"Il n'existe a la verite aucune loi qui protege l'esclave le mauvais traitement du maitre," says Achille Murat, himself a Floridian slave- holder, in his late work on the United States.
Gentlemen, is not this true? Does there exist even in Virginia any law limiting the punishment of a slave? Are there any bounds prescribed, beyond which the brutal, the revengeful, the intoxicated slave-master, acting in the double capacity of judge and executioner, cannot pass?
You will, perhaps, tell me that the general law against murder applies alike to master and slave. True; but will you point out instances of masters suffering the penalty of that law for the murder of their slaves? If you examine your judicial reports you will find the wilful murder of a slave decided to be only a trespass!—[Virginia Reports, vol. v. p. 481, Harris versus Nichols.]
It indeed argues well for Virginian pride of character, that latterly, the law, which expressly sanctioned the murder of a slave, who in the language of Georgia and North Carolina, "died of moderate correction," has been repealed. But, although the letter of the law is changed, its practice remains the same. In proof of this, I would refer to Brockenborough and Holmes' Virginia Cases, p. 258.
In Georgia and North Carolina the murder of a slave is tolerated and justified by law, provided that in the opinion of the court he died "of moderate correction!"
In South Carolina the following clause of a law enacted in 1740 is still in force:—
"If any slave shall suffer in his life, limbs, or members, when no white person shall be present, or being present shall neglect or refuse to give evidence concerning the same, in every such case the owner or other person who shall have the care and government of the slave shall be deemed and taken to be guilty of such offence; unless such owner or other person can make the contrary appear by good and sufficient evidence, or shall by his own oath clear and exculpate himself, which oath every court where such offence shall be tried is hereby empowered to administer and to acquit the offender accordingly, if clear proof of the offence be not made by two witnesses at least, any law, usage, or custom to the contrary notwithstanding."
Is not this offering a reward for perjury? And what shall we think of that misnamed court of justice, where it is optional with the witnesses, in a case of life and death, to give or withhold their testimony.
5. Because it induces dangerous sectional jealousies, creates of necessity a struggle between the opposing interests of free and slave labor, and threatens the integrity of the Union.
That sectional jealousies do exist, the tone of your paper, gentlemen, is of itself an evidence, if indeed any were needed. The moral sentiment of the free states is against slavery. The freeman has declared his unwillingness that his labor should be reduced to a level with that of slaves. Harsh epithets and harsh threats have been freely exchanged, until the beautiful Potomac, wherever it winds its way to the ocean, has become the dividing line, not of territory only, but of feeling, interest, national pride, a moral division.