Randolph Macon College, Va.,
August 18th, 1856.
LECTURES
ON THE
Philosophy and Practice of Slavery.
[LECTURE I.]
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS ON THE SUBJECT OF AFRICAN SLAVERY IN THE UNITED STATES.
General subject enunciated—Why this discussion may be regarded as humiliating by Southern people—Other stand-points, however, disclose an urgent necessity, at this time, for a thorough investigation of the whole subject—The results to which it is the object of these lectures to conduct the mind.
The great question which arises in discussing the slavery of the African population of this country—correctly known as “Domestic Slavery”—is this: Is the institution of domestic slavery sinful?
The position I propose to maintain in these lectures is, that slavery, per se, is right; or that the great abstract principle of slavery is right, because it is a fundamental principle of the social state; and that domestic slavery, as an institution, is fully justified by the condition and circumstances (essential and relative) of the African race in this country, and therefore equally right.
I confess that it is somewhat humiliating to discuss the question enunciated—Is the institution of domestic slavery sinful? The affirmative assumes that an immense community of Southern people, of undoubted piety, are, nevertheless, involved in great moral delinquency on the subject of slavery. This is a palpable absurdity in regard to a great many. For nothing is more certain than this, that if it be sinful, they either know it, or are competent to know it, and hence are responsible. And as no plea of necessity can justify an enlightened man in committing known sin, it follows that all such Southern people are highly culpable, which is utterly inconsistent with the admission that they are pious. To say, as some are accustomed to do, that “slavery is certainly wrong in the abstract,” that is, in plain terms, in itself sinful, but that they cannot help themselves, appears to me to be wholly unfounded. It assumes that a man may be absolutely compelled to commit sin. This certainly cannot be true. All candid minds will readily allow, that so far as Deity has yet explained himself, he has in no instance enjoined upon man the observance of any principle as his duty, which he may be compelled, in the order of his providence, to violate. It is equally false in fact, for it is not true that we are absolutely compelled to be slaveholders. If government be, as it undoubtedly is, the agent of the people, and the people choose, they are certainly competent by this agent to free themselves from this institution. True, the immense cost of such an enterprise would be the least in the catalogue of evils resulting from it; for the total ruin of the African race in this country may be put down among the rest. But what of all this? Nothing can justify an enlightened and civilized people in committing sin. No; not even the sacrifice of life itself. Withal, if the civil society refuse to make so costly a sacrifice to avoid sin, there is nothing that can compel any individual citizen to remain a slaveholder. He can live in the community, as some do, without even hiring or owning a slave; or he can remove to one of the so-called free States. We should give no countenance, therefore, to any such mere attempts to apologize for domestic slavery. The conduct of bad men may sometimes find apologists. The conduct of good men always admits of defence. Hence, with many others, I have often been grieved by the repeated attempts of certain pseudo-friends to pass off this flimsy and ridiculous apology as an able defence of the South.