Last, facts already evince, that the doom of ultimate extermination which Southern philanthropists have ever predicted as the result of premature emancipation, is already overtaking the negro with giant strides. About the end of 1866 the officers of the State revenue made their returns, which showed that there were then about 275,650 negro males over 21 years within the present limits of Virginia. Repeated calculations made from previous returns show that there are usually four and a half times as many souls among the blacks of Virginia as there are males over 21 years. The entire black population of the State then, at the end of the last year, was 340,500. The census of 1860 returned 531,000 blacks within the present limits of the State. The diminution is therefore 190,500; or nearly two-fifths, in less than two years. Some may suppose that more negro men have left the State since the war than women and children. If this is true, the number of males is now relatively smaller, and should be multiplied by a larger ratio than 4-1/2 to find the correct total. But, on the other hand, it is certain that the neglect and mortality have been much larger among the aged and little children than among the robust men. This fact, therefore, reduces the ratio of the total to the males over 21 years, and renders it certain that 340,500 is a large estimate. The same officers brought in returns which show that the white population of Virginia, although decimated by a terrible war, has actually increased since 1860. But we exposed no negro to the dangers of the battle. Thus it is made manifest that the philanthropy of Yankees has been to the poor negro an infinitely more desolating scourge than a tremendous war has been to the race against which the sword was openly wielded. And it requires little arithmetic to discover how long it will be, at this rate, before the monstrous consummation will be reached of the extinction of a whole nation of people by their professed friends.
CHAPTER V.
THE OLD TESTAMENT ARGUMENT.
§ 1. Let us appeal, then, to the Bible, to learn the moral character of Domestic Slavery. It will be well for both writer and readers, if they recall the reverence and honesty with which such a book should be approached; if the one is cautious to permit no party zeal, pride of opinion, or love of hypothesis, to tempt him to warp the sacred text to any thing inconsistent with its own truth and purity; and if the others are equally careful to receive its teachings with impartiality and docility.
That no misunderstanding may attend the discussion, we must define at the outset, what we mean by that domestic slavery which we defend. By this relation we understand the obligations of the slave to labour for life, without his own consent, for the master. The thing, therefore, in which the master has property or ownership, is the involuntary labour of the slave, and not his personality, or his soul. A certain right of control over the person of the slave is incidentally given to the master by his property in the bondsman's labour; that is, so much control as is necessary to enable him to secure the labour which belongs to him. But we repeat, it is not the person, but the labour of the slave, which is the master's property. This is substantially the definition of Paley, an enemy of slavery; and it is obviously correct; it expresses the general result of the laws of all modern nations which have had slaves, touching that relation.
The abolitionists clamorously insist upon a different definition, which makes the master claim property in the very personality of the slave, in his soul, in the highest capacities which connect him with his God, and in his very being. According to this description, slavery converts the responsible, rational being, into a mere thing, a chattel, a commodity, by converting him into mere property of another man. The motive of this preposterous definition is obvious enough. One of the most astute of American Abolitionists has been candid enough to avow it, saying that if our definition be adopted, there is an end of the discussion; for every logician must see that it is absurd to declare the mere ownership of one man's labour by another, an essential and necessary moral wrong; which is the character it suits them to ascribe to slavery. Their object is so to represent it, that it shall appear a self-evident injustice, and the apologist shall be overwhelmed and silenced by a foregone prejudice. For, if it gave a literal ownership in the person and being of the slave, which can belong to none but the Creator; if it made not only his labour, but his conscience, the property of the master, destroying his moral responsibility, it would indeed dehumanize him, and would be an iniquity indefensible by any fair mind. The trick of securing the victory before the contest begins, by raising a false issue, is not very novel. The utter absurdity of applying such a definition to African slavery in America, appears from this: that it is contrary to the whole tenour of the legislation which establishes and regulates the institution among us. These laws, first, legislate for the slave, as to his own conduct, as a responsible human being, govern him by precepts sanctioned by rewards and punishments, and require of him intelligent obedience to the same moral rules which are enforced on his master. Second, the laws assign to the master precisely that amount of control over his slave's person which they suppose (whether correctly or not is no concern to us in this argument) to be incidental to his property in the servant's labour; and no more. Third, they protect the person, being, and moral responsibility of the slave against his own master. If the master kills him, it is murder, by the law. The slave's Sabbath is secured to him by the law. If the master force him to commit a crime, the former is held by the law guilty therefor, as accessory before the fact: and the latter is also held to his personal responsibility for it. And last, the law treats the slave so fully as a rational and responsible human, that it even bestows on him the right of litigation against his own master, in one case. Any African setting up a plea of unlawful detention in bondage, against his master, is allowed to sue in forma pauperis, in the courts of law. How could the fact be more clearly defined, that the institution of slavery treats the slave as a rational human being, and gives the master property in nothing but his labour?
Yet Senator Sumner points triumphantly to the words of the South Carolina statute as proving that slavery makes the servant a mere thing; and all smaller Abolitionists have caught up his special pleading. The cane of Mr. Brooks having given him, as it seems, a special taste for things South Carolinian, he hunted up a clause where the law of that State declares, that slaves and their children shall be held in every respect as "chattels personal." This proves beyond a peradventure, he says, that the law reduces the slave to a mere thing, as though he were an ox or bureau. Yet, a hundred other laws of South Carolina treat him as a responsible man! Any honest mind will perceive the explanation, at once; which is, that the lawyers of South Carolina were not aiming, in this law, to settle the question of the moral nature of slavery; but to decide whether property in a slave should be regarded as pertaining to the real, or to the personal estate of a citizen; and in deciding it, they very properly had more regard to legal perspicuity than to ethical accuracy of definition. Let us suppose that among the statutes of the British Parliament, there should be one (as there very probably is) declaring that when a master mechanic dies, having an indentured apprentice, the unfinished term of service of this apprentice should be held as belonging to his personal effects, and should be so used for the benefit of his heirs or creditors. And let us suppose, farther, that in defining this fact, some such words as these should be used: that said apprentice should be held in every respect, as pertaining unto the personal estate of the deceased. Then, the same logic would prove that the British laws reduce an apprentice to a mere chattel! But we have a better illustration of its folly. God says, Genesis xxvi. 14: "Isaac had possessions of flocks, and herds, and servants." Leviticus, xxv. 45: "Of the children of strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall you buy: ... and they shall be your possession." Exodus, xxi. 20, 21: "And if a man smite his servant or his maid with a rod, and he die under his hand: he shall be surely punished. Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished: for he is his money." Does God's law dehumanize the slave, and reduce him to a mere chattel? We repeat, then, that, according to the slave institutions of the Southern States, it is only the labour of the servant which belongs to the master, and is treated as property.
Let it be understood, then, from the beginning, that we are not inquiring into the moral character of that thing which Abolitionists paint as domestic slavery; a something horrid with the groans of oppressed innocence and the clang of unrighteous stripes; a something which aims to reduce a man to a brute, and denies him his natural right to serve his Creator and save his soul. We begin by asserting that these things, if they ever exist in fact, are not domestic slavery, but the abuses of it. We are not the apologists of them: we no more defend them than do the Abolitionists. In this discussion we have nothing more to do with them, except to express, once for all, our strong abhorrence and reprobation of all such unlawful abuses of a lawful institution. It has been a favourite trick of our opponents, to represent the abuses of the relation so prominently and odiously, that the defender of slavery shall be held up to the abhorrence of the publick as the defender of the abuses. Especially if he is a clergyman, (and necessity has thrown our side of this discussion very much into the hands of Southern clergymen,) do they raise a holy clamour, representing the unnatural wickedness of a desecrating of the sacred office to apologize for such iniquities. Their object is to raise a prejudice against us in advance, which will deprive us of a dispassionate and just hearing. With all dispassionate and just readers, for whom alone we write, it should be enough for us to repeat emphatically, that it is only the relation of domestic slavery as authorized by God, that we defend; and not the abuses it has received at the hands of wicked men. The parental authority, and civil government, and the operations of God's own church, are often abused also. The intelligent reader, and especially the intelligent Englishman, will remember how triumphantly this shallow sophism of arguing against a thing from its abuses, is exposed by Burke, in his reply to Bolingbroke's posthumous assault on Christianity, the ironical "Defence of Natural Society." Such argument from abuses can only be just when it is shown that the wrongs pointed out are not incidental abuses, but legitimate, and necessary, and uniform consequences of the institution itself. But that the incidental evils of African slavery among us are not such, is abundantly proved by the simple fact, that thousands of masters held slaves among us, and yet perpetrated none of these abuses. About the relative frequency of such abuses, we shall have something to say at a subsequent place. Enough now to point to the fact, that by the vast majority of our servants they were unfelt, so that they cannot be necessary parts of the system.
We conclude these preliminary definitions by requesting the reader to note well what is the moral character which we understand the Bible to assign to slavery. We do not admit that it is a thing in itself evil, but yet attended with such circumstances, in the eyes of many merciful and humane masters who have found themselves by inheritance unwilling slaveholders, that a change would be attended with still greater mischiefs: so that they are excusable for its continuance for a time. This is the view of many moderate and kind anti-slavery men; it is not ours. We do not hold that slaveholding is only justified as belonging to that class of wrongs, to which the laws of Moses assigned polygamy, which ought not to have been done, but which, when done, cannot be undone, except by the perpetrating of a greater wrong. We assert that the Bible teaches that the relation of master and slave is perfectly lawful and right, provided only its duties be lawfully fulfilled. When we say this, we shall not be understood as saying that all men ought to live in this relation, notwithstanding the wide diversities of their condition and characters, or that it would be politic, or even right, for all. But we say that the relation is not sin in itself; but may be perfectly righteous and innocent, and not merely excusable. And we are free to confess that unless the Bible taught us this truth, we should be obliged to hold with the decided Abolitionists. We could never be of the number of those, who attempt to transmute the essential traits of moral right and wrong, at the demand of expediency, and to excuse the continuance of a radical injustice, by the inconvenience of repairing it. Duty belongs to man; consequences to God.