KHHO ®Ij^ ^rtscut Crisis WTIH A REPLY AND APPEAL TO EUROPEAN ADVISERS, FROM THE SIXTH EDITION OF SLAYEKY AND THE REMEDY. SAMUEL NOTT. BOSTON: CROCKER AND BREWSTER, 47 Washington Street. 1860. Price, seat by Mail, 12 CenU. ^^T. THE PRESENT CRISIS. After tlic Sectional strife which has marked the closing and the opening year, it cannot be amiss to ask atttention to the Reply and Appeal to European Advisers, prefixed to the Sixth Edition of " Slavery and the Remedy." It has, at least, this advantage, that the subject is presented on the great principles re- quired in a Plea before the Christian and philanthropic world, and that these are illustrated by instances, outside of the disturbed cir- cle in which we move. The principles thus illustrated, are, — The sovereignty of each separate State and the limited authority of the United States, re- moving the question of slavery in every form from the National Legislature ; — The impossibility of any absolute and advantageous emancipation of the slaves, and the requirement, therefore, of all possible measures for their well-being ; — and, finally, That Sec- tional impotence which limits the action of the North to whatever aids of wisdom and good-will. These principles are more fully discussed in " Slavery and the Remedy," already widely circulated, but they cannot be obscure to those who shall read only the " Reply and Appeal." It is there- fore sent abroad by itself, to the members of the National Legisla- ture and to the principal officers of the several State Governments, in the hope of promoting the NEW ERA invoked at its close, and required no less by the interests of the African race, than by the fixed relations of North and South. IV The necessity of some harmonizing principles in our great Na- tional family, was never more manifest and imperious than at the beginning of the year 18G0. But no principles can effectually har- monize, save those which are merciful and just, — giving free scope to that " golden rule " which enriches those who obey it, even more than the objects of their self-proportioned good-will. The princi- ples of advantageous Union must be at once National and benefi- cent ; must unite the two great Sections with due regard to the welfare of all classes of the people. If such harmonizing pinnciples are discarded, nothing can be more fearful than the prospect before us. With Sections so sub- stantially equal that no majorities or advantages can give to either an available supremacy, and so intimately united and dependant that separation is impossible, what else can ensue, but " the misera- ble strifes of those whom God has joined together in essential equality ?" — so much the more miserable because ruling and part- ing are alike impossible — the lasting curse of the European race, with only evil to the African, which is the subject of the strife. The questions and the dangers wont to be uppermost in the public mind, seem to the writer to have no practical bearing — sink into utter insignificance, in the real relations of the two Sections to each other, and to those who are enslaved. The question is not, for instance, whether free labor is more profitable than slave labor, now that we have four millions of slaves upon our hands, to be supported from the soil ; — ^and if supported from it, of necessity, to labor on it. There is the al)solute neces- sity of food and raiment and shelter ; and the capital of the coun- try cannot otherwise provide for it, than by regulai', continuous and well-directed lal>oi-. The indispensable question now, is, How, justly and mercifully, to make the actual labor as available as pos- •siblo, whether in restoring wasted soils, or in bringing virgin soils into cultivation ; so as to make; the provision as permanent and in- creasing as the peoplvhose earnest remonstrances and appeals demand of the United States the aboli- tion of slaver}^ The letters we receive, and the whole expression of the Foreign Press, seem to us utterly indiscriminate of facts and proposals — of the responsible and the irresponsible — the practicable and the impracticable — the advantageous and the disadvantao-eous — the rio'ht and the wrono;. We do not deny to European Philanthropists and Christians that rio;ht of interference which we have claimed for ourselves — the right of Christian good- will, which is as wide as the world. " There is no evil on the face of the earth, which may not be rightly discussed, and for which just relief may not be at- tempted by any man on the face of the earth. Man to man, may speak for man, under no other restric- tion but to speak the words of truth, justice, and kindness, and no man or people has the right to gain- say." * We object only to the indiscriminate outcry, not to the benevolent intention. On the other hand, as it was our desire to engage in aid of the best measures of well-being our own Northern Philan- thropy, so it is now, to engage that of Europe also to the same high purpose, both, as we believe, equally misdirected, to the injury of the very cause they profess to promote. No doubt it is too much to assume that the Reme- dial Code proposed is absolutely perfect. Yet, with all readiness to question the details, we have the • Page 47. utmost confidence in the great principle on which it proceeds, of meeting an exkiing fact as a fact, and not as a proposal, and therefore of turning the question from abolition to well-being, from the irresponsible to the responsible ; of breaking only the bad bonds and re- taining the good, both of master and slave, until, the word slavery remaining or disappearing, the whole condition of Africa in America shall be such as is due to a Christian country and a Christian age. We do not propose to the responsible States to omit any duty to which a true Christian philanthropy calls — to cancel in regard to slavery'- one jot or tittle of the golden rule. Whatever ills attach to the African or the European race in point of fact, this work adopts them no more for the one than for the other ; and requires equally for both all possible reliefs and bene- fits. It is not therefore to justify any wrong, to apologize for any removable evil, that this work is now offered to the consideration of our European advisers, but to engage their co-operation and influ- ence in the work of good will to man required by the actual facts of African slavery in the United States. To this end we submit some introductory illustrations — suited, as we think, to correct their mistaken views. 1. One error of our foreign fiiends consists in ad- dressing their Appeals to the citizens of the United States, as if in their National capacity, they were responsible for slavery in the several slave-holding States, in any other than the general sense, in which the Appellants themselves are responsible for the social conditions of the several European Nations, or VUl even for American slavery itself. "We ask their care- ful attention to the argument,* showing who are, in the matter of slavery, ordained' of God as the " Pow- ers that be." Surely they must see that, by the ordi- nance of Heaven, the authority in all matters exist- ing in 1776, and not transferred to the United States, is with each separate State ; precisely as the authority of Great Britain, France, Austria, Prussia, or Russia, is over the social conditions of each of those nations, and not in any Congress of nations, w^hether temporary and special, or fixed and permanent like the Amer- ican Union. No majorities in the august assemblies of such a Congress would have authority from Him by whom " kings reign and princes decree justice," to abolish the serfdom of Russia, to restore the lost rights of the French Noblesse, to divide the domains of the Landholders of Great Britain, and to equalize the wdiole social condition of the high and the low in Austria and Prussia. These matters belong, by the ordinance of Heaven, to each several nation for itself; each has its own separate authority and responsibility. Any appeal in regard to them must be made to each by itself, and not to the whole as a Congress of Na- tions. In like manner the United States are not to be appealed to in regard to the social condition of the several States existing when their Union was formed. The general interests, which their common language and peculiar circumstances and an over- ruling Providence have enabled them to unite, giving them some advantage over adjacent European States • Chapters VH.— XII. 1Z do not destroy the limits by which God, for wise pur- poses, made them separate j give them no authority over the original and inherent right of each separate sovereignty. Besides — if there were the authority of the whole over the parts in the matter in question — there is lacking the power by which alone authority can have vitality. If, as we have asserted and shown,* an over- ruling Providence has made an equilibrium between the slave-holding and the free States — if any sup- posable Northern majorities are counterbalanced by some compensatory powers of Southern minorities, then, any original authority would become nugatory by means of equibalanced forces, and all vital au- thority would cease. Equity itself can give no au- thority to equibalanced impotence ; — can impose ' no duty. Of this principle, take the most marked of Euro- pean instances ; Great Britain and France. — Is either responsible for the social condition of the other ? Has either received from the Ruler of nations author- ity over the other; or, if the authority were claimed has either the power to overrule the other ? In matters of essential equity has either the might, which alone could give the right, to overthrow the social conditions of the other ? In such a warfare, can either acquire the responsibility of conquest ; — the right and the duty of the stronger ? Let centii- ries of war and blood answer the question which, in regard to its own relations, it behooves the New • Chapter X. Xll mass without distinction ; — left unchanged the existing franchises and those relations of property, and labor which doomed the mass to the actual con- dition of " the poor/' without a voice in the govern- ment of their country. It was never claimed that Magna Charta and the Bill of Rights equalized all classes of society actually existing at their date. These documents tvcnt as far as they weiii and no farther, and left all matters unnamed, to the slow progress of just principles in promoting the well-being of all orders of the people. No doubt there has been wrong in not using the powers reclaimed for the well- being of the laboring and struggling masses, but it was never intended by these documents that all con- ditions of society should have one rule and one meas- ure of civil liberty. In the language of Macaulay with regard to the Bill of Rights, " They made nothing law, which had not been law before. . . . Their object was to make the restoration of a tyrant impossible, and to place upon the throne sovereigns under whom law and liberty might be secure " '•' with all practica- ble advantages for all conditions of men. In like manner, the Documents of the American Revolution — the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, tccnt as far as thnj vent and no farther, did ivhai they did and no more ; reclaimed English principles for English men, and not for the native Indians, or the Africans settled in the land, neither of whom had any such principles to re- claim, or were prepared to receive and enjo}^ the • Vol. ii. 2, 580, 616. XIU freedom of an English peo^^le ; though the ruling quality assumed in those documents by the United " Englands " of America required from each all possible provision for every condition of people in any way under their government, whether to regulate their freedom or to ameliorate their slavery. These Ameri- can documents " made nothinii; law which was not law before ; " and the American Revolution stands precisely in the same relation to existing facts, as do the two great eras of British liberty — making no immediate changes in the relation of any inhabitants of the land, and yet containing the elements, and therefore the obligation, of progressive improve- ment for all. At the time of the Declaration of In- dependence, slavery, like serfdom in Great Britain eight hundred years ago, existed in every state but one ; and slaves remained slaves afterwards, precisely as serfs remained serfs after Magna Charta, and peasants, peasants after the Bill of Rights, with no change whatever, but yet with every claim to be cared for by each body politic, as kindness and jus- tice might from time to time require. If this view be thouijrht inconsistent with the broad language of the Declaration of Independence, with the equal rights into wdiich all men " are born," it needs only to consider the specifications of the Doc- ument itself, which are found, not to be the common rights of men, as men, but the rights of Englishmen as Englishmen — rights brought by the colonists from England, and existing by charter and custom, from the first. If the specifications are not as broad as the general expression, they necessarily limit and explain h XIV it ; can in no way be extended by it to other people, and to other matters, than those which are specified. If there be a literal inconsistency, it cannot be helped, and must find its practical commendation and its just issue, not in admitting free Indians and en- slaved Africans to the privileges of Englishmen, which would be no privileges to them, but in such use of the governing power as shall best promote the well- being of both. And in regard to it we may adopt the langunge of Macaulay concerning the resolution of Parliament which preceded and secured the Bill of Eights. " In fact, the one beauty of it was its in- consistency." Like that resolution, the Declaration stated and secured its great object, if not in perfect logical agreement with its general expression, yet in perfect consistency with any just view of its broadest terms. " Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," to which all men are declared entitled, cannot be so understood as to interfere with either of the three. " Liberty " has " life " and " the pursuit of happiness " as its manifest and necessary limitations. The ques- tion remains with regard to all men that " are born," of all ages, sexes, classes, and conditions — how much liberty, in their actual case, does best pro- mote and secure these primary and highest purposes. To be in any worthy sense equally free, that is, with reference to " life " and " the pursuit of hap- piness," the various classes and conditions of men must be uncquaUy free, strange as the paradox may seem. In this sense, men and women, parents and children, masters and apprentices, in our own Euro- pean population, are equally free. Who shall say XV that with slavery ameliorated — its bonds to labor and maintain labor retained, and its bad bonds re- moved — that Southern masters and their African slaves may not be equally free, that is, equally en- titled to " life " and " the pursuit of happiness." When the government shall become truly patriarchal, at once in just regulation and in paternal protection, it will prove the most perfect freedom."''- 3. A third mistake of our Foreign Advisers consists in demanding for slavery, as an existing fact, the same refusal as for the proposal to enslave. No mistake is more plain. Every where and al- ways, we must refuse the proposal to change the con- dition of our fellow-men from the better to the worse ; but this does not require, for it does not enable us to change instantly and absolutely the worse for the better, to annihihate any or all distinctions on a scale of endless variety. Poverty, sickness, wounds, are in this respect in the same category as slavery. We may accept no proposal to inflict them, ])ut this does not require, for it does not enable us to abolish them. All that is required, in either case, is to meet the ac- tual condition wdth all kindness and justice, to alle- viate all evils, and bestow all benefits, to our utmost power. We must refuse utterly and instantly the proposal to engage in highway robbery ; but we are not therefore required to restore utterly and instantly the " man wounded and half dead " to soundness and his goods, but only to dress his wounds, provide for his wants, and aid his recovery according to our • Compare pp. 133, 134. XVI power. The divine illustration of love to our neigh- bor requires no more. The impossibility of treating facts, like the pro- posal to introdace them, lies, in the very nature of things, in the arrangements of the world — embracing toils, exposures, sufferings, of exceeding inequality from the very heights of wealth down to the deepest extremes of poverty and woe. In sober truth, it is not man but God, it Is not human will but the ordi- nance of Heaven, which makes it the necessity of every country, and of every age, that existing con- ditions should be incapable of instant and absolute abolition — should admit only of alleviation and im- provement. The necessity is for substance the same in Europe and America. The labor must he done at once for the livelihood of the laljorers themselves — their employers and mankind, or all must suffer a severer doom than labor and exposure In any form which has ever been endured. The mightiest governments of earth have their limits ; are not competent to re- move social evils, nay, even social abuses, at their will ; are restrained to the one work within their power, of gradual amelioration — none the less where the mass of the people are nominallj- free, none the more where they are enslaved. We proceed to name European instances, neither for reproacli nor self- justification, but to make plain the principles which must govern Europe and America alike in dealing with great social facts, with existing conditions of society. Take first the Dunlng of Europe, with all Its ex- posures and miseries — the work on which all other xvu work depends, the labor by -wliich all other labor is alleviated and aided, at once the severest and the most indispensable of the occupations of mankind ; without which there can be no provision for multi- tudes of men, no ease and comfort of civilized life. Mining is an existing fact, an actual institution, doom- ing a few, compared with the whole race benefited by it, and yet thousands, to the severest labors, expo- sures, and sufferings, and incidentally but actually, to abuses which call for relief And yet, it cannot be instantly and absolutely abolished, without greater evils even to the miners themselves, without damag-e to the whole well-being of the race, without dooming the world to a ruin worse than all the toils, expo- sures, sufferings, and even abuses of the mines. You cannot abolish the miner's lot, unless you can abolish God's ordinance when he built the earth and hid in its depths the treasures of iron and coal, and silver and gold, for the use of countless millions of men, — to ennoble and alleviate their labors, — to limit and lessen their exposures and sufferings, to provide more abundantly for their wants. You can no more abol- ish mining and the miner's lot, than you can level the mountains and raise the depths in which the stores of ages have been gathered by the hand of the Almighty — than you can command to the surface the whole material for the instruments with which the earth is tilled, and its productions wrought for the food, and raiment, and comfort of mankind, and for the very coin by which what is thus provided is distributed to the families of all nations. All you can do is to ameliorate the indispensable lot — to xvm remove as far and as fast as jDOssible its manifest abuses — to make it as easy, as safe, as advantageous to the actual miners as the indispensable labor per- mits — leaving only the toil, exposure, and suffering essential to the lot which God's wise providence has ordered. The steam engine, and the safety lamp, and the attempts of the British Parliament to correct abuses which fill the mind with horror, all indicate the amelioration which is possible, and not the abo- lition which is impossible. The miners must still be left to their lot, in the assurance that nothing which Heaven has arranged is without its mercy and its lesson, without the axiom made plain to every mind of man and taught in every lot — to prosperity in its greatest heights, to poverty in its lowest depths, to the miners even, in the bowels of the earth. " Surely," says the most ancient of all books, " there is a vein for the silver, and a place for gold, where they fine it. Iron is taken out of the earth, and brass is mol- ten out of the stone. . . . There is a path which no fowl knoweth, and which the vulture's eye hath not seen. He putteth forth his hand upon the rock ; lie overturneth the mountains by the roots. He cutteth out rivers among the rocks, and his eye seeth every precious thing ; he bindeth the floods from overflow- ing ; and the thing that is hid bringeth he forth to light. But where shall wisdom be found ? and where is the place of understanding ? . . . And unto man he said, Behold the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil Is understanding." '=" When * Job xxviiU XIX God made it needful that the replenished earth should live by mining, he did not bury the miners beneath his highest mercy, the best boon of life; beneath the reach of all the beatitudes. The same necessity — the same paradox of toil, ex- posm-e, and suffering in order to the greatest ease, safety, and enjoyment — the same irreversible doom of some, at once for their own benefit and the benefit of all — the same liability to abuse, and the same moral opportunity, — belong to the great mass of mankind, occupied in the labors by which men live, and for which mining provides the indispensable ma- terial ; — the same impossibility of innncdiate and absolute abolition, and even of the abuses at any time actual, but not essential to the doom. There can be no immediate and absolute abolition of the condition of the laboring classes of Europe — of " the poor," the " lower classes," the " peasantry," the " operatives " — at the best, dependent on scanty wages, and at the worst, " suffering masses " outnum- bering the means of employment and support. This condition of the laborers of Europe is an existing fact, to be met in all kindness and justice by indi- viduals and governments, as a fiict to be regarded, — but not as a proposal to be instantly and absolutely rejected. Parliaments, Kings, Emperors cannot turn great national facts into non-existence — cannot put them into mere proposals — can no more emancipate « the poor," the " lower classes," the " peasantry-," ^^^^ " operatives," the " serfs," of their several governments, than they can emancipate the miners from their lot, — than they can emancipate the human race from XX the use of iron, and coal, and silver, and gold, and food, and raiment, and house, and home. All they can do, is by all the means in their power to alleviate the miseries and correct the abuses of every lot. Suppose it assumed on our side the Atlantic, that the system of small farming and a working yeomanry in our Northern States, is the true idea of social well-being, and that we require all Europe to adopt it — instantly and absolutely to emancipate '' the poor," to raise to social equality " the lower classes," to abolish the poverty of "the masses," to divide the wide domains of unenlightened ages, and establish every where laborers on their little farms after the manner of New England. Vain and absurd demand ! as impossible as to re- move the mountains ! If it were a proposal to bring the New England yeomanry into the condition of the European "poor," there would be reason and con- science in rejecting it. If Europe had the power, it would have no right to force upon us the undesirable change, to rob us of our birthright enjoyment — of the gift of Providence inherited from our fathers. But it is quite another thing to undertake the impos- sibility of putting their masses into our condition — of changing the doom wdiich Providence has imposed as the inheritance from many generations. What God has permitted to grow for ages, man has no power to change in a day. He may reject the pro- posal to plant the seed, but he cannot uproot the stem growth of centuries. A^iin and absurd demand ! The very pattern we propose for Europe to follow, only illustrates the im- XXI possibility of following it. How came that condition of the laboring masses in America which is proposed as a pattern to the greater masses of Europe ? Came it at the instant, at the call of man or by the decree of any government on earth, that you should require Sovereigns and Parliaments to " charm " it into being ? Rather, did it not require a new world for the theatre of a minute experiment, and the slow emigration of a medium class, " the siftings of three kingdoms," and then the time of two centuries, to establish govern- ments, create habits, and form communities capable of assimilating and absorbing moderate proportions of the European peasantry ? The governments of New England, New York, Pennsylvania, the models of the North, could not have been instituted at all, by the crowds of Em-opean peasants now thronging our shores. If their emigration had been rapid at first, the New England condition of a working yeomanry would never have existed on our continent, nor been capable of its present work of assimilation and ab- sorption. Even now, there are complaints that they come too fast, whether for their advantage or our own. What else means our " Americanism," our ob- ioction to the ingress of these hundreds of thousands every year, but our dread of a too rapid increase of the European '' lower classes ; " — but our acknowledg- ment, that a population homogeneous with ourselves cannot come instantly into the full inheritance of the lot which the providence of two hundred years has given us ; that Europe cannot change by decree the condition of the masses of her people ; must leave them to their inherited doom, with only those allevi- XXll ations and benefits which kmdness and justness can bestow — those progressive improvements of which they can only plant the seed and cherish the growth. The impossibility of annihilating great social fiicts, as the proposal to introduce them might be rejected, applies equally to the most despotic and to the most republican of the European Powers. The Russian Autocrat and the British Parliament are alike impo- tent to change the existing conditions of the masses of their people. The nobility and the serfs of the one, the aristocracy and peasantry, with the middle classes, of the other, exist in fixed relations of poverty and wealth, neither at the bidding nor the forbidding of " the powers that be." The Parliament, were it ever so much inclined to benefit the wdiole people — to bless the masses — the Autocrat, with whatever wisdom and good will — have their necessary limit — are precluded by the circumstances actually exist- ing, by the rooted strength of ages, from instant and absolute change. There is no power in governments, despotic or free, to enrich " the poor," to raise " the lower classes," to banish the " misery of the masses," to emancipate " the serfs," to change the condition of European laborers into that of the working yeomanry of New England, as there is to reject any proposal to bring the working yeomanry of these States into the condition of European serfs and peasants. All that can be done, and all that is required, is, accord- ing to the abilities of the several governments, and the capabilities of the several people, to bestow such reliefs and benefits as are possible in the conditions actually existing — such as are continually attempted XXIU by the British Parliament for England, Scotland, and Wales, and even for Ireland itself, only with a wisdom and kindness never to pause until the utmost limits of well-being have been reached. The Russian Auto- crat can do no more — will find himself hindered or baffled in his endeavors, if in his desire for rapid im- provement, he transcends the bounds which conditions, established by ages, have made as firm as the moun- tains. These bounds he may or may not have suf- ficiently regarded, in providing for the freedom of serfs homogeneous with the higher classes of society. Time alone can settle the question whether he have retained duly the bonds which make free, and duly rejected the freedom which enslaves. There are lim- its, on the one side and on the other, to the proposals of the Czar. Some bonds are retained upon both mas- ters and serfs, no doubt designed to prevent in Russia the great evil of Southern Europe — of masses " mis- erably free." In Russia, now, as in all the world and in all time, then only can beneficial changes be wrought in long established conditions of society, when mutual relations and obligations are duly re- garded, in view of the whole past conditions of the people ; then only can the well-being of its serfs be duly provided for, when the mutual dependence of property and labor is duly regarded, when bad bonds are progressively broken, and good bonds retained and strengthened. The nineteenth century, civili- zation, Christianity, instead of requiring, forbid the immediate and absolute abolition of Russian serf- dom—instead of forbidding, require some bonds retained upon the existing and long established prop- XXIV erty of the country; and if so, some bonds on the existing and long established labor of the country also, that property may be able to fulfil its obliga- tions; — while at the same time, there is forbidden every abuse and required every possible amelioration and advantage for the whole people, whether bond or free. The impossibility of immediate and absolute change in actual social conditions, even in homogeneous Eu- rope, has always existed. The Europe that now calls upon America to treat the fact of African slavery like the proposal to enslave, has given proof for ages, that it asks an impossibility. In truth, the existing con- ditions of any period of its history, as they were never due to the governments of that period, but to previous acts and methods which gave them their prevalence, so they were out of the power of cotemporary au- thority, except by such corrections and ameliorations as might grow at length into beneficial substitutes. European serfdom was not the infliction of the lords of the soil, paramount at any period, but the growth of ages; partly from the original barbarian condition, partly by conquest and oppression, and partly by methods of relief and security to which various expo- sures gave rise. Originating with the barbarism of the European nations, the low condition of the masses might have proved worse, might have continued long- er, if feudalism had not intervened with its protecting, governing, and providing care, as well as its oppres- sion.* The barbarian starting-points, and the element • Guizot, vol. ili. pp. 122, 123. XXV of conquest and subjugation, are older tlian Julius CiBsar who describes them; — even Great Britain having been visited by continental conquerors and settlers, before the Roman, the Saxon, the Danish, and the Norman invasions, by which its enserfed con- dition became extended and established — at every point, beyond the removal of any cotemporary gov- ernments. The impossibility thus due to long established social conditions and belonging to European serfdom, explains the chasm of history in regard to its aboli- tion. There is no histori/, because there could be none. No direct, positive, absolute and general emancipation was ever made by any decree or succession of de- crees of which history could make record ; — the eman- cipation, such as it was, being every where only casual and incidental, the growth of time and circumstance, the only method possible of changing the condition of the masses of the people in all countries and all times. Indeed, whatever condemnation may be due to those warlike tribes, the Franks, the Saxons and the Normans, who conquered and enserfed the European masses, when each new step of serfdom was a pro- posal capable of being refused ; — whether a condition advancing by conquest and oppression be regarded as an unmixed evil, or as a providential method of evolving modern industry and civilization from the indolence and improvidence of savage life; — a//^ the deed luas done, and established relations and con- ditions existed, there was no power in European monarchs or lords to abolish the actual institution — XXVI to do more than to correct and ameliorate up to the just relations of property and labor. " No great fact, no social state makes its appearance complete and at once."=^= "The change, great as it was, (in Great Britain,) was the effect of gradual development, not of demolition and reconstruction. The exorbitant power of the Barons was gradually reduced, the condition of the peasants gradually elevated. . . . That revolu- tion which put an end to property in man, was silently and imperceptibly effected." f " The evil was mingled with the institutions of the country, and required much time and successive efforts for its eradication." J The impossibility of immediate and absolute change is still more manifest in the issues of even this slow emancipation, — silently and imperceptibly effected, as alone was possible, making it a caution and not a pattern, and requiring in all future attempts some new method not included in the received idea of emancipation and freedom. There is manifest enough (on which we have dwelt §) "the misery of the masses," indicating that in the slow progress from serf- dom there was not a sufficient reservation of mutual bonds ; and there u'cre, certainly, for many ages, ex- treme social difficulties and disorders, due undoubt- edly, in degree, to the premature and indiscreet emancipation of lords and serfs — to " too free a free- dom." The just view forced itself upon the mind of Puffendorf, more than a century ago, in view of evils • Guiz.ot, vol. iii. p. 17. t Macaulay, vol. i. pp. 21, 23. X A History of the Poor Law, by Sir George Nicholas, Secretary of the Poor Law Hoard. \ Sec Chapter VI. "European Experiments -with Serfdom." xxvu of which there is history enough. " To be hekl within the limits of slavery which the natural \iiW of support prescribes, apart from the cruelty of some masters and the rio-or of certain laws, — in this, there is no undue severity. For this compulsory subjection is compen- sated by the advantage of being assured of a liveli- hood, whilst hired laborers know not often how to subsist, whether for want of being hired or their own laziness, which cannot be cured without blows. This laziness men have endeavored to remedy, by the estabhshment of workhouses, a sort of prison, to make men work, whether they will or no. Some have thought, not without reason, that the prohibition of slavery among Christian nations, hath chiefly occa- sioned that flood of thieving vagrants and sturdy beggars which is usually complained of."''= The same view forces itself upon those who are occupied at the present day in the endeavor to remedy the conse- quences of ancient mistakes by new legislation. Sir George Nicholas, in his elaborate history of the poor laws, says : " The change from a state of slavery was attended with a certain amount of evil — led to a great increase of vagrancy. That there was cause for coercive legislation, cannot be denied." He accord- in o-ly refers to the laws of centuries to compel labor and to supply the wants of the poor — from Edward II. to Elizabeth, ending in those famous poor laws, rendered necessary by the condition of society, and intended to be equally binding upon property and labor, of the one-sided application of which Black- ♦ PufiFendorf, Book VI. chap. iii. sec. 10. XXVUl stone complains* However lacking history is in regard to emancipation from serfdom, there is no lack of record of the fearful condition of society which was the consequence, when the police and provision of serfdom ceased to be compulsory on property and labor, and the only remedy men saw was a partial restoration of the bonds prematurely broken. Surely the abolition of serfdom in Europe, though slow enough, was premature and indiscreet, and is not an example to be followed, but a caution to be carefully regarded; requiring, wherever slavery is found, all just bonds retained both on property and labor, — some indispensable coercion upon both, in order that the functions of both may be duly performed; — preventing the idleness and improvidence which a premature freedom might give to the laborer, and the parsimony and neglect which a premature free- dom might give to the employer; — taking before- hand the same liberty which in every land the most free nations are compelled to take — in requiring property to support the poor, and the poor to work according to their ability. These European instances illustrate the principles applicable to both continents alike, and are only the more imperative in America on account of wide differ- ences in civilization and race. If actual conditions of men essentially homogeneous cannot be instantly and absolutely abolished, and when abolished by slow de- grees and unobserved processes, have furnished in- stances of warning and caution instead of encourage- • See " Slavery and the Remedy," p. 39. XXIX ment, how doubly impossible the work, when the ruling and the subject races have such remarkable differences; — the African not only lower in the social scale by direct inheritance from barbarian ancestors, but marked by physical characteristics, which always distinguish him. No European successes could decide in favor of the immediate and absolute emancipation of African slaves and American masters. How much more is the example withdrawn, and a double im- possibility assured by European ill success, even with a homogeneous peojole and emancipation by slow degrees. Vagabondage and violence requiring law, and law, failing to recover from vagabondage and violence — wide-spread pauperism requiring relief, and all measures of relief failing to provide for that wide-spread pauperism — centuries passed, and still showing "miserable masses," which baffle the wisest legislation and philanthropy, where the people are essentially of one blood — these results of European emancipation, all-pervading, long-enduring, and, to all human view, irretrievable, — how distinctly and sol- emnly do they forewarn the greater difficulty, the more absolute impossibility in the matter of African slavery in America, — opening to the view a "misery of the masses" of which homogeneous Europe can- not furnish a type.* * In requiring an ameliorated slavery, instead of instant and absolute free- dom for the benefit of the African race, as lower in the social scale, we ab- stain, as in the work itself, from any assertion of their natural inferiority, as entirely irrelevant to the question ; — assured that the rights of one race over another have not been submitted to their own judgment of superioritv ; that no claim to be " the Celestial Empire" can give Heaven's authority, either to enslave or hold in slavery any portion of manlcind. We simply take the facts XXX The difficulties belonging to differences of civiliza- tion and race are abundantly set forth in the original work/^ and in the subsequent Review of the Decision of the Supreme Court in the case of Dred Scott. There are intrinsic difficulties — there may be also unreasonable prejudice ; but both unite in the argu- ment against immediate and absolute emancipation, for something better than immediate and absolute freedom. "The laws which have been passed and enforced by the States most exposed to large propor- tions of free African population, and the reasons given for those laws, show most plainly, that there is not 'free soil' for the freed African in all our wide Amer- ica. With the minutest exceptions, in every town, and county, and state. North as well as South, every body thinks that the African race, improved though they have been, since their emigration, are not en- titled to be, in large numbers, part and parcel with the Anglo-Saxon race — to be advantageously to them- selves or the whole people, parts of the several ' Eng- lands' of the new world." as thej' are, without deciding how they might have been, if the circumstances of the two races had been interchanged, or how they may become hereafter. It is enough for our argument, that the African is less advanced in civilization and its adjuncts, even though admitted equally capable of advancement, and his actual inferiority were referred entirely to the providential arrangement, which fixed his place of habitation on the earth. Dare the European race proudly say, that if God had assigned them their place behind the great Afri- can Desert and in the depths of the torrid zone, and had given temperate Europe to the Negro, with its gulfs, and bays, and rivers, for the easy com- munication of civilization and Christianity from their great centres, that the Negro of the nineteenth century would not have been the superior, in all that can exalt and bless mankind ? Whatever might or might not have been, — the barbarism of Central Africa is an actual fact, has been only partially removed from the race in the "United States, and must be taken into the account in any proposals for their well-being. • Pages 21, 80, and 129—132. XXXI If any thing be wanted to intensify the argument from the diiferences of civilization and race, it may be had in the words of the great champion* of free soil, in his speech on Kansas, in the Senate of the United States, March 3, 1858. "Free labor," says the Senator, "has at last apprehended its rights, its interests, its powers, its destiny, and is organizing itself to assume the government of the Kepublic. It will meet you every where, in the Territories and out of them, wher- ever you may go to extend slavery. It has driven you back in California and Kansas. It will invade you soon in Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Missouri, and Texas. It will meet you in Arizona, in Central America, and even in Cuba. You may, indeed, get a start under or near the Tropics, but it will be for a short time. Even there, you will found states for free labor to maintain and occupy." ..." The in- terests of the white race demand the ultimate eman- cipation of all men. The white man needs this con- tinent to labor on. His head is clear, his arm is strong, and his necessities are fixed. He mmt and uill have itr Alas, how extremes meet ! The highest philanthropy and the deepest cruelty are at one ! The demand is for freedom for the African race, and yet they are not to have room for the sole of their foot! — there is to be no "free soil for the freed Afri- can in all our wide America" ! Surely, there is an overruling Providence which turns men's counsels against themselves, and makes them to establish what they intended to destroy. There is no argument so • Hon. W. II. Seward. xxxu intense against immediate and absolute abolition, and in favor of an ameliorated and protecting slavery, as is furnished bv the expressions and practices of the advocates of free soil in the United States. The conclusion from European instances — more decisive in view of differences of race — is required by the whole history of mankind ; an immediate and absolute abolition of a great social institution has never occurred since the world began : — rather, never hit once, and then, under such conditions as make the impossibihty only the more plain, when it is proposed as the mere work of man under the common providence of God : once, and once only ; — the exception proving the rule, by which the most powerful nations must needs govern themselves in their undertakings for the masses of their people. It was only by the strong hand and outstretched arm of the Almighty, over- ruling the universal laws which govern human things, that the threefold impossibility was accom- plished in favor of the tribes of Israel instantly and absolutely released from Egyptian bondage. MiracleB from heaven delivered them from the power which held them in slavery — miracles opened their path through the sea, and fed, and clothed, and governed, and taught, and disciplined them, forty years in the wilderness, until a new generation was prepared for settlement in the promised land : and miracles pre- pared for them their final habitation, giving them houses which thoy buildcd not, wells which they digged not, and fields which they planted not : — the whole, most manifestly, withdrawing their example, unless the same commands, the same signs and won- XXXUl ders require again what is utterly impossible, and therefore not required, under the common providence of God. The whole history of mankind, with this singb exception, itself joining the testimony, con- firms our conclusion from general principles and European experiments, that immediate and absolute emancipation is impossible, and must be doubly im- possible in the case of African slavery in the United States. This confident assurance has not been adopted without considering the example of the British West Indies, concerning which claims so opposite are urged. Instead of attempting to decide upon conflicting tes- timony, we have preferred to admit in degree the most favorable accounts, and to maintain the alleged impossibility notwithstanding. Admitting, then, all that is claimed by the most sanguine friends of eman- cipation in the West Indies, we assert that its success is neither so assured nor so complete as to make it an example for the United States if the cases were alike ; while they are plainly so unlike, that the re- stricted and regulated emancipation in the one, if the success were assured and complete, Avould require restrictions and regulations in the other suited to the case, and in our belief, the ameliorated slavery which this work proposes. 1. The success of West India emancipation is neither so assured nor so complete as to make it an example. It is plamly too early in its history XXXIV to ' give assurance of success. The Bishop of Bar- badoes, expecting final success, admits that there are many evils, but claims that two or even three gener- ations are needful, before the ill effects of slavery can be entirely removed, and the success of emancipation be complete/^ Be it so. But then, also, it is equally right to say, that two or three generations must pass before the good effects of slavery can be lost, and the Ul success of the emancipation be complete. In truth, a longer time is required before either the good or the evil issues can be decided by experience. Though there were at the end of twenty years no occasion for misgiving in regard to those whose habits of life, and relations to property and skill, were so suddenly changed, a longer trial would be needful to determine the question. Much more, when there are acknowledged evils as well as hopeful appearances, it must be impossible to decide whether the one or the other be due to the slavery abolished or to the free- dom bestowed. If the evils remaining may be re- ferred to the influences of slavery, which it requires two or three generations to remove, then may any hopeful appearances be referred to the influences of slavery not yet entirely vanished away. The old habits of labor on the one hand, and of capital and arrangement on the other, may not yet have lost their force, and there may be remaining some of the advantages of a regular and regulated industry — of due labor and maintenance, preventing the evils of " too free a freedom," but giving no assurance • Letter dated Feb. 23, 1858, in National Era, Aug. 12. XXXV of a favorable issue when that force is lost. The « train" does not instantly stop when the "power" is removed, but goes forward almost as before. Never- theless, gravitation and friction are producmg their gradual effect, and the whole force will be expended at last. Admit all the favorable appearances claimed, and they give no absolute assurance of a successful emancipation. Besides the uncertainty of the final issues, the suc- cess at its present stage is manifestly too incomplete to make a decisive example. Difficulties and evils are admitted which break the charm, and throw us back upon general principles and the whole experi- ence of mankind. Such admissions as those of the Bishop of Barbadoes and others, with regard to Bar- badoes and the smaller islands where the circum- stances are peculiarly favorable, give ground for the assertion that even in them the success is too incom- plete to become our example. Much more do the larger islands, as we understand the admissions of the frie'^nds of emancipation, give this ground, in greater degrees of idleness, improvidence, and vagrancy, fore- warning the evils which prevailed in Europe for cen- turies, and have issued in the "miserable masses" of the nineteenth century, with whatever enhancement differences of race and climate may produce. That the success of West India emancipation is thus incomplete, is confirmed by certain important facts which admit of no other explanation. How else can we explain the act of the Legislature of Jamaica, meeting idleness and vagrancy with such provisions as to be objected to by Lord Brougham, XXXVl m the House of Lords, as "reducino; the free neo-ro population to slavery." '•' Laws are provided for oc- casions, which, however exaggerated, can never be entirely non-existent. There must be idleness and vagrancy, with the fear of their increase, or such a law could never have been proposed. The actual evils and the dreaded dano-er are im- o plied, also, in the methods of emancipation proposed by other European goverimients having tropical pos- sessions, viz., the retaining some good bonds, instead of loosing all, in order that the evils and dangers of the British West Indies may be avoided. Thus, the Dutch ordinance for liberating fifty thousand slaves in Surinam, retains honds, instead of making emanci- pation complete. Says the Kingston Journal, " Upon being liberated, the slaves are not to be left uncon- ditionally to their own control, and the control of those who are ready to take advantage of their igno- rance to impose uj)on them, as in this and the other British colonies. At the same time, the former slave-holders are protected against the evils arising from the want of labor, as the emancipated will not become the unrestricted owners of their own time and labor. The duties they are to perform are to be made known by general orders, but all slaves who shall repay to the government the amount paid for their freedom, are to be exempt from these orders. Another, and by far one of the most wholesome pro- visions in the law, is that all who obtain their freedom are to contribute on fixed terms towards a fund for • London Momijig Chronicle, March 23, I808. XXXVll repaying the government the cost of their freedom — also for rehgioiis teaching, education of children, nursing of the sick and relief of the poor and aged. With us in the West Indies, the absence of such reg- ulations at the general emancipation, involved us in difficulties, against which at the present time we have to fight a hard battle." The Danish method at Santa Cruz indicates a like caution — requiring, as we understand, an " annual affiliation " — the only freedom being the power of changing masters and service, without the liberty to have no master, or to strike for higher wages. It does not answer the argument to ascribe the evils acknowledged to the proprietors and not to the laborers — to the emancipated masters and not to the emancipated slaves. It only gives prominence to the necessity of bonds upon property, that labor may have due opportunity and provision, while it requires, of course, corresponding bonds on labor, without which bonds on property would be of no avail. If the emancipated masters have used their freedom unjustly towards the native-born laborers, thetj were made too free, and should have remained under some of their former bonds. But then, of necessity, the slaves also were made too free, and should have remained under such bonds as would enable the masters to fulfil their obligations. Neither does it answer the argument to produce instances of African advancement in property and station ; for the all-important question is, the effect upon the mass, and not upon excepted cases. Be- sides, a just amelioration could not fail to secure more d xxxvm excepted cases withont the evils resulting from the whole system of labor