NATURE OF SLAVERY. 365 fruit of years of toil, would, by universal consent, be denounced as a great wrong; but what is this compared with seizing the man himself, and appropriating to our use the limbs, faculties, strength, and labor, by which all property is won and held fast? The right of property in outward things is as nothing, compared with our right to ourselves. Were the slaveholder stripped of his fortune, he would count the violence slight, compared with what he would suffer, were his person seized and devoted as a chattel to another's use. 757. That the above are not groundless assertions, but a true account of the domestic institution at the South, could easily be shown by quoting from published laws there enacted, and either enforced, or liable to be enforced upon any slave. The Louisiana code declares: "A slave is in the power of the master to whom he belongs. The master may sell him, dispose of his person, his industry, his labor. He can do nothing, possess nothing, nor acquire anything but which must belong to his master." The laws of South Carolina say: "Slaves shall be deemed, taken, reported, and adjudged, to be chattels personal in the hands of their masters, and possessions to all intents and purposes whatsoever." 758. That the above view of slavery is correct, will further be substantiated by quoting the testimony of the Rev. R. J. Breckenridge, D.D., who was born and educated in a slave state, and still resides in a slave state, and must therefore be well acquainted with the morals and usages of the South. He says: "What is slavery as it exists among us? We reply, it is that condition, enforced by the laws of one half of the states of this confederacy, in which one portion of the community, called masters, is allowed such power over another, called slaves, as― "1st. To deprive them of the entire earnings of their own labor, except only so much as is necessary to continue labor itself, by continuing healthful existence, thus committing CLEAR ROBBERY: "2d. To reduce them to the necessity of universal concubinage by denying to them the civil rights of marriage, thus breaking up the dearest relations of life, and encouraging universal prostitution: "3d. To deprive them of the means and opportunities 366 A DEFENSE OF SLAVERY. of moral and intellectual culture, in many states making it a high penal offense to teach them to read; thus per- . petuating whatever of evil there is, that proceeds from ignorance: "4th. To set up between parents and children an authority higher than the impulses of nature, and the laws of God; which breaks up the authority of the father over his own offspring, and at pleasure separates the mother at a returnless distance from her child; thus abrogating the clearest laws of nature, thus outraging all decency and justice, and degrading and oppressing thousands upon thousands of beings created like themselves in the image of the Most High God. "This is slavery as it is daily exhibited in every slave state. This is that dreadful but unavoidable necessity,' for which you may hear so many mouths uttering excuses, in all parts of the land.” [African Repository.] 759. Further, slavery deprives men of the dignity of human beings, and degrades them to a level with mere beasts of burden. They are converted, by slave laws, from persons to things, and treated as no longer possessing the recognized attributes of human nature. They are, in the eye of the law, no longer acknowledged as men. Their pleasures and pains, their wishes and desires, their thoughts and feelings, are of no value whatever. Even their crimes are not acknowledged as wrongs, any more than those of a brute, lest it may be supposed that being regarded as capable of doing a wrong, they ought to be regarded as capable of suffering a wrong. They of course are thus legally deprived of their nature as moral beings, having no law but the will of the master, like the brute property of the master. 760. It is pleaded, in favor of slavery, that the negro is a being inferior to the white man in his faculties. He is asserted to approach in his nature to the inferior animals; and hence it is inferred that he may be possessed as a thing, like those animals. 761. This defense of slavery may easily be overthrown. The same faculties of mind have appeared in the negro as in the white, so far as the condition of negro nations has afforded opportunities for their development. The negroes do not appear to be duller, ruder, or coarser, in mind or habits, than many savage white nations, or than A DEFENSE OF SLAVERY OVERTHROWN. 367 nations, now highly cultured, were in their early condition. The negro has a moral nature, discriminates between right and wrong in actions. He has the same affections and springs of action as ourselves. He can buy and sell, and promise and perform. He has, equally with other races of men, moral sentiments: can admire and love what he considers good, and condemn and hate what he considers bad. He has the sentiment of rights and wrongs also. In short, there is no phrase which can be used, describing the moral and rational nature of man, which may not be used of the negro, as of the white. The assertion that there is, between the white and the black race, any difference on which the one can found a right to enslave the other, is utterly false. Various races of men differ somewhat in their external form, but are furnished substantially with the same physical organization. They differ also greatly in color, but why a white color, rather than a black, should be an attribute of man as such, it would be difficult to show. The use of language is a plain and simple criterion of the difference between man and the brutes; and we have shown that the negro possesses other distinguishing attributes of the human nature. Again, the laws which prohibit slaves to be taught to read or write suppose the capacity of negroes for intellectual culture; and are an implicit confession that it is necessary to degrade their minds in order to keep their bodies in slavery. The claim of the negro to be regarded as a man being thus briefly established, the charge will hold good against slavery as a system, that it is a violation of the Eighth Commandment, being a system of robbery and oppression of the most decided and willful character. [Whewell's Elements.] 762. It comes in conflict also with other expressions of the will of God. 'Behold, the hire of the laborers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth; and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth." James v. 4. "Rob not the poor because he is poor." Prov. xxii. 22. "Woe unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness, and his chambers by wrong; that 368 SLAVERY IS OPPRESSION. "The laborer is worthy These passages condemn useth his neighbor's service without wages, and giveth him not for his work." Jer. xxii. 13. of his reward." 1 Tim. v. 18. the system of slavery, in which a fair equivalent is confessedly not rendered for the labor performed, so that the master may live in indolence. If a fair equivalent were rendered, the system would become so utterly unprofitable, that it must soon be abandoned. Further, the Bible, both in the Old and New Testament condemns oppression, as well as the withholding of just wages. "What mean ye that ye beat my people to pieces and grind the faces of the poor? saith the Lord of hosts." Is. iii. 15. See also Ps. xii. 5; James ii. 13; v. 4. Mr. Barnes has remarked, that if it were the design to originate a system of laws for the very purpose of oppression, scarcely any new element could be introduced into the laws of the Southern states; and that if all that properly comes under the name of oppression were removed from those laws, slavery, as a system, would soon come to an end. 763. It is a question of some interest, whether any moral wrong attaches to those who hold slaves by inheritance and not by purchase. To this the reply may be given in the forcible language of Mr. Dymond: "He who had no right to steal the African can have none to sell him. From him who is known to have no right to sell, another can have no right to buy, or to possess. Sale, or gift, or legacy imparts no right to me, because the seller, or giver, or bequeather had none himself. The sufferer has just as valid claim to liberty at my hands as at the hands of the ruffian who first dragged him from his home. Every hour of every day the present owner is guilty of injustice. Nor is the case altered with respect to those who are born on a man's estate. The parents were never the landholder's property, and therefore the child is not. Nay, if the parents had been, rightfully, slaves; it would not justify me in making slaves of their children. No man has a right to make a child a slave, but the child himself (nor even has he). What should we say of a law which enacted, that of every criminal who was sentenced to labor for life, all the children should be sentenced to labor also? 66 That any human being who has not forfeited his lib ANOTHER DEFENSE OF SLAVERY. 369 erty by his own crimes, has a right to be free, and that whosoever forcibly withholds liberty from an innocent man, robs him of his right, and violates the moral law, are truths which no man would dispute or doubt, if custom had not obscured our conceptions, or if wickedness did not prompt us to close our eyes." 764. În palliation of the wrong of holding men as property, it has been said, that a man has property in his wife, in his children, in his domestic animals, in his fields and forests; and where it is said that one man is the property of another, it can only mean that the one has the right to use the other as a man, but not as a brute, or a thing. When this idea of property comes to be analyzed, it is found to be nothing more than a claim of service either for life, or for a term of years. But the error of this assumption has been fully exposed in the recent work of Mr. Barnes. He has shown that slavery is not a mere condition of apprenticeship; that the service which a slave is bound to render to his master is not that which the apprentice is bound to render to his employer; that while the relations resemble each other in certain circumstances, they differ in the following of the highest moment, namely, that the relation of an apprentice is designed to be temporary; is formed for the good of the apprentice himself; contemplates his future usefulness and happiness, and provides what is considered a full equivalent for the labor he is to perform; implies moreover no claim of property in the apprentice; and involves no right to transfer him to another. He has further shown that slavery is not to be confounded with the condition of a minor. He has shown also that there are important differences between the American slave, and the serfs of Russia and the "villains" of the feudal system; above all, that the kind of property which a slaveholder has in his slave is entirely different from that which a man has in his wife or child that the relation of parent and child is a natural relation; that of master and slave is not: that the relation of husband and wife is voluntary; that of master and slave is not that wives and children are treated in all respects as human beings; slaves, according to the system authorized by law, are not that in the relations of husband and wife there is no right of property in any such sense as that in |