Cotton is King, and Pro-Slavery Arguments / Comprising the Writings of Hammond, Harper, Christy, Stringfellow, Hodge, Bledsoe, and Cartrwright on this Important Subject

by Unknown

The master, we repeat, lays no claim to the soul of the slave. He demands no spiritual service of him, he exacts no divine honors. With his own soul he is fully permitted to serve his own God. With this soul he may follow the solemn injunction of the Most High, "Servants, obey your masters;" or he may listen to the voice of the tempter, "Servants, fly from your masters." Those only who instigate him to violate the law of God, whether at the North or at the South, are the men who seek to deprive him of his rights and to exercise an infamous dominion over his soul.

Since, then, the master claims only a right to the labor and lawful obedience of the slave, and no right whatever to his soul, it follows that the argument, which Dr. Channing regards as the strongest of his seven, has no real foundation. Since the master claims to have no property in the "rational, moral, and immortal" part of his being, so all the arguments, or rather all the empty declamation, based on the false supposition of such claim, falls to the ground. So the passionate appeals, proceeding on the supposition of such a monstrous claim, and addressed to the religious sensibilities of the multitude, are only calculated to deceive and mislead their judgment. It is a mere thing of words; and, though "full of sound and fury," it signifies nothing. "The traffic in human souls," which figures so largely in the speeches of the divines and demagogues, and which so fiercely stirs up the most unhallowed passions of their hearers, is merely the transfer of a right to labor.

Does any one doubt whether such a right may exist? The master certainly has a right to the labor of his apprentice for a specified period of time, though he has no right to his soul even for a moment. The father, too, has a right to the personal service and obedience of his child until he reach the age of twenty-one; but no one ever supposed that he owned the soul of his child, or might sell it, if he pleased, to another. Though he may not sell the soul of his child, it is universally admitted that he may, for good and sufficient reasons, transfer his right to the labor and obedience of his child. Why, then, should it be thought impossible that such a right to service may exist for life? If it may exist for one period, why not for a longer, and even for life? If the good of both parties and the good of the whole community require such a relation and such a right to exist, why should it be deemed so unjust, so iniquitous, so monstrous? This whole controversy turns, we repeat, not upon any consideration of abstract rights, but solely upon the highest good of all—upon the highest good of the slave as well as upon that of the community.

"It is plain," says Dr. Channing, in his first argument, "that if any one may be held as property, then any other man may be so held." This sophism has been already sufficiently refuted. It proceeds on the supposition that if one man, however incapable of self-government, may be placed under the control of another, then all men may be placed under the control of others! It proceeds on the idea that all men should be placed in precisely the same condition, subjected to precisely the same authority, and required to perform precisely the same kind of labor. In one word, it sees no difference and makes no distinction between a Negro and a Newton. But as an overstrained and false idea of equality lies at the foundation of this argument, so it will pass under review again, when we come to consider the great demonstration which the abolitionist is accustomed to deduce from the axiom that "all men are created equal."

The third argument of Dr. Channing is, like the first, "founded on the essential equality of men." Hence, like the first, it may be postponed until we come to consider the true meaning and the real political significancy of the natural equality of all men. We shall barely remark, in passing, that two arguments cannot be made out of one by merely changing the mode of expression.

The second argument of the author is as follows: "A man cannot be seized and held as property, because he has rights. . . . A being having rights cannot justly be made property, for this claim over him virtually annuls all his rights." This argument, it is obvious, is based on the arbitrary idea which the author has been pleased to attach to the term property. If it proves any thing, it would prove that a horse could not be held as property, for a horse certainly has rights. But, as we have seen, a limited property, or a right to the labor of a man, does not deny or annul all his rights, nor necessarily any one of them. This argument needs no further refutation. For we acknowledge that the slave has rights; and the limited or qualified property which the master claims in him, extending merely to his personal human labor and his lawful obedience, touches not one of these rights.

The fourth argument of Dr. Channing is identical with the second. "That a human being," says he, "cannot be justly held as property, is apparent from the very nature of property. Property is an exclusive right. It shuts out all claim but that of the possessor. What one man owns cannot belong to another." The only difference between the two arguments is this: in one the "nature of property" is said "to annul all rights;" and in the other it is said "to exclude all rights!" Both are based on the same idea of property, and both arrive at the same conclusion, with only a very slight difference in the mode of expression!

And both are equally unsound. True; "what one man owns cannot belong to another." But may not one man have a right to the labor of another, as a father to the labor of his son, or a master to the labor of his apprentice; and yet that other a right to food and raiment, as well as to other things? May not one have a right to the service of another, without annulling or excluding all the rights of that other? This argument proceeds, it is evident, on the false supposition that if any being be held as property, then he has no rights; a supposition which, if true, would exclude and annul the right of property in every living creature.

Dr. Channing's fifth argument is deduced from "the universal indignation excited toward a man who makes another his slave." "Our laws," says he, "know no higher crime than that of reducing a man to slavery. To steal or to buy an African on his own shores is piracy." "To steal a man," we reply, is one thing; and, by the authority of the law of the land, to require him to do certain labor, is, one would think, quite another. The first may be as high a crime as any known to our laws; the last is recognized by our laws themselves. Is it not wonderful that Dr. Channing could not see so plain a distinction, so broad and so glaring a difference? The father of his country held slaves; he did not commit the crime of man-stealing.

The sixth argument of Dr. Channing, "against the right of property in man," is "drawn from a very obvious principle of moral science. It is a plain truth, universally received, that every right supposes or involves a corresponding obligation. If, then, a man has a right to another's person or powers, the latter is under obligation to give himself up as a chattel to the former." Most assuredly, if one man has a right to the service or obedience of another, then that other is under obligation to render that service or obedience to him. But is such an obligation absurd? Is it inconsistent with the inherent, the inalienable, the universal rights of man that the "servant should obey his master?" If so, then we fear the rights of man were far better understood by Dr. Channing than by the Creator of the world and the Author of revelation.