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 abolitionists do not hold their passions in subjection to reason. This is not merely the judgment of a Southern man: it is the opinion of the more decent and respectable abolitionists themselves. Thus says Dr. Channing, censuring the conduct of the abolitionists: "They have done wrong, I believe; nor is their wrong to be winked at because done fanatically or with good intentions; for how much mischief may be wrought with good designs! They have fallen into the common error of enthusiasts—that of exaggerating their object, of feeling as if no evil existed but that which they opposed, and as if no guilt could be compared with that of countenancing or upholding it."[142] In like manner, Dr. Wayland says: "I unite with you and the lamented Dr Channing in the opinion that the tone of the abolitionists at the North has been frequently, I fear I must say generally, 'fierce, bitter, and abusive.' The abolitionist press has, I believe, from the beginning, too commonly indulged in exaggerated statement, in violent denunciation, and in coarse and lacerating invective. At our late Missionary Convention in Philadelphia, I heard many things from men who claim to be the exclusive friends of the slave, which pained me more than I can express. It seemed to me that the spirit which many of them manifested was very different from the spirit of Christ. I also cheerfully bear testimony to the general courtesy, the Christian urbanity, and the calmness under provocation which, in a remarkable degree, characterized the conduct of the members from the South."

In the flood of sophisms which the abolitionists usually pour out in their explosions of passion, none is more common than what is technically termed by logicians the ignoratio elenchi, or a mistaking of the point in dispute. Nor is this fallacy peculiar to the more vulgar sort of abolitionists. It glares from the pages of Dr. Wayland, no less than from the writings of the most fierce, bitter, and vindictive of his associates in the cause of abolitionism. Thus, in one of his letters to Dr. Fuller, he says: "To present this subject in a simple light. Let us suppose that your family and mine were neighbors. We, our wives and children, are all human beings in the sense that I have described, and, in consequence of that common nature, and by the will of our common Creator, are subject to the law, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Suppose that I should set fire to your house, shoot you as you came out of it, and seizing your wife and children, 'oblige them to labor for my benefit without their contract or consent.' Suppose, moreover, aware that I could not thus oblige them, unless they were inferior in intellect to myself, I should forbid them to read, and thus consign them to intellectual and moral imbecility. Suppose I should measure out to them the knowledge of God on the same principle. Suppose I should exercise this dominion over them and their children as long as I lived, and then do all in my power to render it certain that my children should exercise it after me. The question before us I suppose to be simply this: Would I, in so doing, act at variance with the relations existing between us as creatures of God? Would I, in other words, violate the supreme law of my Creator, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself? or that other, Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them? I do not see how any intelligent creature can give more than one answer to this question. Then I think that every intelligent creature must affirm that do this is wrong, or, in the other form of expression, that it is a great moral evil. Can we conceive of any greater?"

It was surely very kind in Dr. Wayland to undertake, with so much pains, to instruct us poor, benighted sons of the South in regard to the difference between right and wrong. We would fain give him full credit for all the kindly feeling he so freely professes for his "Southern brethren;" but if he really thinks that the question, whether arson, and murder, and cruelty are offenses against the "supreme law of the Creator," is still open for discussion among us, then we beg leave to inform him that he labors under a slight hallucination. If he had never written a word, we should have known, perhaps, that it is wrong for a man to set fire to his neighbor's house, and shoot him as he came out, and reduce his wife and children to a state of ignorance, degradation, and slavery. Nay, if we should find his house already burnt, and himself already shot, we should hardly feel justified in treating his wife and children in so cruel a manner. Not even if they were "guilty of a skin," or ever so degraded, should we deem ourselves justified in reducing them to a state of servitude. This is not "the question before us." We are quite satisfied on all such points. The precept, too, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, was not altogether unknown in the Southern States before his letters were written. A committee of very amiable philanthropists came all the way from England, as the agents of some abolition society there, and told us all that the law of God requires us to love our neighbor as ourselves. In this benevolent work of enlightenment they were, if we mistake not, several months in advance of Dr. Wayland. We no longer need to be enlightened on such points. Being sufficiently instructed, we admit that we should love our neighbor as ourselves, and also that arson, murder, and so forth are violations of this law. But we want to know whether, semper et ubique, the institution of slavery is morally wrong. This is the question, and to this we intend to hold the author.

§ II. The second fallacy of the abolitionist.

Lest we should be suspected of misrepresentation, we shall state the position of Dr. Wayland in his own words. In regard to the institution of slavery, he says: "I do not see that it does not sanction the whole system of the slave-trade. If I have a right to a thing after I have gotten it, I have a natural right to the means necessary for getting it. If this be so, I should be as much justified in sending a vessel to Africa, murdering a part of the inhabitants of a village, and making slaves of the rest, as I should be in hunting a herd of wild animals, and either slaying them or subjecting them to the yoke."

Now mark the principle on which this most wonderful argument is based: "If I have a right to a thing after I have gotten it, I have a natural right to the means for getting it." That is to say, If I have the right to a slave, now that I have got him, then I may rightfully use all necessary means to reduce other men to slavery! I may shoot, burn, or murder, if by this means I can only get slaves! Was any consequence ever more wildly drawn? Was any non sequitur ever more glaring?

Let us see how this argument would apply to other things. If I have a right to a watch after I have gotten it, no matter how, then I have a right to use the means necessary to get watches; I may steal them from my neighbors! Or, if I have a right to a wife, provided I can get one, then may I shoot my friend and marry his widow! Such is the argument of one who seeks to enlighten the South and reform its institutions!

§ III. The third fallacy of the abolitionist.

Nearly allied to the foregoing argument is that of the same author, in which he deduces from the right of slavery, supposing it to exist, another retinue of monstrous rights. "This right also," says Dr. Wayland, referring to the right to hold slaves, "as I have shown, involves the right to use all the means necessary to its establishment and perpetuity, and, of course, the right to crush his intellectual and social nature, and to stupefy his conscience, in so far as may be necessary to enable me to enjoy this right with the least possible peril." This is a compound fallacy, a many-sided error. But we will consider only two phases of its absurdity.

In the first place, if the slaveholder should reason in this way, no one would be more ready than the author himself to condemn his logic. If any slaveholder should say, That because I have a right to my slaves, therefore I have the right to crush the intellectual and moral nature of men, in order to establish and perpetuate their bondage,—he would be among the first to cry out against such reasoning. This is evident from the fact that he everywhere commends those slaveholders who deem it their duty, as a return for the service of their slaves, to promote both their temporal and eternal good. He everywhere insists that such is the duty of slaveholders; and if such be their duty, they surely have no right to violate it, by crushing the intellectual and moral nature of those whom they are bound to elevate in the scale of being. If the slaveholder, then, should adopt such an argument, his logic would be very justly chargeable by Dr. Wayland with evidencing not so much the existence of a clear head as of a bad heart.