The student of history perceives that, whatever may be the moral character of domestic slavery, it is one of the most hoary institutions of the human race. It has prevailed in every age and continent, and under patriarchal, monarchical, despotic, aristocratic, republican and democratic governments; while secular history gives us no account of its origin. But Sacred Writ informs us, and traces it to the earlier generations of the human family as refounded after the flood. In Genesis, ix. 20 to 27, we have the following brief narrative: "And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard: and he drank of the wine and was drunken: and he was uncovered within his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without. And Shem and Japhet took a garment, and laid it upon both their shoulders, and went backward and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father's nakedness. And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him; and he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. And he said, Blessed be the Lord God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. God shall enlarge Japhet and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant."
In explanation of it, the following remarks may be made; on which the majority of sound expositors are agreed. In this transaction, Noah acts as an inspired prophet, and also as the divinely chosen, patriarchal head of church and state, which were then confined to his one family. God's approbation attended his verdict, as is proved by the fact that the divine Providence has been executing it for many ages since Noah's death. Canaan probably concurred in the indecent and unnatural sin of Ham. As these early men were extremely ambitious of a numerous and prosperous posterity, Ham's punishment, and Canaan's, consisted in the mortification of hearing their descendants doomed to a degraded lot. These descendants were included in the punishment of their wicked progenitors on that well-known principle of God's providence, which "visits the sin of the fathers upon the children," and this again is explained by the fact, that depraved parents will naturally rear depraved children, unless God interfere by a grace to which they have no claim; so that not only punishment, but the sinfulness, becomes hereditary. Doubtless God's sentence, here pronounced by Noah, was based on his foresight of the fact, that Ham's posterity, like their father, would be peculiarly degraded in morals; as actual history testifies of them, so far as its voice extends.
Some have been weak enough to draw a justification of slavery from the fact, that the bondage of Canaan's posterity is predicted. This logic the Abolitionists have, of course, delighted to expose; it was easy to show, by sundry biblical instances, like that of the Assyrian employed to chastise Israel, and then punished by God for his own rapacity, that it is no justification of one's acts to find that God, in his inscrutable and holy workings, has overruled them to the effectuation of his own righteous, secret purposes. And our opponents, with a treachery fully equal to the folly of our unwise advocates, usually represent this as nearly the whole amount, and the fair exemplar, of our biblical argument. Such is not the use we design to make of this important piece of history.
It does in the first place, what all secular history and speculations fail to do: it gives us the origin of domestic slavery. And we find that it was appointed by God as the punishment of, and remedy for (nearly all God's providential chastisements are also remedial) the peculiar moral degradation of a part of the race. God here ordains that this depravity shall find its necessary restraints, and the welfare of the more virtuous its safeguard against the depraved, by the bondage of the latter. He introduces that feature of political society, for the justice of which we shall have occasion to contend; that although men have all this trait of natural equality that they are children of a common father, and sharers of a common humanity, and subjects of the same law of love; yet, in practice, they shall be subject to social inequalities determined by their own characters, and their fitness or unfitness to use privileges for their own and their neighbours' good.
But second: this narrative gives us more than a prediction. The words of Noah are not a mere prophecy; they are a verdict, a moral sentence pronounced upon conduct, by competent authority; that verdict sanctioned by God. Now if the verdict is righteous, and the execution blessed by God, it can hardly be, that the executioners of it are guilty for putting it in effect. Can one believe that the descendants of Shem and Japhet, with this sentence in their hands, and the divine commendation just bestowed on them for acting unlike Ham, could have reasonably felt guilty for accepting that control over their guilty fellow-men which God himself had assigned? For the vital difference between the case of the Assyrians, when their guilty ambition was permissively employed by God to punish the back-slidings of his own people, and the case of Shem and Japhet, is this: The Assyrians were cursed by God for doing their predicted work, in the very sentence; Shem and Japhet were blessed by Him in the very verdict which assigns Canaan as their servant.
It may be that we should find little difficulty in tracing the lineage of the present Africans to Ham. But this inquiry is not essential to our argument. If one case is found where God has authorized domestic slavery, the principle is settled, that it cannot necessarily be sin in itself. It is proper that we should say, in conclusion, that this passage of Scripture is not regarded, nor advanced, as of prime force and importance in this argument. Others more decisive will follow.
§ 3. Abraham a Slaveholder.
The references to the bondsmen of Abraham and his son Isaac are the following: Genesis xiv., 14, "And when Abram heard that his brother," (or relative, viz.: Lot,) "was taken captive, he armed his trained servants, born in his own house, three hundred and eighteen, and pursued them unto Dan. And he divided himself against them, he and his servants, by night," etc. Genesis xvii., 10, etc., "This is my covenant which ye shall keep, between me and you, and thy seed after thee; every man-child among you shall be circumcised," ... v. 12, "And he that is eight days old shall be circumcised among you, every man-child in your generations; he that is born in the house, or bought with money of any stranger, which is not of thy seed. He that is born in thy house and he that is bought with thy money must needs be circumcised," and v. 26, 27, "In the self-same day was Abraham circumcised, and Ishmael his son; and all the men of his house, born in the house and bought with money of the stranger, were circumcised with him." Genesis xviii. 17 to 19, "And the Lord said, Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do: seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him? For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment: that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him." Genesis xx. 14, "And Abimelech" (seeking reconciliation with Abraham for the wrong intended to Sarah his wife, at God's command,) "took sheep and oxen, and men-servants and women-servants, and gave them unto Abraham, and restored him Sarah his wife." Genesis xxiv. 35, Eliezer, when seeking a wife for Isaac, says: "And the Lord hath blessed my master greatly, and he is become great; and he hath given him flocks, and herds, and silver, and gold, and men-servants, and maid-servants, and camels and asses." And Genesis, xxvi. 12, 14, it is said of Isaac: "And the Lord blessed him. And the man waxed great and went forward and grew until he became very great. For he had possession of flocks, and possession of herds, and great store of servants."
It appears then, that Abraham, "the friend of God," and Isaac, the most holy and spotless of the Patriarchs, were great slaveholders. But before pursuing the argument farther, it may be prudent to remove the quibble that these servants were not slaves, in the sense of our African slaves, but only humble clansmen, retainers, or hirelings. At least one writer would prove this by the fact that Abraham did not fear to arm three hundred and eighteen of them. For had they been real slaves, says he, they would not have continued so one day after getting arms in their hands. The retort most appropriate would be, that Abraham was not afraid to arm his slaves, though actual slaves, because there were no saucy, meddling, Yankee Abolitionists in those days to preach insubordination and make ill blood between masters and servants. But, more seriously, what shall we say of the professed reasoning which assumes the very point in debate? viz.: that slavery is an evil; and thence infers the conclusion that these could not be slaves, because they did not seize the power to burst the bonds of such an evil when placed in their reach? If their bondage was not evil, which is the question sub judice in this debate, then they would not necessarily desire to burst from it. And that these were actual slaves is clear, because the words for bondsman and bondsmaid here used are, in every case, ebed and shippheh, which are defined by every honest lexicon to mean actual slaves, which are used in that sense alone everywhere else in the Hebrew Scriptures, which are contrasted in the book of Leviticus with the "hired servant," or sasir. A part of these servants were bought from foreigners with Abraham's money. They are represented along with his very sheep and oxen as his property.
Abraham and Isaac then, were all their lives literal slaveholders, on a large scale. Now we do not argue that this fact alone, coupled with the other, that they were good men, proves that slaveholding is innocent. The Abolitionists, fond of an easy victory on a false issue, always hasten to represent this as the amount of the argument; and then, their reply is obvious—that the example of truly good men is no rule of ethics for us, unless supported by the expressed or implied approval of God; for good men are imperfect, and many of their errors are recorded, by the honesty of the sacred writers, for our warning—that Abraham himself was guilty of falsehood to Abimelech, King of Gerar, and especially that he was betrayed into the gross sin of concubinage. Hence they say, Abraham's example no more proves slaveholding innocent than concubinage. We reply, that all these remarks, except the last, are perfectly just; but they have no application to the case, because God's sanction of Abraham's example as a slaveholder is expressly found in the narrative. The cases of slaveholding and concubinage are totally different. First, because the origin of the latter sin in the accursed lineage of Cain, and the act of the murderer Lamech, is impliedly stamped with God's condemnation, (Genesis iv. 19,) whereas the origin of domestic slavery is given us in the righteous sentence of God for depraved conduct. Second, Abraham fell into the sins of falsehood and concubinage but once, under violent temptation. There is no evidence that either he or Isaac ever practised them again, but both lived and died without one recorded qualm of conscience, in the practice of slaveholding, and made it one of their last acts, before passing to the judgment-seat of God, to bequeath their slaves, as property, to their heirs. Third, in Genesis xxiv. 35, and xxvi. 12, 14, it is represented that the bestowal of a multitude of slaves on Abraham and Isaac was a mark of the divine favour. In the first passage, it is indeed only the pious Eliezer who states this; but in the second, it is stated of Isaac by the sacred narrative itself. Now to represent God as blessing a favoured saint by bestowing providentially gifts which it is a sin to have, implicates God in the sin. Fourth, in Genesis xviii. 17 to 19, Jehovah expresses his love for Abraham, approbation for his character, and purpose to exalt him as a blessing to all nations, because "He knew him that he would command his children and his household after him, that they shall keep the way of the Lord to do justice and judgment." What was this "household," distinct from his children? Hebrew usage and the context answer with one voice, his slaves. Then, God's high favour to Abraham was explained by the fact that he foresaw the patriarch would govern his children and slaves religiously and righteously. Now we ask emphatically, does a holy God bless a misguided and sinning man for the manner in which he perseveres in the sinful practice, be that manner what it may? If the relation of master and slave were sinful, would not the virtue of terminating the relation at once, so far transcend the questionable credit of using it to make the wronged and oppressed victim live piously, that it would be impossible for God to bestow his peculiar praise on the latter, where the former was lacking? There is no righteous way to perpetuate an unrighteous relation. Therefore God's blessing Abraham for his good government of his slaves, is proof that it is not a sin to have slaves to govern.