IV. The low and base meanness of slave-holding. Nothing is accounted meaner than theft and stealing! ☜ And yet ☞ every slaveholder is necessarily a constant, and perpetual thief. ☜ He steals the slave’s body and soul. And if there is one kind of theft which is worse than all others, it is to steal the wages of the poor, three hundred and sixty-five days in the year! It would be accounted very mean in a rich man, to employ a poor day laborer and then follow him to his home at night, after the toils of the day were over, and steal from his pocket the price of his day’s labor, which he had paid to him to buy bread for his children, and such a man would be called a wretch all over the world;—and yet every slaveholder as absolutely steals the slave’s wages every night—for he goes to his dwelling and family, if he have one, pennyless after a day of hard toil. It would be considered the worst kind of meanness to go, and divide, and separate by an impassable distance the members of a poor family; and yet not a slave lives in the South, who has not at some time or other, seen the same barbarous practice in the circle of his own relationship, and love.
It is the necessary and legitimate inference of the master, from the doctrine of the right of property in man, that all the slave possesses or acquires belongs to the one who owns him. Accordingly, Morehouse had a perfect right to the broadcloth coat which Mr. Tucker gave Peter for saving the life of his daughter. The whole difficulty, the grand cause of all the barbarities of slavery, lies in this unfounded and infamous claim of the right to own, as property, the image of the Great Jehovah. Destroy this claim, and slavery must cease forever. Acknowledge it in any instance, or under any circumstances, and the flood-gate is flung wide open to the most tyrannical oppression in an hour. This was illustrated in the case of Dr. Ely, of Philadelphia, who pretended to be “opposed to slavery as much as any body,” and yet who still main’tained that corner-stone principle of tyranny, “that it is right under certain circumstances to hold man as property.” He removed to a slave state, and found that “these circumstances” occurred. He bought a slave, Ambrose, with, (as he declared,) benevolent designs, intending to spend the avails of his unrequited labor, in buying others to emancipate. He was expostulated with by his brethren in the ministry, and out of it, against the sin of his conduct in owning a fellow-man, and making the innocent labor without reward, to free the enslaved. And “the hire of the laborer which he kept back cried to God.” He was told of the danger of owning a man for an hour, by a keen-sighted editor of New York; and this same editor uttered a prophecy which seemed almost like the voice of inspiration, that God would pour contempt upon such an unholy experiment, “of doing evil that good might come.” But still the Doctor passed on, and heeded it not. At length, after that prophecy had been forgotten by all but the friends of the slave, its fulfilment came from the shores of the Mississippi, and God had blasted the Doctor’s unrighteous scheme, and his speculations all failed, and poor Ambrose was sold to pay his master’s debts. ☜ Then the experiment was fairly, and one would think, satisfactorily made, and the principle was settled forever by God’s providence, that “it is wrong under any circumstances to hold man as property.” We want the slaveholder to give up his unholy, and unfounded claim to the image of God, and when he will practically acknowledge this principle, then he will cease to be a slaveholder.
V. We see, in the light of this story, the debasing, degrading, and withering influence of slavery upon its poor victim. Peter tells the truth, when he says, “no man can hold up his head like a man if he is a slave.” Any person who has been on a southern plantation must confess, that there is a degraded and servile air upon the countenance of all the slaves. A more abject, low, vacant, inhuman look, cannot be seen in the face of a being in the world, than you see when you meet a southern slave. It is not the tame and subdued look of a jaded beast. It is infinitely more painful to behold a slave than such a spectacle. He seems to be a man with the soul of a beast; God’s image does not speak from his dim and lustreless eye, or his lifeless and degraded bearing. You see a human form, but you cannot see the image of his Maker and Father there. The slave loses his self-respect, and all regard for his nature. He is shut out from all the lovely and glorious objects of creation; and a soul which was made to soar upward in an eternal flight towards its Sire, is smothered, and debased, and ruined;—its existence is almost blotted from creation, and when it leaves its abused and lacerated house of mortality, the world does not feel the loss;—the departure is unnoticed, except by a few who loved him in life, and are glad when his pilgrimage is over. The spirit flies, “no marble tells us whither and he is forgotten, and only a few like himself know that he ever existed in a green and beautiful world. But “a soul is a deathless thing,” and that soul shall speak at the last judgment day! It shall tell its tale of blood to an assembled universe, and that universe shall pronounce the doom of its murderer. ☜ In forecasting the proceedings of the last day, I tremble to think I shall be one of its spectators; not because I shall be tried, for I humbly trust I shall have an advocate there, whose plea the Judge will accept, and whose robe of complete righteousness shall mantle my naked spirit. But the revelations of that solemn tribunal, which millions of enslaved Africans shall unfold, will make the universe turn pale. And I should feel a desire to withdraw behind the throne, till the sentence had been passed upon all buyers, and sellers, and owners, of the image of the Omnipotent Judge, and executed; did I not wish to behold all the scenes of that great day, and mingle my sympathies with all the fortunes of that Throne. For, as I expect to stand among that mighty company, who shall cluster around the Judgment Seat, I do believe, that God’s Book will contain no page so dark with rebellion and crime, as that which records the story of American Slavery! And yet I believe that that Book will embrace the history of the whole creation.
VI. We see the glorious and hallowed influence of freedom upon man:—
No sooner had Peter escaped from chains, than he began to emerge from degradation into the dignity of a human being. He breathed an inspiring and ennobling atmosphere; he felt the greatness and glory of immortal existence steal over him, and his soul, which had been shrouded in darkness, begun to lift itself up from a moral sepulchre, and feel the life-giving energy of a resurrection from despair. It must have been so, for man’s element is freedom, and it cannot live in any other; deprived of its necessary element, it will languish and die.
While I am writing this paragraph, Peter Wheeler comes into my room, and we will hear his own testimony; he says, “Arter I’d got my liberty, I felt as though I was in a new world; although I suffered, for a while, a good deal, with fear of being catched.
“When I look back, and think how much I suffered by bein’ beat, and banged, and whipt, and starved; and then my feelin’s arter I got free, when I held up my head among men, and nobody pinted at me when I went by and said, ‘there goes this man’s nigger, or that man’s nigger;’ why, I can’t describe how I felt for two or three years. I was almost crazy with joy. What I got for work was my own, and if I had a dollar, I would slap my hand on my pocket and say, ‘that’s my own;’ and if I hauled out my turnip, why it ticked for me and not for master, and ’twas mine tu when it ticked. And I bought clothes, and good ones, and my own arnin’s paid for ’em. In fact, I breathed, and thought, and acted, all different, and it was almost like what a person feels when he is changed from darkness into light. Besides, when gentlemen and ladies put a handle to my name, and called me Mr. Wheeler, why, for months I felt odd enough; for you see a slave han’t got no name only ‘nig,’ or ‘cuss,’ or ‘skunk,’ or ‘cuffee,’ or ‘darkey;’ and then, besides, I was treated like a man. And if you show any body any kindness, or attention, or good will, you improve their characters, for you make them respect you, and themselves, and the whole human race a sight more than ever. Why, respect and kindness lifts up any body or thing. Even the beast or dog, if you show ’em a kindness, they never will forgit it, and they’ll strut and show pride in treatin’ on you well; and pity if man is of sich a natur’ that he ain’t as noble as that, then I give it up. Why, arter I come to myself, and I would git up and find all the family as pleasant as could be, and I would go out and look, and see the sun rise, and hear the birds sing, and I felt so joyful that I fairly thought my heart would leap out of my body, and I would turn on my heel and ask myself ‘is this Peter Wheeler, or ain’t it? and if ’tis me, why how changed I be.’ I felt as a body would arter a long sickness, when they first got able to be out, and felt a light mornin’ breeze comin’ on ’em, and a fresh, cool kind of a feelin’ comin’ over ’em; and they would think they never see any thing, or felt any thing afore, for all seemed brighter and more gloriouser than ever; and oh! it does seem to me that no Christian people in the world can help wantin’ to see all free, for Christians love to see all God’s crutters happy.
VII. “I b’lieve that one of the wickedest and most awful things in creation, and the root, and bottom, and heart of all the evil, is prejudice agin’ color.’ ☜ There is most, or quite as much of this at the North as there is at the South, for I can speak from experience. There is that disgrace upon us, that many people think it’s a disgrace to ’em to have us come into a room where they be, for fear that they will be blacked, or disgraced, or stunk up by us poor off-scourin’ of ‘arth. And if I come into a room with a sarver of tea, coffee, rum, wine, or sich like, they can’t smell any thing; but jist the second I set down on an equal with ’em, as one of the company, they pretend they can smell me. But, worse than this, this same disgrace is cast on our color in the Sanctuary of the Living God. In enemost all the meetin’ houses, you see the ‘nigger pew;’ and when they come to administer the Lord’s Supper, they send us off into some dark pew, in one corner, by ourselves, as though they thought we would disgrace ’em, and stink ’em up, or black ’em, or somethin.’ Why, ’twas only at the last Sacrament in our Church this took place. All communicants was axed to come and partake together, and I come down from the gallery, and as I come into the door, to go and set down among ’em; one of the elders stretched out his arm, with an air of disdain, and beckoned me away to a corner pew, where there was no soul within two or three pews on me, as though he had power to save or cast off. Now think what a struggle I had, when I sot down, to git my mind into a proper state for the solemn business I was agoin to do.
“First, I thought it was hard for me to be so cast off by my brethren in the church, and a feelin’ riz, and I fit agin’ it, and, finally, I thought I could submit to my fate; and I believed God could see me, and hear my cry, and accept my love, as well there as though I sot in the midst on ’em. And it is the strangest thing in the world, too, that Christian people can act so. There must be some of the love of Christianity wantin’ in their hearts, or they could not treat a brother in Christ in that way. As I sot there, I thought, ‘can there be any sich place as a dark-hole, or black pew, or behind the door, or under the fence, in heaven? If there is sich a spirit or policy there, I don’t feel very anxious desire to go there.’ The bible says, ‘God is no respecter of persons.’ ☜
“And what is worse than all, this spirit is carried to the graveyard; and for fear that the dead body of a black man shall black up or disgrace the body of a white, they go and dig holes round under the fences, and off in a wet corner, or under the barn, and put all of our colour in ’em; for every one may be an eyewitness if he’ll go to our graveyard and others; for I have lived now goin’ on fourteen years in one place, and any colored person who has been buried at all there, has been buried all along under the fences, and close up to the old barn that stands there. I know God will receive the souls of sich, jist as well as though they was buried in the middle of the yard, but I say this, to let the reader know what a cruel and unholy thing prejudice agin color is, and what it will do to us poor black people.