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Liberty or Slavery; the Great National Question.

THREE PRIZE ESSAYS

ON

AMERICAN SLAVERY.

"THE TRUTH IN LOVE."

BOSTON:

CONGREGATIONAL BOARD OF PUBLICATION.

1857.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1857, by

SEWALL HARDING,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of
Massachusetts.

CAMBRIDGE:

ALLEN AND FARNHAM, STEREOTYPERS AND PRINTERS.




PREMIUM OFFERED.


A benevolent individual, who has numerous friends and acquaintances both
North and South, and who has had peculiar opportunities for learning the
state and condition of all sections of the nation, perceiving the danger
of our national Institutions, and deeply impressed with a sense of the
importance, in this time of peril, of harmonizing Christian men through
the country, by kind yet faithful exhibitions of truth on the subject
now agitating the whole community, offered a premium of $100 for the
best Essay on the subject of Slavery, fitted to influence the great body
of Christians through the land.

The call was soon responded to by nearly fifty writers, whose
manuscripts were examined by the distinguished committee appointed by
the Donor, whose award has been made, as their certificate, here
annexed, will show.




PREMIUM AWARDED.


The undersigned, appointed a Committee to award a premium of one hundred
dollars, offered by a benevolent individual, for the best Essay on the
subject of Slavery, "adapted to receive the approbation of Evangelical
Christians generally," have had under examination more than forty
competing manuscripts, a large number of them written with much ability.
They have decided to award the prize to the author of the Essay
entitled, "_The Error and the Duty in regard to Slavery_," whom they
find, on opening the accompanying envelope, to be the Rev. R. B.
THURSTON, of Chicopee Falls, Mass.

They would also commend to the attention of the public, two of the
remaining tracts, selected by the individual who offered the prize, and
for which he and others interested have given a prize of one hundred
dollars each. One of these is entitled, "_Friendly Letters to a
Christian Slave-holder_," by Rev. A. C. BALDWIN, of Durham, Conn.; the
other, "_Is American Slavery an Institution which Christianity sanctions
and will perpetuate?_" by Rev. TIMOTHY WILLISTON, of Strongsville, Ohio.

    ASA D. SMITH,
    MARK HOPKINS,
    THEODORE FRELINGHUYSEN.

_May, 1857._




CONTENTS.


                                                        PAGE

I. THE ERROR AND THE DUTY IN REGARD TO SLAVERY,            1

II. FRIENDLY LETTERS TO A CHRISTIAN SLAVE-HOLDER,         39

III. IS AMERICAN SLAVERY AN INSTITUTION WHICH CHRISTIANITY
SANCTIONS AND WILL PERPETUATE,                            99

FOOTNOTES




THE ERROR AND THE DUTY

IN

REGARD TO SLAVERY.

BY

REV. R. B. THURSTON.


The great and agitating question of our country is that concerning
slavery. Beneath the whole subject there lies of course some simple
truth, for all fundamental truth is simple, which will be readily
accepted by patriotic and Christian minds, when it is clearly perceived
and discreetly applied. It is the design of these pages to exhibit this
truth, and to show that it is a foundation for a union of sentiment and
action on the part of good men, by which, under the divine blessing, our
threatening controversies, North and South, may be happily terminated.

To avoid misapprehension, let it be noticed that we shall examine the
central claim of slavery, first, as a legal institution; afterwards,
the moral relations of individuals connected with it will be
considered. In that examination the term _property, as possessed in
men_, will be used in the specific sense which is given to it by the
slave laws and the practical operation of the system. No other sense is
relevant to the discussion. The property of the father in the services
of the son, of the master in the labor of the apprentice, of the State
in the forced toil of the convict, is not in question. None of these
relations creates slavery as such; and they should not be allowed, as
has sometimes been done, to obscure the argument.

The limits of a brief tract on a great subject compel us to pass
unnoticed many questions which will occur to a thoughtful mind. It is
believed that they all find their solution in our fundamental positions;
and that all passages of the Bible relating to the general subject, when
faithfully interpreted in their real harmony, sustain these positions.
It is admitted that the following argument is unsound if it does not
provide for every logical and practical exigency.

The primary truth which is now to be established may be thus stated:
_All men are invested by the Creator with a common right to hold
property in inferior things; but they have no such right to hold
property in men._

Christians agree that God as the Creator is the original proprietor of
all things, and that he has absolute right to dispose of all things
according to his pleasure. This right he never relinquishes, but asserts
in his word and exercises in his providence. The Bible speaks thus: "The
earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof, the world and they that
dwell therein, for he hath founded it. We are his people and the sheep
of his pasture"--ourselves, therefore, subject to his possession and
disposal as the feeble flock to us. Even irreligious men often testify
to this truth, confessing the hand of providence in natural events that
despoil them of their wealth.

Now, under his own supreme control, God has given to all men equally a
dependent and limited right of property. _Given_ is the word repeatedly
chosen by inspiration in this connection. "The heavens are the Lord's,
but the earth hath he _given_ to the children of men." In Eden he
blessed the first human pair, and said to them, in behalf of the race,
"Replenish the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of
the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that
moveth upon the earth. Behold, I have _given_ you every herb bearing
seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree in the
which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed." This, then, is the
original and permanent ground of man's title to property; and the
important fact to be observed is the _specific divine grant_. The right
of all men equally to own property is the positive institution of the
Creator. We all alike hold our possessions by his authentic warrant, his
deed of conveyance.

Let us be understood here. We are not educing from the Bible a doctrine
which would level society, by giving to all men equal shares of
property; but a doctrine which extends equal divine protection over the
right of every man to hold that amount of property which he earns by his
own faculties, in consistency with all divine statutes.

This right is indeed argued from nature; and justly; for God's
revelations in nature and in his word coincide. It is, however, a right
of so much consequence to the world, that, where nature leaves it, he
incorporates it, and gives it the force of a law; so that in the sequel
we can with propriety speak of it as a law, as well as an institution.
To the believer in the Bible, this law is the end of argument.

It will have weight with some minds to state that this position is
supported by the highest legal authority. In his Commentaries on the
Laws of England, Blackstone quotes the primeval grant of God, and then
remarks, "This is the only true and solid foundation of man's dominion
over external things, whatever airy metaphysical notions may have been
started by fanciful writers upon this subject. The earth, therefore, and
all things therein, are the general property of all mankind, exclusive
of other beings, from the immediate gift of the Creator."[A]

It will enhance the force of this argument to remember that this
universal right of property is one of what may be called a sacred
trinity of paradisaical institutions. These institutions are the
Sabbath, appointed in regard for our relations to God as moral beings;
marriage, ordained for our welfare as members of a successive race; and
the right of property, conferred to meet our necessities as dwellers on
this material globe. These three are the world's inheritance from lost
Eden. They were received by the first father in behalf of all his
posterity. They were designed for all men as men. It is demonstrable
that they are indispensable, that the world may become Paradise
Regained. "Property, marriage, and religion have been called the pillars
of society;" and the first is of equal importance with the other two;
for all progress in domestic felicity and in religious culture depends
on property, and also on the equitable distribution or possession of
property, as one of its essential conditions. Property lies in the
foundation of every happy home, however humble; and property gilds the
pinnacle of every consecrated temple. The wise and impartial Disposer,
therefore, makes the endowments of his creatures equal with their
responsibilities: to all those on whom he lays the obligations of
religion and of the family state, he gives the right of holding the
property on which the dwelling and the sanctuary must be founded. It is
a sacred right, a divine investiture, bearing the date of the creation
and the seal of the Creator.

The blessing of this institution, like that of the Sabbath and of the
family, has indeed been shattered by the fall of man; but when God said
to Noah and his sons, concerning the inferior creatures, "Into your hand
are they delivered; even as the green herb have I given you all things,"
it was reëstablished and consecrated anew. The Psalmist repeated the
assurance to the world when he wrote, "Thou madest him to have dominion
over the works of thy hand; thou hast put all things under his feet."

We now advance to the second part of our proposition. Men have no such
right to hold property in men. Since the right is from God, it follows
immediately that they can hold in ownership, by a divine title, only
what he has given. But he has not given to men, as men, a right of
ownership in men. No one will contend for a moment that the universal
grant above considered confers upon them mutual dominion, or rightful
property in their species. The idea is not in the terms; it is nowhere
in the Bible; it is not in nature; it is repugnant to common sense; it
would resolve the race into the absurd and terrific relation of
antagonists, struggling, each one for the mastery of his own estate in
another,--I, for the possession of my right in you; and you, for yours
in me. Nay, the very act of entitling all men to hold property proves
the exemption of all, by the divine will, from the condition of
property. The idea that a man can be an article of property and an owner
of property by the same supreme warrant is contradictory and absurd.

We now have sure ground for objecting to the system of American slavery,
as such. It is directly opposed to the original, authoritative
institution of Jehovah. He gives men the right to hold property. Slavery
strips them of the divine investiture. He gives men dominion over
inferior creatures. Slavery makes them share the subjection of the
brute. That slavery does this, the laws of the States in which it exists
abundantly declare. Slaves are "chattels," "estate personal."
Slave-holders assembled in convention solemnly affirm in view of
northern agitation of the subject, that "masters have the same right to
their slaves which they have to any other property."

This asserted and exercised right is the vital principle and substance
of the institution. It is the central delusion and transgression; and
the evils of the system to white and black are its legitimate
consequences. The legal and the leading idea concerning slaves is that
they are property: of course, the idea that they are men, invested with
the rights of men, practically sinks; and, from the premise that they
are property, the conclusion is logical that they may be treated as
property. Why should _property_, contrary to the interests of the
proprietor, be exempt from sale, receive instruction, give testimony in
court, hold estate, preserve family ties, be loved as the owner loves
himself, in fine, enjoy all or any of the "inalienable rights" of _man_?
It is because they are held as property, that slaves are sold; because
they are property, families are torn asunder; because they are
property, instruction is denied them; because they are property, the
law, and the public sentiment that makes the law, crush them as men.

We do not here call in question the mitigations with which Christian
masters temper into mildness the hard working of an evil system. Those
mitigations do not, however, logically or morally defend slavery. Nay,
they condemn it; for they are practical tributes to the fact that the
laws of humanity, not of property, are binding in respect to the slaves.
Hence they really show the inherent inconsistency of the idea, and the
unrighteousness of the system which regards men as property.

Notwithstanding those mitigations, the system itself, like every wrong
system, produces characteristic evils, which can be prevented only by
removing their cause, the false doctrine that men can be rightfully held
in ownership. Fallen as man is, no prophet was needed to foretell at the
first the dreadful facts that have been recorded in the bitter history
of man's claim of property in man. Such a history must always be a
scroll written within and without with lamentations and mourning and
woe. Man is not a safe depositary of such power. A human institution
which subverts a divine institution, and which carries with it the
assumption of a divine prerogative in constituting a new species of
property, naturally saps the foundations of every other divine
institution and law which stands in its way. Hence, for example, the
fall of the domestic institution before that of slavery.

The inherent wrongfulness of American slavery as a legal and social
institution is therefore clearly demonstrated. It formally abolishes by
law and usage a divine institution. Hence, in its practical operation,
it sets aside other divine institutions and laws. Consequently it stands
in the same relations to the divine government with the abolition of the
Sabbath by infidel France, and with the perversion of the family
institution by the Mormon territory of Utah.

Here the fundamental argument from the Bible rests. But slavery
justifies itself by the Bible. It becomes essential, therefore, to
examine the validness of this justification.

There are but two possible ways of avoiding the conclusion that has been
reached. To vindicate slavery it must be proved, first, that God has
abolished the original institution, conferring on men universally the
right to hold property; or, secondly, it must be proved, that, while he
has by special enactments taken away from a portion of mankind the right
to hold property, he has given to other men the right to hold the
former as property. Further, to justify American slavery, it must be
shown that these special enactments include the African race and the
American States.

In regard to the first point we simply remark, it is morally impossible
that God should permanently and generally abolish the original
institution concerning property; because, as in the case of its coevals,
the Sabbath and marriage, the reason for it is permanent and
unchangeable, and "lex stat dum ratio manet," the law stands while the
reason remains. Moreover, there is not a word of such repeal in the
Bible. That institution, therefore, is still a charter of rights for the
children of men. Till it is assailed, more need not be said.

As to the second point, we believe that careful investigation will prove
conclusively, that no special enactments are now in force which arrest
or modify the institutions of Eden, in regard to any state or any
persons. It will, then, remain demonstrated, that the legal system of
slavery exists utterly without warrant of the Holy Scriptures, and in
defiance of the authority of the Creator. The word of God is throughout
consistent.

It is here freely admitted, that God can arrest the operation of general
laws by special statutes. He can take away from men the right to hold
property which he has given, and, if he please, constitute them the
property of other men. It is, in this respect, as it is with life. God
can take what he gives. If, then, he has given authority to individuals
or to nations to hold others as property, they may do so. Nay, more; if
their commission is imperative, they must do so. But such an act of God
creates an exception to his own fundamental law, and, like all
_exceptions_, conveys its own restrictions, and _proves the rule_. It
imposes no yoke, save upon those appointed to subjugation. It confers no
authority, save upon those specifically invested with it. They are bound
to keep absolutely within the prescribed terms, and no others can
innocently seize their delegated dominion. Outside of the excepted
parties the universal law has sway unimpaired. It is in this instance as
it is in regard to marriage. God permitted the patriarchs to multiply
their wives; but monogamy is now a sacred institution for the world. So
the supreme Disposer can make a slave, or a nation of slaves; and the
world shall be even the more solemnly bound by the original institutes
concerning property. It follows, without a chasm in the argument, or a
doubtful step, that, when persons or States reduce men to the condition
of chattels, _without divine authorization_, they are guilty of
subverting a divine institution; and, since it is the prerogative of God
to determine what shall be property, they are chargeable with a
presumptuous usurpation of divine prerogative, in making property, so
far as human force and law can do it, of those whom Jehovah has created
in his own image, and invested with all the original rights of men.

The soundness of the principle contained in these remarks, both in law
and in biblical interpretation, will not be questioned. In the light of
it, let us examine briefly the justifications of slavery as derived from
the Bible. Happily the principle itself saves the labor of minute and
protracted criticism.

We first consider the curse pronounced upon Canaan by Noah. Admitting
all that is necessary to the support of slavery, namely, that that curse
constituted the descendants of _Canaan_ the property of some other tribe
or people, upon whom it conferred the right of holding them as property,
yet even so this passage does not justify but condemns American slavery;
for that curse does not touch the African race: _they are not
descendants of Canaan_;[B] and it gives no rights to American States.
In later times the Canaanites were devoted to destruction for their
sins. The Hebrews were the agents appointed by Jehovah to this work of
retribution. It was not, however, accomplished in their entire
extermination. In the case of the Gibeonites it was formally commuted to
servitude, and other nations occupying the promised land were made
tributary. Thus the curse upon Canaan was fulfilled by _authorized
executioners_ of divine justice.

What light does the whole history now throw upon slavery? It is plain
the curse was a judicial act of God concerning Canaan. It follows that
conquest with extermination or servitude was a judgment of God, which he
appointed his chosen people to execute. It follows further, that those,
who, without his commission, reduce to bondage men who are not
descendants of Canaan, do inflict a curse on those whom he has not
cursed; and thus virtually assume his most awful prerogative as the
Judge of guilty nations.

We then inquire whether the States of the South have received warrant
for enslaving any portion of mankind. Has God _given_ them the African
race as property? Where is the commission? The argument fails to justify
modern slavery for the same reason identically that it fails to justify
offensive war and conquest. God has not given the right--has neither
proclaimed the curse, nor commissioned the agent of the curse. Christian
States in America seize it, and lay it upon those whom he has not
cursed. The passage of his word which has been considered affords them
no sanction.

We proceed to another passage. It is supposed by many to be an
incontrovertible defence of modern slavery, that the Hebrews were
authorized to buy bondmen and bondmaids of the heathen round about them.
Let us candidly examine this defence.

Why were the Hebrews authorized by God in express terms to buy servants,
and possess them as their "money?" Evidently _because they did not
otherwise have this authority_. Human beings, as we have seen, were not
"given" in the grant of property. They do not, therefore, fall within
the scope of the general laws of property. If they had so fallen, the
special statutes, by which the Hebrews purchased them, would have been
as gratuitous as special enactments for buying animals, trees, and
minerals. _Of all nations they only have possessed this right; for they
only received it by special bestowment._ The rest of mankind have ever
been prohibited from assuming it by fundamental laws. If ever there was
a case in which the exception proves the rule, that case is before us;
and therefore a chasm yawns between the premise and the conclusion
defensive of slavery, which no exegesis and no logic can bridge over.

To illustrate the strength of this argument, let the fact be observed,
that, if it could be set aside, it would follow, by parity of reasoning,
that the clergy of our country, regardless of fundamental laws, have
right to take possession of a tenth part of the estates and incomes of
their fellow-citizens, because the Levites in this manner received their
inheritance among their brethren. It is plain, however, that, as in
regard to other interests no less important than liberty or slavery, so
also in regard to slavery itself, the special laws of the Old Testament
are no longer in force; whence it follows that the vital doctrine of the
system, "masters have the same right to their slaves which they have to
any other property," is totally erroneous. The institution which claims
solid foundation here is built on nothing.

We cannot forbear to adduce an instance of unexceptionable testimony to
the validity of this reasoning. In one or two famous articles on slavery
and abolitionism, the Princeton Repertory adopts it, with another
application, and says, "So far as polygamy and divorce were permitted
under the old dispensation they were lawful, and became so by that
permission; and they ceased to be lawful when that permission was
withdrawn, and a new law given. That Christ did give a new law is
abundantly evident." In the same manner, 'so far as' slavery 'was
permitted under the old dispensation it was lawful, and became so by
that permission; and it ceased to be lawful when that permission was
withdrawn, and a new law given.' It is true, however, only in a
qualified sense, that Christ gave "a new law" concerning polygamy and
divorce. His law restored the original institution of marriage, as in
Eden; and this was "new" to the Jews, because there had been departure
from it. In like manner the New Testament, if not the very words of
Christ, now gives a new law concerning slavery in the same sense; that
is, as will appear, in the sequel, the Christian precepts restore the
original institution concerning property as well as concerning marriage.
The laws which allowed polygamy and slavery, and therefore the right,
passed away together.

Here we leave the Old Testament. No other passages need examination; for
all consist with these positions. So far as that sacred volume gives
light, the world are bound by the laws and have equal right to the full
blessings of three divine institutions, whose foundations were laid in
Paradise, and whose complete and glorious proportions will encompass the
universal, millennial felicity.

The defence of slavery from the New Testament now demands brief notice.
We desire to allow it full force, while we ask the reader's candid
judgment of the conclusion.

Of course, the New Testament sanctions now what it sanctioned in the
days of its authors. That must have been _Roman, not Hebrew_, slavery;
for they lived and wrote to men under Roman law. Besides, there is
reason to believe, as Kitto states, that the Jews at that time held no
slaves. In point of historic truth, it appears that the Mosaic law,
finding slavery in existence, practically operated as a system of
gradual emancipation for its extinction. "There is no evidence that
Christ ever came in contact with slavery." This sufficiently explains
why he did not give a "new law" concerning it in specific terms. The
occasion did not arise, as it did arise in regard to polygamy and
divorce, with which he did come in contact. Furthermore, there was no
need of new law, other than was actually given.

The argument from the New Testament for the rightfulness of slavery is
twofold, being built on the instructions given to masters and servants.
It fails on both sides.

For, first, the precepts addressed to servants convey no authority to
national rulers or to private individuals to set aside the institution
of Jehovah by reducing men to the condition of slaves. These precepts
simply enjoin the conduct which Christianity required in their actual
situation. They do not vindicate the law and usage by which they were
held as property. This is abundantly evident in the texts themselves,
and more emphatically, when they are compared with the parallel cases.

Christ promulgated these rules. "I say unto you that ye resist not evil;
but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other
also. And if any man will sue thee at the law and take away thy coat,
let him have thy cloak also." Does this empower States to legalize fraud
and violence? Does it transmute all the _evil_ which Jesus' disciples
have endured into _righteousness_ of those who have inflicted the evil?
Does it wash the crimsoned hands of persecutors in innocency? Does it
justify the wilful smiter? All men know better. No one contends for such
exposition. Yet it is indispensable to the interpretation which finds a
justification of slavery in precepts which enjoin obedience on slaves.
That obedience is required on other grounds.

Another example. The New Testament explicitly commands citizens to
submit to the civil power. Does this sanctify the tyranny of a Nero or a
Nicholas? In the enjoined submission of subjects, has the despot, or the
state, full license for edicts and acts of oppression and iniquity? Yet
they are logically compelled to admit this, and thus, in theory at
least, banish freedom from the whole earth, who find in commands
addressed to servants power conferred on legislators and masters to make
them slaves; that is, to hold them as property. Instead of this, the
rights and obligations of rulers, and of those who claim to be owners of
their fellow men, are defined in a very different class of instructions.

Secondly, the instructions addressed to masters forbid the exercise of
the right which is assumed in slavery. To make this clear, we observe,
primarily, there is no passage in the New Testament which _institutes_
the relation of men held in ownership by men. There is no direct
reference to the civil laws which constituted this relation. They are
passed by silently, as are the laws that established idolatry, and
kindled the fires of persecution. Their existence is tacitly
acknowledged in the use of the terms which designate masters and
servants; and that is all. Hence those who find here an apology for
slavery are obliged to refer to secular history for the facts and
definitions on which their argument rests. Accordingly, no passage in
the New Testament would be void of meaning, though slavery should cease.
In this respect the Constitution of the United States resembles the
sacred books; for not one word of that instrument, interpreted on just
principles as the palladium of liberty, needs to be obliterated in the
abolition of slavery. Furthermore, and this covers our position, the New
Testament, disregarding the Roman law, refers masters exclusively to the
law of God as their rule for the treatment of servants. A single
citation, with which all passages agree, is sufficient to show this.
"Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal, knowing
that ye also have a Master in heaven." Now, as none can find in such
precepts a right to destroy God's primary institution concerning the
family, no more can they find in them a right to destroy his primary and
universal institution concerning property. Stronger than this, the
conclusion is inevitable, that the very precepts which are relied upon
to support American slavery do condemn and destroy it; for the law of
God, by which they bind masters, ordaining from Eden what is just and
equal between men, abolishes the fundamental and central law of the
system.[C]

It is argued, indeed, that slavery is right, because masters, as well as
fathers and rulers, may require obedience. The argument fails utterly;
for there is at the foundation no analogy in the cases. The family and
the State are divine institutions, having sanction in the Bible; but
slavery subverts a divine institution. Fathers and rulers, _as such_,
have duties and rights suitable to the relations they sustain by the
will of God. Masters, _as such_, have no _rights_; for their relation,
as holding property in men, is contrary to his will. Their duty, to
which they are bound by the solemn consideration that he is their
Master, is practically to restore to their servants the rights which he
confers upon all; for nothing less than this can be just and equal in
his sight.

This view discloses the harmony of the whole Bible concerning slavery;
and, in the light of the two Testaments, the institution stands as a
legalized violation of the positive will of Jehovah.

We now condense the whole argument into its briefest form, in the
following syllogisms.

The entire right of men to hold property is given by the Creator. He
gives to American States and citizens no right to hold property in men.
Therefore they have no such right.

Again. An institution is sinful, which, without divine warrant, holds
property in men, thus assuming a divine prerogative, and subverting a
divine institution. American slavery does this. Therefore it is a sinful
institution.

The purpose of this tract now introduces a new series of topics. The
argument demands its application; and the exigencies of the times
present momentous questions, which it must answer.

Hitherto we have spoken of the system of slavery. We come now to persons
connected with it. Because the system is sinful, the question
immediately occurs, who are chargeable with the sin; for there is no sin
without sinners. The answer is obvious. They are chargeable who founded
it, and all who wilfully implicate themselves with it. Practically, they
are always chargeable who adopt it as their own in theory and practice,
who support it in the State, consecrate it in the Church, and labor for
its extension. They are chargeable, for they bring heresy into creeds,
unrighteousness into legislation, and crime into popular usage. If they
are masters, they stand in the same moral relations with persecutors and
tyrannical rulers, guilty for all personal injuries they inflict under
color of unjust laws; and, whether masters or not, they are guilty for
exerting their influence to sustain laws which set aside the authority
of God, and withhold the rights he has given. Such men are accountable
to God and to society for deliberate, organised, aggressive iniquity.
The "organic sin" of the State is their sin, the sin of each in his own
measure; for they are the individuals who determine the acts and the
character of the slave-holding State as such.

But are there no exceptions among slave-holders? We trust there are
many. There is a plain distinction between wicked laws and the personal
acts of men who live under those laws. Some may approve them, and use or
abuse them to the injury of their fellow men. Others may disapprove
them, and refuse, by means of them, to do or justify a wrong. Christians
may become in a legal sense owners of slaves, while they heartily
deprecate the system of oppression, while they are ready to unite with
good men in feasible and wise measures for its removal, and while they
obey the Christian precepts towards their servants, rendering unto them
what is just and equal to men and brethren in Christ. Such Christians
and such men do not hold slaves in the sense which God forbids; and they
cannot be charged with the wickedness of laws by which they, as well as
the slaves, are oppressed. On their estates a higher law than that of
slavery has sway. To them their slaves, though legally property, are
morally and actually men. The Bible sustains their position. They are
the Philemons to whom Paul gives fellowship, and Onesimus returns, not
as a slave, but a brother beloved. In the trials of their situation they
should receive the cordial sympathy of Christians everywhere. It is,
indeed, to their sound convictions and their political influence the
world must look, in part at least, for the ultimate, peaceful extinction
of American slavery. Without them, what would the South become? With the
Scriptures in our hand we earnestly say to them, "Throw the weight of
your influence against unrighteous laws, fulfil to servants the law of
God, and you shall have the sympathy and confidence of good men
everywhere. Nay, more; you, with their help, and they with your help,
will confine the spreading curse, till, with God's blessing, it shall
cease; and Christian and civilized man shall have no more communion with
it."

These discriminations answer certain ecclesiastical questions, which
have occasioned much perplexity and discord. When properly applied, they
take away whatever support a wicked institution has found by leaning
upon the Church; at the same time they award to consistent Christians
what is due to them by the religion of Jesus. If it shall be said, there
will be practical difficulty in applying these discriminations, it is
sufficient to answer, it will be less than the difficulty of
disregarding them.

The question now arises, what can be done for the restriction and
ultimate extinction of slavery as it is; for, since it is sinful,
Christianity and patriotism declare it should be restrained and
abolished.

First. The extension of slavery can and should be prevented by the
Federal Government. The Scriptures have shown us, that the people in
their sovereignty have not the right to create a slave State or a slave.
Of course, the legislators and presidents; who receive in trust the
power which emanates from the people, have no such right. If the
Constitution assumed to confer this power, it would be the first
national duly to amend that instrument in this particular. There is no
power on earth competent to set aside either of the Creator's original
institutions for man. But, according to the sound and established
principle of strict construction, the Constitution as it is does not
create slavery, or even acknowledge its existence, except by inference.
Hence there is no legal objection to the measure which religion herself
ordains. The religious and the political obligations of all citizens and
all legislators coincide to protect, under the jurisdiction of Congress,
the right of every man to be exempt from the condition of property, and
to enjoy the property which he honestly earns. Thus the question
concerning slavery and the territories is morally settled by divine
authority; and to this no real objection can be made, except by that
great interest, whose existence is inherently unrighteous and
irreligious.

Secondly. In the slave States, legislation should restore to the
enslaved population the primitive rights which God has given to all men,
establishing for them, on humane and Christian principles, such
relations as are suitable to their condition of poverty, ignorance, and
dependence, and are adapted to secure at once their improvement and the
general welfare.

This is the logical conclusion to be derived from the premises. As the
central wrong of slavery consists in making men articles of property by
law, the rectification is to lift from them by law the curse of the
false and irreligious doctrine, that they can be rightfully held as
property. Thus the axe is laid to the root of the tree.

This is also the conclusion to which we are forced by other moral
principles bearing on the case. For men to receive services of men is
right. Accordingly, the New Testament allows masters to receive services
of those who are slaves in the sense of human law; but at the same time
the sacred book requires masters, with all who employ labor, to make the
recompenses which are just and equal towards men; for slavery is not
right; and legislators, on their responsibility to the Ruler of nations,
are bound to adjust the laws in harmony with the first principles of
individual and moral obligation.

Furthermore, this is the only practical conclusion. By inevitable
necessity, the slaves, as a body, must remain on the soil of their
bondage. Only exceptional cases of removal can occur. They are the
laborers of the South; and no State will, or can, or is bound, to remove
its laborers. It is simply bound to protect and treat them with
Christian equity and kindness. Banishment of them would be injustice and
cruelty, violating perhaps no less than restoring divine rights.
Moreover, no practicable means of removing them have ever been seriously
proposed; and, till they shall be, the point needs no discussion.

But the question may be raised, "Are the slaves to endure their present
wrongs until the laws shall be thus renewed, or perhaps forever?" We
reply, in showing how slave-holders can cease from guilty connection
with slavery; we have also shown how the situation of the slaves becomes
one of practical righteousness, before the laws can be readjusted; and
for this great obligation of the body politic, sufficient time most be
allowed. Moral principles do not exact natural impossibilities. The
elevation of oppressed millions can be accomplished only in harmony with
great natural and social, as well as ethical laws, which the wisdom of
God has ordained.

It remains therefore, that, for a period of which no man can see the
end, the slaves must, in most cases, dwell within the present
boundaries; but it is incumbent on the citizens and legislators of the
South to institute _immediate_ measures for restoring to them the
inviolable rights of men. So long as they continue, by the _necessities_
of the case, in the relation of servants and laborers, masters should
deal with them according to the rules of humane and Christian equity,
paying to them in suitable ways their just earnings, holding sacred
their family ties, and securing to them the privileges of education and
religion. Meanwhile, the legislatures of the several States, by wise
enactments, should coöperate with masters in training their servile
population for the position which the Creator designed for men.

When these things shall come to pass, a consideration, in which many
good men have sought relief in regard to slavery, will have multiplied
force. The providential wisdom of God, in bringing millions of the
children of Africa from a land of pagan darkness and violence to a land
of freedom and Christianity, will shine with new lustre, when they shall
receive from American hands, together with true religion, every divine
right, and shall thus be qualified and enabled to convey to the dark
habitations of their fathers the infinite blessings of enlightened
liberty and of the gospel of eternal salvation.

These things are practicable. So long as "righteousness exalteth a
nation," a great, free, and Christian people can do what they should do;
and thus only can they secure, under the divine blessing, their own
highest prosperity and glory. To prove this would be simply to repeat
the familiar facts which exhibit the legitimate effects of slavery on
general intelligence, enterprise, and virtue.

But what shall produce the true and wide spread public sentiment, which
is indispensable to usher in so radical a change in the laws and
institutions of proud and powerful States? Truth must accomplish this
great work--THE TRUTH that our Creator does not place those who bear his
image in bondage to their fellow men as property, but invests them with
a common and inviolable right of dominion over inferior things. The
vivid light which this truth sheds on the social relations of men has
been extinguished at the South; and it has been dimmed at the North. In
every right way and in every place, therefore, it should be made to
shine again unobscured. Expounders should bring it forth from the Holy
Oracles; for Jehovah has hallowed it there, and made it equal in
authority with the Sabbath. The press should publish it; for it is the
function of the press to convey unceasingly to the public mind whatever
will establish and crown the public integrity and welfare. All men
should seal it in their hearts; for it is the divine rule and bond of
brotherhood in the universal dominion. It surrounds them with protected
families, and builds their safe firesides and their altars of worship.

The question arises here, can general agreement be expected in regard to
this primary truth, and measures which legitimately proceed from it? It
is to be supposed there are men in whose hearts there is no fear of God
or love of their fellow beings. With such men these views may be
powerless; but for men of Christian principle, we are confident they
show a common foundation for united sentiments and efforts.

There is now a general, practical, vital consent that government and
society should respect the divine institutions of the family and the
Sabbath. Beneath all superficial strifes and irrelevant issues, there is
the same sure ground for a living and earnest agreement, that government
and society should respect the equal and coeval institution of the right
of property.

Christian and conservative men can unite in the proposed measures and
the truth which appoints them; for they desire to preserve only what is
right. Christian and progressive men can unite in them; for they desire
to abolish only what is wrong. Politics can approve them; for they are
constitutional and patriotic. Philanthropy can be satisfied with them;
for they promise all that in the nature of the case can be promised for
the early relief of the slaves. Religion sanctions them; for they
restore her own institutions. Good men of the South can unite in them
with those of the North; for they have equal authority North and South.
They proffer only that moral aid which great communities, sharing common
interests and responsibilities, should render and receive with intimate
and cordial confidence. They honor the sovereignty of proud and jealous
States; for each of them, exercising the power which springs from its
own people in its own way, will discharge its political obligations to
all within its boundaries.

A few years or even months of combined efforts will suffice to convey
this truth with vital energy to millions of minds and hearts. In due
time it will manifest its efficacy in the public sentiment and public
policy. We trust in its power. It is invincible; it will be victorious;
for it is from God. Its absence from the popular and legislative mind
well explains many of the evils that have been precipitated upon the
nation. Its future prevalence, under divine mercy, will arrest the
progress of events which would be, as we judge, not remedy, but
retributive destruction, on account of slavery.

This leads us to the final question. Are the principles and measures
advocated in this tract or their equivalents, with the contemplated
result, essential to the welfare of our country? We are compelled to
believe so.

We present, for the consideration of citizens and statesmen, this fact.
In harmony with that law of fitness which pervades the Creator's works,
all men are constituted with a nature corresponding with the dominion
they have received. They feel that they have a right to hold property,
and should not be held as property. Slaves feel this. Masters often show
that they feel it. They who make laws for slavery, North and South, show
that they feel it. The little property which slaves are often allowed to
possess, so far from furnishing apology for slavery, is an unwitting
tribute to the living principle that destroys the system. Here is a
philosophical demonstration that slavery cannot stand in perpetuity.
This vital element in human nature, to which a divine institution itself
is but an index, is subterranean fire beneath the pyramid of oppression.
Though long crushed and silent, it will not always sleep. Do men expect
to control forever, by law and force, that sense of rights which burns
inextinguishable in every human breast, which God himself kindled in
Eden? As well pile rocks on volcanoes to suppress earthquakes.

                "Vital in every part,
    It can but by annihilating die."

In this light, it is no prediction to say, if slavery survives to
consummate its own results it will destroy our country.

The great political and religious problem of the slave-holding States,
on which their welfare really depends, is not, how shall we extend
slavery? but, how shall we lay legal foundation for the rights of our
servile population as men? Unless it shall be anticipated and prevented,
by restoring to them the dominion which the Creator bestowed, a day is
as sure to come on natural principles as the sun to rise, when the
masses of human property will assert for themselves the indestructible
rights of their being. Generations may not see it; but woe betides the
States implicated in this oppression, when that day shall dawn; and the
longer it tarries the greater the woe.

To our mind, the statesmen are infatuated who do not in their policy
regard this universal sense of rights. It is this which is now making so
bitter conflict on the prairies of Kansas. It will always make conflict,
till slavery expires.

In connection with the general welfare, there is another consideration,
which we solemnly urge upon every man who respects the Bible. It is the
displeasure of God for slavery. He gave the rights which it denies; and
he will assuredly vindicate his own institutions. It would contradict
his word and history, which is but the story of his providence, to
suppose that he will perpetually allow myriads of men, in this land of
light, to hold as property other myriads and even millions of their
fellow men and fellow Christians, whom he has endowed, as bearing his
own image, with equal rights. With Jefferson we have reason to tremble
for our country, when we behold her support of slavery and remember that
God is just. France abolished the Sabbath; and thrones have gone down in
blood. America may abolish another divine institution; and for this her
proud States may be convulsed. The previous topic shows, indeed, that
God has so constituted the social elements of this world, that a great
wrong, like slavery, ultimately provides for its own retribution. The
oppressor himself treasures up the vials of wrath for Him who taketh
vengeance.

In view of all the considerations which have now passed before our
minds, is it too much to believe, that the diffusion of kindly and
scriptural sentiments, with the blessing of heaven producing general
agreement in principles and measures, must be the means of our country's
salvation from the guilt and perils of slavery? If it is not extended,
misguided, infatuated men may, indeed, threaten to dissolve the Union.
Still we fear that extension most; for religion teaches us to fear God
more than man. It allows us but this alternative, to keep his
commandments, and trust that he will make the wrath of man to praise
him. We hold that national righteousness in his sight, "first pure,
then peaceable," is better and safer than union and slavery with his
frown. Let justice be done, and the heavens will not fall.

Whatever purposes God may conceal in the cloudy future, present duties
are ours. He seals them in his word. Notwithstanding all the heats and
perversions of parties and interests, we trust there will yet be a
single voice of our nation's good men. Citizens will speak the truth,
legislators will enact the truth, churches will hallow the truth, vital
to civilization and Christianity, that, by Jehovah's will, man is not
the property of man. Then, under the benediction of our Father in
heaven, all his children in mutual protection and benevolence will enjoy
their property, their homes, and their Sabbath; and he will more richly
bless the land of the free and the just.




FRIENDLY LETTERS

TO

A CHRISTIAN SLAVEHOLDER.

BY

REV. A. C. BALDWIN.




LETTER I.

INTRODUCTION.--SOUTHERN COURTESY AND HOSPITALITY.--CHARACTERISTICS
OF THE SOUTH AND NORTH.--NO ESSENTIAL DIFFERENCE AT HEART.--THEY
SHOULD UNDERSTAND EACH OTHER BETTER.--A FREE INTERCHANGE OF
SENTIMENT DESIRABLE.--SINCERE PATRIOTISM AND PIETY COMMON TO
BOTH.--THESE AN EFFECTUAL SAFEGUARD TO OUR UNION AND
GOOD-FELLOWSHIP.


MY DEAR CHRISTIAN BROTHER,--I embrace the first moment at my command
since leaving your pleasant home, to express the gratification afforded
me by my recent visit to the "Sunny South." The kind hospitality and
polite attentions shown me by yourself and other Christian friends,
during my recent interesting sojourn with you, will ever be gratefully
remembered. I had previously heard "by the hearing of the ear" of the
open, frank warm-heartedness and generous impulses of southern people,
but now I can fully appreciate them. The lessons taught us by
experience, whether they be pleasant or painful, are the most
profitable, and are most deeply engraven upon the memory. If there are
any persons who think or speak lightly of the reputed complaisance and
Christian courtesy of those who live south of "Mason and Dixon's line,"
I have only to say to them,--go and make the acquaintance of those
families which give the tone and character to society there, and enjoy
the hospitalities which they almost force upon you with so much
politeness and delicacy as to make you feel that by sharing them you are
conferring rather than receiving a favor, and your skepticism on this
point will be happily and effectually removed.

You will not understand me, my dear sir, as implying that our southern
brethren have really more heart than we at the North, although there
seems to be "_primâ facie_" evidence in your favor; at least, so far as
polite and generous attention to strangers is concerned. In this last
particular, you are constantly teaching us important lessons. Still, I
contend that the Northerner has as large and generous a soul, when you
get at it, as anybody. We have hearts which beat warm and true, but our
cautious habits and constitutional temperament (phlegmatic sometimes)
conceal them from view; whereas you carry yours throbbing with generous
emotions in your hands, exposed to the gaze of everybody. The Southron
is artless and impulsive, as well as noble; the Northerner is no less
noble, but having been taught more frequently the doctrine of
"expediency" than his southern brother, he stops and "calculates" when,
and in what circumstances, it is best to exhibit his whole character. In
both cases, the pure gold is there; but in the former it lies upon the
surface or in the alluvial, while in the latter it is often imbedded
deep in the quartz-rock;--it requires some labor to get it out, but the
ultimate yield is most rich and abundant.

It is very desirable that a greater degree of social intercourse be kept
up between the North and South. We are brethren of one great family, and
there is no good reason why this family should not be a united and happy
one. To a considerable extent it is so. It is true we do not all think
alike on every subject, and some of these subjects are of vast
importance, and intimately connected with our prosperity and happiness.
We need to understand each other better, and to this end there should be
more intimacy, and a frequent and free interchange of views;--not for
strife and debate, but for mutual edification and enlightenment. There
was probably never a family of brothers, however strong their love for
each other, whose views of domestic policy were exactly alike; but
there need be no lack of fraternal confidence and harmony for all that.
There are certain great fundamental principles which underlie every
thing else, and form the basis of the family compact. These principles
are filial reverence, fraternal affection, love for home, and a watchful
jealousy of aught that can in the least interfere with the happiness or
reputation of their beloved family circle. Falling back upon these
principles to preserve good-will and harmony, they are not in the least
afraid to discuss those topics on which there is an honest difference of
opinion; on the contrary, they take pleasure in doing so, for the result
is a strengthening of the ties which bind them to each other, and a
modification and partial blending of opinions that seemed antagonistic.

Thus it should be in our great political and religious brotherhood. The
North and South have each their peculiar views of what pertains to their
own interests, and the interests of the great family of the Republic.
But do not let us stand at a distance and look at each other with an eye
of jealousy because of these differences. Surely we can meet as
fellow-citizens, and discuss matters of common interest, and the
interests of common humanity, without losing our temper or engendering
any ill feeling or family discord.

It is affirmed by some, that there are certain subjects, at least one,
of so peculiar and delicate a nature as to forbid discussion, lest the
result should be heart-burnings, alienation, and perhaps disunion in our
happy fraternity. I cannot for a moment admit the sentiment. It is an
ungenerous reflection upon the courtesy, Christian candor, piety, and
good-sense, both of the North and South. I hold that good citizens and
good Christians can, if they will, discuss any subject without giving
the least occasion for offence, or endangering that compact which so
happily binds us together. As it is in the family circle, there are
certain great principles most dear to us all, on which we can fall back,
and which, if we are true to ourselves and to them, will prove efficient
safeguards to our temper and good-fellowship. The first of these is
Patriotism. We have a common country, and we love it, and we love each
other for our country's sake. We are children of a common mother, whose
kind arms have encircled us, and whose bosom has nourished us
bounteously and with impartiality, and God forbid, that, as wayward,
ungrateful children, we should wring her maternal heart with anguish by
our unfraternal conduct toward each other. We shall not do it,--either
at the North or at the South. We are true patriots, and in our very
differences, love of country comes in as an important element to shape
and modify our opinions; and while we may be adopting different
theories, we are conscientiously seeking the same end, namely, the
greatest good of our beloved country.

The second is piety. We love our country well, but we love our Saviour
more, and for his sake we will love and treat each other as brethren,
and not fall out by the way because we may not see through the same
optic-glasses. We will cheerfully hear what each has to say on whatever
pertains to Christian morals and practice. There are thousands of
sincere, warm-hearted Christians, whose love to Christ raises them
immeasurably above sectionalism and prejudice, and who daily inquire,
"what is truth?" and "what is duty?" and they entertain that "charity"
which "suffereth long and is kind; is not easily provoked, thinketh no
evil, rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all
things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things;"
and "never faileth." When this love is in exercise, Christian brethren
may open their hearts freely to each other on any subject, whether it
be "for doctrine, or reproof, or for instruction in righteousness."

Whatever may be true of others, I hope that you and I will be able to
demonstrate to the world, that, although one of us lives at the North
and the other at the South, yet we can communicate with each other
unreservedly on an almost interdicted topic, with mutual kind feelings,
if not to edification.

Respectfully and fraternally,

Yours, &c.




LETTER II.

A DIFFICULT AND DELICATE SUBJECT PROPOSED.--AGITATION OF IT
UNAVOIDABLE.--CHRISTIANS NORTH AND SOUTH SHOULD GIVE THE DISCUSSION
OF IT A RIGHT DIRECTION.--WE ARE ALL INTERESTED IN THE
ISSUE.--NORTHERN DISCLAIMERS.


MY DEAR CHRISTIAN BROTHER,--In my last I intimated that I hoped you and
I, by our correspondence, would be able to furnish the world a practical
illustration of good-nature and kind feeling in the discussion of a
subject that has been a fruitful source of trouble and unchristian
invective. You have already anticipated my theme--it is DOMESTIC
SLAVERY. It must be confessed that this is the most difficult and
delicate of all topics to be agitated by a Northerner and a Southerner,
and yet I have the fullest confidence that neither of us will give or
take offence. I need offer you no apology for calling your attention to
this subject at the present time. Not only is it a theme of vast
importance in itself, involving, either directly or indirectly,
interests most dear to you and to me, and to every one who has at heart
the welfare of his country and his race, but it is a subject that must
be discussed,--there is no avoiding it, however much you or I or other
individuals may desire it. It has come before the public mind in such a
manner as peremptorily to demand the attention of every Christian and
every patriot. Whether we approve or deprecate the peculiar causes that
have made this topic so prominent in our country, both North and South,
we have to take things as they are, and turn them to the best possible
account. Politicians and demagogues are all discussing American slavery,
and will continue to do so for the purpose of forwarding their own
favorite schemes; and any attempt to silence them would be as futile as
an effort to arrest the gulf-stream in its course. It remains only for
brethren, both at the South and North, to take up the subject as we find
it brought to our hands in the inscrutable providence of God, and, under
the guidance of his Spirit, given in answer to our prayers, take a truly
Christian view of some of its leading features, and then inquire, What
is duty? I think you will not claim, with some of your southern friends,
that slavery is a subject with which we at the North "have nothing to
do." As patriots, we have something to do with every thing that affects
the interests of our common country; and as Christians, we sustain
responsibilities which we cannot shake off toward all our brethren of
the human family, whether it be at the North or South--whether they be
bound or free. "Have we not all one Father? Hath not one God created
us?" "We are many members, but one body, and whether one member suffer
all the members suffer with it; or one member be honored, all the
members rejoice with it."

Your candor will not impute to me any unkind or improper motive in
entering upon this discussion; and you will permit me, in the outset, to
enter a few disclaimers, in order that you may be the better able to
appreciate what I have to say.

In the first place, it is not my design to throw down the glove for the
purpose of enlisting you, or any of your friends, in a controversy; this
would be an unpleasant and profitless undertaking.

Nor is it to advocate the doctrine, that sustaining the legal relation
of master to a slave for a longer or shorter time is in all possible
cases sin. I will admit that there may be circumstances in which the
relation may subsist without any moral delinquency whatever; as, for
instance, persons may become slaveholders in the eye of the law without
their own consent, as by heirship; they sometimes become so voluntarily
to befriend a fellow-creature in distress, to prevent his being sold
away from his wife and family; persons sometimes purchase slaves for the
sole purpose of emancipating them. In these, and other circumstances
which might be mentioned, no reasonable man either North or South would
ever think of pronouncing the relation a sinful one.

Nor is it my design to question the conscientiousness or piety of all
slaveholders at the South, both among the laity and clergy. Whoever
makes the sweeping assertion, that "no slaveholder can be a child of
God," gives fearful evidence that he himself is deficient in that
"charity" which "hopeth all things." There is an obvious distinction
between those who hold slaves for merely selfish purposes and regard
them as chattels, and those who repudiate this system, and regard them
as men having in common with themselves human rights, and would gladly
emancipate them were there not legal obstacles, and could they do it
consistently with their welfare, temporal and eternal.

Nor is it my purpose to advocate immediate, universal, unconditional
emancipation without regard to circumstances. This doctrine is not held
by the great mass of northern Christians. There are, no doubt, some
cases where immediate emancipation would inflict sad calamities, both
upon the slaves themselves and the community. The opinions of northern
men have often been misunderstood and misrepresented on this subject.
The ground that calm, reflecting opponents of slavery take, is, that
slaveholders should at once cease in their own minds to regard their
slaves as chattels to be bought and sold and worked for mere profit, and
that they should take immediate measures for the full emancipation of
every one, as soon as may be consistent with his greatest good, and that
of the community in which he lives.

This, it is true, is virtually immediate emancipation; for it is at once
giving up the chattel principle, and no longer regarding servants as
property to be bought and sold. It is to act on the Christian principle
of impartial love, doing to them and with them, as, in a change of
circumstances, we would have them do to and with us. This does
immediately abolish, as it should do, the main thing in slavery, and
brings those who are now bondmen into the common brotherhood of human
beings, to be treated, not as chattels and brutes, but on Christian
principles, according to the exigencies of their condition as ignorant,
degraded, and dependent human beings, "endowed, however, by their
Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness," which rights should be acknowledged, and
with the least possible delay be granted.

Nor is it my design to reproach my southern brethren as being to blame
for the origin of slavery in these United States. Slavery was introduced
into this country by our fathers, who have long been sleeping in their
graves, and the North, if they did not as extensively, yet did as truly,
and in many cases did as heartily, participate in it, as the South; so
that, in respect to the origin of American slavery, we have not a word
to say, nor a stone to cast. And besides, our mother country must come
in and share with our fathers to no small extent in the wrong of
introducing domestic slavery to these colonies. Happily, as we think,
slavery was virtually abolished at the North by our ancestors of a
preceding generation; but for their act we are entitled to no credit.
Your ancestors omitted to do this; but for their omission you are
deserving of no blame. We would never forget, that slavery was entailed
upon our southern brethren, and for this entailment they are no more
responsible than for the blood that circulates in their veins.

If you will be so kind as to keep these disclaimers in mind, I think you
will better understand and appreciate what I shall hereafter say on the
subject. With the kindest wishes for you and yours, I remain, in the
best of bonds,

YOUR CHRISTIAN BROTHER.




LETTER III.

THE REAL SUBJECT.--NOT TO BE CONFOUNDED WITH ANCIENT
SERVITUDE.--NOR TO BE JUDGED OF BY ISOLATED CASES.--NORTHERN MEN
COMPETENT AS OTHERS TO DETERMINE ITS TRUE CHARACTER.--SLAVERY
IGNORES OUR DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.--IS INCONSISTENT WITH OUR
CONSTITUTION.


MY DEAR FRIEND AND BROTHER,--I propose in this and subsequent letters to
take a brief, candid view of some of the prominent characteristics of
American slavery. I speak of servitude, not as it existed in patriarchal
times, for that is essentially a distinct matter. While it had some
things in common with American slavery, there was so much that was
dissimilar in the relation of master and servant, that analogy is in a
great measure destroyed.

Neither do I speak of slavery as I saw it developed on your plantation,
and on those of your immediate neighbors. When I went to the South, I
confess I went with strong prepossessions, (prejudices if you choose so
to call them,) against the "peculiar institution." I regarded it an
evil, and only an evil. But while my general views of the legitimate
workings of the system remain unchanged, candor compels me to admit,
that, if all slaves were as well cared for, as kindly treated, as well
instructed, and were they all as contented and happy as yours; and,
especially, were there no evils incident to the system greater than I
saw with you, I would simply divest slavery of its odious name, and it
would virtually be slavery no longer. The plantations at the South would
then, perhaps, with some propriety he denominated communities of
intelligent, happy, Christian peasants. And yet it is slavery, as it
really takes away inalienable rights. Would to God that slavery as it
exists with you were a fair illustration of the system. But alas! it is
not. Perhaps you may say that "it is impossible for a northern man to
speak of slavery so as to do the subject justice." You may indeed know
more and better than we do about the state and condition of the slaves.
But in some respects, where great principles are involved, we at the
North are more competent than you, for our judgment is less liable to be
biased by self-interest; and in my remarks I shall confine myself
chiefly to those points on which a northern man is at least as well
qualified to speak as a slaveholder.

What, then, are some of the prominent characteristics of American
slavery as a system?

FIRST, Slavery ignores and repudiates the foundation-stone on which
rests our renowned Declaration of Independence. That document, for more
than three fourths of a century, has been the boast and glory of
America. It is the platform on which our noble ancestors planted their
feet, with a consciousness that they stood on the eternal principles of
truth and justice. To maintain these principles, relying on God for aid,
they pledged to each other "their lives, their fortunes, and their
sacred honor." Our fathers knew that they were right, and, to carry out
the principles embodied in this Declaration, many of them cheerfully
poured out their heart's blood to defend the "unalienable rights" of
humanity.

Now let us turn our attention to the foundation paragraph of this
memorable Declaration;--I do not mean in that general way in which it is
often read, but minutely and particularly;--let us calmly look at it in
its full import, and not shrink back and avert our eyes on account of a
foreboding that we shall be led to conclusions which we would be glad to
avoid.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident;--that all men are created
equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness."

These significant words are inscribed upon the scroll of our nation's
history, and there they will remain till time shall be no longer. They
need no glossary or explanation. He who runs may read them, and he who
reads can understand them. The sentiment they embody it is impossible to
mistake; it stands out in bold relief, like the sun in the heavens. It
is, that every man has received, from a higher than earthly power, a
charter, which secures to him the unalienable right of life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness. It is impossible for the most ultra
advocate of "human rights" to paraphrase these words, or give them a
rendering so as to make them support his dogmas more strongly than they
now do. On the contrary, he would only weaken their force by the
attempt.

Now, my dear brother, I would candidly, seriously ask you--I would ask
all your southern friends--I would ask everybody, Can the sentiment of
that Declaration be consistent with American slavery? Are not slaves
men? Do color and degradation change a creature of God from a human
being to a soulless brute? No; our southern brethren would as
indignantly repudiate this infidel view as we at the North. Now if a
slave is a man, he has received from his Creator an unalienable right to
liberty if he chooses to avail himself of it, or else the first
principle laid down in our revered Declaration of Independence, so far
from being "self evident," is in fact untrue, and ought at once to be
taken from its honored position in the archives of these United States,
and consigned to the heaps of rubbish of the dark ages.

But does the slave enjoy this liberty? or is it within his reach? It
will not be pretended. The very name by which his class is designated
forbids it. The term free slave is a solecism. His liberty consists in
the freedom to do as he is told to do, or suffer punishment for his
disobedience, and he can pursue happiness only in accordance with the
will of his master.

There is the same incongruity between slavery and that clause in our
constitution which stipulates that "no person shall be deprived of life,
liberty, or property, without due process of law." Now, my brother, does
it not require considerable ingenuity and special pleading to avoid
conclusions to which unbiased common sense would arrive in an instant,
in the application of these declared rights to persons held as slaves? I
am not going to inflict upon you a dissertation, or a series of
syllogisms on this hackneyed subject, but I beg that you and your
friends will calmly look again at what, I doubt not, you have seen
before,--the palpable incongruity between the system of holding persons
perpetually in slavery without their consent, and those declared,
self-evident, heaven bestowed, unalienable rights professedly secured to
all men in these United States by our glorious constitution. Said that
great statesman and patriot, Henry Clay: "We present to the world the
sorry spectacle of a nation that worships Slavery as a household
goddess, after having constituted Liberty the presiding divinity over
church and state."

Surely something must be out of joint here. I have looked again and
again at this matter, I think with perfect candor, and I have tried to
the utmost of my ability to reconcile these apparent inconsistencies,
but I cannot do it. Can you?

Believe me, as ever, your sincere friend and

CHRISTIAN BROTHER.




LETTER IV.

SLAVERY TRANSFORMS MEN TO CHATTELS.--SOUTHERN
LAWS.--SLAVE-AUCTIONS.--MEN PLACED ON A LEVEL WITH BRUTES.--NO
REDRESS FOR WRONGS.--IGNORANCE PERPETUATED BY LAW.


MY DEAR CHRISTIAN FRIEND,--A second characteristic of American slavery
is, It regards human beings, declared to be in the "image of God," as
"chattels,"--things or articles of merchandise. "Slaves," say the laws
of South Carolina and Georgia, "shall be deemed, sold, taken, reputed,
and adjudged in law to be chattels personal in the hands of their owners
and possessors, and their executors, administrators and assigns, to all
intents, constructions, and purposes whatsoever."[D] "A slave," says the
code of Louisiana, "is one who is in the power of his master, to whom he
belongs. The master may sell him, dispose of his person, his industry,
and his labor; he can do nothing, possess nothing, nor acquire any
thing, but what must belong to his master."[E]

Thus, rational, immortal beings, children of our common Father in
heaven, are taken from the exalted scale in which God placed them, and
degraded to that of the brute creation. They are, as you know,
advertised, mortgaged, attached, inherited, leased, bought, and sold
like horses and cattle. Like them they are brought to the auction block,
and like them subjected to a rigid examination as to their age, and
soundness of wind, chest, and limb. Said a gentleman to me: "When I was
at----, I visited the slave mart; and as I saw one and another and
another of my fellow-beings brought forward to the block, and rudely
exposed and minutely examined, in order to ascertain their marketable
value in dollars and cents, and then struck off to the highest bidder,
amid the gibes and jeers of the vulgar, my heart was nigh unto bursting,
and I was obliged to turn away my eyes and weep, exclaiming, O God! can
it be! thy children! my brothers and sisters of humanity,--perhaps my
fellow-heirs of heaven,--precious souls for whom the Saviour died, whose
names may be written in the Book of Life, and over whose repentance
angels may have rejoiced! Can it be?"

For myself, I never witnessed any such scenes, and heaven grant I never
may. It is enough, and too much for me to know, that they exist. I
allude to them in this connection, not to awaken and pain your
sensibilities, but simply to illustrate the fact, that American slavery
sanctions them, and by its operation brings down the noblest work of God
to a level of the beasts that perish. As far as it can do so, it
dehumanizes man, and treats him as a thing without a soul. It may be
remarked, however, in passing, "A man's a man, for a' that."

I might speak in this connection of the obstacles which are thrown in
the way of the slave's obtaining redress for his wrongs should he
unfortunately get into the hands of a cruel and unreasonable master,
being forbidden to defend himself, and not allowed the testimony of his
brethren to be given in his behalf; but there are other features of this
system which more urgently demand our attention.

Neither will I dwell upon the ignorance and mental degradation which are
an essential part of the system. You need not be informed, that, in ten
States, knowledge is kept from the slave by legal enactments,--that
teaching him to read is regarded a crime, to be severely "punished by
the judges." I was happy to find that you and a great many others
totally disregard that law, and, in spite of legislators and penal
statutes, you teach your slaves to read, and in some cases to write. For
this _crime_, I doubt not but heaven, at least, will forgive you. I
shall allude to this latter topic again in a future letter.

Most truly and affectionately, yours, etc.




LETTER V.

DOMESTIC LIFE.--THE MARRIAGE RELATION.--DOMESTIC HAPPINESS A RELIC
OF PARADISE.--ITS ENDEARMENTS.--ITS VALUE.--THE BARBARISM OF
INVADING THE DOMESTIC SANCTUARY.--AN ILLUSTRATION.


MY DEAR BROTHER,--I come now, in the third place, to speak of slavery as
it is related to the endearments and duties of domestic life. On this
subject my heart is full. I am almost afraid to speak, lest I say what I
ought not; and yet I cannot keep silence. I can, in a good measure,
sympathize with Elihu when he said,--

    "For I am full of words,
     The spirit within me doth constrain me,
     Behold I am as wine which hath no vent,
     I am ready to burst like new bottles,
     I will speak that I may breathe more freely,
     I will open my lips and reply."[F]

We now approach a topic more intimately connected with the present and
future happiness of the human race than almost any other. Man was not
completely blest, even in Eden, until God instituted the marriage
relation. His Creator gave him a companion to participate in his joys,
binding them together by ties which no human power might sunder.
Paradise was lost by sin, but as our first parents were exiled thence,
God in infinite kindness permitted them to take one of its purest,
sweetest sources of joy with them to this world of sorrows.

    "Domestic happiness! thou only bliss
     Of Paradise that has survived the fall!"

You, my dear brother, are a husband and father, and can appreciate my
meaning, when I speak of the richness, the tenderness, the depth, of
connubial and paternal love; how it lights up this dark world with
smiles,--how it stimulates us to manly exertion,--how it lightens the
burdens of human life, and enables us cheerfully to sustain its ills,
while it almost restores to us Eden itself. To understand what is meant
by the term domestic happiness, it is necessary for you and me only to
look at the circles around our own firesides, and listen to the musical
accents of the loved ones who dwell there, as they pronounce the words
husband, father, mother, brother, sister, and exchange with them kind
looks and the affectionate embrace. What earthly joys can be compared
with those of home? What would tempt us to part with them? All the gold
in California and Australia would be spurned in contempt, if offered in
exchange. What should we say, and what should we do, were any power on
earth to interfere with our fireside delights, and attempt to wrest them
from us?

Suppose Providence had cast our lot under a despotic government, which
we will suppose to be for the most part kind and paternal, but having
this peculiarity,--every now and then, finding its finances embarrassed,
it should be in the habit of selling some of its subjects to a foreign
power to strengthen its exchequer, and should arbitrarily select its
victims from this family and that;--how should you feel were the doomed
family your own? What would have been your emotions this morning, had
some one come to your room and told you that that bright-eyed boy,
"Willie," who last night sat upon your knee and amused you with his
innocent prattle, showed you his toys, examined your pockets, played
with your hair and features, and finally clasped his little arms around
your neck and impressed the "good-night" kiss upon your lips, had been
seized by an officer, and sold from your sight forever to you know not
whom, and to be carried you know not whither? Nay, more;--suppose that
while he was yet speaking, there came also another with the tidings that
the same fate had befallen your first-born,--your daughter, just budding
into womanhood,--the affectionate, joyous, light-hearted "Kate," whose
voice to your ear is sweeter than the music of flowing waters, whose
feet are swifter than those of the light gazelle, as with open arms she
bounds to meet you on your return from a temporary absence, to welcome
you home with a tear of joy in her eye and a kiss upon her lips,--that
she too had been by the officials of the government clandestinely
abducted from your dwelling, and sold, literally sold, for a valuation
put upon her person in dollars and cents, to a hopeless captivity, to
spend her days in unrequited toil, or, not unlikely, in ministering to
the caprices and brutal passions of a stranger?

And while he was yet speaking, and as your _wife_, half frantic with
grief and terror, was entwining her arms around you, and you were
striving to ease your bursting heart, to crown the whole, suppose
another official and his posse had entered your apartment, and by force
of arms had torn her from your embrace, and with thongs upon her hands,
and a bandage over her mouth, hurried her away to greet your sight no
more? What a scene! There go in one direction the children of your body,
"bone of your bone, and flesh of your flesh," to an unknown but fearful
destiny! In another is ruthlessly borne the object dearer to you than
all the world beside,--one whom you had solemnly sworn to love, cherish,
and protect until death,--the light of your dwelling,--the mother of
your children,--the mutual sharer of all your joys and sorrows,--the
richest and most precious treasure heaven ever gave you!--there she goes
in an agony of wo, to toil under a burning sun, compelled to call
another man her husband, or, it may be, to grace her master's seraglio!
Merciful God! what meaneth this? What horde of barbarians from the dark
corners of the earth have found their way hither to lay waste all that
is beautiful and lovely! What fiend from the pit has been let loose to
enter this little Paradise to destroy and bear away all the good that
was left of the primitive Eden!

No ruthless band of barbarians from benighted lands have found their way
to this Christian domestic sanctuary,--no malignant spirit from below
has been here to snatch the only type of Heaven that escaped his grasp
six thousand years ago. "Think it not strange," brother, "concerning
this fiery trial as though some strange thing had happened to you." This
is only the legitimate working of the patriarchal system of government
under which we live. Be calm,--this is all done according to law, and
with as much kindness as the circumstances will permit. No stripes are
inflicted, and no more force is exerted than is absolutely necessary to
secure the object, and prevent a useless outcry; no ill-will is
entertained toward the victims of these outrages,--it is only because
the finances of the government are low, and must be replenished, and
this is the most convenient, and perhaps at present the only practical,
way of raising the money!

Now, my brother, what should you and I think of living under a
government where such things were permitted by the laws? It would not
reconcile us to the administration to be told, that such proceedings as
I have supposed are of rare occurrence, and that the general character
of the government is kind, that it dislikes exceedingly to sell its
subjects, and especially that it has a great repugnance to separating
husbands and wives, and breaking up of families, and does it only when
severely pressed by pecuniary necessity. To your and my mind this would
be altogether unsatisfactory; it would not change our opinion of the
system. No matter if the heart-rending scene I have supposed were
witnessed only once a year, or once in ten years,--I think we should
loudly protest against a system which allowed the occurrence of it at
all.

You will please, my dear sir, apply the foregoing illustration to the
liabilities and actual workings of the slave system at the South, just
so far as it is applicable, and no further. If there are any points in
which the analogy fails, I will thank you to point them out to me in
your next.

With much love and esteem,

I remain yours, most truly.




LETTER VI.

SACREDNESS OF THE MARRIAGE RELATION.--GOD ALONE CAN DISSOLVE
IT.--THE "HIGHER LAW."--SLAVERY SANCTIONS POLYGAMY AND
ADULTERY.--RELATION OF PARENTS TO THEIR CHILDREN.--FEARFUL
RESPONSIBILITY ASSUMED.


MY DEAR CHRISTIAN BROTHER,--My objections to any system of government
that interferes at will with the family relation, and forcibly separates
husbands and wives, parents and children, do not arise chiefly from the
personal wrongs and bitter woes inflicted upon its victims. A
contemplation of these is calculated to affect our sensibilities, and
excite the tender sympathies of our nature; but there is a more enlarged
Christian view which forces itself upon us. If we could by some magic
process allay the anguish of the stricken heart, and heal its wounds
when the strongest ties of nature are rent asunder,--could we even
obliterate the susceptibilities of the soul, destroy natural affection,
and render man more callous than the brutes, so that he could be torn
from his home and kindred with less pain than they,--in a _moral_ point
of view the case would be altered but little. As I have remarked in a
previous letter, the _marriage relation_ was instituted by God, and he
made it indissoluble. "What God hath joined together let not man put
asunder," is the language of "holy writ;" and whoever, for any cause
which God himself has not specified, breaks up this relation, encroaches
upon God's prerogative, and goes directly in face of his positive
commands. Much has been said of late, seriously, sarcastically, and
contemptuously, about a "higher law;" but notwithstanding the improper
use often made of that term, there is an important sense in which you,
and I, and every Christian recognize what that term implies. If, on any
subject whatever, human enactments do obviously conflict with the
enactments of God, then God's law is the "_higher_," and must be obeyed.
To deny this is worse than infidelity.

Now, brother, does not the system of slavery in the United States
tolerate, and even authorize, the forcible rending asunder of the
marriage tie? Are not husbands, not seldom, but often, sold from their
wives, and wives from their husbands, and new matrimonial alliances
formed by them, with consent and encouragement of their masters? Thus
is flagrant adultery sanctioned in nearly one half of the States of this
Christian Republic, and in some cases the crime is almost, if not quite,
forced upon the wretched perpetrators of it. When God's law is
disregarded, and an ordinance on which depends all we hold dear in
social and Christian life is trampled in the dust by an institution
existing in the midst of us, what shall we say? If slavery were a
question merely of expediency, political economy, or even personal wrong
and suffering, it would be easier to keep silence; but when God is
dishonored, and gross sin sanctioned by law, is it not the duty of his
children, North and South, to enter their solemn, earnest, decided
protestations? You will agree with me, that no Christian can or ought to
acquiesce in what, either directly or indirectly, violates a positive
divine precept; and against what shall he remonstrate, if not against a
system that encourages polygamy and legalizes adultery?[G]

There is another view in which the operation of the system of slavery;
in breaking up families, has affected my mind powerfully and painfully.
Parents sustain most important relations to their children, as well as
to each other. Who can be so much interested in the temporal and eternal
well-being of the child as those by whose instrumentality he had his
existence? Who has so much influence over him, or who could direct his
feet in the way he should go, so well? God has imposed upon all parents
most important duties, which they may not neglect. These duties are as
truly incumbent on the slave-parent as on the master who sustains the
same relation. It may be, indeed, extensively true that he does not
understand them, and is in a great measure incompetent to discharge
them; and that often the child suffers nothing morally or intellectually
by being removed from his influence. But this results in a great measure
from the hopeless ignorance in which the parent is involved. There are,
however, as you can bear witness, multitudes of exceptions. In how many
cases are slave-parents truly pious and intelligent, and feel as much
solicitude for the eternal interests of their children, as you do for
yours, and pray with them as frequently and as fervently. With how much
pleasure did you and I listen to your "Jamie," one time when we were
taking an evening stroll past his cabin, and overheard his family
prayer. With what simplicity and earnestness did he pour out his soul to
God for the salvation of his "dear children." And do you not remember,
too, how with equal importunity he prayed God to "bless dear kind Massa
and Missus, and dere precious children, and also Massa's friend, and dat
all may meet to praise Jesus togedder in heaven," and how we found it
difficult to speak for a minute or two, and how the big tear-drops stood
in our eyes, and we couldn't help it?

You told me there were a great many "Jamies" at the South, and I have no
doubt of it; they love their little ones as well, and who so competent
to train them up for Christ? Who will presume to step in between these
parents and their children and say, this family altar shall be broken
down, and those who have bowed around it shall be separated, to meet no
more till they meet at the judgment? Who will peril his own soul by
taking those children away from such an influence, and for a pecuniary
consideration cast them upon the wide world with none to instruct them,
and none to care or pray for them, except their heart-broken parents
whom they have left behind? I would not do it, neither would you, for
the wealth of the world; and yet, is it not often done? In speaking of
this subject, one of the most eminent southern divines[H] uses the
following language: "Slavery, as it exists among us, sets up between
parents and their children an authority higher than the impulse of
nature and the laws of God; 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 outraging all decency and justice." I
shall refer to the sentiments of this brother again.

I remain as ever,

Affectionately yours, etc.




LETTER VII.

THE CROWNING EVIL OF SLAVERY.--PRECIOUSNESS OF THE BIBLE.--OUR
CHART AND COMPASS ON LIFE'S VOYAGE INDISPENSABLE.--ORAL
INSTRUCTIONS INSUFFICIENT.--DANGERS.--SHIPWRECK ALMOST
INEVITABLE.--WITHHELD FROM THE SLAVE.--SHUTS MULTITUDES OUT OF
HEAVEN.--AMERICAN BIBLE SOCIETY.--TESTIMONY OF GENERAL
ASSEMBLY.--OF SYNOD OF KENTUCKY.--OF DR. BRECKENRIDGE.


MY DEAR BROTHER,--There is one feature of slavery, fourthly, which gives
me more pain by far than any other, and I may say more than all others
put together, and that is, it imperils the immortal souls of millions of
our fellow-beings by keeping from them the Word of God.

Next to the Saviour, and the Holy Spirit, the most precious gift God has
bestowed on man is the Bible. This volume contains our only perfect rule
of life, and is our only guide to heaven. It teaches us our character
and our destiny; it alone raises the curtain between time and eternity,
and dissipates the darkness that otherwise would forever enshroud the
grave; it reveals to us another state of being, in which we shall be
happy or miserable, ages without end. On this Book alone do we depend
for our knowledge of the way of salvation by Christ. It is here we read
the story of the manger and the cross, and the wonderful plan of
redemption through atoning blood. What could we do without the Bible? It
is of infinitely greater value than houses and lands, silver and gold,
and every earthly good beside. To take from us the Bible, would be like
blotting out the sun in the heavens, and enveloping the universe in the
gloom and darkness of eternal night. Take from me riches, honors,
pleasures, comforts, and even liberty itself; and give me instead
thereof poverty, disgrace, pains, affliction, hunger, cold, nakedness,
and a dungeon; tear me from my friends, bind me with chains, scourge me
with the lash, brand my flesh with hot irons, deprive me of every source
of earthly good, and inflict upon me every kind of bodily and mental
anguish which the utmost refinement of cruelty can invent;--but give me
my Bible--leave me this precious treasure, which is the gift of my
heavenly Father, to teach me his will and guide me to himself. Torture
and destroy my body, if you will, but O! give me facilities for saving
my soul. Turn me not adrift on life's troubled ocean to seek alone a
far distant shore, exposed continually to storms, breakers, hidden
reefs, whirlpools, and shoals, with nothing but a few verbal
instructions to direct my way. If I am to make this fearful voyage, (and
make it I must,) take not from me my chart and compass. Your verbal
directions I shall be likely to forget when I most need them. The
polestar, which you tell me may be my guide, is often for a long time
concealed by impenetrable clouds. There are fearful maelstroms, near the
verge of whose deceptive and destructive circles my course lies, and ere
I am aware of it I shall have passed the fatal line, from which no
voyager returns. Between me and my desired haven there is a "hell-gate,"
where are sunken rocks and conflicting currents, and amid all these
complicated dangers my frail bark will make shipwreck, without my chart
and compass. Deprived of these, I cannot keep my reckoning, I cannot
shape my course, I cannot find my haven.

I need not tell you, my dear brother, that it is a part of the
slaveholding policy to take from thousands and millions of immortal
beings in our nominally Christian land, this precious chart and
compass,--the Bible, the only safe guide to heaven. I have often heard
you speak of it, and deplore it. Those severe laws which forbid
teaching the slave to read, do virtually take from him the Bible,--his
directory to the New Jerusalem. You may, indeed, give him oral
instruction, and in many instances, no doubt, they are blessed to his
conversion; but how utterly inadequate are they to his spiritual wants,
how imperfect are they at best, and in how many thousands of cases are
even these entirely wanting. Every enlightened and intelligent Christian
knows, from his own experience, how hard it is to enter the "strait
gate," and to keep in the "narrow way," and how needful to him are all
the helps within his reach, and then he is but "scarcely saved." What
hope is there, then, for the poor slave, who is deprived, not only of
most of the ordinary and extraordinary means of grace which we enjoy,
but is forbidden the printed Word of God? Is not a fearful
responsibility incurred by those who, for any reason, stand between God
and his children, and intercept those messages of grace and mercy which
are contained in the Holy Scriptures?

That noble institution, the American Bible Society, is multiplying
copies of the sacred Word by thousands and hundreds of thousands, and
scattering them over the land and the world; it hesitates not to thrust
them into the hands of the followers of the false prophet,--the deluded
followers of the man of sin,--the disciples of Confucius and
Zoroaster,--the worshippers of Juggernaut and Vishnoo, and the degraded
inhabitants of the South Seas and Caffraria;--it benevolently resolves
to put a copy of the Bible into the dwelling of every white family in
these United States; but it is obliged by law to pass by the cabin of
the slave, and leave more than three millions of immortal beings to find
the road to heaven the best way they can.

My brother, I cannot think of these things without the deepest grief,
and I know that you fully sympathize with me; but it is some consolation
to believe that the great mass of evangelical Christians take the same
views of the wrongs inflicted upon the slave that we do, for it is to
the Christian sentiment of this country that we must look for the
removal of them.

Our brethren of the Presbyterian church have borne their testimony most
fully and pointedly against the evils of slavery which we have been
considering. You doubtless recollect the action of the General Assembly
on this subject in 1818. A committee was appointed, to whom was referred
certain resolutions on the subject of selling a slave,--a member of the
church,--and which was directed to prepare a report to be adopted by
the Assembly, expressing their opinion in general on the subject of
slavery. The report of this committee was unanimously adopted, and
ordered to be published. It is, in part, as follows:--

"The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, having taken into
consideration the subject of slavery, think proper to make known their
sentiments upon it to the churches.

"We consider the voluntary enslaving of the one part of the human race
by another, as a gross violation of the most precious and sacred rights
of human nature; as utterly inconsistent with the law of God, which
requires us to love our neighbors as ourselves; and as totally
irreconcilable with the spirit and principles of the gospel of Christ,
which enjoins that all things 'whatsoever ye would that men should do to
you, do ye even so to them.' Slavery creates a paradox in the moral
system; it exhibits rational, accountable, and immortal beings in such
circumstances as scarcely to leave them the power of moral action. It
exhibits them as dependent on the will of others, whether they shall
receive religious instruction; whether they shall know and worship the
true God; whether they shall enjoy the ordinances of the gospel; whether
they shall perform the duties and cherish the endearments of husbands
and wives, parents and children, neighbors and friends; whether they
shall preserve their chastity and purity, or regard the dictates of
justice and humanity.

"Such are some of the consequences of slavery,--consequences, not
imaginary, but which connect themselves with its very existence. The
evils to which the slave is always exposed often take place in fact, and
in their very worst degree and form, and where all of them do not take
place, as we rejoice to say that in many instances, through the
influence of the principles of humanity and religion on the minds of
masters, they do not, still the slave is deprived of his natural right,
degraded as a human being, and exposed to the danger of passing into the
hands of a master who may inflict upon him all the hardships which
inhumanity and avarice may suggest."

An Address from the Synod of Kentucky, in 1835, to the Presbyterians of
that State, is much more specific in its delineations of the evils of
slavery, and in its denunciations of the system, and adopts language far
more severe than many northern Christians would think it expedient to
use. It presents a picture of its actual workings which could be drawn
only by one who had seen the original. If you have not read this
address, I beg that you will do so. It is altogether a southern
document. I have room only for a short extract.

Slavery is characterized as "a demoralizing and cruel system, which it
would be an insult to God to imagine that he does not abhor; a system
which exhibits power without responsibility, toil without recompense,
life without liberty, law without justice, wrongs without redress,
infamy without crime, punishment without guilt, and families without
marriage; a system which will not only make victims of the present
unhappy generation, inflicting upon them the degradation, the contempt,
the lassitude, and the anguish of hopeless oppression; but which even
aims at transmitting this heritage of injury and woe to their children
and their children's children, down to their latest posterity. Can any
Christian contemplate, without trembling, his own agency in the
perpetuation of such a system?"

Coincident with the judgment of these two most respectable and revered
ecclesiastical bodies is the testimony of one of the most prominent and
honored sons of the southern church, the Rev. Dr. R. L Breckenridge.
Says he:--

"What then is slavery? for the question relates to the action of certain
principles of it, and to its probable and proper results; 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, are allowed such power over
another portion called slaves, as----

"1. To deprive them of the entire earnings of their own labor, except so
much as is necessary to continue labor itself by continuing healthful
existence: thus committing clear robbery.

"2. 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.

"3. To deprive them of the means and opportunities of moral and
intellectual culture, in many States making it a high penal offence to
teach them to read, thus perpetuating whatever of evil there is that
proceeds from ignorance.

"4. To set up between parents and their children an authority higher
than the impulse 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."

Yes, such is the nature and character of an institution in this
enlightened Christian republic, claiming to be the freest nation on
earth, calling itself "an asylum for the oppressed," inviting the
downtrodden subjects of all the despots of the old world to come to this
happy land, and place themselves under the protection of the American
eagle, and in this "eyrie of the free" taste and enjoy the sweets of
liberty!

The views presented in the above extracts may be taken, it is to be
presumed, as an exponent of the southern Christian sentiment on domestic
slavery. There are, indeed, exceptions. It is painful to notice that
within a few years some men of reputed piety and worth have been
attempting to maintain that American slavery is a "divine and
patriarchal institution," "sanctioned by the Bible,"--is "necessary to
the highest state of society," and is "to be perpetuated;" but I am
happy to believe that the number of those who hold such views,
repudiating those of the Presbyterian church, and at the same time call
themselves disciples of Him who said, "whatsoever ye would that men
should do to you, do ye even so to them," is comparatively small.

I close this long letter by subscribing myself, as ever,

Your affectionate

Friend and Brother.




LETTER VIII.

THREE QUESTIONS SUGGESTED.--1. MUST SLAVERY BE PERPETUAL?--2. DOES
THE CHURCH OF CHRIST SUSTAIN ANY RESPONSIBILITY IN THIS MATTER?--3.
WHAT SHALL WE DO?


MY DEAR CHRISTIAN FRIEND,--I fear I shall make myself tedious to you by
dwelling so long upon this, to me, painful subject,--slavery. I will,
therefore, in the present letter, finish what I have to say for the
present, hoping that our future correspondence may be on more grateful
themes.

There are a few questions which are suggested to us by the brief view we
have taken of this most important subject. The first is, Must slavery,
with all its attendant evils, be perpetuated? Must this blot rest upon
our beloved country, and tarnish its escutcheon forever? I am persuaded
that the spontaneous answer from the Christian heart of this nation is,
_No!_ It was never contemplated by Washington nor Jefferson nor Adams,
nor by the framers of our Constitution, nor by the great mass of noble
patriots who perilled their all for the independence of their country,
that slavery was to be handed down to posterity. If you will look at the
writings of the leading public men of the last century, you will find,
that, almost without exception, they looked upon slavery in the United
States as a temporary evil, to be removed as soon as circumstances would
permit. They regarded it not only a wrong inflicted upon the slave, but
an incubus upon the nation, soon to pass away.

The great body of Christians in our land have been looking forward to
the time, and praying for its arrival, when all the oppressed within our
borders shall go free. That the time will come when slavery shall cease
in our land, I as fully believe as I believe that there is a God who
presides over and directs the destinies of men. You and I may not live
to see the day; but it will come.

Another question suggested is, Does the church of Christ in this country
sustain any responsibility in regard to slavery, and has she any duty to
discharge in relation to it? By the church of Christ, I mean the great
mass of Christians of every name who love the Lord Jesus in sincerity,
both North and South.

This question is easily answered. There are no evils existing in the
Christian's field of labor--the world--in regard to which he has not
some responsibility, and for the removal of which he is not bound to do
something. As a general truth, the nearer the evils come to our own
firesides and bosoms, the weightier those responsibilities become. The
hundreds of millions of heathens in foreign lands lying in sin and
degradation appeal to our sympathy and efforts, and that appeal we may
not disregard. But the heathen in our own land have on us much stronger
claims, and our obligations to put forth efforts in their behalf are
more imperious.

Slavery is a great evil and sin, which affects not only individuals, but
our country; and, both as Christians and patriots, we ought to be
sensibly alive to every thing that affects our common weal. You who live
at the South, it may be, have more responsibility in this matter than we
at the North; but none of us can say, "because I am not personally
implicated in inflicting wrongs upon the slave, therefore I have nothing
to do for their removal." Should this become the universal sentiment of
the church, Satan's kingdom in our world would never come to an end, and
wickedness would prevail forever. The spirit of Christianity, although
preëminently mild, gentle, patient, and long-suffering, is nevertheless,
in an important sense, aggressive. It has ever claimed the right of
interesting itself in the welfare of every human creature--to exert its
influence to check the progress of sin in every form--to attack error in
principle and in practice--to "loose the bands of wickedness,"--"undo
heavy burdens,"--"break every yoke,"--"deliver the poor and needy,"--and
to "remember them that are in bonds as bound with them." This, by some,
may be called officiousness, but we cannot help it; it is a part of the
Christian's legitimate business to volunteer his influence and his
services (in every proper way) in opposing wrong, and to stand up and
plead the cause of those who suffer it the world over. He cannot refrain
from doing so, without proving himself false to his Master and his
Master's cause.

Admitting, then, that all Christians have some kind of responsibility
and duty devolving on them, a most important question comes up. Thirdly,
what shall they do? There are certainly some things which it is
perfectly evident we should not do,--though we should rebuke this and
every sin, we should not give vent to our hatred of the system in
ebullitions of wrath, invective, and abuse toward slaveholders. Thus did
not Christ nor his apostles. This is not in accordance with the
Christian spirit, and could be productive only of evil.

Neither should we endeavor to exert an influence over the slaves to make
them restive and disobedient; none but an enemy to the true interests,
both of the slave and his country, would do that, unless under some
hallucination.

Neither should we interfere politically with slavery beyond the
boundaries of our own State, in States where it now exists by the laws
of the land. I might go on indefinitely, and specify what we should not
do; but this does not meet the case;--what shall we do? It would be
arrogance in me to attempt a full answer to a question that has engaged
the attention of many abler heads and better hearts than mine, but there
are some things which have already been said by others, that cannot be
too frequently repeated.

In the first place, we can commit this whole matter to God in humble,
earnest prayer. Here is something which we can all do, North and South,
and in which we shall all be agreed. However much we may differ in
regard to the safety and expediency of other measures to moderate the
condition of the slave and bring about his ultimate emancipation, we are
of one mind in regard to the safety and efficacy of prayer. One effect
of this will be to unite our own hearts more closely in sympathy and
love. There will be no danger of calling each other hard names, bandying
unchristian epithets, and biting and devouring one another, if we are in
the habit of meeting daily at the throne of grace to pray for a cause in
which we take a mutual interest.

By prayer we may hope to be enlightened more fully in regard to our
duty. "If any man lack wisdom," and surely we all do on this subject,
"let him ask of God."

In answer to prayer, we have reason to hope that God will open the eyes
to teach the hearts of all slaveholders, and lead them to "do justly and
love mercy," and also that he will, in his holy and wise Providence,
redress the wrongs of his oppressed children, and prepare the way for
their ultimate emancipation.

Prayer is the Christian's first and last resort. Let us, then, my dear
brother, pray over this subject continuously, and with an earnestness
commensurate with its importance, and then, I doubt not, we shall
ourselves be more enlightened than we now are as to our future course.

A second duty, hardly less obvious than prayer, is to use all the
influence we possess to prevent the extension of the domain of slavery.
To this end, we should utter our voices long and loud in remonstrance
against any such measure. If we and our legislators may not politically
interfere with slavery in States where it now exists, we may interfere
to prevent it from exerting its baleful influence over territory now
free. We should do many things for the sake of peace and conciliation.
We have heretofore made concessions and compromises--perhaps too
many--on this subject; but here is where the people of God, North and
South, should make a stand, and declare before heaven and earth, and
with an emphasis which cannot be misunderstood, that not another inch of
our public domain shall be cursed with slavery for any consideration
whatever, if our influence can prevent it. In our remonstrances, we will
be respectful, but firm. Let our politicians know that all persons who
are governed by Christian principle, through the length and breadth of
the land, have taken their position, and that the mountains shall be
removed out of their places, ere they will swerve from it, and there
will be but little danger of slave extension.

In the third place, we should use every endeavor to disseminate the
gospel of Christ, and bring its principles to bear upon all classes of
persons, North and South. If we can do this effectually, it is all
sufficient. The Gospel, if faithfully applied, is a sure remedy for
every social and moral evil that ever existed. We at the North should
demonstrate to our slave-holding friends whom we wish to influence, that
we ourselves are governed by its spirit, and actuated by its principle,
in all that we do in relation to this subject. It is not ambition, a
lust for power, sectional jealousy, a spirit of censoriousness or
ill-will, that prompts us to what they have been in the habit of
regarding as intermeddling with their affairs, in which we have no
concern, but a spirit of love,--love not less to them than to their
slaves. And then, in the temper of Christ, we will bring the Gospel to
bear on the slaveholder's conscience and sense of justice. We will hold
up and keep before his mind the great rule of life given by Him who
spake as never man spake,--"Whatsoever ye would that men should do to
you, do you even so to them." Let this rule be once adopted and carried
out, and it is enough. Human beings would no more be sold as beasts in
the market, and driven to unrequited toil; the minds of men would no
longer be kept in ignorance; the domestic circle would never again be
invaded by the hand of sordid avarice separating husbands and wives,
parents and children, doing savage violence to the noblest affections
of our nature; the Bible would be put into the hands of every slave, and
he would be taught to read it; common schools and Sabbath schools would
be everywhere established and maintained, as well for the slave as for
the white child; the master would regard those whom he now holds as
property as his own brethren, going with him to the same judgment, and
destined finally to dwell with him as his equals, in the same heaven,
and to wear as bright crowns and sing as rapturous a song as he. He
would immediately set himself about preparing his slaves for
emancipation, and for the enjoyment of those natural rights, of which
they have for so long a time been most unjustly deprived. In short,
slavery, as the term is now understood, would cease instantly, and a
kind, parental guardianship would take its place, and every southern
plantation would be transformed into a moral garden of beauty and
happiness, and universal and entire emancipation would follow with the
least possible delay. And, finally, we should if possible bring the
Gospel to bear upon the great body politic, upon our presidents, our
governors, our National and State legislators. It would seem that some
of our lawmakers are much better acquainted with Blackstone and Vattel,
than they are with the Lord Jesus Christ, or they would not disgrace
our statute-books with laws which ignore the "higher laws" of God. We
should often remind them that this is a Christian, and not a heathen or
infidel republic; and that every enactment, not consistent with the
gospel of Christ and inalienable human rights, does violence to the
Christian sentiment and Christian conscience of the nation, and must be
repealed. If they will not hear us, we have only to appoint more
faithful servants, who will do as they are told. We have no idea of
"uniting church and state," but to infuse as much of the Gospel into the
state as possible is both a privilege and duty; and when all our affairs
and institutions, public, domestic, and private, are administered on
gospel principles, we shall become a free, prosperous, and happy people,
and not till then.

And now, may God bless you, my dear brother, and guide you, and guide us
all, to pursue such a course in regard to the three and a half millions
of slaves in our professedly free republic as will afford us the most
satisfaction when we meet them as our equals at the judgment-seat of
Christ.

With high esteem and much affection,

I remain your Christian brother,

A. C. BALDWIN.




AN ESSAY,

BY

REV. TIMOTHY WILLISTON.

  IS AMERICAN SLAVERY AN INSTITUTION WHICH CHRISTIANITY
     SANCTIONS, AND WILL PERPETUATE? AND, IN VIEW
       OF THIS SUBJECT, WHAT OUGHT AMERICAN
         CHRISTIANS TO DO, AND REFRAIN
                  FROM DOING?

    Homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto.--TERENCE.
        Bear ye one another's burdens.--PAUL.




ESSAY.


A great moral question is, in this nineteenth century, being tried
before the church of Christ, and at the bar of public sentiment. It is,
Whether the system of servitude known as American slavery be a system
whose perpetuity is compatible with pure Christianity? Whether, with the
Bible in her hand, the church may lawfully indorse, participate in, and
help perpetuate, this system? Or whether, on the other hand, the system
be, in its origin, nature, and workings, intrinsically evil; a thing
which, if, like concubinage and polygamy, God has indeed tolerated in
his church, he never approved of; and which, in the progress of a pure
Christianity, must inevitably become extinct? I feel assured that the
latter of these propositions will, without argument, command the assent
of the mass of living Christians. But there are those in the church who
array themselves on the other side. While they would not justify the
least inhumanity in the treatment of slaves, they profess to believe
that slavery itself has the approbation of Jehovah, and may with
propriety be perpetuated in the church and the world. At their hands I
would respectfully solicit a patient hearing, while I proceed to assign
several reasons for differing with them in opinion.

First. Slavery is a condition of society not founded in nature. When
God, in his Word, demands that children shall be in subordination to
their parents, and citizens to the constituted civil authorities, we
need no why and wherefore to enable us to see the reasonableness of
these requirements. We feel that they are no arbitrary enactments, but
indispensable to the best interests of families and of society, and
therefore founded in nature. We are prepared, too, from their obvious
necessity and utility, to rank them among the permanent statutes of the
Divine Legislator. But can as much be said of slavery? Is there such an
obvious fitness and utility in one man's being, against his will, owned
and controlled by another, as to prepare us to say that such an
ownership is founded in the very constitution of things? None will
pretend that there is. Not only is slavery not founded in nature, but,

Second. It is condemned by the very instincts of our moral constitution.
These instincts seem to whisper that "all men are born free and equal;"
equal, not in intellect, or in the petty distinctions of parentage,
property, or power; but having, as the creatures of one God, an equal
right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Job's moral
instincts taught him, that the fact of all men's having one and the same
Creator gave his servants a right to contend with him, when wronged; and
that, if he "despised their cause," he must answer it to his God and
theirs. That men of all races and grades are essentially equal before
God; that every man has a right to himself, to the fruits of his toil,
and to the unmolested pursuit of happiness, in all lawful ways; and
hence, that slavery, as existing in these States, is a gigantic system
of evil and wrong,--are truths which the moral sense of men is
everywhere proclaiming with much emphasis and distinctness. If it be not
so, what means this note of remonstrance, long and loud, that comes to
our ears over the Atlantic wave? Why else did a Mohammedan prince,[I]
(to say nothing of what nearly all Christian governments have done,)
put an end to slavery in his dominions before he died? And how else
shall we account for that moral earthquake which has for years been
rocking this great republic to its very centre? One cannot thoughtfully
observe the signs of the times,--no, nor the workings of his own heart,
methinks,--without perceiving that slavery is at war with the moral
sense of mankind. If there be any conscience that approves, it must be a
conscience perverted by wrong instruction, or by a vicious practice. And
can that be a good institution, and worthy of perpetuity, which an
unperverted conscience instinctively condemns?

Third. The bad character of slavery becomes yet more apparent, if we
consider the manner in which it has chiefly originated and been
sustained. Did God institute the relation of master and slave, as he did
the conjugal and parental relations? It is not pretended. In what, then,
did slavery have its beginning? Doubtless the first slaves were
captives, taken in war. In primitive ages, the victors in war were
considered as having a right to do what they pleased with their
captives; and so it sometimes happened that they were put to death, and
sometimes that they were made to serve their captors as bondmen. Thus
slavery was at first the incidental result of war. But as time rolled
on, the love of power and of gain prompted men to make aggressions on
their weaker neighbors, for the very purpose of enslaving them; and,
eventually, man-stealing and the slave-trade became familiar facts in
the world's history. Upon these has slavery, for centuries past,
depended mainly for its continuance. And, although these feeders of
slavery are now by Christian nations branded as piracy and strictly
vetoed, they are far from being exterminated. Indeed, it seems to be
well understood, that, if all commerce in slaves, foreign and domestic,
ceases, slavery itself must soon become extinct.

Now if man-stealing be an act which the Word of God and the moral
instincts of men do most pointedly condemn,--and I will attempt no
demonstration of this here,--what shall we say of that which is its
legitimate offspring and dependant? Far be it from me to affirm, that,
circumstanced as our southern brethren are, it is just as criminal for
them to hold slaves as it would be to go now to Africa and forcibly
seize them. But, in the spirit of love, I would ask my slave-holding
brother, Can that be a justifiable institution, and deserving to be
upheld, which has so bad a parentage? "Do men gather grapes of thorns?"
"Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?"

Fourth. There are, in the Scriptures, many clear indications that
slavery has not the approbation of God, and hence has not the stamp of
perpetuity upon it. Under this head, let us notice several distinct
particulars.

1. Had God regarded servitude as a good thing, he would not, in
authoritatively predicting its existence, have said, "Cursed be Canaan;
a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren." What God visits
men with as a curse cannot be intrinsically good and beneficial.

2. The judgments with which God visited Egypt and her proud monarch, for
refusing to emancipate the Israelites, and for essaying to recapture
them, when let go, and the wages which he caused his people, when
released, to receive for their hitherto unrequited tolls, clearly evince
that he has no complacency in compulsory, unrewarded servitude.

3. The same thing is indicated by the fact that God has, by statute,
provided expressly for the protection and freedom of an escaped slave;
but not for the recovery of such a fugitive by his master. "Thou shalt
not deliver unto his master, the servant which is escaped from his
master unto thee: he shall dwell with thee, even among you in that place
which he shall choose.... Thou shalt not oppress him." Now be it, if
you will, that this statute had reference only to servants who should
escape into the land of Israel from Gentile masters; does it not
indicate a strong bias, in the mind of God, to the side of freedom,
rather than that of slavery? And does it not establish the point, that,
in God's estimation, one man cannot rightfully be deemed the property of
another man? Were it otherwise, would not the Jew have been required to
restore a runaway to his pursuing master, just as he was to restore any
other lost thing which its owner should come in search of? Or, to say
the least, would not the Israelites have been allowed to reduce to
servitude among themselves the escaped slave of a heathen master? But
how unlike all this are the actual requirements of the statute. God's
people must neither deliver up the fugitive nor enslave him themselves;
but allow him to dwell among them as a FREEMAN, just "where it liketh
him best." And, in this connection, how significant a fact is it, that
the Bible nowhere empowers the master from whom a slave had escaped to
pursue, seize, and drag back to bondage that escaped slave.

4. That which constitutes the grand fountain of slavery,--the forcible,
stealthy seizure of a man, for the purpose of holding or selling him as
a slave,--was, under the Mosaic dispensation, punishable with death;
and is, in the New Testament, named in connection with the most heinous
crimes. "He that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he be found in
his hand, he shall surely be put to death." What could more forcibly
exhibit God's disapprobation of one of the distinctive features of
slavery,--compulsion? What more impressively show the value that he puts
upon a man's personal independence,--his right to himself? Now if God
doomed that man to die a felon's death who should steal and sell a
fellow man, can it be that he would hold him guiltless who should buy
the stolen man, knowing him to have been stolen? God's people were,
indeed, allowed to "buy bondmen and bondmaids" of the strangers that
dwelt among them, and of the surrounding heathen. But were they ever
allowed to buy persons whom they knew to have been unlawfully obtained,
and offered for sale in manifest opposition to their own wishes? If they
were not,--and, from the statute just referred to, it seems certain that
they were not,--does American slavery derive countenance from that which
was tolerated in the Jewish church and nation? True, the slaves now held
as such among us were not themselves feloniously seized on a foreign
soil, torn away from kindred, homes, and country, and sold into hopeless
bondage in a strange land; but their sires and grandsires were.
Man-stealing is confessedly the stock out of which has sprung, and grown
to its present dimensions, the vast and overshadowing Upas of American
slavery; and if the Bible brands that stock as pestiferous, must not the
entire tree partake of the noxious influence? Again: if, as competent
critics assert, the popular sense of the word rendered "men-stealers,"
in 1 Tim. i. 10, be "those who deal in men--literally, slave-traders,"
then trafficking in slaves for mercenary ends is, by Paul, ranked among
vices the most abominable; and American slavery is, if possible, more
pointedly condemned by that passage than by the statute found in Ex.
xxi. 16. For who does not know that trading in "the persons of men" has
ever been, and yet is, a main pillar in the fabric of slavery? Indeed,
man-stealing and slave-trading are to slave-holding precisely what the
business of the distiller and of the vendor is to the vice of
intemperance. There is, in either case, a trio of associated evils; and
it is difficult to say which member of either trio is the most repulsive
and harmful.

If, now, it be objected to this argument from the Bible, that the Mosaic
institutes expressly recognize such a thing as involuntary servitude,
and prescribe rules for its regulation, I answer: true, but the
servitude thus recognized and regulated by statute was of a far milder
type than that which is legalized in these American States. For, 1. It
allowed the bondman a large amount of leisure, or time which he need not
devote to his master's service; 2. It made it possible for him to
accumulate a considerable amount of property; 3. It placed him on a
perfect level with his master, in regard to religious privileges; 4. It
gave him his freedom whenever he should be so chastised as to result in
permanent injury to his person: thus operating as a powerful preventive
of inhumanity in chastising; 5. It respected the sanctity of the
conjugal and parental relations, when existing among bondmen, and did
not authorize a compulsory severing of family ties; 6. It made no
provision for the sale of a servant by his Jewish master, nor for any
such domestic commerce in the persons of men as is practised in the
southern States of this Union; 7. It provided for the periodical
emancipation of all that were in bondage; thus aiming a fatal blow at
the very existence of servitude in the Hebrew commonwealth. I may not,
consistently with the necessary brevity of a tract designed for popular
perusal, go into any demonstration of the facts above asserted. For
proof that they are facts, let my readers studiously examine the Mosaic
books, and the Rev. A. Barnes's "Inquiry into the Scriptural Views of
Slavery." I see not how any candid and discriminating investigator can
help being convinced that the servitude which was temporarily tolerated
in the Jewish church, was, in numerous respects, very unlike to that
which exists among us, and far less repulsive.

But suppose, for argument's sake, it had been just as repulsive a system
as ours, would the fact of its having been tolerated under the Jewish
economy prove it to be intrinsically good, and worthy of being
perpetuated? Then, by parity of reasoning, the good men of ancient times
might safely have concluded that certain other practices were good and
would endure, which we know were not good, and were not to last. Had the
question been propounded in Abraham's or in David's day, whether
polygamy and concubinage were approved of God, and would be perpetuated
in the church, it is probable that even the saints of those periods
would have responded affirmatively. The fact that God had so long
allowed his people to practise these things unrebuked, might, to them,
have seemed sufficient proof that these practices were intrinsically
proper, and were to rank among the permanent fixtures of human society.
But were Abraham and David now on the earth, with what changed feelings
would they regard the cast-off system of concubinage and a plurality of
wives. Again: suppose the conjecture had been hazarded, three thousand
years ago, that woman, from being a menial drudge, or a mere medium of
bestial indulgence, would one day occupy the dignified position to which
Christianity has actually lifted her, would not incredulity have lurked
in every heart, and found expression on every tongue? Now there are
plain indications, not only in the Word, but the providences of God,
that he never regarded slavery with complacency, any more than he did
polygamy, concubinage, or the serfdom of woman; and that he never
designed its perpetuity. Scrutinizing that Word and those providences,
one needs no prophetic ken to enable him to predict with certainty,
that, when Christ's millennial reign is ushered in, contraband will be
inscribed on slavery, as it already has been on some other evils that
were once tolerated, not only in society, but in the church of God.

But I shall be reminded here, that, when the apostles were disseminating
Christianity in the Roman empire, there prevailed throughout that empire
a system of slavery more odious and oppressive than ours; and yet that
both slaveholders and slaves were converted and admitted to the church,
without its affecting the relation of master and slave; that the New
Testament instructs the parties how to demean themselves in that
relation, but nowhere enjoins emancipation on the master, or encourages
absconding or non-submission in the slave; in short, that it nowhere
expressly condemns slavery, or intimates that its extermination was to
be expected or desired. In reply to this, I would say,--

(1.) To infer, because the New Testament enjoins obedience on slaves,
and makes no direct attack on the institution of slavery, that it
therefore sanctions the institution, and would have it perpetuated, is
as much a _non sequitur_ as to infer, because God enjoins on men
subjection to existing civil authorities, whatever may be their
character, that he as much approves of a despotic as of a constitutional
government,--of the government of Ferdinand of Naples as of that of
Victoria of England. Nor is it more difficult to comprehend why God has,
in the Scriptures, made no direct assault on slavery, than it is to see
why He has not directly assailed governmental despotisms, or expressed
any preference for one form of government over another. An obvious and
far-seeing wisdom is discernible in this, which it behooves us to
admire, and not unfrequently to imitate. Had the apostles or the
Scriptures openly denounced all absolutism, whether civil or domestic,
it would have aroused unnecessary prejudice and opposition, and diverted
the attention of men from the grand object aimed at in giving the world
a written and preached gospel. God deemed it wiser to reach these evils
through the slow but sure progress of certain great principles laid down
in his Word, than through the medium of specific prohibitions.

(2.) The fact that the apostles received into the church converts who
not only held slaves, but held them under a slave-system that was
awfully despotic, was no indorsement on their part of that odious
system, nor even of the slightest inhumanity on the part of a master
towards his slaves. It does, indeed, prove that a man may be a
Christian, without ceasing to be a slaveholder in form; but not that a
master may indulge in all the legal barbarities of the system, and yet
be a Christian. Merely to sustain the relation of a Christian master for
the good of the slave, or from the necessity of the case, is one thing,
while to advocate and defend this chattel system, and hold in bondage
fellow human beings for personal and selfish ends, is quite another
thing. Nowhere do the Scriptures countenance, or even wink at, the least
degree of inhumanity or injustice in the treatment of servants. So far
from this, they expressly enjoin it on masters to "give unto their
servants that which is just and equal," all the law of disinterested
love would require; accompanying the injunction with the significant
hint, that they themselves have a Master, and that with him there is "no
respect of persons."

(3.) Though the Scriptures do not directly assail the system of slavery,
they indirectly and obviously condemn it, and that very abundantly.
Slavery is indirectly and yet strongly rebuked in such passages of
Scripture as the following: "Wo unto him that ... useth his neighbor's
service without wages." "Is not this the fast that I have chosen, ... to
undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye
break every yoke?" "What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do
justly, and to love mercy?" ... "Have we not all one Father? Hath not
one God created us?" ... "And hath made of one blood all nations of men,
for to dwell on all the face of the earth; ... that they should seek the
Lord." ... "God is no respecter of persons." "The people of the land
have used oppression, ... therefore have I poured out mine indignation
upon them." ... "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." "Therefore,
all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so
to them." It needs no unusual acuteness to see, that, were the spirit of
these and kindred passages (for numerous others of the sort might have
been cited) everywhere acted out, slavery would as readily vanish, as do
the icebergs of the North, if perchance they float away into milder
latitudes.

Fifth. To the four reasons already assigned for thinking that slavery
has not God's approbation, and ought not to be perpetuated, I will add
but one more,--its baleful effects. (1). As it respects worldly thrift,
or pecuniary prosperity. It is a fact, that slavery exerts a depressing
influence on the business welfare of any community where it prevails;
and that, other things being equal, slaveholding States can never
compete with free ones in the item of financial prosperity. A necessary
brevity forbids my pointing out the causes of this fact; but my readers
will, without my aid, readily ascertain what they are. Suffice it to
say, it has become a settled maxim of political economy, that there
exists an antagonism between slavery and the highest business prosperity
of any people that tolerates it; and the southern States of this Union
furnish abundant confirmation of its truth. (2.) I will name but one
other thing,--its baneful influence on character and morals. That
slavery tends to debase the character and morals of the slaves will
scarcely be questioned. Apart from the ignorance naturally resulting
from their condition, that condition powerfully tends to render them
sensual, indolent, artful, mendacious, stealthful, and revengeful. But
is the bad moral tendency of the institution limited to the bondmen?
Exerts it no corrupting influence on the hearts, the habits, and morals
of the masters? Is it not its legitimate tendency to foster in them such
vices as indolence, effeminacy, licentiousness, covetousness,
inhumanity, haughtiness, and a supreme regard for self? Of course, I do
not affirm that it uniformly produces these sad effects on the character
of masters. So far from this, there may doubtless be found slaveholders,
who, in all that adorns and ennobles human character, will compare
favorably with the very best men at the North. I think it will be
conceded, however, that the legitimate tendency is to evil, and that the
effects of slavery on the character of its sustainers are, in the main,
disastrous; and that the depreciated state of morals prevailing where
slavery exists is mainly attributable to this as its source. I need not
here enter into detail. Facts are too well known to make this
necessary.

Thus have we contemplated several distinct reasons for believing that
slavery is no good thing,--has not the sanction of Jehovah,--and cannot
with propriety be perpetuated. Its contrariety to nature,--its
antagonism to the moral sense of mankind,--its disgraceful parentage and
manner of support,--its condemnation by the Bible,--and its disastrous
influence on financial prosperity, on character, and on public
morals,--all proclaim that slavery, so far from being a good thing, is a
tremendous curse; yea, more, that it is a stupendous wrong; and hence,
that it should be tolerated in the church of Christ no longer than the
best interests of all concerned may render necessary for a safe
termination.

But it may be, after all, that I have failed to secure the assent of
some of my southern brethren to the justness of the foregoing positions
and inferences. It may be that they still regard the system of bondage
prevailing in their midst as in the main beneficial, defensible from the
Bible, and, with some modifications perhaps, worthy of perpetuity. Well,
brethren, suppose you do thus regard it; and for argument's sake
suppose, too, that you may possibly be right,--that slave-holding may be
in itself the harmless thing which you deem it; ought you not
cheerfully to abandon it, in obedience to a great Bible
principle,--that of refraining from things which are in themselves
lawful, or which your conscience may not condemn, out of regard to the
conscience of aggrieved Christian brethren, or to the prejudices of
those whose salvation you would not obstruct? You are aware, brethren,
that this magnanimous principle Paul both inculcated and exemplified.
You are also aware that a large majority of the Christians now living
regard your cherished institution as unjustifiable, and at variance with
the spirit of Christianity; and, so regarding it, they long for its
extinction, and are grieved with you for cleaving to it so tenaciously,
and refusing to concert measures for its ultimate overthrow. Indeed,
they are more than grieved; they are profoundly agitated by the fresh
developments of the iniquitous system which you are helping to uphold;
and there seems no prospect, while that system endures, of their
becoming tranquillized. A tempest has sprung up and is raging in the
church of Christ,--to say nothing of the civilized world,--which seems
not likely to cease till its cause be removed; and slavery is that
cause. Now I put it to you, brethren, if here be not an opportunity of
exemplifying, on a broad scale, the self-denying and noble principle
which Paul indicates in the words, "All things are lawful for me, but
all things are not expedient;" "Eat not for his sake that shewed it, and
for conscience' sake: ... conscience, I say, not thine own, but of the
other;" "Though I be free from all men, yet have I made myself servant
unto all, that I might gain the more." Have it, if you will, that the
brethren for whose sake you are asked to make this sacrifice are weak
brethren, and their consciences weak. Your obligation to make it is none
the less on that account; for the principle just adverted to
contemplates cases of this very sort. Since the practice which grieves
these weak brethren is one that you can probably abandon without
wounding your own conscience, are you at liberty to undervalue their
conscience by persisting in that which grieves them?

But how much weightier does this argument become, when it is remembered
that the opposers of slavery, besides being exceedingly numerous, have,
many of them, been eminent,--not merely for a conscientious piety, but
for talent, for research, for scholarship, for broad and comprehensive
views of things;--and that the list embraces distinguished southern, as
well as northern men; and men of celebrity in both church and state.
There have been found in the anti-slavery ranks, presidents and noble
men, jurists and legislators, statesmen and divines, scholars and
authors, poets and orators. And, still further to enhance the dignity of
the cause, it should be remembered that several General Assemblies of
the Presbyterian Church of the United States, together with numerous
lesser ecclesiastical bodies, have lifted up their voice in opposition
to slavery, and proclaimed substantially the same views which this
humble Essay has aimed to exhibit. Now if, as we have seen, a
deferential regard should be had to the conscience of aggrieved
Christian brethren, even when they are few and feeble-minded, how much
more, when the aggrieved ones are counted in hundreds of thousands? when
theirs is an intelligent piety and an enlightened conscience? and when,
too, their remonstrance is backed up by a public sentiment that is
wellnigh unanimous through all christendom?

If now, in spite of all these considerations, I still have readers that
say in their hearts, slavery must be perpetuated, they will pardon me
for lingering no longer in the hope of changing their views. I would be
indulged, however, in one parting interrogation. Has it never occurred
to you, brethren, that yours is, on some accounts, a very unfavorable
stand-point from which to form just and disinterested views of slavery;
and that your very position as slave-holders, and your long familiarity
with the system and its evils, may have blinded you to the magnitude of
those evils, and to the great desirableness of their being removed? May
it not be that long use, and self-interest, and the love of power and
ease, have conspired to warp your judgment, blunt your sensibilities,
and cause you to view slavery through a deceptive medium?

Having, as I hope, the cordial assent of the great mass of my readers,
northern and southern, to the foregoing argument against slavery and its
perpetuity, we are now prepared to advance to the last great division of
our subject, and to inquire: What are the duties, positive and negative,
which this subject imposes on American Christians? What does it demand
that we, as Christians, should do, and refrain from doing? This question
subdivides itself thus: What ought we northern and professedly
anti-slavery Christians to do, and not do? And, next, What duties,
positive and negative, does the question devolve on professing
Christians in the slave-holding States?

I. We are to consider what we, the northern and avowedly anti-slavery
section of the American church, ought, in view of this subject, both to
do, and refrain from doing. In reply to the question, What ought we to
do? I would say,--

1. It is not only our right, but duty, temperately and with Christian
courtesy to continue to discuss this great theme, both orally and with
the pen; and especially to endeavor to bring the truth into contact with
the mind and heart of our southern brethren,--if, peradventure, we may
thus persuade them soon to cease their connection with slavery. Freedom
of discussion is one important safeguard of the public weal; and that
must be regarded as a bad, untenable cause which will not bear the test
of a full and free discussion before the world. Free inquiry, too, has
not only preceded all great reformations, but has been an important
instrument in bringing them about. That great moral change known as the
temperance reformation is but one example among many that might be
adduced. If slavery is ever to be numbered in history among the things
that are past, it will be by having Bible light and truth made to
converge upon it, through the lens of free public discussion. Hence,
believing as we do that American slavery is an enormous evil and a
gigantic wrong,--a thing with which the church should cease to have
connection as speedily as may be,--as Christians we may, we must, employ
our tongues and our pens in behalf of the enslaved, till our world
shall cease to contain such a class of men.

2. We ought so to exercise the right of suffrage as to resist the
extension of slavery beyond its present limits. I say nothing here of
the political question of State rights, or of interfering with slavery
in States where it now exists. The question of authorizing by law the
extension of slavery into new States and Territories, or of admitting
new States with pro-slavery constitutions, is another and very different
thing from that of disturbing the compact in relation to slavery entered
into by the founders of this republic. The concessions in relation to
the slave interest which our fathers made by no means oblige us to make
further concessions, by consenting that slavery shall overstep her
present geographical limits. I know not what others may think; but, for
one, I feel constrained, by a sense of duty to God and my country, so to
vote as to have my votes tell against the spread of slavery. I must
carry my Christian principles of love and humanity to the ballot-box, as
well as elsewhere. Though long identified with one of the political
parties, I have of late felt myself bound, as a voter, to ignore the
ancient party lines, and even to ignore all other questions, compared
with the one great and absorbing one, Shall slavery be allowed to have
more territory, in which to breed and expand itself? In my deliberate
judgment, all Christian patriots should, so far as their votes can
speak, say to the system of bondage existing in our midst, "Hitherto
shalt thou come, but no further, and here shall thy proud waves be
stayed." This becomes now a moral and a religious duty.

3. In our visits to the throne of grace, we ought, with more frequency
and fervor, "to remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them."
Assured that all hearts and events are at God's disposal, that he abhors
oppression, and that prayer is the Christian's mode of taking hold of
God's strength, we must make full proof of this as a weapon with which
to effect the subversion of slavery. It may be that importunate,
persevering prayer will effect more in behalf of the enslaved than all
other instrumentalities. It is, at least, quite certain that other means
will prove inefficacious, if this be not superadded.

But the question we are considering has a negative as well as positive
side; and we will next inquire, what we anti-slavery Christians ought to
refrain from doing.

1. We must not, in our efforts to subvert slavery, indulge in an
unchristian spirit, or in language adapted needlessly to anger and
alienate those whom it should be our aim to win. A cause that is
intrinsically good may be advocated in a bad spirit, or with improper
weapons; and such may have sometimes been the case with ours. Would that
all men had ever borne it in mind, that truth and love are the only
weapons with which to wage a successful conflict with this or any other
deep-seated moral evil.

2. We must not, in our zeal for emancipation, allow mere feeling or
benevolent impulses partially to dethrone reason; and thus disqualify
ourselves for taking impartial views of the subject, or for accurately
discriminating between truth and error. There may have been men in the
anti-slavery ranks, with whom sympathy was every thing, and reason--and
even the Bible--comparatively nothing. In obeying the injunction to
"remember them that are in bonds," they may have neglected to remember
any thing else. Slavery seemed to occupy their entire field of vision.
Hence, not fully informed in regard to the actual condition of things at
the South, they have erroneously supposed that the slave codes
prevailing there were the standard by which to judge of the actual
condition of the slaves, and that all the Southern church was actually
practising the barbarities authorized by those codes. As there was no
just appreciation of the actual conduct of masters towards their
servants, so there was no allowance made for the circumstances which
conspired to render them masters, nor for the obstacles which stand in
the way of their ceasing to be masters. It must be admitted, that
generally, where unrighteous laws are suffered to exist, the mass of the
community will not be better than the laws; but there are
exceptions,--men who intend to give heed to a higher law. So much for
allowing an amiable but blind sympathy to usurp that throne which reason
and revelation were designed conjointly to occupy. It scarcely need be
added, that these ultraisms have done much to prejudice the anti-slavery
cause, and bring it, in the eyes of some, into unmerited contempt. We
must wipe away that reproach, by so conducting our warfare with slavery
as to evince that we are neither men of one idea, nor men whose judgment
is led captive by their sensibilities.

3. We must not, in opposing slavery, indorse the sentiment, that one
cannot in any conceivable circumstances give credible evidence of piety,
and yet continue in form to hold slaves; that being a master is,
in any and in all circumstances, a disciplinable offence in the
church; or that it should, without exception, constitute a barrier to
church-membership, or to the communion of saints at Christ's sacramental
board. While we believe that all the great principles of God's Word go
to subvert slavery, and while we are constrained to regard the holding
of slaves as diminishing the evidence of a man's piety, and thus far
alienating his claims to a good standing in the Christian church, we may
nevertheless make exceptions, and not keep a man out of the church, or
discipline him when in it, merely because he sustains temporarily the
relation of master, not for selfish ends, but, as in rare cases, for
benevolent reasons. But if a man defends the system, and takes away from
a fellow man inalienable human rights, then we may and should refuse him
admission, or subject him to discipline, as the case may be. But,
obvious and important as is this distinction, it is one which some
anti-slavery men may have failed to make; and that failure may have
prejudiced or retarded the cause of emancipation. A good cause suffers
by having a single uncandid statement or untenable argument advanced in
its support; and the friends of the enslaved must afford their opponents
no room for saying, that their reasonings are illogical or
anti-scriptural.

4. We must not, in seeking the extinction of American slavery, so
insist on its immediate abolition as to repudiate the responsibility
which a master owes to this dependent and depressed class of his fellow
beings; but that that end be kept steadily in view, to be accomplished
as speedily as is consistent with the best good of the parties
concerned. The immediate and total extinction of southern slavery, if
not obviously impossible, is of questionable expediency. The upas of
American slavery has struck its roots so deep, and shot its branches so
far, and so interlaced itself with all surrounding objects, that, to
have it instantaneously and unreservedly uprooted, might prove, in many
cases, disastrous; and, at all events, is not to be expected. To say
nothing of other obstacles to the immediate abolition of Southern
slavery, the highest good of many of the slaves makes it inexpedient.
Some, probably many of them, need to pass through an educating
process,--a kind of mental and moral apprenticeship,--in order to their
profiting largely by the boon of emancipation.[J]

II. We are now to inquire, lastly, what duties, positive and negative,
this great question devolves on those Christians among whom American
slavery has its seat, or who are personally identified with it. Hoping,
brethren, that the sentiments thus far advanced are your sentiments, I
shall have your further assent when I say,

1. That the extinction, at the earliest consistent date, of the system
of servitude existing among you, is a result at which you ought steadily
and strenuously to aim. And, as you see, we base this obligation of
yours, not on the assumption of any sinfulness which you may sustain to
slavery, but on the acknowledged injustice and woes, past, present, and
prospective, of the system as a system,--its contrariety, as a system,
to the fundamental principles of Christianity. Did we regard you as
necessarily sinners, if in any sense you hold slaves, then the least we
could ask of you would be, that with contrition of heart you should
instantaneously cease to indulge in this sin, for all sin should be
immediately abandoned. As it is, we only ask, that, just as fast as your
slaves can be prepared for freedom, and as the providence of God may put
it in your power to liberate them, you will do so. We are not so unwise
as to expect that the work of extinction can be accomplished in a day.
We know, too, that you are not, in your church capacity, the constituted
arbiters of the question as a question of State policy. And, so long as
your legislatures and their constituencies are resolved on maintaining
the system, perhaps you will be unable to effect as much as you desire
in the way of promoting its overthrow. And yet, brethren, there is a way
in which we think you can, with entire safety and manifest propriety,
contribute largely and directly to the extinction of American slavery.
Would the entire Southern church cease all personal participation in
slavery, and throw her whole weight and influence into the scale of
slavery's complete subversion, that "consummation devoutly to be wished"
would soon ensue. Slave-holding, no longer practised or justified by the
church, but discountenanced, could not long retain its foothold in the
State. Now if this be so, our slaveholding brethren will confess that
they are imperiously bound, by motives of Christian duty, to liberate
their bondmen with all consistent speed. Meantime, and as one important
means of qualifying them for freedom, you ought,

2. To see to it that not only your own, but all the bondmen among
you,--your entire slave population,--are furnished with the Bible, and
qualified to read and comprehend it; and also with stated preaching.
They need a written and preached gospel, were it only to fit them to
exchange, with advantage, a state of vassalage for the dignity of
freemen; for all experience proves that the Bible and the pulpit are of
all instruments the best to qualify men safely to exercise the right of
self-government. But there is a servitude more dreadful by far than any
domestic bondage that men have ever groaned under; and your slaves need
the Bible, and the Bible preached, to prove God's instruments of
breaking the chains imposed by Satan, and making them Christ's freemen.
Before God and in prospect of eternity, the distinctions between the
master and his slave dwindle into insignificance. Having souls that are
alike impure and alike precious, alike remembered by a dying Saviour and
alike in need of the regenerating change, they stand alike in need of
God's Word, written and preached, as the Spirit's instrument in renewing
and sanctifying the soul. Hence the Bible and preaching are as much the
rightful inheritance of the slave as of the master. We rejoice that
these truths and the obligations resulting therefrom are, to some
extent, recognized by southern Christians; and that, in spite of certain
adverse statutes, so much is being done there for the spiritual
well-being of the slaves. Go on, brethren, in the good work of
evangelizing your slave population; in teaching them the art of reading
and the rudiments of knowledge; in putting the Bible into their hands,
and affording them stated opportunities to read it, and to hear it
expounded by you and by Christ's ministers. Go on, we say, till there be
not one southern slave, who, in point of religious privileges, is not on
a footing of equality with yourselves. Prosecuting this laudable work in
the spirit of love, you will probably encounter no serious opposition.
The adverse but dead statutes referred to will not, we hope, be
galvanized into life, in order to oppose you.

It only remains that we name a few things, which we trust our Southern
brethren will unite with us in saying that they should refrain from
doing. (1.) You ought not to, and we trust you will not, betray
impatience and irritation, whenever we of the North attempt to press the
claims of the enslaved on your attention. Your doing this,--as you
sometimes have,--seems to indicate, that, in your opinion, we Northern
Christians have no responsibility in regard to slavery and its evils;
and that when we discuss this theme we make ourselves "busybodies in
other men's matters." To the justness of this opinion we cannot
subscribe. While we disclaim all right or intention to break our compact
with you as States, we feel that American slavery is a question of too
great moment to ourselves and to unborn generations for us to have no
concern with or responsibility for; and as patriots, as philanthropists,
as Christians, we are constrained to do all that we rightfully may for
the downfall of this hoary system of wrong and woe. If any of you differ
with us in opinion on this theme, we trust you will allow us to discuss
it to our heart's content; and that you will listen to our reasonings
with Christian meekness and candor. Not to do so will be construed as an
evidence of intrinsic weakness in your cause. (2.) You will freely
admit, we presume, that certain practices are authorized by your slave
laws, in which you must not indulge even so long as by any necessity
you hold slaves. Your slave codes, for example, do not recognize the
sanctity of family ties and the domestic affections as existing among
slaves; but, as Christian masters, you must. You doubtless believe, as
do we, that the marriage relation, with all its rights and immunities,
was as much designed for the negro as for the white man; that he, as
truly as the other, is entitled to "cleave unto his wife," unexposed to
the danger of man's putting asunder what God hath so closely joined,
that "they are no more twain, but one flesh." You believe, too, that God
united husband and wife thus indissolubly, not simply that they might be
a help and solace to each other in the toilsome pilgrimage of life, but
that the children with which God should bless them might grow up under
their supervision, and by them be qualified for a career of usefulness
and honor. Thus you believe, and believing thus, you will not, we trust,
counteract God's benevolent designs, by countenancing, in your own
practice, the separation of husbands and wives, or of parents and their
offspring. We feel assured, that, whatever your laws may allow, or
non-professing masters around you may do, you will never ignore the
conjugal or parental rights of your servants, or indulge in any thing
adapted to mar their domestic enjoyment. Were you to do so, we confess
we could not extend to you "the right hand of fellowship" as brethren in
Christ. Were a church-member of ours to practise thus, we should regard
him as amenable to discipline. We should also regard it as disciplinable
for a master to overwork, or brutally chastise, or but half feed and
clothe his servants; or to hold slaves for mere purposes of gain, or to
traffic in them. None of these inhumanities could we reconcile with the
obligations of a Christian profession; and we confidently hope that in
these views you will heartily concur, and that with them your practice
will correspond.

Christian brethren of the North and the South! The question we have been
considering is one of vast moment. Upon the right disposition of it are
suspended, under God, interests of immeasurable value, and which stretch
far out into the unseen future of our country and the world. Coming ages
and unborn generations are to be affected; favorably or otherwise, by
the decision of this vexed question; and, brethren, unless I misjudge,
its right decision is, to a very great extent, lodged in our hands. As
decides the American church, so, methinks, will decide the American
people. And now,--may I confess it?--I have dared to hope that the
sentiments of this Essay are not only sound, but in unison with the
views of the great mass of American Christians. Are we not agreed in
this: that American slavery is a system of deep injustice and wrong, not
sanctioned by the Word or the providence of God; fraught with
incalculable mischief to the interests of both masters, and slaves, and
to the social and religious well-being of our whole country; a blot on
the escutcheon both of the nation and of the church; a weapon for
scepticism to wield, and an obstacle to the introduction of millennial
glory; and hence, a system which ought speedily to terminate, and which
all good men should unitedly oppose and seek to subvert? If we are thus
agreed, let us join hands as well as hearts, and, swerving neither to
the extreme of passive indifference on the one hand nor to that of
erratic fanaticism on the other, in the majesty of principle let us move
calmly onward, a phalanx of Christian philanthropists, attempting naught
but what they are assured God would have them attempt, and employing
only such means as are warranted by an enlightened conscience. Leaning
prayerfully on Him who hears the sighing of the oppressed, let us push
vigorously forward, and, though the year of jubilee has not yet fully
come, be assured it will come,--that proud day, when not only
"throughout all the land," but throughout the civilized world, liberty
shall be proclaimed "unto all the inhabitants thereof." Hasten its
advent, "O Thou that hearest prayer," and that "delightest in mercy!"
Amen and Amen.


FOOTNOTES:

[A] An extended passage containing the extract may be found conveniently
in Chambers' Cyclopædia of English Literature, vol. 2, p. 246.

[B] Genesis, 10th Chapter. Vide, Kitto's Cyclopædia, for views in this
connection.

[C] Col. 4:1; "Ye masters, give unto your servants that which is just
and equal." That is, act towards them on the principles of justice and
equity. Justice requires that all their rights, as men, as husbands, and
as parents, should be regarded. And these rights are not to be
determined by the civil law, but by the law of God.... But God concedes
nothing to the master beyond what the law of love allows. Paul requires
for servants not only what is strictly just, but τὴν ἰσότητα. What is
that? Literally, it is _equality_. This is not only its signification,
but its meaning. Servants are to be treated by their masters on the
principles of equality. Not that they are to be equal with their masters
in authority or station or circumstances; but that they are to be
treated as having, as men, as husbands, and as parents, equal rights
with their masters. It is just as great a sin to deprive a servant of
the just recompense for his labor, or to keep him in ignorance, or to
take from him his wife or child, as it is to act thus towards a free
man. This is the equality which the law of God demands, and on this
principle the final judgment is to be administered. Christ will punish
the master for defrauding the servant as severely as he will punish the
servant for robbing his master. The same penalty will be inflicted for
the violation of the conjugal or parental rights of the one as of the
other. For, as the apostle adds, there is no respect of persons with
him. At his bar the question will be, "What was done?" not "Who did it?"
Paul carries this so far as to apply the principle not only to the acts,
but to the temper of masters. They are not only to act towards their
servants on the principles of justice and equity, but are to _avoid
threatening_. This includes all manifestation of contempt and ill
temper, or undue severity. All this is enforced by the consideration
that masters have a Master in heaven, to whom they are responsible for
their treatment of their servants.... Believers will act in conformity
with the Gospel in this. And the result of such obedience, if it could
become general, would be, that first the evils of slavery, and then
slavery itself, would pass away naturally, and as healthfully as
children cease to be minors.

_Prof. Hodge's Commentary._

[D] See 2 Brevard's Digest, 229; Prince's Digest, 446.

[E] Civil Code, Art. 35.

[F] Job ch. 32, v. 17-20, Barnes's translation.

[G] It is sometimes said that the crime of adultery is neither
perpetrated nor encouraged by the breaking up of slave-families,
because, generally, the connections formed are not truly marriage, not
being solemnized according to forms of law, and hence the marriage
obligation _cannot_ be violated.

It may be replied, if this be so, it presents slavery in a worse light
still, for it encourages and perpetuates a state of universal
concubinage. But it is _not_ so. When a slave takes a companion, and
they consent and engage to live together as husband and wife until
death, and they thus declare their intentions before others, whether any
legal form is gone through or not, they are as truly "no more twain but
one flesh" as were Adam and Eve. It has been thus decided by our courts
in regard to white persons.

[H] Rev. R. I. Breckenridge, D. D.

[I] Mehemet Ali.

[J] The publishers understand the writer to mean, that the working of
them without wages,--the withholding that which is just and
equal,--should be immediately and universally abandoned, and that
emancipation should be granted as speedily as the slaves can be prepared
to use and enjoy their freedom. The right should be acknowledged, and
the needful means for its security immediately used. The writer does not
say, that holding men in bondage is not generally sinful, nor that all
sin should not be immediately repented of and forsaken, but only that
there may be exceptions where for a time, and under very peculiar
circumstances, it may not be sinful, and cannot consistently with the
greatest good be abandoned, without some previous means of preparation.