"So you all love to reason," said I, "or seek to force that conclusion upon us. No such thing. If God overrules the evil doings of men, this is no reason for repeating the wrong. I am insisting that slavery as it exists in the South has been a blessing to the African. This does not warrant you in perpetrating outrages on those who are still in Africa.
"But the result has been, through the mercy of God as though we had taken millions of degraded savages out of Africa, and had made them contribute greatly to the industrial interests of mankind.
"We have raised them from heathenish ignorance and barbarism to the condition of intelligent beings. Look at them in their churches and Sabbath-schools. Slavery has done this. See the colored population of Charleston, S.C., voluntarily contributing, as they do, on an average, three dollars apiece, annually, for the propagation of the Gospel at home and abroad. See the meeting-house of the African Church at Richmond, Va., a place selected for public speakers from the North to deliver their addresses in it to the citizens of Richmond, because it is more commodious than any other public building in the city. Think of the membership of slaves in Christian Churches; of the multitudes of them who have died in the faith and hope of the Gospel. Slavery has done this. The question is whether slavery has been, or is, such a curse, on the whole, to the African race, that we must now set free the whole colored population? Please let us keep to the point. The reopening of the slave-trade is a question by itself.
"It seems that God had chosen to redeem and save large numbers of the African race by having them transported to this Christian land. Philanthropists would not be at the cost and trouble of all this. God has, therefore, used the cupidity of men to accomplish his purposes, and he punishes the wicked agents of his own benevolent schemes. His curse has for ages rested on the African race, and the laws of nature have, to a great degree, interposed to prevent Christian efforts in their behalf. God saw fit to change the prison-house, and prison yards and shops of this race from one continent to another, and New England merchantmen, in part, have been allowed to be the conveyers. In the process of transferring these future subjects of civilization and Christianity, vast misery is endured, as in opening a way by the sword for the execution of his decrees, great slaughter is the inevitable attendant. I look at the whole subject of slavery in the light of God's providence. And I do not see that his providence yet indicates any way for its termination consistent with the interests of the colored people.
"As to the extension of slavery, in this land, if the Most High has any further purposes of mercy for the African race in connection with us, he will not consult you nor me. He will open districts of our country for them; if my political party refuses to be the instrument in doing this, from benevolent motives, or from any other cause, He will make that party to be defeated, it may be by a party below us in moral principle, as we view it. This question of slavery, its extension and continuance, is therefore among the great problems of God's providence. I shall do all that I properly can to prevent it, and to encourage, and, if called upon, to aid my brethren now in immediate charge of the slaves, to fulfil their solemn trust; but anything like impatience and passion at the existence of slavery, I hold to be a sin against God. I pity those good men whose minds are so inflamed by the consideration of individual cases of suffering as not to perceive the great and steadfast march of the divine administration. Politicians and others who get their places, or their bread, by easy appeals to sympathy for individual cases of suffering, are the causes of much misplaced commiseration and of a low, uninstructed view of the great interests involved in slavery. Yet these very men who, for selfish purposes, stir up the passions of our people, by dwelling on cases of hardship in slavery, are greatly disappointed when Napoleon III., at Villafranca, prematurely terminates a war of unparalleled slaughter. They would have preferred, for the cause of constitutional liberty and for its possible influence against the Pope, that the fighting had continued a month longer; we hear no pathetic remonstrances from them on the score of the killed and maimed, the widows and orphans and the childless, of homes made desolate, by this additional month of battle. Such is man, so inconsistent, so blinded by party prejudice, so ready to maintain that which, in a change of persons and places, he will denounce. He will be wholly blinded by individual acts of suffering to all that is good in a system; and again, the good to be effected by a war will blind him to the hundreds of thousands of dead or mutilated soldiers, with five times that number of bleeding hearts, rifled by the sword of their precious treasures."
I saw that I had prolonged my remarks to an undue length. We sat in silence for a little while, looking into the fire, and listening to the rain against the windows, when Judith called Mrs. North to the door; and, after some whispering between them, Mrs. North said to her,
"Oh, bring them in; our company will excuse it."
The cranberries, it seems, were not doing well over the fire in Judith's department, and she had hesitatingly proposed that they should be promoted to the parlor grate, where, after due apologies, they were placed. They soon began to simmer; then one would burst, and then another, we pausing unconsciously to hear them surrendering themselves to their fate, while one mouth, at least, watered at the thought of the delicious dish which they were to furnish; the rich, ruby color of their juice in the best cut-glass tureen, and the added spoonful, as a reward for not spilling a drop on the table-cloth the last time they were served, coming to mind, with thoughts of early days. And here I was discussing slavery. Now, while the cranberries were over the fire, making one feel domestic and also bringing back young days, it was impossible to be disputatious, had we been so inclined. The Northern cranberry-meadow and the Southern sugar-plantation seemed mixed up in my feelings on this subject, qualifying and rectifying each other. Perhaps the soothing presence of the cranberry saucepan was timely; for, without any design, a phase of our subject next presented itself which was not the most agreeable. I broke the silence, and said,—
"Mr. North, what do you think is the mission of the abolitionists as a party, and of all who sympathize with them?"
"Why," said he, "to abolish slavery, to be sure. What else can it be?"