Silver Bluff, S. C., March 24, 1845.
Sir—In my letter to you of the 28th January—which I trust you have received ere this—I mentioned that I had lost your circular letter soon after it had come to hand. It was, I am glad to say, only mislaid, and has within a few days been recovered. A second perusal of it induces me to resume my pen. Unwilling to trust my recollections from a single reading, I did not, in my last communication, attempt to follow the course of your argument, and meet directly the points made and the terms used. I thought it better to take a general view of the subject, which could not fail to traverse your most material charges. I am well aware, however, that for fear of being tedious, I omitted many interesting topics altogether, and abstained from a complete discussion of some of those introduced. I do not propose now to exhaust the subject; which it would require volumes to do; but without waiting to learn—which I may never do—your opinion of what I have already said, I sit down to supply some of the deficiencies of my letter of January, and, with your circular before me, to reply to such parts of it as have not been fully answered.
It is, I perceive, addressed, among others, to "such as have never visited the Southern States" of this confederacy, and professes to enlighten their ignorance of the actual "condition of the poor slave in their own country." I can not help thinking you would have displayed prudence in confining the circulation of your letter altogether to such persons. You might then have indulged with impunity in giving, as you have done, a picture of slavery, drawn from your own excited imagination, or from those impure fountains, the Martineaus, Marryatts, Trollopes, and Dickenses, who have profited by catering, at our expense, to the jealous sensibilities and debauched tastes of your countrymen. Admitting that you are familiar with the history of slavery, and the past discussions of it, as I did, I now think rather broadly, in my former letter, what can you know of the true condition of the "poor slave" here? I am not aware that you have ever visited this country, or even the West Indies. Can you suppose, that because you have devoted your life to the investigation of the subject—commencing it under the influence of an enthusiasm, so melancholy at first, and so volcanic afterwards, as to be nothing short of hallucination—pursuing it as men of one idea do every thing, with the single purpose of establishing your own view of it—gathering your information from discharged seamen, disappointed speculators, factious politicians, visionary reformers and scurrilous tourists—opening your ears to every species of complaint, exaggeration and falsehood, that interested ingenuity could invent, and never for a moment questioning the truth of any thing that could make for your cause—can you suppose that all this has qualified you, living the while in England, to form or approximate toward the formation of a correct opinion of the condition of slaves among us? I know the power of self-delusion. I have not the least doubt, that you think yourself the very best informed man alive on this subject, and that many think so likewise. So far as facts go, even after deducting from your list a great deal that is not fact, I will not deny that, probably, your collection is the most extensive in existence. But as to the truth in regard to slavery, there is not an adult in this region but knows more of it than you do. Truth and fact are, you are aware, by no means synonymous terms. Ninety-nine facts may constitute a falsehood: the hundredth, added or alone, gives the truth. With all your knowledge of facts, I undertake to say that you are entirely and grossly ignorant of the real condition of our slaves. And from all that I can see, you are equally ignorant of the essential principles of human association revealed in history, both sacred and profane, on which slavery rests, and which will perpetuate it forever in some form or other. However you may declaim against it; however powerfully you may array atrocious incidents; whatever appeals you may make to the heated imaginations and tender sensibilities of mankind, believe me, your total blindness to the whole truth, which alone constitutes the truth, incapacitates you from ever making an impression on the sober reason and sound common sense of the world. You may seduce thousands—you can convince no one. Whenever and wherever you or the advocates of your cause can arouse the passions of the weak-minded and the ignorant, and bringing to bear with them the interests of the vicious and unprincipled, overwhelm common sense and reason—as God sometimes permits to be done—you may triumph. Such a triumph we have witnessed in Great Britain. But I trust it is far distant here; nor can it, from its nature, be extensive or enduring. Other classes of reformers, animated by the same spirit as the abolitionists, attack the institution of marriage, and even the established relations of parent and child. And they collect instances of barbarous cruelty and shocking degradation, which rival, if they do not throw into the shade, your slavery statistics. But the rights of marriage and parental authority rests upon truths as obvious as they are unchangeable—coming home to every human being,—self-impressed forever on the individual mind, and can not be shaken until the whole man is corrupted, nor subverted until civilized society becomes a putrid mass. Domestic slavery is not so universally understood, nor can it make such a direct appeal to individuals or society beyond its pale. Here, prejudice and passion have room to sport at the expense of others. They may be excited and urged to dangerous action, remote from the victims they mark out. They may, as they have done, effect great mischief, but they can not be made to maintain, in the long run, dominion over reason and common sense, nor ultimately put down what God has ordained.
You deny, however, that slavery is sanctioned by God, and your chief argument is, that when he gave to Adam dominion over the fruits of the earth and the animal creation, he stopped there. "He never gave him any further right over his fellow-men." You restrict the descendants of Adam to a very short list of rights and powers, duties and responsibities, if you limit them solely to those conferred and enjoined in the first chapter of Genesis. It is very obvious that in this narrative of the Creation, Moses did not have it in view to record any part of the law intended for the government of man in his social or political state. Eve was not yet created; the expulsion had not yet taken place; Cain was unborn; and no allusion whatever is made to the manifold decrees of God to which these events gave rise. The only serious answer this argument deserves, is to say, what is so manifestly true, that God's not expressly giving to Adam "any right over his fellow-men" by no means excluded him from conferring that right on his descendants; which he in fact did. We know that Abraham, the chosen one of God, exercised it and held property in his fellow-man, even anterior to the period when property in land was acknowledged. We might infer that God had authorized it. But we are not reduced to inference or conjecture. At the hazard of fatiguing you by repetition, I will again refer you to the ordinances of the Scriptures. Innumerable instances might be quoted where God has given and commanded men to assume dominion over their fellow-men. But one will suffice. In the twenty-fifth chapter of Leviticus, you will find domestic slavery—precisely such as is maintained at this day in these States—ordained and established by God, in language which I defy you to pervert so as to leave a doubt on any honest mind that this institution was founded by him, and decreed to be perpetual. I quote the words:
Leviticus xxv. 44-46: "Both thy bond-men and thy bond-maids which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen [Africans] that are round about you: of them ye shall buy bond-men and bond-maids.
"Moreover, of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you which they begat in your land [descendants of Africans?] and they shall be your possession.
"And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession. They shall be your bond-men forever."
What human legislature could make a decree more full and explicit than this? What court of law or chancery could defeat a title to a slave couched in terms so clear and complete as these? And this is the law of God, whom you pretend to worship, while you denounce and traduce us for respecting it.
It seems scarcely credible, but the fact is so, that you deny this law so plainly written, and in the face of it have the hardihood to declare that "though slavery is not specifically, yet it is virtually, forbidden in the Scriptures, because all the crimes which necessarily arises out of slavery, and which can arise from no other source, are reprobated there and threatened with divine vengeance." Such an unworthy subterfuge is scarcely entitled to consideration. But its gross absurdity may be exposed in few words. I do not know what crimes you particularly allude to as arising from slavery. But you will perhaps admit—not because they are denounced in the decalogue, which the abolitionists respect only so far as they choose, but because it is the immediate interest of most men to admit—that disobedience to parents, adultery, and stealing, are crimes. Yet these crimes "necessarily arise from" the relations of parent and child, marriage, and the possession of private property; at least they "can arise from no other sources." Then, according to your argument, it is "virtually forbidden" to marry, to beget children, and to hold private property! Nay, it is forbidden to live, since murder can only be perpetrated on living subjects. You add that "in the same way the gladiatorial shows of old, and other barbarous customs, were not specifically forbidden in the New Testament, and yet Christianity was the sole means of their suppression." This is very true. But these shows and barbarous customs thus suppressed were not authorised by God. They were not ordained and commanded by God for the benefit of his chosen people and mankind, as the purchase and holding of bond-men and bond-maids were. Had they been they would never have been "suppressed by Christianity" any more than slavery can be by your party. Although Christ came "not to destroy but fulfill the law," he nevertheless did formally abrogate some of the ordinances promulgated by Moses, and all such as were at war with his mission of "peace and good-will on earth." He "specifically" annuls, for instance, one "barbarous custom" sanctioned by those ordinances, where he says, "ye have heard that it hath been said, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth; but I say unto you that ye resist not evil, but whosoever shall smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also." Now, in the time of Christ, it was usual for masters to put their slaves to death on the slightest provocation. They even killed and cut them up to feed their fishes. He was undoubtedly aware of these things, as well as of the law and commandment I have quoted. He could only have been restrained from denouncing them, as he did the "lex talionis," because he knew that in despite of these barbarities the institution of slavery was at the bottom a sound and wholesome, as well as lawful one. Certain it is, that in his wisdom and purity he did not see proper to interfere with it. In your wisdom, however, you make the sacrilegious attempt to overthrow it.
You quote the denunciation of Tyre and Sidon, and say that "the chief reason given by the prophet Joel for their destruction, was, that they were notorious beyond all others for carrying on the slave trade." I am afraid you think we have no Bibles in the slave States, or that we are unable to read them. I can not otherwise account for your making this reference, unless indeed your own reading is confined to an expurgated edition, prepared for the use of abolitionists, in which every thing relating to slavery that militates against their view of it is left out. The prophet Joel denounces the Tyrians and Sidonians, because "the children also of Judah and the children of Jerusalem have ye sold unto the Grecians." And what is the divine vengeance for this "notorious slave trading?" Hear it. "And I will sell your sons and daughters into the hands of the children of Judah, and they shall sell them to the Sabeans, to a people far off; for the Lord hath spoken it." Do you call this a condemnation of slave trading? The prophet makes God himself a participator in the crime, if that be one. "The Lord hath spoken it," he says, that the Tyrians and Sidonians shall be sold into slavery to strangers. Their real offense was, in enslaving the chosen people; and their sentence was a repetition of the old command, to make slaves of the heathen round about.
