Three Prize Essays on American Slavery

by R. B. Thurston; A. C. Baldwin; Timothy Williston

We now advance to the second part of our proposition. Men have no such right to hold property in men. Since the right is from God, it follows immediately that they can hold in ownership, by a divine title, only what he has given. But he has not given to men, as men, a right of ownership in men. No one will contend for a moment that the universal grant above considered confers upon them mutual dominion, or rightful property in their species. The idea is not in the terms; it is nowhere in the Bible; it is not in nature; it is repugnant to common sense; it would resolve the race into the absurd and terrific relation of antagonists, struggling, each one for the mastery of his own estate in another,—I, for the possession of my right in you; and you, for yours in me. Nay, the very act of entitling all men to hold property proves the exemption of all, by the divine will, from the condition of property. The idea that a man can be an article of property and an owner of property by the same supreme warrant is contradictory and absurd.

We now have sure ground for objecting to the system of American slavery, as such. It is directly opposed to the original, authoritative institution of Jehovah. He gives men the right to hold property. Slavery strips them of the divine investiture. He gives men dominion over inferior creatures. Slavery makes them share the subjection of the brute. That slavery does this, the laws of the States in which it exists abundantly declare. Slaves are "chattels," "estate personal." Slave-holders assembled in convention solemnly affirm in view of northern agitation of the subject, that "masters have the same right to their slaves which they have to any other property."

This asserted and exercised right is the vital principle and substance of the institution. It is the central delusion and transgression; and the evils of the system to white and black are its legitimate consequences. The legal and the leading idea concerning slaves is that they are property: of course, the idea that they are men, invested with the rights of men, practically sinks; and, from the premise that they are property, the conclusion is logical that they may be treated as property. Why should property, contrary to the interests of the proprietor, be exempt from sale, receive instruction, give testimony in court, hold estate, preserve family ties, be loved as the owner loves himself, in fine, enjoy all or any of the "inalienable rights" of man? It is because they are held as property, that slaves are sold; because they are property, families are torn asunder; because they are property, instruction is denied them; because they are property, the law, and the public sentiment that makes the law, crush them as men.

We do not here call in question the mitigations with which Christian masters temper into mildness the hard working of an evil system. Those mitigations do not, however, logically or morally defend slavery. Nay, they condemn it; for they are practical tributes to the fact that the laws of humanity, not of property, are binding in respect to the slaves. Hence they really show the inherent inconsistency of the idea, and the unrighteousness of the system which regards men as property.

Notwithstanding those mitigations, the system itself, like every wrong system, produces characteristic evils, which can be prevented only by removing their cause, the false doctrine that men can be rightfully held in ownership. Fallen as man is, no prophet was needed to foretell at the first the dreadful facts that have been recorded in the bitter history of man's claim of property in man. Such a history must always be a scroll written within and without with lamentations and mourning and woe. Man is not a safe depositary of such power. A human institution which subverts a divine institution, and which carries with it the assumption of a divine prerogative in constituting a new species of property, naturally saps the foundations of every other divine institution and law which stands in its way. Hence, for example, the fall of the domestic institution before that of slavery.

The inherent wrongfulness of American slavery as a legal and social institution is therefore clearly demonstrated. It formally abolishes by law and usage a divine institution. Hence, in its practical operation, it sets aside other divine institutions and laws. Consequently it stands in the same relations to the divine government with the abolition of the Sabbath by infidel France, and with the perversion of the family institution by the Mormon territory of Utah.

Here the fundamental argument from the Bible rests. But slavery justifies itself by the Bible. It becomes essential, therefore, to examine the validness of this justification.

There are but two possible ways of avoiding the conclusion that has been reached. To vindicate slavery it must be proved, first, that God has abolished the original institution, conferring on men universally the right to hold property; or, secondly, it must be proved, that, while he has by special enactments taken away from a portion of mankind the right to hold property, he has given to other men the right to hold the former as property. Further, to justify American slavery, it must be shown that these special enactments include the African race and the American States.

In regard to the first point we simply remark, it is morally impossible that God should permanently and generally abolish the original institution concerning property; because, as in the case of its coevals, the Sabbath and marriage, the reason for it is permanent and unchangeable, and "lex stat dum ratio manet," the law stands while the reason remains. Moreover, there is not a word of such repeal in the Bible. That institution, therefore, is still a charter of rights for the children of men. Till it is assailed, more need not be said.

As to the second point, we believe that careful investigation will prove conclusively, that no special enactments are now in force which arrest or modify the institutions of Eden, in regard to any state or any persons. It will, then, remain demonstrated, that the legal system of slavery exists utterly without warrant of the Holy Scriptures, and in defiance of the authority of the Creator. The word of God is throughout consistent.