gentleman from Pennsylvania, [Mr. Brown,] and the gentleman from Virginia, [Mr. Bedinger.] Through the post-office of the House of Representatives, I have been in the regular receipt of anonymous letters, made up mainly of small slips cut from newspapers printed at the north, describing some case of murder, suicide, robbery, or other offence. These have been arranged under the heads of different states,—Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, &c., and accompanied, in the margin, with rude drawings of a school-book or a school house, and all referred to Common Schools, as to their source. Two only, of the whole number thus collected, originated in Massachusetts, and one of these was a case of suicide committed by a man who had become insane from the loss of his wife. Which of these events, in the opinion of my anonymous correspondent, constituted the crime,—whether the bereavement that caused the insanity, or the suicide committed in one of its paroxysms,—I am unable to say. Now, what satisfaction even a bad man could have in referring offences against law and morality to the institution of public schools, when he must have known that the very existence of the offences only proves that education has not yet done its perfect work, I cannot conceive. And what spite, either against an educational office which I once held, or against an institution which is worthy of all honor, could be so mean and paltry as to derive gratification from referring me to long lists of offences, only one of which was committed in my native state, I must leave for others to conjecture. Surely the author of these letters must have known little of Common Schools, and profited by them as little as he has known. Had he referred to any considerable number of crimes perpetrated in Massachusetts, I would take his letters home and carry them into our public schools, and make them the text for a sermon, in which I would warn the children to beware of all crimes, and especially of the meanness and the wickedness which feels a complacency in the crimes of others, or can give a false paternity to them. And, sir, I should be sure of a response; for out of those schools there is going forth a nobler band of young men and women than ever before conferred intelligence, virtue, refinement, and renown upon any people or community on the face of the globe.