Many persons, who appear to be sensible of the evils of slavery, seem utterly at a loss for some feasible method of abolishing it. “It is here in our midst,” say they, “and how are we to get rid of it?”
To this question we have a plain scriptural answer. “Loose the bands of wickedness,”—“undo the heavy burdens,”—“Let the oppressed go free,”—“break every yoke,”—“proclaim liberty throughout all the land, unto all the inhabitants thereof.”
Immediate, unconditional, universal emancipation is the only just, the only reasonable and the only possible method of adjusting the slavery question. To this measure the people of the United States must come. A general Jubilee is inevitable. Slavery is an unmitigated wrong. Every element of it is at variance with the happiness of man and the law of God. It is without a single redeeming principle, and hence its destruction—its total annihilation is necessary.
Since the gigantic wrongs of slavery have been so generally made known as somewhat to arouse the public conscience from its long sleep, some writers, anxious to preserve the system, have proposed to reform it. They say, “Slavery, of itself, is a very innocent relation, but its evils are horrible. Let us correct the evils and preserve the system.”
But slavery cannot be reformed, so as to make it a tolerable institution because its essential feature—viz, property in a human being, is, wherever imposed, an outrageous, an insufferable wrong. Who would think of reforming robbery—of making laws to regulate robbers in their trade—and to prevent brutal men from engaging in it? What if it should be enacted by grave senators that none but gentlemen should rob, and that they must do it genteelly—using no unnecessary cruelty or coercion? All the world would laugh such senators to scorn. But slavery is from beginning to end a system of robbery, which it is as impossible to reform, so as to take away its “evils,” as it is to so reform piracy as to destroy its evils, and make it a humane, just and christian trade.
But the American slaves, it is maintained, are not prepared for freedom. This objection is without foundation. God creates men free, and sends them forth into the world with such endowments as are needed in a state of freedom, and as are suited to no other state. To say that a race, which God has created free, is unprepared for freedom is to reproach the Maker. Freedom is the native element of man. And
“The heavens, the earth, man’s heart and sea,
Forever cry, let all be free!”
“Not prepared for freedom?” This has been the watchword of oppressors in all ages. The “people,” the uninformed “masses,” have, in the estimation of tyrants, always been prepared for slavery and injustice of every kind, but never for freedom. And it has ever been their policy to render them less fit for any station or any responsibility in life. They never put forth an effort to prepare their victims for any higher business than obsequious submission to usurped authority. True to this spirit, those who are most noisy about the unfitness of slaves for freedom, are most zealous for the maintenance of those odious laws and usages which shut them out from all chance of mental and moral culture.
And if the slaves are unprepared for freedom, what is to prepare them for it? Their present degradation is owing to slavery, and it is not likely that the continuance of the cause of their degradation will elevate them. Remove the cause, and the effect will cease. Emancipate the colored man, open to him our schools and colleges, place before him motives for action such as animate freemen, and swell the hearts of Christians, give him an opportunity and he will prove himself every whit a MAN. How mean and hypocritical the objection, that slaves are not prepared for freedom, when we employ the whole weight of our laws and prejudices to crush out their manhood, and as far as possible unfit them for any condition except that of working animals.