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THE 
 
 PRO-SLAVERY ARGUMENT; 
 
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 AS MAINTAINED BY THE MOST 
 
 DISTINGUISHED WRITERS OF THE SOUTHERN STATES, 
 
 CONTAINING THE 
 
 SEVERAL ESSAYS, ON THE SUBJECT, 
 
 CHANCELLOR HARPER, GOVERNOR HAMMOND, 
 DR. SIMMS, and PROFESSOR DEW. 
 
 CHARLESTON: 
 
 WALKER, RICHARDS & CO 
 1852. 
 
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HARPER ON SLAVERY 
 
 The institution of domestic slavery exists over far the great- 
 er portion of the inhabited earth. Until within a very few 
 century it may be said to have existed over the whole earth 
 at least m all those portions of it which had made any ad- 
 vances towards civilization. We might safely conclude 'then, 
 that ,t is deeply founded in the nature of man and the exigen- 
 ces of human society. Yet, in the few countries in which it 
 has been abol shed-claiming perhaps justly, to be farthest 
 advanced m cmhzation and intelligence, but which have had 
 the smallest opportunity of observing its true character and 
 >•! 7 '? <^™nced as the most intolerable of social and 
 poht.eal evils Its existence, and every hour of its continu- 
 ance, >s regarded as the crime of the communities in which it 
 is found. _ Even by those in the countries alluded to, who re- 
 gard it w,th the most indulgence or the least abhorrence— 
 who attribute no criminality to the present generation-who 
 found ,t m ex.stence, and have not yet been able to devise 
 the means of abolishing it, — It is pronounced a misfortune and 
 
 finally fetal to the societies which admit it. This is no longer 
 regarded as a subject of argument and investigation. The 
 opinions referred to are assumed as settled, or the truth of 
 hem as self-evident. If any voice is raised among ourselves 
 to extenuate or to vindicate, it is unheard. The judgment is 
 made up. AV e can have no hearing before the tribunal of 
 
HARPERS MEMOIR ON SLAVERY. 
 
 the civilized world. Yet, on this very account, it is more im- 
 portant that we, the inhabitants of the slaveholding States of 
 America, insulated as we are, by this institution, and cut off, 
 in some degree, from the communion and sympathies of the 
 world by which we are surrounded, or with which we have 
 intercourse, and exposed continually to their animadversions 
 and attacks, should thoroughly understand this subject, and 
 our strength and weakness in relation to it. If it be thus 
 criminal, dangerous, and fatal ; and if it be possible to devise 
 means of freeing ourselves from it, wo ought at once to set 
 about the employing of those means. It would be the most 
 wretched and imbecile fatuity, to shut our eyes to the im- 
 pending dangers and horrors, and " drive darkling down the 
 current of our fate," till we are overwhelmed in the final de- 
 struction. If we are tyrants, cruel, unjust, oppressive, let us 
 humble ourselves and repent in the sight of heaven, that the 
 foul stain may be cleansed, and we enabled to stand erect as 
 having common claims to humanity with our fellow-men. 
 
 But if we are nothing of all this ; if we commit no injustice 
 or cruelty ; if the maintenance of our institutions be essential 
 to our prosperity, our character, our safety, and the safety of 
 all that is dear to us, let us enlighten our minds and fortify 
 our hearts to defend them. 
 
 It is a somewhat singular evidence of the indisposition of 
 the rest of the world to hear anything more on this subject, 
 that perhaps the most profound, original, and truly philo- 
 sophical treatise, which has appeared within the time of my 
 recollection,* seems not to have attracted the slightest atten- 
 tion out of the limits of the slaveholding States themselves. 
 If truth, reason, and conclusive argument, propounded with 
 admirable temper and perfect candor, might -be supposed to 
 
 * President Dew's Review of the Virginia Debates on the subject of 
 Slaverv. 
 
harper's memoir on slavery. 3 
 
 have an effect on the minds of men, we should think this 
 work would have put an end to agitation on the subject. The 
 
 author has rendered inappreciable service to the South in en- 
 lightening them on the subject of their own institutions, and 
 turning back that monstrous tide of folly and madness which, 
 if it had rolled on, would have involved his own great State 
 along with the rest of the slaveholding States in a common 
 ruin; But beyond these, he seems to have produced no effect 
 whatever. The denouncers of Slavery, with whose produc- 
 tions the press groan*, seems to be unaware of his existence — 
 unaware that there is reason, to be encountered or argument 
 to be answered. They assume that the truth is known and 
 settled, and only requires to be enforced by denunciation. 
 
 Another vindicator of the South has appeared in an indi- 
 vidual who is among those that have done honor to Ameri- 
 can literature.* With conclusive argument, and great force 
 of expression, he has defended Slavery from the charge of in- 
 justice or immorality, and shewn clearly the unspeakable 
 cruelty and mischief which must result from any scheme of 
 abolition. He does not live among slaveholders, and it can- 
 not be said of him, as of others, that his mind is warped by 
 interest, or his moral sense blunted by habit and familiarity 
 with abuse. These circumstances, it might be supposed, 
 would have secured him hearing and consideration. He 
 seems to be equally unheeded, and the work of denunciation 
 disdaining argument, still goes on. 
 
 President Dew has shewn that the institution of Slavery is 
 a principal cause of civilization. Perhaps nothing can bo 
 more evident than that it is the sole cause. If anything can 
 be predicated as universally true of uncultivated man, it is 
 that he will not labor beyond what is absolutely necessary to 
 maintain his existence. Labor is pain to those who are unac- 
 * Paulding on Slavery. 
 
4 HARPER S MEMOIR ON 6LAVERY. 
 
 customed to it, and the nature of man is averse to pain. 
 Even with all the training, the helps and motives of civiliza- 
 tion, we find that this aversion cannot be overcome in many 
 individuals of the most cultivated societies. The coercion of 
 Slavery alone is adequate to form man to habits of labor. 
 Without it, there can be no accumulation of property, no pro- 
 vidence for the future, no tastes for comfort or elegancies, 
 which are the characteristics and essentials of civilization. He 
 who has obtained the command of another's labor, first begins 
 to accumulate and provide for the future, and the foundations 
 of civilization are laid. We find confirmed by experience that 
 which is so evident in theory. Since the existence of .man 
 upon the earth, with no exception whatever, either of ancient 
 or modern times, every society which has attained civiliza- 
 tion, has advanced to it through this process. 
 
 Will those who regard Slavery as immoral, or crime in 
 itself, tell us that man was not intended for civilization, but to 
 roam the earth as a biped brute ? That he was not to raise 
 his eyes to heaven, or be conformed in his nobler faculties to 
 the image of his Maker ? Or will they say that the Judge of 
 all the earth has done wrong in ordaining the means by which 
 alone that end can be obtained ? It is true that the Creator 
 can make the wickedness as well as the wrath of man to 
 praise him, and bring forth the most benevolent results from 
 the most atrocious actions. But in such cases, it is the mo- 
 tive of the actor alone which condemns the action. The act 
 itself is good, if it promotes the good purposes of God, and 
 would be approved by him, if that result only were intended. 
 Do they not blaspheme the providence of God who denounce 
 \?s wickedness and outrage, that which is rendered indispensa- 
 ble to his purposes in the government of the world ? Or at 
 what stage of the progress of society will they say that Sla- 
 very ceases to be necessary, and its very existence becomes 
 
harper's memoir on slavery. 5 
 
 sin and crime ? I am aware that such argument would liave 
 little effect on those with whom it would be degrading to con- 
 tend—who pervert the inspired writings— which in some 
 parts expressly sanction Slavery, and throughout indicate 
 most clearly that it is a civil institution, with which religion 
 has no concern— with a shallowness and presumption not less 
 flagrant and shameless than his, who would justify murder 
 from the text, "and Phineas arose and executed judgment." 
 
 There seems to be something in this subject which blunts 
 the perceptions, and darkens and confuses the understandings 
 and moral feelings of men. Tell them that, of necessity, in 
 every civilized society, there must be an infinite variety of 
 conditions and employments, from the most eminent and in- \^ 
 tellectual, to the most servile and laborious ; that the negro 
 race, from their temperament and capacity, arej^Harly 
 smW Uo the situatio nwhich th^y^cnpy^and^^ 
 in it than any corresponding class to be found in the world; 
 prove mcOfttestibl y ^ h a trTTO^schenie of emancipation could be 
 carried into effect without the most intolerable mischiefs and 
 calamities to both master and slave, or without probably 
 throwing a large and fertile portion of the earth's surface out 
 of the pale of civilization— and you have done nothing. They 
 reply, that whatever may be the consequence, you are bound 
 to do right ; that man has a right to himself, and man can- 
 not have property in man ; that if the negro race be natural- 
 ly inferior in mind and character, they are not less entitled 
 to the rights of humanity ; that if they are happy in their 
 condition, it affords but the stronger evidence of their degra- 
 dation, and renders them still more objects of commiseration. 
 They repeat, as the fundamental maxim of our civil policy, 
 that all men are born free and equal, and quote from our 
 Declaration of Independence, "that men are endowed by 
 1* 
 
HARPER'S MEMOIR ON SLAVERY. 
 
 their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are 
 life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." 
 
 It is not the first time that I have had occasion to observe 
 that men may repeat with the utmost confidence, some maxim 
 or sentimental phrase, as self-evident or admitted truth, 
 which is either palpably false, or to which, upon examination, 
 it will be found that they attach no definite idea. Notwith- 
 standing our respect for the important document which de- 
 clared our independence, yet if any thing be found in it, and 
 especially in what may be regarded rather as its ornament 
 than its substance — false, sophistical or unmeaning, that re- 
 spect should not screen it from the freest examination. 
 
 All men are born free and equal. Is it not palpably near- 
 er the truth to say that no man was ever born free, and that 
 no two men were ever born equal ? Man is born in a state 
 of the most helpless dependence on others. He continues 
 subject to the absolute control of others, and remains without 
 many of the civil and all of the political privileges of his so- 
 ciety, until the period which the laws have fixed as that at 
 which he is supposed to have attained the maturity of his 
 faculties. Then inequality is further developed, and becomes 
 infinite in every society, and under whatever form of govern- 
 ment. Wealth and poverty, fame or obscurity, strength or 
 weakness, knowledge or ignorance, ease or labor, power or 
 subjection, mark the endless diversity in the condition of men. 
 
 But we have not arrived at the profundity of the maxim. 
 This inequality is, in a great measure, the result of abuses in 
 the institutions of society. They do not speak of what exists, 
 but of what ought to exist. Every one should be left at lib- 
 erty to obtain all the advantages of society which he can com- 
 pass, by the free exertion of his faculties, unimpeded by civil 
 restraints. It may be said that this would not remedy the . 
 
evils of society which are complained of. The inequalities to 
 which I have referred, with the misery resulting from them, 
 would exist in fact under the freest and most popular form of 
 government that man could devise. But what is the founda- 
 tion of the bold dogma so confidently announced ? Females 
 are human and rational beings. They may be found of bet- 
 ter faculties, and better qualified to exercise political privileges, 
 and to attain the distinctions of society, than many men ; yet 
 who complains of the order of society by which they are ex- 
 cluded from them? For I do not speak of the few who would 
 desecrate them ; do violence to the nature which their Creator 
 has impressed upon them ; drag them from the position which 
 they necessarily occupy for the existence of civilized society, 
 and in which they constitute its blessing and ornament — the 
 only position which they have ever occupied in any human 
 society — to place them in a situation in which they would be 
 alike miserable and degraded. Low as we descend in com- 
 bating the theories of presumptuous dogmatists, it cannot be 
 necessary to stoop to this. A youth of eighteen may have 
 powers which cast into the shade those of any of his more ad- 
 vanced cotemporaries. He may be capable of serving or sa- 
 ving his country, and if not permitted to do so now, the occa- 
 sion may have been lost forever. But he can exercise no po- 
 litical privilege, or aspire to any political distinction. It is 
 said that, of necessity, society must exclude from some civil 
 and political privileges those who are unfitted to exercise 
 them, by infirmity, unsuitableness of character, or defect of 
 discretion ; that of necessity there must be some general rule 
 on the subject, and that any rule which can be devised will 
 operate with hardship and injustice on individuals. This is 
 all that can be said, and all that need be said. It is saying, 
 in other words, that__t he privileges in cju gsji on aro -grr matter 
 of natural right, but to be settled by convention, as the good 
 
harper's memoir on slavery. 
 
 and safety of society may require. If society should disfran- 
 chise individuals convicted of infamous crimes, would this he 
 a n invasion of natural right? Yet this would not be justified 
 on the score of their moral guilt, but that the good of society 
 required or would be promoted by it. We admit the exist- 
 ence of a moral law, binding on societies as on individuals. 
 Society must act in good faith. No man, or body of men, has 
 a right to inflict pain or privation on others, unless with a 
 view, after full and impartial deliberation, to prevent a greater 
 evil. If this deliberation be had, and the decision made in 
 good faith, there can be no imputation of moral guilt. Has 
 any politician contended that the very existence of govern- 
 ments in which there are orders privileged by law, constitutes a 
 violation of morality ; that their continuance is a crime, which 
 men are bound to put an end to, without any consideration of 
 the good or evil to result from the change ? Yet this is the 
 natural inference from the dogma of the natural equality of 
 men as applied to our institution of Slavery— an equality not 
 to be invaded without injustice and wrong, and requiring to 
 be restored instantly, unqualifiedly, and without reference to 
 consequences. 
 
 This is sufficiently common-place, but we are sometimes 
 driven to common-place. It is no less a false and shallow, 
 than a presumptuous philosophy, which theorizes on the af- 
 fairs of men as of a problem to be solved by some unerring 
 rule of human reason, without reference to the designs of a 
 superior intelligence, so far as he has been pleased to indicate 
 them, in their creation and destiny. Man is born to subjec- 
 tion. ' Not only during infancy is he dependent, and under 
 \the control of others; at all ages, it is the very bias of his 
 nature, that the strong and the wise should control the weak 
 and the ignorant. So it has been since the days of Nimrod. 
 The existence of some form of slavery in all ages and coun- 
 
harper's memoir on slavery. 9 
 
 t ries, is proof en ough of this. He is born to subjection as he 
 is born in sin and ignorance. To make any considerable pro- 
 gress in knowledge, the continued efforts of successive genera- 
 tions, and the diligent training and unwearied exertions of the 
 individual, are requisite. To make progress in moral virtue, 
 not less time and effort, aided by superior help, are necessary ; 
 and it is only by the matured exercise of his knowledge and 
 his virtue, that he can attain to civil freedom. Of all things, 
 the existence of civil liberty is most the result of artificial in- 
 stitution. The prochyily-o f t he natural mfta us^tp_ domineer 
 at tn h^ ""^gTyi finti, A noble result, indeed, but in the at- 
 taining of which, as in the instances of knowledge and virtue, 
 the Creator, for his own purposes, has set a limit beyond 
 which we cannot go. 
 
 But he who is most advanced in knowledge, is most sensi- 
 ble of his own ignorance, and how much must forever be un- 
 known to man in his present condition. As I have heard it 
 expressed, the further you extend the circle of light, the wider 
 is the horizon of darkness. He who has made the greatest 
 progress in moral purity, is most sensible of the depravity, not 
 only of the world around him, but of his own heart, and the 
 imperfection of his best motives ; and this he knows that men 
 must feel and lament so long as they continue men. So 
 when the greatest progress in civil liberty has been made, the 
 enlightened lover of liberty will know that there must remain 
 much inequality, much injustice, much slavery, which no hu- 
 man wisdom or virtue will ever be able wholly to prevent or 
 redress. As I have before had the honor to say to this Socie- 
 ty, the condition of our w T hole existence is but to struggle 
 with evils — to compare them — to choose between them, and, 
 so far as we can, to mitigate them. To say that there is evil 
 in any institution, is only to say that it is human. 
 
 And can we doubt but that this long discipline and labori- 
 
10 
 
 ous process, by which men are required to work out the eleva- 
 tion and improvement of their individual nature and their 
 social condition, is imposed for a great and beuevolent end ? 
 Our faculties are not adequate to the solution of the mystery, 
 why it should be so ; but the truth is clear, that the world was 
 not intended for the seat of universal knowledge, or goodness, 
 or happiness, or freedom. 
 
 Man has been endowed by his Creator with certain inalien- 
 able rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
 hap2)iness. What is meant by the inalienable right of liber- 
 ty ? Has any one who has used the words ever asked himself 
 this question ? Does it mean that a man has no right to ali- 
 enate his own liberty — to sell himself and his posterity for 
 slaves ? This would seem to be the more obvious meaning. 
 When the word right is used, it has reference to some law 
 which sanctions it, and would be violated by its invasion. It 
 must refer either to the general law of morality, or the law of 
 the country — the law of God or the" law of man. If the law 
 of any country permitted it, it would of course be absurd to 
 say that the law of that country was violated by such aliena- 
 tion. If it have any meaning in this respect, it must mean 
 that though the law of the country permitted it, the man 
 would be guilty of an immoral act who should thus alienate 
 his liberty. A fit question for schoolmen to discuss, and the 
 consequences resulting from its decision as important as from 
 any of theirs. Yet who will say that the man pressed by 
 famine, and in prospect of death, would be criminal for such 
 an act ? Self-preservation, as is truly said, is the first law of 
 nature. High and peculiar characters, by elaborate cultiva- 
 tion, may be taught to prefer death to slavery, but it would 
 be folly to prescribe this as a duty to the mass of mankind. 
 
 If any rational meaning can be attributed to the sentence 
 I have quoted, it is this : — That the society, or the individu- 
 
harper's memoir on slavery. 11 
 
 als who exercise the powers of government, are guilty of a 
 violation of the law of God or of morality, when, by any law 
 or public act, they deprive men of life or liberty, or restrain 
 them in the pursuit of happiness. Yet every government 
 does, and of necessity must, deprive men of life and liberty 
 for offences against society. Restrain them in the pursuit of 
 happiness ! Why all the laws of society are intended for 
 nothing else but to restrain men from the pursuit of happiness, 
 according to their own ideas of happiness or advantage — 
 which the phrase must mean if it means any thing. And by 
 what .right does society punish by the loss of life or liberty? 
 Not on account of the moral guilt of the criminal — not by 
 impiously and arrogantly assuming the prerogative of the 
 Almighty, to dispense justice or suffering, according to moral 
 desert. It is for its own protection — it is the right of self- 
 defence. If there existed the blackest moral turpitude, which 
 by its example or consequences, could be of no evil to society, 
 government would have nothing to do with that. If an ac- 
 tion, the most harmless in its moral character, could be dan- 
 gerous to the security of society, society would have the per- 
 fect right to punish it. If the possession of a black skin 
 would be otherwise dangerous to society, society has the same 
 right to protect itself by disfranchising the possessor of civil 
 privileges, and to continue the disability to his posterity, if 
 the same danger would be incurred by its removal. Society* 
 inflicts these forfeitures for the security of the lives of its 
 members ; it inflicts them for the security of their property, 
 the great essential of civilization ; it inflicts them also for the 
 protection of its political institutions, the forcible attempt to 
 overturn which, has always been justly regarded as the great- 
 est crime ; and who has questioned its right so to inflict ? 
 " Man cannot have property in man" — a phrase as full of 
 meaning as, " who slays fat oxen should himself be fat," 
 
12 harper's memoir on slavery. 
 
 Certainly lie may, if the laws of society allow it, and if it be 
 on sufficient grounds, neither he nor society do wrong. 
 
 And is it by this — as we must call it, however recom- 
 mended to our higher feelings by its associations — well-sound- 
 ing, but unmeaning verbiage of natural equality and inalien- 
 able rights, that our lives are to be put in jeopardy, our pro- 
 perty destroyed, and our political institutions overturned or 
 endangered ? If a people had on its borders a tribe of bar- 
 barians, whom no treaties or faith could bind, and by whose 
 attacks they were constantly endangered, against whom they 
 could devise no security, but that they should be extermi- 
 nated or enslaved ; would they not have the right to enslave 
 them, and keep them in slavery so long as the same danger 
 would be incurred by their manumission? If a civilized man 
 and a savage were by chance placed together on a desolate 
 island, and the former, by the superior power of civilization, 
 would reduce the latter to subjection, would he not have the 
 same right ? Would this not be the strictest self-defence ? I 
 do not now consider, how far we can make out a similar case 
 to justify our enslaving of the negroes. I speak to those who 
 contend for inalienable rights, and that the existence of 
 slavery always, and under all circumstances, involves injustice 
 and crime. 
 
 As I have said, we acknowledge the existence of a moral 
 law. It is not necessary for us to resort to the theory which 
 resolves all right into force. The existence of such a law is 
 imprinted on the hearts of all human beings. But though 
 its existence be acknowledged, the mind of man has hitherto 
 been tasked in vain to discover an unerring standard of mo- 
 rality. It is a common and undoubted maxim of morality, 
 that you shall not do evil that good may come. You shall 
 not do injustice or commit an invasion of the rights of others, 
 for the sake of a greater ulterior good. But what is injus- 
 
harper's memoir on slavery. 13 
 
 tice, and what are the rights of others ? And why are we 
 not to commit the one or invade the others ? It is because it 
 inflicts pain or suffering, present or prospective, or cuts them 
 off from enjoyment which they might otherwise attain. The 
 Creator has sufficiently revealed to us that happiness is the 
 great end of existence, the sole object of all animated and 
 sentient beings. To this he has directed their aspirations 
 and efforts, and we feel that we thwart his benevolent pur- 
 poses when we destroy or impede that happiness. This is the 
 only natural right of man. All other fights result from thel/ 
 conventions of society, and these, to be sure, we are not to 
 invade, whatever good may appear to us likely to follow. 
 Yet are we in no instance to inflict pain or suffering, or disturb 
 enjoyment, for the sake of producing a greater good 1 Is the 
 madman not to be restrained who would bring destruction on 
 himself or others ? Is pain not to be inflicted on the child, 
 when it is the only means by which he can be effectually 
 instructed to provide for his own future happiness ? Is the 
 surgeon guilty of wrong who amputates a limb to preserve 
 life ? Is not the object of all penal legislation, to inflict suf- 
 fering for the sake of greater good to be secured to society ? 
 
 By what right is it that man exercises dominion over the V 
 beasts of the field ; subdues them to painful labor, or deprives 
 them of life for his sustenance or enjoyment? They are not 
 rational beings. No, but they are the creatures of God, sen- 
 tient beings, capable of suffering and enjoyment, and entitled 
 to enjoy according to the measure of their capacities. Does 
 not the voice of nature inform every one, that he is guilty of 
 wrong when he inflicts on them pain without necessity or 
 object ? If their existence be limited to the present life, it 
 affords the stronger argument for affording them the brief 
 enjoyment of which it is capable. It is because the greater 
 good is effected ; not only to man but to the inferior animals 
 2 
 
14 harper's memoir ott slavery. 
 
 themselves. The care of man gives the boon of existence to 
 myriads who would never otherwise have enjoyed it, and the 
 enjoyment of their existence is better provided for while it 
 lasts. It belongs to the being of superior faculties to judge of 
 the relations which shall subsist between himself and inferior 
 animals, and the use he shall make of them ; and he may 
 justly consider himself, who has the greater capacity of enjoy- 
 ment, in the first instance. Yet he must do this conscien- 
 tiously, and no doubt, moral guilt has been incurred by the 
 infliction of pain on these animals, with no adequate benefit 
 to be expected. I do no disparagement to the dignity of 
 human nature, even in its humblest form, when I say that on 
 the very same foundation, with the difference only of circum- 
 stance and degree, rests the right of the civilized and culti- 
 vated man, over the savage and ignorant. It is the order of 
 nature and of God, that the being of superior faculties and 
 knowledge, and therefore of superior power, should control 
 and dispose of those who are inferior. It is as much in the 
 older of nature, that men should enslave each other, as that 
 other animals should prey upon each other. I admit that he 
 does this under the highest moral responsibility, and is most 
 guilty if he wantonly inflicts misery or privation on beings 
 more capable of enjoyment or suffering than brutes, without 
 necessity or any view to the greater good which is to result. 
 If we conceive of society existing without government, and 
 that one man by his superior strength, courage or wisdom, 
 could obtain the mastery of his fellows, he would have a per- 
 fect right to do so. He would be morally responsible for the 
 use of his power, and guilty if he failed to direct them so as 
 to promote their happiness as well as his own. Moralists 
 have denounced the injustice and cruelty which have been 
 practised towards our aboriginal Indians, by which they nave 
 been driven from their native seats and exterminated, and no 
 
harper's memoir on slavery. 15 
 
 doubt with much justice. No doubt, much fraud and in- 
 justice has been practised in the circumstances and the man- 
 ner of their removal. Yet who has contended that civilized 
 man had no moral right to possess himself of the country \ 
 That he was bound to leave this wide and fertile continent, 
 which is capable of sustaining uncounted myriads of a civi- 
 lized race, to a few roving and ignorant barbarians ? Yet if 
 any thing is certain, it is certain that there were no means by 
 which he could possess the country, without exterminating or 
 enslaving them. Savage and civilized man cannot live to- 
 gether, and the savage can only be tamed by being enslaved 
 or by having slaves. By enslaving alone could he have pre- 
 served them.* And who shall take upon himself to decide 
 that the more benevolent course, and more pleasing to God, 
 was pursued towards them, or that it would not have been 
 better that they had been enslaved generally, as they were in 
 particular instances \ It is a refined philosophy, and utterly 
 false in its application to general nature, or the mass of hu- 
 man kind, which teaches that existence is not the greatest of 
 all boons, and worthy of being preserved even under the most 
 adverse circumstances. The strongest instinct of all animated 
 beings sufficiently proclaims this. When the last red man 
 shall have vanished from our forests, the sole remaining traces 
 of his blood will be found among our enslaved population.] - 
 The Afi'ican slave trade has" given, and will give, the boon of 
 existence to millions and millions in our country, who would 
 otherwise never have enjoyed it, and the enjoyment of their 
 existence is better provided for while it lasts. Or if, for the 
 rights of man over inferior animals, we are referred to revc- 
 
 * 1 refer to President Dew on this subject. 
 
 t It is not uncommon, especially in Charleston, to .see slaves, after 
 many descents and having mingled their blood with the Africans, pos- 
 ; Indian hair aud features. 
 
16 harper's memoir on slavert. 
 
 lation, which pronounces — "ye shall have dominion over the 
 beasts of the field, and over the fowls of the air," we refer to 
 the same, which declares not the less explicitly — 
 
 " Both the bondmen and bondmaids which thou shalt 
 have, shall be of the heathen that are among you. Of them 
 shall you buy bondmen and bondmaids." 
 
 " Moreover of the children of strangers that do sojourn 
 among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that 
 are with you, which they begot in your land, and they shall 
 be your possession. And ye shall take them as an inheri- 
 tance for your children after you, to inherit them by posses- 
 sion. They shall be your bondmen forever." 
 
 In moral investigations, ambiguity is often occasioned by 
 confounding the intrinsic nature of an action, as determined 
 by its consequence, with the motives of the actor, involving 
 moral guilt or innocence. If poison be given with a view to 
 destroy another, and it cures him of disease, the poisoner is 
 guilty, but the act is beneficent in its results. If medicine be 
 given with a view to heal, and it happens to kill, he who ad- 
 ministered it is innocent, but the act is a noxious one. If 
 they who begun and prosecuted the slave trade, practised hor- 
 rible cruelties and inflicted much sufTering — as no doubt they 
 did, though these have been much exaggerated — for merely 
 selfish purposes, and with no view to future good, they were 
 morally most guilty. So far as unnecessary cruelty was prac- 
 tised, the motive and the act were alike bad. But if we 
 could be sure that the entire effect of the trade has been to 
 produce more happiness than would otherwise have existed, 
 we must pronounce it good, and that it has happened in the 
 ordering of God's providence, to whom evil cannot be im- 
 puted. Moral guilt has not been imputed to Las Casas, and 
 if the importation of African slaves into America, had the 
 effect of preventing more suffering than it inflicted, it was 
 
harper's memoir on slavery. 17 
 
 good, both in the motive and the result, I freely admit that, 
 it is hardly possible to justify morally, those who begun and 
 carried on the slave trade. No speculation of future good to y/ 
 be brought about, could compensate the enormous amount of 
 evil it occasioned. 
 
 If we should refer to the common moral sense of mankind, 
 as determined by their conduct in all ages and countries, for 
 a standard of morality, it would seem to be in favor of 
 Slavery. The will of God, as determined by utility, would 
 be an infallible standard, if we had an unerring measure of 
 utility. The utilitarian philosophy, as it is commonly under- 
 stood, referring only to the animal wants and employments, 
 and physical condition of man, is utterly false and degrading. 
 If a sufficiently extended definition be given to utility, so as to 
 include every thing that may be a source of enjoyment or suf- 
 fering, it is for the most part useless. IIow can you compare 
 the pleasures resulting from the exercise of the understanding, 
 the taste and the imagination, with the animal enjoyments of 
 the senses — the gratification derived from a fine poem with 
 that from a rich banquet ? IIow are we to weigh the pains 
 and enjoyments of one man highly cultivated and of great 
 sensibility, against those of many men of blunter capacity for 
 enjoyment or suffering? And if we could determine with 
 certainty in what utility consists, we are so short-sighted with 
 respect to consequences — the remote results of our best con- 
 sidered actions are so often wide of our anticipations, or con- 
 trary to them, that we should still be very much in the dark. 
 But though we cannot arrive at absolute certainty with re- 
 spect to the utility of actions, it is always fairly matter of 
 argument. Though an imperfect standard, it is the best we 
 have, and perhaps the Creator did not intend that we should 
 arrive at perfect certainty with regard to the morality of many 
 actions. If, after the most careful examination of conse- 
 2* 
 
18 harper's memoir on slavery. 
 
 quences that we are able to make, with due distrust of our- 
 selves,vwe impartially, and in good faith, decide for that 
 which appears likely to produce the greatest good, we are 
 free from moral guilt. And I would impress most earnestly, 
 that with our imperfect and limited faculties, and short-sight- 
 ed as we are to the future, we can rarely, very rarely indeed, 
 be justified in producing considerable present evil or suffering, 
 in the expectation of remote future good — if indeed this can 
 ever be justified. 
 
 In considering this subject, I shall not regard it in the first 
 instance in reference to the present position of the slavehold- 
 ing States, or the difficulties which lie in the way of their 
 emancipating their slaves, but as a naked, abstract question — 
 whether it is better that the institution of praedial and domes- 
 tic Slavery should, or should not, exist in civilized society. 
 And though some of my remarks may seem to have such a 
 tendency, let me not be understood as taking upon myself to 
 determine that it is better that it should exist. God forbid 
 that the responsibility of deciding such a question should 
 ever be thrown on me or my countrymen. But this I will 
 say, and not without confidence, that it is in the power of no 
 human intellect to establish the contrary proposition — that it 
 is better it should not exist. This is probably known but to 
 one being, and concealed from human sagacity. 
 
 There have existed in various ages, and we now see exist- 
 ing in the world, people in every stage of civilization, from 
 the most barbarous to the most refined. Man, as I have said, 
 is not born to civilization. He is born rude and ignorant. 
 But it will be, I suppose, admitted that it is the design of his 
 Creator that he should attain to civilization: that religion 
 should be known, that the comforts and elegancies of life 
 should be enjoyed, that letters and arts should be cultivated ; 
 in short, that there should be the greatest possible develop- 
 
harper's memoir on slavery. 19 
 
 ment of moral and intellectual excellence. It can hardly be 
 necessary to say any thing of those who have extolled the 
 superior virtues and enjoyments of savage life — a life of phy- 
 sical wants and sufferings, of continual insecurity, of furious 
 passions and depraved vices. Those who have praised savage 
 life, are those who have known nothing of it, or who have 
 become savages themselves. But as I have said, so far as 
 reason or universal experience instruct us, the institution of 
 Slavery is an essential process in emerging from savage life.^. 
 It must then produce good, and promote the designs of the 
 Creator. 
 
 I add further, that Slavery anticipates the benefits of civi- 
 lization, and retards the evils of civilization. The former 
 part of this proposition has been so fully established by a 
 writer of great power of thought — though I fear his practical 
 conclusions will be found of little value — that it is hardly ne- 
 cessary to urge it.* Property — the accumulation of capital, 
 as it is commonly called — is the first element of civilization. 
 But to accumulate, or to use capital to any considerable ex- 
 tent, the combination of labor is necessary. In early stages 
 of society, when people are thinly scattered over an extensive 
 territory, the labor necessary to extensive works cannot be 
 commanded. Men are independent of each other. Having 
 the command of abundance of land, no one will submit to be 
 employed in the service of his neighbor. No one, therefore, 
 can employ more capital than he can use with his own hands, 
 or those of his family, nor have an income much beyond 
 the necessaries of life. There can, therefore, be little leisure 
 
 * The author of '■ England and America." We do, however, most 
 indignantly repudiate his conclusion, that we are bound to submit to a 
 tariff of protection, as an expedient for retaining our slaves, "the 
 force of the whole Union being required to preserve Slavery, to keep 
 down the slaves." 
 
20 harper's memoir on slavery. 
 
 for intellectual pursuits, or means of acquiring tlie comforts or 
 elegancies of life. It is hardly necessary to say, however, that 
 if a man has the command of slaves, he may combine labor, 
 and use capital to any required extent, and therefore accumu- 
 late wealth. He shows that no colonies have been success- 
 fully planted without some sort of Slavery. So we find the 
 fact to be. It is only in the slaveholding States of our Con- 
 federacy, that wealth can be acquired by agric ulture — which 
 i s the general em plo yment of our wholft cou ntry. Among 
 us, we know that there is no one, however humble his begin- 
 ning, who, with persevering industry, intelligence, and orderly 
 and virtuous habits, may not attain to considerable opulence. 
 So far as wealth has been accumulated in the States which do 
 not possess slaves, it has been in cities by the pursuits of 
 commerce, or lately, by manufactures. Bu^Jhe products of 
 sl ave labor furnish more than two-thirds of j hematcrials of 
 
 rmr forpi o-n Commerce, w l 11 r ' h ^'^ Wlnst.ry ttfjJTnsft St,n,t.ps is 
 
 ejxi^loy^d in transporting and exchanging..;- and among the 
 slaveholding Stateslsl:ol)e'1ouncl"the great market for all the 
 productions of their industry, of whatever kind. The pros- 
 perity of those States, tliej^^%, ^miLilifi. civilization of thei r 
 J cities7lia^^^aa==fof^e^most Twi.cie ated by the exist ence of 
 Slavery. Even in the cities, but for a class of population, 
 which our institutions have marked as servile, it would be 
 scarcely possible to preserve the ordinary habitudes of civilized 
 life, by commanding the necessary menial and domestic ser- 
 vice. 
 
 Every stage of human society, from the most barbarous to 
 the most refined, has its own peculiar evils to mark it as the 
 condition of mortality ; and perhaps there is none but omni- 
 potence who can say in which the scale of good or evil most 
 preponderates. We need say nothing of the evils of savage 
 life. There is a state of society elevated somewhat above it, 
 
harper's memoir on slavery. 21 
 
 which is to be found in some of the more thinly peopled por- 
 tions of our own country — the rudest agricultural state — 
 which is thus characterized by the author to whom I have re- 
 ferred : " The American of the back woods has often been 
 described to the English as grossly ignorant, dirty, unsocial, 
 delighting in rum and tobacco, attached to nothing but his 
 rifle, adventurous, restless, more than half savage. Deprived 
 of social enjoyments or excitements, he has recourse to those 
 of savage life, and becomes (for in this respect the Americans 
 degenerate) unfit for society." This is no very inviting pic- 
 ture, which, though exaggerated, we know not to be without 
 likeness. The evils of such a state, I suppose, will hardly be 
 thought compensated by unbounded freedom, perfect equal- 
 ity, and ample means of subsistence. 
 
 But let us take another stage in the progress — which to 
 many will appear to offer all that is desirable in existence, and 
 realize another Utopia. Let us suppose a state of society in 
 which all shall have property, and there shall be no great in- 
 equality of property — in which society shall be so much con- 
 densed as to afford the means of social intercourse, without 
 being crowded, so as to create difficulty in obtaining the 
 means of subsistence — in which every family that chooses 
 may have as much land as will employ its own hands, while 
 others may employ their industry in forming such products as 
 it may be desirable to exchange with them. Schools are 
 generally established, and the rudiments of education univer- 
 sally diffused. Religion is taught, and every village has its 
 church, neat, though humble, lifting its spire to heaven. 
 Here is a situation apparently the most favorable to happiness. 
 I say apparently, for the greatest source of human misery is 
 not in external circumstances, but in men themselves — in 
 their depraved inclinations, their wayward passions and per- 
 verse wills. Here is room for all the petty competition, the 
 
22 harper's memoir ox slavery. 
 
 envy, hatred, malice and dissimulation, that torture the heart 
 in what may be supposed the most sophisticated states of 
 societ}' ; and though less marked and offensive, there may be 
 much of the licentiousness. 
 
 But apart from this, in such a condition of society, if there 
 is little suffering, there is little high enjoyment. The even 
 flow of life forbids the high excitement which is necessary 
 for it. If there is little vice, there is little place for the emi- 
 nent virtues, which employ themselves in controlling the dis- 
 orders and remedying the evils of society, which, like war and 
 revolution, call forth the highest powers of man, whether for 
 good or for evil. If there is little misery, there is little room 
 for benevolence. Useful public institutions we may suppose 
 to be created, but not such as are merely ornamental. Ele- 
 gant arts can be little cultivated, for there are no means to 
 reward the artists ; nor the higher literature, for no one will 
 have leisure or means to cultivate it for its own sake. Those 
 who acquire what may be called liberal education, will do so 
 in order to employ it as the means of their own subsistence 
 or advancement in a profession, and literature itself will par- 
 take of the sordidness of trade. In short, it is plain that in 
 such a state of society, the moral and intellectual faculties 
 cannot be cultivated to their highest perfection. 
 
 But whether that which I have described be the most desi- 
 rable state of society or no, it is certain that it cannot conti- 
 nue. Mutation and progress is the condition of human affairs. 
 Though .retarded for a time by extraneous or accidental cir- 
 cumstances, the wheel must roll on. The tendency of popu- 
 lation is to become crowded, increasing the difficulty of obtain- 
 ing subsistence. There will be some without any property 
 except the capacity for labor. This they must sell to those 
 who have the means of employing them, thereby swelling 
 the amount of their capital, and increasing inequality. The 
 
harper's memoir 0>7 slavery. 23 
 
 process still r j;<-^-< on. The number of laborers increases until 
 there is a difficulty in obtaining* employment. Then compe- 
 tition is established. The remuneration of the laborer be- 
 comes gradual ly less and less ; a larger and larger proportion 
 of the product of his labor goes to swell the fortune of the 
 capitalist ; inequality becomes still greater and more invidious, 
 until the process ends in the establishment of just such a state 
 of things, as the same author describes as now existing in 
 England. After a most imposing picture of her greatness 
 and resources ; of her superabounding capital, and all-perva- 
 ding industry and enterprise ; of her public institutions for 
 purposes of art, learning and benevolence; her public im- 
 provements, by which intercourse is facilitated, and the conve- 
 nience of man subserved; the conveniences and luxuries of 
 life enjoyed by those who are in possession of fortune, or have 
 profitable employments; of all, in short, that places her at 
 the head of modern civilization, he proceeds to give the re- 
 verse of the picture. And here I shall use his own words : 
 " The laboring class compose the bulk of the people ; the 
 great body of the people ; the vast majority of the people — 
 these are the terms by which English writers and speakers 
 usually describe those whose only property is their labor." 
 
 " Of comprehensive words, the two most frequently used in 
 English politics, are distress and pauperism. After these, of 
 expressions applied to the state of the poor, the most common 
 are vice and misery, wretchedness, sufferings, ignorance, de- 
 gradation, discontent, depravity, drunkenness, and the increase 
 of crime ; with many more of the like nature." 
 
 He goes on to give the details of this inequality and 
 wretchedness, in terms calculated to sicken and appal one to 
 whom the picture is new. That he has painted strongly we 
 may -uppose ; but there is ample corroborating testimony, if 
 such were needed, that the representation is substantially just. 
 
24 harper's memoir on slavery. 
 
 Where so much misery exists, there must of course be much 
 discontent, and many have been disposed to trace the sources 
 of the former in vicious legislation, or the structure of govern- 
 ment ; and the author gives the various schemes, sometimes 
 contradictory, sometimes ludicrous, which projectors have 
 devised as a remedy for all this evil to which flesh is heir. 
 That ill judged legislation may have sometimes aggravated 
 the general suffering, or that its extremity may be mitigated 
 by the well directed efforts of the wise and virtuous, there 
 can be no doubt. One purpose for which it has been permit- 
 ted to exist is, that it may call forth such efforts, and awaken 
 powers and virtues which would otherwise have slumbered for 
 want of object. But remedy there is none, unless it be to 
 abandon their civilization. This inequality, this vice, this 
 misery, this Slavery, is the price of England's civilization. 
 They sutler the lot of humanity. But perhaps we may be 
 permitted humbly to hope, that great, intense and widely 
 spread as this misery undoubtedly is in reality, it may yet be 
 less so than in appearance. "We can estimate but very, very 
 imperfectly the good and evil of individual condition, as of 
 different states of society. Some unexpected solace arises to 
 alleviate the severest calamity. Wonderful is the power of 
 custom, in making the hardest condition tolerable ; the most 
 generally wretched life has circumstances of mitigation, and 
 moments of vivid enjoyment, of w 7 hich the more seemingly 
 happy can scarcely conceive ; though the lives of individuals 
 be shortened, the aggregate of existence is increased ; even 
 the various forms of death accelerated by want, familiarized 
 to the contemplation, like death to the soldier on the field of 
 battle, may become scarcely more formidable than what we 
 are accustomed to regard as nature's ordinary outlets of exis- 
 tence. If we could perfectly analyze the enjoyments and suf- 
 ferings of the most happy, and the most miserable man, we 
 
harper's memoir on slavery. 25 
 
 should perhaps be startled to find the difference so much less 
 than our previous impressions had led us to conceive. But it 
 is not for us to assume the province of omniscience. The par- 
 ticular theory of the author quoted, seems to be founded on 
 an assumption of this sort — that there is a certain stage in 
 the progress, when there is a certain balance between the de- 
 mand for labor, and the supply of it, which is more desirable 
 than any other — when the territory is so thickly peopled that 
 all cannot own land and cultivate the soil for themselves, but 
 a portion will be compelled to sell their labor to others ; still 
 leaving, however, the wages of labor high, and the laborer 
 independent. It is plain, however, that this would in like 
 manner partake of the good and the evil of other states of so- 
 ciety. There would be less of equality and less rudeness, 
 than in the early stages ; less civilization, and less suffering, 
 than in the latter. 
 
 It is the competition for employment, which is the source 
 of this misery of society, that gives rise to all excellence in 
 art and knowledge. When the demand for labor exceeds the 
 supply, the services of the most ordinarily qualified laborer 
 will be eagerly retained. When the supply begins to exceed, 
 and competition is established, higher and higher qualifications 
 will be required, until at length when it becomes very intense, 
 none but the most consummately skilful can be sure to be em- 
 ployed. Nothing but necessity can drive men to the exer- 
 tions which are necessary so to qualify themselves. But it is 
 not in arts, merely mechanical alone, that this superior excel- 
 lence will be required. It will be extended to every intellec- 
 tual employment ; and though this may not be the effect in 
 the instance of every individual, yet it will fix the habits and 
 character of the society, and prescribe every where, and in 
 every department, the highest possible standard of attainment. 
 
 But how is it that the existence of Slavery, as with us, will 
 3 
 
26 harper's memoir on slavery. 
 
 Retard the evils of civilization? Very obviously. It is the 
 intense competition of civilized life, that gives rise to the 
 excessive cheapness of labor, and the excessive cheapness of 
 labor is the cause of the evils in question. Slave labor can 
 never be so cheap as what is called free labor. Political econo- 
 mists have established as the natural standard of wages in a 
 fully peopled country, the value of the laborer's existence. I 
 shall not stop to inquire into the precise truth of this proposi- 
 tion. It certainly approximates the truth. Where competi- 
 tion is intense, men will labor for a bare subsistence, and less 
 than a competent subsistence. The employer of free laborers 
 obtains their services during the time of their health and vigor, 
 without the charge of rearing them from infancy, or support- 
 in* them in sicluiess or old age. This charge is imposed on 
 the employer of slave labor, who, therefore, pays higher wa- 
 ges, and cuts off the principal source of misery-the wants 
 and sufferings of infancy, sickness, and old age. Laborers too 
 will be less skilful, and perform less work-enhancing the 
 price of that sort of labor. The poor laws of England are an 
 attempt-but an awkward and empirical attempt-to supply 
 the place of that which we should suppose the feelings of every 
 human heart would declare to be a natural obligation-that 
 he who has received the benefit of the laborer's services dur- 
 ing his health and vigor, should maintain him when he be- 
 comes unable to provide for his own support. They answer 
 their purpose, however, very imperfectly, and are unjustly and 
 unequally imposed. There is no attempt to apportion the 
 burden according to the benefit received-and perhaps there 
 could be none. This is one of the evils of their condition. 
 In periods of commercial revulsion and distress, like the 
 - present, the distress, in countries of free labor, falls principally 
 on the laborers. In those of slave labor, it falls almost ex- 
 clusively on the employer. In the former, when a business 
 
harper's memoir on slavery. 27 
 
 becomes unprofitable, the employer dismisses his laborers or 
 lowers their wages. But with us, it is the very period at 
 which we are least able to dismiss our laborers ; and if we 
 would not suffer a further loss, we cannot reduce their wages. 
 To receive the benefit of the services of which they are capa- 
 ble, we must provide for maintaining their health and vigor. 
 In point of fact, we know that this is accounted among the ne- 
 cessary expenses of management. If the income of every * 
 planter of the Southern States were permanently reduced one- 
 half, or even much more than that, it would not take one jot 
 from the support and comforts of the slaves. And this can 
 never be materially altered, until they shall become so unpro- 
 fitable that Slavery must be of necessity abandoned. It is 
 probable that the accumulation of individual wealth will never 
 be carried to quite so great an extent in a slaveholding coun- 
 try, as in one of free labor ; but a consequence will be, that 
 there will be less inequality and less suffering. 
 
 Servitude is the condition of civilization. It was decreed, 
 when the command was given, " be fruitful, and multiply and 
 replenish the earth, and subdue it," and when it was added, 
 "in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread." And what 
 human being shall arrogate to himself the authority to pro- 
 nounce that our form of it is worse in itself, or more displeas- 
 ing to God, than that which exists elsewhere ? Shall it be 
 said that the servitude of other countries grows out of the exi- 
 gency of their circumstances, and therefore society is not re- 
 sponsible for it ? But if we know that in the progress of 
 things it is to come, would it not seem the part of wisdom 
 and foresight, to make provision for it, and thereby, if we can, 
 mitigate the severity of its evils ? But the fact is not so. Let 
 any one who doubts, read the book to which I have several 
 times referred, and he may be satisfied that it was forced upon 
 us by the extremest exigency of circumstances, in a struggle 
 
28 harper's memoir on slavery. 
 
 for very existence. Without it, it is doubtful whether a white 
 man would be now existing on this continent — certain, that 
 if there were, they would be in a state of the utmost destitu- 
 tion, weakness, and misery. It was forced on us by necessity, 
 and further fastened upon us by the superior authority of the 
 mother country. I, for one, neither deprecate nor resent the 
 gift. Nor did we institute Slavery. The Africans brought to 
 us had been, speaking in the general, slaves in their own 
 country, and only underwent a change of masters. In the 
 countries of Europe, and the States of our Confederacy, in 
 which Slavery has ceased to exist, it was abolished by positive 
 legislation. If the order of nature has been departed from, 
 and a forced and artificial state of things introduced, it has 
 been, as the experience of all the world declares, by them and 
 not by us. 
 
 That there are great evils in a society where Slavery exists, 
 and that the institution is liable to great abuse, I have already 
 said. To say otnerwise, would be to say that they were not 
 human. But the whole of human life is a system of evils and 
 compensations. We have no reason to believe that the com- 
 pensations with us are fewer, or smaller in proportion to the 
 evils, than those of any other condition of society. Tell me 
 of an evil or abuse ; of an instance of cruelty, oppression, licen- 
 tiousness, crime or suffering, and I will point out, and often in 
 five fold degree, an equivalent evil or abuse in countries where 
 Slavery does not exist. 
 
 Let us examine without blenching, the actual and alleged 
 evils of Slavery, and the array of horrors which many suppose 
 to be its universal concomitants. It is said that the slave is 
 out of the protection of the law; that if the law purports to 
 protect him in life and limb, it is but imperfectly executed ; 
 that he is still subject to excessive labor, degrading blows, or 
 any other sort of torture, which a master pampered and bru- 
 
29 
 
 talized by the exercise of arbitrary power, may think proper 
 to inflict; he is cut off from the opportunity of intellectual, 
 moral, or religious improvement, and even positive enactments 
 are directed against his acquiring the rudiments of knowl- 
 edge ; he is cut off forever from the hope of raising his condi- 
 tion in society, whatever may be his merit, talents, or virtues, 
 and therefore deprived of the strongest incentive to useful and 
 praiseworthy exertion ; his physical degradation begets a cor- 
 responding moral degradation : he is without moral principle, 
 and addicted to the lowest vices, particularly theft and false- 
 hood ; if marriage be not disallowed, it is little better than a 
 state of concubinage, from which results general licentiousness, 
 and the want of chastity among females — this indeed is not 
 protected by law, but is subject to the outrages of brutal lust ; 
 both sexes are liable to have their dearest affections violated ; 
 to be sold like brutes; husbands to be torn from wives, chil- 
 dren from parents ; — t his is the picture comm only presented 
 by t he denounc ers of Slavery. . 
 
 ""It is a somewhat singular fact that when there existed in • 
 our State no law for punishing the murder of a slave, other 
 than a pecuniary fine, there were, I will venture to say, at 
 least ten murders of freemen, for one murder of a slave. Yet 
 it is supposed they are less protected, or less secure than their 
 masters. Why they are protected by their very situation in 
 society, and therefore less need the protection of law. With 
 any other person than their master, it is hardly possible for 
 them to come into such sort of collision as usually gives rise 
 to furious and revengeful passions ; they offer no temptation 
 to the murderer for gain ; against the master himself, they 
 have the security of his own interest, and by his superintend- 
 ence and authority, they are protected from the revengeful 
 passions of each other. I am by no means sure that the cause 
 of humanity has been served by the change in jurisprudence, 
 3* 
 
30 harper's memoir on slavery. 
 
 which has placed their murder on the same footing with that 
 of a freemen. The change was made in subserviency to the 
 opinions and clamor of others who were utterly incompetent 
 to form an opinion on the subject; and a wise act is seldom 
 the result of legislation in this spirit. From the fact which I 
 have stated, it is plain that they less need protection. Juries 
 are, therefore, less willing to convict, and it may sometimes 
 happen that the guilty will escape all punishment. Security 
 is one of the compensations of their humble position. We 
 challenge the comparison, that with us there have been fewer 
 murders of slaves, than of parents, children, apprentices, and 
 other murders, cruel and unnatural, in society where slavery 
 does not exist. 
 
 But short of life or limb, various cruelties maybe practised 
 as the passions of the master may dictate. To this the same 
 reply has been often given — that they are secured by the mas- 
 ter's interest. If the state of Slavery is to exist at all, the 
 ^master must have, and ought to have, such power of punish- 
 ment as will compel them to perform the duties of their sta- 
 tion. And is not this for their advantage as well as his? No 
 human being can be contented, who does not perform the 
 duties of his station. Has the master any temptation to go 
 beyond this? If he inflicts on him such punishment as will 
 permanently impair his strength, he inflicts a loss on himself, 
 and so if he requires of him excessive labor. Compare the 
 labor required of the slave, w r ith those of the free agricultural 
 or manufacturing laborer in Europe, or even in the more 
 thickly peopled portions of the non-slaveholding States of our 
 Confederacy — though these last are no fair subjects of com- 
 parison — they enjoying, as I have said, in a great degree, the 
 advantages of Slavery along with those of an early and sim- 
 ple state of society. Read the English Parliamentary reports, 
 on the condition of the manufacturing operatives, and the 
 
harper's memoir on slavery. 31 
 
 children employed in factories. And such, is the impotence 
 of man to remedy the evils which the condition of his exist- 
 ence has imposed on him, that it is much to be doubted 
 whether the attempts by legislation to improve their situa- 
 tion, will not aggravate its evils. They resort to this exces- 
 sive labor as a choice of evils. If so, the amount of their 
 compensation will be lessened also with the diminished 
 labor ; for this is a matter which legislation cannot regulate. 
 Is it the part of benevolence then to cut them off even from 
 this miserable liberty of choice? Yet would these evils 
 exist in the same degree, if the laborers were the pro- 
 perty of the master — having a direct interest in preserving 
 their lives, their health and strength ? Who but a drivelling 
 fanatic has thought of the necessity of protecting domestic 
 animals from the cruelty of their owners ? And yet are not 
 great and wanton cruelties practised on these animals ? Com- 
 pare the whole of the cruelties inflicted on slaves throughout 
 our Southern country, with those elsewhere, inflicted by igno- 
 rant and depraved portions of the community, on those whom 
 the relations of society put into their power — of brutal hus- 
 bands on their wives ; of brutal parents — subdued against the 
 strongest instincts of nature to that brutality by the extremi- 
 ty of their misery — on their children ; of brutal masters on 
 apprentices. And if it should be asked, are not similar cruel- 
 ties inflicted, and miseries endured, in your society ? I answer, 
 in no comparable degree. The class in question are placed 
 under the control of others, who are interested to restrain 
 their excesses of cruelty or rage. Wives are protected from 
 their husbands, and children from their parents. And this is 
 no inconsiderable compensation of the evils of our system ; 
 and would so appear, if we could form any conception of the 
 immense amount of misery which is elsewhere thus inflicted. 
 The other class of society, more elevated in their position, are 
 
j 
 
 32 harper's memoir on slavery. 
 
 also (speaking of course in the general) more elevated in cha- 
 racter, and more responsible to public opinion. 
 
 But besides the interest of their master, there is another 
 security against cruelty. The relation of master and slave, 
 when there is no mischievous interference between them, is, as 
 the experience of all the world declares, naturally jone of kind- 
 ness. As tojjie^act, we should be held interested witnesses, 
 . hiy^w>^ppeal to universal nature. Is it not natural that a 
 man should be attached to that which is his own, and which 
 has contributed to his convenience, his enjoyment, or his vani- 
 ty ? This is felt even towards animals and inanimate objects. 
 How much more towards a being of superior intelligence and 
 usefulness, who can appreciate our feelings towards him, and 
 return them ? Is it not natural that we should be interested 
 in that which is dependent on us for protection and support ? 
 Do not men everywhere contract kind feelings towards their 
 dependants? Is it not natural that men should be more at- 
 tached to those whom they have long known — whom, perhaps, 
 they have reared or been associated with from infancy — than to 
 one with whom their connexion has been casual and tempo- 
 rary ? What is there in our atmosphere or institutions, to 
 produce a perversion of the general feelings of nature ? To 
 be sure, in this as in all other relations, there is frequent cause 
 of offence or excitement — on one side, for some omission of 
 duty, on the other, on account of reproof or punishment in- 
 flicted. But this is common to the relation of parent and 
 child ; and I will venture to say, that if punishment be justly 
 inflicted — and there is no temptation to inflict it unjustly — it 
 is as little likely to occasion permanent estrangement or re- 
 sentment as in that case. Slaves are perpetu al chfl jjrpn. It 
 is not the common nature of man, unless it be depraved by 
 his own misery, to delight in witnessing pain. It is more 
 grateful to behold contented and cheerful beings, than sullen 
 
33 
 
 and wretched ones. That men are sometimes wayward, de- 
 praved and brutal, we know. That atrocious and brutal cru- 
 elties have been perpetrated on slaves, and on those who were 
 not slaves, by such wretches, we also know. But that the 
 institution of Slavery has a natural tendency to form such a 
 character, that such crimes are more common, or more aggra- 
 vated than in other states of society, or produce among us 
 less surprise and horror, we utterly deny, and challenge the 
 comparison. Indeed, I have little hesitation in saying, that 
 if full evidence could be obtained, the comparison would re- 
 sult in our favor, and that the tendency of Slavery is rather 
 to humanize than to brutalize. 
 
 The accounts of travellers in oriental countries, give a very 
 favorable representation of the kindly relations which exist 
 between the master and slave ; the latter being often the 
 friend, and sometimes the heir of the former. Generally, how- 
 ever, especially if they be English travellers — if they say any 
 thing which may seem to give a favorable complexion to Sla- 
 very, they think it necessary to enter their protest, that they 
 shall not be taken to give any sanction to Slavery as it exists 
 in America. Yet human nature is the same in all countries. 
 There are very obvious reasons why in those countries there 
 should be a nearer approach to equality in their manners. 
 The master and slave are often of cognate races, and therefore 
 tend more to assimilate. There is, in fact, less inequality in 
 mind and character, where the master is but imperfectly civil- 
 ized. Less labor is exacted, because the master has fewer 
 motives to accumulate. But is it an injury to a human be- 
 ing, that regular, if not excessive labor, should be required of 
 him ? The primeval curse, with the usual benignity of provi- 
 dential contrivance, has been turned into the solace of an ex- 
 istence that would be much more intolerable without it. If 
 they labor less, they are much more subject to the outrages of 
 
34 harper's memoir on slavery. 
 
 capricious passion. If it were put to the choice of any human 
 being, would he prefer to be the slave of a civilized man, or 
 of a barbarian or semi-barbarian ? But if the general tenden- 
 cy of the institution in those countries is to create kindly rela- 
 tions, can it be imagined why it should operate differently in 
 this ? It is true, as suggested by President Dew — with the 
 exception of the ties of close consanguinity, it forms one of the 
 most intimate relations of society. And it will be more and 
 more so, the longer it continues to exist. The harshest fea- 
 tures of Slavery were created by those who were strangers to 
 Slavery — who supposed that it consisted in keeping savages in 
 subjection by violence and terror. The severest laws to be 
 found on our statute book, were enacted by such, and such are 
 still found to be the severest masters. As society becomes 
 settled, and the wandering habits of our countrymen altered, 
 there will be a larger and larger proportion of those who were 
 reared by the owner, or derived to him from his ancestors, 
 and who therefore will be more and more intimately regard- 
 ed, as forming a portion of his family. 
 
 It is true that the slave is driven to labor by stripes ; and if 
 the object of punishment be to produce obedience or reforma- 
 tion, with the least permanent injury, it is the best method of 
 punishment. But is it not intolerable, that a being formed in 
 the image of his Maker^shouldjbe degraded by bloivs ? This 
 is One of the perversions of mind and fe eling, tn ivhk*h--J .shall 
 have~fl£g ^iuii agalTTtojeier ? Such punishment would be de- 
 
 \ grading to a freeman, who had the thoughts and aspirations of 
 a freeman. In general, it is not degrading to a slave, nor is 
 
 1 it felt to be so. The evil is the bodily pain. Is it degrading 
 to a child ? Or if in any particular instance it would be so 
 felt, it is sure not to be inflicted — -unless in thos e rare case s 
 whicJi-can&titute^he startling and eccentric evils, from which 
 no s ociety is exempt, and against which no institutions. of so- 
 ciety can provide. 
 
35 
 
 The slave is cut off from the means of intellectual, moral^ 
 and religious improvement, and in consequence his moral cha- 
 racter becomes depraved, and he addicted to degrading vices. \ 
 The slave receives such instruction as qualifies him to dis- * 
 charge the duties of his particular station. The Creator did 
 not intend that every individual human being should be hio-h- 
 ly cultivated, morally and intellectually, for, as we have seen, 
 he has imposed conditions on society which would render this 
 impossible. There must be general mediocrity, or the high- 
 est cultivation must exist along with ignorance, vice, and de- 
 gradation. But is there in the aggregate of society, less op- 
 portunity for intellectual and moral cultivation, on account of 
 the existence of Slavery ? We must estimate institutions from 
 their aggregate of good or evil. I refer to the views which I 
 have before expressed to this society. It is by the existence 
 of Slavery, exempting so large a portion of our citizens from 
 the necessity of bodily labor, that we have a greater propor- 
 tion than any other people, who have leisure for intellectual \j 
 pursuits, and the means of attaining a liberal education. If 
 we throw away this opportunity, we shall be morally respon- 
 sible for the neglect or abuse of our advantages, and shall 
 most unquestionably pay the penalty. But the blame will 
 rest on ourselves, and not on the character of our institu- 
 tions. 
 
 I add further, notwithstanding that equality seems to be 
 the passion of the day, if, as Providence has evidently decreed, 
 there can be but a certain portion of intellectual excellence in 
 any community, it is better that it should be unequally divi- 
 ded. It is better that a part should be fully and highly culti- 
 vated, and the rest utterly ignorant. To constitute a society, 
 a variety of offices must be discharged, from those requiring 
 but the lowest degree of intellectual power, to those requiring 
 the very highest, and it should seem that the endowments 
 
36 
 
 ought to be apportioned according to the exigencies of the 
 situation. In the course of human affairs, there arise difficul- 
 ties which can only be comprehended or surmounted by the 
 strongest native power of intellect, strengthened by the most 
 assiduous exercise, and enriched with the most extended 
 knowledge — and even these are sometimes found indequate 
 to the exigency. The first want of society is — leaders. Who 
 shall estimate the value to Athens, of Solon, Aristides, The- 
 mistocles, Cymon, or Pericles ? If society have not leaders 
 qualified, as I have said, they will have those who w T ill lead 
 them blindly to their loss and ruin. Men of no great native 
 power of intellect, and of imperfect and superficial knowledge, 
 are the most mischievous of all — none are so busy, meddling, 
 confident, presumptuous, and intolerant. The whole of society 
 receives the benefit of the exertions of a mind of extraordina- 
 ry endowments. Of all communities, one of the least desira- 
 ble, w r ould be that in which imperfect, superficial, half-educa- 
 tion should be universal. The first care of a state which re- 
 gards its own safety, prosperity and honor, should be, that 
 when minds of extraordinary power appeal-, to whatever de- 
 partment of knowledge, art or science, their exertions may be 
 directed, the means should be provided of their most consum- 
 mate cultivation. Next to this, that education should be as 
 widely extended as possible. 
 
 Odium has been cast upon our legislation, on account of its 
 forbidding the elements of education to be communicated to 
 slaves. But, in truth, what injury is done to them by this ? 
 He who works during the day with his hands, does not read 
 in intervals of leisure for his amusement, or the improvement 
 of his mind — or the exceptions are so very rare, as scarcely to 
 need the being provided for. Of the many slaves whom I 
 have known capable of reading, I have never known one to 
 read any thing but the Bible, and this task they impose on 
 
harper's memoir on slavery. 37 
 
 themselves as matter of duty. Of all methods of religious in- 
 struction, however, this, of reading for themselves, would be . 
 the most inefficient — their comprehension is defective, and 
 the employment is to them an unusual and laborious one. 
 There are but very few who do not enjoy other means more 
 effectual for religious instruction. There is no place of wor- 
 ship opened for the white population, from which they are 
 excluded. I believe it a mistake, to say that the instructions 
 there given are not adapted to their comprehension, or calcu- 
 lated to improve them. If they are given as they ought to 
 be — practically, and without pretension, and are such as are 
 generally intelligible to the free part of the audience, compre- 
 hending all grades of intellectual capacity, — they will not be 
 unintelligible to slaves. I doubt whether this be not better 
 than instruction, addressed specially to themselves — which 
 they might look upon as a device of the master's, to make 
 them more obedient and profitable to himself. Their minds, 
 generally, show a strong religious tenden cy, and they are fond 
 of assuming the office o f religious instructors to e achoffie'r ; 
 and perhaps their religious notions are not mucfTmore ex- 
 travagant than those of a large portion of the free population 
 of our country. I am not sure that there is a much smaller 
 proportion of them, than of the free population, who make 
 some sort of religious profession. It is certainly the master's 
 interest that they should have proper religious sentimentsl 
 and if he fails in his duty towards them, we may be sure that \ 
 the consequences will be visited not upon them, but upon 
 him. 
 
 If there were any chance of their elevating their rank andv / 
 condition in society, it might be matter of hardship, that they * 
 should be debarred those rudiments of knowledge which open 
 the w T ay to further attainments. But this they know cannot 
 be, and that further attainments would be useless to them. 
 4 
 
33 harper's memoir on slavery. 
 
 Of the evil of this, I shall speak hereafter. A knowledge of 
 reading, writing, and the elements of arithmetic, is conveni- 
 ent and important to the free laborer, who is the transactor 
 of his own affairs, and the guardian of his own interests— but 
 of what use would they>-4o4he-slave ? These alone do not 
 elevate the mind or character, if such elevation were desirable. 
 If we estimate their morals according to that which should 
 be the standard of a free man's morality, then I grant they 
 are degraded in morals— though by no means to the extent 
 which'those who are unacquainted with the institution seem 
 to suppose. We justly suppose, that the Creator will require 
 of man the performance of the duties of the station in which 
 his providence has placed him, and the cultivation of the vir- 
 tues which are adapted to their performance; that he will 
 make allowance for all imperfection of knowledge, and the 
 absence of the usual helps and motives which lead to self- 
 correction and improvement. The degradation of morals re- 
 late principally to loose notions of honesty, leading to petty 
 thefts ; to falsehood and to licentious intercourse between the 
 sexes.' Though with respect even to these, I protest against 
 the opinion which seems to be elsewhere entertained, that they 
 are universal, or that slaves, in respect to them, might not 
 well bear a comparison with the lowest laborious class of other 
 countries. But certainly there is much dishonesty leading to 
 petty thefts. It leads, however, to nothing else. They have 
 ro contracts or dealings which might be a temptation to 
 fraud, nor do I know that their characters have any tendency 
 that way. They are restrained by the constant, vigilant, and 
 interested superintendence which is exercised over them, from 
 the commission of offences of greater magnitude— even if they 
 Avere disposed to them— which I am satisfied they are not. 
 frothing is so rarely heard of, as an atrocious crime commit- 
 ted by 1 slave ; especially since they have worn off the savage 
 
harper's memoir on slavery. 39 
 
 character which their progenitors brought with them from 
 Africa. Their offences are confined to petty depredations, 
 principally for the gratification of their appetites, and these 
 for reasons already given, are chiefly confined to the property 
 of their owner, which is most exposed to them. They could 
 make no use of a considerable booty, if they should obtain it. 
 It is plain that this is a less evil to society in its consequences 
 and example, than if committed by a freeman, who is master 
 of his own time and actions. With reference to society then, 
 the offence is less in itself — and may we not hope that it is 
 less in the sight of God ? A slave has no hope that by a 
 course of integrity, he can materially elevate his condition in 
 society, nor can his offence materially depress it, or affect his 
 means of support, or that of his family. Compared to the 
 freeman, he has no character to establish or to lose. He has 
 not been exercised to self-government, and being without in- 
 tellectual resources, can less resist the solicitations of appetite. 
 Theft in a freeman is a crime ; in a slave, it is a vice. I re- 
 collect to have heard it said, in reference to some question of 
 a slave's theft which was agitated in a Court, " Courts of Jus- 
 tice have no more to do with a slave's stealing, than with his 
 lying — that is a matter for the domestic forum. 1 ' It was truly 
 said — the theft of a slave is no offence against society. Com- 
 pare all the evils resulting from this, with the enormous 
 amount of vice, crime, and depravity, which in an European, 
 or one of our Northern cities, disgusts the moral feelings, and 
 render life and p'roperty insecure. So with respect to his 
 falsehood. I have never heard or observed, that slaves have 
 any peculiar proclivity to falsehood, unless it be in denying or 
 concealing their own offences, or those of their fellows. I have 
 never heard of falsehood told by a slave for a malicious pur- 
 pose. Lies of vanitj^ are sometimes told, as among the weak 
 and ignorant of other conditions. Falsehood is not attributed 
 
40 harper's memoir on slavery. 
 
 to an individual charged with an offence before a Court of 
 Justice, who pleads not guilty — and certainly the strong- temp- 
 tation to escape punishment, in the highest degree extenuates, 
 if it does not excuse, falsehood told by a slave. If the object 
 be to screen a fellow slave, the act bears some semblance of 
 fidelity, and perhaps truth could not be told without breach 
 of confidence. I know not how to characterize the falsehood 
 of a slave. 
 
 It has often been said by the denouncers of Slavery, that 
 marriage does not exist among slaves. It is difficult to un- 
 derstand this, unless wilful falsehood were intended. We 
 know that marriages are contracted ; may be, and often are, 
 solemnized with the forms usual among other classes of socie- 
 ty, and often faithfully adhered to during life. The law has 
 not provided for making those marriages indissoluble, nor 
 could it do so. If a man abandons his wife, being without 
 property, and being both property themselves, he cannot be 
 required to maintain her. If lie abandons his wife, and lives 
 in a state of concubinage with another, the law cannot punish 
 him for bigamy. It may perhaps be meant that the chastity 
 of wives is not protected by law from the outrages of violence* 
 I answer, as with respect to their lives, that they are protect- 
 ed by manners, and their position. Who ever heard of such 
 outrages being offered? At least as seldom, I will venture to 
 say, as in other communities of different forms of polity. One 
 reason doubtless may be, that often there is no disposition to 
 resist. Another reason also may be, that there is little temp- 
 tation to such violence, as there is so large a proportion of 
 this class of females who set little value on chastity, and af- 
 ford easy gratification to the hot passions of men. It might 
 be supposed, from the representations of some writers, that a 
 slaveholding country was one wide stew for the indulgence of 
 unbridled lust. Particular instances of intemperate and 
 
harper's memoir on - slavery. 41 
 
 shameless debauchery are related, which may perhaps he 
 true, and it is left to be inferred that this is the universal state 
 of manners. Brutes and shameless debauchees there are in 
 every country ; we know that if such things are related as 
 general or characteristic, the representation is false. Who 
 would argue from the existence of a Col. Chartres in England, 
 or of some individuals who might, perhaps, be named in other 
 portions of this country, of the horrid dissoluteness of man- 
 ners occasioned by the want of the institution of Slavery ? Yet 
 the argument might be urged quite as fairly, and really it 
 seems to me with a little more justice — for there such depra- 
 vity is attended with much more pernicious consequences. 
 Yet let us not deny or extenuate the truth. It is true that in 
 this respect the morals of this class are very loose, (by no 
 means so universally so as is often supposed,) and that the 
 passions of men of the superior caste, tempt and find gratifi- 
 cation in the easy chastity of the females. This is evil, and to 
 be remedied, if we can do so, without the introduction of 
 greater evil. But evil is incident to every condition of socie- 
 ty, and as I have said, we have only to consider in which in- 
 stitution it most predominates. 
 
 Compare these prostitutes of our country, (if it is not in- 
 justice to call them so,) and their condition with those of 
 other countries — the seventy thousand prostitutes of London, 
 or of Paris, or the ten thousand of New- York, or our other 
 Northern cities. Take the picture given of the first from the 
 author whom I have before quoted. " The laws and customs 
 of England conspire to sink this class of English women into 
 a state of vice and misery below that which necessarily be- 
 longs to their condition. Hence their extreme degradation 
 their troopers' oaths, their love of gin, their desperate reck- 
 lessness, and the shortness of their miserable lives." 
 
 " English women of this class, or rather girls, for few of 
 4* 
 
42 harper's memoir on slavery. 
 
 them live to be women, die like sheep with the rot ; so fast 
 that soon there would be none left, if a fresh supply were not 
 obtained equal to the number of deaths. But a fresh supply 
 is always obtained without the least trouble ; seduction easily 
 keeps pace with prostitution or mortality. Those that die are, 
 like factory children that die, instantly succeeded by new com- 
 petitors for misery and death." There is no hour of a sum- 
 mer's or a winter's night, in which there may not be found in 
 the streets a ghastly wretch, expiring under the double tor- 
 tures of disease and famine. Though less aggravated in its 
 features, the picture of prostitution in New-York or Philadel- 
 phia would be of like character. 
 
 In such communities, the unmarried woman who becomes 
 a mother, is an outcast from society — and though sentimen- 
 talists lament the hardship of the case, it is justly and neces- 
 sarily so. She is cut off from the hope of useful and profita- 
 ble employment, and driven by necessity to further vice. Her 
 misery, and the hopelessness of retrieving, render her despe- 
 rate, until she sinks into every depth of depravity, and is pre- 
 pared for every crime that can contaminate and infest society. 
 She has given birth to a human being, who, if it be so unfor- 
 tunate as to survive its miserable infancy, is commonly educa- 
 ted to a like course of vice, depravity, and crime. 
 
 Compare with this the female slave under similar circum- 
 stances. She is not a less useful member of society than be- 
 fore. If shame be attached to her conduct, it is such shame 
 as would be elsewhere felt for a venial impropriety. She has 
 not impaired her means of support, nor materially impaired 
 her character, or lowered her station in society ; she has done 
 no great injury to herself, or any other human being. Her 
 offspring is not a burden but an acquisition to her owner; his 
 support is provided for, and he is brought up to usefulness ; if 
 the fruit of intercourse with a freeman, his condition is, per- 
 
HARPERS MEMOIR ON SLAVERY. 43 
 
 haps, raised somewhat above that of his mother. Under 
 these circumstances, with imperfect knowledge, tempted by 
 the strongest of human passions — unrestrained by the mo- 
 tives which operate to restrain, but are so often found insuffi- 
 cient to restrain the conduct of females elsewhere, can it be 
 matter of surprise that she should so often yield to the temp- 
 tation ? Is not the evil less in itself, and in reference to socie- 
 ty — much less in the sight of God and man ? As was said of 
 theft — the want of chastity, which among females of other 
 countries is sometimes vice, sometimes crime — among the free 
 of our own, much more aggravated ; among slaves, hardly de- 
 serves a harsher term than that of weakness. I have heard 
 of complaint made by a free prostitute, of the greater counte- 
 nance and indulgence shown by society towards colored per- 
 sons of her profession, (always regarded as of an inferior and 
 servile class, though individually free,) than to those of her 
 own complexion. The former readily obtain employment ; 
 are even admitted into families, and treated with some de- 
 gree of kindness and familiarity, while any approach to inter- 
 course with the latter is shunned as contamination. The dis- 
 tinction is habitually made, and it is founded on the unerr- 
 ing instinct of nature. The colored prostitute is, in fact, a far 
 less contaminated and depraved being. Still many, in spite 
 of temptation, do preserve a perfectly virtuous conduct, and I 
 imagine it hardly ever entered into the mind of one of these, 
 that she was likely to be forced from i ' - authority or . 10- 
 lence. 
 
 It may be asked, if we have no prostitutes from the free 
 class of society among ourselves. I answer, in no assignable 
 proportion. With general truth, it might be said, that there 
 are none. When such a case occurs, it is among the rare 
 evils of society. And apart from other and better reasons, 
 which we believe to exist, it is plain that it must be so, from 
 
44 harper's memoir ox slavery. 
 
 the comparative absence of temptation. Our brothels, com- 
 parative^ very few — and these should not be permitted to exist 
 at all — are filled, for the most part, by importations from the 
 cities of our confederate States, where Slavery does not exist. 
 In return for the benefits which they receive from our Slavery, 
 along with tariffs, libels, opinions moral, religious, or political 
 — they furnish us also with a supply of thieves and prosti- 
 tutes. Never, but in a single instance, have I heard of an 
 imputation on the general purity of manners, among the free 
 females of the slaveholding States. Such an imputation, how- 
 ever, and made in coarse terms, we have never heard here — 
 here where divorce was never known — where no Court was 
 ever polluted by an action for criminal conversation with a 
 wife — where it is related rather as matter of tradition, not 
 unmingled with wonder, that a Carolinian woman of educa- 
 tion and family, proved false to her conjugal faith — an impu- 
 tation deserving only of such reply as self-respect would for- 
 bid us to give, if respect for the author of it did not. And 
 can it be doubted, that this purity is caused by, and is a com- 
 pensation for the evils resulting from the existence of an en- 
 slaved class of more relaxed morals ? 
 
 It is mostly the warm passions of youth, which give rise to 
 licentious intercourse. But I do not hesitate to say, that the 
 intercourse which takes place with enslaved females, is less 
 depraving in its effects, than when it is carried on with fe- 
 males of their own caste. In the first place, as like attracts 
 like, that which is unlike repels ; and though the strength of 
 passion be sufficient to overcome the repulsion, still the at- 
 traction is less. He feels that he is connecting himself with 
 one of an inferior and servile caste, and that there is some- 
 thing of degradation in the act. The intercourse is generally 
 casual ; he does not make her habitually an associate, and is 
 less likely to receive any taint from her habits and manners. 
 
HARPER'S MEMOIR ON" SLAVERY. 45 
 
 He is less liable to those extraordinary fascinations, with 
 which worthless women sometimes entangle their victims, to 
 the utter destruction of all principle, worth and vigor of cha- 
 racter. The female of his own race offers greater allurements. 
 The haunts of vice often present a show of elegance, and vari- 
 ous luxury tempts the senses. They are made an habitual 
 resort, and their inmates associates, till the general character 
 receives a taint from the corrupted atmosphere. Not only 
 the practice is licentious, but the understanding is sophistica- 
 ted ; the moral feelings are bewildered, and the boundaries of 
 virtue and vice are confused. Where such licentiousness very 
 extensively prevails, society is rotten to the heart. 
 
 But is it a small compensation for the evils attending the 
 relation of the sexes among the enslaved class, that they have 
 universally the opportunity of indulging the first instinct of 
 nature, by forming matrimonial connexions? What painful 
 restraint — what constant effort to struggle against the strong- 
 est impulses, are habitually practised elsewhere, and by other 
 classes ? And they must be practised, unless greater evils 
 would be encountered. On the one side, all the evils of vice, 
 with the miseries to which it leads — on the other, a marriage 
 cursed and made hateful by want — the sufferings of children, 
 and agonizing apprehensions concerning their future fate. Is 
 it a small good that the slave is free from all this ? He 
 knows that his own subsistence is secure, and that his children 
 will be in as good a condition as himself. To a refined and 
 intellectual nature, it may not be difficult to practise the re- 
 straint of which I have spoken. But the reasoning from such 
 to the great mass of mankind, is most fallacious. To these, 
 the supply of their natural and physical wants, and the indul- 
 gence of the natural domestic affections, must, for the most 
 part, afford the greatest good of which they are capable. To 
 the evils which sometimes attend their matrimonial connex- 
 
46 
 
 ions, arising from their looser morality, slaves, for obvious 
 reasons, are comparatively insensible. I am no apologist of 
 vice, nor would I extenuate the conduct of the profligate and 
 unfeeling, who would violate the sanctity of even these en- 
 gagements, and occasion the pain which such violations no 
 doubt do often inflict. Yet such is the truth, and we cannot 
 make it otherwise. We know that a woman's having been 
 before a mother, is very seldom indeed an objection to her 
 being made a wife. I know perfectly well how this will be 
 regarded by a class of reasoners or declaimers, as imposing a 
 character of deeper horror on the whole system ; but still, I 
 will say, that if they are to be exposed to the evil, it is mercy 
 that the sensibility to it should be blunted. Is it no compen- 
 sation also for the vices incident to Slavery, that they are, to 
 a great degree, secured against the temptation to greater 
 crimes, and more atrocious vices, and the miseries which at- 
 tend them ; against their own disposition to indolence, and 
 the profligacy which is its common result ? 
 
 But if they are subject to the vices, they have also the vir- 
 tues of slaves. Fidelity — often proof against all temptation — 
 even death itself — an eminently cheerful and social temper — 
 what the Bible imposes as a duty, but which might seem an 
 equivocal virtue in the code of modern morality — submission 
 to constituted authority, and a disposition to be attached to, 
 as well as to respect those, whom they are taught to regard 
 as superiors. They may have all the knowledge which will 
 make them useful in the station in which God has been pleased 
 to place them, and may cultivate the virtues which will ren- 
 der them acceptable to him. But what has the slave of any 
 country to do with heroic virtues, liberal knowledge, or ele- 
 gant accomplishments ? It is for the master ; arising out of 
 his situation — imposed on him as duty — dangerous and dis- 
 graceful if neglected — to compensate for this, by his own more 
 
47 
 
 assiduous cultivation, of the more generous virtues, and libe- 
 ral attainments. 
 
 It has been supposed one of the great evils of Slavery, that 
 it affords the slave no opportunity of raising himself to a 
 higher rank in society, and that he has, therefore, no induce- 
 ment to meritorious exertion, or the cultivation of his faculties. 
 The indolence and carelessness of the slave, and the less pro- 
 ductive quality of his labor, are traced to the want of such 
 excitement. The first compensation for this disadvantage, is 
 his security. If he can rise no higher, he is just in the same 
 degree secured against the chances of falling lower. It has 
 been sometimes made a question whether it were better for 
 man to be freed from the perturbations of hope and fear, or 
 to be exposed to their vicissitudes. But I suppose there could 
 be little question with respect to a situation, in which the fears 
 must greatly predominate over the hopes. And such, I ap- 
 prehend, to be the condition of the laboring poor in countries 
 where Slavery does not exist. If not exposed to present suf- 
 fering, there is continual apprehension for the future — for 
 themselves — for their children — of sickness and want, if not 
 of actual starvation. They expect to improve their circum- 
 stances ! Would any person of ordinary candor, say that 
 there is one in a hundred of them, who does not well know, 
 that with all the exertion he can make, it is out of his power 
 materially to improve his circumstances \ I speak not so 
 much of menial servants, who are generally of a superior 
 class, as of the agricultural and manufacturing laborers. They 
 labor with no such view. It is the instinctive struggle to pre- 
 serve existence, and when the superior efficiency of their labor 
 over that of our slaves is pointed out, as being animated by a 
 free man's hopes, might it not well be replied — it is because 
 they labor under a sterner compulsion. The laws interpose 
 no obstacles to their raising their condition in society. 'Tis a 
 
48 
 
 great boon — but as to the great mass, they know that they 
 never will be able to raise it — and it should seem not very 
 important in effect, whether it be the interdict of law, or im- 
 posed by the circumstances of the society. One in a thousand 
 is successful. But does his success compensate for the suffer- 
 ings of the many who are tantalized, baffled, and tortured in 
 vain attempts to attain a like result? If the individual be 
 conscious of intellectual power, the suffering is greater. Even 
 where success is apparently attained, he sometimes gains it 
 but to die — or with all capacity to enjoy it exhausted — worn 
 out in the struggle with fortune. If it be true that the Afri- 
 can is an inferior variety of the human race, of less elevated 
 character, and more limited intellect, is it not desirable that 
 the inferior laboring class should be made up of such, who 
 will conform to their condition without painful aspirations 
 and vain strua;o;les ? 
 
 / The slave is certainly liable to be sold. But, perhaps, it 
 vmay be questioned, whether this is a greater evil than the lia- 
 bility of the laborer, in fully peopled countries, to be dismissed 
 by his employer, with the uncertainty of being able to obtain 
 employment, or the means of subsistence elsewhere. With 
 us, the employer cannot dismiss his laborer without providing 
 him with another employer. His means of subsistence are 
 secure, and this is a compensation for much. He is also lia- 
 ble to be separated from wife and child — though not more 
 frequently, that I am aware of, than the exigency of their 
 condition compels the separation of families among the labor- 
 ing poor elsewhere — but from native character and tempera- 
 ment, the separation is much less severely felt. And it is one 
 of the compensations, that he may sustain these relations 
 without suffering a still severer penalty for the indulgence. 
 
 The love of liberty is a noble passion — to have the free, 
 uncontrolled disposition of ourselves, our words and actions- 
 
harper's memoir on slavery. 49 
 
 But alas ! it is one in which we know that a large portion of 
 the human race can never be gratified. It is mockery, to say 
 that the laborer any where has such disposition of himself — 
 though there may be an approach to it in some peculiar, and 
 those, perhaps, not the most desirable, states of society. But 
 unless he be properly disciplined and prepared for its enjoy- 
 ment, it is the most fatal boon that could be conferred — fatal 
 to himself and others. If slaves have less freedom of action 
 than other laborers, which I by no means admit, they are 
 saved in a great degree from the responsibility of self-govern- 
 ment, and the evils springing from their own perverse wills. 
 Those who have looked most closely into life, and know how 
 great a portion of human misery is derived from these sources 
 — the undecided and wavering purpose — producing ineffectu- 
 al exertion, or indolence with its thousand attendant evils — 
 the wayward conduct — intemperance or profligacy — will most 
 appreciate this benefit. The line of a slave's duty is marked 
 out with precision, and he has no choice but to follow it. He 
 is saved the double difficulty, first of determining the proper 
 course for himself, and then of summoning up the energy 
 which will sustain him in pursuing it. 
 
 If some superior power should impose on the laborious poor 
 of any other country — this as their unalterable condition — 
 you shall be saved from the torturing anxiety concerning 
 your own future support, and that of your children, which 
 now pursues you through life, and haunts you in death — you 
 shall be under the necessity of regular and healthful, though 
 not excessive labor — in return, you shall have the ample sup- 
 ply of your natural wants — you may follow the instinct of 
 nature in becoming parents, without apprehending that this 
 supply will fail yourselves or your children — you shall be 
 supported and relieved in sickness, and in old age, wear out 
 the remains of existence among familiar scenes and accustom- 
 5 
 
50 harper's memoir on slavery. 
 
 ed associates, without being driven to beg, or to resort to the 
 hard and miserable charity of a work-house— you shall of ne- 
 cessity be temperate, and shall have neither the temptation 
 nor opportunity to commit great crimes, or practice the more 
 destructive vices— how inappreciable would the boon be 
 thought ! And is not this a very near approach to the con- 
 dition of our slaves ? The evils of their situation they but 
 lightly feel, and would hardly feel at all, if they were not 
 seduously instructed into sensibility. Certain it is, that if 
 their fate were at the absolute disposal of a council of the 
 most enlightened philanthropists in Christendom, with unlim- 
 ited resources, they could place them in no situation so favora- 
 ble to themselves, as that which they at present occupy. But 
 whatever good there may be, or whatever mitigation of evil, 
 it is worse than valueless, because it is the result-of Slavery. 
 
 I am aware, that however often answered, it is likely to be 
 repeated again and again — how can that institution be tolera- 
 ble, by which a large class of society is cut off from the hope 
 of improvement in knowledge; to whom blows are not de- 
 grading ; theft no more than a fault; falsehood and the want 
 of chastity almost venial, and in which a husband or parent 
 looks with comparative indifference, on that which, to a free- 
 man, would be the dishonor of a wife or child ? 
 
 But why not, if it produces the greatest aggregate of good ? 
 Sin and ignorance are only evils, because they lead to misery. 
 It is not our institution, but the institution of nature, that in 
 the progress of society a portion of it should be exposed to 
 want, and the misery which it brings, and therefore involved 
 in ignorance, vice, and depravity. In anticipating some of 
 the good, we also anticipate a- portion of the evil of civiliza- 
 tion. But we have it in a mitigated form. The want and 
 the misery are unknown ; the ignorance is less a misfortune, 
 because the being is not the guardian of himself, and partly 
 
harper's memoir on slavery. 51 
 
 on account of that involuntary ignorance, the vice is less vice 
 — less hurtful to man, and less displeasing to God. 
 
 There is something in this word Slavery which seems to 
 partake of the qualities of the insane root, and distempers the 
 minds of men. That which would be true in relation to one 
 predicament, they misapply to another, to which it has no ap- 
 plication at all. Some of the virtues of a freeman would be 
 the vices of slaves. To submit to a blow, would be degra- 
 ding to a freeman, because he is the protector of himself. It 
 is not degrading to a slave — neither is it to a priest or wo- 
 man. And is it a misfortune that it should be so ? The free- 
 man of other countries is compelled to submit to indignities 
 hardly more endurable than blows — indignities to make the 
 sensitive feelings shrink, and the proud heart swell ; and this 
 very name of freeman gives them double rancor. If when a 
 man is born in Europe, it were certainly foreseen that he was 
 destined to a life of painful labor — to obscurity, contempt, 
 and privation — would it not be mercy that he should be rear- 
 ed in ignorance and apathy, and trained to the endurance of 
 the evils he must encounter ? It is not certainly foreseen as 
 to any individual, but it is foreseen as to the great mass of 
 those born of the laboring poor ; and it is for the mass, not 
 for the exception, that the institutions of society are to pro- 
 vide. Is it not better that the character and intellect of the 
 individual should be suited to the station which he is to occu- 
 py ? Would you do a benefit to the horse or the ox, by 
 giving him a cultivated understanding or fine feelings ? So 
 far as the mere laborer has the pride, the knowledge, or the 
 aspirations of a freeman, he is unfitted for his situation, and 
 must doubly feel its infelicity. If there are sordid, servile, 
 and laborious offices to be performed, is it not better that 
 there should be sordid, servile, and laborious beings to per- 
 form them ? If there were infallible marks by which individ- 
 
52 harper's memoir on slavery. 
 
 uals of inferior intellect, and inferior character, could be se- 
 lected at their birth — would not the interests of society be 
 served, and would not some sort of fitness seem to require, 
 that they should be selected for the inferior and servile offi- 
 ces ? And if this race be generally marked by such inferiori- 
 ty, is it not fit that they should fill them ? 
 
 I am well aware that those whose aspirations are after a 
 state of society from which evil shall be banished, and who 
 look in life for that which life will never afford, contemplate 
 that all the offices of life may be performed without contempt 
 or degradation — all be regarded as equally liberal, or equally 
 respected. But theorists cannot control nature and bend her 
 to their views, and the inequality of which I have before 
 spoken is deeply founded in nature. The offices which em- 
 ploy knowledge and intellect, will always be regarded as more 
 liberal than those which require the labor of the hands. 
 "When there is competition for employment, he who gives it 
 bestows a favor, and it will be so received. He will assume 
 superiority from the power of dismissing his laborers, and 
 from fear of this, the latter will practise deference, often 
 amounting to servility. Such in time will become the esta- 
 blished relation between the employer and the employed, the 
 rich and the poor. If want be accompanied with sordidness 
 and squalor, though it be pitied, the pity will be mixed with 
 some degree of contempt. If it lead to misery, and misery 
 to vice, there will be disgust and aversion. 
 
 What is the essential character of Slavery, and in what 
 does it diner from the servitude of other countries ? If I 
 should venture on a definition, I should say that where a man 
 is compelled to labor at the will of another, and to give him 
 much the greater portion of the product of his labor, there 
 Slavery exists; and it is immaterial by what sor^t of compul- 
 sion the will of the laborer is subdued. It is what no human 
 
HARPER'S MEMOIR ON SLA.VERY. 53 
 
 being would do without some sort of compulsion. He cannot 
 be compelled to labor by blows. No — but what difference 
 does it make, if you can inflict any other sort of torture which 
 will be equally effectual in subduing the will ? if you can 
 starve him, or alarm him for the subsistence of himself or his 
 family ? And is it not under this compulsion- that the free- 
 man labors ? I do not mean in every particular case, but in 
 the general. Will any one be hardy enough to say that he is 
 at his own disposal, or has the government of himself? True, 
 he may change his employer if he is dissatisfied with his con- 
 duct towards him ; but this is a privilege he would in the 
 majority of cases gladly abandon, and render the connexion 
 between them indissoluble. There is far less of the interest 
 and attachment in his relation to his employer, which so often 
 exists between the master and the slave, and mitigates the 
 condition of the latter. An intelligent English traveller has 
 characterized as the most miserable and degraded of all be- 
 ings, " a masterless slave." And is not the condition of the 
 laboring poor of other countries too often that of masterless 
 slaves ? Take the following description of a free laborer, no 
 doubt highly colored, quoted by the author to whom I have 
 before referred. 
 
 " What is that defective being, with calfless legs and stoop- 
 ing shoulders, weak in body and mind, inert, pusillanimous 
 and stupid, whose premature wrinkles and furtive glance, tell 
 of misery and degradation ? That is an English peasant or 
 pauper, for the words are synonimous. His sire was a pauper, 
 and his mother's milk wanted nourishment. From infancy his 
 food has been bad, as well as insufficient ; and he now feels 
 the pains of unsatisfied hunger nearly whenever he is awake. 
 But half clothed, and never supplied with more warmth than 
 suffices to cook his scanty meals, cold and wet come to him, 
 and stay by him with the weather. He is married, of course ; 
 5* 
 
54 harper's memoir on slavery. 
 
 for to this he would have been driven by the poor laws, even 
 if he had been, as he never was, sufficiently comfortable and 
 prudent to dread the burden of a family. But though in- 
 stinct and the overseer have given him a wife, he has not 
 tasted the highest joys of husband and father. His partner 
 and his little ones being like himself, often hungry, seldom 
 warm, sometimes sick without aid, and always sorrowful 
 without hope, are greedy, selfish, and vexing ; so, to use his 
 own expression, he hates the sight of them, and resorts to his 
 hovel, only because a hedge affords less shelter from the wind 
 and rain. Compelled by parish law to support his family, 
 which means to join them in consuming an allowance from 
 the parish, he frequently conspires with his wife to get that 
 allowance increased, or prevent its being diminished. This 
 brings beggary, trickery, and quarrelling, and ends in settled 
 craft. Though he have the inclination, he wants the courage 
 to become, like more energetic men of his class, a poacher or 
 smuggler on a large scale, but he pilfers occasionally, and 
 teaches his children to lie and steal. His subdued and sla- 
 vish manner towards his great neighbors, shews that they 
 treat him with suspicion and harshness. Consequently, he at 
 once dreads and hates them ; but he will never harm them 
 by violent means. Too degraded to be desperate, he is only 
 thoroughly depraved. His miserable career will be short ; 
 rheumatism and asthma are conducting him to the work- 
 house; where he will breathe his last without one pleasant re- 
 collection, and so make room for another wretch, who may 
 live and die in the same way." And this description, or some 
 other not much less revolting, is applied to " the bulk of the 
 people, the great body of the people." Take the following de- 
 scription of the condition of childhood, which has justly been 
 called eloquent.* 
 
 * Essays of Elia. 
 
harper's memoir on slavery. 55 
 
 " The children of the very poor have no young times ; it 
 makes the very heart bleed, to over-hear the casual street talk 
 between a poor woman and her little girl, a woman of the 
 better sort of poor, in a condition rather above the squalid 
 beings we have been contemplating. It is not of toys, of 
 nursery books, of summer holidays, (fitting that age,) of the 
 promised sight or play ; of praised sufficiency at school. It is 
 o^ mangling and clear starching ; of the price of coals, or of 
 potatoes. The questions of the child, that should be the very 
 outpourings of curiosity in idleness, are marked with forecast 
 and melancholy providence. It has come to be a woman, 
 before it was a child. It has learnt to go to market; it chaf- 
 fers, it haggles, it envies, it murmurs ; it is knowing, acute, 
 sharpened ; it never prattles." Imagine such a description ap- 
 plied to the children of negro slaves, the most vacant of hu- 
 man beings, whose life is a holiday. 
 
 And this people, to whom these horrors are familiar, are 
 those who fill the world with clamor, concerning the injustice 
 and cruelty of Slavery. I speak in no invidious spirit. Neith- 
 er the laws nor the government of England are to be re- 
 proached with the evils which are inseparable from the state 
 of their society — as little, undoubtedly, are we to be reproach- 
 ed with the existence of our Slavery. Including the whole of 
 the United States — and for reasons already given, the whole 
 ought to be included, as receiving in no unequal degree the 
 benefit — may we not say justly that we have less Slavery, 
 and more mitigated Slavery, than any other country in 
 the civilized world ? 
 
 That they are called free, undoubtedly aggravates the suf- 
 ferings of the slaves of other regions. They see the enormous 
 inequality which exists, and feel their own miseiy, and can 
 hardly conceive otherwise, than that there is some injustice in 
 the institutions of society to occasion these. They regard the 
 
56 harper's memoir on slavery. 
 
 apparently more fortunate class as oppressors, and it adds 
 bitterness that they should be of the same name and race. 
 They feel indignity more acutely, and more of discontent and 
 evil passion is excited ; they feel that it is mockery that calls 
 them free. Men do not so much hate and envy those who 
 are separated from them by a wide distance, and some appa- 
 rently impassable barrier, as those who approach nearer to 
 their own condition, and with whom they habitually bring 
 themselves into comparison. The slave with us is not tanta- 
 lized with the name of freedom, to which his whole condition 
 gives the lie, and would do so if he were emancipated to- 
 morrow. The African slave sees that nature herself has 
 marked him as a separate — and if left to himself, I have no 
 doubt he would feel it to be an inferior — race, and interposed 
 a barrier almost insuperable to his becoming a member of the 
 same society, standing on the same footing of right and privi- 
 lege with his master. 
 
 That the African negro is an inferior variety of the human 
 race, is, I think, now generally admitted, and his distinguish- 
 ing characteristics are such as peculiarly mark him out for the 
 situation which he occupies among us. And these are no 
 less marked in their original country, than as we have daily 
 occasion to observe them. The most remarkable is their in- 
 difference to personal liberty. In this they have followed 
 their instincts since we have any knowledge of their continent, 
 by enslaving each other ; but contrary to the experience of 
 every race, the possession of slaves has no material effect in 
 raising the character, and promoting the civilization of the 
 master. Another trait is the want of domestic affections, and 
 insensibility to the ties of kindred. In the travels of the Lan- 
 ders, after speaking of a single exception, in the persou of a 
 woman who betrayed some transient emotion in passing by 
 the country from which she had been torn as a slave, the 
 
harper's memoir on slavery. 57 
 
 authors add : " that Africans, generally speaking, betray the 
 most perfect indifference on losing their liberty, and being- 
 deprived of their relatives, while love of country is equally a 
 stranger to their breasts, as social tenderness or domestic af- 
 fection." " Marriage is celebrated by the nations as uncon- 
 cernedly as possible ; a man thinks as little of taking a wife, 
 as of catting an ear of corn — affection is altogether out of the 
 question." They are, however, very submissive to authority, 
 and seem to entertain great reverence for chiefs, priests, and 
 masters. No greater indignity can be offered an individual, 
 than to throw opprobrium on his parents. On this point of 
 their character I think I have 'remarked, that, contrary to the 
 instinct of nature in other races, they entertain less regard for 
 children than for parents, to whose authority they have been 
 accustomed to submit. Their character is thus summed up 
 by the travellers quoted : " The few opportunities we have 
 had of studying their characters, induce us to believe that 
 they are a simple, honest, inoffeusive, but weak, timid, and 
 cowardly race. They seem to have no social tenderness, very 
 few of those amiable private virtues which could win our af- 
 fections, and none of those public qualities that claim respect 
 or command admiration. The love of country is not strong 
 enough in their bosoms to incite them to defend it against a 
 despicable foe ; and of the active energy, noble sentiments, 
 and contempt of danger which distinguishes the North Ame- 
 rican tribes and other savages, no traces are to be found 
 among this slothful people. Regardless of the past, as reck- 
 less of the future, the present alone influences their actions. 
 In this respect, they approach nearer to the nature of the 
 brute creation, than perhaps any other people on the face of 
 the globe." Let me ask if this people do not furnish the very 
 material out of which slaves ought to be made, and whether 
 it be not an improving of their condition to make them the 
 
58 
 
 slaves of civilized masters ? There is a variety in the charac- 
 ter of the tribes. Some are brutally and savagely ferocious 
 and bloody, whom it would be mercy to enslave. From the 
 travellers' account, it seems not unlikely that the negro race 
 is tending to extermination, being daily encroached on and 
 overrun by the superior Arab race. It may be, that when 
 they shall have been lost from their native seats, they may 
 be found numerous, and in no unhappy condition, on the con- 
 tinent to which they have been transplanted. 
 
 The opinion which connects form and features with charac- 
 ter and intellectual power, is one so deeply impressed on the 
 human mind, that perhaps there is scarcely any man who 
 does not almost daily act upon it, and in some measure verify 
 its truth. Yet in spite of this intimation of nature, and 
 though the anatomist and physiologist may tell them that 
 the races differ in every bone and muscle, and in the propor- 
 tion of brain and nerves, yet there are some who, with a most 
 bigoted and fanatical determination to free themselves from 
 what they have prejudged to be prejudice, will still maintain 
 that this physiognomy, evidently tending to that of the brute, 
 when compared to that of the Caucasian race, may be en- 
 lightened by as much thought, and animated by as lofty 
 sentiment. We who have the best opportunity of judging, 
 are pronounced to be incompetent to do so, and to be blinded 
 by our interest and prejudices — often by those who have no 
 opportunity at all — and Ave are to be taught to distrust or 
 disbelieve that which w r e daily observe, and familiarly know, 
 on such authority. Our prejudices are spoken of. But the 
 truth is, that, until very lately, since circumstances have com- 
 pelled us to think for ourselves, we took our opinions on this 
 subject, as on every other, ready formed from the country of 
 our origin. And so deeply rooted were they, that we adhered 
 to them, as most men will do to deeply rooted opinions, even 
 
harper's memoir on slavery. 59 
 
 against the evidence of our own observation, and our own 
 senses. If the inferiority exists, it is attributed to the apathy 
 and degradation produced by Slavery. Though of the hun- 
 dreds of thousand scattered over other countries, where the 
 laws impose no disability upon them, none has given evidence 
 of an approach to even mediocrity of intellectual excellence ; 
 this, too, is attributed to the slavery of a portion of their race. 
 They are regarded as a servile caste, and degraded by opin- 
 ion, and thus every generous effort is repressed. Yet though 
 this should be the general effect, this very estimation is calcu- 
 lated to produce the contrary effect in particular instances. It 
 is observed by Bacon, with respect to deformed persons and 
 eunuchs, that though in general there is something of perver- 
 sity iu the character, the disadvantage often leads to extraor- 
 dinary displays of virtue and excellence. " Whoever hath 
 any thing fixed in his person that doth induce contempt, hath 
 also a perpetual spur in himself, to rescue and deliver himself 
 from scorn." So it would be with them, if they were capable 
 of European aspirations — genius, if they possessed it, would, 
 be doubly fired with noble rage to rescue itself from this scorn. 
 Of course, I do not mean to say that there may not be found 
 among them some of superior capacity to many white per- 
 sons ; but that great intellectual powers are, perhaps, never 
 found among them, and that in general their capacity is very 
 limited, and their feelings animal and coarse — fitting them 
 peculiarly to discharge the lower, and merely mechanical offi- 
 ces of society. 
 
 And why should it not be so ? We have among domestic 
 animals infinite varieties, distinguished by various degrees of 
 sagacity, courage, strength, swiftness, and other qualities. And 
 it may be observed, that this is no objection to their being 
 derived from a common origin, which we suppose them to 
 have had. Yet these accidental qualities, as they may be 
 
CO 
 
 termed, however acquired in the first instance, we know that 
 they transmit unimpaired to their posterity for an indefinite 
 succession of generations. It is most important that these 
 varieties should be preserved, and that each should be applied 
 to the purposes for which it is best adapted. No philo-zoost, 
 I believe, has suggested it as desirable that these varieties 
 should be melted down into one equal, undistinguished race 
 of curs or road horses. 
 
 Slavery, as it is said in an eloquent article published in a 
 Southern periodical work,* to which I am indebted for other 
 ideas, " has done more to elevate a degraded race in the scale 
 of humanity ; to tame the savage ; to civilize the barbarous; 
 to soften the ferocious; to enlighten the ignorant, and to 
 spread the blessings of Christianity among the heathen, than 
 all the missionaries that philanthropy and religion have ever 
 sent forth." Yet unquestionable as this is, and though hu- 
 man ingenuity and thought may be tasked in vain to devise 
 any other means by which these blessings could have been 
 conferred, yet a sort of sensibility winch would be only mawk- 
 ish aud contemptible, if it were not mischievous, affects still 
 to weep over the wrongs of "injured Africa." Can there be 
 a doubt of the immense benefit which has been conferred on 
 the race, by transplanting them from their native, dark, and 
 barbarous regions, to the American continent and islands ? 
 There, three-fourths of the race are in a state of the most de- 
 plorable personal Slavery. And those who are not, are in a 
 scarcely less deplorable condition of political Slavery, to bar- 
 barous chiefs — who value neither life nor any other human 
 right, or enthralled by priests to the most abject and atrocious 
 superstitions. Take the following testimony of one of the few 
 disinterested observers, who has had an opportunity of ob- 
 
 * Southern Literary Messenger, for January, 1835. Note to Black- 
 stone's Commentaries. 
 
harper's memoir on slavery. 61 
 
 serving them in both situations * " The wi]d savage is the 
 child of passion, unaided by one ray of religion or morality to 
 direct his course, in consequence of which his existence is 
 stained with every crime that can debase human nature to a 
 level with the brute creation. Who can say that the slaves 
 in our colonies are such ? Are they not, by comparison with 
 their still savage brethren, enlightened beings ? Is not the 
 West Indian negro, therefore, greatly indebted to his master 
 for making him what he is— for having raised him from the 
 state of debasement in which he was born, and placed him in 
 a scale of civilized society ? How can he repay him ? He is 
 possessed of nothing— the only return in his power is his 
 servitude. The man who has seen the wild African, roaming 
 in his native woods, and the well fed, happy looking negro of 
 the West Indies, may, perhaps, be able to judge of their com- 
 parative happiness ; the former, I strongly suspect, would be 
 glad to chauge his state of boasted freedom, starvation, and 
 disease, to become the slave of sinners, and the commisera- 
 tion of saints." It was a useful and beneficent work, ap- 
 proaching the heroic, to tame the wild horse, and subdue him 
 to the use of man ; how much more to tame the nobler ani- 
 mal that is capable of reason, and subdue him to usefulness ? 
 We believe that the tendency of Slavery is to elevate the 
 character of the master. No doubt the character — especially 
 of youth — has sometimes received a taint and premature 
 knowledge of vice, from the contact and association with ig- 
 norant and servile beings of gross manners and morals. Yet 
 still we believe that the entire tendency is to inspire disgust 
 and aversion towards their peculiar vices. It was not without 
 a knowledge of nature, that the Spartans exhibited the vices 
 of slaves by way of negative example to their children. We 
 
 * Journal of an officer employed in the expedition, under the com- 
 mand of Capt. Owen, on the Western Coast of Africa, 1822. 
 6 
 
62 
 
 flatter ourselves that the view of this degradation, mitigated 
 as it is, lias the effect of making probity more strict, the pride 
 of character more high, the sense of honor more strong, than 
 is commonly found where this institution does not exist. 
 "Whatever may the prevailing faults or vices of the masters of 
 slaves, they have not commonly been understood to be those 
 of dishonesty, cowardice, meanness, or falsehood. And so 
 most unquestionably it ought to be. Our institutions would 
 indeed be intolerable in the sight of God and man, if, con- 
 demning one portion of society to hopeless ignorance and 
 comparative degradation, they should make no atonement by 
 elevating the other class by higher virtues, and more liberal 
 attainments — if, besides degraded slaves, there should be ig- 
 norant, ignoble, and degraded freemen. There is a broad and 
 well marked line, beyond which no slavish vice should be re- 
 garded with the least toleration or allowance. One class is 
 cut off from all interest in the State — that abstraction so po- 
 tent to the feelings of a generous nature. The other must 
 make compensation by increased assiduity and devotion to its 
 honor and welfare. The love of wealth — so laudable when 
 kept within proper limits, so base and mischievous when it 
 exceeds them — so infections in its example — an infection to 
 which I fear we have been too much exposed — should be pur- 
 sued by no arts in any degree equivocal, or at any risk of 
 injustice to others. So surely as there is a just and wise 
 governor of the universe, who punishes the sins of nations and 
 communities, as well of individuals, so surely shall we suffer 
 punishment, if we are indifferent to that moral and intellectu- 
 al cultivation of which the means are famished to us, and to 
 which we are called and incited by our situation. 
 
 I would to heaven 1 could express, as I feel, the conviction 
 how necessary this cultivation is, not only to our prosperity 
 and consideration, but to our safety and very existence. We, 
 
harper's memoir on slavery. 63 
 
 the slaveholding States, are in a hopeless minority in our own 
 confederated Republic — to say nothing of the great confede- 
 racy of civilized States. It is admitted, I believe, not only by 
 slaveholders, but by others, that we have sent to our common 
 councils more than our due ' share of talent, high character 
 and eloquence. Yet in spite of all these most strenuously 
 exerted, measures have been sometimes adopted which we 
 believed to be dangerous and injurious to us, and threatening 
 to be fatal. What would be our situation, if, instead of these, 
 we were only represented by ignorant and grovelling men, 
 incapable of raising their views beyond a job or petty office, 
 and ineapable of commanding bearing or consideration ? May 
 I be perm'tted to advert— by no means invidiously— to the 
 late contest carried on by South-Carolina against Federal 
 authority, and so happily terminated by the moderation which 
 prevailed in our public counsels. I have often reflected, what 
 one circumstance, more than any other, contributed to the 
 successful issue of a contest, apparently so hopeless, in which 
 one weak and divided State was arrayed against the whole 
 force of the Confederacy — unsustained, and uncountenanced, 
 even by those who had a common interest with her. It seem- 
 ed to me to be, that we had for leaders an unusual number of 
 men of great intellectual power, co-operating cordially and in 
 good faith, and commanding respect and confidence at home 
 and abroad, by elevated and honorable character. It was 
 from these that we— the followers at home — caught hope and 
 confidence in the gloomiest aspect of our affairs. These, by 
 their eloquence and the largeness of their views, at least shook 
 the faith of the dominant majority in the wisdom and justice 
 of their measures — or the practicability of carrying them into 
 successful effect ; and by their bearing and well known cha- 
 racter, satisfied them that South-Carolina would do all that 
 she had pledged herself to do. Without these, how different 
 
64 harper's memoir on slavery. 
 
 might have been «the result ? And who shall say what at 
 this day would have been the aspect of the now flourishing- 
 fields and cities of South-Carolina ? Or rather, without these, 
 it is probable the contest would never have been begun ; but 
 that, without even the animation of a struggle, we should 
 have sunk silently into a hopeless and degrading subjection. 
 "While I have memory — in the extremity of age — in sickness 
 — under all the reverses and calamities of life — I shall have 
 one source of pride and consolation — that of having been as- 
 sociated — according to my humbler position — with the noble 
 spirits who stood prepared to devote themselves for Liberty — 
 the Constitution — the Union. May such character and such 
 talent never be wanting to South-Carolina. 
 
 I am sure that it is unnecessary to say to an assembly like 
 this, that the conduct of the master to his slave should be 
 distinguished by the utmost humanity. That we should in- 
 deed regard them as wards and dependants on our kindness, 
 for whose well-being in every way we are deeply responsible. 
 This is no less the dictate of wisdom and just policy, than of 
 right feeling. It is wise with respect to the services to be 
 expected from them. I have never heard of an owner whose 
 conduct in their management was distinguished by undue se- 
 verity, whose slaves were not in a great degree worthless to 
 him. A cheerful and kindly demeanor, with the expression 
 of interest in themselves and their affairs, is, perhaps, calcula- 
 ted to have a better effect on them, than what might be es- 
 teemed more substantial favors and indulgences. Through- 
 out nature, attachment is the reward of attachment. It is 
 wise, too, in relation to the civilized world around us, to 
 avoid giving occasion to the odium which is so industriously 
 excited against ourselves and our institutions. For this rea- 
 son, public opinion should, if possible, bear even more strong- 
 ly and indignantly than it does at present, on masters who 
 
HARPER'S MEMOIR ONJ3LAVERY. 65 
 
 practise any wanton cruelty on their slaves. The miscreant 
 who is guilty of this, not only violates the law of God and of 
 humanity, but as far as in him lies, by bringing odium upon, 
 endangers the institutions of his country, and the safety of his 
 countrymen. He casts a shade upon the character of every 
 individual of his fellow-citizens, and does every one of them a 
 personal injury. So of him who indulges in any odious ex- 
 cess of intemperate or licentious passion. It is detached 
 instances of this sort, of which the existence is, perhaps, hard- 
 ly known among ourselves, that, collected with pertinacious 
 and malevolent industry, affords the most formidable weapons 
 to the mischievous zealots, who array them as being charac- 
 teristic of our general manners and state of society. 
 
 I would by no means be understood to intimate, that a 
 vigorous, as well as just government, should not be exercised 
 over slaves. This is part of our duty towards them, no less 
 obligatory than any other duty, and no less necessary towards 
 their well-being than to ours. I believe that at least as much 
 injury has been done and suffering inflicted by weak and inju- 
 dicious indulgence, as by inordinate severity. He whose busi- 
 ness is to labor, should be made to labor, and that with due 
 diligence, and should be vigorously restrained from excess or 
 vice. This is no less necessary to his happiness than to his 
 usefulness. The master who neglects this, not only makes 
 his slaves unprofitable to himself, but discontented and wretch- 
 ed — a nuisance to his neighbors and to society. 
 
 I have said that the tendency of our institution is to elevate 
 the female character, as well as that of the other sex, and for 
 similar reasons. In other states of society, there is no well 
 defined limit to separate virtue and vice. There are degrees 
 of vice, from the most flagrant and odious, to that which 
 scarcely incurs the censure of society. Many individuals oc- 
 6* 
 
66 harper's memoir on slavery. 
 
 cupy an unequivocal position ; and as society becomes accus- 
 tomed to this, there will be a less peremptory requirement of 
 purity in female manners and conduct; and often the whole 
 of the society will be in a tainted and uncertain condition with 
 respect to female virtue. Here, there is that certain and 
 marked line, above which there is no toleration or allowance 
 for any approach to license of manners or conduct, and she 
 who falls below it, will fall far below even the slave. How 
 many will incur this penalty ? 
 
 And permit me to say, that this elevation of the female 
 character is no less important and essential to us, than the 
 moral and intellectual cultivation of the other sex. It would 
 indeed be intolerable, if, when one class of the society is ne- 
 cessarily degraded in this respect, no compensation were made 
 by the superior elevation and purity of the other. Not only 
 essential purity of conduct, but the utmost purity of manners, 
 and I will add, though it may incur the formidable charge of 
 affectation or prudery, — a greater severity of decorum than is 
 required elsewhere, is necessary among us. Always should 
 be strenuously resisted the attempts which have been some- 
 times made to introduce among us the freedom of foreign 
 European, and especially of continental manners. This free- 
 dom, the remotest in the world from that which sometimes 
 springs from simplicity of manners, is calculated and common- 
 ly intended to confound the outward distinctions of virtue and 
 vice. It is to prepare the way for licentiousness — to produce 
 this effect — that if those who are clothed with the outward 
 color and garb of vice, may be well received by society, those 
 who are actually guilty may hope to be so too. It may be 
 said, that there is often perfect purity where there is very 
 great freedom of manners. And, I have no doubt, this may 
 be true in particular instances, but it is never true of any soci- 
 
harper's memoir on slavery. 67 
 
 ety in which this is the general state of manners. What 
 guards can there be to purity, when every thing that may 
 2Jossibly be done innocently, is habitually practised ; when 
 there can be no impropriety which is not vice. And what 
 must be the depth of the depravity when there is a departure 
 from that which they admit as principle. Besides, things 
 which may perhaps be practised innocently where they are 
 familiar, produce a moral dilaceration in the course of their 
 being introduced where they are new. Let us say, we will 
 not have the manners of South-Carolina changed. 
 
 T have before said that free labor is cheaper than the labor 
 of slaves, and so far as it is so the condition of the free laborer 
 is worse. But I think President Dew has sufficiently shown 
 that this is only true of Northern countries. It is matter of 
 familiar remark that the tendency of warm climates is to relax 
 the human constitution and indispose to labor. The earth 
 yields abundantly — in some regions almost spontaneously — 
 under the influence of the sun, and the means of supporting 
 life are obtained with but slight exertion ; and men will use 
 no greater exertion than is necessary to the purpose. This 
 very luxuriance of vegetation, where no other cause concurs, 
 renders the air less salubrious, and even when positive malady 
 does not exist, the health is habitually impaired. Indolence 
 renders the constitution more liable to these effects of the at- 
 mosphere, and these again aggravate the indolence. Nothing 
 but the coercion of Slavery can overcome the repugnance to 
 labor under these circumstances, and by subduing the soil, 
 improve and render wholesome the climate. 
 
 It is worthy of remark, that there does not now exist on 
 the face of the earth, a people in a tropical climate, or one 
 approaching to it, where Slavery does not exist, that is 
 in a state of high civilization, or exhibits the energies which 
 mark the progress towards it. Mexico and the South Ameri- 
 
68 harper's memoir on slavery. 
 
 can Republics,* starting on their new career of independence, 
 and having gone through a farce of abolishing slavery, are 
 rapidly degenerating, even from semi-barbarism. The only 
 portion of the South American continent which seems to be 
 making any favorable progress, in spite of a weak and arbi- 
 trary civil government, is Brazil, in which slavery has been 
 retained. Cuba, of the same race with the continental repub- 
 lics, is daily and rapidly advancing in industry and civiliza- 
 tion ; and this is owing exclusively to her slaves. St. Do- 
 mingo is struck out of the map of civilized existence, and the 
 British West Indies will shortly be so. On the other conti- 
 nent, Spain and Portugal are degenerate, and their rapid pro- 
 gress is downward. Their southern coast is infested by dis- 
 
 * The author of England and America thus speaks of the Colom- 
 bian Republic : 
 
 " During some years, this colony has been an independent state ; 
 but the people dispersed over this vast and fertile plain, have almost 
 ceased to cultivate the good land at their disposal ; they subsist prin- 
 cipally, many of them entirely, on the flesh of wild cattle ; they have 
 lost most of the arts of civilized life ; not a few of them are in a state 
 of deplorable misery; and if they should continue., as it seems proba- 
 ble they will, to retrograde as at present, the beautiful pampas of 
 Buenos Ayres will soon be fit for another experiment in colonization. 
 Slaves, black or yellow, would have cultivated those plains, would 
 have kept together, would have been made to assist each other ; 
 would, by keeping together and assisting each other, have raised a 
 surplus produce exchangeable in distant markets ; would have kept 
 their masters together for the sake of markets ; would, by combina- 
 tion of labor, have preserved among their masters the arts and habits 
 of civilized life." Yet this writer, the whole practical effect of whose 
 work, whatever he may have thought or intended, is to show the ab- 
 solute necessity, and immense benefits of Slavery, finds it necessary 
 to add, I suppose in deference to the general sentiment of his country- 
 men, " that Slavery might have done all this, seems not more plain, 
 than that so much good would have been bought too dear, if its price 
 had been Slavery." Well may we say that the word makes men mad . 
 
69 
 
 ease, arising from causes which industry might readily over- 
 come, but that industry they will never exert. Greece is still 
 barbarous, and scantily peopled. The work of an English 
 physician, distinguished by strong sense and power of obser- 
 vation,* gives a most affecting picture of the condition of 
 Italy, — especially south of the Appenines. With the decay 
 of industry, the climate has degenerated towards the condition 
 from which it was first rescued by the labor of slaves. There 
 is poison in every man's veins, affecting the very Springs of 
 life, dulling or extinguishing, with the energies of the body, 
 all energy of mind, and often exhibiting itself in the most ap- 
 palling forms of disease. From year to year the pestilential 
 atmosphere creeps forward, narrowing the circles within which 
 it is possible to sustain human life. With disease and misery, 
 industry still more rapidly decays, and if the process goes on, 
 it seems that Italy too will soon be ready for another experi- 
 ment in colonization. 
 
 Yet once it was not so, when Italy was possessed by theV/ 
 masters of slaves ; when Rome contained her millions, and 
 Italy was a garden ; when their iron energies of body corres- 
 ponded with the energies of mind which made them conquer- 
 ors in every climate and on every soil ; rolled the tide of 
 conquest, not as in later times, from the South to the North ; 
 extended their laws and their civilization, and created them 
 lords of the earth. 
 
 " What conflux issuing forth or entering in ; 
 Praetors, pro-consuls to their provinces, 
 Hasting, or on return in robes of state. 
 Lictors and rods, the ensigns of their power, 
 Legions and cohorts, tunns of horse and wings : 
 Or embassies from regions far remote, 
 In various habits, on the Appian road, 
 
 * Johnson on Chansre of Air. 
 
70 
 
 Or on th' Emilian ; some from farthest South, 
 
 Syene, and where the shadow both way lulls, 
 
 Meroe, Nilotic isle, and more to West, 
 
 The realms of Bocchus to the Blackmoor sea ; 
 
 From th' Asian kings, and Parthian among these ; 
 
 From India and the golden Chersonese, 
 
 And utmost India's isle, Taprobona, 
 
 Dusk faces, with white silken turbans wreathed; 
 
 From Gallia, Gades, and the British West ; 
 
 Germans, and Scythians, and Sarmatians, North 
 
 Beyond Danubius to the Tauric Pool ! 
 
 All nations now to Pome obedience pay." 
 
 Such was, and such is, the picture of Italy. Greece pre- 
 sents a contrast not less striking. What is the cause of the 
 great change ? Many causes, no doubt, have occurred ; but 
 though 
 
 " War, famine, pestilence, and flood and fire, 
 Have dealt upon the seven-hilled city's pride," 
 
 vl will venture to say that nothing has dealt upon it more 
 heavily than the loss of domestic slavery. Is not this evident ? 
 If they had slaves, with an energetic civil government, would 
 the deadly miasma be permitted to overspread the Campagna, 
 and invade Rome herself? Would not the soil be cultivated, 
 and the wastes reclaimed ? A late traveller* mentions a ca- 
 nal, cut for miles through rock and mountain, for the purpose 
 of carrying off the waters of the lake of Celano, on which 
 thirty thousand Roman slaves were employed for eleven years, 
 and which remains almost perfect to the present day. This ? 
 the government of Naples w T as ten years in repairing with an 
 hundred workmen. The imperishable works of Rome which 
 remain to the present day were, for the most part, executed 
 by slaves. How different would be the condition of Naples, 
 
 * Eight days in the Abruzzi. — Blackwood's Magazine, November, 
 1835. 
 
if for her wretched lazzaroni were substituted negro slaves, 
 employed in rendering productive the plains whose fertility 
 now serves only to infect the air ! 
 
 To us, on whom this institution is fastened, and who could 
 not shake it off, even if we desired to do so, the great repub- 
 lics of antiquity offer instruction of inestimable value. They 
 teach us that slavery is compatible with the freedom, stabili- 
 ty, and long duration of civil government, with denseness of 
 population, great power, and the highest civilization. x\.nd in 
 what respect does this modern Europe, which claims to give 
 opinions to the world, so far excel them — notwithstanding the 
 immense advantages of the Christian religion and the discove- 
 ry of the art of printing ? They are not more free, nor have 
 performed more glorious actions, nor displayed more exalted 
 virtue. In the higher departments of intellect — in all that 
 relates to taste and imagination — they will hardly venture to 
 claim equality. Where they have gone beyond them in the 
 results of mechanical philosophy, or discoveries which contri- 
 bute to the wants and enjoyments of physical life, they have 
 done so by the help of means with which they were furnished 
 by the Grecian mind — the mother of civilization — and only 
 pursued a little further the tract which that had always point- 
 ed out. In the development of intellectual power, they will 
 hardly bear comparison. Those noble republics in the pride 
 of their strength and greatness, may have anticipated for them- 
 selves — as some of their poets did for them, — an everlasting 
 duration and predominance. But they could not have antici- 
 pated, that when they had fallen under barbarous arms, that 
 when arts and civilization were lost, and the whole earth in 
 darkness — the first light should break from their tombs — that 
 in a renewed world, unconnected with them by ties of locality, 
 language or descent, they should still be held the models of 
 all that is profound in science, or elegant in literature, or all 
 
72 harper's memoir on slavery. 
 
 that is great in character, or elevated in imagination. And 
 perhaps when England herself, who now leads the war with 
 which we are on all sides threatened, shall have fulfilled her 
 mission, and like the other glorious things of the earth, shall 
 have passed away ; when she shall have diffused her noble 
 race and noble language, her laws, her literature, and her 
 civilization, over all quarters of the earth, and shall perhaps 
 be overrun by some Northern horde — sunk into an ignoble 
 and anarchical democracy,* or subdued to the dominion of 
 some Caesar, — demagogue and despot, — then, in Southern re- 
 gions, there may be found many republics, triumphing in 
 Grecian arts and civilization, and worthy of British descent 
 and Roman institutions. 
 
 If, after a time, when the mind and almost the memory of 
 the republic were lost, Romans degenerated, they furnish con- 
 clusive evidence that this w T as owing not to their domestic, 
 but to their political Slavery. The same thing is observed 
 over all the Eastern monarchies; and so it must be, wherever 
 property is insecure, and it is dangerous for a man to raise 
 himself to such eminence by intellectual or moral excellence, 
 as would give him influence over his society. So it is in 
 Egypt; and the other regions bordering the Mediterranean, 
 which once comprehended the civilization of the world, where 
 Carthage, Tyre, and Phoenicia flourished. In short, the un- 
 contradicted experience of the world is, that in the Southern 
 States where good government and predial and domestic Sla- 
 very are found, there are prosperity and greatness ; where 
 either of these conditions is wanting, degeneracv and barba- 
 rism. The former, however, is equally essential in all climates 
 and under all institutions. And can we suppose it to be the 
 
 * I do not use the word democracy in the Athenian sense, but to 
 describe the government in which the slave and his master have an 
 equal voice in public affairs. 
 
is 
 
 design of the Creator, that these regions, constituting half of 
 the earth's surface, and the more fertile half, and more capa- 
 ble of sustaining life, should be abandoned forever to depopu- 
 lation and barbarism ? Certain it is that they will never be 
 reclaimed by the labor of freemen. In our own country, look 
 at the lower valley of the Mississippi, which is. capable of be- 
 ing made a far greater Egypt. In our own State, there are 
 extensive tracts of the most fertile soil> which are capable of 
 being made to swarm with life. These are at present pesti- 
 lential swamps, and valueless, because there is abundance of 
 other fertile soil in more favorable situations, which demand 
 all and more than all the labor which our country can sup- 
 ply. Are these regions of fertility to be abandoned at once 
 and forever to the alligator and tortoise — with here and there 
 perhaps a miserable, shivering, crouching free black savage ? 
 Does not the finger of heaven itself seem to point to a race of 
 men — not to be enslaved by us, but already enslaved, and 
 who will be in every way benefitted by the change of masters 
 — to whom such climate is not uncongenial, who, though dis- 
 posed to indolence, are yet patient and capable of labor, on 
 whose whole features, mind and character, nature has indelibly 
 written — slave ; — and indicate that we should avail ourselves - 
 of these in fulfilling the first great command to subdue and 
 replenish the earth. 
 
 It is true that this labor will be dearer than that of North- 
 ern countries, where, under the name of freedom, they obtain 
 cheaper and perhaps better slaves. Yet it is the best we can 
 have, and this too has its compensation. "We see it compen- 
 sated at present by the superior value of our agricultural pro- 
 ducts. And this superior value they must probably always 
 have. The Southern climate admits of a greater variety of 
 productions. Whatever is produced in Northern climates, 
 the same thing, or something equivalent, may be produced 
 V 
 
in the Southern. But the Northern have no equivalent for 
 the products of Southern climates. The consequence will be, 
 that the products of Southern regions will be demanded all 
 over the civilized world. The agricultural products of North- 
 ern regions are chiefly for their own consumption. They must 
 therefore apply themselves to the manufacturing of articles of 
 luxury, elegance, convenience, or necessity, — which requires 
 cheap labor — for the purpose of exchanging them with their 
 Southern neighbors. Thus nature herself indicates that agri- 
 culture should be the predominating employment in Southern 
 countries, and manufactures in Northern. Commerce is ne- 
 cessary to both — but less indispensable to the Southern, 
 which produce within themselves a greater variety of things 
 desirable to life. They will therefore have somewhat less of 
 the commercial spirit. We must avail ourselves of such la- 
 bor as we can command. The slave must labor, and is inured 
 to it ; while the necessity of energy in his government, of 
 watchfulness, and of preparation and power to suppress insur- 
 rection, added to the moral force derived from the habit of 
 command, may help to prevent the degeneracy of the master. 
 The task of keeping down insurrection is commonly sup- 
 posed by those who are strangers to our institutions, to be a 
 very formidable one. Even among ourselves, accustomed as 
 we have been to take our opinions on this as on every other 
 subject, ready formed from those whom we regarded as in- 
 structors, in the teeth of our own observation and experience, 
 fears have been entertained which are absolutely ludicrous. 
 We have been supposed to be nightly reposing over a mine, 
 which may at any instant explode to our destruction. The 
 first thought of a foreigner sojourning in one of our cities, 
 who is awakened by any nightly alarm, is of servile insurrec- 
 tion and massacre. Yet if any thing is certain in human 
 affairs, it is certain and from the most obvious considerations, 
 
harper's memoir on slavery. *75 
 
 that we are more secure in this respect than any civilized and 
 fully peopled society upon the face of the earth. In every 
 such society, there is a much larger proportion than with us, 
 of persons who have more to gain than to lose by the over- 
 throw of government, and the embroiling of social order. It 
 is in such a state of things that those who were before at the 
 bottom of society, rise to the surface. From causes already 
 considered, they are peculiarly apt to consider their sufferings 
 the result of injustice and misgovernment, and to be ranco- 
 rous and embittered accordingly. They have every excite- 
 ment, therefore, of resentful passion, and every temptation 
 which the hope of increased opulence, or power or considera- 
 tion can hold out, to urge them to innovation and revolt. 
 Supposing the same disposition to exist in equal degree among 
 our slaves, what are their comparative means or prospect of 
 gratifying it ? The poor of other countries are called free. 
 They have, at least, no one interested to exercise a daily and 
 nightly superintendence and control over their conduct and 
 actions. Emissaries of their class may traverse, unchecked, 
 every portion of the country, for the purpose of organizing in- 
 surrection. From their greater intelligence, they have great- 
 er means of communicating with each other. They may pro- 
 cure and secrete arms. It is not alone the ignorant, or those 
 who are commonly called the poor, that will be tempted to 
 revolution. There will be many disappointed men, and men 
 of desperate fortune — men perhaps of talent and daring — to 
 combine them and direct their energies. Even those in the 
 higher ranks of society who contemplate no such result, will 
 contribute to it, by declaiming on their hardships and rights. 
 With us, it is almost physically impossible that there 
 should be any very extensive combination among the slaves. 
 It is absolutely impossible that they should procure and con- 
 ceal efficient arms. Their emissaries traversing the country, 
 
76 harper's memoir on slavery. 
 
 would carry their commissions on their foreheads. If we sup- 
 pose among them an individual of sufficient talent and ener- 
 gy to qualify him for a revolutionary leader, he could not be 
 so extensively known as to command the confidence, which 
 would be necessary to enable him to combine and direct them. 
 Of the class of freemen, there would be no individual so poor 
 or degraded (with the exception perhaps of here and there a 
 reckless and desperate outlaw and felon) who would not have 
 much to lose by the success of such an attempt ; every one, 
 therefore, would be vigilant and active to detect and suppress 
 it. Of all impossible things, one of the most impossible would 
 be a successful insurrection of our slaves, originating with 
 themselves. 
 
 Attempts at insurrection have indeed been made — excited, 
 as we believe, by the agitation of the abolitionists and de- 
 rlaimers on Slavery ; but these have been in every instance 
 promptly suppressed. We fear not to compare the riots, dis- 
 order, revolt and bloodshed, which have been committed in 
 our own, with those of any other civilized communities, dur- 
 ing the same lapse of time. And let it observed under what 
 extraordinary circumstances our peace has. been preserved. 
 For the last half century, one half of our population has been 
 admonished in terms the most calculated to madden and 
 excite, that they are the victims of the most grinding and 
 cruel injustice and oppression. We know that these exhorta- 
 tions continually reach them, through a thousand channels 
 which we cannot detect, as if carried by the birds of the air — 
 and what human being, especially when unfavorably distin- 
 guished by outward circumstances, is not ready to give credit 
 when he is told that he is the victim of injustice and oppres- 
 sion ? In effect, if not in terms, they have been continually 
 exhorted to insurrection. The master has been painted as a 
 criminal, tyrant and robber, justly obnoxious to the vengeance 
 
harper's memoir on slavery. YY 
 
 of God and man, and they have been assured of the counte- 
 nance and sympathy, if not of the active assistance, of all the 
 rest of the world. We ourselves have in some measure plead- 
 ed guilty to the impeachment. It is not long since a great 
 majority of our free population, servile to the opinions of those 
 whose opinions they had been accustomed to follow, would 
 have admitted Slavery to be a great evil, unjust and indefen- 
 sible in principle, and only to be vindicated by the stern ne- 
 cessity which was imposed upon us. Thus stimulated by 
 every motive and passion which ordinarily actuate human 
 beings — not as to a criminal enterprise, but as to something 
 generous and heroic — what has been the result ? A few im- 
 becile and uncombined plots — in every instance detected 
 before they broke out into action, and which perhaps if unde- 
 tected would never have broken into action. One or two 
 sudden, unpremeditated attempts, frantic in their character, if 
 not prompted by actual insanity, and these instantly crushed. 
 As it is, we are not less assured of safety, order, and internal 
 peace, than any other people ; and but for the pertinacious 
 and fanatical agitations of the subject, would be much more so. 
 This experience of security, however, should admonish us 
 of the folly and wickedness of those who have sometimes taken 
 upon themselves to supersede the regular course of law, and 
 by rash and violent acts to punish supposed disturbers of the 
 peace of society. This can admit of no justification or pallia- 
 tion whatever. Burke, I think, somewhere remarked some- 
 thing to this effect, — that when society is in the last stage of 
 depravity — when all parties are alike corrupt, and alike wick- 
 ed and unjustifiable in their measures and objects, a good man 
 may content himself with standing neuter, a sad and dis- 
 heartened spectator of the conflict between the rival vices. 
 But are we in this wretched condition ? It is fearful to see 
 with what avidity the worst and most dangerous characters of 
 1* 
 
*78 harper's memoir on slavery. 
 
 society seize on the occasion of obtaining the countenance of 
 better men, for the purpose of throwing off the restraints of 
 law. It is always these who are most zealous and forward in 
 constituting themselves the protectors of the public peace. 
 To such men — men without reputation, or principle, or stake 
 in society — disorder is the natural element. In that, despe- 
 rate fortunes and the want of all moral principle and moral 
 feeling constitute power. They are eager to avenge them- 
 selves upon society. Anarchy is not so much the absence of 
 government, as the government of the worst — not aristocracy, 
 but kakistocracy — a state of things, which to the honor of our 
 nature, has seldom obtained amongst men, and which per- 
 haps was only fully exemplified during the worst times of the 
 French revolution, when that horrid hell burnt with its most 
 lurid flame. In such a state of things, to be accused is to be 
 condemned — to protect the innocent is to be guilty ; and what 
 perhaps is the worst effect, even men of better nature, to 
 whom their own deeds are abhorrent, are goaded by terror to 
 be forward and emulous in deeds of guilt and violence. The 
 scenes of lawless violence which have been acted in some por- 
 tions of our country, rare and restricted as they have been, 
 have done more to tarnish its reputation than a thousand 
 libels. They have done more to discredit, and if anything 
 could, to endanger, not only our domestic, but our republican 
 institutions, than the abolitionists themselves. Men can 
 never be permanently and effectually disgraced but b}^ them- 
 selves, and rarely endangered but by their own injudicious 
 conduct, giving advantage to the enemy. Better, far better, 
 would it be to encounter the dangers with which we are sup- 
 posed to be threatened, than to employ such means for avert- 
 ing them. But the truth is, that in relation to this matter, 
 so far as respects actual insurrection, when alarm is once 
 excited, danger is absolutely at an end. Society can then 
 
harper's memoir on slavery. Id 
 
 employ legitimate and more effectual measures for its own 
 protection. The very commission of such deeds is proof that 
 they are unnecessary. Let those who attempt them, then, or 
 make any demonstration towards them, understand that they 
 will meet only the discountenance and abhorrence of all 
 good men, and the just punishment of the laws they have 
 dared to outrage. 
 
 It has commonly been supposed, that this institution will 
 prove a source of weakness in relation to military defence 
 against a foreign enemy. I will venture to say that in a 
 slaveholding community, a larger military force may be main- 
 tained permanently in the field, than in any State where there 
 are not slaves. It is plain that almost the whole of the able 
 bodied free male population, making half of the entire able 
 bodied male population, may be maintained in the field, and 
 this without taking in any material degree from the labor and 
 resources of the country. In general, the labor of our coun- 
 try is performed by slaves. In other countries, it is their 
 laborers that form the material of their armies. What pro- 
 portion of these can be taken away without fatally crippling 
 their industry and resources ? In the war of the revolution, 
 though the strength of our State was wasted and paralyzed 
 by the unfortunate divisions which existed among ourselves, 
 yet it may be said with general truth, that every citizen was 
 in the field, and acquired much of the qualities of the soldier. 
 
 It is true that this advantage will be attended with its com- 
 pensating evils and disadvantages ; to which we must learn 
 to submit, if we are determined on the maintenance of our 
 institutions. We are, as yet, hardly at all aware how little 
 the maxims and practices of modern civilized governments 
 will apply to us. Standing armies, as they are elsewhere 
 constituted, we cannot have ; for we have not, and for genera- 
 tions cannot have, the materials out of which they are to be 
 
80 harper's memoir on slavery. 
 
 formed. If we should be involved in serious wars, I have no 
 doubt but that some sort of conscription, requiring the ser- 
 vice of all citizens for a considerable term, will be necessary. 
 Like the people of Athens, it will be necessary that every 
 citizen should be a soldier, and qualified to discharge efficient- 
 ly the duties of a soldier. It may seem a melancholy consi- 
 deration, that an army so made up should be opposed to the 
 disciplined mercenaries of foreign nations. But we must 
 learn to know our true situation. But may we not hope, 
 that made up of superior materials, of men having home and 
 country to defend ; inspired by higher pride of character, of 
 greater intelligence, and trained by an effective, though hon- 
 orable discipline, such an army will be more than a match 
 for mercenaries. The efficiency of an army is determined by 
 the qualities of its officers, and may we not expect to have a 
 greater proportion of men better qualified for officers, and 
 possessing the true spirit of military command. And let it 
 be recollected that if there were otherwise reason to appre- 
 hend danger from insurrection, there will be the greatest 
 seeurity when there is the largest force on foot within the 
 country. Then it is that any such attempt would be most 
 instantly and effectually crushed. 
 
 And, perhaps, a wise foresight should induce our State to 
 provide, that it should have within itself such military know- 
 ledge and skill as may be sufficient to organize, discipline and 
 command armies, by establishing a military academy or school 
 of discipline. The school of the militia will not do for this. 
 From the general opinion of our weakness, if our country 
 should at any time come into hostile collision, we shall be 
 selected for the point of attack ; making us, according to 
 Mr. x\dams's anticipation, the Flanders of the United States. 
 Come from what quarter it may, the storm will fall upon us. 
 It is known that lately, when there was apprehension of hos- 
 
harper's memoir oisr slavery. 81 
 
 tility with France, the scheme was instantly devised of invad- 
 ing- the Southern States and organizing insurrection. In a 
 popular English periodical work, I have seen the plan sug- 
 gested by an officer of high rank and reputation in the Bri- 
 tish army, of invading the Southern States at various points 
 and operating by the same means. He is said to be a gal- 
 lant officer, and certainly had no conception that he was 
 devising atrocious crime, as alien to the true spirit of civilized 
 warfare, as the poisoning of streams and fountains. But the 
 folly of suck schemes is no less evident than their wicked- 
 ness. Apart from the consideration of that which experience 
 has most fully proved to be true — that in general their 
 attachment and fidelity to their masters is not to be shaken, 
 and that from sympathy with the feelings of those by whom 
 they are surrounded, and from whom they derive their im- 
 pressions, they contract no less terror and aversion towards an 
 invading enemy ; it is manifest that this recourse would be 
 an hundred fold more available to us than to such an enemy. 
 They are already in our possession, and we might at will arm 
 and organize them in any number that we might think pro- 
 per. The Helots were a regular constituent part of the Spar- 
 tan armies. Thoroughly acquainted with their characters, 
 and accustomed to command them, we might use any strict- 
 ness of discipline which would be necessary to render them 
 effective, and from their habits of subordination already form- 
 ed, this would be a task of less difficulty. Though morally 
 most timid, they are by no means wanting in physical strength 
 of nerve. They are excitable by praise ; and directed by 
 those in whom they have confidence, would rush fearlessly 
 and unquestioning upon any sort of danger. With white 
 officers and accompanied by a strong white cavalry, there arc 
 no troops in the world from whom there would be so little 
 reason to apprehend insubordination or mutiny. 
 
82 
 
 This, I admit, might be a dangerous resource, and one not 
 to be resorted to but in great extremity. But I am supposing 
 the case of our being driven to extremity. It might be dan- 
 gerous to disband such an army, and reduce them with the 
 habits of soldiers, to their former condition of laborers. It 
 might be found necessary, when once embodied, to keep them 
 so, and subject to military discipline — a permanent standing 
 army. This in time of peace would be expensive, if not dan- 
 gerous. Or if at any time we should be engaged in hostili- 
 ties with our neighbors, and it were thought advisable to send 
 such an army abroad to conquer settlements for themselves, 
 the invaded regions might have occasion to think that the 
 scourge of God was again let loose to afflict the earth. 
 
 President Dew has very fully shown how utterly vain are 
 the fears of those, who, though there may be no danger for 
 the present, yet apprehend great danger for the future, when 
 the number of slaves shall be greatly increased. He has 
 shown that the larger and more condensed society becomes, 
 the easier it will be to maintain subordination, supposing the 
 relative number of the different classes to remain the same — 
 or even if there should be a very disproportionate increase of 
 the enslaved class. Of all vain things, the vainest and that 
 in which man most shows his impotence and folly, is the 
 taking upon himself to provide for a very distant future — at 
 all events by any material sacrifice of the present. Though 
 experience has shown that revolutions and political move- 
 ments — unless when they have been conducted with the most 
 guarded caution and moderation — have generally terminated 
 in results just the opposite of what was expected from them, 
 the angry ape will still play his fantastic tricks, and put in 
 motion machinery, the action of which he no more compre- 
 hends or foresees than he comprehends the mysteries of in- 
 finity. The insect that is borne upon the current will fancy 
 
harper's memoir on slavery. 
 
 83 
 
 that lie directs its course. Besides the fear of insurrection 
 and servile war, there is also alarm lest, when their numbers 
 shall be greatly increased, their labor will become utterly un- 
 profitable, so that it will be equally difficult for the master to 
 retain and support them, or to get rid of them. But at what 
 age of the world is this likely to happen ? At present, it 
 may be said that almost the whole of the Southern portion of 
 this continent is to be subdued to cultivation ; and in the 
 order of providence, this is the task allotted to them. For 
 this purpose, more labor will be required for generations to 
 come than they will be able to supply. When that task is 
 accomplished, there will be many objects to which their labor 
 may be directed. 
 
 At present they are employed in accumulating individual 
 wealth, and this in one way, to wit, as agricultural laborers— 
 and this is, perhaps, the most useful purpose to which their 
 labor can be applied. The effect of Slavery has not been to 
 counteract the tendency to dispersion, which seems epidemical 
 among our countrymen, invited by the unbounded extent of 
 fertile and unexhausted soil, though it counteracts many of 
 the evils of dispersion. All the customary trades, professions 
 and employments, except the agricultural, require a condensed 
 population for their profitable exercise. The agriculturist who 
 can command no labor but that of his own hands, or that of 
 his family, must remain comparatively poor and rude. He 
 who acquires wealth by the labor of slaves, has the means of 
 improvement for himself and his children. He may have a 
 more extended intercourse, and consequently means of infor- 
 mation and refinement, and may seek education for his chil- 
 dren where it may be found. I say, what is obviously true, 
 that he has the means of obtaining those advantages; but I 
 say nothing to palliate or excuse the conduct of him who, 
 having such means, neglects to avail himself of them. 
 
84 harper's memoir on slavery. % 
 
 I believe it to be true, that in consequence of our disper- 
 sion, though individual "Wealth is acquired, the face of the 
 country is less adorned and improved by useful and ornamen- 
 tal public -works, than in other societies of more condensed 
 population, where there is less wealth. But this is an effect 
 of that which constitutes perhaps our most conspicuous ad- 
 vantage. Where population is condensed, they must have 
 the evils of condensed population, and among these is the 
 difficulty of finding profitable employment for capital. lie 
 ■who has accumulated even an inconsiderable sum, is often 
 puzzled to know what use to make of it. Ingenuity is there- 
 fore tasked to cast about for every enterprise which may afford 
 a chance of profitable investment. Works useful and orna- 
 mental to the country, are thus undertaken and accomplished, 
 and though the proprietors may fail of profit, the community 
 no less receives the benefit. Among us, there is no such dif- 
 ficulty. A safe and profitable method of investment is offered 
 to every one who has capital to dispose of, which is further 
 recommended to his feelings by the sense of independence 
 and the comparative leisure which the employment affords to 
 the proprietor engaged in it. It is for this reason that few of 
 our citizens engage in the pursuits of commerce. Though 
 these may be more profitable, they are also more hazardous 
 and more laborious. 
 
 W^hen the demand for agricultural labor shall be fully sup- 
 plied, then of course the labor of slaves will be directed to 
 other employments and enterprises. Already it begins to be 
 found, that in some instances it may be used as profitably in 
 works of public improvement. As it becomes cheaper and 
 cheaper, it will be applied to more various purposes and com- 
 bined in larger masses. It may be commanded and com- 
 bined with more facility than any other sort of labor ; and 
 the laborer, kept in stricter subordination, will be less danger- 
 
harper's memoir on slavery. 85 
 
 ous to the security of society than in any other country, which 
 is crowded and overstocked with a class of what are called 
 free laborers. Let it be remembered that all the great and 
 enduring monuments of human art and industry — the won- 
 ders of Egypt — the everlasting works of Rome — were created 
 by the labor of slaves. There will come a stage in our pro- 
 gress when we shall have facilities for executing works as 
 great as any of these — more useful than the pyramids — not 
 less magnificent than the sea of Moeris. What the end of all 
 is to be ; what mutations lie hid in the womb of the distant 
 future ; to what convulsions our societies may be exposed — 
 whether the master, finding it impossible to live with his 
 slaves, may not be compelled to abandon the country to 
 them — of all this it were presumptious and vain to speculate. 
 I have hitherto, as I proposed, considered it as a naked, 
 abstract question of the comparative good and evil of the in- 
 stitution of slavery. Very far different indeed is the practical 
 question presented to us, when it is proposed to get rid of an 
 institution which has interwoven itself with every fibre of the 
 body politic ; which has formed the habits of our society, and 
 is consecrated by the usage of generations. If this be not a 
 vicious prescription, which the laws of God forbid to ripen 
 into right, it has a just claim to be respected by all tribunals 
 of man. If the negroes were now free, and it were proposed 
 to enslave them, then it would be incumbent on those who 
 proposed the measure to show clearly that their liberty was 
 incompatible with the public security. When it is proposed 
 -to innovate on the established state of things, the burden is 
 on those who propose the innovation, to show that advantage 
 will be gained from it. There is no reform, however neces- 
 sary, wholesome or moderate, which will not be accompanied 
 with some degree of inconvenience, risk or suffering. Those 
 who acquiesce in the state of things which they found exist- 
 8 
 
8G harper's memoir on slavery. 
 
 ing, can hardly be thought criminal. But most deeply cri- 
 minal are they who give rise to the enormous evil with which 
 great revolutions in society are always attended, without the 
 fullest assurance of the greater good to be ultimately obtained. 
 But if it can be made to appear, even probably, that no good 
 will be obtained, but that the results will be evil and calami- 
 tous as the process, what can justify such innovations ? No 
 human being can be so mischievous — if acting consciously, 
 none can be so wicked as those who, finding evil in existing 
 institutions, rush blindly upon change, unforeseeing and reck- 
 less of consequences, and leaving it to chance or fate to deter- 
 mine whether the end shall be improvement, or greater and 
 more intolerable evil. Certainly the instincts of nature prompt 
 to resist intolerable oppression. For this resistance no rule 
 can be prescribed, but it must be left to the instincts of nature. 
 To justify it, however, the insurrectionists should at least have 
 a reasonable probability of success, and be assured that their 
 condition will be improved by success. But most extraordi- 
 nary is it, when those who complain and clamor are not those 
 who are supposed to feel the oppression, but persons at a dis- 
 tance from them, and who can hardly at all appreciate the 
 good or the evil of their situation. It is the unalterable con- 
 dition of humanity, that men must achieve civil liberty for 
 themselves. The assistance of allies has sometimes enabled 
 nations to repel the attacks of foreign power, never to con- 
 quer liberty as against their own internal government. 
 
 In one thing I concur with the abolitionists ; that if eman- 
 cipation is to be brought about, it is better that it should be 
 immediate and total. But let us suppose it to be brought 
 about in any manner, and then enquire what would be the 
 effects. 
 
 * The first and most obvious effect, would be to put an end 
 to the cultivation of our great Southern staple. And this 
 
harper's memoir on slavery. 87 
 
 would be equally the result, if we suppose the emancipated 
 negroes to be in no way distinguished from the free laborers 
 of other countries, and that their labor would be equally effec- 
 tive. In that case, they would soon cease to be laborers for 
 hire, but would scatter themselves over our unbounded terri- 
 tory, to become independent land owners themselves. The 
 cultivation of the soil on an extensive scale, can only be car- 
 ried on where there are slaves, or in countries superabounding 
 with free labor. No such operations are carried on in any por- 
 tions of our own country where there are not slaves. Such are 
 carried on in England, where there is an overflowing popula- 
 tion and intense competition for employment. And our insti- 
 tutions seem suited to the exigencies of our respective situa- 
 tions. There, a much greater number of laborers is required 
 at one season of the year than at another, and the former 
 may enlarge or diminish the quantity of labor he employs, as 
 circumstances may require. Here, about the same quantity 
 of labor is required at every season, and the planter suffers no 
 inconvenience from retaining his laborers throughout the year 
 Imagine an extensive rice or cotton plantation cultivated by 
 free laborers, who might perhaps strike for an increase of 
 wages, at a season when the neglect of a few days would 
 insure the destruction of the whole crop. Even if it were 
 possible to procure laborers at all, what planter would venture 
 to carry on his operations under such circumstances ? I need 
 hardly say that these staples cannot be produced to any 
 extent where the proprietor of the soil cultivates it with his 
 own hands. He can do little more than produce the neces- 
 sary food for himself and his family. 
 
 And what would be the effect of putting an end to the cul- 
 tivation of these staples, and thus annihilating, at a blow, two- 
 thirds or three-fourths of our foreign commerce ? Can any 
 sane mind contemplate such a result without terror ? I speak 
 
88 
 
 not of the utter poverty and misery to which we ourselves 
 would be reduced, and the desolation which would overspread 
 our own portion of the country. Our Slavery has not only 
 given existence to millions of slaves within our own territo- 
 ries, it has given the means of subsistence, and therefore ex- 
 istence, to millions of freemen in our confederates States; 
 enabling them to send forth their swarms to overspread the 
 plains and forests of the West, and appear as the harbingers 
 of civilization. The- products of the industry of those States 
 are in general similar to those of the civilized world, and are 
 little demanded in their markets. By exchanging them for 
 ours, which are every where sought for, the people of these 
 States are enabled to acquire all the products of art and indus- 
 try, all that contributes to convenience or luxury, or gratifies 
 the taste or the intellect, which the rest of the world can sup- 
 ply. Not only on our own continent, but on the other, it has 
 given existence to hundreds of thousands, and the means of 
 comfortable subsistence to millions. A distinguished citizen 
 of our own State, than whom none can be better qualified to 
 form an opinion, has lately stated that our great staple, cotton, 
 has contributed more than any thing else of later times to the 
 progress of civilization. By enabling the poor to obtain cheap 
 and becoming clothing, it has inspired a taste for comfort, the 
 first stimulus to civilization. Does not self-defence, then, 
 demand of us steadily to resist the abrogation of that which 
 is productive of so much good ? It is more than self-defence. 
 It it to defend millions of human beings, who are far removed 
 from us, from the intensest suffering, if not from being struck 
 out of existence. It is the defence of human civilization. 
 
 But this is but a small part of the evil which would be oc- 
 casioned. After President Dew, it is unnecessary to say a 
 single word on the practicability of colonizing our slaves. The 
 two races, so widely separated from each other by the impress 
 
harper's memoir on slavery. 89 
 
 of nature, must remain together in the same country. Wheth-/ 
 er it be accounted the result of prejudice or reason, it is cer- 
 tain that the two races will not be blended together so as to 
 form a homogenous population. To one who knows anything 
 of the nature of man and human society, it would be unneces- 
 sary to argue that this state of things cannot continue ; but 
 that one race must be driven out by the other, or extermina- 
 ted, or again enslaved. I have argued on the supposition 
 that the emancipated negroes would be as efficient as other 
 free laborers. But whatever theorists, who know nothino- f 
 the matter, may think proper to assume, we well know that 
 this would not be so. We know that nothing but the coer- 
 cion of Slavery can overcome their propensity to indolence, 
 and that not one in ten would be an efficient laborer. Even 
 if this disposition were not grounded in their nature, it would 
 be a result of their position. I have somewhere seen it ob- 
 served, that to be degraded by opinion, is a thousand fold 
 worse, so far as the feelings of the individuals are concerned, 
 than to be degraded by the laws. They would be thus de- 
 graded, and this feeling is incompatible with habits of order 
 and industry. Half our population would at once be paupers. 
 Let an inhabitant of New-York or Philadelphia conceive of 
 the situation of their respective States, if one-half of their popu- 
 tion consisted of free negroes. The tie which now connects 
 them, being broken, the different races w r ould be estranged / 
 from each other, and hostility would grow up between them. 
 Having the command of their own time and actions, they 
 could more effectually combine insurrection, and provide the 
 means of rendering it formidable. Released from the vigilant 
 superintendence which now restrains them, they would infalli- 
 bly be led from petty to greater crimes, until all life and pro- 
 perty would be rendered insecure. Aggression would beget 
 retaliation, until open war — and that a war of extermination 
 8* 
 
90 harper's memoir on slavery. 
 
 — were established. From the still remaining superiority of 
 the white race, it is probable that they would be the victors, 
 and if they did not exterminate, they must again reduce the 
 others to Slavery — when they could be no longer fit to be 
 either slaves or freemen. It is not only in self-defence, in de- 
 fence of our country and of all that is dear to us, but in de- 
 fence of the slaves themselves, that we refuse to emancipate 
 them. 
 
 If we suppose them to have political privileges, and to be 
 admitted to the elective franchise, still worse results may be 
 expected. It is hardly necessary to add anything to what 
 has been said by Mr. Paulding on this subject, who has treat- 
 ed it fully. It is already known, that if there be a class un- 
 favorably distinguished by any peculiarity from the rest of 
 society, this distinction forms a tie which binds them to act in 
 concert, and they exercise more than their due share of politi- 
 cal power and influence — and still more, as they are of inferior 
 character and looser moral principle. Such a class form the 
 v very material for demagogues to work with. Other parties 
 court them, and concede to them. So it would be with the 
 free blacks in the case supposed. They would be used by 
 unprincipled politicians, of irregular ambition, for the advance- 
 ment of their schemes, until they should give them political 
 power and importance beyond even their own intentions. 
 They would be courted by excited parties in their contests 
 with each other. At some time, they may perhaps attain 
 political ascendancy, and this is more probable, as we may 
 suppose that there will have been a great emigration of whites 
 from the country. Imagine the government of such legisla- 
 tors. Imagine then the sort of laws that will be passed, to 
 confound the invidious distinction which has been so long 
 assumed over them, and, if possible, to obliterate the very 
 memory of it. These will be resisted. The blacks will be 
 
harper's memoir on slavery. 91 
 
 tempted to avenge themselves by oppression and proscription 
 of the white race, for their long superiority. Thus matters 
 will go on, until universal anarchy, or kakistocracy, the gov- 
 ernment of the worst, is fully established. I am persuaded 
 that if the spirit of evil should devise to send abroad upon 
 the earth all possible misery, discord, horror, and atrocity, he 
 could contrive no scheme so effectual as the emancipation of 
 negro slaves within our country. 
 
 The most feasible scheme of emancipation, and that which 
 I verily believe would involve the least danger and sacrifice, 
 would be that the entire white population should emigrate, 
 and abandon the country to their slaves. Here would be 
 triumph to philanthropy. This wide and fertile region would 
 be again restored to ancient barbarism — to the worst of all 
 barbarism — barbarism corrupted and depraved by intercourse 
 w 7 ith civilization. And this is the consummation to be wished, 
 upon a speculation, that in some distant future age, they may 
 become so enlightened and improved, as to be capable of sus- 
 taining a position among the civilized races of the earth. But 
 I believe moralists allow men to defend their homes and their 
 country, even at the expense of the lives and liberties of others. 
 Will any philanthropist say that the evils, of which I have 
 spoken, would be brought about only by the obduracy, preju- 
 dices, and overweening self-estimation of the whites in refu- 
 sing to blend the races by marriage, and so create an homoge- 
 nous population ? But what, if it be not prejudice, but truth, 
 and nature, and right reason, and just moral feeling ? As I 
 have before said, throughout the whole of nature, like attracts 
 like, and that which is unlike repels. What is it that makes 
 so unspeakably loathsome, crimes not to be named, and hard- 
 ly alluded to ? Even among the nations of Europe, so nearly 
 homogenous, there are some peculiarities of form and feature, 
 mind and character, which may be generally distinguished by 
 
92 harper's memoir on slavery. 
 
 those accustomed to observe them. Though the exceptions 
 are numerous, I will venture to say that not in one instance in a 
 hundred, is the man of sound and unsophisticated tastes and 
 propensities so likely to be attracted by the female of a for- 
 eign stock, as by one of his own, who is more nearly conform- 
 ed to himself. Shakspeare spoke the language of nature, 
 when he made the senate and people of Venice attribute to 
 the effect of witchcraft, Desdemona's passion for Othello — 
 though, as Coleridge has said, we are to conceive of him not 
 as a negro, but as a high bred Moorish chief. 
 
 If the negro race, as I have contended, be inferior to our 
 own in mind and character, marked by inferiority of form and 
 features, then ours would sutler deterioration from such inter- 
 mixture. What would be thought of the moral conduct of 
 >J the parent who should voluntarily transmit disease, or fatuity, 
 or deformity to his offspring ? If man be the most perfect 
 work of the Creator, and the civilized European man the most 
 perfect variety of the human race, is he not criminal who 
 would desecrate and deface God's fairest work; estranging it 
 further from the image of himself, and conforming it more 
 nearly to that of the brute ? I have heard it said, as if it af- 
 forded an argument, that the African is as well satisfied of 
 the superiority of his own complexion, form, and features, as 
 we can be of ours. If this were true, as it is not, would any 
 one be so recreant to his own civilization, as to say that his 
 opinion ought to weigh against ours — that there is no univer- 
 sal standard of truth, and grace, and beauty — that the Hot- 
 tentot Venus may perchance possess as great perfection of 
 form as the Medicean ? It is true, the licentious passions of 
 men overcome the natural repugnance, and find transient 
 gratification in intercourse witli females of the other race. But 
 this is a very different thing from making her the associate of 
 life, the companion of the bosom and the hearth. Him who 
 
harper's memoir on slavery. 93 
 
 would contemplate such an alliance for himself, or regard it 
 with patience, when proposed for a son, or daughter, or sister, 
 we should esteem a degraded wretch — with justice, certainly, 
 if he were found among ourselves — and the estimate would 
 not be very different if he were found in Europe. It is not 
 only in defence of ourselves, of our country, and of our own 
 generation, that we refuse to emancipate our slaves, but to de- 
 fend our posterity and race from degeneracy and degradation. 
 
 Are we not justified then in regarding as criminals, the fa- 
 natical agitators whose efforts are intended to bring about the 
 evils I have described ? It is sometimes said that their zeal is 
 generous and disinterested, and that their motives may be 
 praised, though their conduct be condemned. But I have 
 little faith in the good motives of those who pursue bad ends. 
 It is not for us to scrutinize the hearts of men, and we can 
 only judge of them by the tendency of their actions. There 
 is much truth in what was said by Coleridge. " I have never 
 known a trader in philanthropy who was not wrong in heart 
 somehow or other. Individuals so distinguished, are usually 
 unhappy in their family relations — men not benevolent or be- 
 neficent to individuals, but almost hostile to them, yet lavish- 
 ing money and labor and time on the race — the abstract no- 
 tion." The prurient love of notoriety actuates some. There 
 is much luxury in sentiment, especially if it can be indulged 
 at the expense of others, and if there be added some share of 
 envy or malignity, the temptation to indulgence is almost 
 irresistible. But certainly they may be justly regarded as 
 criminal, who obstinately shut their eyes and close their ears 
 to all instruction with respect to the true nature of their ac- 
 tions. 
 
 It must be manifest to every man of sane mind that it is 
 impossible for them to achieve ultimate success ; even if every 
 individual in our country, out of the limits of the slaveholding 
 
94 harper's memoir on slavery. 
 
 States, were united in their purposes. They cannot have even 
 the miserable triumph of St. Domingo — of advancing through 
 j scenes of atrocity, blood and massacre, to the restoration of 
 barbarism. They may agitate and perplex the world for a 
 time. They may excite to desperate attempts and particular 
 acts of cruelty and horror, but these will always be suppressed 
 or avenged at the expense of the objects of their truculent 
 philanthropy. But short of this, they can hardly be aware of 
 the extent of the mischief they perpetrate. As I have said, 
 their opinions, by means to us inscrutible, do very generally 
 reach our slave population. What human being, if unfavora- 
 bly distinguished by outward circumstances, is not ready to 
 believe when he is told that he is the victim of injustice ? Is 
 it not cruelty to make men restless and dissatisfied in their 
 condition, when no effort of theirs can alter it ? The greatest 
 injury is done to their characters, as well as to their happi- 
 ness. Even if no such feelings or designs should be enter- 
 tained or conceived by the slave, they will be attributed to 
 him by the master, and all his conduct scanned with a severe 
 and jealous scrutiny. Thus distrust and aversion are estab- 
 lished, where, but for mischievous interference, there would 
 be confidence and good will, and a sterner control is exercised 
 over the slave who thus becomes the victim of his cruel advo- 
 cates. 
 
 An effect is sometimes produced on the minds of slave- 
 holders, by the publications of the self-styled philanthropists, 
 and their judgments staggered and consciences alarmed. It 
 is natural that the oppressed should hate the oppressor. It is 
 still more natural that the oppressor should hate his victim. 
 Convince the master that he is doing injustice to his slave, 
 and he at once begins to regard him with distrust and ma- 
 lignity. It is a part of the constitution of the human mind, 
 that when circumstances of necessity or temptation induce 
 
harper's memoir on slavery. 95 
 
 men to continue in the practice of what they believe to be 
 wrong, they become desperate and reckless of the degree of 
 wrong. I have formerly heard of a master who accounted 
 for his practising much severity upon his slaves, and exacting 
 from them an unusual degree of labor, by saying that the 
 thing (Slavery) was altogether wrong, and therefore it was 
 well to make the greatest possible advantage out of it. This 
 agitation occasions some slaveholders to hang more loosely 
 on their country. Regarding the institution as of questiona- 
 ble character, condemned by the general opinion of the world, 
 and one which must shortly come to an end, they hold them- 
 selves in readiness to make their escape from the evil which 
 they anticipate. Some sell their slaves to new masters (al- 
 ways a misfortune to the slave) and remove themselves to 
 other societies, of manners and habits uncongenial to their 
 own. And though we may suppose that it is only the weak 
 and the timid who are liable to be thus affected, still it is 
 no less an injury and public misfortune. Society is kept in 
 an unquiet and restless state, and every sort of improvement 
 is retarded. 
 
 Some projectors suggest the education of slaves, with a 
 view to prepare them for freedom — as if there were any 
 method of a man's being educated to freedom, but by him- 
 self. The truth is, however, that supposing that they are 
 shortly to be emancipated, and that they have the capacities 
 of any other race, they are undergoing the very best educa- 
 tion which it is possible to give. They are in the course of 
 being taught habits of regular and patient industry, and this 
 is the first lesson which is required. I suppose that their 
 most zealous advocates would not desire that they should be 
 placed in the high places of society immediately upon their 
 emancipation, but that they should begin their course of freedom 
 as laborers, and raise themselves afterwards as their capacities 
 
96 harper's memoir on slavery. 
 
 and characters might enable them. But how little would 
 what are commonly called the rudiments of education, add to 
 their qualifications as laborers ? But for the agitation which 
 exists, however, their education would be carried further than 
 this. There is a constant tendency in our society to extend 
 the sphere of their employments, and consequently to give 
 them the information which is necessary to the discharge of 
 those employments. And this, for the most obvious reason, 
 it promotes the master's interest. How much would it add 
 to the value of a slave, that he should be capable of being 
 employed as a clerk, or be able to make calculations as a me- 
 chanic ? In consequence, however, of the fanatical spirit 
 which has been excited, it has been thought necessary to re- 
 press this tendency by legislation, and to prevent their acquir- 
 ing the knowledge of which they might make a dangerous 
 use. If this spirit were put down, and we restored to the 
 consciousness of security, this would be no longer necessary, 
 and the process of which I have spoken would be accelerated. 
 Whenever indications of superior capacity appeared in a slave, 
 it would be cultivated ; gradual improvement would take 
 place, until they might be engaged in as various employments 
 as they were among the ancients — perhaps even liberal ones. 
 Thus, if in the adorable providence of God, at a time and in 
 a manner which we can neither foresee nor conjecture, tjiey 
 are to be rendered capable of freedom and to enjoy it, they 
 would be prepared for it in the best and most effectual, be- 
 cause in the most natural and gradual manner. But fanati- 
 cism hurries to its effect at once. I have heard it said, God 
 does good, but it is by imperceptible degrees ; the devil is 
 permitted to do evil, and he does it in a hurry. The benefi- 
 cent processes of nature are not apparent to the senses. You 
 cannot see the plant grow, or the flower expand. The vol- 
 cano, the earthquake, and the hurricane, do their work of 
 
harper's memoir on slavery. 97 
 
 desolation in a moment. Such would be the desolation, if 
 the schemes of fanatics were permitted to have effect. They 
 do all that in them lies to thwart the beneficent purposes of 
 providence. The whole tendency of their efforts is to aggra- 
 vate present suffering, and to cut off the chance of future im- 
 provement, and in all their bearings and results, have pro- 
 duced, and are likely to produce, nothing but " pure, unmixed, 
 dephlegmated, defecated evil." 
 
 If Wilberforce or Clarkson were living, and it were enquired 
 of them "can you be sure that you have promoted the happi- 
 ness of a single human being?" I imagine that, if they con- 
 sidered conscientiously, they would find it difficult to answer 
 in the affirmative. If it were asked "can you be sure that 
 you have not been the cause of suffering, misery and death 
 to thousands,"— when we recollect that they probably stimu- 
 lated the exertions of the amis des noirs in France, and that 
 through the efforts of these the horrors of St. Domingo were 
 perpetrated— I think they must hesitate long to return a de- 
 cided negative. It might seem cruel, if we could, to convince 
 a man who has devoted his life to what he esteemed a good 
 and generous purpose, that he has been doing only evil— that 
 he has been worshipping a horrid fiend, in the place of the 
 true God. But fanaticism is in no danger of being convinced. 
 It is one of the mysteries of our nature, and of the divine 
 government, how utterly disproportioned to each other are 
 the powers of doing evil and of doing good. The poorest and 
 most abject instrument, that is utterly imbecile for any pur- 
 pose of good, seems sometimes endowed with almost the 
 powers of omnipotence for mischief. A mole may inundate 
 a province— a spark from a forge may conflagrate a city— a 
 whisper may separate friends— a rumor may convulse an em- 
 pire—but when we would do benefit to our race or country, 
 the purest and most chastened motives, the most patient 
 9 
 
98 harper's memoir on slavery. 
 
 thought and labor, -with the humblest self-distrust, are hardly 
 sufficient to assure us that the results may not disappoint our 
 expectations, and that we may not do evil instead of good. 
 But are we therefore to refrain from efforts to benefit our race 
 and country ? By no means : but these motives, this labor 
 and self-distrust are the only conditions upon which we are 
 permitted to hope for success. Very different indeed is the 
 course of those whose precipitate and ignorant zeal would 
 overturn the fundamental institutions of society, uproar its 
 peace and endanger its security, in pursuit of a distant and 
 shadowy good, of which they themselves have formed no defi- 
 nite conception — whose atrocious philosophy would sacrifice 
 a generation — and more than one generation — for any hy- 
 pothesis. 
 
HAMMOND'S LETTERS ON SLAVERY. 
 
 SILVER BLUFF, (So. Ca.,) January 28, 1845. 
 
 Sir : I received, a short time ago, a letter from the Rev 
 Willoughby M. Dickinson, dated at your residence, " Play ford 
 Hall, near Ipswich, 2Gth November, 1844," in which was en- 
 closed a copy of your Circular Letter, addressed to professing 
 Christians in our Northern States, having no concern with 
 Slavery, and to others there. I presume that Mr. Dickinson's 
 letter was written with your knowledge, and the document 
 enclosed with your consent and approbation. I therefore feel 
 that there is no impropriety in my addressing my reply direct- 
 ly to yourself, especially as there is nothing in Mr. Dickinson's 
 communication requiring serious notice. Having abundant 
 leisure, it will be a recreation to devote a portion of it to an 
 examination and free discussion of the question of Slavery as 
 it exists in our Southern States : and since you have thrown 
 down the gauntlet to me, I do not hesitate to take it up. 
 
 Familiar as you have been with the discussions of this sub- 
 ject in all its aspects, and under all the excitements it has 
 occasioned for sixty years past, I may not be able to present 
 much that will be new to you. Nor ought I to indulge the 
 hope of materially affecting the opinions you have so long 
 cherished, and so zealously promulgated. Still, time and ex- 
 perience have developed facts, constantly furnishing fresh tests 
 
100 
 
 to opinions formed sixty years since, and continually placing 
 this great question in points of view, which could scarcely 
 occur to the most consummate intellect even a quarter of a 
 century ago : and which may not have occurred yet to those 
 whose previous convictions, prejudices, and habits of thought, 
 have thoroughly and permanently biased them to oue fixed 
 way of looking at the matter : while there are peculiarities in 
 the operation of every social system, and special local as well 
 as moral causes materially affecting it, which no one, placed 
 at the distance you are from us, can fully comprehend or pro- 
 perly appreciate. Besides, it may be possibly, a novelty to 
 you to encounter one who conscientiously believes the domes- 
 tic Slavery of these States to be not only an inexorable neces- 
 sity for the present, but a moral and humane institution, pro- 
 ductive of the greatest political and social advantages, and 
 who is disposed, as I am, to defend it on these grounds. 
 
 I do not propose, however, to defend the African slave 
 trade. That is no longer a question. Doubtless great evils 
 arise from it as it has been, and is now conducted : unneces- 
 sary wars and cruel kidnapping in Africa : the most shocking 
 barbarities in the middle passage : and perhaps a less humane 
 system of Slavery in countries continually supplied with fresh 
 laborers at a cheap rate. The evils of it, however, it may be 
 fairly presumed, are greatly exaggerated. And if I might 
 judge of the truth of transactions stated as occurring in this 
 trade, by that of those reported as transpiring among us, I 
 should not hesitate to say, that a large proportion of the sto- 
 ries in circulation are unfounded, and most of the remainder 
 highly colored. 
 
 On the passage of the Act of Parliament prohibiting this 
 trade to British subjects rests, what you esteem, the glory of 
 your life. It required twenty years of arduous agitation, and 
 the intervening extraordinary political events, to convince your 
 
101 
 
 countrymen, and among the rest your pious king, of the ex- 
 pediency of the measure : and it is but just to say, that no 
 one individual rendered more essential service to the cause 
 than you did. In reflecting on the subject, you cannot but often 
 ask yourself : What, after all, has been accomplished ; how 
 much human suffering has been averted ; how many human 
 beings have been rescued from transatlantic Slavery ? And 
 on the answers you can give these questions, must in a great 
 measure, I presume, depend the happiness of your life. In 
 framing them, how frequently must you be reminded of the 
 remark of Mr. Grosvenor, in one of the early debates upon the 
 subject, which I believe you have yourself recorded, " that he 
 had twenty objections to the abolition of the slave trade : the 
 first was, that it was impossible — the rest he need not give." 
 Can you say to yourself, or to the world, that this first ob- 
 jection of Mr. Grosvenor has been yet confuted ? It was esti- 
 mated at the commencement of your agitation in 1787, that 
 forty-five thousand Africans were annually transported to 
 America and the West Indies. And the mortality of the 
 middle passage, computed by some at five, is now admitted 
 not to have exceeded nine per cent. Notwithstanding your 
 Act of Parliament, the previous abolition by the United States, 
 and that all the powers in the world have subsequently pro- 
 hibited this trade — some of the greatest of them declaring it 
 piracy, and covering the African seas with armed vessels to 
 prevent it — Sir Thomas Fowel Buxton, a coadjutor of yours, 
 declared in 1840, that the number of Africans now annually 
 sold into slavery beyond the sea, amounts, at the very least, 
 to one hundred and fifty thousand souls ; while the mortality 
 of the middle passage has increased, in consequence of the 
 measures taken to suppress the trade, to twenty-five or thirty 
 per cent. And of the one hundred and fifty thousand slaves 
 who have been captured and liberated by British men-of-war, 
 9* 
 
102 Hammond's letters on slavery. 
 
 since the passage of your Act, Judge Jay, an American aboli- 
 tionist, asserts that one hundred thousand, or two-thirds, have 
 perished between their capture and liberation. Does it not 
 really seem that Mr. Grosvenor was a prophet ? That though 
 nearly all the "impossibilities" of 1*787 have vanished, and 
 become as familiar facts as our household customs, under the 
 magic influence of steam, cotton, and universal peace, yet this 
 wonderful prophecy still stands, defying time and the energy 
 and genius of mankind. Thousands of valuable lives, and fifty 
 millions of pounds sterling, have been thrown away by your 
 government in fruitless attempts to overturn it. I hope you 
 have not lived too long for your own happiness, though you 
 have been spared to see that in spite of all your toils and 
 those of your fellow-laborers, and the accomplishment of all 
 that human agency could do, the African slave trade has in- 
 creased three-fold under your own eyes — more rapidly, per- 
 haps, than any other ancient branch of commerce — and that 
 your efforts to suppress it have effected nothing more than a 
 three-fold increase of its horrors. There is a God who rules 
 this world — all-powerful — far-seeing : He does not permit his 
 creatures to foil his designs. It is he who, for his all-wise, 
 though to us often inscrutable purposes, throws "impossibili- 
 ties " in the w r ay of our fondest hopes and most strenuous 
 exertions. Can you doubt this ? 
 
 Experience having settled the point, that this trade cannot 
 be abolished by the use of force, and that blockading squadrons 
 serve only to make it more profitable and more cruel, I am 
 surprised that the attempt is persisted in, unless it serves as a 
 cloak to other purposes. It would be far better than it now 
 is, for the African, if the trade was free from all restrictions, 
 and left to the mitigation and decay which time and competi- 
 tion would surely bring about. If kidnapping, both secretly 
 and by war made for the purpose, could be by any means 
 
Hammond's letters on slavery. 103 
 
 prevented in Africa, the next greatest blessing you could be- 
 stow upon that country would be to transport its actual slaves 
 in comfortable vessels across the Atlantic. Though they 
 might be perpetual bondsmen, still they would emerge from 
 darkness into light — from barbarism into civilization — from 
 idolatry to Christianity — in short from death to life. 
 
 But let us leave the African slave trade, which has so sig- 
 nally defeated the philanthropy of the world, and turn to 
 American Slavery, to which you have now directed your at- 
 tention, and against which a crusade has been preached as 
 enthusiastic and ferocious as that of Peter the Hermit — des- 
 tined, I believe, to be about as successful. And here let me 
 say, there is a vast difference between the two, though you 
 may not acknowledge it. The wisdom of ages has concurred 
 in the justice and expediency of establishing rights by pre- 
 scriptive use, however tortious in their origin they may have 
 been. You would deem a man insane, whose keen sense of 
 equity would lead him to denounce your right to the lands 
 you hold, and which perhaps you inherited from a long line 
 of ancestry, because your title was derived from a Saxon or 
 Norman conqueror, and your lands were originally wTested 
 b} r violence from the vanquished Britons. And so would the 
 New-England abolitionist regard any one who would insist 
 that he should restore his farm to the descendants of the 
 slaughtered red men, to Avhom God had as clearly given it as 
 he gave life and freedom to the kidnapped African. That 
 time does not consecrate wrong, is a fallacy which all history 
 exposes ; and which the best and wisest men of all ages and 
 professions of religious faith have practically denied. The 
 means, therefore, whatever they may have been, by which the 
 African race now in this country have been reduced to Slave- 
 ry, cannot affect us, since they are our property, as your land 
 is yours, by inheritance or purchase and prescriptive right. 
 
104 hammond's letters on slavery. 
 
 You will say that man cannot hold property in man. The 
 answer is, that lie can and actually does hold property in his 
 fellow all the world over, in a variety of forms, and lias always 
 done so. I will show presently his authority for doing it. 
 
 If you were to ask me whether I am an advocate of Slave- 
 ry in the abstract, I should probably answer, that I am not, 
 according to my understanding of the question. I do not like 
 to deal in abstractions. It seldom leads to any useful ends. 
 There are few universal truths. I do not now remember any 
 single moral truth universally acknowledged. We have no 
 assurance that it is given to our finite understanding to com- 
 prebend abstract moral truth. Apart from revelation and the 
 inspired writings, what ideas should we have even of God, 
 salvation and immortality ? Let the heathen answer. Justice 
 itself is impalpable as an abstraction, and abstract liberty the 
 merest phantasy that ever amused the imagination. This 
 world was made for man, and man for the world as it is. We 
 ourselves, our relations with one another and with all matter, 
 are real, not ideal. I might say that I am no more in favor 
 of Slavery in the abstract, than I am of poverty, disease, de- 
 formity, idiocy, or any other inequality in the condition of the 
 human family ; that I love perfection, and think I should en- 
 joy a millennium such as God has promised. But what would 
 it amount to ? A pledge that I would join you to set about 
 eradicating those apparently inevitable evils of our nature, in 
 equalizing the condition of all mankind, consummating the 
 perfection of our race, and introducing the millennium ? By 
 no means. To effect these things, belongs exclusively to a 
 higher power. And it would be well for us to leave the Al- 
 mighty to perfect his own works and fulfil his own covenants. 
 Especially, as the history of the past shows how entirely futile 
 all human efforts have proved, when made for the purpose of 
 aiding llim in carrying out even his revealed designs, and 
 
Hammond's letters on slavery. 105 
 
 how invariably he has accomplished them by unconscious in- 
 struments, and in the face of human expectation. Nay more, 
 that every attempt which has been made by fallible man to 
 extort from the world obedience to his " abstract " notions of 
 right and wrong, has been invariably attended with calamities 
 dire, and extended just in proportion to the breadth and vigor 
 of the movement. On Slavery in the abstract, then, it would 
 not be amiss to have as little as possible to say. Let us con- 
 template it as it is. And thus contemplating it, the first 
 question we have to ask ourselves is, whether it is contrary to 
 the will of God, as revealed to us in his Holy Scriptures — 
 the only certain means given us to ascertain his will. If it 
 is, then Slavery is a sin. And I admit at once that every 
 man is bound to set his face against it, and to emancipate his 
 slaves, should he hold any. 
 
 Let us open these Holy Scriptures. In the twentieth chap- 
 ter of Exodus, seventeenth verse, I find the following words : 
 " Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, thou shalt not 
 covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his man-servant, nor his maid- 
 servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neigh- 
 bor's " — which is the tenth of those commandments that de- 
 clare the essential principles of the great moral law delivered 
 to Moses by God himself. Now, discarding all technical and 
 verbal quibbling as wholly unworthy to be used in interpre- 
 ting the Word of God, what is the plain meaning, undoubted 
 intent, and true spirit of this commandment ? Does it not 
 emphatically and explicitly forbid you to disturb your neigh- 
 bor in the enjoyment of his property ; and more especially of 
 that which is here specifically mentioned as being lawfully, 
 and by this commandment made sacredly his ? Prominent • 
 in the catalogue stands his " man-servant and his maid-ser- / 
 vant," who are thus distinctly con secrat ed as his property, andV 
 guaranteed to him for his exclusive benem^in the most solemn 
 
106 Hammond's letters on slavery. 
 
 manner. You attempt to avert the otherwise irresistible con- 
 clusion, that Slavery was thus ordained by God, by declaring 
 that the word " slave" is not used here, and is not to be found 
 in the Bible. And I have seen many learned dissertations on 
 this point from abolition pens. It is well known that both 
 I the Hebrew and Greek words translated "servant" in the 
 ^Scriptures, mean also, and most usually, "slave." The use of 
 the one word, instead of the other, was a mere matter of taste 
 with the translators of the Bible, as it has been with all the 
 commentators and religious writers, the latter of whom have, 
 I believe, for the most part, adopted the term " slave," or used 
 both terms indiscriminately. If, then, these Hebrew and 
 Greek words include the idea of both systems of servitude, the 
 conditional and unconditional, they should, as the major in- 
 cludes the minor proposition, be always translated "slaves," 
 unless the sense of the whole text forbids it. The real ques- 
 tion, then is, what idea is intended to be conveyed by the 
 words used in the commandment quoted ? And it is clear to 
 my mind, that as no limitation is affixed to them, and the 
 express intention was to secure to mankind the peaceful en- 
 joyment of every species of property, that the terms " men- 
 servants and maid-servants" include all classes of servants, 
 and establish a lawful, exclusive, and indefeasible interest 
 equally in the "Hebrew brother who shall go out in the sev- 
 enth year," and " the yearly hired servant," and " those pur- 
 chased from the heathen round about," who were to be 
 "bondmen forever," as the property of their fellow-man. 
 
 You cannot deny that there were among the Hebrews 
 " bondmen forever." You cannot deny that God especially 
 authorized his chosen people to purchase " bondmen forever " 
 from the heathen, as recorded in the twenty -fifth chapter of 
 Leviticus, and that they are there designated by the very He- 
 brew word used in the tenth commandment. Nor can you 
 
Hammond's letters on slavery. 107 
 
 deny that a " bondman forever " is a " slave ;" yet you 
 endeavor to bang an argument of immortal consequence upon 
 the wretched subterfuge, that the precise word « slave " is not 
 to be found in the translation of the Bible. As if the trans- 
 lators were canonical expounders of the Holy Scriptures, 'and 
 their words, not God's meaning, must be regarded as his * 
 revelation. 
 
 It is vain to look to Christ or any of his Apostles to justify 
 such blasphemous perversions of the word of God. Although 
 Slavery in its most revolting form was everywhere visible 
 around them, no visionary notions of piety or philanthropy 
 ever tempted them to gainsay the law, even to mitigate the 
 cruel severity of the existing system. On the contrary, re- 
 garding Slavery as an established, as well as inevitable condi- 
 tion of human societij, they never hinted at such a thing as its 
 termination on earth, any more than that " the poo°r may 
 cease out of the land," which God affirms to Moses shall 
 never be : and they exhort « all servants under the yoke " to 
 "count their masters as worthy of all honor:" "to obey them 
 in all things according to the flesh ; not with eye-service as 
 men-pleasers, but in singleness of heart, fearing God ;" " not 
 only the good' and gentle, but also the froward :" "for what 
 glory is it if when ye are buffetted for your faults ye shall 
 take it patiently ? but if when ye do well and suffer for it ye 
 take it patiently, this is acceptable of God." St. Paul actual- J 
 \j apprehended a runaway slave, and sent him to his master ! 
 Instead of deriving from the Gospel any sanction for the work 
 you have undertaken, it would be difficult to imagine senti- 
 ments and conduct more strikingly in contrast, than those of 
 the Apostles and the abolitionists. 
 
 It is impossible, therefore, to suppose that Slavery is contra- 
 ry to the will of God. It is equally absurd to say that Ameri- 
 can Slavery differs in form or principle from that of the cho- 
 
J.08 hammond's letters on slavery. 
 
 sen people. We accept the Bible terms as the definition of 
 our Slavery, and its precepts as the guide of our conduct. 
 We desire nothing more. Even the right to " buffet," which 
 is esteemed so shocking, finds its express license in the gospel. 
 1 Peter ii. 20. Nay, what is more, God directs the Hebrews 
 to " bore holes in the ears of their brothers " to mark them, 
 when under certain circumstances they become perpetual 
 slaves. Exodus xxi. 6. 
 
 I think, then, I may safely conclude, and I firmly believe, 
 that American Slavery is not only not a sin, but especially 
 commanded by God through Moses, and approved by Christ 
 through his apostles. And here I might close its defence ; for 
 what ( rod ordains, and Christ sanctifies, should surely com- 
 mand the respect and toleration of man. But I fear there has 
 grown up in our time a transcendental religion, which is throw- 
 ing even transcendental philosophy into the shade — a religion 
 too pure and elevated for the Bible ; which seeks to erect 
 among men a higher standard of morals than the Almighty 
 has revealed, or our Saviour preached ; and which is probably 
 destined to do more to impede the extension of God's king- 
 dom on earth than ail the infidels who have ever lived. Error 
 is error. It is as dangerous to deviate to the right hand as 
 J the left. And when men, professing to be holy men, and 
 who are by numbers so regarded, declare those things to be 
 sinful which our Creator has expressly authorized and institu- 
 ted, they do more to destroy his authority among mankind 
 than the most wicked can effect, by proclaiming that to be 
 innocent which he has forbidden. To this self-righteous and 
 self-exalted class belong all the abolitionists whose writings I 
 have read. With them it is no end of the argument to prove 
 your propositions by the text of the Bible, interpreted accord- 
 ing to its plain and palpable meaning, and as understood by 
 all mankind for three thousand years before their time. They 
 
Hammond's letters on slavery. 109 
 
 are more ingenious at construing and interpolating to accom- 
 modate it to their new-fangled and etherial code of morals, 
 than ever were Voltaire and Hume in picking it to pieces, to 
 free the world from what they considered a delusion. When 
 the abolitionists proclaim "man-stealing" to be a sin, and 
 show me that it is so written down by God, I admit the'm to 
 be right, and shudder at the idea of such a crime. But when 
 I show them that to hold " bondmen forever" is ordained by 
 God, they deny the Bible, and set up in its place a law of their 
 own making. I must then cease to reason with them on this 
 branch of the question. Our religion differs as widely as our 
 manners. The great judge in our day of final account must 
 decide between us. 
 
 Turning from the consideration of slaveholding in its rela- 
 tions to man as an accountable being, let us examine it in its 
 influence on his political and social state. Though, being 
 foreigners to us, you are in no wise entitled to interfere with 
 the civil institutions of this country, it has become quite com- 
 mon for your countrymen to decry Slavery as an enormous 
 political evil to us, and even to declare that our Northern 
 States ought to withdraw from the Confederacy rather than 
 continue to be contaminated by it. The American abolition- 
 ists appear to concur fully in these sentiments, and a portion, 
 at least, of them are incessantly threatening to dissolve the 
 Union. Nor should I be at all surprised if they succeed. It 
 would not be difficult, in my opinion, to conjecture which 
 region, the North or South, would suffer most by such an 
 event. For one, I should not object, by any means, to cast 
 my lot in a confederacy of States whose citizens might all be 
 slaveholders. 
 
 I endorse without reserve the much abused sentiment of 
 Governer M'Duffie, that " Slavery is the corner-stone of our 
 republican edifice ;" while I repudiate, as ridiculously absurd, 
 10 
 
J 
 
 110 
 
 that much lauded but nowhere accredited dogma of Mr. Jef- 
 ferson, that " all men are born equal." No society has ever 
 yet existed, and I have already incidentally quoted the high- 
 est authority to show that none ever will exist, without a 
 natural variety of classes. The most marked of these must, 
 in a country like ours, be the rich and the poor, the educated 
 and the ignorant. It will scarcely be disputed that the very 
 poor have less leisure to prepare themselves for the proper 
 discharge of public duties than the rich ; and that the igno- 
 rant are wholly unfit for them at all. In all countries save 
 ours, these two classes, or the poor rather, who are presumed 
 to be necessarily ignorant, are by law expressly excluded from 
 all participation in the management of public affairs. In a 
 Republican Government this cannot bo done. Universal suf- 
 frage, though not essential in theory, seems to be in fact a 
 necessary appendage to a republican system. "Where univer- 
 sal suffrage obtains, it is obvious that the government is in 
 the hands of a numerical majority ; and it is hardly necessary 
 to say that in every part of the world more than half the peo- 
 ple are ignorant and poor. Though no one can look upon 
 poverty as a crime, and we do not here generally regard it as 
 any objection to a man in his individual capacity, still it must 
 be admitted that it is a wretched and insecure government 
 which is administered by its most ignorant citizens, and those 
 who have the least at stake under it. Though intelligence 
 and wealth have great influence here, as everywhere, in keep- 
 ing in check reckless and unenlightened numbers, yet it is 
 evident to close observers, if not to all, that these are rapidly 
 usurping all power in the non-slaveholding States, and threat- 
 en a fearful crisis in republican institutions there at no remote 
 period. In the slaveholding States, however, nearly one-half 
 of the whole population, and those the poorest and most igno- 
 rant, have no political influence whatever, because they are 
 
Ill 
 
 slaves. Of the other half, a large proportion are both educa- 
 ted and independent in their circumstances, while those who 
 unfortunately are not so, being still elevated far above the 
 mass, are higher toned and more deeply interested in pre- 
 serving a stable and well ordered government, than the same 
 class in any other country. Hence, Slavery is truly the 
 " corner-stone " and foundation of every well-designed and 
 durable " republican edifice." 
 
 With us every citizen is concerned in the maintenance of 
 order, and in promoting honesty and industry among those of 
 the lowest class who are our slaves ; and our habitual viffi- 
 lance renders standing armies, whether of soldiers or police- 
 men, entirely unnecessary. Small guards in our cities, and 
 occasional patrols in the country, ensure us a repose and se- 
 curity known no where else. You cannot be ignorant that, 
 excepting the United States, there is no country in the world 
 whose existing government would not be overturned in a 
 month, but for its standing armies, maintained at an enormous 
 and destructive cost to those whom they are destined to over- 
 awe — so rampant and combative is the spirit of discontent 
 wherever nominal free labor prevails, with its ostensive privi- 
 leges and its dismal servitude. Nor will it be long before the 
 "free States" of this Union will be compelled to introduce 
 the same expensive machinery, to preserve order among their 
 "free and equal" citizens. Already has Philadelphia organ- 
 ized a permanent battalion for this purpose ; New-York, Bos- 
 ton and Cincinnati will soon follow her example ; and then the 
 smaller towns and densely populated counties. The inter- 
 vention of their militia to repress violations of the peace is 
 becoming a daily affair. A strong government, after some of 
 the old fashions — though probably with a new name — sus- 
 tained by the force of armed mercenaries, is the ultimate 
 destiny of the non-slave-holding section of this confederacy, 
 and one which may not be very distant. 
 
112 HAMMONDS LETTERS ON SLAVERT. 
 
 It is a great mistake to suppose, as is generally done abroad, 
 that in case of war slavery would be a source of weakness. 
 It did not weaken Rome, nor Athens, nor Sparta, though their 
 slaves were comparatively far more numerous than ours, of 
 the same color for the most part with themselves, and large 
 numbers of them familiar with the use of arms. I have no 
 apprehension that our slaves would seize such an opportunity 
 to revolt. The present generation of them, born among us, 
 would never think of such a thing at any time, unless insti- 
 gated to it by others. Against such instigations we are al- 
 ways on our guard. In time of war we should be more 
 watchful and better prepared to put down insurrections than 
 at any other periods. Should any foreign nation be so lost 
 to every sentiment of civilized humanity, as to attempt to 
 erect among us the standard of revolt, or to invade us with 
 black troops, for the base and barbarous purpose of stirring 
 up servile war, their efforts would be signally rebuked. Our 
 slaves could not be easily seduced, nor would any thing de- 
 light them more than to assist in stripping Cuffee of his regi- 
 mentals to put him in the cotton-field, which would be the 
 fate of most black invaders, without any very prolix form of 
 u apprenticeship." If, as I am satisfied would be the case, our 
 slaves remained peaceful on our plantations, and cultivated 
 them in time of war under the superintendence of a limited 
 number of our citizens, it is obvious that we could put forth 
 more strength in such an emergency, at less sacrifice, than 
 any other people of the same numbers. And thus we should 
 in every point of view, u out of this nettle danger, pluck the 
 flower safety." 
 
 How far Slavery may be an advantage or disadvantage to 
 those not owning slaves, yet united with us in political asso- 
 ciation, is a question for their sole consideration. It is true 
 that our representation in Congress is increased by it. But so 
 
Hammond's letters on slavery. 113 
 
 are our taxes ; and the non slave-holding States, being the 
 majority, divide among themselves far the greater portion of 
 the amount levied by the Federal Government. And I doubt 
 not that, when it comes to a close calculation, they will not 
 be slow in rinding out that the balance of profit arising from 
 the connection is vastly in their favor. 
 
 In a social point of view the abolitionists pronounce Slavery 
 to be a monstrous evil. If it was so, it would be our own pe- 
 culiar concern, and superfluous benevolence in them to lament ' 
 over it. Seeing their bitter hostility to us, they might leave 
 us to cope with our own calamities. But they make war upon 
 us out of excess of charity, and attempt to purify by covering 
 us with calumny. You have read and assisted to circulate a 
 great deal about affrays, duels and murders, occurring here, 
 and all attributed to the terrible demoralization of Slavery. 
 Not a single event of this sort takes place among us, but it is 
 caught up by the abolitionists, and paraded over the world, 
 with endless comments, variations and exaggerations. You 
 should not take what reaches you as a mere sample, and infer 
 that there is a vast deal more you never hear. You hear all, 
 and more than all, the truth. 
 
 It is true that the point of honor is recognized throughout 
 the slave region, and that disputes of certain classes are fre- 
 quently referred for adjustment, to the "trial by combat." 
 It would not be appropriate for me to enter, in this letter, into 
 a defence of the practice of duelling, nor to maintain at length, 
 that it does not tarnish the character of a people to acknow- 
 ledge a standard of honor. Whatever evils may arise from 
 it, however, they cannot be attributed to Slavery, since the same 
 custom prevails both in France and England. Few of your 
 Prime Ministers, of the last half-centmy even, have escaped 
 the contagion, I believe. The affrays, of which so much is 
 said, and in which rifles, bowie-knives and pistols are so prom- 
 *10 
 
114 HAMMONDS LETTERS ON SLAVERY. 
 
 inent, occur mostly in the frontier States of the South-West. 
 They are naturally incidental to the condition of society, as it 
 exists in many sections of these recently settled countries, and 
 -will as naturally cease in due time. Adventurers from the 
 older States, and from Europe, as desperate in character as 
 they are in fortune, congregate in these wild regions, jostling 
 one another and often forcing the peaceable and honest into 
 rencontres in self-defence. Slavery has nothing to do with 
 these things. Stability and peace are the first desires of 
 every slave-holder, and the true tendency of the system. It 
 could not possibly exist amid the eternal anarchy and civil 
 broils of the ancient Spanish dominions in America. And 
 . for this very reason, domestic Slavery has ceased there. So 
 far from encouraging strife, such scenes of riot and bloodshed, 
 as have within the last few years disgraced our Northern 
 cities, and as you have lately witnessed in Birmingham and 
 Bristol and Wales, not only never have occurred, but I will 
 venture to say, never will occur in our slave-holding States. 
 The only thing that can create a mob (as you might call it) here, 
 is the appearance of an abolitionist, whom the people assemble 
 to chastise. And this is no more of a mob, than a rally of 
 shepherds to chase a wolf out of their pastures would be 
 one. 
 
 But we are swindlers and repudiators ! Pennsylvania is not 
 a slave State. A majority of the States which have failed to 
 meet their obligations punctually are non-slave-holding ; and 
 two-thirds of the debt said to be repudiated is owed by these 
 States. Many of the States of this Union are heavily encum- 
 bered with debt — none so hopelessly as England. Pennsyl- 
 vania owes 822 for each inhabitant — England 8222, counting 
 her paupers in. Nor has there been any repudiation definite 
 and final, of a lawful debt, that I am aware of. A few States 
 have failed to pay some instalments of interest. The extra- 
 
115 
 
 ordinary financial difficulties which occurred a few years ago 
 will account for it. Time will set all things rio-ht again. 
 Every dollar of both principal and interest, owed by any 
 State, North or South, will be ultimately paid, unless the abo- 
 lition of Slavery overwhelms us all in one common ruin. 
 But have no other nations failed to pay ? When were the 
 French Assignats redeemed ? How much interest did your 
 National Bank pay on its immense circulation, from 1*797 to 
 1821, during which period that circulation was inconvertible, 
 and for the time repudiated ? How much of your national 
 debt has been incurred for money borrowed to meet the inter- 
 est on it, thus avoiding delinquency in detail, by insuring inevi- 
 table bankruptcy and repudiation in the end ? And what sort of 
 operation was that by which your present Ministry recently 
 expunged a handsome amount of that debt, by substituting, 
 through a process just not compulsory, one species of security 
 for another? I am well aware that the faults of others do 
 not excuse our own, but when failings are charged to Slavery, 
 which are shown to occur to equal extent where it does not 
 exist, surely Slavery must be acquitted of the accusation. 
 
 It is roundly asserted, that we are not so well educated nor 
 so religious here as elsewhere. I will not go into tedious 
 statistical statements on these subjects. Nor have I, to tell 
 the truth, much confidence in the details of what are com- 
 monly set forth as statistics. As toeducation^^ 
 bably admit t hat slave-h olders should have more leisurejbr 
 
 m ental cultu reJb Qn m^! f peopjg. And 1 believe it is charged 
 against them, that they are peculiarly fond of power, and am- 
 bitious of honors. If this be so, as all the power and honors 
 of this country are won mainly by intellectual superiority, it 
 might be fairly presumed, that slave-holders would not be 
 neglectful of education. In proof of the accuracy of this pre- 
 sumption, I point you to the facts, that our Presidential chair 
 
116 HAMMONDS LETTERS ON SLAVERY. 
 
 has been occupied for forty-four out of fifty-six years, by slave- 
 holders ; that another has been recently elected to fill it for 
 four more, over an opponent who was a slave-holder also ; 
 and that in the Federal Offices and both Ilouses of Congress, 
 considerably more than a due proportion of those acknow- 
 ledged to stand in the first rank are from the South. In this 
 arena, the intellects of the free and slave States meet in full 
 and fair competition. Nature must have been unusually 
 bountiful to us, or we have been at least reasonably assiduous 
 in the cultivation of such gifts as she has bestowed — unless 
 indeed you refer our superiority to moral qualities, which I 
 am sure you will not. More wealthy we are not ; nor would 
 mere wealth avail in such rivalry. 
 
 The piety of the South is unobtrusive. We think it proves 
 but little, though it is a confident thing for a man to claim 
 that he stands higher in the estimation of his Creator, and is 
 -inner than his neighbor. If vociferation is to carry 
 the question of religion, the North, and probabl} 7 the Scotch, 
 have it. Our sects are few, harmonious, pretty much united 
 among themselves, and pursue their avocations in humble 
 peace. In fact, our professors of religion seem to think — 
 whether correctly or not — that it is their duty "to do good in 
 secret," and to carry their holy comforts to the heart of each 
 individual, without reference to class or color, for his special 
 enjoyment, and not with a view to exhibit their zeal before the 
 world. So far as numbers are concerned, I believe our cler- 
 gymen, when called on to make a showing, have never had 
 occasion to blush, if comparisons were drawn between the 
 free and slave States. And although our presses do not teem 
 with controversial pamphlets, nor our pulpits shake with ex- 
 communicating thunders, the daily walk of our religious com- 
 municants furnishes, apparently, as little food for gossip as is 
 to be found in most other regions. It may be regarded as a 
 
hammond's letters on slavery. 117 
 
 mark of our want of excitability— though that is a quality 
 accredited to us in an eminent degree — that few of the re- 
 markable religious Isms of the present day have taken root 
 among us. We have been so irreverent as to laugh at Mor- 
 monism and Millerism, which, have created such commotions 
 farther North ; and modern prophets have no honor in our 
 country. Shakers, Rappists, Dunkers, Socialists, Fourrierists 
 and the like, keep themselves afar off. Even Puseyism has 
 not yet moved us. You may attribute this to our domestic 
 Slavery if you choose. I believe you would do so justly. 
 There is no material here for such characters to operate upon. 
 
 But your grand charge is, that licentiousness in intercourse yf 
 between the sexes, is a prominent trial of our social system, 
 and that it necessarily arises from Slavery. This is a favorite 
 theme with the abolitionists, male and female. Folios have 
 been written on it. It is a common observation, that there is 
 no subject on which ladies of eminent virtue so much delight 
 to dwell, and on which in especial learned old maids, like Miss 
 Martineau, linger with such an insatiable relish. They expose 
 it in the slave States with the most minute observance and 
 endless iteration. Miss Martineau, with peculiar gusto, relates 
 a series of scandalous stories, which would have made Bocca- 
 cio jealous of her pen, but which are so ridiculously false as 
 to leave no doubt, that some wicked wag, knowing she would 
 write a book, has furnished her materials — a game too often 
 played on tourists in this country. The constant recurrence * 
 of the female abolitionists to this topic, and their bitterness in 
 regard to it, cannot fail to suggest to even the most charitable 
 mind, that 
 
 " Such rage without betrays the fires within." — 
 Nor are their immaculate coadjutors of the other sex, though ' 
 perhaps less specific in their charges, less violent in their de- 
 nunciations. But recently in your Island, a clergyman has, 
 
118 
 
 at a public meeting, stigmatized the whole slave region as a 
 " brothel." Do these people thus cast stones, being " without 
 sin ?" Or do they only 
 
 " Compound for sins they arc inclined to 
 By damning those they have no mind to."' 
 
 Alas that David and Solomon should be allowed to repose in 
 peace — that Leo should be almost canonized, and Luther 
 more than sainted — that in our own day courtezans should be 
 formally licensed in Paris, and tenements in London rented 
 for years to women of the town for the benefit of the Church, 
 with the knowledge of the Bishop — and the poor slave States 
 of America alone pounced upon, and offered up as a holocaust 
 on the altar of immaculateness, to atone for the abuse of 
 natural instinct by all mankind ; and if not actually consumed,^/ 
 at least exposed, anathematized and held up to scorn, by those 
 who 
 
 « Write, 
 Or with a rival's or an eunuch's spite." 
 
 But I do not intend to admit that this charge is just or 
 true. Without meaning to profess uncommon modesty, I 
 will say that I wish the topic could be avoided. I am of 
 opinion, and I doubt not every right-minded man will concur, 
 that the public exposure and discussion of this vice, even to 
 rebuke, invariably does more harm than good ; and that if it 
 cannot be checked by instilling pure and virtuous sentiments, 
 it is far worse than useless to attempt to do it, by exhibiting 
 its deformities. I may not, however, pass it over ; nor ought 
 I to feel any delicacy in examining a question, to which the 
 slave-holder is invited and challenged by clergymen and vir- 
 gins. So far from allowing, then, that licentiousness pervades 
 this region, I broadly assert, and I refer to the records of our 
 courts, to the public press, and to the knowledge of all who 
 have ever lived here, that among our white population thereV^ 
 
119 
 
 are fewer cases of divorce, separation, crim. con., seduction, 
 rape and bastardy, than among any other five millions of peo- 
 ple on the civilized earth. And this fact I believe will be 
 conceded by the abolitionists of this country themselves. I 
 am almost willing to refer it to them and submit to their de- 
 cision on it. I would not hesitate to do so, if I thought them 
 capable of an impartial judgment on any matter where Slavery 
 is in question. But it is said, that the licentiousness consists 
 in the constant intercourse between white males and colored 
 females. One of your heavy charges against us has been, 
 that we regard and treat these people as brutes ; you now */ 
 charge us with habitually taking them to our bosoms. I will 
 not comment on the inconsistency of these accusations. I 
 will not deny that some intercourse of the sort does take place- 
 Its character and extent, however, are grossly and atrociously 
 exaggerated. No authority, divine or human, has yet been 
 found sufficient to arrest all such irregularities among men. 
 But it is a known fact, that they are perpetrated here, for the 
 most part, in the cities. • Very few mulattoes are reared on 
 our plantations. In the cities, a large proportion of the in- 
 habitants do not own slaves. A still larger proportion are 
 natives of the North, or foreigners. They should share, and 
 justly, too, an equal part in this sin with the slave-holders. 
 Facts cannot be ascertained, or I doubt not, it would appear 
 that they are the chief offenders. If the truth be otherwise, 
 then persons from abroad have stronger prejudices against the 
 African race than we have. Be this as it may, it is well 
 known, that this intercourse is regarded in our society as high- 
 ly disreputable. If carried on habitually, it seriously affects y 
 a man's standing, so far as it is known ; and he who takes a * 
 colored mistress — with rare and extraordinary exceptions — 
 loses caste at once. You will say that one exception should j 
 damn our whole country. How much less criminal is it to take^/ 
 
] i Hammond's letters on slavery. 
 
 a white mistress ? In your eyes it should be at least an equal 
 offence. Yet look around you at home, from the cottage to 
 the throne, and count how many mistresses are kept in un- 
 blushing notoriety, without loss of caste. Such cases are 
 nearly unknown here, and down even to the lowest walks of 
 life, it is almost invariably fatal to a man's position and pros- 
 pects to keep a mistress openly, whether white or black. 
 What Miss Martineau relates of a young man's purchasing a 
 colored concubine from a lady, and avowing his designs, is too 
 absurd even for contradiction. No person would dare to al-^ 
 lude to such a subject, in such a manner, to any decent female 
 in this country. 
 
 After all, however, the number of the mixed breed, in pro- 
 portion to that of the black, is infinitely small, and out of the 
 towns next to nothing. And when it is considered that the 
 African race has been among us for two hundred years, and 
 that those of the mixed breed continually intermarry — often 
 rearing large families— it is a decided proof of our continence, 
 that so few comparatively are to be found. Our misfortunes 
 are two-fold. From the prolific propagation of these mongrels 
 among themselves, we are liable to be charged by tourists 
 with delinquencies where none have been committed, while, 
 where one has been, it cannot be concealed. Color marks in- 
 delibly the offence, and reveals it to every eye. Conceive 
 that, even in your virtuous and polished country, if every bas- 
 tard, through all the circles of your social system, was thus 
 branded by nature and known to all, what shocking develop- 
 ments might there not be ! How little indignation might your 
 saints have to spare for the licentiousness of the slave region. 
 But I have done with this disgusting topic. And I think I 
 may justly conclude, after all the scandalous charges which v 
 tea-table gossip, and long-gowned hypocrisy have brought 
 against the slave-holders, that a people whose men are prover- 
 
Hammond's letters on slavery. 121 
 
 bially brave, intellectual and hospitable, and whose women are * 
 unaffectedly chaste, devoted to domestic life, and happy in it, 
 can neither be degraded nor demoralized, whatever their in- 
 stitutions may be. My decided opinion is, that our system of 
 Slavery contributes largely to the development and culture 
 of these high and noble qualities. •"" 
 
 In an e conomica l point of view — which I will not omit — 
 Slavery presents some difficulties. As a general rule, I agree 
 it must be admitted, that free labor is cheaper than slave labor. 
 It is a fallacy to suppose that ours is unpaid labor. The slavey 
 himself must be paid for, and thus his labor is all purchased 
 at once, and for no trifling sum. His price was, in the first 
 ])lace, paid mostly to your countrymen, and assisted in build- 
 ing up some of those colossal English fortunes, since illustrated 
 by patents of nobility, and splendid piles of architecture, 
 stained and cemented, if you like the expression, with the 
 blood of kidnapped innocents ; but loaded with no heavier 
 curses than abolition and its begotten fanaticisms have brought 
 upon your land — some of them fulfilled, some yet to be. But 
 besides the first cost of the slave, he must be fed and clothed, 
 well fed and well clothed, if not for humanity's sake, that he 
 may do good work, retain health and life, and rear a family 
 to supply his place. When old or sick, he is a clear expense, 
 and so is the helpless portion of his family. No poor law 
 provides for him when unable to work, or brings up his chil- 
 dren for our service when we need them. These are all heavy 
 charges on slave labor. Hence, in all countries where the 
 denseness of the population has reduced it to a matter of per- 
 fect certainty, that labor can be obtained, whenever wanted, 
 and the laborer be forced, by sheer necessity, to hire for the 
 smallest pittance that will keep soul and body together, and 
 rags upon his back while in victual employment — dependent 
 at all other times on alms or poor rates — in all such countries 
 11 
 
122 iiammond's letters on slavery. 
 
 it is found cheaper to pay this pittance, than to clothe, feed, 
 nurse, support through childhood, and pension in old age, a 
 race of slaves. Indeed, the advantage is so great as speedily 
 to compensate for the loss of the value of the slave. And I 
 have no hesitation in saying, that if I could cultivate my lands 
 on these terms, I would, without a word, resign my slaves, 
 provided they could be properly disposed of. But the ques- 
 tion is, whether free or slave labor is cheapest to us in this 
 country, at this time, situated as we are. And it is decided at 
 once by the fact that we cannot avail ourselves of any other 
 than slave labor. We neither have, nor can we procure, other 
 labor to any extent, or on anything like the terms mentioned. 
 We must, therefore, content ourselves with our dear labor, 
 under the consoling reflection that what is lost to us, is gained 
 to humanity; and that, inasmuch as our slave costs us more 
 than your free man costs you, by so much is he better off. 
 You will promptly say, emancipate your slaves, and then you 
 will have free labor on suitable terms. That might be if there 
 were five hundred where there now is one, and the continent, 
 from the Atlantic to the Pacific, was as densely populated as 
 your Island. But until that comes to pass, no labor can be 
 procured in America on the terms you haveTt. 
 
 While I thus freely admit that to the individual proprietor 
 slave labor is dearer than free, I do not mean to admit as 
 equally clear that it is dearer to the community and to the 
 State. Though it is certain that the slave is, a far greater 
 consumer than your laborer, the year round, yet your pauper 
 system is costly and wasteful. Supported by your community 
 at large, it is not administered by your hired agents with that 
 interested care and economy — not to speak of humanity — 
 which mark the management of ours, by each proprietor, for 
 his own non-effectives ; and is both more expensive to those 
 who pay, and less beneficial to those who receive its bounties. 
 
Hammond's letters op slavery. 123 
 
 Besides this, Slavery is rapidly filling up our country with a 
 hardy and healthy race, peculiarly adapted to our climate and 
 productions, and conferring signal political and social advan- 
 tages on us as a people, to -which I have already referred. 
 
 I have yet to reply to the main ground on which you and 
 your coadjutors rely for the overthrow of our system of Slave- 
 ry. Failing in all your attempts to prove that it is sinful in 
 its nature, immoral in its effects, a political evil, and profitless 
 to those who maintain it, you appeal to the sympathies of 
 mankind, and attempt to arouse the world against us by the 
 most shocking charges of tyranny and cruelty. You begin 
 by a vehement denunciation of " the irresponsible power of 
 one man over his fellow men." The question of the respon- 
 sibility of power is a vast one. It is the great political ques- 
 tion of modern times. Whole nations divide off upon it and 
 establish different fundamental systems of government. That 
 " responsibility," which to one set of millions seems amply 
 sufficient to check the government, to the support of whichN 
 they devote their lives and fortunes, appears to another set of 
 millions a mere mockery of restraint. And accordingly as 
 the opinions of these millions differ, they honor each other 
 with the epithets of " serfs " or " anarchists." It is ridiculous 
 to introduce such an idea as this into the discussion of a mere 
 domestic institution ; but since you have introduced it, I deny 
 that the power of the slave-holder in America is "irresponsi- 
 ble." He is responsible to God. He is responsible to the 
 world — a responsibility which abolitionists do not intend to 
 allow him to evade — and in acknowledgment of which, \\J 
 write you this letter. He is responsible to the community in 
 which he lives, and to the laws under which he enjoys his 
 civil rights. Those laws do not permit him to kill, to maim, 
 or to punish beyond certain limits, or to overtask, or to refuse 
 to feed and clothe his slave. In short, they forbid him to be 
 
I 'I 
 
 tyrannical or cruel. If any of the e law bate grown ob o 
 
 lete, i! ia becau e they are 'Mora violated, thai they are 
 
 forgotten. You have di interred one of them, from b compi 
 
 lation by bo Judge Stroud of Philadelphia, to stigmatize its 
 
 inadequate penalties for killing, maiming, &c four object 
 
 /appears t<> be vou can have do other to produce the im- 
 I'H ion, that i< mu I be often violated on account of its in uf 
 ficiency. 5Tou say an much, and that il marks our estimate 
 of the slave. 5Tou forgel to state that this law was enacted 
 i>\ Englishmen, and <"'l\ indicates (heir opinion "l" the repa- 
 ration due for th< e offena . Ours is proved by the fact, 
 though perhaps unknown to Judge Stroud or your elf, that 
 we have essentially altered this law; and the murder of ;i 
 slave has for raanj years been punishable with death in this 
 State. Ami bo il i , l believe, in most or all the slave States. 
 jfou eem well aware, however, thai laws have been recently 
 pa ed in .-ill the e State , making it penal to teach slaves to 
 read. Do you Know whal occasioned their passage, and ren- 
 ders their stringent enforcement necei aryf I can tell you. 
 J! was the abolition agitation, It' the slave h Dot allowed to 
 
 Jread his bible, the sin rests opon the abolitionists; for they 
 ad prepared t>> furnish him with a key to it, which would 
 
 make it, doI a I b of hope, and love, and peace, bul of de 
 
 pair, hatred and blood; \\lii<'li would convert the reader, Dot 
 into b christian, but a demon. To preserve him from such a 
 horrid destiny, it is b sacred duty which we owe to our slaves, 
 in. i less than to ourselves, to interpose the most de< 
 means. It' the Catholics deem it wrong to trust the bible to 
 the hands of ignorance, shall we be excommunicated because 
 we will ii"! give it, and with it the corrupt and fatal commen- 
 taries of the abolitionist , to our slaves ? Allow our slaves to 
 read your writing i, i timulating them to cut our. throats ! < Ian 
 you believe us to be such unspeakable i 
 
12.", 
 
 Home urn h ■ ani nihil a i 
 
 i 
 
 ill do 
 try perl 
 tempi 
 
 win ; 
 
 and that I am : 
 
 whom God I I, therefore, 
 
 ,'l'T the • 
 If and f*:!i 
 
 4 all, and 1 am convinced tb; 
 
 proper kindnet §. Ii 
 amow m them. Of 
 
 the only ( 
 conld derive from the oppi 
 - making m< 
 
 i ountrymen d< Q you 
 
 - lare that ■■, it for the 
 
 ; being inhuman, i \r, Pitt 
 
 conld i be idea ,! 
 
 lefod treatment I - 
 
 of the middle pa Mr Pitt ira right in tl 
 
 '1, under your tuition, in riot, pel 
 
 n a temj Mp of 
 
 perfi ct than other men* 
 ] 
 not, at all tl rain them. rf< ither do J. 
 
 n ' 
 
126 Hammond's letters on slavery. 
 
 and friends. And in each of these relations, as serious suffer- 
 ing as frequently arises from uncontrolled passions, as ever 
 * does in that of master and slave, and with as little chance of 
 indemnity. Yet you would not on that account break them 
 up. I have no hesitation in saying that our slaveholders are 
 kind masters, as men usually are kind husbands, parents and 
 friends — as a general rule, kinder. A bad master — he who 
 overworks his slaves, provides ill for them, or treats them with 
 undue severity — loses the esteem and respect of his fellow- 
 citizens to as great an extent as he would for the violation of 
 any of his social and most of his moral obligations. What 
 the most perfect plan of management would be, is a problem 
 
 (hard to solve. From the commencement of Slavery in this 
 country, this subject has occupied the minds of all slavehold- 
 ers, as much as the improvement of the general condition of 
 mankind has those of the most ardent philanthropists ; and 
 the greatest progressive amelioration of the system has been 
 effected. You yourseF acknowledge that in the early part of 
 your career you were exceedingly anxious for the immediate 
 abolition of the slave trade, lest those engaged in it should so 
 mitigate its evils as to destroy the force of your arguments 
 and facts.. The improvement you then dreaded has gone on 
 steadily here, and would doubtless have taken place in the 
 slave trade, but for the measures adopted to suppress it. 
 
 Of late years we have been not only annoyed, but greatly 
 embarrassed, in this matter, by the abolitionists. We have 
 been compellec] to curtail' some privileges; we have been de- 
 barred from granting new ones. In the nice of discussions 
 which aim at loosening all ties between master and slave, we 
 have in some measure to abandon our efforts to attach them 
 to us, and control them through their affections and pride. 
 We have to rely more and more on the power of fear. We 
 must, in all our intercourse with them, assert and maintain 
 
127 
 
 strict mastery, and impress it on them that they are slaves. 
 This is painful to us, and certainly no present advantage to 
 them. But it is the direct consequence of the abolition agi- 
 tation. We are determined to continue masters, and to do so 
 we have to draw the rein tighter and tighter day by day to 
 be assured that we hold them in complete check. How far 
 this process will go on, depends wholly and solely on the 
 abolitionists. When they desist, we can relax. We may not 
 before. I do not mean by all this to say that we are in a 
 state of actual alarm and fear of our slaves ; but under exist- 
 ing circumstances we should be ineffably stupid not to in- 
 crease our vigilance and strengthen our hands. You see 
 some of the fruits of your labors. I speak freely and candid- 
 ly — not as a colonist, who, though a slaveholder, has a mas- 
 ter ; but as a free white man, holding, under God, and resolv- 
 ed to hold, my fate in my own hands ; and I assure you that 
 my sentiments, and feelings, and determinations, are those of 
 every slaveholder in this country. 
 
 The research and ingenuity of the abolitionists, aided by 
 the invention of runaway slaves — in which faculty, so far as 
 improvizing falsehood goes, the African race is without a rival 
 — have succeeded in shocking the world with a small number 
 of pretended instances of our barbarity. The only wonder is, 
 that considering the extent of our country, the variety of our 
 population, its fluctuating character, and the publicity of all 
 our transactions, the number of cases is so small. It speaks 
 well for us. Yet of these, many are false, all highly colored, 
 some occurring half a century, most of them many years ago ; 
 and no doubt a large proportion of them perpetrated by 
 foreigners. With a few rare exceptions, the emigrant Scotch 
 and English are the worst masters among; us, and next to 
 them our Northern fellow-citizens. Slaveholders born and 
 bred here are always more humane to slaves, and those who 
 
128 Hammond's letters on - slavery. 
 
 / have grown up to a large inheritance of them, the most so of 
 any — showing clearly that the effect of the system is to foster 
 kindly feelings. I do not mean so much to impute innate 
 inhumanity to foreigners, as to show that they come here 
 with false notions of the treatment usual and necessary for 
 slaves, and that newly acquired power here, as everywhere 
 else, is apt to be abused. I cannot enter into a detailed ex- 
 amination of the cases stated by the abolitionists. It would 
 be disgusting, and of little avail. I know nothing of them. I 
 have seen nothing like them, though born and bred here, and 
 have rarely heard of anything at nil to be compared to them. 
 Permit me to say that T think most of your facts must have 
 been drawn from the West Indies, where undoubtedly slaves 
 wore treated much more harshly than with us. This was 
 owing to a variety of causes, which might, if necessary, be 
 stated. One was, that they had at first to deal more exten- 
 sively with barbarians fresh from the wilds of Africa; another, 
 and a leading one, the absenteeism of proprietors. Agents 
 are always more unfeeling than owners, whether placed over 
 West Indian or American slaves, or Irish tenantry. We feel 
 this evil greatly even here. You describe the use of thumb 
 screws, as one mode of punishment among us. I doubt if a 
 thumb screw can be found in America. I never saw or heard 
 of one in this country. Stocks are rarely used by private in- 
 dividuals, and confinement still more seldom, though both are 
 common punishments for whites, all the world over. I think 
 they should be more frequently resorted to with slaves, as 
 substitutes for flogging, which I consider the most injurious 
 and least efficacious mode of punishing them for serious of- 
 fences. It is not degrading, and unless excessive, occasions 
 little pain. You may be a little astonished, after all the 
 flourishes that have been made about "cart whips," &c, when 
 I say flogging is not the most degrading punishment in the 
 
Hammond's letters on slavery. 129 
 
 world. It may be so to a white man in most countries, but 
 Low is it to the white boy ? That necessary coadjutor of the 
 schoolmaster, the " birch," is never thought to have rendered 
 infamous the unfortunate victim of pedagogue ire ; nor did 
 Solomon in his wisdom dream that he was counselling parents 
 to debase their offspring, when he exhorted them not to spoil 
 the child by sparing the rod. Pardon me for recurring to the 
 now exploded ethics of the Bible. Custom, which, you will 
 perhaps agree, makes most things in this world good or evil, 
 has removed all infamy from the punishment of the lash to 
 the slave. Your blood boils at the recital of stripes inflicted 
 on a man; and you think you should be frenzied to see your 
 own child flogged. Yet see how completely this is ideal, 
 arising from the fashions of society. You doubtless submit- 
 ted to the rod yourself, in other years, when the smart was 
 perhaps as severe as it would be now ; and you have never 
 been guilty of the folly of revenging yourself on the Precep- 
 tor, who, in the plenitude of his "irresponsible power," thought 
 proper to chastise your son. So it is with the negro, and the 
 negro father. 
 
 As to chains and irons, they are rarely used ; never, I be- 
 lieve, except in cases of running away. You will admit that 
 if we pretend to own slaves, they must not be permitted to 
 abscond whenever they see fit ; and that if nothing else will 
 prevent it, these means must be resorted to. See the inhu- 
 manity necessarily arising from Slavery, you will exclaim. 
 Are such restraints imposed on no other class of people, giving 
 no more offence ? Look to your army and navy. If your 
 seamen, impressed from their peaceful occupations, and your 
 soldiers, recruited at the gin-shops — both of them as much 
 kidnapped as the most unsuspecting victim of the slave trade, 
 and doomed to a far more wretched fate — if these men mani- 
 fest a propensity to desert, the heaviest manacles are their 
 
$130 hammond's letters on slavery. 
 
 mildest punishment. It is most commonly death, after sum- 
 mary trial. But armies and navies, you say, are indispen- 
 sable, and must be kept up at every sacrifice. I answer, 
 that they are no more indispensable than Slavery is to us — 
 and to you ; for you have enough of it in your country, though 
 the form and name differ from ours. 
 
 Depend upon it that many things, and in regard to our 
 slaves, most things which appear revolting at a distance, and 
 to slight reflection, would, on a nearer view and impartial 
 comparison with the customs and conduct of the rest of man- 
 kind, strike you in a very different light. Remember that 
 on our estates we dispense with the whole machinery of pub- 
 lic police and public courts of justice. Thus we try, decide, 
 and execute the sentences, in thousands of cases, which in 
 other countries would go into the courts. Hence, most of the 
 acts of our alleged cruelty, which have any foundation in 
 truth. AVhether our patriarchal mode of administering jus- 
 tice is less humane than the Assizes, can only be determined 
 by careful enquiry and comparison. But this is never done 
 by the abolitionists. All our punishments are the outrages of 
 "irresponsible power." If a man steals a pig in England, he 
 is transported — torn from wife, children, parents, and sent to 
 the antipodes, infamous, and an outcast forever, though pro- 
 bably he took from the superabundance of his neighbor to 
 s?ve the lives of his famishing little ones. If one of our well 
 fed negroes, merely for the sake of fresh meat, steals a pig, he 
 gets perhaps forty stripes. If one of your cottagers breaks 
 into another's house, he is hung for burglary. If a slave does 
 the same here, a few lashes, or it may be, a few hours in the 
 stocks, settles the matter. Are our courts or yours the most 
 humane? If Slavery were not in question, you would doubt- 
 less say ours is mistaken lenity. Perhaps it often is ; and 
 slaves too lightly dealt with sometimes grow daring. Occa- 
 
13]| 
 
 sionally, though rarely, and almost always in consequence of 
 excessive indulgence, an individual rebels. This is the hish- 
 est ciime he can commit. It is treason. It strikes at the 
 root of our whole system. His life is justly forfeited, though 
 it is never intentionally taken, unless after trial in our public 
 courts. Sometimes, however, in capturing, or in self-defence, 
 he is unfortunately killed. A legal investigation always fol- 
 lows. But, terminate as it may, the abolitionists raise a hue 
 and cry, and another "shocking case" is held up to the in- 
 dignation of the world by tender-hearted male and female 
 philanthropists, who would have thought all right had the 
 master's throat been cut, and would have triumphed in it. 
 
 I cannot go into a detailed comparison between the penal- 
 ties inflicted on a slave in our patriarchal courts, and those of 
 the Courts of Sessions, to which freemen are sentenced in all 
 civilized nations ; but I know well that if there is any fault in 
 our criminal code, it is that of excessive mildness. 
 
 Perhaps a few general facts will best illustrate the treat- 
 ment this race receives at our hands. It is acknowledged that 
 it increases at least as rapidly as the white. I believe it is an 
 established law, that population thrives in proportion to its 
 comforts. But when it is considered that these people are not 
 recruited by immigration from abroad, as the whites are, and 
 that they are usually settled on our richest and least healthy 
 lands, the fact of their equal comparative increase and great- 
 er longevity, outweighs a thousand abolition falsehoods, in 
 favor of the leniency and providence of our management of 
 them. It is also admitted that there are incomparably fewer u 
 cases of insanity and suicide among them than among the 
 whites. The fact is, that among the slaves of the African 
 race these things are almost wholly unknown. However fre- 
 quent suicide may have been among those brought from Afri- 
 ca, I can say that in my time I cannot remember to have 
 
§3]l hammond's letters on slavery. 
 
 known or beard of a single instance of deliberate self-destruc- 
 tion, and but of one of suicide at all. As to insanity, I have 
 seen but one permanent case of it, and that twenty years ago. 
 It cannot be doubted that among three millions of people there 
 must be some insane and some suicides ; but I will venture 
 to say that more cases of both occur annually among every 
 hundred thousand of the population of Great Britain, than 
 among all our slaves. Can it be possible, then, that they exist 
 in that state of abject misery, goaded by constant injuries, 
 outraged in their affections, and worn down with hardships, 
 which the abolitionists depict, and so many ignorant and 
 thoughtless persons religiously believe I 
 
 With regard to the separation of husbands and wives, pa- 
 rents and children, nothing can be more untrue than the 
 inferences drawn from what is so constantly harped on by 
 abolitionists. Some painful instances perhaps may occur. 
 Very few that can be prevented. It is, audit always has been, 
 an object of prime consideration with our slaveholders, to keep 
 families together. Negroes are themselves both perverse and 
 comparatively indifferent about this matter. It is a singular 
 trait, that they almost invariably prefer forming connexions 
 with slaves belonging to other masters, and at some distance. 
 It is, therefore, impossible to prevent separations sometimes, 
 by the removal of one owner, his death, or failure, and dis- 
 persion of his property. In all such cases, however, every 
 reasonable effort is made to keep the parties together, if they 
 desire it. And the negroes forming these connexions, know- 
 ing the chances of their premature dissolution, rarely com- 
 plain more than we all do of the inevitable strokes of fate. 
 Sometimes it happens that a negro prefers to give up his 
 family rather than separate from his master. I have known 
 such instances. As to wilfully selling off a husband, or wife, 
 or child, I believe it is rarely, very rarely done, except when 
 
Hammond's letters on slavery. 133 
 
 some offence lias been committed demanding "transporta- 
 tion." At sales of estates, and even at Sheriff's sales, they 
 are always, if possible, sold in families. On the whole, not- 
 withstanding the migratory character of our population, I 
 believe there are more families among our slaves, who have 
 lived and died together without losing a single member from, 
 their circle, except by the process of nature, and in the enjoy- 
 ment of constant, uninterrupted communion, than have flour- 
 ished in the same space of time, and among the same num- 
 ber of civilized people in modern times. And to sum up all, 
 if pleasure is correctly defined to be the absence of pain — 
 which, so far as the great body of mankind is concerned, is 
 undoubtedly its true definition — I believe our slaves are the 
 happiest three millions of human beings on whom the sun 
 shines. Into their Eden is coming Satan in the guise of an 
 abolitionist 
 
 As regards their religious condition, it is well known that 
 a majority of the communicants of the Methodist and Baptist 
 churches of the South are colored. Almost everywhere they 
 have precisely the same opportunities of attending worship 
 that the whites have, and, besides special occasions for them- 
 selves exclusively, which they prefer. In many places not so 
 accessible to clergymen in ordinary, missionaries are sent, and 
 mainly supported by their masters, for the particular benefit 
 of the slaves. There are none I imagine who may not, if they 
 like, hear the gospel preached at least once a month — most 
 of them twice a month, and very many every week. In our 
 thinly settled country the whites fare no better. But in ad- 
 dition to this, on plantations of any size, the slaves who have 
 joined the church are formed into a class, at the head of 
 which is placed one of their number, acting as deacon or 
 leader, who is also sometimes a licensed preacher. This class 
 assembles for religious exercises weekly, semi- weekly, or often- 
 12 
 
134 hammond's letters on slavery. 
 
 er, if the members choose. In some parts, also, Sunday 
 schools fur blacks are established, and Bible classes are orally 
 instructed by discreet and pious persons, Now where will 
 you find a laboring population possessed of greater religious 
 advantages than these ? Not in London, I am sure, where it 
 is known that your churches, chapels, and religions meeting- 
 houses, of all sorts, cannot contain one-half of the inhabitants. 
 I have admitted, without hesitation, what it would be un- 
 true and profitless to deny, that slaveholders are responsible 
 to the world for the humane treatment of the fellow-beings 
 whom God has placed in their hands. I think it would be 
 only fair for you to admit, what is equally undeniable, that 
 every man in independent circumstances, all the world <>wr, 
 and every government, is to th^ same extent responsible to 
 the whole human family, for the condition of the poor and 
 laboring classes in their own country, and around them, 
 wherever they may be placed, to whom God has denied the 
 advantages he has given themselves. If so, it would naturally 
 seem the duty of true humanity and rational philanthropy to 
 devote their time and labor, their thoughts, writings and 
 charity, first to the objects placed as it were under their own 
 immediate charge. And it must be regarded as a clear eva- 
 sion and skilful neglect of this cardinal duty, to pass from 
 those whose destitute situation they can plainly see, minutely 
 examine and efficiently relieve, to enquire after the condition 
 of others in no way entrusted to their care, to exaggerate 
 evils of which they cannot be cognizant, to expend all their 
 sympathies and exhaust all their energies on these remote 
 objects of their unnatural, not to say dangerous, benevolence; 
 and finally, to calumniate, denounce, and endeavor to excite 
 the indignation of the world against their unoffending fellow- 
 creatures for not hastening, under their dictation, to redress 
 wrongs which are stoutly and truthfully' denied, while they 
 
Hammond's letters on slavery. 135 
 
 themselves go but little farther in alleviating those chargeable 
 on them than openly and unblushingly to acknowledge them. 
 There may be indeed a sort of merit in doing so much as to 
 make such an acknowledgment, but it must be very modest 
 if it expects appreciation. 
 
 Now I affirm, that in Great Britain the poor and laboring- 
 classes of your own race and color, not only your fellow- 
 being?, but your fellow-citizens, are more miserable and de- 
 graded, morally and physically, than our slaves ; to be eleva- 
 ted to the actual condition of whom, would be to these, your 
 fellow-citizens, a most glorious act of emancipation. And I 
 also affirm, that the poor and laboring classes of our older 
 free States would not be in a much more enviable condition, 
 but for our Slavery. One of their own Senators has declared 
 in the United States Senate, " that the repeal of the Tariff 
 would reduce New-England to a howling wilderness." And 
 the American Tariff is neither more nor less than a system by 
 which the slave States are plundered for the benefit of those 
 States which do not tolerate Slavery. 
 
 To prove what I say of Great Britain to be true, I make the 
 following extracts from the Reports of Commissioners ap- 
 pointed by Parliament, and published by order of the House 
 of Commons. I can make but few and short ones. But simi- 
 lar quotations might be made to any extent, and I defy you 
 to deny that these specimens exhibit the real condition of your 
 operatives in every branch of your industry. There is of 
 course a variety in their sufferings. But the same incredible 
 amount of toil, frightful destitution, and utter want of morals, 
 characterize the lot of every class of them. 
 
 Collieries. — " I wish to call the attention of the Board to 
 the pits about Brampton. The seams are so thin that several 
 of them have only two feet headway to all the working. They 
 are worked altogether by boys from eight to twelve years of 
 
136 iiammoxd's letters on slavery. 
 
 ago, on all-fours, with a dog belt and chain. The passages 
 being neither ironed nor wooded, and often an inch or two 
 thick with mud. In Mr. Barnes' pit these poor boys have to 
 drag the barrows with one hundred weight of coal or slack 
 sixty times a day sixty yards, and the empty barrows hack, 
 without once straightening their backs, unless they choose to 
 stand under the shaft, and run the risk of having their heads 
 broken by a falling coal.*' — Report on Mines, 1842, p. 71. " In 
 Shropshire the seams are no more than eighteen or twenty 
 inches." — Ibid, p. 67. "At the Booth pit," says Mr. Scriven, 
 " I walked, rod*-, and crept eighteen hundred yards to one of 
 the n i." — Ibid. "Chokedamp, firedamp, wild tire, 
 
 sulphur and water, at all times menace instant death to the 
 laborers in these mines." " Robert North, aged 16 : Went 
 into the pit at seven years of ago, to fill up skips. I drew 
 about twelve months. When I drew by the girdle and chain 
 my skin was broken, and the blood ran down. I durst not 
 say anything. If we said anything, the butty, and the reeve, 
 who works under him, would take a stick and beat us." — Ibid. 
 "The usual punishment for theft is to place the culprit's head 
 between the legs of one of the biggest boys, and each 
 boy in the pit — sometimes there are twenty — inflicts twelve 
 lashes on the back and rump with a cat." — Ibid. "Instances 
 occur in which children are taken into these mines to work as 
 early as four years of age, sometimes at five, not unfrequently 
 at six and seven, while from eight to nine is the ordinary age 
 at which these employments commence." — Ibid. " The wages 
 paid at these mines is from two dollars fifty cents to seven 
 dollars fifty cents per month for laborers, according to age and 
 ability, and out of this they must support themselves. They 
 work twelve hours a day." — Ibid. 
 
 In Calico Printing. — " It is by no means uncommon in all 
 the districts for children five or six years old to be kept at 
 
137 
 
 work fourteen to sixteen hours consecutively." — Report on 
 Children, 1842, p. 59. 
 
 I could furnish extracts similar to these in regard to every 
 branch of your manufactures, but I will not multiply them. 
 Everybody knows that your operatives habitually labor from 
 twelve to sixteen* hours, men, women, and children, and the 
 men occasionally twenty hours per day. In lace-making, says 
 the last quoted report, children sometimes commence work at 
 two years of age. 
 
 Destitution. — It is stated by your Commissioners that forty 
 thousand persons in Liverpool, and fifteen thousand in Man- 
 chester, live in cellars ; while twenty-two thousand in England 
 pass the night in barns, tents, or the open air. " There have 
 been found such occurrences as seven, eight, and ten persons 
 in one cottage, I cannot say for one day, but for whole days, 
 without a morsel of food. They have remained on their beds 
 of straw for two successive days, under the impression that in 
 a recumbent posture the pangs of hunger were less felt." — 
 Lord Brougham 's Sjjeech, 11th July, 1842. A volume of 
 frightful scenes might be quoted to corroborate the inferences 
 to be necessarily drawn from the facts here stated. I will not 
 add more, but pass on to the important enquiry as to 
 
 Morals and Education. — "Elizabeth Barrett, aged 14: I 
 always work without stockings, shoes, or trowsers. I wear 
 nothing but a shift. I have to go up to the headings with 
 the men. They are all naked there. I am got used to that." — 
 Report on Mines. " As to illicit sexual intercourse it seems 
 to prevail universally, and from an early period of life." " The 
 evidence might have been doubled, which attest the early 
 commencement of sexual and promiscuous intercourse among 
 boys and girls." " A lower condition of morals, in the fullest 
 sense of the term, could not, I think, be found. I do not 
 mean by this that there are many more prominent vices 
 12* 
 
138 HAMMONDS LETTERS ON SLAVERY. 
 
 among them, but that moral feelings aud sentiments do not 
 exist They have no morals. 11 " Their appearance, manners, 
 and moral natures — so far as the word moral can be applied 
 to them — are in accordance with their half-civilized condition." 
 — Report on Children. " More than half a dozen instances 
 occurred in Manchester, where a man, his wife, and his wife's 
 grown-up sister, habitually occupied the same bed." — Report 
 on Sanitary Condition. " Robert Crucilow, aged 16:1 don't 
 know anything of Moses — never heard of France. I don't 
 know what America is. Never heard of Scotland or Ireland. 
 Can't tell how many weeks there are in a year. There are 
 twelve pence in a shilling, and twenty shillings in a pound. 
 There are eight pints in a gallon of ale." — Report on Mines. 
 "Ann Eggly, aged 18:1 walk about and get fresh air on Sun- 
 days. I never go to church or chapel. I never h< aid of Christ 
 at all." — Ibid. Others : "The Lord sent Adam and Eve on 
 earth to save sinners." " I don't know who made the world; I 
 never heard about God." "I don't know Jesus Christ — I 
 never saw him — but 1 have seen Foster who prays about 
 him." "Employer : You have expressed surprise at Thomas 
 Mitchel's not hearing of God. I judge there are few colliers 
 here about that have." — Ibid. I will quote no more. It is 
 shocking beyond endurance to turn over your records, in 
 which the condition of your laboring classes is but too faith- 
 fully depicted. Could our slaves but see it, they would join 
 us in lynching the abolitionists, which, by the by, they would 
 not now be loth to do. We never think of imposing on them 
 such labor, either in amount or kind. We never put them to 
 any icorlc, under ten, more generally at twelve years of age, 
 and then the very lightest. Destitution is absolutely un- 
 known — never did a slave starve in America ; while in moral 
 sentiments and feelings, in religious information, and even in 
 general intelligence, they are infinitely the superiors of your 
 
Hammond's letters on slavery. 139 
 
 operatives. "When you look around you, how dare you talk 
 to us before the world of Slavery ? For the condition of 
 your wretched laborers, you, and every Briton who is not one 
 of them, are responsible before God and man. If you are 
 really humane, philanthropic, and charitable, here are objects 
 for you. Eelieve them. Emancipate them. Raise them from 
 the condition of brutes, to the level of human beings — of 
 American slaves, at least. Do not for an instant suppose that 
 the name of being freemen is the slightest comfort to them, 
 situated as they are, or that the bombastic boast that " who- 
 ever touches British soil stands redeemed, regenerated, and 
 disenthralled," can meet with anything but the ridicule and 
 contempt of mankind, while that soil swarms, both on and 
 under its surface, with the most abject and degraded wretches 
 that ever bowed beneath the oppressor's yoke. 
 
 I have said that Slavery is an established and inevitable 
 condition to human society. I do not speak of the name, 
 but the fact. The Marquis of Normanby has lately declared 
 your operatives to be " in effect slaves" Can it be denied I 
 Probably, for such philanthropists as your abolitionists care 
 nothing for facts. They deal in terms and fictions. It is the 
 word '• slavery" which shocks their tender sensibilities ; and 
 their imaginations associate it with " hydras and chimeras 
 dire." The thing itself, in its most hideous reality, passes 
 daily under their view unheeded — a familiar face, touching no 
 chord of shame, sympathy or indignation. Yet so brutalizing 
 is your iron bondage that the English operative is a bye-word 
 throuo\h the world. When favoring fortune enables him to 
 escape his prison house, both in Europe and America he is 
 shunned. With all the skill which fourteen hours of daily 
 labor from the tenderest age has ground into him, his discon- 
 tent, which habit has made second nature, and his depraved 
 propensities, running riot when freed from his wonted fetters, 
 
140 hammond's letters on slavery. 
 
 prevent his employment whenever it is not a matter of neces- 
 sity. If we derived no other benefit from African Slavery in 
 the Southern States than that it deterred your freedmen from 
 
 coming- hither, I should regard it as an inestimable blessing. 
 
 And how unaccountable is that philanthropy, which closes 
 its eyes upon such a state of things as you have at home, and 
 turns its blurred vision to our affairs beyond the Atlantic, 
 meddling with matters which no way concern them — pre- 
 siding, as you have lately done, at meetings to denounce the 
 " iniquity of our laws 3 ' and "the atrocity of our practl 
 and to sympathize with infamous wretches imprisoned here 
 for violating decrees promulgated both by God and man! 
 Is this doing the work of "your Father which is in heaven,* 1 
 or is it seeking only "that you may have glory of man?" 
 Do you remember the denunciation of our Saviour, "Woe 
 unto you, Scribes and Pharisees; hypocrites! for ye make 
 clean the outside of the cup and platter, but within they are 
 full of extortion and excess." 
 
 But after all, supposing that every thing you say of Slavery 
 be true, and its abolition a matter of the last necessity, how 
 do you expect to effect emancipation, and what do you calcu- 
 late will Ijq the result of its accomplishment ? As to the 
 means to be used, the abolitionists, I believe, affect to differ, 
 a large proportion of them pretending that their sole purpose 
 is to apply " moral suasion" to the slaveholders themselves. 
 As a matter of curiosity, I should like to know what their 
 idea of this " moral suasion" is. Their discourses — yours is 
 no exception — are all tirades, the exordium, argument and 
 peroration, turning on the epithets "tyrants," "thieves," 
 '* murderers," addressed to us. They revile us as "atrocious 
 monsters," "violators of the laws of nature, God and man," 
 our homes the abode of every iniquity, our land a "brothel." 
 AVe retort, that they are " incendiaries" and " assassins." De- 
 
hammond's letters on slavery. 141 
 
 lightful argument! Sweet, potent " moral suasion!" What 
 slave has it freed — what proselyte can it ever make ? But if 
 your course was wholly different — if you distilled nectar from 
 your lips, and discoursed sweetest music, could you reasonably 
 indulge the hope of accomplishing your object by such 
 means? Nay, supposing that we were all convinced, and 
 thought of Slavery precisely as you do, at what era of "moral 
 suasion'' do you imagine you could prevail on us to give up a 
 thousand millions of dollars in the value of our slaves, and a 
 thousand millions of dollars more in the depreciation of our 
 lands, in consequence of the want of laborers to cultivate 
 them ? Consider : were ever any people, civilized or savage, 
 persuaded by any argument, human or divine, to surrender 
 voluntarily two thousand millions of dollars ? Would you 
 think of asking five millions of Eno-lishmen to contribute, 
 either at once or gradually, four hundred and fifty millions of 
 pounds sterling to the cause of philanthropy, even if the pur- 
 pose to be accomplished was not of doubtful goodness ? If 
 you are prepared to undertake such a scheme, try it at home. 
 Collect your fund — return us the money for our slaves, and 
 do with them as you like. Be all the glory yours, fairly and 
 honestly won. But you see the absurdity of such an idea. 
 Away, then, with your pretended " moral suasion." You know 
 it is mere nonsense. The abolitiouists have no faith in it 
 themselves. Those who expect to accomplish any thing count 
 on means altogether different. They aim, first, to alarm us : 
 that failing, to compel us by force to emancipate our slaves, 
 at our own risk and cost. To these purposes they obviously 
 direct all their energies. Our Northern liberty men endea- 
 vored to disseminate their destructive doctrine among our 
 slaves, and excite them to insurrection. But we have put an 
 end to that, and stricken terror into them. They dare not 
 show their faces here. Then they declared they would dis- 
 
142 Hammond's letters on slavery. 
 
 solve the Union. Let them do it. The North would repent 
 it far more than the South. "We arc not alarmed at the idea. 
 We are well content to give up the Union sooner than sacri- 
 fice two thousand millions of dollars, and with them all the 
 rights we prize. You may take it for granted that it is im- 
 possible to persuade or alarm us into emancipation, or to 
 making the first step towards it. Nothing, then, is left to try, 
 but sheer force. If the abolitionists are prepared to expend 
 their own treasure and shed their own blood as freely as they 
 ask us to do ours, let them come. We do not court the con- 
 flict; but we will not and we cannot shrink from it. If they 
 are not ready to go so far ; if, as I expect, their philanthropy 
 recoils from it; if they are looking only for clunp glory, let 
 them turn their thoughts elsewhere, and leave us in peace. 
 Be the sin, the danger and the evils of Slavery all our own. 
 We eompel, we ask none to share them with us. 
 
 I am well aware that a notable scheme lias been set on foot 
 to achieve abolition by making what is by courtesy called 
 " free" labor so much cheaper than slave labor as to force the 
 abandonment of the latter. Though we are beginning to 
 manufacture with slaves, I do not think you will attempt to 
 pinch your operatives closer in Great Britain. You cannot 
 curtail the rags with which they vainly attempt to cover their 
 nakedness, nor reduce the porridge wh'ch barely, and not 
 always, keeps those who have employment from perishing of 
 famine. When you can do this, we will consider whether 
 our slaves may not dispense with a pound or two of bacon 
 per week, or a few garments annually. Your aim, however, 
 is to cheapen labor in the tropics. The idea of doing this by 
 exporting your u bold yeomanry" is, I presume, given up. 
 Cromwell tried it when he sold the captured followers of 
 Charles into West Indian Slavery, where they speedily found 
 graves. JSor have your recent experiments on British and 
 
Hammond's letters on slavery. 143 
 
 even Dutch constitutions succeeded better. Have you still 
 faith in carrying thither your Coolies from Hindostan ? Doubt- 
 less that once wild robber race, whose highest eulogium was 
 that they did not murder merely for the love of blood, have 
 been tamed down, and are perhaps " keen for immigration," 
 for since your civilization has reached it, plunder has grown 
 scarce in Guzerat. But what is the result of the experiment 
 thus far ? Have the Coolies, ceasing to handle arms, learned 
 to handle spades, and proved hardy and profitable laborers ? 
 On the contrary, broken in spirit and stricken with disease at 
 home, the wretched victims whom you have hitherto kid- 
 napped for a bounty, confined in depots, put under hatches 
 and carried across the ocean — forced into " voluntary immi- 
 gration," have done little but lie down and die on the pseudo 
 soil of freedom. At the end of five years two thirds, in some 
 colonies a larger proportion, are no more ! Humane and 
 pious contrivance ! To alleviate the fancied sufferings of the 
 accursed posterity of Ham, you sacrifice by a cruel death 
 two-thirds of the children of the blessed Shem — and demand 
 the applause of Christians — the blessing of heaven ! If this 
 " experiment" is to go on, in God's name try your hand upon 
 the Thugs. That other species of "immigration" to which 
 you are resorting I will consider presently. 
 
 But what do you calculate will be the result of emancipa- 
 tion, by whatever means accomplished ? You will probably 
 point me, by way of answer, to the West Indies — doubtless 
 to Antigua, the great boast of abolition. Admitting that it 
 has succeeded there — which I will do for the sake of the 
 argument — do you know the reason of it ? The true and '^J 
 only causes of whatever success has attended it in Antigua are, 
 that the population was before crowded, and all or nearly all 
 the arable land in cultivation. The emancipated negroes 
 
144 iiammond's letters on slavery. 
 
 could not, many of them, get awn)- if they desired ; and knew 
 not where to go, in case they did. They had, practically, no 
 alternative but to remain on the spot ; and remaining, they 
 must work on the terms of the proprietors, or perish — the 
 strong- arm of the mother country forbidding all hope of Priz- 
 ing the land for themselves. The proprietors, well knowing 
 that they could thus command labor for the merest R< 
 ties of life, which was much cheaper than maintaining the 
 non-effective as well as effective slaws in a style which decency 
 and interest, if not humanity, required, willingly accepted half 
 their value, and at once realized far more than the interest on 
 the oth«r half in the diminution of their expenses, and the 
 reduced comforts of the freemen. One of your most illus- 
 trious judges, who was also a profound and philosophical his- 
 torian, has said u that villeinage was not abolished, but went 
 into decay in England." This was the process. This has 
 been the process wherever (the name of) villeinage or slavery 
 has been successfully abandoned. Slavery, in fart, "went 
 into decay" in Antigua. 1 have admitted that, under similar 
 circumstances, it mighi profitably cease here — that is, profita- 
 bly to the individual proprietors. Give me half the value of 
 my slaves, and compel them to remain and labor on my 
 plantation, at ten to eleven cents a day, as they do in An- 
 tigua, supporting themselves and families, and you shall have 
 them to-morrow, and if you like dub them " free." Not to 
 stickle, I would surrender them without price. No — I recall 
 my words : My humanity revolts at the idea. lam attached 
 to my slaves, and would not have act or part in reducing 
 them to such a condition. I deny, however, that Antigua, as 
 a community, is, or ever will be, as prosperous under present 
 circumstances, as she was before abolition, though fully ripe 
 for it. The fact is well known. The reason is that the Afri- 
 
 
Hammond's letters on slavery. 145 
 
 can, if not a distinct, is an inferior race, and nevov v\\[ effect, 
 as it never has effected, as much in any other condition as in 
 that of Slavery. 
 
 I know of no slaveholder who has visited the West Indies 
 since Slavery was abolished, and published his views of it. 
 All our facts and opinions come through the friends of the 
 experiment, or at least those not opposed to it. Taking these, 
 even without allowance, to be true as stated, I do not see 
 where the abolitionists find cause for exultation. The tables 
 of exports, which are the best evidences of the condition of a 
 people, exhibit a woful falling off— excused, it is true, by un- 
 precedented droughts and hurricanes, to which their free labor 
 seems unaccountably more subject than slave labor used to be. 
 I will not go into detail. It is well known that a large pro- 
 portion of British legislation and expenditure, and that pro- 
 portion still constantly increasing, is most anxiously devoted 
 to repairing the monstrous error of emancipation. You are 
 actually galvanizing your expiring colonies. The truth, de- 
 duced from all the facts, was thus pithily stated by the Lon- 
 don Quarterly Review, as long ago as 1840 : "None of the 
 benefits anticipated by mistaken good intentions have been 
 realized, while every evil wished for by knaves and foreseen 
 by the wise has been painfully verified. The wild rashness of 
 fanaticism has made the emancipation of the slaves equiva- 
 lent to the loss of one-half of the West Indies, and yet put 
 back the chance of negro civilization." (Art. Ld. Dudley's 
 Letters.) Such are the real fruits of your never-to-be-too- 
 much-glorified abolition, and the valuable dividend of your 
 twenty millions of pounds sterling invested therein. 
 
 If any farther proof was wanted of the utter and well- 
 known, though not yet openly avowed, failure of West Indian 
 emancipation, it would be furnished by the startling fact, that 
 the African Slave Trade has been actually revived 
 13 
 
146 Hammond's letters on slavery. 
 
 under the auspices and protection of the britisii gov- 
 ERNMENT. Under the specious guise of " immigration," they 
 are replenishing those Islands with slaves from the coast of 
 Africa. Your colony of Sierra Leone, founded on that coast 
 to prevent the slave. trade, and peopled, by the bye, in the 
 first instance, by negroes stolen from these States during the 
 Revolutionary War, is the depot to which captives taken from 
 slavers by your armed vessels are transported. I might say 
 returned, since nearly half the Africans carried across the 
 Atlantic are understood to be embarked in this vicinity. The 
 wretched survivors, who are there set at liberty, are imme- 
 diately seduced to " immigrate" to the West Indies. The 
 business is systematically carried on by black " delegates," 
 sent expressly from the West Indies, where, on arrival, the 
 "immigrants" are sold into Slavcnj for twenty-one years, 
 under conditions ridiculously trivial and wickedly void, since 
 few or none will ever be able to derive any advantage from 
 them. The whole prime of life thus passed in boudage, it is 
 contemplated, and doubtless it will be carried into effect, to 
 turn them out in their old age to shift for themselves, and to 
 supply their places with fresh and vigorous "immigrants." 
 Was ever a system of Slavery so barbarous devised before ? 
 Can you think of comparing it with ours \ Even your own 
 religious missionaries at Sierra Leone denounce it u as worse 
 than the slave state in Africa." And your black delegates, fear- 
 ful of the influence of these missionaries, as well as on account 
 of the inadequate supply of captives, are now preparing to pro- 
 cure the able-bodied and comparatively industrious Kroomen 
 of the interior, by purchasing from their head-men the privi- 
 lege of inveigling them to the West India market ! So ends 
 the magnificent farce — perhaps I should say tragedy, of West 
 India abolition ! I will not harrow your feelings by asking 
 you to review the labors of your life and tell me what you 
 
Hammond's letters on slavery. 14 7 
 
 and your brother enthusiasts have accomplished for ;i injured 
 Africa," but while agreeing with Lord Stowell, that " villein- 
 age decayed," and admitting that Slavery might do so also, I 
 think I am fully justified by passed and passing events in 
 saying, as Mr. Grosvenor said of the slave trade, that its 
 abolition is " impossible." 
 
 You are greatly mistaken, however, if yor ihink that the 
 consequences of emancipation here would be similar and no 
 more injurious than those which followed from it in your little 
 sea-girt West India Islands, where nearly all were blacks. 
 The system of Slavery is not in " decay" with us. It flour- 
 ishes in full and growing vigor. Our country is boundless in 
 extent. Dotted here and there with villages and fields, it is, 
 for the most part, covered with immense forests and swamps 
 of almost unknown size. In such a country, with a people so 
 restless as ours, communicating of course some of that spirit 
 to their domestics, can you conceive that any thing short of 
 the power of the master over the slave, could confine the 
 African race, notoriously idle and improvident, to labor on 
 our plantations ? Break this bond, but for a day, and these . < 
 plantations will be solitudes. The negro loves change, novelty 
 and sensual excitements of all kinds, when awake. " Reason 
 and order," of which Mr. Wilberforce said " liberty was the 
 child," do not characterize him. Released from his present 
 obligations, his first impulse would be to go somewhere. And 
 here no natural boundaries would restrain him. At first they 
 would all seek the towns, and rapidly accumulate in squalid 
 groups upon their outskirts. Driven thence by the " armed 
 police," which would immediately spring into existence, they 
 would scatter in all directions. Some bodies of them might 
 'wander towards the " free" States, or to the Western wilder- 
 ness, marking their tracks by their depredations and their 
 corpses. Many would roam wild in our " big woods." Many 
 
148 Hammond's letters on slavery. 
 
 more would seek the recesses of our swamps for secure covert. 
 Few, very few of them, could be prevailed on to do a stroke 
 of work, none to labor continuously, while a head of cattle, 
 sheep or swine could be found in our ranges, or an ear of corn 
 nodded in our abandoned fields. These exhausted, our folds 
 and poultry yards, barns and store- houses, would become their 
 prey. Finally, our scattered dwellings would be plundered, 
 perhaps fired, and the inmates murdered. How long do you 
 suppose that we could bear these things? How long would 
 it be before we should sleep with rifles at our bedsides, and 
 never move without one in our hands ? This work once 
 begun, let the story of our British ancestors and the aborigines 
 of this country tell the sequel. Far more rapid, however, 
 would be the catastrophe. " Ere many moons went by," the 
 African race would be exterminated, or reduced again to 
 Slavery, their ranks recruited, after your example, by fresh 
 11 emigrants" from their fatherland. 
 
 Is timely preparation and gradual emancipation suggested 
 to avert these horrible consequences ? I thought your expe- 
 rience in the West Indies had, at least, done so much as to 
 explode that idea. If it failed there, much more would it 
 fail here, where the two races, approximating to equality in 
 numbers, are daily and hourly in the closest contact. Give 
 room for but a single spark of real jealousy to be kindled 
 between them, and the explosion would be instantaneous and 
 universal. It is the most fatal of all fallacies, to suppose that 
 , these two races can exist together, after any length of time, 
 i or any process of preparation, on terms at all approaching to 
 ^equality. Of this, both of them are finally and fixedly con- 
 vinced. They differ essentialjy, in all the leading traits which 
 characterize the varieties of the human species, and color 
 draws an indelible and insuperable line of separation between 
 
Hammond's letters on slavery. 149 
 
 them. Every scheme founded upon the idea that they can 
 remain together on the same soil, beyond the briefest period, 
 in any other relation than precisely that which now subsists 
 between them, is not only preposterous, but fraught with 
 deepest danger. If there was no alternative but to try the 
 "experiment" here, reason and humanity dictate that the 
 sufferings of " gradualism " should be saved, and the catastro- 
 phe of " immediate abolition" enacted as rapidly as possible. 
 Are you impatient for the performance to commence ? Do 
 you long to gloat over the scenes I have suggested, but could 
 not hold the pen to portray ? In your long life many such 
 have passed under your review. You know that they are not 
 " impossible." Can they be to your taste ? Do you believe 
 that in laboring to bring them about, the abolitionists are do- 
 ing the will of God ? No ! God is not there. It is the work 
 of Satan. The arch-fiend, under specious guises, has found 
 his way into their souls, and with false appeals to philanthro- 
 py, and foul insinuations to ambition, instigates them to rush 
 headlong to the accomplishment of his diabolical designs. 
 
 We live in a wonderful age. The events of the last three 
 quarters of a century appear to have revolutionized the human 
 mind. Enterprise and ambition are only limited in their pur- 
 poses by the horizon of the imagination. It is the transcen- 
 dental era. In philosophy, religion, government, science, arts, 
 commerce, nothing that has been is to be allowed to be. 
 Conservatism, in any form, is scoffed at. The slightest taint 
 of it is fatal. Where will all this end ? If you can tolerate 
 one ancient maxim, let it be that the best criterion of the fu- 
 ture is the past. That, if anything, will give a clue. And, 
 looking back only through your time, what was the earliest 
 feat of this same transcendentalism ? The rays of the new 
 moral Drummond Light were first concentrated to a focus at 
 13* 
 
150 Hammond's letters ox slavery. 
 
 Paris, to illuminate the universe. In a twinkling it consumed 
 the political, religious and social systems of France. It could 
 not be extinguished there until literally drowned in blood. 
 And then, from its ashes arose that supernatural man, who, 
 for twenty years, kept affrighted Europe in convulsions. Since 
 that time, its scattered beams, refracted by broader surfaces, 
 have, nevertheless, continued to scathe wherever they have 
 fallen. What political structure, what religious creed, but has 
 felt the galvanic shock, and even now trembles to its founda- 
 tions ? Mankind, still horror-stricken by the catastrophe of 
 France, have shrunk from rash experiments upon social sys- 
 v-\u<. But they have been practising in the East, around the 
 Mediterranean, and through the West India Islands. And 
 growing confident, a portion of them seem desperately bent 
 on kindling the all-devouring flame in the bosom of our land. 
 Let it once again blaze up to heaven, and another cycle of 
 blood and devastation will dawn upon the world. For our 
 own sake, and for the sake of those infatuated men who are 
 madly driving on the conflagration ; for the sake of human 
 nature, we are called on to strain every nerve to arrest it. 
 And be assured our efforts will be bounded only with our 
 being. Nor do I doubt that five millions of people, brave, 
 intelligent, united, and prepared to hazard every thing, will, 
 in such a cause, with the blessing of God, sustain themselves. 
 At all events, come what may, it is ours to meet it. 
 
 We are well aware of the light estimation in which the 
 abolitionists, and those who are taught by them, profess to 
 hold us. We have seen the attempt of a portion of the Free 
 Church of Scotland to reject our alms, on the ground that 
 we are "slave-drivers," after sending missionaries to solicit 
 them. And we have seen Mr. O'Connell, the "irresponsible 
 master" of millions of ragged serfs, from whom, poverty 
 
Hammond's letters on slavery. 151 
 
 stricken as they are, he contrives to wring a splendid privy- 
 purse, throw back with contumely, the "tribute" of his own 
 countrymen from this land of " miscreants." These people 
 may exhaust their slang, and make black-guards of themselves, 
 but they cannot defile us. And as for the suggestion to ex- 
 clude slaveholders from your London clubs, we scout it. 
 Many of us, indeed, do go to London, and we have seen your 
 breed of gawky lords, both there and here, but it never en- 
 tered into our conceptions to look on them as better than our- 
 selves. The American slaveholders, collectively or individual- 
 ly, ask no favors of any man or race who tread the earth. In 
 none of the attributes of men, mental or physical, do they 
 acknowledge or fear superiority elsewhere. They stand in the 
 broadest light of the knowledge, civilization and improvement 
 of the age, as much favored of heaven as any of the sons of 
 Adam. Exacting nothing undue, they yield nothing but jus- 
 tice and courtesy, even to royal blood. They cannot be flat- 
 tered, duped, nor bullied out of their rights or their propriety. 
 They smile with contempt at scurrility and vaporing beyond 
 the seas, and they turn their backs upon it where it is "irre- 
 sponsible ;" but insolence that ventures to look them in the 
 face, will never fail to be chastised. 
 
 I think I may trust you will not regard this letter as intru- 
 sive. I should never have entertained an idea of writing it, 
 had you not opened the correspondence. If you think any- 
 thing in it harsh, review your own — which I regret that I lost 
 soon after it was received — and you will probably find that 
 you have taken your revenge before hand. If you have not, 
 transfer an equitable share of what you deem severe, to the 
 account of the abolitionists at large. They have accumulated 
 against the slaveholders a balance of invective, which, with all 
 our efforts, we shall not be able to liquidate much short of the 
 era in which your national debt will be paid. At all events, 
 
15 2 hammond's letters on slavery. 
 
 I have no desire to offend yon personally, and, with the best 
 wishes for your continued health, I have the honor to be, 
 Your obedient servant, 
 
 J. H. HAMMOND. 
 Thos. Clarkson, Esq. 
 
 Silver Bluff, S. C, March 24, 1845. 
 
 Sir — In my letter to you of the 28th January — which I 
 trust you have received ere this — I mentioned that I had lost 
 your circular letter soon after it had come to hand. It was, 
 I am glad to say, only mislaid, and has within a few days 
 been recovered. A second perusal of it induces me to resume 
 my pen. Unwilling to trust my recollections from a single 
 reading, I did not, in my last communication, attempt to fol- 
 low the course of your argument, and meet directly the points 
 made and the terms used. I thought it better to take a gen- 
 eral view of the sulject, which could not fail to traverse your 
 most material charges. I am well aware, however, that for 
 fear of being tedious, I omitted many interesting topics alto- 
 gether, and abstained from a complete discussion of some of 
 those introduced. I do not propose now to exJumst the sub- 
 ject ; which it would require volumes to do ; but without 
 waiting to learn — which I may never do — your opinion of 
 what I have already said, I sit down to supply some of the 
 deficiencies of' my letter of January, and, with your circular 
 before me, to reply to such parts of it as have not been fully 
 answered. 
 
 It is, I perceive, addressed, among others, to "such as have 
 never visited the Southern States" of this confederacy, and 
 
hammond's letters on slavery. 153 
 
 professes to enlighten their ignorance of the actual " condition 
 of the poor slave in their own country." I cannot help think- 
 ing you would have displayed prudence in confining the cir- 
 culation of your letter altogether to such persons. You might 
 then have indulged with impunity in giving, as you have 
 done, a picture of Slavery, drawn from your own excited 
 imagination, or from those impure fountains, the Martineaus, 
 Marryatts, Trollopes and Dickenses, who have profited by 
 catering, at our expense, to the jealous sensibilities and de- 
 bauched tastes of your countrymen. Admitting that you are 
 familiar with the history of Slavery, and the past discussions 
 of it, as I did, I now think rather broadly, in my former let- 
 ter, what can you know of the true condition of the " poor 
 slave " here ? I am not aware that you have ever visited this 
 country, or even the West Indies. Can you suppose^ that be- 
 cause you have devoted your life to the investigation of the 
 subject — cornmencing it under the influence of an enthusiasm, 
 so^r nelancholy^ at fe*t, and so volcanic afterwards, as to be 
 nothing short of hallucination — pursuing it as men of one idea 
 do everything, with the single purpose of establishing your 
 own view of it — gathering your information from discharged 
 seamen, disappointed speculators, factious politicians, visionary 
 reformers and scurrilous tourists — opening your ears to every 
 species of complaint, exaggeration and falsehood, that inter- 
 ested ingenuity could invent, and never for a moment ques- 
 tioning the truth of anything that could make for your cause — 
 can you suppose that all this has qualified you, living the 
 while in England, to form or approximate towards the forma- 
 tion of a correct opinion of the condition of slaves among us ? 
 I know the power of self-delusion. I have not the least doubt, 
 that you think yourself the very best informed man alive on 
 this subject, and that many think so likewise. So far as facts 
 go, even after deducting from your list a great deal that is not 
 
154 Hammond's letters on slavery. 
 
 fact, I will not deny that, probably, your collection is the most 
 extensive in existence. But as to the truth in regard to 
 Slavery, there is not an adult in this region but knows more 
 of it than you do. Truth and fact tare, you are aware, by no 
 means synonymous terms. Ninety-nine facts may constitute 
 a falsehood: the hundredth, added or alone, gives the truth. 
 With all your knowledge of facts, I undertake to say that 
 you are entirely and grossly ignorant of the real condition of 
 our slaves. And from all that I can see, you are equally ig- 
 norant of the essential principles of human association revealed 
 in history, both sacred and profane, on which Slavery rests, 
 and which will perpetuate it forever in some form or other. 
 However you may declaim against it; however powerfully 
 you may array atrocious incidents; whatever appeals you may 
 make to the heated imaginations and tender sensibilities of 
 mankind, believe me, your total blindness to the whole truth, 
 which alone constitutes the truth, incapacitates you from ever 
 making an impression on the sober reason and sound com- 
 mon sense of the world. You may seduce thousands — you 
 can convince no one. Whenever and wherever you or the 
 advocates of your cause can arouse the passions of the weak- 
 minded and the ignorant, and bringing to bear with them the 
 interests of the vicious and unprincipled, overwhelm common 
 sense and reason — as God sometimes permits to be done — you 
 may triumph. Such a triumph we have witnessed in Great 
 Britain. But I trust it is far distant here ; nor can it, from its 
 nature, be extensive or enduring. Other classes of reformers, 
 animated by the same spirit as the abolitionists, attack the 
 institution of marriage, and even the established relations of 
 parent and child. And they collect instances of barbarous 
 cruelty and shocking degradation, which rival, if they do not 
 throw into the shade, your Slavery statistics. But the rights 
 of marriage and parental authority rests upon truths as ob- 
 
Hammond's letters on slavery. 155 
 
 vious as they are unchangeable — coming home to every hu- 
 man being, — self-impressed forever on the individual mind, 
 and cannot be shaken until the whole man is corrupted, nor sub- 
 verted until civilized society becomes a putrid mass. Domestic 
 Slavery is not so universally understood, nor can it make such 
 a direct appeal to individuals or society beyond its pale. 
 Here, prejudice and passion have room to sport at the expense 
 of others. They may be excited and urged to dangerous ac- 
 tion, remote from the victims they mark out. They may, as 
 they have done, effect great mischief, but they cannot be made 
 to maintain, in the long run, dominion over reason and 
 common sense, nor ultimately put down what God has or- 
 dained. 
 
 You deny, however, that Slavery is sanctioned by God, and 
 your chief argument is, that when he gave to Adam dominion 
 over the fruits of the earth and the animal creation, he stopped 
 there. " He never gave him any further right over his fellow- 
 men."' You restrict the descendants of Adam to a very short 
 list of rights and powers, duties and responsibilities, if you 
 limit them solely to those conferred and enjoined in the first 
 chapter of Genesis. It is very obvious that in this narrative 
 of the Creation, Moses did not have it in view to record any 
 part of the law intended for the government of man in his 
 social or political state. Eve was not yet created ; the expul- 
 sion had not yet taken place ; Cain was unborn ; and no allu- 
 sion whatever is made to the manifold decrees of God to 
 •which these events gave rise. The only serious answer this 
 argument deserves, is to say, what is so manifestly true, that 
 God's not expressly giving to Adam " any right over his fel- 
 low-men " by no means excluded him from conferring that 
 right on his descendants ; which he in fact did. We know- 
 that Abraham, the chosen one of God, exercised it and held 
 property in his fellow-man, even anterior to the period when 
 
156 
 
 property in land was acknowledged. We might infer that 
 God had authorized it. But we are not reduced to inference 
 or conjecture. At the hazard of fatiguing you by repetition, 
 I will again refer you to the ordinances of the Scriptures. In- 
 numerable instances might be quoted where God has given 
 and commanded men to assume dominion over their fellow- 
 men. But one will suffice. In the twenty fifth chapter of 
 Leviticus, you will find domestic Slavery — precisely such as 
 is maintained at (his day in these States — ordained and estab- 
 lished by God, in language which I defy you to pervert so 
 as to leave a doubt on any honest mind that this institution 
 was founded by him, and decreed to be perpetual '. I quote 
 the words : 
 
 Leviticus xxv. 44-40 : " Both thy bondmen and thy bond- 
 maids which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen [Afri- 
 cans] that are round about you : of them ye shall buy bond- 
 men and bondmaids. 
 
 " Moreover, of the children of the strangers that do sojourn 
 among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that 
 are with you which they begat in your land [descendants of 
 Africans ?] and they shall be your possession. 
 
 ''''And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your chil- 
 dren after you, to inherit them for a possession. They shall 
 
 BE TOUR BONDMEN FOREVER." 
 
 What human legislature could make a decree more full 
 and explicit than this ? What court of law or chancery could 
 defeat a title to a slave couched in terms so clear and com- 
 plete as these ? And this is the law of God, whom you pre- 
 tend to worship, while you denounce and traduce us for re- 
 specting it. 
 
 It seems scarcely credible, but the fact is so, that you deny 
 this law so plainly written, and in the face of it have the 
 hardihood to declare that " though Slavery is not specifically, 
 
Hammond's letters on slavery. 157 
 
 yet it is virtually, forbidden in the Scriptures, because all thei 
 crimes which necessarily arise out of Slavery, and which can 
 arise from no other source, are reprobated there and threat- 
 ened with divine vengeance." Such an unworthy subterfuge 
 is scarcely entitled to consideration. But its gross absurdity 
 may be exposed in few words. I do not know what crimes 
 you particularly allude to as arising from Slavery. But you 
 will perhaps admit— not because they are denounced in the 
 decalogue, which the abolitionists respect only so far as they 
 choose, but because it is the immediate interest of most men 
 to admit— that disobedience to parents, adultery, and steal- 
 ing, are crimes. Yet these crimes " necessarily arise from " 
 the relations of parent and child, marriage, and the possession 
 of private property; at least they " can arise from no other 
 sources." ' Then, according to your argument, it is " virtually 
 forbidden" to marry, to beget children, and to hold private 
 property ! Nay, it is forbidden to live, since murder can only 
 be perpetrated on living subjects. You add that « in the same 
 way the gladiatorial shows of old, and other barbarous cus- 
 toms, were not specifically forbidden in the New Testament, 
 and yet Christianity was the sole means of their suppression." 
 This is very true. But these shows and barbarous customs 
 thus suppressed were not authorized by God. They were not 
 ordained and commanded by God for the benefit of his chosen 
 people and mankind, as the purchase and holding of bond- 
 men and bondmaids were. Had they been they would never 
 have been " suppressed by Christianity " any more than Sla- 
 very can be by your party. Although Christ came " not to 
 destroy but fulfil the law," he nevertheless did formally abro- 
 gate some of the ordinances promulgated by Moses, and all 
 such as were at war with his mission of " peace and good will 
 on earth." He "specifically" annuls, for instance, one "bar- 
 barous custom " sanctioned by those ordinances, where he 
 14 
 
158 hammond's letters on slavery. 
 
 says, " ye have heard that it hath been said, an eye for an 
 eye, and a tooth for a tooth ; but I say unto you that ye resist 
 not evil, but whosoever shall smite thee on the right cheek, 
 turn to him the other also." Now, in the time of Christ, it 
 was usual for masters to put their slaves to death on the 
 slightest provocation. They even killed and cut them up to 
 feed their fishes. He was undoubtedly aware of these things, 
 as well as of the law and commandment I have quoted. He 
 could only have been restrained from denouncing them, as he 
 did the "lex la lionis" because he knew that in despite of 
 these barbarities the institution of Slavery was at the bottom 
 a sound and wholesome, as well as lawful one. Certain it is, 
 \i that in his wisdom and purity lie did not see proper to inter- 
 fere with it. In your wisdom, however, you make the sacri- 
 legious attempt to overthrow it. 
 
 You quote the denunciation of Tyre and Sidon, and say 
 that "the chief reason given by the prophet Joel for their de- 
 struction, was, that tiny were notorious beyond all others for 
 carrying on the slave trade." I am afraid you think we have 
 no Bibles in the Slave States, or that we are unable to 
 read them. I cannot otherwise account for your making this 
 reference, unless indeed your own reading is confined to an 
 expurgated edition, prepared for the use of abolitionists, in 
 which everything relating to Slavery that militates against 
 their view of it is left out. The prophet Joel denounces the 
 Tyrians and Sidonians, because " the children also of Judah 
 and the children of Jerusalem have ye sold unto the Grecians." 
 And what is the divine vengeance for this " notorious slave 
 trading V Hear it. " And I will sell your sons and daugh- 
 ters iuto the hands of the children of Judah, and they shall 
 sell them to the Sabeans, to a people far off; for the Lord 
 hath spoken it." Do you call this a condemnation of slave 
 trading ? The prophet makes God himself a participator in 
 
Hammond's letters on slavery. 159 
 
 the crime, if that be one. "The Lord hath spoken it," he 
 says, that the Tyrians and Sidonians shall be sold into slavery 
 to strangers. Their real offence was, in enslaving the chosen 
 people ; and their sentence was a repetition of the old com- 
 mand, to makes slaves of the heathen round abont. 
 
 I have dwelt upon your scriptural argument, because you 
 profess to believe the Bible ; because a large proportion of the 
 abolitionists profess to do the same, and to act under its sanc- 
 tion ; because your circular is addressed in part to "professing 
 Christians ;" and because it is from that class mainly that you 
 expect to seduce converts to your anti-christian, I may say, 
 infidel doctrines. It would be wholly unnecessary to answer 
 you, to any one who reads the Scriptures for himself, and con- 
 strues them according to any other formula than that which 
 the abolitionists are wickedly endeavoring to impose upon the 
 world. The scriptural sanction of Slavery is in fact so palpa- 
 ble, and so strong, that both wings of your party are begin- 
 ning to acknowledge it. The more sensible and moderate 
 admit, as the organ of the Free Church of Scotland, the North. 
 British Review, has lately done, that they " are precluded by 
 the statements and conduct of the Apostles from regarding 
 mere slaveholding as essentially sinful" while the desperate 
 and reckless, who are bent on keeping up the agitation at 
 every hazard, declare, as has been done in the Anti-Slavery 
 Record, "If our inquiry turns out in favor of Slavery, it is 
 the Bible that must fall, and not the rights of human* 
 nature." You cannot, I am satisfied, much longer maintain 
 before the world the Christian platform from which to wage 
 war upon our institutions. Driven from it, you must aban- 
 don the contest, or, repudiating revelation, rush into the 
 horrors of natural religion. 
 
 You next complain that our slaves are kept in bondage by 
 the " law of force." In what country or condition of mankind 
 
160 
 
 do you see human affairs regulated merely by the law of 
 love ? Unless I am greatly mistaken, you will, if you look 
 over the world, find nearly all certain and permanent rights, 
 civil, social, and I may even add religions, resting on and ulti- 
 mately secured by the " law of force." The power of majori- 
 ties — of aristocracies — of kings — nay of priests, for the most 
 part, and of property, resolves itself at last into " force," and 
 could not otherwise be long maintained. Thus, in every turn 
 of your argument against our Bystem of Slavery, you advance, 
 whether conscious of it or not, radical and revolutionary doc- 
 trines calculated to change the whole face of the world, to 
 overthrow all government, disorganize society, and reduce 
 man to a state of nature — red with blood, and shrouded once 
 more in barbaric ignorance. But you greatly err, if you sup- 
 pose, because we rely on force in the last resort to maintain 
 our supremacy over our slaves, that ours is a stern and un- 
 feeling domination, at all to be compared in hard-hearted 
 severity to that exercised, not over the mere laborer only, but 
 by the higher over each lower order, wherever the British 
 sway is acknowledged. You say, that if those you address 
 were "to spend one day in the South, they would return 
 home with impressions against Slavery never to be erased." 
 But the fact -is universally the reverse, I have known nume- 
 rous instances, and I never knew a single one, where there 
 was no other cause of offence, and no object to promote by 
 falsehood, that individuals from the non-slaveholding States 
 did not, after residing among us long enough to understand 
 the subject, " return home " to defend our Slavery. It is matter 
 of regret that you have never tried the experiment yourself. 
 I do not doubt you would have been converted, for I give you 
 credit for an honest though perverted mind. You would 
 have seen how weak and futile is all abstract reasoning about 
 this matter, and that, as a building may not be less elpgant 
 
Hammond's letters on slavery. 161 
 
 in its proportions, or tasteful in its ornaments, or virtuous in 
 its uses, for being based upon granite, so a system of human 
 government, though founded on force, may develope and cul- 
 tivate the tenderest and purest sentiments of the human 
 heart. And our patriarchal scheme of domestic servitude is 
 indeed well calculated to awaken the higher and finer feelings 
 of our nature. It is not wanting in its enthusiasm and its 
 poetry. The relations of the most beloved and honored chief, 
 and the most faithful and admiring subjects, which, from the 
 time of Homer, have been the theme of song, are frigid and 
 unfelt compared with those existing between the master and 
 his slaves — who served his father, and rocked his cradle, or 
 have been born in his household, and look forward to serve 
 his children — who have been through life the props of his 
 fortune, and the objects of his care — who have partaken of 
 his griefs, and looked to him for comfort in their own — whose 
 sickness he has so frequently watched over and relieved — 
 whose holidays he has so often made joyous by his bounties 
 and his presence ; for whose welfare, when absent, his anxious 
 solicitude never ceases, and whose hearty and affectionate 
 greetings never fail to welcome him home. In this cold, cal- 
 culating, ambitious world of ours, there are few ties more 
 heartfelt, or of more benignant influence, than those which 
 mutually bind the master and the slave, under our ancient 
 system, handed down from the father of Israel. The unholy 
 purpose of the abolitionists, is to destroy by defiling it ; to 
 infuse into it the gall and bitterness which rankle in their ow r n 
 envenomed bosoms ; to poison the minds of the master and 
 the servant; turn love to hatred, array "force" against force, 
 and hurl all 
 
 " With hideous ruin and combustion, down 
 To bottomless perdition." 
 
 You think it a great " crime " that we do not pay our slaves 
 14* 
 
162 HAMMONDS LETTERS ON SLAVERY. 
 
 " wage?,"' and on this account pronounce us " robbers." In 
 my former letter, I showed that the labor of our slaves was 
 not without great cost to us, and that in fact they themselves 
 receive more in return for it than your hirelings do for theirs. 
 For what purpose do men labor, but to support themselves 
 and their families in what comfort they are able ? The efforts 
 of mere physical labor seldom suffice to provide more than a 
 livelihood. And it is a well known and shocking fact, that 
 while few operatives in Great Britain succeed in securing a 
 comfortable living, the greater part drag out a miserable ex- 
 istence, and sink at last under absolute want. Of what avail 
 is it that you go through the form of paying them a pittance 
 of what you call "wages," when you do not, in return for 
 their services, allow them what alone they ask — and have a 
 just right to demand — enough to feed, clothe and lodge tin m, 
 in health and Bickness, with reasonable comfort. Though we 
 do not give " wage- < v, we do this for our stares, and 
 
 they are therefore better rewarded than yours. It is the pre- 
 vailing vice and error of the- aire, and one from which the 
 abolitionist, with all their saintly pretensions, are far from 
 being free, to bring everything to the standard of money. 
 You make gold and silver the great test of happiness. The 
 American slave must be wretched indeed, because he is not 
 compensated for his services in cash. It is altogether praise- 
 worthy to pay the laborer a shilling a day, and let him starve 
 on it. To supply all his wants abundantly, and at all times, 
 yet withhold from him money, is among " the most reprobated 
 crimes/' The fact cannot be denied, that the mere laborer is 
 now, and always has been, everywhere that barbarism has 
 ceased, enslaved. Among the innovations of modern times, 
 following " the decay of villeinage," has been the creation of 
 a new system of Slavery. The primitive and patriarchal, 
 which may also be called the sacred and natural system, in 
 
Hammond's letters on slavery. 163 
 
 which the laborer is under the personal control of a fellow- 
 being endowed with the sentiments and sympathies of hu- 
 manity, exists among us. It has been almost everywhere else 
 superseded by the modern artificial money power system, in 
 "which man — his thews and sinews, his hopes and affections, his 
 very being, are all subjected to the dominion of capital — a 
 monster without a heart — cold, stern, arithmetical — sticking 
 to the bond — taking ever " the pound of flesh," — working up 
 human life with engines, and retailing it out by weight and 
 measure. His name of old was " Mammon, the least erected 
 spirit that fell from heaven." And it is to extend his empire 
 that you and your deluded coadjutors dedicate your lives. 
 You are stirring up mankind to overthrow our heaven-ordain- 
 ed system of servitude, surrounded by innumerable checks, 
 designed and planted deep in the human heart by God aud 
 nature, to substitute the absolute rule of this " spirit repro- 
 bate," whose proper place was hell. 
 
 You charge us with looking on cur slaves " as chattels or 
 brutes," and enter into a somewhat elaborate argument to 
 prove that they have "human forms," "talk," and even 
 " think." Now the fact is, that however you may indulge in 
 this strain for effect, it is the abolitionists, and not the slave- 
 holders, who, practically, and in the most important point of 
 view, regard our slaves as " chattels or brutes." In your cal- 
 culations of the consequences of emancipation, you pass over 
 entirely those which must prove most serious, and which arise 
 from the fact of their being persons. You appear to think 
 that we might abstain from the use of them as readily as if 
 they were machines to be laid aside, or cattle that might be 
 turned out to find pasturage for themselves. I have hereto- 
 fore glanced at some of the results that would follow from 
 breaking the bonds of so many human beings, now peacefully 
 and happily linked into our social system. The tragic hor- 
 
J 
 
 164 hammond's letters on slavery. 
 
 rors, the decay and ruin that would for year?, perhaps for 
 ages, brood over our land, if it could be accomplished, 1 will 
 not attempt to portray. But do you fancy the blight would, 
 in such an event, come to us alone ? The diminution of the 
 sugar crop of the West Indies affected Great Britain only, and 
 there chiefly the poor. It was a matter of no moment to 
 capital, that labor should have one comfort less. Yet it has 
 forced a reduction of the British duty on sugar. Who can 
 estimate the consequences that must follow' the annihilation 
 of the cotton crop of the slaveholding States ? I do not un- 
 dervalue the importance of other articles of commerce, but no 
 calamity could befall the world at all comparable to the sud- 
 den loss of two millions of bales of cotton annually. From 
 the deserts of Africa to the Siberian wilds — from Greenland to 
 the Chinese wall, — there is not a spot of earth but would feel 
 the sensation. The factories of Europe would fall with a con- 
 cussion that would shake down castles, palaces, and even 
 thrones; while the "purse-proud, elbowing insolence" of our 
 Northern monopolist would soon disappear forever under the 
 smooth speech of the pedlar, scourging our frontiers for a live- 
 lihood, or the bluff vulgarity of the South Sea whaler, follow- 
 ing the harpoon amid storms and shoals. Doubtless the abo- 
 litionists think we could grow cotton without slaves, or that 
 at worst the reduction of the crop would be moderate and 
 temporary. Such gross delusions show how profoundly igno- 
 rant they are of our condition here. 
 
 You declare that " the character of the people of the South 
 has long been that of hardened infidels, who fear not God, 
 and have no regard for religion." I will not repeat what I 
 said in my former letter on this point. I only notice it to ask 
 you how you could possibly reconcile it to your profession of 
 a Christian spirit, to make such a malicious charge — to defile 
 your soul with such a calumny against an unoffending people ? 
 
Hammond's letters on slavery. 165 
 
 * ' You are old ; 
 Nature in you stands on the very verge 
 Of her confine. You should be ruled and led 
 By some discretion." 
 
 May God forgive you. 
 
 Akin to this, is the wanton and furious assault made on us 
 by Mr. Macaulay, in his late speech on the sugar duties, in 
 the House of Commons, which has just reached me. His 
 denunciations are wholly without measure, and, among other 
 things, he asserts " that Slavery in the United States wears 
 its worst form ; that, boasting of our civilization and freedom, 
 and frequenting Christian churches, we breed up slaves, nay, 
 beget children for slaves, and sell them at so much a-head." 
 Mr. Macaulay is a reviewer, and he knows that he is " no- 
 thing if not critical." The practice of his trade has given him 
 the command of all the slashing and vituperative phrases of 
 our language, and the turn of his mind leads him to the ha- 
 bitual use of them. He is an author, and as no copy-right 
 law secures for him from this country a consideration for his 
 writings, he is not only independent of us, but naturally hates 
 everything American. He is the representative of Edinburgh ; 
 it is his cue to decry our Slavery, and in doing so he may 
 safely indulge the malignity of his temper, his indignation 
 against us, and his capacity for railing. He has suffered once, 
 for being in advance of his time in favor of abolition, and he 
 does not intend that it shall be forgotten, or his claim passed 
 over, to any crumb which may now be thrown to the vocife- 
 rators in the cause. If he does not know that the statements 
 he has made respecting the slaveholders of this country are 
 vile and atrocious falsehoods, it is because he does not think it 
 worth his while to be sure he speaks the truth, so that he 
 speaks to his own purpose. 
 
 " Hie niger est, hunc tu, Rornane caveto." 
 
166 hammond's letters on slavery. 
 
 Such exhibitions as ho has made, may draw the applause 
 of a British House of Commons, but. among the sound and 
 high-minded thinkers of the world they can only excite con- 
 tempt and disgust. 
 
 But you are not content with depriving us of all religious 
 feelings. You assert that our Slavery lias also "demoralized 
 the Northern States," and charge upon it not only every 
 common violation of good order there, but the "Mormon 
 murders," the u Philadelphia riots,' 1 and all " the extermina- 
 ting wars against the Indians." I wonder that you did not 
 increase the list by adding that it had caused the recent in- 
 undation of the Mississippi, and the hurricane in the West 
 Indies — perhaps the insurrection of Rebecca, and the war in 
 Scinde. You refer to the law prohibiting the transmission of 
 abolition publications through the mail, as proof of general 
 corruption ! You could not do so, however, without noticing 
 the late detected espionage over the British post office by a 
 minister of state. It is true, as yon say, it "occasioned a 
 general outburst of national feeling" — from the opposition; 
 and a "Parliamentary enquiry was instituted" — that is, 
 moved, but treated quite cavalierly. At all events, though 
 the fact was admitted, Sir James Graham yet retains the 
 Home Department, For one, I do not undertake to condemn 
 him. Such thino-s are not against the laws and usages of 
 your country. I do not know fully what reasons of state may 
 have influenced him and justified his conduct. But I do 
 know that there is a vast difference in point of "national 
 morality" between the discretionary power residing in your 
 government to open any letter in the public post office, and a 
 well-defined and limited law to prevent the circulation of cer- 
 tain specified incendiary writings by means of the United 
 States mail. 
 
 Having now referred to everything like argument on the 
 
167 
 
 subject of Slavery, that is worthy of notice in your letter, per- 
 mit me to remark on its tone and style, and very extraordi- 
 nary bearing upon other institutions of this country. You 
 commence by addressing certain classes of our people, as be- 
 longing to " a nation whose character is now so low in the 
 estimation of the civilized world ;" and throughout you main- 
 tain this tone. Did the Americans who were " under your 
 roof last summer " inform you that such language would be 
 gratifying to their fellow-citizens "having no practical con- 
 cern with slaveliolding ?" Or do the infamous libels on Ame- 
 rica, which you read in our abolition papers, induce you to 
 believe that all that class of people are, like the abolitionists 
 themselves, totally destitute of patriotism or pride of country ? 
 Let me tell you that you are grossly deceived. And although 
 your stock-brokers and other speculators, who have been bit- 
 ten in American ventures, may have raised a stunning "cry" 
 against us in England, there is a vast body of people here 
 besides slaveholders, who justly 
 
 " Deem their own land of every land the pride, 
 Beloved by heaven o'er all the world beside," 
 and who know that at this moment we rank among the first 
 powers of the world— a position which we not only claim, but 
 are always ready and able to maintain. 
 
 The style you assume in addressing your Northern friends, 
 is in perfect keeping with your apparent estimation of them. 
 Though I should be the last, perhaps, to criticise mere style, 
 I could not but be struck with the extremely simple manner 
 of your letter. You seem to have thought you were writing 
 a tract for benighted heathen, and telling wonders never be- 
 fore suggested to their imagination, and so far above their 
 untutored comprehension as to require to be related in the 
 primitive language of " the child's own book." This is suffi- 
 ciently amusing ; and would be more so, but for the coarse 
 
168 Hammond's letters on slavery. 
 
 and bitter epithets you continually apply to the poor slave- 
 holders — epithets whicii appear to be stereotyped for the use 
 of abolitionists, and which form a large and material part of 
 all their arguments. 
 
 But, perhaps, the most extraordinary part of your letter is 
 your bold denunciation of" the shameful compromises" of our 
 constitution, and your earnest recommendation to those you 
 address to overthrow or revolutionize it. In so many words 
 you say to them, " you must either separate yourselves from 
 all political connection with the South, and make your own 
 laws ; or if you do not choose such a separation, you must 
 break up the political ascendancy which the Southern have 
 had for so long a time over the Northern States." The ital- 
 ics in this, as in all other quotations, are your own. It is well 
 for those who circulate your letter here, that the constitution 
 you denounce requires an overt act to constitute treason. It 
 may be tolerated for an American by birth, to use on his own 
 soil the freedom of speaking and writing which is guaranteed 
 him, and abuse our constitution, our Union, and our people. 
 But that a foreigner should use such seditious language, in a 
 circular letter addressed to a portion of the American people, 
 is a presumption well calculated to excite the indignation of 
 all. The party known in this country as the abolition party 
 has long since avowed the sentiments you express, and adopt- 
 ed the policy you enjoin. At the recent presidential election, 
 they gave over 62,000 votes for their own candidate, and 
 held the balance of power in two of the largest States — want- 
 ing but little of doing it in several others. In the last four 
 years their vote has quadrupled. Should the infatuation con- 
 tinue, and their vote increase in the same ratio for the next 
 four years, it will be as large as the vote of the actual slave- 
 holders of the Union. Such a prospect is, doubtless, ex- 
 tremely gratifying to you. It gives hope of a contest on 
 
Hammond's letters on slavery. 169 
 
 such terms as may insure the downfall of Slavery or our con- 
 stitution. The South venerates the constitution, and is pre- 
 pared to stand by it forever, such as it came from the hands 
 of our fathers ; to risk every thing to defend and maintain 
 it in its integrity. But the South is under no such delusion 
 as to believe that it derives any peculiar protection from the 
 Union. On the contrary, it is well known we incur peculiar 
 danger, and that we bear far more than our proportion of the 
 burdens. The apprehension is also fast fading away that any 
 of the dreadful consequences commonly predicted will neces- 
 sarily result from a separation of the States. And comeivhat 
 may, we are firmly resolved that our system of Domestic 
 Slavery shall stand. The fate of the Union, then — but, 
 thank God, not of republican government — rests mainly in 
 the hands of the people to whom your letter is addressed — 
 the " professing Christians of the Northern States having no 
 concern with slaveholding," and whom with incendiary zeal 
 you are endeavo'-ing to stir up to strife — without which fana- 
 ticism can neither live, move, nor have any being. 
 
 We have often been taunted for our sensitiveness in regard 
 to the discussion of Slavery. Do not suppose it is because 
 we have any doubts of our rights, or scruples about asserting 
 them. There was a time when such doubts and scruples 
 were entertained. Our ancestors opposed the introduction of 
 slaves into this country, and a feeling adverse to it was handed 
 clown from them. The enthusiastic love of liberty fostered 
 by our revolution strengthened this feeling. And before the 
 commencement of the abolition agitation here, it was the 
 common sentiment that it was desirable to get rid of Slavery. 
 
 ; Many thought it our duty to do so. When that agitation 
 arose, we were driven to a close examination of the subject in 
 
 1 all its bearings, and the result has been an universal convic- 
 tion that in holding slaves we violate no law of God, — inflict 
 15 
 
170 hammoxd's letters on slavery. 
 
 no injustice on any of his creatures — while the terrible con- 
 sequences of emancipation to all parties and the world at 
 clearly revealed to us, make us shudder at the bare 
 thought of it. The slaveholders are, therefore, indebted to 
 the abolitionists for perfect rase of conscience, and the satis- 
 faction of a settled and unanimous determination in reference 
 to this matter. And could their agitation cease now, I 
 believe, after all, the good would preponderate over the evil 
 of it in this country. On the contrary, however, it is urged 
 on with frantic violence, and the abolitionists, reasoning in the 
 abstract, as if it were a mere moral or metaphysical specula- 
 tion, or a minor question in polities, profess to be surprised at 
 our exasperation. In their ignorance and recklessness, they 
 seem to be unable to comprehend our feelings or position. 
 The subversion of our light-, tin- destruction of our property^ 
 the disturbance of our peace ami the peace of the world, are 
 matters which do not appear to arrest their consideration. 
 When revolutionary France proclaimed "hatred to king- and 
 unity to the republic," and inscribed on her banners " Franca 
 ris< n against tyrants," she professed to be only worshipping 
 " abstract rights." And if there can be Buch things, perhaps 
 she was. Yet all Europe rose to put her sublime theories 
 down. They declared her an enemy to the common peace ; 
 that her doctrines alone violated the "law of neighborhood," 
 and, as Mr. Burke said, justly entitled them to anticipate the 
 "damnum nonduui factum" of the civil law. Danton, Bar- 
 rere, and the rest were apparently astonished that umbrage 
 should be taken. The parallel between them and the aboli- 
 tionists holds good in all respects. 
 
 The rise and progress of this fanaticism is one of the phe- 
 nomena of the age in which we live. I do not intend to 
 repeat what I have already said, or to trace its career more 
 minutely at present. But the legislation of Great Britain 
 
171 
 
 Will make it historical, and doubtless you must feel some cu- 
 riosity to know how it will figure on the page of' the annalist. 
 I think I can tell you. Though I have accorded and do ac- 
 cord to you and your party, great influence in bringing about 
 the parliamentary action of your country, you must not expect 
 to go down to posterity as the only cause of it. Though you 
 trace the progenitors of abolition from 1516, through a long 
 stream with clivers branches, down to the period of its triumph 
 in your country, it has not escaped contemporaries, and will 
 not escape posterity, that England, without much effort, sus- 
 tained the storm of its scoffs and threats, until the moment 
 arrived when she thought her colonies fully supplied with 
 Africans; and declared against the slave trade, only when she 
 deemed it unnecessary to her, and when her colonies, full of 
 slaves, would have great advantages over others not so well 
 provided. Nor did she agree to West India emancipation, 
 until, discovering the error of her previous calculation, it be- 
 came an object to have slaves free throughout the Western 
 world, and, on the ruins of the sugar and cotton growers of 
 America and the Islands, to build up her great slave empire 
 in the East; while her indefatigable exertions, still continued, 
 to engraft the right of search upon the law of nations, on the 
 plea of putting an end to the forever increasing slave trade, 
 are well understood to have chiefly in view the complete es- 
 tablishment of her supremacy at sea.* Nor must you flatter 
 yourself that your party will derive historic dignity from the 
 
 * On these points, let me recommend you to consult a very able 
 Essay on the Slave Trade and Right of Search, by M. Jollivet, re- 
 cently published; and as you say, since writing your Circular Letter, 
 that you " burn to try your hand on another little Essay, if a subject 
 could be found," I propose to you to " try " to answer this question, 
 put by M. Jollivet to England : '• Pourquoi sa philanthrope ria pas 
 daigne, jusqu' a present, doublet le cap de Bonne- Esperance ?" 
 
172 Hammond's letters on slavery. 
 
 names of the illustrious British statesmen who have acted 
 with it. Their country's ends were theirs. They have stoop- 
 ed to use you, as the must illustrious men will sometimes use 
 the vilest instruments, to accomplish their own purposes. A 
 few philanthropic common places and rhetorical flourishes, 
 "in the abstract," have secured them your "sweet voices," 
 and your influence over the tribe of mawkish sentimentalists. 
 Wilberforce may have been yours, but what was he besides, 
 but a wealthy county member? You must, therefore, expect 
 to stand on your own merits alone before posterity, or rather 
 that portion of it that may be curious to trace the history of 
 the delusions which, from time to time, pass over the surface of 
 human affairs, and who may trouble themselves to look 
 through the ramifications of transcendentalism, in this era of 
 extravagances. And how do you expect to appear in their 
 As Christians, piously endeavoring to enforce the will 
 of God, and carry out the principles of Christianity 1 Cer- 
 tainly not, since you deny or pervert the Scriptures in the 
 doctrines you advance ; and in your conduct, furnish a glaring 
 contrast to the examples of Christ and the Apostles. As 
 philanthropists, devoting yourselves to the cause of humanity, 
 relieving the needy, comforting the afflicted, creating peace 
 and gladness and plenty round about you ? Certainly not, since 
 you turn from the needy, the afflicted ; from strife, sorrow 
 and starvation which surround you ; close your eyes and hands 
 upon them ; shut out from your thoughts and feelings the 
 human misery which is real, tangible, and within your reach, 
 to indulge your morbid imagination in conjuring up woes and 
 Wants among a strange people in distant lands, and offering 
 them succor in the shape of costless denunciations of their 
 best friends, or by scattering among them " firebrands, arrows 
 and death." Such folly and madness, such wild mock- 
 ery and base imposture, can never win for you, in the sober 
 
Hammond's letters on slavery. 173 
 
 judgment of future times, the name of philanthropists. Will 
 you even be regarded as worthy citizens ? Scarcely, when 
 the purposes you have in view, can only be achieved by revo- 
 lutionizing governments and overturning social systems, and 
 when you do not hesitate, zealously and earnestly, to recom- 
 mend such measures. Be assured, then, that posterity will 
 not regard the abolitionists as Christians, philanthopists, or 
 virtuous citizens. It will, I have no doubt, look upon the 
 mass of the party as silly enthusiasts, led away by designing 
 characters, as is the case with all parties that break from the 
 great, acknowledged ties which bind civilized man in fellow- 
 ship. The leaders themselves will be regarded as mere am- 
 bitious men ; not taking rank with those whose ambition is 
 "eagle-winged and sky-aspiring," but belonging to that mean 
 and selfish class, who are instigated by "rival-hating envy," 
 and whose base thirst is for notoriety ; who cloak their designs 
 under vile and impious hypocrisies, and, unable to shine in 
 higher spheres, devote themselves to fanaticism, as a trade. 
 And it will be perceived that, even in that, they shunned the 
 highest walk. Religious fanaticism was an old established 
 vocation, in which something brilliant was required to attract 
 attention. They could not be George Foxes, nor Joanna 
 Southcotes, nor even Joe Smiths. But the dullest pretender 
 could discourse a jumble of pious bigotry, natural rights, and 
 drivelling philanthropy. And, addressing himself to aged 
 folly and youthful vanity, to ancient women, to ill-gotten 
 wealth, to the reckless of all classes, who love excitement and 
 change, offer each the cheapest and the safest glory in the 
 market. Hence, their numbers; and, from number and 
 clamor, what impression they have made on the world. 
 
 Such, I am persuaded, is the light in which the abolitionists 
 will be viewed by the posterity their history may reach. Un- 
 less, indeed— which God forbid— circumstances should so favor 
 
174 hammond's letters on slavery. 
 
 as to enable them to produce a convulsion which may elevate 
 them higher on the "bad eminence " where they have placed 
 themselves. 
 
 I have the honor to be 
 
 Your obedient servant, 
 
 J. II. HAMMOND. 
 Thomas Clarkson, Esq. 
 
 Note.— The foregoing Letters were not originally intended for pub- 
 lication. In preparing them for the press, they have Wen revised. 
 The alteration- and corrections made, however.have been mostly ver- 
 bal. Had the writer fell at liberty to condense the two letters into 
 one, and bring up the history of abolit on to the period of publica- 
 tion, be might bare presented a more concise and perfect argument, and 
 illustrated his views more forcibly, by reference to facts recently de- 
 veloped. For example, since writing the first, the letter of Mr. Clark- 
 son, as President of the British Anti-Slavery Society, to Sir Robert 
 
 Feel, denouncing the whole scheme of " Immigration," has reached 
 him; ami after he had forwarded the last, he saw it stated, that Mr. 
 Clarkson had, as late as the first part of April, addressed the Karl of 
 Aberdeen, and declared, that all efforts to suppress the African slave 
 trade bad fully failed. It may be confidently expected, thai it will 
 be ere long announced from the same quarter, that the "experiment" 
 
 of Wot India emancipation has^ao prove! a complete abortion. 
 
 Should the terms which have been applied to the abolitionists ap- 
 pear to any as unduly severe, let it remembered, that the direct aim 
 of these people is to destroy us by the most shocking of all processes ; 
 and that, having a large portion of the civilized world for their au- 
 dience, they daily and systematically heap upon us the vilest calum- 
 nies and most unmitigated abuse. Clergymen lay aside their bibles, 
 and females unsex themselves, to carry on this horrid warfare against 
 slave holders. 
 
THE MORALS OF SLAVERY." 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The original of the essay which follows was originally pub- 
 lished in the pages of the Southern Literary Messenger, 
 sometime in the year 1837. At that period the subject had 
 not so greatly engaged the attention of the Southern people, 
 as in more recent years ; the progress of the anti-Slavery 
 sentiment, in the Northern States and other regions, not hav- 
 ing shown itself so active, pressing and insolent as it has 
 jsince become. The very favorable opinion with which the 
 article was, at the time, received, and the demand for copies, 
 prompted its republication, in the form of a separate pamph- 
 let, which appeared in 1838. This pamphlet was dedicated 
 ito the Honorable, the Delegates from South Carolina, in the 
 \Congress of the United States, in the following language : 
 r Gentlemen : 
 
 " If I did not regard you as representatives, not 
 
 ess of the interests of the slave of Carolina, than of the 
 
 rights of his owner, I should not trouble you with this in- 
 
 Ipeription, nor the press with the publication of this little 
 
 Ibssay. Originally put forth in one of our Southern periodi- 
 
 * Being a brief review of the writings of Miss Martineau, and 
 )ther persons, on the subject of Negro Slavery, as it now exists in 
 the United States. By "W. Gilmore Simais, Esq., of South Carolina. 
 
176 THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 
 
 cals, it has been so far honored by the approbation of its 
 readers, as to make it desirable, in the estimation of many, 
 that it should have a more extended circulation. This it 
 should not have, if I could bring myself for au instant to be- 
 lieve, that I was moved to its preparation by any motive but 
 a sincere desire for the truth ; or, if I could doubt that it con- 
 tains principles which no sophistry can subvert, and no mis- 
 applied ingenuity, whether of sheer cunning or of self-blinding 
 philanthropy, could keep from the ultimate reception of man- 
 kind. The argument, indeed, is chiefly drawn from what 
 would seem to be the inevitable sense of mankind upon the 
 subject of which it treats, as that sense is illustrated and 
 shown by the practices and the necessities of men throughout 
 the world, and through all its successive ages, from its known 
 beginning. I will not seek, therefore, to fortify my views by 
 the accumulation of authorities which he who runs may read) 
 In my humble notion, the whole world of human experience 
 is tributary to their maintenance; and I would as soon doubt 
 that it is truth which I profess, as question the final triumph 
 of those opinions upon which the practice of all nations has^ 
 invariably settled down. I speak now, only, as I deem it de- 
 sirable that we should facilitate the advent of truth, and not* 
 because I have any doubts of her final coming. We should ' 
 labor in her assistance, not so much because she may need 
 our service, as because our feeble race stands so grievously in r 
 need of hers. This we can best do, not by persuasive and 
 specious doctrines, and fine flexible sayings, but simply by a > 
 firm adherence to what we know, and to what we think we 
 have already gained. As yet, we have, confessedly, but par- 
 tial glimmerings of her divine presence, — her fixed and all' 
 sufficing light! — we must treasure up these gleams and 
 glimpses, few and feeble though they be, until, to our more* 
 familiar eyes, star by star, she unfolds her perfect form, and, 
 
 > 
 
THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 177 
 
 II with the loveliness and the light of heaven, irradiates the dim 
 ; cloud that now hangs between her and the earth. That we 
 I shall pray long and vainly for this ideal of the moral world— 
 . . that we shall look for it, with but little hope, whether in your 
 j| day or in mine— is not a matter of difficult prediction while 
 I there are so many, and so bold, prophets that proclaim them- 
 I selves adversely throughout the laud. But, that the contin- 
 I ued and cheering presence of this blessed hope in the hearts 
 
 ■ of the few, will at length achieve what they so earnestly seek 
 I and sometimes die to realize, may be predicted with not less 
 
 ■ confidence. Let us, at least, labor that we may verify our 
 I own desires, and find renewed impulse to our labors, as we 
 J behold the industry of those who toil against us, and those 
 
 things, which we conceive'to be justified by their perfect con- 
 sonance with the divine law. We may neither of us do much 
 in this holy cause, but, if we gather, each, but a single shell 
 from the great ocean of truth-to employ the fancy of one 
 whose constant thought was the best philanthropy— we shall 
 at least diminish the toils of those who shall follow in our 
 footsteps along the shores of the same solitary and unknown 
 regions." 
 
 There is nothing in the tone or sentiment of the preceding 
 :hat the author would change, and the interval which has 
 lapsed since the publication of the essay and the present 
 ime, has confirmed him in most of his convictions, while 
 cabling him greatly to enlarge the sphere of his observations 
 md to add to the number of his facts. 
 
 It is thought by the present publishers, that the views here 
 xpressed, may still serve a useful purpose, in connection with 
 hose of others, in the defence of a domestic institution, 
 ihich we hold to be not simply within the sanctions of jus- 
 ce and propriety, b ut as constituting; one of th« mnd a^ . 
 £ agencies, under the j^^q^]^ forpromotio^rgT gen- 
 
178 
 
 THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 
 
 pv nj proo-rppg nt pu -iliTfltinn. n rid fop - el evatin g, to a c ondition 
 o ? humanity, a people otlienvise ba rbarou s, pn*ily dp-prnvprl, 
 and needing thehclp of a superior condition — a power from 
 
 .savage sta te. In 
 consenting to this republication, I am not unaware of tlTeTlis- 
 advantages under which it must labor, in comparison with 
 other essays subsequently written. When I wrote, but little 
 had been said in defence of African Slavery in Ameiica. 
 Prescription was against it everywhere. All our maxims, 
 our declamation, the pet phrases, equally of philanthropy and 
 of demagogueism, were designed to render it odious and 
 criminal ; and, in the defence usually offered, on the part of 
 those who maintained it, it was generally admitted that a 
 wrong had been done, and that a social evil did exist, which 
 expediency alone denied that we should seek to repair, or put 
 away from us. The author was among the very few who 
 took other and higher grounds. He denied that any wrong 
 had been done to the African, in making him labor in Amer- 
 ica. He denied that any evil, but rather a great good and 
 blessing, accrued from his appropriate but subordinate em- 
 ployment in the States of the South. /pEIe contended, that the 
 institution of Slavery, per se, was not in violation of the di- 
 vine law ; that it had existed, in all ages, and from the earliest 
 periods, under the immediate sanction of Heaven ; and that 
 most nations, while it endured among them, were in the en- 
 joyment of the highest human prosperity. J; But the argument 
 of the essay need not be anticipated "here. Enough that, 
 under certain slavish habits of thinking, many of these opin- 
 ions were regarded as heresies, even in the South. It was 
 not easy, even with the interests of the community to support 
 the truth, to eradicate that falsehood from their minds, which 
 had been the growth of prescription and the habit of 
 thought, of phrase and formula, for a hundred years — errors 
 
THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 1*79 
 
 of opinion, when habitual, being entirely hostile to all inde- 
 pendent and honest thinking. But the progress of fifteen 
 years, since the first publication of this essay, has effected a 
 corresponding progress to independence in the opinion and 
 sentiment of our people. Forced, by external and hostile 
 pressure, to re-examine the argument, the grounds upon 
 which their title rests to the labor of their slaves, they have 
 found themselves fortified by higher authority than they had 
 originally claimed in mere expediency. It is one of the happy 
 results of evil always, according to the benign decree of pro- 
 vidence, that it must ultimately work out the fruits of good, 
 in despite of its malicious contriver; and it should be a sub- 
 ject of great gratification to the people of the South, that 
 abolition, with all its annoyances and offences against our 
 peace and safety, has resulted in our moral reassurance, — in 
 the establishing, to our own perfect conviction, our right to the 
 labor of our slaves, and in relieving us from all that doubt, that 
 morbid feeling of weakness in respect to the moral of our claim, 
 which was undoubtedly felt so long as we forebore the proper / 
 consideration of the argument. Twenty years ago, few per- 
 sons in the South undertook to justify Negro Slavery, except 
 on the score of necessity. Now, very few persons in the same 
 region, question their perfect right to the labor of their 
 slaves, — and more, — their moral obligation to keep them still 
 subject, as slaves, and to compel their labor, so long as they 
 remain the inferior beings which we find them now, and which 
 they seem to have been from the beginning. This is a great 
 good, the fruit wholly of the hostile pressure. It has forced 
 us to examine into the sources of the truth ; to reject the 
 specious formula, which originally deluded us, and still de- 
 ludes so many ; and to feel the strength of our argument, by 
 which we are justified to our own consciences, and to know our 
 justification, as slave-holders, to be complete, according to all 
 
J 
 
 180 THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 
 
 proper morals, and in accordance equally -with sacred and 
 profane experience. 
 
 I have but to add that, in the revision of the review which 
 follows, I have not confined myself to a consideration of the 
 case, according to the condition of the country when it was 
 written, the lights then possessed and the opinions entertained. 
 I have not scrupled to make such additions, alterations and 
 amendments, as my own longer experience, as well as that of 
 our people, and the subsequent thought given to the subject, 
 shall have suggested as proper and useful to the discussion. 
 In the plan of my paper, I have made no changes. It has 
 seemed to me proper that I should still address myself to 
 Miss Martineau, as fairly representing that tribe whose rest- 
 less eagerness, morbid self-esteem, and complacent philanthro- 
 py — never so well satisfied as when, preaching reform, it 
 designs revolution — are at the bottom of all the dangers 
 which threaten the existing civilization and safety of mankind, /j 
 In showing up her mistakes of fact and opinion, I do but in- 
 dicate those which are common to her sect; and, what is de- 
 sultory in the manner of the essay, may be forgiven, in con- 
 sideration of the freedom which it affords ; by which the 
 gravity of the discussion is relieved, and the occasional 
 employment of what is personal and anecdotical, is made the 
 better to illustrate the case. 
 
 Charleston, July 1, 1852. 
 
 
THE MORALS OF SLAYEItY. 
 
 In the course of my wanderings, last summer, in some of 
 the Northern States, a friend, who had possessed himself of 
 the volumes of Miss Martineau, descriptive of her Western 
 Travel, drew my attention to those portions of her work 
 which related especially to South-Carolina. He was anxious 
 that, as a native of that State, who had resided in it all his 
 life, and who might, accordingly, be assumed to know the 
 condition and character of its society, I should say in what 
 degree the good lady had erred in the statement of her facts. 
 Her inferences in respect to them, we were both agreed, might 
 be reserved for after consideration. Her report, I need not 
 say, had been by no means a grateful one. She had seen 
 many things which she understood unfavorably. She had 
 reported many other unseen things, equally unfavorable, on 
 the authority of others; and her conjectures, and doubts, and 
 suspicions, were of a sort sufficiently to show, that the indul- 
 gent entertainment which she had found in Carolina, had not 
 tended very materially to raise her estimate of a people, 
 whom, it was evident, she was prepared to study only through 
 the medium of her prejudices. My friend, who was a north- 
 ern man, agreed that Miss Martineau was a very favorable 
 sample of the more intelligent among the abolitionists ; that 
 she had embodied pretty generally their authorities and argu- 
 ments, and that her alleged facts, and the inferences drawn 
 16 
 
182 THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 
 
 from them, were such as constituted the materials of warfare 
 commonly employed by the fraternity. To expose her errors 
 and to answer her charges, was sufficiently to answer all; and 
 as he was really curious, and, I believe, in good faith solici- 
 tous of the truth, I was not unwilling to undertake the task 
 which he pointed out, and to go over with him, page by page, 
 the two thick duodecimos of the philanthropic lady. Pencil 
 in hand, we noted all her points, not only in respect to Caro- 
 lina, but all the States, so far as the subjects were familiar to 
 either of us ; and the result was the expression, on his part, of 
 a wish, that I should take up the matter in some of our pe- 
 riodicals, and answer to her, as I had done to him, the charges 
 which she had made against my particular province. It was 
 only a natural opinion that, to expose her blunders in regard 
 to one of the States, we should reasonably compel a proper 
 caution, on the part of the reader, in the adoption of her au- 
 thority in respect to any; and it might be that the sectional 
 labors of one citizen would thus persuade others, in other 
 regions which the lady traveller had disparaged, to undertake 
 tli<- patriotic labor of following her footsteps, and correcting 
 her blunders, as fast as she committed them. It was agreed, 
 between us, that the first essential was to disprove the facts 
 of the abolitionists. They had relied upon these alleged 
 facts in the first instance, to create an antipathy to the slave- 
 holder. ; To paint the horrors of Slavery, so as to revolt the 
 sensibilities of humanity, was the first great means by which 
 to show that the institution was unnatural and irreligious, and 
 its tendencies necessarily inhuman. The rest was easy. Our 
 first business, accordingly, was with the facts ; to dispose of 
 these, was to clear the way to an inquiry into the institution 
 of Slavery, per se, as a moral question. No matter how seem- 
 ingly insignificant was the fact asserted, it thus became im- 
 portant to the discussion ; and the insignificance of the details 
 
THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 183 
 
 was not a sufficient reason for shoving them aside from con- 
 sideration. The common mind rarely reasons independently 
 of practical considerations ; and its prejudices, by which the 
 most wholesome laws are overthrown, are morally founded in 
 matters of fact, which, intrinsically, have, perhaps, no sort of 
 bearing upon the morals of the subject. To assert, as we do 
 in argument, that there is no course so illogical as that which 
 reasons from the abuse against the use, is scarcely sufficient 
 for oar purpose when dealing with the ignorant. It must be 
 our care, also, to show the gross exaggeration, if not utter 
 mis-statement, in the matter of the abuse; — show that the 
 morals of the philanthropist do not deny that he should lie 
 ad libitum, even when he proposes nothing less than a holy 
 warfare in the cause of truth ; and that if Slavery in the States 
 of the South is to be overthrown, it must be by argument 
 drawn from intrinsic considerations of the institution itself, 
 and not from the alleged inhumanity of the slave-hold.r. 
 
 I was not unwilling to comply with the request of my 
 friend — not unwilling to assist the stranger to our country in 
 arriving at a knowledge — which appears so equally difficult 
 and necessary —of a region of the world, which our foreign 
 brethren are so well pleased to insist upon as barbarous. But 
 here, at the very threshold of the subject, my pride revolted 
 at the task. Why should we account to these people ? 
 What are they that they should subject us to the question ? 
 We are their equals ; sprung from the same stocks, in pos- 
 session of the same authorities, learning at the same schools, 
 taught from the same books, by the same great masters 
 of thought and language, and in the fall assertion of an equal 
 civilization and freedom. Speaking once with Miss C. Sedg- 
 wick, — a lady whom, in spite of her abolition prejudices, I 
 greatly esteem, — in respect to the gradual progress of the 
 negro under our care and tuition, to the exercise of a higher 
 
184 THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 
 
 moral and intellect than he had ever exhibited, as a freeman in 
 his own or in any country, she asked " But what security do 
 you give us that you will continue to advance him?" The 
 natural reply was immediate. " Give ]/ M~J&vuxxtj J . You 
 mistake. We offer you none. We are your equals. "We 
 owe you no accountability. Ourj^sjDon^ibJJity' is to God and 
 our own consciences alone." The same natural pride would 
 prompt us to answer the seorner with scorn, and the assailant 
 with defiance. What we offer is voluntary. What we put 
 Am record, is not in our defence, but in the assertion of the 
 '"'truth, and that we may furnish the due authorities to history. 
 The very approach to the subject, on the part of the stranger, 
 is an implied impertinence. It goes on the assumption of 
 our inferiority, as well as our error. The Southern people 
 form a nation, and, as such, it derogates from their dignity 
 that they should be called to answer at the tribunals of any 
 other nation. When that call shall be definitely or impera- j 
 lively made, they will answer with their weapons, and in no 
 other language than that of war to the knife. 
 
 As individuals, the annoyance of such an approach is more 
 acutely felt, since it outrages their personal self-esteem. The 
 Southron asks with indignation, why it is that he and his 
 people should be supposed guilty of brutalities and cruelties 
 to the negro race, which are inconsistent with the civilization 
 of that race to which he belongs? What do you see in us, 
 our manners, tastes, opinions or habits, to lead you to think 
 us less humane and intelligent than yourselves ; less consider- 
 ate of the claims, less solicitous of the sympathies of the in- 
 ferior ? And he may well ask these questions, with astonish- 
 ment, sinco, what he sees, elsewhere, is by no means calculated 
 to prompt his doubts of an inferior humanity in his own 
 bosom. Yet the daily narrative and clamor of the abolition- 
 ists teaches this very doubt, which it is their policy to incul- 
 
THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 185 
 
 cate. In conflict with this assumption of our assailants, it is 
 usual to ascribe to the people of the South a somewhat supe- 
 rior refinement. Their grace of manner, courteous bearing, 
 gentleness of deportment, studious forbearance and unobtru- 
 siveness— their social characteristics, in general — all assumed 
 to spring from the peculiar institution of Negro Slavery, as 
 affording superior time, as well as leisure, to the controlling 
 race — are usually admitted without question. The testimony 
 of the intelligent European is commonly to this effect. That 
 these traits should be held consistent with brutal practice, 
 savage passions, and a reckless tyranny over inferiors, is natu- 
 rally a great difficulty in the way of those whose habit it is 
 to recognize good manners as, in some degree, a warranty 
 for good morals. In regard to the former, the Southron, who 
 is something of a traveller, has rarely occasion to feel morti- 
 fied at the comparison with the people among whom he 
 travels ; and his wonder is even greater than his mortification, 
 when he finds himself charged with crimes against humanity, 
 such as are in strange conflict with his social attainments and 
 position. To these charges it is not his custom to offer any 
 reply ; his scorn of the imputation usually rendering him 
 unconscious of the assailant, whom he regards rather as a 
 slanderer than an adversary. 
 
 What is true of the relations of the Southern people with 
 the Northern, is, in a great degree, true of the general rela- 
 tions of both people with the British ; and the inordinate self- 
 esteem of the latter, coupled with quite an adequate share of 
 ignorance, makes it almost impossible to teach them, through 
 any processes, except those of war, to accord the simplest jus- 
 tice to* their cis- Atlantic descendants. In ordinary cases — ' 
 viewing the proposition abstractly — and a colony, it will be 
 taken for granted, must resemble, in all substantial par- 
 ticulars, the country from which it goes forth. In its habits 
 *16 
 
180 THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 
 
 and pursuits, its tastes and objects, its general modes of think- 
 ing, and the common carriage of society, its people will exhibit, 
 with very trifling modifications, the race from which they 
 sprang. This, which is true as a rule, is yet not without its 
 exceptions ; and it is the pleasure of the people of Great Bri- 
 tain to regard those of America as falling very far short of those 
 superior standards, of mind and society, which they have set 
 up as their own. Their travellers, accordingly, when they 
 come among us, and write about us, do so with the air of 
 persons surveying the savages of some newly found country — 
 some Polynesia or Australasia — that fifth portion of the world 
 for which they are only now providing fine names and proba- 
 bly foul destinies. Their very first approaches among us are 
 made with an air of superiority ; either of an insolence which 
 contemns, or of a patronage which is scarcely less offensive; 
 and they speak with certain assumptions forever in their 
 mouths, by which we are required to waive altogether the ad- 
 vantages of ancestry — forego any claims that might result to 
 us from the possession of an origin, a language and a litera- 
 ture, in common with themselves,- — and content ourselves with 
 that place, on the lower form, from which it is scarcely possi- 
 ble, or to be permitted, that we shall at any time emerge into 
 honorable consideration. Our intercourse, in limine, begins 
 with a distinct assertion of our inferiority and degeneracy ; and 
 the pert noble, or the unsexed spinster, never rising to a con- 
 sideration of what has been done by our branch of the family, 
 almost single-handed, will impudently set themselves up as 
 the social and political teachers of a people, which, from its 
 own ranks, has produced, in modern and recent times, many 
 of the master spirits of the world. One of the consequences 
 of this practice, is, to exclude all such persons from the society 
 of those who could best enlighten them in American facts, 
 and give them the most just notions of American morals and 
 
THE MORALS OP SLAVERY. 187 
 
 manners. Persons having a becoming sense of their own claims, 
 and those of their country, never permit these boors to enter 
 their habitations. They fall, accordingly, into the hands of 
 those only who seek notoriety ; — of those who, conscious of 
 inferior position at home, are eager to seize upon the titled or 
 the notorious foreigner — any one, indeed, who can, by any 
 possibility, lift them into local consideration. These persons 
 conciliate the visitor by such concessions as, did they represent 
 the nation, would wholly degrade it; and, not the least of the 
 evils accruing from their toadyism is, that they suffer, without 
 denial, the assumptions of the stranger at the expense of their 
 country. This is the fruit equally of their desire to flatter the 
 guest, and of their incapacity to engage in the argument. The 
 enlightened Englishman will find little difficulty in recognizing 
 the better society of the United States in those who make 
 him the fewest possible approaches ; — those who let him see, 
 at the outset, that their desire of society, however eager, is 
 not to be gratified at the sacrifice of their proper self-esteem. 
 The reserve of this class, towards the foreigner, is in due degree 
 with the eagerness with which the merely 'pretentious press 
 torwads him. What he hears and learns from the latter, in 
 respect to parties, sections, or the country at large, must always 
 be taken with a due caution, which never, at any time, over- 
 looks the doubtful moral of that authority which begins with 
 the surrender of the individual amour propre. 
 
 The misfortune of Miss Martineau was in falling very fre- 
 quently into such hands as these, when she came to this coun- 
 try ; a circumstance which, in addition to the farther fact that 
 her abolition sympathies conducted her naturally into the 
 embraces of those who were hostile to the South, served suf- 
 ficiently to fill her mind with false facts, as it had already 
 been sufficiently stored with false philosophy. That she saw 
 many intelligent and worthy people, besides, we do not deny ; 
 
188 THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 
 
 but she saw thorn, and sought them, only that she might ex- 
 ercise her favorite passion for polemics. She Bought them for 
 the purposes of encounter ; and frequently chuckled, in fancied 
 triumphs, over statesmen and philosophers, who preferred tern 
 porarv submission to her tongue, rather than encounter the 
 toil of appealing to a mind which, on certain subjects, was, to 
 the full, as inaccessible as her ears. 
 
 When Miss Martineau, after acknowledging the peculiar 
 disability under which she labors, in being deaf, proceeds to 
 hunt up and to dilate upon some of the advantages of such an 
 infirmity; and, with an ingenuity which deserves credit, (and 
 in New-England might have found it, had she withheld her 
 remarks upon that region,) dilates upon the winning power 
 which her trumpet exercises in a t< te-a-trte — we, at once, dis- 
 cover the sort of person with whom we have to deal. Had 
 she written volumes with the design of illustrating the pecu- 
 liar properties of her own mind, she could have said nothing 
 which better conveys the idea of the adroit casuist, ready and 
 able to make the best case out of the worst ; — to raise subtle 
 hypotheses, — to BUggest means of fight and defence in the 
 worst cases. — to plan sorties and escapes ; and, whatever might 
 be the fate of the conflict, if she did not " change sides," at least 
 "still continue to dispute." The passage of her preface, in 
 which this singular stretch of self deception (if we may so style 
 it) occurs, is truly an amusing one. Her accuracy of infor- 
 mation, she insists, is not diminished in consequence of her 
 deafness; for her trumpet is one of " singular fidelity," and she 
 "gains more in a tete-a-tete, than is given to people who hear 
 general conversation." This is one of those pas-ages, with 
 which the volume abounds, which most admirably illustrate 
 the perfect assurance of the author. What person beside her- 
 self would undertake to argue fur the advantages of being 
 deaf ? To prove that the ears are but surplusage, is certainly 
 
THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 189 
 
 to suggest to the deity a process of improvement, by which 
 the curtailment of a sense will help the endowments of a phi- 
 losopher. Here, she assumes cognizance of a subject, and de- 
 cides a preference, which she is physically incapable of con- 
 sidering; and, without thought — for the reflection of a single 
 instant would have saved her from the absurdity — proceeds 
 to determine upon a point obviously beyond her capacity. Satis- 
 fied, herself, with the " charm of her trumpet," and fully per- 
 suaded, as she seems to be, of the truth of what she has said, 
 she is yet dubious that there will be some unwisely skeptical 
 whom it is yet necessary to convince ; and the reason which 
 she gives for the truth that is in her, may amuse many whom 
 it will certainly fail to satisfy. 
 
 "Its charm (the charm of chatting through a trumpet with 
 a deaf damsel of a ' certain age ! ') consists in the new feeling 
 which it imparts, of ease and privacy !" 
 
 It does not seem to strike her for an instant that, among a 
 people, like the Americans, who are singularly susceptible of 
 the ridiculous, there would be nothing half so awkward as to be 
 subjected to this chaiming tete-a-tcte. Yet such was the case. 
 We know many intelligent persons who declined to make the 
 lady's acquaintance while in this country, simply on account 
 of her trumpet, and the awkwardness of such a chat in com- 
 pany, who, otherwise, would have been very well pleased to 
 know her, and who might have afforded her some very useful 
 information. This latter opinion, she, perhaps, will not so 
 readily believe ; since she tells us, in brief, that, during her 
 travels of nearly two years among the Americans, seldom 
 more than two weeks in any one place, and thus dividing her 
 time among fifteen or eighteen millions of persons, she made 
 the acquaintance of nearly all of the distinguished people, 
 and believes that she " heard every argument that can possi- 
 bly be adduced in vindication or palliation of Slavery !" In a 
 
190 THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 
 
 note, only a few pages apart from tins precious sample of as- 
 surance, she gives a little anecdote which will answer all the 
 purposes of a commentary upon it. She says : 
 
 "A fact regarding Mr. Gallatin, shows what the obscurity 
 of country life in the United States may be. His estate was 
 originally in Virginia. By a new division it was thrown into 
 the back part of Pennsylvania. He ceased to be heard of for 
 some years During this time an advertisement ap- 
 peared in a newspaper, asking for tidings of ' one Albert Gal- 
 latin,' and adding, that it" he were still living, he might, on 
 making a certain application, hear of something to his advan- 
 tage." 
 
 So much for the story, which may be true or not. It is 
 highly probable. And yet, it will be remembered — that the 
 hardihood of our traveller may be the better understood — 
 that Mr. Albert Gallatin has the reputation of being one of 
 our most celebrated economists — a statesman highly distin- 
 guished for his acumen and frequently employed ; — an eth- 
 nologist of no mean reputation. It was left for Miss Marti- 
 neau, in spite of the "obscur'ty of country life in the United 
 States, 1 ' — which is peculiarly the nation of great distances, — 
 to find out all the distinguished men, and to hear all the argu- 
 ments that were worth hearing. The "charm " of her trum- 
 pet, however, bring taken into consideration, some of the 
 difficulties of the achievement were, no doubt, readily over- 
 come. 
 
 A little proem taken from a paper in the Edinburgh Review, 
 furnishes the text for a portion of her preface. This text 
 dilates, though summarily, upon the folly and impertinence 
 of any traveller assuming, by a brief race through a neighbor- 
 ing country, to generalize, for the people thereof, from his 
 own partial and hasty observations. Miss Martineau, with an 
 air of no little humility at first, acknowledges the force of this 
 
THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 191 
 
 paragraph ; and is almost resolved, as she felt the reasonable- 
 ness of its suggestions, to say nothing " in print on the condi- 
 tion of society in the United States." But she does not keep 
 in this mind long. Indeed, how could she, in utter disregard 
 of the leading habit of her life ? To quote the paragraph, 
 was only to serve its suggestions, as she does so many con- 
 versational ninepins which she sets up, here and there, 
 throughout her two volumes, simply to show how well she 
 can bowl them down. This is her obvious purpose in making 
 the quotation ; and she concludes not to mind its arguments, 
 but to print and generalize, for good or for evil ; contenting 
 herself with saying, most illogically, in defence of her resolve, 
 that " men will never arrive at a knowledge of each other, if 
 those who have the power of foreign observation refuse to re- 
 late what they think they have learned ; or even to lay before 
 others the materials from which they themselves hesitate to 
 construct a theory, or draw large conclusions." 
 
 No wonder error should breed so fast, and attain a growth 
 so vigorous, when this sort of morals is to be inculcated. " I am 
 not sure," says our author, " that what I tell you is the truth, 
 but never mind, it looks sufficiently like the truth for all com- 
 mon purposes, and with my dressing; and better that than 
 nothing. If we scruple to say what we conjecture, we should 
 perhaps know but little of each other, and an ingenious con- 
 jecture is certainly a good substitute for an unknown fact* 1 Be 
 thankful, with Sancho, and look not the gift horse too narrow- 
 ly in the mouth." 
 
 This is the gist of the argument. It does not occur to the 
 good lady that the task of unlearning the error is perhaps one 
 of the greatest difficulties in the way of the progress to the 
 truth. But allowing all the credit claimed for her reasoning, 
 it could only apply to a region of which there is no means to 
 acquire better information. In regard to the United States, 
 
192 THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 
 
 of which the people of Great Britain have it in their power to 
 know so much ; to which their travellers crowd daily ; of which 
 they publish accounts daily ; with which their intercourse, of 
 the most imposing; and valuable kind, is constant, absorbing, 
 and hourly increasing, the suggestion is a mere absurdity* 
 The good lady knew of this intimate relation quite as well as 
 any body else ; but she had a policy in forestalling the opin- 
 ions and inferences of others. It belonged to her philosophy 
 that she should furnish the guide points and the clues to the 
 traveller; that she should shape his facts and construct his 
 philosophies ; and this, not because she desired the perversion 
 of the truth, but that she was sworn to the progress of a theo- 
 ry which served all the purposes of a perfect truth to her. 
 
 The same preface affords us another marvellous statement, 
 in regard to the condition of Miss Marti neau'a mind, when she 
 proposed to visit the United States. To those who know the 
 lady, whether from her writings or from personal intercourse, 
 the following passage will seem as perfect an absurdity as any 
 of the many in her volumes. She tells us that she " went 
 with a mind, she believes, as nearly as possible unprejudiced 
 about America ; with a strong disposition to admire democra- 
 tic institutions ; but an entire ignorance how far the people of 
 the United States lived up to or fell below, their own theory. 
 She had read whatever she could lay hold of that had been 
 wrilfen about them ; but was unable to satisfy herself that, 
 after all, she understood anything whatever of their condition. 
 As to knowledge of them, her mind was nearly a blank ; as 
 to opinion of their state, she did not carry the germ of one." 
 
 If this be the truth, Miss Marti neau was capable of far more 
 forbearance, on the subject of the United States, than is her 
 usual habit on most other subjects. She was a democrat in 
 England, writing incessantly on topics, and in regard to insti- 
 tutions and objects, which necessarily involved a close conside- 
 
THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 193 
 
 ration of a region which, to her class, conveyed in some de- 
 gree an ideal realm of security and happiness, — perfect free- 
 dom and proper philanthropy. She tells us that she had 
 read all that she could lay hands on in relation to America, 
 yet had leaiv.ed nothing. Is it possible that such was the 
 case ; that the people of Great Britain, down to this the day 
 of her writing, had left themselves so utterly uninformed as 
 to a people with whom their original relations were so inti- 
 mate; with whom they had fought two bloody wars; with 
 whom they carried on the most profitable commercial inter- 
 course ? Credo t Judceas ! Miss Martineau, at least, could 
 never have left herself thus ignorant, whatever had been the 
 indifference of her people upon this subject. She is one of 
 those coarse, eager, bold, disputatious persons, strong of will, 
 restless in search, keen and persevering, who are never satis- 
 fied with themselves, until they have acquired some leading 
 notions upon every topic to which their minds may be ad- 
 dressed. She will store her memory with facts, or such as 
 she deems so, drawn from no matter what quarter, and she 
 will brood upon these facts until she shapes and resolves them 
 all into tributary groups for the maintenance of whatsoever 
 view of the case may have obtained predominance in her mind. 
 She has formed a habit of speculating as she goes, — a very 
 good habit, if her mind were not always subject to a bias, — 
 and with this habit she has formed another, a far less valua- 
 ble one, of declaiming her philosophies aloud, as fast as they 
 accumulate in her thought. Nothing escapes her tongue, 
 however much avoids her ear. No subject is felt too great, 
 none proves too little, for her scrutiny. She shrinks from 
 neither extreme. The shallows and the deeps, alike, form her 
 elements, though she shows herself ludicrously striving to 
 dive in the one, and to wade upright in the other. To those 
 who, not caring either to wade or dive in such waters, will 
 17 
 
192 THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 
 
 of which the people of Great Britain have it in their power to 
 know so much ; to which their travellers crowd daily ; of which 
 they publish accounts daily; with which their intercourse, of 
 the most imposing and valuable kind, is constant, absorbing, 
 and hourly increasing, the suggestion is a mere absurdity* 
 The good lady knew of this intimate relation quite as well as 
 any body else ; but she had a policy in forestalling the opin- 
 ions and inferences of others. It belonged to her philosophy 
 that she should furnish the guide points and the clues to the 
 traveller ; that she should shape his facts and construct his 
 philosophies ; and this, not because she desired the perversion 
 of the truth, but that she was sworn to the progress of a theo- 
 ry which served all the purposes of a perfect truth to her. 
 
 The same preface affords us another marvellous statement, 
 in regard to the condition of Miss Martineau's mind, when she 
 proposed to visit the United States. To those who know the 
 lady, whether from her writings or from personal intercourse, 
 the following passage will seem as perfect an absurdity as any 
 of the many in her volumes. She tells us that she " went 
 with a mind, she believes, as nearly as possible unprejudiced 
 about America; with a strong disposition to admire democra- 
 tic institutions ; but an entire ignorance how far the people of 
 the United States lived up to or fell below, their own theory. 
 She had read whatever she could lay hold of that had been 
 written about them ; but was unable to satisfy herself that, 
 after all, she understood anything whatever of their condition. 
 As to knowledge of them, her mind was nearly a blank ; as 
 to opinion of their state, she did not carry the germ of one." 
 
 If this be the truth, Miss Marti neau was capable of far more 
 forbearance, on the subject of the United States, than is her 
 usual habit on most other subjects. She was a democrat in 
 England, writing incessantly on topics, and in regard to insti- 
 tutions and objects, which necessarily involved a close conside- 
 
THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 195 
 
 Miss Martineau, should have prepared us for any other course. 
 " Mr. Speaker," he said naively, "I know nothing of the sub" 
 ject under discussion, but I intend to go on argufying it, until 
 I l'arn all the necessary knowledge," &c. 
 
 Miss Martineau argues, no doubt, with the same hope, 
 though it is clear that her progress is not exactly in the direc- 
 tion of the desired result. I do not doubt her real igno- 
 rance of the subject of America, for the simple reason that all 
 the facts in the world will not avail to make a simple truth, 
 in the case of one who perverts them to the maintenance of 
 a prejudice. As to the passive ness of her mind, in the forma- 
 tion of opinions touching this country, prior to her visit, we 
 may be permitted to doubt a little. She deceived herself, I 
 am very sure, as most English travellers do, on the subject of 
 this disj assionateness. The Halls', Hamilton's, Trollope's, et 
 id omne genus, all allege the same grateful impartiality ; nay, 
 the greater number of them insist, with Miss Martineau, upon 
 their absolutely democratic tendencies; as if any well educated 
 Englishman could be a democrat, in the vulgar sense of the 
 term, and at the same time an honest man. But the word 
 democrat, with the modern Englishman — I am not now 
 speaking of the Chartists — has really no signification more 
 profound than was implied in the old word Dissenter. Their 
 notion of it implied no revolution — no absolute change, per- 
 haps, — nothing more than a modification of existing condi- 
 tions, — with a more indulgent recognition on the part of those 
 in power, of the great merits of many, who sat in the king's 
 porch, upon anxious benches — waiters upon providence, in 
 better phrase. But American democracy was an argument 
 in the mouths of these good people, since it is sometimes ne- 
 cessary to appeal to the apprehensions, as well as the wisdom, 
 of men in power. For this reason, American democracy had 
 to be studied, and, if possible, understood. A similar neces- 
 
196 THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 
 
 sity existed in France, and that gave us De Tocqueville. Miss 
 Alartineau, possibly, had some design of doing for England, in 
 this respect, what the former had done for France. She might 
 ■well fancy that there was some special call upon her to do 
 this work. As a democrat after the English fashion — nay, 
 something more, — as a perfect leveller, for the time, in Eng- 
 land, the government and institutions of the United States 
 (Slavery always excepted) might well loom up before her ima- 
 gination in beautiful contrast with those of her own govern- 
 ment. Our theories more completely harmonized with her 
 own, — nay, most probably helped to originate them. She 
 could not, accordingly, by any possibility, have escaped the 
 formation of a large body of opinions in relation to our peo- 
 ple, society, and institutions ; and that she had formed such 
 opinions, and very decisive ones, too, in respect to them, is 
 everywhere apparent in these volumes. It is, indeed, from 
 opinions thus previously formed, upon imperfect data, or facts 
 vitiated by her anomalous theories, that most of her errors 
 have arisen. Her notions of democracy, for example, lead 
 her constantly to overlook the fact, that, whatever may be our 
 abstractions or her own, we have a limited and restraining 
 charter — a constitutional compact — which overrules and over- 
 rides, or should do so, every enactment of Congress and the 
 laws. This fact is continually conflicting, in its operations, 
 with the cherished idea in her head. Of course, whenever 
 this happens, we fall short of our theories — our plan is defec- 
 tive — the charter is anomalous — the people are corrupt. The 
 ideal of the good lady furnishes the only correct standard. 
 
 On the subject of Slavery in America, her detestation is 
 avowed as having been entertained long before she entered 
 the slave States. It was entertained long before she left Eng- 
 land; and very naturally so. The subject, from the labors of 
 Clarkson and others, had been the philanthropic hobby of the 
 
THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 197 
 
 British government and people for many years past. The wisest 
 among their statesmen doubted of the wisdom of this ; and the 
 number of doubters among their wise men, increases daily, as 
 the results of the emai.cipation experiment declare them- 
 selves. But, for a considerable period, it was the favorite sub- 
 ject of British declamation; that which cant most delighted to 
 indulge in, and to which national vanity was most pleased to 
 listen. The insane and cruel act which set free the slaves of 
 the British West Indies, to the ruin of that region as well as 
 themselves, was one of those tremendous acts of legislation, 
 by which pride and vanity rear themselves monuments ; but, 
 too frequently, at the expense of their country. Abolition, 
 naturally, under the sanction of such an act, became the na- 
 tional cry, the popular watch-word, the subject upon which 
 every mil-fed British subject felt himself entitled to expatiate. 
 The habit was prescriptive. There was no opinion in the 
 matter. It was the result of no thought, no examination of 
 the subject. It was simply the embodiment of a self-glorify- 
 ing phrase, uttered and uttered falsely long before, which pro- 
 claimed that the chains fell from the limbs of the slave the 
 moment that he touched the soil of Britain ; and this, while 
 Britain was planting African Slavery in America, and subject- 
 ing the free-born chiefs and people of the East to war, havoc, 
 spoliation, and the most cruel bondage. Verily, the only 
 monument which truth and the future will rear to the atro- 
 cious hypocrisy of such an act of grace as the emancipation of 
 the West India negroes, must be that " whited sepulchre," 
 which, in Scripture language, is made to illustrate that shame- 
 less looking up, and challenging the praise of heaven, while 
 doing the work of hell ! 
 
 It belonged to the generally levelling tendencies of Miss 
 Martineairs character that she should be hostile to the insti- 
 tution of Negro Slavery without regard to its facts. She 
 17* 
 
198 THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 
 
 shared the prejudices of her times and country, and, though 
 a strong-minded woman in many respects, it suited too well 
 with her usual modes of thinking, to set aside the national 
 prejudices, and, looking behind the mere name of odium, 
 which attached to the institution, to inquire into its substan- 
 tial working and results, by which, alone, the moral uses and 
 propriety of any institution could be determined. Had it not 
 been for this name of odium, and that Slavery had been 
 assimilated with those features of government policy which it 
 was her cue to obliterate, we shou'd have seen her, as we 
 have in latter days seen Carlyle, boldly looking through all 
 the mists and mystifications of the subject, and probing it 
 with an independent analysis, with which neither prescription, 
 nor prejudices, nor selfish policy, could be permitted to inter- 
 fere. Her self-relvinof nature would have sufficed for this, 
 had she not determined against Slavery, before acquiring any 
 just knowledge of that condition which has received this 
 name. On this topic, at least, her sentiments were decided 
 long before she left Europe. When she reached New-Eng- 
 land, the brotherly love of that region served to heighten 
 this detestation, which thenceforward became so cordial, that 
 all things and thoughts, whatever she saw or heard, only gave 
 it added aliment, It was fed, we are not sorry to add, in 
 most cases, at the previous sacrifice of truth. I do not mean 
 to say that Miss Marti neau wilfully related falsehoods, or 
 willingly adopted them. Far from it. I must do her the 
 justice to say that I regard her volumes, as written through- 
 out in good faith, and with a mind of the most perfect integ- 
 rity ; so far as integrity may be predicated cf a mind in a 
 condition only of partial sanity. But on the one subject she is 
 a monomaniac, with all the wonderful ingenuity, to pervert 
 the truth, and shape the fanciful to her purposes, which marks 
 the nature of the monomaniac. Biassed and bigoted to the 
 
THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 199 
 
 last degree on the subject of Slavery, she could neither believe 
 the truth, when it spoke in behalf of the slaveholder, nor ques- 
 tion the falsehood, however gross, when it fell from the lips of 
 the abolitionist. The morbid quality in her mind effectually 
 impaired her ordinary capacity, strong in most other respects, 
 to observe and judge with vigilance and sagacity. Thus, for 
 example, in proof not less of this bias, than of its demorali- 
 zing influence upon her mind, we are told that the abolition- 
 ists sent no incendiary tracts among the slaves, and that they 
 use no direct means towards promoting their objects in the 
 slave States. " It is wholly untrue that they insinuate their 
 publications into the South." Such is her bold assertion ; 
 yet, " Mr. Madison made the charge, so did Mr. Clay, so did 
 every slaveholder and merchant with whom I conversed. I 
 chose afterwards to hear the other side of the whole question ; 
 and I found, to my amazement, that this charge was wholly 
 groundless." Here the lady undertakes to decide a question 
 of veracity, with singular composure, in favor of her friends, 
 and at the expense of the first names of the country. Would 
 Miss Martineau have done this, and that too in the assertion 
 of a negative, if she were in full possession of her wits? But, 
 so far from the denial being valid, " of the other side," the 
 matter is one of public notoriety throughout the country ; 
 leading, in some cases, to demonstrations, which were beyond 
 question the gutting of post-offices, filled with incendiary 
 documents, and public bonfires of their contents in the streets 
 of large cities. 
 
 " Nor did it occur to me," she writes, " that, as slaves can- 
 not read," <tc. 
 
 This is one of her assertions, her facts, which is as noto- 
 riously false as her previous statement. Thousands of negro 
 slaves do read, as any body may see who has ever visited the 
 cities of the South ; but, the slaveholders allege — though the 
 
200 THE MORALS OP SLAVERY. 
 
 abolitionists may deny — that, lest the slave should labor 
 under this disability, and for the better conveying the lesson 
 to the thousands that do read, gross cuts are employed in these 
 abolition newspapers, and are even stamped upon manufac- 
 tured cottons, of the kind usually furnished for negro con- 
 sumption, and insinuated, here and there, at decent intervals, 
 among the bales designed for the Southern market. Such 
 bales were laid bare to public examination, in the city of 
 Charleston, but a few years before the visit of MissMartineau. 
 She might have obtained ample evidence from New-England 
 authority, on this point, had she desired it, when in that city. 
 " Slavery," says our author, " of a very mild kind, has 
 been abolished in the northern parts of the Union." What 
 xA knowledge had Miss Marti neau, except from interested par- 
 ties, by which to enable her to pronounce so authoritatively 
 upon the character of the institution at the North ? Slavery, 
 properly speaking, never was abolished at all, in any of the 
 States where it originally obtained. It simply died out, 
 when it ceased to be profitable. In some of the States, no 
 formal enactment was necessary ; and we believe it is only 
 within five years that Massachusetts placed any such decree 
 among her statutes ; if, indeed, she has yet done so. The 
 New-England States were never, to any great extent, slave- 
 holding ; their virtues were chiefly exercised in slave-selling. 
 To New-England and Old England, the South almost wholly 
 owes her slaves. They stole the African from his native land, 
 and bartered him away, without a care what became of him 
 afterwards ; their philanthropy by no means disquieted at the 
 reflection that he might fall into the hands of those who 
 might brutally entreat him — a people, not like themselves, 
 proverbially God-fearing and men-loving. They kept but 
 few of their captives among themselves, and those only who 
 were least saleable. It was not profitable to use negro labor in 
 
THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 201 
 
 the cold and sterile regions of New-England ; nor did any act of 
 abolition, when it did occur, help many of the slaves of that 
 country. The great bulk of their negroes were sold to the 
 South long before it could go into operation. Few were suf- 
 fered to remain to taste its benefits (?) except the infirm, and 
 here and there an old servant of some wealthy family, who 
 could very well afford to give him that liberty which the 
 dependent rarely sought to assert. This is the true history 
 of Slavery in New-England. We may add — what may be 
 new to our British philanthropists — that it was from the 
 Southern colonies that the prayer was first heard to arise, to 
 the British Parliament, to arrest the further traffic in, and 
 importation of, slaves ; a prayer to which the mother country 
 turned a deaf ear always. New-England continued to steal 
 and sell the property which she did not care to keep, and for 
 which she now refuses all warranty. She would still continue 
 to do so, if she could. Her ships still continue the trade at the 
 perils of piracy. The South gave up one of its best securities 
 against New-England morals when it assented to the abolition 
 of the slave trade. But, to proceed with our author. 
 
 It is one part of the policy of the abolitionists to urge the 
 continual insecurity which attends the condition of the slave- 
 holder ; to show that he sleeps upon the pillow of fear, and 
 that his own convictions forever prompt the dread of ven- 
 geance at the hands of his serviles. There is an argument 
 to be deduced from this apprehension, if it could be shown to 
 exist, since any human institution, thus guarded by terror, 
 would seem to be in conflict with the design and decree of 
 Providence. The condition would seem an unnatural one, 
 and the moral which might be drawn from it would appear 
 to be fatal to its propriety. Such, at least, is the assumption ; 
 and it is one which we should by no means deny, if the dan- 
 ger arose from the natural movements of the servile mind, 
 
202 THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 
 
 and were not instigated from without. But, without engag- 
 ing in the discussion of this principle, it is enough that we 
 join issue with our enemies upon the fact. Miss Martineau 
 contributes, in a small way, to this portion of the subject, by 
 retailing a number of petty anecdotes ; — some ludicrous 
 enough, and others merely foolish and vicious without being 
 ludicrous, to show the feeling of insecurity of the whites of 
 the South, and their dread of the negro population. I quote 
 a single paragraph, by way of sample, from the collection of 
 the lady, and will proceed to analyze it, in order to show 
 the absurdity of the statement. In doing this, it will be seen 
 how singularly obtuse the mind may become, even in the 
 case of one so generally acute as Miss Martineau, when it is 
 inveterate in the pursuit of a given object, and held in bond- 
 age to a controlling prejudice. 
 
 " At Charleston, when a fire breaks out, the gentlemen all 
 / go home on the ringing of the alarm bell ; the ladies rise 
 and dress themselves and their children. It may be the 
 signal of insurrection ; and the fire burns on, for any help 
 the citizens give, till a battalion of soldiers marches down to 
 put it out." 
 
 Now, I take it, that, in any city in the world, slave or free, 
 the gentleman who happens to be absent from his family 
 when the fire-bell rings, will be apt to hurry home to see that 
 all is safe, and to quiet the alarm of his wife and children — 
 particularly, indeed, in a large city, where it is not so easy, at 
 all times, to determine in what quarter the fire rages. It may 
 be in your precincts, or in mine, but while neither of us 
 know, we had better both depart and see. There is nothing 
 at all remarkable in such a proceeding, let it occur among 
 men in any city. Were they not to do so, it would argue a 
 singular degree of indifference to the fate of objects and inter- 
 ests, which, in every community, are considered sufficiently 
 
THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 203 
 
 precious. There is surely nothing remarkable in the fact, nor 
 is it peculiar to Charleston, or to any other city in which slaves 
 are held. But, in a city that is largely built of wood— which 
 in comparatively recent times was almost wholly built of 
 wood, and that of the most inflammable kind —the resinous 
 pine — where a fire extends with amazing rapidity, and where 
 the ravages of fire have been alike frequent and terrible, — it 
 becomes especially necessary that the gentlemen should not 
 only make all haste in getting home, but that the lady should 
 be equally prompt in getting her children and other jewels 
 ready for rapid flight. All this would seem natural enough, 
 and these necessities would seem sufficiently justified on other 
 grounds than those of Slavery. " But," says Miss Martineau, 
 blindly a* well as deafly blundering into speech, which a single 
 moment of reflection would have made her quietly avoid — 
 " The fire burns on for any help the citizens give, till a bat- 
 talion of soldiers marches down to put it out." This is grave 
 fooling enough. Who are the soldiers in Charleston, but the 
 citizens, and how can soldiers extinguish a fire ? By guns 
 and bayonets ? These two simple questions, had the lady 
 allowed herself sufficient time for inquiry, would have saved 
 her from the emission of such an absurdity. We have 
 none but a citizen soldiery in Charleston, unless you regard 
 the hundred and fifty cadets at the military academy as so 
 many regulars, and count the score or two employees at the 
 United States arsenal, as sufficient guarantees against the 
 negroes in time of fire ; but, it so happens, that neither of 
 these bodies leave their separate stations, at such a period, or 
 seek, in any way, the scene of conflagration. But it is easy 
 to account for the lady's error. She had got hold of the tail, 
 rather than the head of the fact, and was resolute to twist it 
 to the required direction, in obedience to her fixed bias. There 
 is just truth enough in her story for the purposes of false- 
 
204 THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 
 
 hood; but even this slender capital was too imperfectly under- 
 stood by our author, to be used with effect. She was too 
 eager to launch her shaft at the slaveholders, to observe that 
 she aimed at them the notched, and not the barbed, extrem- 
 ity. Let us explain. There is an arrangemnt in Charleston, 
 by which a certain portion of the city militia — amounting 
 probably to two hundred men, — is required to appear on 
 parade whenever the alarm of fire is given. This body acts 
 simply as a military police, and is really auxiliary in its duties 
 to the ordinary city police and watch. It did originate, we 
 believe, at the period of the anticipated negro insurrection 
 in Charleston, in 1822; an affair which, we are disposed to 
 think, stands quite alone in the domestic history of that place, 
 and the scheme of which originated in an imported mulatto. 
 But the original cause for the creation of this military police 
 is no longer recognized as the necessity for its continuance. It 
 has other uses. It preserves public order, which is always 
 liable to disturbance on occasions of tire, and protects the 
 property which has been rescued from the flames. So little 
 is the popular apprehension of the slaves, that, of fifteen or 
 twenty fire engines owned by the city, a large number of 
 (these is entirely worked by negroes. Those who have seen 
 their excitement on occasions of public duty, have heard the 
 Babel-like uproar of their conflicting tongues, their shouts, 
 cries, clamor, and peculiar eloquence, would be very apt to 
 suppose that they had never been taught the first lesson in 
 subordination.* Certainly no one would suppose that they 
 
 * These facts were true when this pamphlet was originally written. 
 There may be some alteration in the present arrangement, with 
 which the writer is less familiar; at that date, the fire system in 
 Charleston was supposed to be particularly complete. The city had 
 so frequently and fearfully suffered, that improvement in the system, 
 and refinement upon it, was inevitable. The citizen soldiery, we 
 
THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 205 
 
 entertained any lurking jealousies or suspicions of their mas- 
 ters, or stood on such doubtful terms with them as might, by 
 possibility, require sharp application from the bayonets of the 
 guard on duty. A sudden shower from Che engines would 
 be more calculated to arouse their terror, and would be the 
 most obvious resort of the firemen, in the event of their 
 subordinates showing themselves lazy or unruly — the former 
 exhibition being by far the most likely of the two. 
 
 But, even did there exist among the people of Charleston 
 and the South generally, an apprehension of mutiny and 
 revolt among their seniles, to what would it amount ? What 
 would it prove? What argument would Miss Martineau and 
 the abolitionist brethren draw from the fact ? That the slave 
 is a discontent. That the superior authority anticipates trou- 
 ble and prepares for strife! Suppose we grant it, and in what 
 then does our condition as a community, and our relations 
 with our slaves, differ from that of any European people ? 
 Why are there standing armies in all the states of Europe ? 
 Why do grim sentries environ the highwaj's, the posts, sta- 
 tions, railway trains, public walks? Why do the citadels 
 
 need not say, do nothing towards extinguishing the fire, as the dear 
 old lady states. That is left to weil-drilled companies — hose, and 
 axe and engine. The city watch consists of about 100 men. This, to 
 a population of 44,000, is moderate enough ; and, during a fire, would 
 be of small value in preserving order. '1 he fire, guard, in biief, is an 
 auxiliary police. The detachment is relieved every three months. 
 Their duty, as stated in the text, is chiefly to receive and protect the 
 rescued goods, and to preserve order; since fires are most commonly 
 the work of incendiaries, who avail themselves of the public alarm to 
 plunder. Nor is this the only respect in which the fire police in 
 Charleston is superior There is a salaried officer, — an engineer — who, 
 ^vith certain assistants, is required to appear at every fire, properly 
 provided with powder made up into certain forms, and with the neees- 
 sary chev atix-de-fri.se, for blowing up houses — not negroes ! — in order to 
 the more summary arresting of the conflagration by making a vacuum. 
 18 
 
206 THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 
 
 look down with grinning muzzles upon the streets of the 
 peaceful city ? Why is the simple traveller, the single man, 
 compelled to carry his passport, and get it vised at every 
 stage in his journey — nay, why is he denied to journey in cer- 
 tain of the states of Europe at all ? Why are the walks of 
 the great city garrisoned with spies to report the sayings and 
 doings of the populace ? "Why does England growl at the 
 bare mention of Ireland, and present her bayonets, if she but 
 stirs, in her stagnating Bleep \ And why does France burden 
 herselt with the support of half a million of armed men ? 
 Why does Russia the same ? Why is Austria only a great 
 camp ? Why does New- York call out its militia to support 
 the sheriff and collect the rents of the Patroon — and uuavail- 
 ingly ? But why multiply the questions which can have but 
 one answer? It is because authority every where dreads the 
 revolt of the impatient, toiling, vexed, weary and ignorant 
 inferiority — because, slavish and superstitious, anxious to luxu- 
 riate in lordidden pleasures ; loathing the decreed toils which 
 are wholesome ; envious of the wealth which they have not 
 patience to wait for, or virtue to forbear to crave, — th^y would 
 have the day's pay without doing the day's work, and long to 
 vote themselves ease and affluence out of the possessions of 
 the wealthier classes. That the people of the Southern 
 States should adopt some precautions — some regulations, by 
 which to make their repose secure — is only what is done in 
 Europe, at greater expense, — in more imposing array, — with 
 greater ostentation of men and weapons. It is absolutely 
 absurd to speak of such police regulations as prevail in Caro- 
 lina, as of any significance at all, when we consider the pre- 
 cautions of the same sort which distinguish every state in 
 Europe ; but, when we add, that the civil and military police 
 of South-Carolina, and of any ot the Southern States, bears 
 no such proportion to the total of the population as occurs in 
 
THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 207 
 
 the states and cities of the North, we may quietly suffer this 
 count in Miss Martineau's indictment to remain without more 
 waste of words in answer. The police of Charleston is no- 
 thing to that of New-York, making a due relative estimate of 
 the two populations ; yet, in the former, such a thing* as a riot 
 is never heard of. There, no portion of the population, the 
 blackest and the poorest, is so degraded as to need to be shot 
 down by scores for the maintenance of order and the security 
 of society. 
 
 In the chapter devoted to " Revenue and Expenditure," we 
 are told, in an extraneous sentence, which is closed with a 
 note of exclamation, that in " South-Carolina there is a tax 
 on free people of color !" Had it not been that Miss Mar- 
 ti neau was too well satisfied with the surface of the fact, 
 she would have inquired farther ; in the New-England States 
 she certainly would have done so ; but it was quite enough 
 to show that in Carolina a special poll tax was levied upon 
 the unhappy free negro. Let us complete the fact, and pro- 
 bably do away with the mystery and injustice, by stating that 
 the same free person of color enjoys an exemption from 
 militia, from patrol, jury, guard and other duties, and is 
 required to perform no military service in time of war. For 
 such exemption the white mechanic and laborer — indeed, 
 most white men — would be very well pleased to pay ten times 
 the amount paid by the free negro as a capitation tax. But, 
 says the abolitionist, these duties are privileges, and the 
 exemption of the free negro, however grateful to his love of 
 ease, is still in the nature of a forfeiture. Precisely ; but it 
 is such a forfeiture as is conceived proper to his natural disa- 
 bilities. Our women are similarly exempt. The system with 
 us, whether it regards the free negroes or the slave, goes on 1/ 
 the assumption that he belongs to an inferior race, to whom 
 such trusts, where the rights of the superior race are con- 
 
208 THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 
 
 cerned, would be improperly confided. I shall Lave some- 
 thing further to say on this topic in another place. 
 
 In the remarks of our author upon the policy and institu- 
 tions of Carolina, to which I chiefly confine myself, there 
 are numerous other points, like the preceding, involving error, 
 either of fact or inference, which might be exposed with 
 little difficulty, were it worth my while to pursue such small 
 game. But, merely to multiply instances, when a few can be 
 made to illustrate the whole, would trespass, without profita- 
 ble result, upon the time of the reader. AH these blunders 
 of our author are to be ascribed to the one cause — her bias on 
 the subject of Slavery. This bias has been of .1 character so 
 tyrannical, as to derange her intellect, and utterly to bailie 
 her reasoning faculties, the moment she recurs to it. She 
 can make no correct observations, or exercise any proper judg- 
 ment, in any matter with which this subject is coupled, how- 
 ever remotely or incidentally. To those who think for them- 
 selves, and examine honestly, — her errors, in the greater num- 
 ber of cases, as in those we have instanced, carry their refuta- 
 tion on the face of them. They were unavoidable in a pro- 
 gress such as hers, and could not but occur to a person who, 
 like herself, pursued her travels, and made her observations, 
 with regard simply to a support of her theories. What one 
 wills to see is readily seen; what one resolves to believe, for 
 that he will find sufficient proofs; and that which already 
 constitutes a controlling faith in the mind, will never lack for 
 a cloud of witnesses. Miss Martineau can summon any 
 number. The vague apprehensions of women, filled with 
 fears and suspicions in due degree with their ignorance, are 
 already gravely written in her chronicles. Her informants are 
 frequently Northern women, who have married and removed 
 to the South. If not readily admitted into society, they 
 revenge themselves upon it by their slanders. Such persons 
 
THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 209 
 
 are always anxious to got away from a region where they 
 can make no figure ; and their lives are wasted in envious 
 repining"*, in complainings and vaporing*, and in a studied 
 misconstruction of the circumstances in which they live* 
 What Miss Marti neau hears of the fears of the Southern 
 people, are from such witnesses ; and they serve her in stead 
 on all occasions. It needs, for all such persons, but the slen- 
 derest support of fact, to justify the most monstrous revela- 
 tions. These charges against the South, drawn from such 
 sources, are of the most hotch-potch character, and, of what- 
 ever sort, they are fastened, as a matter of course, upon 
 Slavery. Of the rapes, hangings, burnings, murders, which 
 have happened upon the Southern border for fifty years, Miss 
 Martineau makes a grateful collection, and licks her lips over 
 them with the air of one about to gratify a very avid appe- 
 tite. She records many of which the people of the South 
 never heard. She enters into no such statistics at the North, — 
 but sets out, seemingly, with the assumption that they are to 
 be looked for only in the precincts of the slaveholder. She 
 does not seem to have asked about the offences against good 
 morals in New-York and Philadelphia, or the quality and 
 color of the offenders in those cities. If she hears that a slave 
 poisons an owner in Carolina, though this event may occur 
 once in a hundred years, she crows over it lustily. The very 
 instance which she records was given to her as a remarkable 
 one, yet she wilfully assumes it to be a common occurrence, 
 in spite of its notorious isolation. But the crimes of the free 
 negroes at the North, with whose condition alone, the com- 
 parison should be made of the Southern slave, entirely escape 
 her attention. Crimes and atrocities which occur in all com- 
 munities, and which simply indicate the bad passions and 
 vicious heart of the criminal, are assumed to be peculiar to the 
 state of Slavery ; while, the truth is, the South is confessedly 
 18* 
 
210 THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 
 
 the region of all the United States, where the criminal never 
 prospers. Compare its criminal reports with those that reach 
 us daily from the North. How many women are cruelly 
 murdered in the Northern cities — sometimes by priests, some- 
 times by professors ; by merchants and merchants' clerks. 
 "What a volume of depravity was unfolded in the trial of 
 Robinson ; and there was the case of Avery, and the case of 
 Colt, and the case of AVebster — a series of the most bloody, 
 base, cowardly murders, ai d all for money, or to get rid of an 
 importunate creditor. So deliberately done, too, the crime — 
 beguiling the creditor to the shambles, butchering him and 
 cutting him up, and pickling him, and packing him away, in 
 boxes, coal holes, privies ; decomposing him with lime, and 
 acids and vitriol. And the criminals all among " our best 
 citizens !" Of course, the offender mostly escapes, if he be 
 not poor. If he be poor, he goes to the gallows or the state 
 prison. The finding of the jury, declaring that the supposed 
 murderer is not guilty, does not do away with the fact that 
 the poor victim, man or woman, is murdered — nor does it 
 diminish the aggravation that they are almost invariably 
 murdered with impunity. The newspapers frequently record 
 forgeries by priests, by priests' sons, and by the founders of 
 splendid cities ; and while they wonder passingly that such 
 good people should turn out so bad, their chief regrets are 
 the loss of such enterprising citizens to the fine cities for 
 which they did so much. Alleged rapes, by negroes upon 
 white girls, are frequently stated by Northern journalists. 
 "We refer to Mr. Tappan for such particulars as resulted from 
 the examination of the Commissioners of the Magdalen Asy- 
 lum into the morals of New-York ; and we regret that Miss 
 Martineau had not looked more closely into the negro quar- 
 ters, and into the various police trials of negro offenders in 
 the different cities of the free States. Had she done this, she 
 
THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 211 
 
 would have spared us the entire chapter on the morals of 
 Slavery. Indeed, had she as narrowly examined the brothels, 
 and the stews, and the alleys, and sinks of London — with as 
 keen a nostril as she has thrust into the Southern country, 
 she would have paused before taking ship for the New World ; 
 and, as a good Christian, would have addressed herself to the 
 augean duty of cleansing out her own stables. It is a mod- 
 ern British statistician who tells us that, in London alone, 
 there are five thousand persons who will cut your throat for a 
 shilling. But why linger upon that royal lazar-house of suf- 
 fering, infamy and crime, which England offers, in all her 
 recesses, to the hopeless inspection of the philosopher. We 
 have only to read the narratives of her own statesmen, de- 
 scriptive of the sable horrors of the collieries, to feel that 
 rebuke from Britain is the saddest and stupidest of all imper- 
 tinences. It is to take a harder test, for trying the South, 
 that we invite the comparison with the free States of our own 
 country. Our crimes in the South are not only fewer, but 
 very different in character from theirs. With us, such a 
 thing as the murder of a woman is never heard of, or so rare- 
 ly as to make the event a marvel. Our men engage in dead- 
 ly combat with one another — proud, passionate men, filled 
 with mortified ambition, and goaded by public indignity. 
 But secret murders are infrequent. Throat-cutting to escape 
 a debt or dun, is not among our chronicles ; you never hear, 
 among us, of infernal machines sent into a family, in the guise 
 of innocent- mahogany cases, to explode when opened, and 
 blow a fearful household into eternity. But why pursue the 
 contrast ? It is one that every day's intelligence only serves 
 to heighten. 
 
 The antipathy of Miss Marti neau to the slaveholder, some- 
 times results in an amusing exposure of her absurd injustice. 
 Take a sample or two. At page 44, vol. i, she says : 
 
212 THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 
 
 " In the Senate, the people's right of petition is invaded. 
 Last session, it was ordained that all petitions, and memorials 
 relating to a particular subject — Slavery in the District of 
 Columbia — should be laid on the table, unread, and never 
 recurred to. Of course the people will not long submit to 
 this !" 
 
 Mark how her tone changes, in a case exactly parallel — 
 when it is my bull which has gored your ox ! At page r 0, of 
 the same volume, we tiud a similar proceeding of Congress 
 dismissed with a complacency quite remarkable, when com- 
 pared with the evident indignation of the preceding para- 
 graph. She is now speaking of Carolina nullification, and 
 the violent opposition of the State Rights portion of the 
 country to the protective policy of the Eastern States. 
 
 " Congress," says she, " went on legislating about the tariff 
 without regard to this opposition; and the protests of certain 
 Stttes, against their proceedings, were quiet/// laid on the 
 table as impertinences f n 
 
 The hatred of the white towards the colored population is 
 a subject of her notice, and she tells an anecdote, of which 
 she has probably heard only a portion of the particulars. 
 
 '' Lafayette,' 1 says she, ''on his Last visit to the United States, 
 expressed his astonishment at the increase of the prejudice 
 against color. He remembered, he said, how the black 
 soldiers used to mess with the whites in the revolutionary 
 war." 
 
 Had Miss Marti neau asked the particulars of this change, 
 which she should have done, she would have found that it 
 was a change altogether confined to those regions where 
 Slavery had been done away with ! The black soldiers were 
 employed, as such, at a time when their brethren (and them- 
 selves also, probably) were slaves, and were modestly satisfied 
 -with their condition of inferiority. By emancipation, and the 
 
THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 213 
 
 petting? of philanthropy, the coarse and uneducated negro be- 
 came lifted into a condition to which his intellect did not entitle S 
 him, and to which his manners were unequal ; — he became 
 presumptuous accordingly, and consequently offensive ; — and 
 the whites, who could have tolerated him in his proper and 
 inferior condition, were naturally outraged by the impudence of 
 the creature when lifted out of place. There is no doubt that he 
 is an object of dislike and hatred in the Northern cities, and 
 with good reason. lie is a rival without being an equal ; a 
 competitor without like responsibilities with those to whom he 
 opposes himself. lie is presumptuous in due degree with his 
 sense of irresponsibility. His habits of idleness increase his 
 presumption, while lessening his moral, wretchedly feeble 
 from the first. The complaint of the white population of the 
 North is always to this effect. The blacks do uot labor on 
 the same terms with the whites. In fact, they will not labor 
 at all if they can escape it. They will do jobs, do light 
 chores, brush boots, goon errands, sweep, tinker, and thieve, — 
 the latter upon the same petty scale which marks all their 
 performances. They skulk all manly and honorable toils, 
 such as the white prefers, boldly undertakes, and vigorously 
 performs. The black still seeks the position of the menial, 
 and is despised accordingly ; in that position he is easily ren- 
 dered impudent, for his conceit is intolerable when at large, 
 like that of a monkey ; when impudent he grows offensive, 
 and hence hateful. He must be always despicable in any 
 community which leaves him at liberty, and where he shrinks 
 from grappling with the higher toils and purposes which 
 alone can dignify the possession of freedom. 
 
 The case is for otherwise where Negro Slavery exists. In 
 the South, the negro is not an object of dislike or hatred. 
 There, he never offends by obtrusiveness ; he occupies his true 
 position, and, while he fills it modestly, he is regarded with 
 
214 THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 
 
 favor, nay, respect and love, and is treated with kindness and 
 affection. And this would be the result. North as weTl as 
 South, if he did not contend for an equality of position with a 
 people to whom he is morally and physically, interior. When 
 he does this, he provokes hatred inevitably, and must live in a 
 condition of perpetual insecurity. If his moral were not so 
 glaringly interior to his assumptions, and those made for him, 
 at the North, he would be torn to pieces by the laboring 
 classes among the whites. As it is, he frequently incurs this 
 danger. I need not surely refer to the frequent drubbings 
 which he receives, even in his wigwam, in the negro quarters 
 of the great cities. It is to him no castle. He is sometimes 
 torn out of it, neck and heels, by the mob, and his den de- 
 molished about his ears. But, when these things bike place, 
 our benevolent abolitionists ascribe the outrage to the influence 
 of the slaveholders. Listen to Miss Marti neau, at one mo- 
 ment, and she will persuade you that these slaveholders abso- 
 lutely rule the Northern cities ; that their influence is sovereign 
 for evil every where; and is mortally vexed at certain friendly 
 relations between Boston and Charleston, of which cities she 
 deals in terms not less insulting to their communities than 
 complimentary to the minds by which they are supposed to 
 be governed. But, a moment after, she forgets the prodigious 
 influence over the North for which she has given credit to the 
 South, and then tells us, that the latter seeks for disunion 
 because she is without influence. She then treats us to a 
 stock of anecdotes, showing the envy and hatred of the latter 
 towards the North, because of this deficiency. Envy of the 
 North by the South ! The boot is on the other leg, perhaps. 
 So far from envy, the error of the South is in the indulgence 
 of quite too complacent an estimate of its own resources. 
 The South is frequently made indignant at the assumptions of 
 the North, resenting frequent injustice and wrong which, in 
 
 
THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 215 
 
 other countries, would be called rank robbery ! But envy — 
 never ! That is not the Southern vice or weakness, though it 
 may have many vices for which to answer. 
 
 I could multiply extracts, page on page, to show the heated, 
 the malignant prejudices which darken the eyes, and baffle 
 the faculties of our author ; — but of what use ? A few spe- 
 cimens may serve. She looks at all things in our country as 
 through a blackened glass. The eyes of her mind are jaun- 
 diced — they are not healthy — they never will be healthy, 
 until she substitutes Christianity for that shrewd sort of phi- 
 losophy which is so grateful to human vanity, and which so 
 betrays the heart. Her eyes need the helping hand of that 
 benign occulist, Truth ; and truth will only be able to touch 
 them successfully, when she has first had them well washed 
 by that gentle handmaid, whom moralists call Humility. As 
 yet,. neither of them can do any thing for her case. Could 
 she enjoy the restoration of one faculty, by the forfeit of 
 another ; — could she recover her hearing by the surrender of 
 her speech ; — there might be hope of her. Now, she is too 
 talkative to listen, too deaf to hear, too confident of herself 
 to learn, even should Truth, in visible embodiment, descend 
 divinely to become her teacher ! But let us proceed with 
 our instances. 
 
 u When to all this is added that tremendous curse, the 
 possession of irresponsible power over slaves," &c. 
 
 There is no such irresponsibility in America. Ordinarily, 
 and in most cases, the interests of the owner are sufficient 
 protection for the slave. It is his policy to prolong his life, to 
 preserve his health, to promote his strength, and to give him 
 contentment. These objects imply adequate food and cloth- 
 ing, indulgent nurture, moderate tasks, and, as much, if not 
 more leisure, than is allotted usually to the laboring classes in 
 any couutry. The laws protect him also — as a being of infe- 
 
216 THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 
 
 rior caste, it is true — but the} 7 do protect him, in correspon- 
 dence with what is the obvious policy of the master. lie is as 
 effectually secured against wrong and murder as the white man, 
 and his securities are as unfrequently outraged. The murder 
 of the negro, slave or free, is punished with death. Wanton 
 injuries against him are redressed by the courts, as in the case 
 of the white man, and the courts will entertain an action for 
 damages for an assault even upon his character. That there 
 •will be instances in which he suffers wrong, blows, brutalities 
 and loss of life, are undeniable ; but these risks are not pecu- 
 liar to the slave. It will be time enough to ascribe these 
 offences against humanity, to the institution of Slavery, when 
 it is shown that free states and communities enjoy exemption 
 from them. We insist, and challenge investigation, that the 
 crimes of all descriptions, brutality, murder and violence, 
 occur less frequency in the slave than in the free States, and 
 that, even as they occur in the slave States, the negro is less 
 frequently the sufferer than the white man. 
 
 "A planter," says Miss Martineau, "stated to a sugar 
 refiner in New- York, that it was found the best economy to 
 work off the stock of negroes once in seven years." 
 
 Miss Martineau's credulity, on the subject of slave atroci- 
 ties, is sufficiently English. Such an assertion should not be 
 made but upon the most unquestionable authority. It would, 
 I fancy, be a subject of some difficulty to point out the Lou- 
 isiana planter who finds it the best economy to wear out his 
 machinery as rapidly as possible. It would be equally diffi- 
 cult, I apprehend, to bring forth the sugar refiner to sup- 
 port the indictment. As an honest man, — as a man of any 
 sort — he should have denounced by name the heartless wretch 
 by whom the speech was made. But this is of a piece with 
 the usual fictions of the abolitionists, which most commonly 
 defeat their malice by their absurdities. It is possible that 
 
THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 
 
 217 
 
 such a speech was made ; but supposing it true, it proves 
 nothing. To show that there is an individual monster in the 
 slave States, argues nothing against their morals. It must be^ 
 shown that his case is not the exception, but the ordinary 
 history. There is a work of fiction, recently published by 
 Mrs. Stowe, which is just now the rage with the abolitionists ; 
 the great error of which, throughout, consists in the accumu- 
 lation of all the instances that can be found of cruelty or 
 crime among the slaveholders. Admit all her statements to^ 
 be true, and they prove nothing. Her facts may be suscepti- 
 ble of proof, while her inferences are wholly false. Take an 
 example from this very work of fiction, (Uncle Tom's Cabin,) 
 which illustrates this error of reasoning among our enemies. 
 She shows us a planter of Louisiana, as one of the most 
 heartless, bloody, brutal, gross, loathsome and ignorant 
 wretches under the sun. She gives us the most shocking 
 details of his inhumanities ; but, in doing so, she herself 
 isolates him. She shows that he resides in a remote, and 
 scarcehj inaccessible swamp region, where his conduct comes 
 under no human cognizance. How is society answerable for 
 his offences? How does he represent the condition and char- 
 acter of the slaveholder ? The very isolation of his position 
 and of the case, is conclusive against its application. When 
 to this we add, that the equal necessities of truth and fiction 
 seem to have compelled her, though a Yankee, to admit that 
 this brutal specimen is a Yankee also, we may reasonably, 
 without shaking our skirts, refer his responsibilities back to 
 his native parish. 
 
 We have been apt, in the South, to think and to assert, that 
 there are few people so very well satisfied with their condition 
 as the negroes, — so happy of mood, so jocund, and so generally 
 healthy and cheerful. Such has been the general admission 
 of the traveller. But Miss Martineau, seeing through her 
 19 
 
218 THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 
 
 own eyes, gives very different testimony. She never saw " in 
 any brute, an expression of countenance so low, so lost, as in 
 the most degraded classes of negroes. There is some life and 
 intelligence in the countenance of every animal ; even in that 
 of the silly sheep ; nothing so dead as the vacant, unheeding 
 look of the depressed slave is to be seen." 
 
 The depressed slave, we suppose, will look depressed, just 
 as the white man in a state of depression. There is no com- 
 bating the statement as it is made ; but it is so put as to con- 
 vey the idea that such is the usual appearance of the slave, 
 and as the natural result of his condition. Unless this be 
 meant, the passage is simply absurd and gratuitous ; nobody 
 need be told that men who sutler will be apt to look like 
 sufferers. It is the testimony of travellers generally — British 
 mostly — and Miss Martineau among them — that the Ameri- 
 can countenance generally (that of the whites) is that of 
 a people care-worn and prematurely old. This is ascribed by 
 the same charitable persons to the greedy avarice of the 
 people, the degrading, intense and unintermitted worship of 
 the " eternal dollar." The exceptions which they have made, 
 when this sarcasm was to be established, were all in favor of 
 the slave. Even in the pages of our author, we might find a 
 dozen passages which go to this effect, and thus conflict with 
 that which we have quoted ; and, but that it appeared to 
 serve the purposes of Miss Marti neau's single object and 
 argument, to show the brutalizing processes of slavery upon 
 its subjects, we think it very probable that she would have 
 seen very differently. The prevailing desire of the mind but 
 too commonly imparts its own color to the eyes, and when it 
 fails to do so, the perversely hostile soon discovers some in- 
 genious method by which to evade the argument which is 
 suggested by the senses. Thus, when Dr. Lardner was in 
 this country, and on a visit to Carolina, he found himself 
 
THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 219 
 
 forced to wonder at the exceeding comfort, and great cheer- 
 fulness and contentment of the negro. He freely admitted 
 that nowhere were the laboring classes better, if so well 
 treated, as our slaves. Their sprightliness particularly com- 
 manded his notice, their buoyancy and happy abandon. So 
 far, his eyes beheld things through a different medium from 
 Miss Martineau ; but the Doctor was philosophically per- 
 verse ; and more ingenious, in the adoption and use of the 
 fact, than the lady in rejection of it. His regret and com- 
 plaint were that the silly negroes were so cheerful, so content, 
 so happy, so well fed, clothed, and generally entreated. 
 Why ? do you suppose ? " Because, it permanently recon- 
 ciled them to their condition!'''' We ask, with surprise — 
 Well ! if so, is not this prima, facie evidence that the condi- 
 tion is the very best for them ? " Not so !" the Doctor sub- 
 stantially replies, " for the sufficient reason that it conflicts 
 with certain ideas in my mind on that subject /" This is the 
 difficulty with ail these people. The Doctor was a better 
 observer than philosopher. He blundered in this case, as he 
 did in his relations with Mrs. Heavyside. The Doctor's eyes 
 showed him, truly, that the lady was fair to look upon ; it 
 was his moral philosophy that failed him, not his senses, 
 when he broke the commandments, and lusted after his 
 neighbor's wife. 
 
 In further illustration of the tendency of our minds to 
 control our capacities for observation, and the just use of our 
 senses, I give another instance, in the case of another traveller 
 in the South. Mr. Charles Hoffman, of New- York, a gentle- 
 man of good family, and the author of several works of 
 merit, recently (1836) put forth a couple of volumes of travels 
 in the South and West. On his arrival in Virginia, he is 
 startled with a spectacle, such as he has never before wit- 
 nessed, and which painfully reminds him that he is in a slave 
 
220 THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 
 
 State. "What is that spectacle ? A stout, able-bodied white 
 man is beheld, sitting, or lying at ease, in his piazza, while an 
 old negro is at work, hoe in hand, in the contiguous fields ! 
 Is it not curious that Mr. Huffman should never have seen 
 this spectacle a thousand times a day in the streets of New- 
 York ; — should nut have beheld the wealthy nabob at his 
 palace windows, along Broadway, or Fifth Avenue, reclining 
 in state, under crimson or azure curtains, canopied like a 
 prince, while the aged laborer plies his weary tuil, without 
 cessation, in the streets below ; — driving the iron ram duwn 
 upon the unmalleable stone, paving the highways, or, in mid- 
 summer, piling bricks, bearing the hud tu the house-top, saw- 
 ing wood and lifting luggage, performing tuils a thousand 
 times mure heavy than any task which is put upon the shoul- 
 ders uf the Southern slave ? The une condition proves the 
 existence of slavery no more than the other ; and there is no 
 sort of reason why the spectacle should give pain in one more 
 than in the other instance. They both simply declare for 
 the universal inequalities of fortune in all parts of the world. 
 TBut it was the contrast of color which smote the eyes, and 
 J drew the attention, of our traveller to the fact in Virginia, 
 which he had never witnessed in New- York. In New-York, 
 the negro is seldom caught doing hard work of any sort, and 
 he wins that sympathy in the South, from the Northern tra- 
 veller, which the latter does not seem to have accorded to the 
 sufferings of the working class at home. 
 
 M There is an obligation by law to keep an overseer, to 
 obviate insurrection." 
 
 This is said of Alabama. It may be true or not. It is 
 possible that there is a similar regulation in Carolina. If so, 
 it is pretty nearly obsolete. There is scarcely any need of 
 such a law ; and certainly none, in reference to the event which 
 is assigned as the reason for its enactment. It would seem 
 
THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 221 
 
 sufficiently to justify the practice of keeping an overseer, on 
 estates where the owner is not present, that the profit of the 
 plantation would dwindle to nothing without one. In Caro- 
 lina and Alabama, as in New-England, the interests of the 
 proprietor would sufficiently suggest the necessity of such an 
 employee. I know, indeed, of no part of the world, in which, 
 if the subordinates be numerous, the overseer can safely be 
 dispensed with, lie is employed, if not necessary, in every 
 factory of the free States. According to Miss Martineau, the 
 purpose of the overseer is to prevent that which, as a white 
 man, it would be equally his policy to resist and prevent, 
 though not employed as an overseer. He is in the same ship 
 with his employer, and the storm which would sink the one, 
 would not be likely to spare the other. But what would the 
 efforts of one overseer, a single man, in charge frequently of 
 an hundred slaves, avail against their outbreak ? The sug- 
 gesiton is an absurdity. He is empolyed with regard to other 
 objects ; to regulate, to direct, the labor of the negroes ; to 
 see that they work ; that they make a crop ; to keep them from 
 roving about the country, robbing hog- pens and hen-roosts, 
 and doing those things which occur to the negro, as, perhaps, 
 the only advantages that could possibly result to him from 
 his freedom. As for insurrection, nobody who knows any 
 thing of the country, or its people, has any apprehensions on 
 the subject. Men retire to their beds at night, on plantations 
 surrounded with slaves, without locking a door or bolting a 
 window. 
 
 " For any responsible service," says Miss Martineau, " slaves 
 are quite unfit." 
 
 This is not true. But, assuming it to be true, she infers 
 that it is because they are slaves that they are thus irrespon- 
 sible. AYhat is the fitness of the free negro at the Xorth — 
 what his responsibility ? In the South, we have ample evi- 
 19* 
 
222 THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 
 
 clence of their fitness, whenever they are faithful. The Vir- 
 ginia and Carolina negro is not only superior to the African 
 savages, from whom they sprung, but, when they have had 
 the advantages of training among the whites, the} 7 prove 
 themselves very far superior to the free redmen of the coun- 
 try. The latter defer to them in most seasons of difficulty. 
 They make them frequently their own and the u sense-keep- 
 ers" of the nation. The negro slave, Abraham, was the 
 master mind among the Seminoles. .He guided the councils 
 of " Micanopy" and others ; and had the policy of the United 
 States been a little more subtle, they might have prevented 
 the last war with the Seminoles, by proper douceurs to Abra- 
 ham. In respect to this subject of the negro intellect in the 
 slave condition, Miss Martineau's book is full of contradic- 
 tions. In one place, we are told that the slaves show them- 
 selves susceptible of education in numberless respects ; in 
 another, they are denied the capacity to cut out their own 
 garments. In the assertion of either case, the good lady 
 makes it prove the curse and crime of slavery. If the negro 
 is shown to have improved, she insists that it is an improve- 
 ment in spite, and not in consequence, of his subjection ; and 
 that his progress in a free condition would have been far 
 greater ; — if he fails, and shows himself incapable, it is only 
 because he is degraded by his bonds into fatuity. In the 
 South, nobody denies their susceptibility to training; none 
 who do not readily acknowledge and assert their improve- 
 ment. There are certain arts in which they may excel — cer- 
 tain employments for which they are specially fitted. Some 
 of the best dress makers and tailors in the South are slaves. 
 The mulatto has a genius for barbering and hair-dressing. 
 The black makes a first rate butcher, and as a fish and melon 
 vender is incomparable. His eloquence in crying his wares, 
 however rude, is very efficient. In the cities of the South, 
 
 
THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 223 
 
 the barbers, many of the butchers, and several of the tavern 
 keepers, are slaves or free negroes, quite respected, shrewd, 
 intelligent, and usually prosperous in all these occupations. 
 
 Miss Martineau not unfrequently takes the position of the 
 slaveholder, and argues his case for him, simply to show the 
 weakness of his cause. The defence is usually pitiful enough. 
 To show our own inequality to the argument, she records all 
 our angry speeches ; and the disputant whom, on another 
 subject, she would scorn to notice, is honored with a heedful 
 ear, and a chronicled remembrance, when he utters himself, 
 in a heat, and savagely, on a topic which is at all times apt to 
 provoke us. " We have our slaves and mean to keep them," 
 was never spoken by any Southern gentleman, by way of 
 argument on the subject of Slavery ; but in defiance ; shortly, 
 to answer an insolent party seeking to exercise a power in the 
 councils of the Federal Government, in relation to a subject 
 over which the Southron denies that government shall exer- 
 cise any jurisdiction ; or in answer, perhaps, to some impudent 
 foreigner, stupidly pressing upon a mood which his own pro- 
 vocations have rendered irritable to the last degree. 
 
 Speaking of the Southampton insurrection. Miss Martineau 
 says — " It happened before the abolition movement began • 
 for it is remarkable that no insurrections have taken place 
 since the friends of the slave have been busy afar off f 
 " whereas rebellions broke out as often as once a month before ; 
 there have been none since." Of this frequency of rebellion 
 we hear for the first time. In regard to the rest of this mat- 
 ter, we shall say but few words. Our author confounds cause 
 with effect. She should have said that the Southampton in- 
 surrection broke out before the secret workings of the aboli- 
 tionists had been generally detected or suspected. The insur- 
 rections ceased the moment that the lovino- labors of the abo- 
 litionists were discovered, and when they w 7 ere constrained to 
 
224 THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 
 
 be " busy only afar off." The fact, as well as the phrase, is 
 a very significant one. The moment that the South roused 
 itself, grew angry, drove the abolitionists off, and burned 
 their pamphlets and tracts, the insurrections, " which had 
 broke out as often as once a month before," entirely ceased ! 
 There have been none since. The good lady needs glass 
 eyes ! 
 
 The failure of Christian preaching among the slaves, in 
 making them any better, is next insisted on as the result of 
 slavery ; as if slavery, which requires submission and obedi- 
 ence on the part of the inferior, was not really an auxiliary to 
 the Christian preliminary of humility. But any one who 
 should report an improved condition of religion at the North, 
 in the free States, black or white, would greatly peril his 
 honest conscience. 
 
 " The testimony of slaveholders was explicit as to no moral 
 improvement having taken place in consequence of the intro- 
 duction of religion. There was less singing and dancing ; 
 but as much lying, drinking and stealing as ever." 
 
 The question might here be asked, who are the authorities 
 for the statement? It is too general and sweeping to be true. 
 In regard to some regions, the report is false; and in others 
 it is, perhaps, only true, in consequence of the peculiar quality 
 of the so-called religion which wast aught. But the vices 
 named are not confined to the slaves; and the budget of hor- 
 rors, brutalities and miscellaneous crimes, which the book of 
 Miss M. unfolds, as of occurrence among the free people of 
 the country, should have taught her to hesitate ere she 
 ascribed the short-comings of the negro to slavery. The 
 very abolition of singing and dancing, as the result of the 
 religion, must sufficiently show the sort of religion which was 
 busy ; and should certainly have produced some doubt, in the 
 mind of one so subtle on most subjects as the writer, whether 
 
THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 225 
 
 the religion itself which, at the outset, subverted the innocent 
 and natural recreations of a simple people, was not likely to 
 produce even greater evils than it professed to cure. The 
 philosophical mind has long since been anxiously watchful of 
 the fearful progress of a gloomy bigotry throughout the 
 land. Miss Martineau should not have treated it so blindly — 
 suffering her own infirmity to obscure to her view a subject 
 of the greatest popular importance. She should have re- 
 membered, while ascribing to slavery the defeat and failure 
 of the professors of religion to make any impression upon the 
 slaves, what she has herself said of their progress among the 
 red men, who are freed from all the restraints which she 
 deems so pernicious to the black. The gloomy and ascetic 
 doctrines of our teachers have resulted only in the greater 
 depravation of the savage : while the French Catholics, who 
 taught an easier faith, and indulgent laws of exercise and 
 recreation, have been eminently successful in improving them. 
 " Near Little Traverse, in the north-west part of Michigan," 
 says Miss Martineau, "there is an Indian village, full of 
 orderly and industrious inhabitants, employed chiefly in agri- 
 culture. The English and Americans have never succeeded 
 with the aborigines so well as the French ; and it may be 
 doubted whether the clergy have been a much greater blessing 
 than the traders." 
 
 There is one passage in Miss Martineau's book which calls 
 for the serious attention of the philosopher. We quote the 
 passage entire. She is describing the State asylum for luna- 
 tics, in Columbia, South-Carolina. " I observed that no peo- 
 ple of color were visible in any part of the establishment. I 
 inquired whether negroes were as subject to insanity as whites. 
 Probably ; but no means were known to have been taken to 
 ascertain the fact. From the violence of their passions, there 
 could be no doubt that insanity must exist among them. 
 
226 THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 
 
 Were such insane negroes ever seen? No one present bad 
 ever seen any. Where were they, then ? It was some time 
 before I could get a clear answer to this : but my friend, the 
 physician, said, at length, that he had no doubt they were kept 
 in outhouses, chained to logs, to prevent their doing mis- 
 chief." 
 
 It is singular, indeed, that we should find so very few insane 
 persons among the blacks. The absence of all care for the 
 morrow, for the future, for their own support in age, and the 
 support of their children, together with the restraints of labor, 
 tending to the subjection of those intense passions of which 
 Miss Martineau speaks, and which are not in consequence so 
 active, I am inclined to think, in the negro, as in the white 
 man, must greatly abridge the tendency to insanity ; and it 
 may be that the generally inferior activity of their minds, 
 is one cause of their freedom from this dreadful malady. 
 Certain it is, that we have few or no madmen among the 
 negroes. The idea that they are chained in out- houses to 
 logs, is idle enough ; since, in that condition, they would 
 require the constant attention of one or more able slaves, 
 which a master would not be willing to afford ; and would 
 be, in other respects, a monstrous annoyance. Were insanity 
 at all common among them, "it would be," in Miss Marti - 
 neau's own language, " the interest of masters to provide for 
 their useless or mischievous negroes ;" — and this — were there 
 sufficient occasion — would have been the case. But, in truth 
 there is little or no madness in South-Carolina, whether 
 among black or white.* The lunatic asylum is not a popular 
 
 * Since these passages were penned, the United States census con- 
 firms our facts, and thus justifies our inferences. The reader need not 
 be reminded of the official statement of Mr. Calhoun, when Secretary 
 of State, under Tyler, comparing the relative insanity of the North 
 and South, and the blind rage which followed the exposure among 
 the abolitionists. 
 
THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 227 
 
 institution in the State, as it is known to be unprofitable, 
 and was believed to be unnecessary. The patients are usually 
 very few — not enough to support the establishment — and 
 these, in half the number of instances, are drawn from other 
 States. The few cases of madness known in the State, prior 
 to the establishment of the present asylum, were kept in a 
 small building, devoted to the purpose, in Charleston, con- 
 nected with the Poor establishment of that city. Among the 
 inmates there were one or two negroes, both women — I do 
 not think that there were more. The number was greater 
 during the revolution, when the building appropriated to their 
 confinement stood in the same neighborhood with the fabric 
 more recently put to their use, and both within a short dis- 
 tance of the place of arms, or arsenal, which, when Charleston 
 fell into the possession of the British, was assigned as the 
 depot for the reception of the weapons of the defenders. A 
 melancholy fate attended the maniacs, in consequence of this 
 propinquity. The American prisoners, ordered to deposit 
 their arms in the arsenal, under the feelings of mortified pride 
 and shame, which, naturally enough, followed the surrender 
 of their city, threw the weapons and ammunition confusedly 
 together, into the hall designed for them, without any heed 
 to the danger of such carelessness. The consequences were 
 dreadful. The building was blown up, the guard of British 
 soldiers, fifty in number, destroyed, and the contiguous houses, 
 the poor-house and mad-house, destroyed also, with the great- 
 er number of their unhappy inmates. 
 
 But, to return to our author. Miss Martineau does not let 
 this opportunity slip, of conveying an imputation of inhu- 
 manity at the expense of the slaveholders. 
 
 " No member of society is charged with the duty of in- 
 vestigating cases of -disease and suffering among slaves, who 
 
228 THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 
 
 cannot make their own state known. They are wholly at the 
 mercy of their owners." 
 
 We had almost called these wilful misstatements. The 
 grand juries of the country are bound to take cognizance of 
 all such matters, and do so whenever occasion requires. The 
 slaves, themselves, will always contrive to make their suffer- 
 ings known, and have few scruples in complaining, whether 
 they have cause or not. A brutal master is sometimes pun- 
 ished, and always known ; and his offences against law and 
 humanity, in the treatment of his slaves, are quite as often 
 the subject of public inquiry and prosecution, as in any other 
 cases over which juries possess jurisdiction. But it is not 
 often that he offends by their ill-treatment. His interest in 
 the life and health of his slave obviates the necessity of any 
 particular supervision of the subject by the public authorities. 
 No better security has ever yet been devised by man, for the 
 safety of man, and the proper observance of humane laws by 
 the citizen, than that which the Southern slaveholder offers, 
 in the continual presence of his leading interests. It would 
 be fortunate for the country if the securities of the abolitionist 
 to society were half so good. As for the chaining of the ne- 
 gro lunatic in outhouses, the notion is ridiculous. A case of 
 temporary necessity like this may have occurred, but nothing 
 more. A madman, chained in an outhouse, would be a suffi- 
 cient source of disquiet to all the country round ; and the 
 neighborhood would soon rise, en masse, and compel his re- 
 
 o 
 
 moval to a place of safe-keeping. 
 
 There is one painful chapter in these two volumes, under 
 the head of "Morals of Slavery." It is painful, because it is 
 full of truth. It is devoted to the abuses, among slavehold- 
 ers, of the institution of slavery ; and it gives a collection of 
 statements which are, no doubt, in too many cases, founded 
 
 i 
 
THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 229 
 
 upon fact, of the illicit and foul conduct of some among us, 
 who make their slaves the victims and the instruments, alike, 
 of the most licentious passions. Regarding our slaves as a 
 dependent and inferior people, we are their natural and only 
 guardians ; and to treat them brutally, whether by wanton 
 physical injuries, by a neglect, or perversion of their morals, 
 is not more impolitic than it is dishonorable. We do not 
 quarrel with Miss Martineau for this chapter. The truth — 
 though it is not all truth — is quite enough to sustain her and 
 it ; and we trust that its utterance may have that beneficial 
 effect upon the relations of master and slave in our country, 
 which the truth is, at all times, most likely to have every 
 where. Still, we are not satisfied with the spirit with which 
 Miss M. records the grossness which fills this chapter. She 
 has exhibited a zest in searching into the secrets of our pri- 
 son-house, in the slave States, which she does not seem to 
 have shown in any other quarter. The female prostitution 
 of the South is studiously looked after, as if it were the pe- 
 culiar result of slavery. She makes no corresponding inquiry 
 into the j^ostitution of the North. She picks up no tales of 
 vice in that quarter — no rapes — no murders — no robberies — 
 no poisoning — no stabbing. She has addressed her whole 
 mind to the search after these things in the slave States ; 
 and, with a strange singleness of vision, she has entirely for- 
 borne the haunts of the negro at the North, and the degraded 
 classes in the free States. She says nothing whatsoever about 
 them. Had she demanded of Mr. Tap] tan a copy of the 
 report of the Commissioners of the Magdalen Asylum, of 
 New-York, of which he was the President, and one of the 
 founders, she would have been told by that publication, that, 
 in the city of New-York alone, not including blacks, there 
 are ten thousand professional prostitutes. We do not answer 
 for the truth of this assertion ; but as Miss M. has bestowed, 
 20 
 
\ 
 
 230 THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 
 
 elsewhere, a most lavish eulogy upon the veracity and general 
 good character of the abolitionists, and as Mr. Tappan has 
 been heretofore regarded as the very Coryphceus of that fra- 
 ternity, she will be able to determine for herself the degree 
 of confidence which she should yield to this statement. The 
 fact is, that, in the Southern States, the prostitutes of the 
 communities are usually slaves, unless when imported from 
 the free States. The negro and the colored woman, in the 
 South, supply the place which, at the North, is usually filled 
 with factory and serving girls. The evil is one for which 
 good morals can offer no apology in any region ; but this 
 may l»e said of it in the South, that it affects, there, a race 
 which has not yet been lifted into sensibilities, the possession 
 of which necessarily brings, with indulgence in the vice, the 
 consciousness of degradation. It does not debase the civi- 
 lized, as is the case with prostitution at the North. It scarce- 
 Iv, in any way, affects the mind of the negro, and does not 
 materially affect his social status. The case is far otherwise 
 with white prostitution. The only way to judge of the vice, 
 in connection with slavery, is to compare its practice in both 
 regions, North and South. Prostitution seems to be an inci- 
 dent of humanity, in its fallen state. Napoleon, rinding it 
 ineradicable from the community, legislated for it, and thus 
 ameliorated some of its evils. If the practice were not great 
 in, and common to, all communities, savage and civilized, bond 
 and free, it might be permitted to dwell upon its aspects, as 
 they show themselves especially in the slave States ; but not 
 as the matter stands with all. We may, and do, acknowledge 
 our guilt in the South, but not as slaveholders; and, looking 
 at all the regions of the earth, we may add, " those, only, who 
 are least guilty, may be permitted to cast the stone !" 
 
 We are perfectly safe in saying that two-thirds of these vol- 
 umes are devoted to the slavery question, and in the States of 
 
THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 231 
 
 the South. Now, the lady gives us a body of assumed facts ; 
 now, her declamations ujx>n them ; and, anon, a subtle topic 
 of metaphysics, by way of novel speculation. Setting forth 
 evidently with the resolve to uproot and utterly destroy an 
 institution which she has previously resolved to be evil, she 
 sees no aspect of it which is not so. The kindness of the 
 master to the slave is likened to the kindness which he has 
 for his dog ; the affection of the slave, and his respect for 
 one whom he looks up to as greatly superior, is ascribed to 
 the fear of punishment, or the utter fatuity of his intellect 
 Every anecdote of cruelty which she hears is religiously writ- 
 ten down, and honestly believed ; and even the jealous appre- 
 hensions of a jaundiced wife, who fears that her husband is 
 no better than he should be, are chronicled with a sad so- 
 lemnity — which is amusing enough — as the fruit of slavery. 
 The outrages of the borderers — the frontier law of "regula- 
 tion," or "lynching. 1 ' which is common to new countries, all 
 over the world — are ascribed to slavery. Miss M., along with 
 too many others, seems to think that none but well-bred, 
 quiet, peaceable men, should tame the wilderness. All her 
 stories of great crimes, of burning, and hanging, and stabbing, 
 which she has raked up with such exquisite care, are stories 
 of the borders. They bslong to that period in the history of 
 society, when civilization sends forth her pioneer to tame the 
 wilderness. Your well-bred city gentleman is no pioneer — 
 he belongs to a better condition of things, and to after times. 
 It is the bold, reckless adventurer, the dissolute outcast, the 
 exile from crime, or from necessities of one sort or another, 
 who goes forth to contend with the wild beasts, the stubborn 
 forests, and the savage tribes who prowl among them. These 
 people, naturally enough, become as wild, almost, as those 
 whom they conquer ; but they have their uses. They are 
 the lower limbs of civilization, and the links which connect 
 
232 THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 
 
 the wilderness with the city. They prepare the way for civi- 
 lization, if uncivilized themselves; and, however much we 
 may deplore the crimes which they sometimes commit, we 
 must content ourselves with the knowledge that these crimes 
 seem to be unavoidable, under the circumstances, and will 
 continue to be committed, by the same class of men, when- 
 ever, in a new country, the presence of such adventurers be- 
 comes necessary. This is said simply, by way of statement. 
 It is only a record of the fact, which I do not seek to excuse, 
 let it happen South or North. I look upon all violence 
 and all injustice as brutal, whether it be the burning of the 
 convent, the assault upon the trembling nuns, and their sub- 
 sequent denial of justice, the frequent murders of women in 
 places professing to be civilized, and where they are pleased 
 to declaim very much about the outrages upon the borders, 
 or the cruel 4t h neliings," at the South, of the sturdy incen- 
 diary. These atrocities, in the settled communities of our 
 country, may, most generally, be ascribed to the constant ap- 
 peals which are made to what is called u public opinion ;" an 
 appeal to a something — a power beyond the law — which is 
 expected to take the form of an equitable jurisdiction, and 
 remedy its Supposed deficiencies. This I take to be one of 
 the great causes of so much mobbing, and burning, and riot- 
 ing, and lynching, in recent times, among us. "Public opin- 
 ion," so called, is very apt to become public action ; and the 
 mob, whom an editor invokes to ridicule the militia law, will 
 not hesitate long to tar and feather the colonel, who is some- 
 thing of a martinet, and desires to sustain it. But it is not 
 public opinion which is thus invoked ; it is popular passion, 
 and a vain insolence, which are cherished and brought into 
 activity by such appeals, and which then become a tyranny, 
 being out of its place. Public opinion is of very slow, very 
 temperate, and very judicious formation. It is the aggregate 
 
THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 233 
 
 of small truths, and the experience of successive days and 
 years, which, heaped together, form a general principle, which 
 is of final conviction in every bosom. It only requires to 
 receive a name, in order to become a law ; and a law which 
 is precipitately imposed upon a people, in advance of the 
 formation of this sort of public opinion, will soon be openly 
 abolished, or become obsolete, in the progress of events. For 
 my own part, I am satisfied with the existing laws, until the 
 gradual and naturally formed convictions of the community, 
 and the progress of experience, shall call for their improve- 
 ment. I have no respect for those who set themselves up for 
 makers of public opinion; and as for the "hell-broth" so 
 compounded, I know not any draught which would not be more 
 wholesome than that which makes the body politic a body 
 plethoric, and leaves no remedy to the physician but the cau- 
 tery and the knife. The evils of this sort, thus originating, 
 are, by the way, far less frequent in the slave than in the free 
 States, which really no not appear to possess a single principle 
 of permanence and stability. 
 
 A goodly portion of the two volumes of Miss Martineau is 
 compiled from the conversations and opinions of Americans, 
 who are nameless, followed by her examination of them. 
 She sets up these argumentative nine-pins with the utmost 
 gravity, and bowls them down with great rapidity and won- 
 derful adroitness. Many of her arguments are carried on 
 with women ; and as there are very few women so ''cunning 
 of fence," on her own ground, as this professional disputant, it 
 is easy to see, not only that she obtains an easy victory, but 
 that she derives no increase of knowledge from the contro- 
 versy. Her own estimate of the mental pretensions of the 
 American women should have saved her from a misplaced 
 confidence either in their evidence or judgment. Indeed, she 
 only confides in their opinions when it answers her purpose to 
 20* 
 
234 THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 
 
 do so. She describes them as little above fatuity. The three 
 chapters devoted to this subject, under the general head of 
 k> Woman," present a singular and contradictory compound 
 of truth and error, which nothing but a rabid desire for pub- 
 lication could have suffered her to put forth. The minds of 
 the American women, according to her estimate, with few 
 exceptions, are little else than a blank. They have little or 
 no practical philosophy — no thought ; — and they confound 
 learning with wisdom. Wherever she heard of a woman 
 having a local celebrity, she was sure to find her a mere lin- 
 guist ; and she winds up her generally contemptuous estimate 
 of the sex, by ascribing drunkenness to the more enlightened 
 among them — a vice, perhaps, more - utterly foreign to the 
 American woman, than to the woman of any other country 
 on the face of the globe. "It is no secret, on the spot, that 
 the habit of intemperance is not unfrequent among women of 
 station and education, in the most enlightened parts of the 
 country. I witnessed some instances, and heard of more. It 
 does not seem to me to be regarded with all the dismay 
 which such a symptom ought to excite." The wonder is, 
 with sueh an estimate of the sex, she should have drawn 
 most of her authorities from them. This she does, common- 
 ly, on the subject of slavery. Her dialogues are mostly had 
 with women ; and those which she reports are certainly silly 
 enough, in most cases, to support her estimate. Fortunately, 
 since the days of Lady Blessington's protracted conversations 
 with Lord Byron, men are not satisfied with reports of this 
 description, unless they have proof that the stenographer has 
 been by, all the while, and busy. 
 
 Another source of authority, with Miss Martineau, are the 
 public men of our country — the members of Congress, of 
 both parties, and those, seemingly, among the most violent. 
 It does appear to me that she could not have erred more 
 
THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 235 
 
 strikingly than in this particular : since the furious partizan, 
 whether in England or America, is usually the last person in 
 the world from whom the unprejudiced and ungarbled truth 
 can be derived. That she should not have given the most 
 implicit confidence to their statements, is the legitimate con- 
 clusion from her own report of them. She tells us that they 
 strove to make a partizan of her — sought to secure her fa- 
 vorable opinions — and, on all occasions, exhibited much more 
 earnestness in making proselytes to the party, than they would 
 have done in securing them to the cause of truth. It is true, 
 she is, here and there, annoyed with something in their con- 
 duct that seems to startle her with the semblance of an in- 
 consistency ; but she does not, even then, doubt the good 
 faith of the speaker — when it serves her turn, or supports her 
 favorite idea. She suspects the judgment first — aye, al- 
 ways — with a self-confidence in her own, which is thoroughly 
 English — the weakness — anything but the prejudice and the 
 interest of party. The politicians of Carolina give heed, and 
 bow ready assent to all her anti-slavery propositions ; and 
 when she believes that she has them all snugly within the 
 hem of her garment, she is thunderstruck to hear them vote 
 aloud in approbation of Governor McDuffie's thoroughgoing, 
 yet only half-elaborated, opinions in favor of slavery. To this 
 day, she does not suspect that a polite Southern gentleman, 
 in a ball-room, would infinitely prefer bowing assent to all her 
 propositions, than gravely undertake to refute them, through 
 the medium of her ''charming" trumpet. 
 
 " It was necessary to purchase Florida, because it was a 
 retreat for runaways." 
 
 This was one reason, perhaps; but Miss M. seems to have 
 "been imperfectly acquainted with the history of Florida. It 
 may be well to inform her, that the best reason for the pur- 
 
236 THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 
 
 chase of that country, is kindred to that which prompts the 
 United States and Great Britain to maintain so jealous a 
 watch upon the Island of Cuba, in order to keep it from fall- 
 ing into the possession of any great maritime power. From 
 the first, Florida, under the Spaniards, had been the scourge 
 of the Southern States. As Colonies and States, they were 
 subjected to the continual incursions of the savages, under 
 Spanish influence; and the wars of the borders, between the 
 two people, were among the most sanguinary of those that 
 ever took place in America. St. Augustine was emphatically 
 styled, by the early English settlers in the South, as the 
 " Sallee of America." In later days, a more urgent neces- 
 sity arose for the acquisition of this territory, as it furnished 
 a foothold, during the war of 1812, to our affectionate mother, 
 England, to plant her standard upon it, and summon her red 
 brethren to pile up the scalps of her banished children be- 
 neath it. Had Miss Marti neau read the history, she might 
 have found stronger reasons for the acquisition of this terri- 
 tory by the United States, than the recovery of its fugitive 
 slaves ; though that would be reason quite enough, in our 
 estimation, to justify the purchase. But, he who knows any 
 thing of the American people, needs not to hunt up a neces- 
 sity, of any kind, for their acquisition of territory, or any 
 reason better than the greed and 'strength of appetite. It is 
 quite enough that the land is in the neighborhood, and acces- 
 sible, to be lusted after ; and the lust does not often scruple 
 at the process by which it gratifies itself. 
 
 Miss Martineau deals in unmeasured invective, in respect to 
 the annexation of Texas, an event then only in anticipation. 
 She has her nice little story, of abolition manufacture, touch- 
 ing this region also, which is quite different from that told by 
 the Texans themselves. But I need not linger upon this 
 topic. 
 
THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 237 
 
 Of the causes of the war with the Seminoles, she gives us 
 the following history : 
 
 "According to the laws of the slave States, the children of 
 the slaves follow the fortunes of the mother. It will be seen, 
 at a glance, what consequences follow upon this ; how it ope- 
 rates as a premium upon licentiousness among white men ; 
 how it prevents any but mock-marriages among slaves ; and, 
 also, what effect it must have upon any Indians with whom 
 slave women have taken refuge. The late Seminole war arose 
 out of this law. The escaped slaves had intermarried with 
 the Indians. The masters claimed the children. The Semi- 
 nole fathers would not deliver them up. Force was used, to 
 tear the children from their parents' arms, and the Indians 
 began their desperate, but very natural war, of extermination." 
 
 Such is the story of Miss Martineau. AVithout doubt, it 
 came from the mint of the abolitionists — the people of such 
 veracity. This version is entirely new in the South. It is a 
 budget of errors, one growing out of the other. The laws of 
 Florida do not prevail over the Indians. The children of 
 slaves only follow the condition of the mother, where the 
 laws prevail. If a runaway woman is recovered from the 
 Indian territory, her child will, of course, follow her condition, 
 under the laws of the State whence she escapes ; and there 
 may have been an instance where the child of an Indian father 
 is thus recovered, with the slave mother, and carried back 
 into bondage ; but I am disposed to doubt even this. The 
 occurrence is rare, if it ever does or did take place. The 
 Seminoles own slaves, which are either brought from the 
 Island of Cuba, or have been stolen from the whites, at re- 
 mote periods. They are only transferred from one kind of 
 slavery to another, since they are held by the Indians without 
 any restraints of law whatsoever and are liable to all their 
 caprices, of sudden rage, drunkenness, gloomy ferocity, and a 
 
238 THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 
 
 malice which seems natural to them. Under these influences, 
 the slave is frequently murdered, and the murderer goes un- 
 punished. It is only such philanthropists as modern abolition 
 provides, who esteem it better for the negro to be the slave 
 to the savage than to the civilized man. The Indians do not 
 often have intercourse with their slaws. They are a cold and 
 sterile people, as is the case with most of the wandering tribes. 
 Fecundity is one of the fruits of a settled and stationary po- 
 pulation. The marriages among the negro slaves of the 
 whites are much more formal, and quite as rigidly observed, 
 as among the Indians, who are polygamists or anything. 
 They are creatures of impulse, having nothing but the 
 mood of the moment for their laws. The rule, that the 
 child shall follow the condition of the mother, is not a 
 stimulant to licentiousness among the whites, and we almost 
 wonder to find Miss Marti neau meditating such a matter. 
 She certainly knows but little of human passion, if she sup- 
 poses that, in matters of this nature, the mercenary desire of 
 gain will prompt the white man to such excesses, other pro- 
 vocatives being wanting. So far from this being the motive, 
 it may be stated here with perfect safety, that the greater 
 number of the Southern mulattoes have been made free, in 
 consequence of their relationship to their owners. In tact, 
 mulatto slaves are not liked. They are a feebler race than 
 the negro, and less fitted for the labors of the field. Of late 
 years, some arbitrary laws have been passed in Carolina, 
 which forbid the citizens to free their slaves. I do not ap- 
 prove of these laws myself; but they have their advocates 
 among the majority, and reasons of State policy are given in 
 their behalf, which are imposing enough, if not altogether 
 sound. I am persuaded that it would be a wholesome policy 
 to revoke these laws. It would, in the first place, prevent 
 their frequent evasion. A more important consideration is, 
 
THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 239 
 
 that it would give to the owner a power now denied, of doing 
 full justice to the claims of the faithful and the intellectual, 
 without compelling him to banish them from their native 
 homes, while bestowing upon them their own mastery. The 
 war in Florida arose from other and more natural causes, 
 which the philosophical mind of Miss Marti neau would have 
 soon enough ferreted out, if the demon of abolition had not 
 possessed her brain, and too entirely darkened her vision. 
 The hunting grounds of the red men were too much circum- 
 scribed, by the gradual gathering of the whites around them, 
 to permit them to procure sustenance after their ordinary 
 habits. The game had become scarce, and, as they had not 
 yet been taught the first lesson of Christianity, as it is the 
 first decree of God — namely, the necessity of labor — they 
 were half the time in a state of starvation. Their contact 
 with the civilized must always result — as such contact has 
 everywhere resulted — either in their subjection as inferiors, or 
 their extermination. Their only safety will be found in their 
 enslavement, or in their removal to a region where the hunt- 
 ing grounds are open and unci rcu inscribed. They must perish 
 or remove, unless they conform to the established usages of 
 the States in which they linger, and fall into the customs of 
 the superior people. The government of the United States 
 has aimed at their removal for many years; but this removal 
 has been resisted in various quarters, and chiefly by the in- 
 strumentality of those universal philanthropists, who are now 
 known as abolitionists. They were strenuous in opposing it, 
 and did not confine their opposition to the councils of our 
 own nation. They preached resistance to the Indians them- 
 selves, and encouraged them to stay where they were, and 
 starve. Their eloquence, in these exhortations, overlooked 
 the absolute necessities of the Indian ; and was chiefly devoted 
 to the imaginary privations consequent upon his removal. 
 
240 THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 
 
 They dwelt pathetically upon the loss of his home, and his 
 banishment from his forefathers' graves ; and, in dilating upon 
 privations such as these, they entirely forgot all the more 
 serious evils arising from the state of sufferance in which he 
 dwelt, in an abridged territory, and under a government whose 
 regulations, his necessities, and his ignorance alike, drove him 
 momently to violate. He must either beg, steal or starve. 
 In seeking to avoid the latter, the commission of crime is fre- 
 quent. The red men become embroiled with the whites, whom 
 they despoil of their hogs and cattle, and whatever else they 
 can lay their hands on ; they refine obedience to the authori- 
 ties they offend ; they fly from the officers of justice, and seek 
 for shelter in their wild recesses, their swamps and everglades. 
 They are pursued, and, from their refractoriness, are treated, 
 naturally enough, as outlaws, by their pursuers. The num- 
 bers, on both sides, accumulate ; and blood is shed, and can 
 only cease to be shed in the utter extermination of the infe- 
 rior class. To avoid this dreadful necessity, the government 
 has been laboring to remove them to other homes, and a 
 wider extent of country, where they may follow, without let 
 or hindrance, the customs which they like. And this removal 
 is but a small and partial evil, in comparison with the many 
 evils which must follow upon their stay. Our homes depend, 
 for their comfort, not so much upon the associations of our 
 childhood, as upon their fitness for our mental and moral con- 
 dition. Men — civilized men — whose sensibilities upon such 
 matters are duly educated, and made fine and susceptible by 
 the institutions of society, daily dispose of their dwellings, 
 and depart into strange lands ; and while we doubt not that 
 all men must feel a sense of regret at parting from the homes 
 of infancy and youth, we should be paying but a sorry tribute 
 to their manliness, and proper nature, in regarding this as a 
 sore and overwhelming evil. The Indian, too, of all people 
 
THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 241 
 
 in the world, is the last to feel much, if any regret, at such a 
 necessity. It is no great sacrifice for him. From the moment 
 that his eyes opened upon the light, he has been a wanderer. 
 He has never known a fixed abode, until the appearance and 
 settlement of the whites formed a point of attraction, to 
 which, with all the consciousness of his inferiority, he tacitly 
 inclined. His fathers before him were wanderers, and, ac- 
 cording to their histories, their whole lives have been passed 
 in bearing their stakes from the wilderness to the seaside, and 
 from the seaside to the wilderness again. The habitations of 
 the Indians prove all this.* During the space of three hun- 
 dred years — the time of our acquaintance with them — they 
 have made no improvements ; they have built no house of 
 sufficient comfort or importance to be occupied by two suc- 
 fessive generations. Their habitations have been such, only, 
 as they could readily remove, or leave, without loss, to the 
 use of some succeeding occupant. Their towns — if the col- 
 lections of filthy wigwams in which they fester and breed 
 vermin may be called towns — are few, far between, and the 
 men seldom in them. Their women have ever been their 
 drudges, in the most degrading slavery — brutes denied in- 
 
 * The account which the aborigines gave of themselves to the first 
 discoverers, represented them to be the invaders of a people far superior 
 to ihemselves in civilization, which their greater numbers and savage 
 frrocity destroyed. This was the boast of the Indian to the white man. 
 The antique remains of woiks, fortifications, temples, and other fabrics, 
 which are dispersed all over the country, confirm this intelligence, with- 
 out regarding the obvious iact thar these were remains utterly beyond 
 the ability of the Indians to erect. This history, we may add, is the 
 history ot the world, as we read it everywhere. The moment that 
 civilization pauses in her conquests, she is overrun by the savage. She 
 cannot rest in her conquests. She must conquer, not only to improve 
 the savage, but to save herself. Let her pause, with an inferior tribe 
 beside her, not acknowledging her sway, and she is overthrown. 
 21 
 
2 42 THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 
 
 diligence, and slaves to the most vicious caprices of their 
 masters, without restraint or redress, unless it comes in the 
 sudden vengeance of some irritable relative. Such a people 
 have no idea of home. That is their best home which gives 
 them elbow room, and full forests in which to hunt. The 
 Florida war sprung entirely from want of such freedom, and 
 we may add, that most of our Indian wars have arisen from 
 the same single cause. The philanthropists who would keep 
 them in a region in which they have no resources of life, are 
 those only to whom such wars are to be ascribed. Still, we 
 do not deny the wanton injustice, and the occasional cruelty, 
 of the base white borderer. It would be wonderful, indeed, 
 if such people did forbear the commission of injustice. Their 
 labors are not of such a sort as would lead us to hope for 
 their forbearance ; and the necessities of the savage give them 
 but too frequent provocation for the exercise of their unre- 
 strained and brutal propensities. The true evil is in the con- 
 dition of things which keeps the two races in contact, yet not 
 in connection. The inferior people must fly from the presence, 
 or perish before the march of approaching civilization. 
 
 I come now to a point upon which the abolitionists, and 
 the Northern people universally, are more profoundly igno- 
 rant than upon almost any other subject. This is the as- 
 sumed greater dependence of the South, than any other sec- 
 tion, upon the confederacy. Miss Martineau, in this matter, 
 is the unreluctant mouth-piece of their crudities. Of course, 
 the weakness of the South, in these relations, is due to slavery. 
 
 " In case of war," says the good lady, "they might be only 
 too happy if their sjaves did run away, instead of rising up 
 against them at home." 
 
 The wish is very much the father of the thought.* Per- 
 
 * I slept, not long since, into one of the book shops of Broadway, 
 and, in a new magazine lying upon the counter, read a letter from a 
 
THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 243 
 
 haps there is nothing in the world that the people of the 
 South less apprehend, than this, of the insurrection of their 
 negroes. The attempts of this people at this object have been 
 singularly infrequent, and perhaps never would be dreamed 
 of, were their bad passions not appealed to by the abolitionists 
 or their emissaries. They are not a warlike people ; are, in- 
 deed, rather a timid race; have no concert, no system, and 
 are too well content with their condition, to the great grief of 
 such philosophers as Dr. Lardner, to desire any change. 
 And this has been the case from the beginning. I must 
 remind these reformers of a history which will scarcely add 
 strength to their convictions. The slave population in Caro- 
 lina was quite equal to its white population in 1776. That 
 conflict was one which obviously held forth the best opportu- 
 nities for an outbreak, had the slaves desired it. The British 
 authorities were not unfriendly to any proceedings, on their 
 part, which would have distressed their owners. They did 
 encourage them to take up arms, and undertook to form se- 
 parate bands of negro troops, to uniform them in their scarlet, 
 and furnish them with arms ; yet succeeded in persuading 
 only a single regiment to their ranks. The entire mass of 
 the slave population adhered, with unshaken fidelity, to their 
 masters — numbers followed or accompanied them to the field, 
 and fought at their sides, while the greater body faithfully 
 pursued their labors on the plantations — never deserting them 
 in trial, danger or privation, and exhibiting, amidst every re- 
 visitor in Charleston, who stated that, such was the apprehension en- 
 tertained of slave insurrections, that all the houses are enclosed with 
 brick or stone walls ! There are not half a dozen such walls in the 
 city. The enclosures are mostly of wood, and such as a strong man 
 would hew down with an axe in half a dozen strokes. But the absurd- 
 becomes most intelligible, when it is remembered that the slaves of 
 each household are lodgers within each enclosure. 
 
244 THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 
 
 verse of fortune, that respect, that propriety of moral, which 
 did nut presume in adversity, and took no license from the 
 disorder of the times; and this decorum and fidelity were 
 shown at a time when, to the presence of an overwhelmii g for- 
 eign enemy, was added the greater curse of a reckle.-s and 
 unsparing civil war, before their eyes, and among their own 
 masters. Perhaps the whole world cannot exhibit a history 
 more remarkable, or more worthy of grateful remembrance, 
 than the conduct of the serviles of the South, during the war 
 of the revolution. The few who were incorporated in the 
 ranks of the British were of little service, behaved with no 
 courage, and were soon dispersed or cut to pieces. Where 
 they survived, they probably shared the fate of thousands 
 more, whom the enemy found it much easier to convert into 
 slaves, in the West Indies, than soldiers in the Carolinas. 
 This history ought surely to suffice, to settle any doubts, 
 or hopes, of our philanthropic brethren, in regard to our se- 
 curities on this head. Of the remaining causes of Southern 
 insecurity from foreign war, it is perhaps quite enough to 
 state that the people of the South are born to the use of 
 arms, and are fearless in the employment of them. They have 
 never received any help from the North, at any period of their 
 fortunes, either before or since the formation of the confederacy. 
 They have, on the contrary, frequently sent their troops to the 
 succor of the Northern States. In the recent war with Mexi- 
 co, of the volunteers in the conquest of that country, under 
 Taylor and Scott, their contribution, in proportion to that of 
 the North, was as two to one. The people of the Southern 
 States are emphatically a military people. The very fact that 
 the tillage of the earth is confided mostly to an inferior race, 
 affords them leisure for war, for constant exercise with wea- 
 pons, and on horseback. The point, however, need not be 
 pursued. Enough, that the people of the South are conscious 
 
THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 245 
 
 of their strength, and entertain no sort of doubt of their 
 capacity to maintain themselves equally against the danger 
 from within and the foe without. 
 
 I have now gone through most of the points, in these vol- 
 umes, which, directly or indirectly, affect the moral and the 
 fact, in the case of South-Carolina. I have confined myself 
 mostly to the one State, as better prepared to speak as a wit- 
 ness on the subject, and satisfied that the argument, in the 
 case of one, will apply more or less thoroughly to that of all 
 the slave States. It would have been quite easy to expose 
 many other errors in these books, relating to the whole coun- 
 try, the result of Miss Marti neau's self-conceit, her monomania, 
 and her habit of generalizing from imperfect and inferior 
 sources of fact ; but this sort of labor is not very grateful, 
 and the game would be scarce worth the candle. I must 
 leave the task to other pens, more able and ready, in the re- 
 gions which she has wronged by her report I commend it to 
 them. A book like that of this lady, who appears to think, 
 and certainly labors to do so, after a fashion of her own, is 
 the proper sort of work for dissection. She arrays before us 
 all our alleged offences, and thus makes it easy to turn at once 
 to page and chapter, when we would make up the issue with 
 her. I had marked sundry little anecdotes which she gives 
 us, which, true in themselves, are yet false, in consequence of 
 her employment of them for the illustration of the truth in 
 general. But, as they involve no principles likely to affect 
 the question, and are so commonly in conflict with other mat- 
 ters which the samp, pages develope, we may leave it to the 
 reader to detect and contrast the examples for himself. They 
 will do no harm, even if they escape all objection. Indeed, 
 the book itself can do no harm. On the contrary, 1 am half 
 disposed to think it may be of some benefit, if it brings us 
 only to the knowledge of some of our errors. Like the spite- 
 21* 
 
246 THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 
 
 ful octavo of Mrs. Trollope, it tells us an occasional home 
 troth, North and South, which we may ponder, and upon 
 which we may improve. And yet there may be some unkind- 
 ness, in requiring the reader to toil through this weary wilder- 
 ness of chaff, in the hope of such small wheat as it promises. 
 Miss Martineau is a monstrous prose*. She has a terrible 
 power of words, and is tyrannical as she is powerful, in the 
 use of them. We have no doubt she is herself free from 
 stain or reproach ; but her tongue is wretchedly incontinent. 
 She is probably one of those persons who never believe that 
 they have been talking all the while. She declaims constant- 
 ly, and is forever searching after exceptions. She scruples at 
 no game, fears no opponent, and, whether the meat be washed 
 or unwashed, hawk or heron, it is all the same to her. She 
 discusses the rights of man, and — heaven save the mark ! — 
 the rights of women too, with her chambermaid, when she 
 cannot corner a senator. Smart exceedingly, well practised 
 in the minor economies of society, and having at her tongue's 
 end all the standards of value in the grain, cotton, beef and 
 butter markets, she does not scruple to apply them to the 
 more mysterious involutions of the mind and society. It is 
 but too evident that, with all her cleverness, she lacks that 
 more advantageous wisdom which begins with humility. She 
 is too dogmatical ever to be wise. She comes to teach, not 
 to learn. She gets nothing from her hearer, for she does not 
 hear him. If she listens, it is simply because she is confident 
 that her answer is ready. That she has never listened, while 
 in America, is evident from these volumes ; though I doubt 
 not that a great many words have gone through her trumpet. 
 Miss Martineau came to America with two or three texts in 
 her memory, which she assumed to be the only right stand- 
 ards by which our people were to be tried and their institu- 
 tions judged. These texts are so many broad and bold as- 
 
THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 247 
 
 sumptions, that have obtained currency, rather in consequence 
 of the audacity by which they have been urged, and perhaps 
 by some latent vitality, the result of partial truth within 
 them, than because of their complete and triumphant endu- 
 rance of the tests of experience and severe analysis. With 
 her, as with most European philosophers of her order, they 
 are assumptions only — specious or imposing — which have 
 been taken on trust ; according, perhaps, with the particular 
 temperament of the individual. To a woman of the bold, 
 free, masculine nature of Miss Martineau, impatient of the 
 restraints of her sex, and compelled to seek her distinction in 
 fields which women are rarely permitted to penetrate, demo- 
 cracy is one of the most attractive of social philosophies, as 
 conservatism must be necessarily the most offensive. With 
 her, the doctrine of majorities is the voice of God. She has 
 a fast faith in the proverb. The will of the majority, she in- 
 sists, will be right — right, always, in the end — a faith which 
 we should not care to dispute, since we can readily conceive 
 of a people, after having boxed the compass in experiments, 
 and bruised its shins, or broken its limbs, over a thousand 
 errors, arriving, at last, at the goal which it had never conjec- 
 tured, and had not the capacity to seek or to foresee. Let 
 " the end'' 1 be sufficiently remote, and we hardly question but 
 that, in God's mercy, all his scattered flocks will find their 
 way into the saving fold. But need this be a matter of 
 chance, and need there be any such long delay about it? 
 May not the thousand sorrows, trials, hurts and bruises of the 
 race be lessened, and the road to right be shorten id, under 
 other auspices ? Are not the delay and the suffering the 
 strict consequence of following such blind guides as our own 
 capricious passions, headlong will, fierce impulse, and impu- 
 dent presumption — following the multitude, in short, to do 
 evil ; and has not God appointed safer guides, specially gifted 
 
248 THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 
 
 beings, whom we were wiser to seek and follow, and who 
 would conduct as to the great object of our pilgrimage, at no 
 such peri), and with no such delay a* now attends the progress! 
 I confess that, though not unwilling to suppose the majority 
 may be right in the end, I am half disposed to prefer a mi- 
 nority that is right in the beginning. But that would not 
 suit Miss Martineau, who prefers to work out her own pro- 
 blems, at any cost, so that she can do the work for herself. 
 Sli<- tak.'s this doctrine of majorities lovingly in band, and, 
 applying it to sundry cases in her own mind — to which it is 
 not customary to apply it in America — she is alarmed at the 
 annoying inconsistency which follow-. Hence her wild chap- 
 ter about the u Rights of Women,* 5 her groans and invectives 
 because of their exclusion from the offices of state, the right 
 of suffrage, the exercise of political authority. In all this, 
 tin- error of the declaimer consists in the very first movement 
 of the mind. "The "Rights of Women" may all bo con- 
 ceded to tie- sex. wt tin- rights of nun withheld from them. 
 Here is all the difficulty. The knot of the Bubject lies in this 
 little respect ; and tin- untying of it, by no A'exandrine pro- 
 cess — we had almost said Caesarian— may enable us still to 
 insist upon our American understanding of the doctrine of 
 majorities, yet Ka\e the tender sex without any legitimate 
 cause of complaint. Certainly, if mere numbers are to be 
 considered the proper sources of power in a state, the infe- 
 rence follows that women must have a share in the adminis- 
 tration of affairs. The fact that they are not, in a country 
 which yet professes to be ruled by a majority, should h-»ve 
 prompted Miss Martineau to a closer inquiry into the source 
 of the peculiar lights of the majority. It is important to 
 know what was the peculiar sense, on this subject, of the 
 founders of our laws, customs, and constitution. We are in 
 possession of a good many very subtle and ingenious exposi- 
 
THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 249 
 
 tions of the secret principle by which the larger claims to rule 
 the smaller body. But I doubt the whole of them, and am 
 not sure that the whole moral of it is not an agreeable political 
 fiction, by which to save trouble, avoid difficulty, escape dan- 
 ger, and have leisure for more personal matters ; just as the 
 elevation of a pretty young woman to the throne of England, 
 following the prescribed order of events, prevents a constant 
 recurrence of struggles, ending in bloody wars, with regard 
 to the disputed succession. There must be, for the general 
 safety, some rule on these subjects, of general recognition, and 
 this of the majority is most in accordance with the genius, as it 
 is the preference, of the people. There may be found a sub- 
 stantial reason for it at bottom, which may be suggestive 
 to Miss Marti neau why women are not to be taken into the 
 account. The truth is, the doctrine of majorities simply de- 
 termines the presence of physical power, displayed by simple 
 arithmetic, by which we obviate any necessity for the applica- 
 tion of the brute force, when we assert our rights, and seek 
 their exercise by swaying over the rights of others. The 
 majority tells us where the brute force lies, and we submit to 
 it, with what philosophy we can, in all cases where the au- 
 thority which governs, entails upon us no such evils as would 
 follow from our physical struggle to shake it off. Whenever 
 the wrongs and injustice of the majority pass beyond the 
 ordinary bounds of patience, it is resisted, and the ultima 
 ratio is resorted to by the minority, either in hope or despe- 
 ration. There is no abstract charm, in mere numbers, to 
 compel the submission of those who are wronged, or who 
 think themselves so. But when it is known that votes repre- 
 sent men — able-bodied and armed men — the case is different. 
 We at once see the enemy with which we have to contend, 
 and the superior capacities which he possesses of coercion. 
 The doctrine of majorities is, in truth, no new doctrine. It 
 
250 THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 
 
 is as old as the hills. The only difference between times past 
 and times present, consists, simply, in the superior facilities 
 which, in modern times, we enjoy, of determining where the 
 power lies, without any resort to blows. It is more easy, 
 now-a-days, to compute the strength of the opposition, than 
 it was in the distant periods when war was almost invariably 
 the result of ignorance on both hands ; and never was the 
 doctrine more clearly illustrated than in the wars of Napoleon 
 Bonaparte, whose many successes were the sheer result of his 
 attention to this fact. His mode of concentrating his force 
 at a given point, in advance of his enemy, was the true secret 
 of his wonderful victories. Like all dexterous politicians, his 
 aim was to be always in a majority. Minorities would never 
 submit to the frequent injustice of majorities, but that they 
 well know that the court of dernier resort is one just as little 
 likely to give them redress, as the power which robs them of 
 their rights by a mere resort to the numeration table. 
 
 It is only one of many of the subjects of disquiet which 
 Miss Marti neau rinds, when she compares the ivork'uiy of our 
 system with its prescribed standards. The governing princi- 
 ples of our political condition, and the laws and practice un- 
 der them, she finds in frequent conflict; and her trouble is 
 that of the European generally. One of her points of diffi- 
 culty is in the famous passage in the declaration of American 
 independence, which announces that "all men are created 
 equal." The declaration has been one of long dispute, with 
 all sorts of philosophers, and the decision upon the vexed 
 question is not likely to be made in our day. Our excellent 
 forefathers, when they pronounced this truth to be self-evident, 
 were not in the best mood to become philosophers, however 
 well calculated to approve themselves the best of patriots. 
 They were much excited, nay, rather angry, in the days of 
 the u declaration," and hence it is that what they alleged to 
 
THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 251 
 
 be self evident then, is, at this time, when we are compara- 
 tively cool, a source of very great doubt and disputation. 
 But, the truth is, the phrase was simply a finely sounding 
 one, significant of that sentimental French philosophy, then 
 so current, which was destined to bear such sanguinary fruits 
 in after periods. Jefferson inclined to that school of philoso- 
 phers, so long as its sentimentality constituted its chief cha- 
 racteristic, and before the paradisaical fancies of which it was 
 so prolific had been literally swallowed up. in a sea of human 
 blood. How could Rousseau, or Jefferson, determine how 
 men were created— in what degrees— in what equality ? The 
 only record which we have, shows us, under the ordinary in- 
 terpretation of the churchmen, that there was never but a 
 single man created by the hands of God ; the rest were born, 
 under laws such as prevail uniformly through the animal v 
 world— in different climates, different realms, under different 
 conditions, victims to poverty, to exposure, to want, to dis- 
 ease, or pets of vanity, and pride, and opulence— all differing, 
 everywhere, in health, strength, size, circumstance — under no 
 uniformity of culture, training, education ; — ^unequal a scat- 
 tered family — color, race, tribe, feature — as if it had been the 
 studious purpose of the Deity that there should be as great a 
 variety in the human family, as among the brute and vegeta- 
 ble nations. And I have no doubt that such really was his 
 plan, conforming to all the analogies in nature. But the 
 statement of the case, as made in the " declaration of inde- 
 pendence," is, in its very nature, wholly indeterminable. No- 
 body, now-a-days, is born naked. Indeed, man was hardly 
 ever, at any period, in what we describe as a state of nature. 
 The artifices of a social condition were woven about him from 
 the earliest periods, and the essential inequalities of such 
 conditions, in differing societies, must always have had the 
 effect of establishing corresponding inequalities among the 
 
252 THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 
 
 individuals composing tribes and families, even if it had not 
 been the benevolent purpose of God that such inequalities 
 should constitute an essential feature of his plan of creation. 
 But, be sure that our good fathers, in the revolution, never 
 contemplated so wide a survey of the subject, when they in- 
 sisted upon the perfect equality of the sons of men. They 
 made the assertion in a more limited sense, evidently think- 
 ing not so much of the accouchement of Eve, as of the de- 
 livery of the American people. Their assertion meant no 
 more than this: "You, George the Third, whom we think a 
 tyrant, have presumed to call us, John Hancock, Samuel 
 Adams, Thomas Jefferson, etc., traitors and rebels. Now, 
 look you, George, we owe you no allegiance. We are as 
 good men as you, any day. We are your equals. God 
 created, or made, us so. Stand up and compare with us, if 
 you dare. Compare with us your best men — your Norths, 
 and Butes, and Germaines — and let us see where your supe- 
 riority lies. Physically, we are fully your match ; morally 
 and intellectually, your superiors. And so will our people 
 compare with yours, and with the whole world. God has 
 endowed them, equally with your people, with the capacity to 
 govern and control themselves." And this was the amount 
 ot it, and such was the argument, as against a rival people. 
 Within their own tribes, they no doubt held the farther doc- 
 trine, that all men were equal in the sight of God — that is, 
 that he was incapable of partialities. He had made them 
 equally his care — he had decreed their equal accountability ; 
 and, by proper analogy, the authors of the declaration might 
 well declare, in behalf of the equal recognition, by the laws 
 and government, of the claims of the citizen, each in his 
 place ; each, while he obeyed the laws and complied with 
 his public duties, having an equal right with his neighbor to 
 the protection of society, in his life and liberty, his pursuits 
 
THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 253 
 
 and his possessions. We are not to subject such a perform- 
 ance as the declaration of independence to a too critical scru- 
 tiny, in respect to its generalizations. These are put briefly, 
 and the circumstances of the revolutionary movement were 
 such as required that they should be put strongly. It was 
 necessary that they should be pronounced with emphasis 
 since the revolution was an event which, while it fixed the 
 attention of the civilized world, required that it should also 
 compel its popular sympathies. It was, perhaps, something 
 of policy that dictated the employment of phrases which 
 should particularly commend it to the French philosophers of 
 that day ; and I have no question but that many of the 
 statesmen who signed the paper were thus made the endorsers 
 of sundry sentiments which they never swallowed at all. The 
 Adamses, of Massachusetts, could not well have bolted the 
 doctrine of universal equality ; while it is very certain that 
 the aristocrats of Carolina, in that day, must, if they did 
 swallow it, have done so with monstrous wry faces. But the 
 doubtful matter did not then provoke a question, since no- 
 body gave it, then, any construction more authoritative than 
 that which I have here assigned it. 
 
 How should they, indeed, unless blinder than the beasts 
 that perish, with staring proofs to the contrary surrounding 
 them, even while they deliberated and wrote ? That God 
 has not created men alike, or equal, whether morally or physi- 
 cally, is not less notorious, than it is in perfect harmony with 
 all his other creations. The most striking development, every 
 where, in and about the beautiful world which we inhabit, is 
 in striking proof of his purpose to crown it with as much 
 diversity as life. Nothing, indeed, can be more remarkable, 
 or more delightful, to the mind and eye, surveying the works 
 of the Creator, than the endless varieties, and the boundless 
 22 
 
254 THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 
 
 inequalities, of his creations. Not only is no void unfilled, 
 but no void is filled in the same manner. Size, form, color, 
 order, power, in ail living objects, are graduated endowments, 
 ■which enable one to fly, while another creeps ; one to dilate 
 in grandeur, while another trembles in insignificance ; one to 
 loom out, like some bright creature of the elements, white 
 another nestles, with sombre garment, in a corresponding 
 shadow. Whether we survey the globe which we inhabit, the 
 sky which canopies, the seas which surround us, or the sys- 
 tems which give us light and loveliness, we are perpetually 
 called upon to admire that infinite variety of the Creator, 
 which nothing seems to stale. The stars are lovely in their 
 inequalities; the hills, the trees, the rivers and the seas; and 
 it is from their very inequalities that their harmonics arise. 
 "Were it otherwise, the eye would be pained by the monotony 
 of the prospect ever}' where. As it is, we love to look abroad 
 upon nature, and it is with a pleasure no less sensible than 
 that of the savage, that we learn " how to name the bigger 
 light, and how the less." They have their names, only as 
 they are unlike and unequal. It is because these shine in 
 their places, however inferior to other orbs, that they are 
 lovely. They are all unequal, but each keeps its place; and 
 the beauty which they possess and yield us, results entirely 
 from their doing so. A greater philosopher than Thomas 
 Jefferson — and we may add, after a long interval, Jeremy 
 Bentham and Miss Maitineau — has given us a noble passage, 
 devoted to this subject, which is no less philosophical than 
 poetical — indeed, it is the true poet, alone, who is the perfect 
 and universal philosopher. Let us hear William Shakspeare. 
 I quote from "Troilus and Cressida." The speech is made 
 by U.ysses, at the close of the seventh year of the siege of 
 Troy, when the Greeks, emulous of each other, each striving 
 
THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 255 
 
 for sway, defeat their own objects, and begin to despair of suc- 
 cess in the continued disappointments of the war. After a 
 prefatory passage, he says : 
 
 " Degree being vizarded, 
 The unworthiest shows as fairly in the mask. 
 The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre, 
 Observe degree, priority and place, 
 Insisture, course, proportion, season, form, 
 Office and custom, in all line of order: 
 And therefore is the glorious planet, Sol, 
 In noble eminence enthroned and sphered 
 Amidst the other, whose med'cinable eye 
 Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil, 
 And po<ts, iike the commandment of a king, 
 Sans check, to good and bad : But when the planets, 
 In evil mixture, to d-sorder wander, 
 What plaques, and what portents ! What mutiny i 
 What raging of the sea ! shaking of earth ! 
 Commotion in the winds ! — frights, changes, horrors, 
 Divert and crack, rend and deracinate 
 The unity and married calm of states* 
 Quite from their fixture! Oh, when degree is shak'd, 
 Which is the ladder of all high designs, 
 The enterprise is sick ! How could communities, 
 Degiees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities, 
 Peaceful commerce from dividable shores, 
 _The piimogenitive and due of birth, 
 Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels, 
 But by degree, stand in authentic place ? 
 Take but degree away, untune that string, 
 And hark ! what discord follows ! Each thing meets 
 In mere oppugnancy : The bounded waters 
 Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores, 
 And make a sop of ail this sulid globe; 
 
 * Were our federal union what it should be, how happily would 
 this line servo as the motto of the confederacy. 
 
256 THE MORALS OP SLAVERY. 
 
 Strength should be lord of imbecility, 
 
 And the rude son should strike his father dead ; 
 
 Force should be right ; or, rather, right and wrong 
 
 (Between whose endless jars justice resides) 
 
 Should lose their names, and so should justice too. 
 
 Then everything includes itself in power, 
 
 Power into will, will into appethe ; 
 
 And appetite, an universal wolf, 
 
 So doubly seconded by will and power, 
 
 Must make, perforce, an universal prey, 
 
 And last, eat up himself. Great Agamemnon, 
 
 This chaos, when deg-ree is suffocate, 
 
 Follows the choking."* 
 
 * Pope, too, not to speak of a hundred others, has like authority. 
 * Order is heaven's first law, and this eon lest, 
 Some are, and must be, greater than the rest." 
 The laws of society are not intended to disturb the natural degrees of 
 humanity, but to reconcile them — to make them consistent with, and 
 dependent upon, one another — not to make the butcher a judge, or the 
 baker a president ; but to protect them, according to their claims as 
 butcher and baker. Let us illustrate these distinctions by some well 
 known eases. In a claim for maintenance, the jury will inquire what 
 have been the habits, what is the education, the tastes, sensibilities, etc, 
 of the wife — in an action for damages, in slander, the words being the 
 same, the jury will adjudge the amount of damages according to the 
 profession, the moral and intellectual standing, of ihe slandered person ; 
 and this, too, without reflecting that it is wholly in defiance of this 
 doctrine of universal equality. Yet the trial by jury is, perhaps, even 
 beyond that of representation — nay, it is the most vital sort of repre- 
 sentation — the most conspicuous showing of the equal rights princi- 
 ple. The jury, drawn from all classes, recognizes, as by an instinct, 
 what is due to superior social position, and, just in degree as the cha- 
 racter is eminent, which they have to redress, will make exemplary 
 the damages. Here is the whole subject. If we thu-; guage the degree 
 of wrong done to the individual, as an individual, and accord. ng to his 
 special claims, it is because we have first recognized the individual 
 superiority of his rights. 
 
 
THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 25 7 
 
 This noble passage is full of force and meaning. It does 
 not too highly rate, to society, the importance of order — de- 
 gree — or men, as well as things, in their right places. All S 
 harmonies, whether in the moral or physical worlds, arise 
 wholly from the inequality of their tones and aspects ; and all 
 things, whether in art or nature, social or political systems, 
 but for this inequality, would give forth only monotony or 
 discord. That equality which the leveller insists upon would 
 result in general confusion — the breaking down of every 
 necessary barrier of distinction — the universal forfeiture of 
 names to things. There could be no hope, there would be 
 no ambition, where 
 
 " Degree, being vizarded, 
 The unworthiest shows as fairly " 
 
 as the noblest. The motive to honorable performance would 
 be lost ; and that, too, without lessening, in any degree, the 
 scramble, on all hands, for place and power. The very na- 
 ture of man is in conflict with this law of universal equality. 
 His perpetual, and proper effort, is to rise honorably above 
 his fellows. It is thus, and thus only, that he asserts an in- 
 dividuality of character and endowment, which is the secret 
 of all greatness, whether of possession or performance. It 
 was never the intention of the fathers of the country to de- 
 stroy this individuality, to deny its assertion, or to bring about 
 that dead level condition in society, in which everything but 
 stagnates. They may have been democrats; but in their 
 notion of democracy, it was not levelling in its character. 
 They rather found in it that harmory of relation in the mo- 
 ral world, in which all the agents and operatives, playing 
 together, wrought out from their correspondence the best 
 music of humanity — that music which builds the great city, 
 and secures peace and prosperity to man, in the prosecution 
 22* 
 
258 THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 
 
 of his labors. The democracy which tbey asserted not only 
 recognized, but insisted npon inequalities — its laws declaring 
 
 nut the fitness of all nnn for any place, but that all should 
 be secured in the- quiet possession of their individual right of 
 
 place — that there should be no usurpation — no assertion of 
 power, in hostility to right — no arrogant assumption, upon 
 artificial bases, of any natural right of one class of perform- 
 ers to the sway over another. Neither their acts nor their 
 declarations, properly read and understood, asserted anything 
 beyond the simple and reasonable law, that each man should 
 enjoy the place to which he is justly entitled, by reason of 
 hi- moral, his intellect, his strength, or his resource. Of the 
 thing or position proper to him, that should lie enjoy without 
 molestation. Their understanding, and, as I read it, their 
 definition of true liberty, is the enjoyment of that place in 
 society to which our moral and intellect entitle us, and of the 
 fruits of those efforts and enterprises, which we owe to our 
 own performances, lien-, I may offer a few brief definitions, 
 the better to convey my notion of what was theirs. 
 
 He is in the enjoyment of freedom, whatever his condition, 
 who is suffered to occupy his ptroper place. 
 
 He, only, is the slave, who is forced into a position in so- 
 ciety which is below the claim of his intellect and moral. 
 
 He cannot but be a tyrant — a wrong-doer at least — who 
 forces or makes his way into a position for which his moral 
 is unfitted or unprepared, and for the duties of which his 
 intellect is unprepared. 
 
 That such were the definitions of democracy, in the days 
 of the declaration, is fairly inferrible from the tact, that they 
 left the condition of their social world precisely as they found 
 it. They might, indeed, have held, as an abstract notion, 
 that, in a state of nature, men were born equal — equally 
 helpless, of themselves, certainly, and equally dependant and 
 
THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 25 3 
 
 incapable — but they certainly never held that they must of 
 right continue equal ; nor is this a fair conclusion, from what 
 they say. The birthright of man maybe alienated in a thou- 
 sand ways, and it never was an unqualified one. 
 
 Of these inalienable rights of man, 
 
 " All men," says the declaration of independence, " are 
 created equal ; they are endowed by their Creator with cer- 
 tain inalienable rights ; among these are life, liberty, and the 
 pursuit of happiness," etc. 
 
 Now, is this true, in whole or in part? Is it true that life, 
 liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, are inalienable, under 
 the practice of our government, or any other ? Do we not 
 alienate them every day ? Men are hung for rapes, for trea- 
 son, for murder, for forgery, for burglary, and many other 
 offences. We cast them into prisons, and deprive them of 
 their liberty ; we sue them in the courts, and take from them 
 their property. On what pretence, if these rights of man be 
 inalienable, do we deprive him of them ? There is some 
 mystery in all this, not to be explained by a resort to the 
 ordinary mode of argumentation ; and those who insist, as 
 Miss Martineau does, upon the unlimited and the unqualified 
 meaning of these natural laws — for natural rights are natural 
 laws — will certainly be at a loss to reconcile a difficulty like 
 this. In fact, these are only conditional possessions or en- 
 dowments. We must look farther. There must be a quali- 
 fied acceptation of these principles and phrases, or they are 
 nothing. The truth is, that oui natural rights depend en- ^-s 
 tirely upon the degree of obedience which we pay to the faivs 
 of our creation. All our rights, whether from nature or from 
 society — and these are the only two sources of right known 
 to us — result from the performance of our duties. Unless 
 we perform our duties, we have no rights ; or they are aliena- 
 ble, in consequence of our lachesse. The man has no rights 
 
260 THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 
 
 by nature, unless by a compliance with the laws of nature; 
 as he would have no rights from society, unless by a com- 
 pliance with its laws. Refusing to obey, he is outlawed, and 
 society thus only recognizes, instinctively, the remorseless de- 
 cree of nature. These laws, in a state of nature, require 
 from the man the application of his mental and physical 
 energies, to the improvement of the passive world around him. 
 It was given to him for this single purpose. The Indian, who 
 finds himself upon a hillock, has no more right to it, by na- 
 ture, than the hog which burrows along its borders, until he 
 proves his right by the exhibition of faculties superior to 
 those which the hog possesses. lie is no more a man than 
 the hog, until he complies with the natural laws of his being. 
 This he does, when he builds himself a cabin from the woods 
 around him ; when he bends the branches into a bower over- 
 head, and covers the roof with leaves, and strews the floor 
 with rushes, and thus protects himself against the elements ; 
 when he gathers fuel, and, by rubbing two dried sticks to- 
 gether, builds himself a fire, and warms himself against the 
 cold ; when he plants his maize and beans, and provides 
 against future hunger. These prove his superiority to the 
 brute, and maintain for him the proper rights which his 
 superior powers have fairly established to be in him. He 
 literally obeys the first decree of God to the expatriated man, 
 and, by tilling the earth, obtains his bread in the sweat of 
 his brow.* As he proceeds, Labor, which, alone, is but a 
 blind Polyphemus at the best, receives a divine assistant from 
 heaven, in the shape of Art. She gives life and animation 
 to his toils, cheers him with her smiles and her songs, and, 
 
 * And this is one of the first elements of religion, as it is the prime 
 element of human prosperity. Genesis is studied in vain, unless this 
 be the conclusion of the student. 
 
THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 261 
 
 when his work is ended, with a plastic hand, smoothes down 
 its roughnesses, and, from the rude block, commands the 
 upspringing presence of Beauty. In the progress of time, 
 Nature supplies him, from his own resources, with another 
 ally, of whom he had no previous knowledge, in the shape of 
 Science. This ally is many-winged and many-handed, and 
 makes all the elements subservient to his purposes. lie shows 
 labor where to place his shoulder, and the mountain is heaved 
 from its base. He tells where he shall strike, and the crag is 
 cleft by his stroke. He hews down the high trees of the 
 forest at his bidding, and guides his dwelling-place even upon 
 the waters. These gifts prepare man properly for life. The 
 crowning and last gift, which is spiritual religion, prepares him 
 for death. But the inevitable law must be first obeyed, or he 
 gains none of these blessings. He must first labor. This is 
 the destiny from which he is forever seeking to escape.* It 
 is only by a compliance with this, the first law of his creation, 
 that he can hope to be secure in life, successful in his pursuits, 
 benefitted by society, and made happy by religion. It is the 
 key-stone of religion itself; and the missionary who seeks to 
 teach the mysteries of Christianity to the wandering savage, 
 can never hope to be successful, so long as he neglects to in- 
 form him of the first duty consequent upon his creation. 
 
 * The desire to escape this destiny is one of the true causes of the 
 present distress of our country. We are all toiling to avoid loil ; and 
 we coorjie, swindle, speculate — do anything but delve and dig. We 
 import our labor— the most useful and necessary arm of our population — 
 from a foreign country ; and a long train of evils must ensue in conse- 
 quence, which the narrow mind will always be unwilling 10 trace back 
 to this seemingly unimportant origin. It is a moral disgrace to a nation 
 such as ours, not less than a political and social evil, when we are com- 
 pelled to import from foreign lands our grain, our bread stuffs, and the 
 forage for our cattle. Land was given us for cultivation ; not for spe- 
 culation. — Note written in 1837. 
 
262 THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 
 
 The result of labor, to the man, is property. The posses- 
 sion of property is the first cause which brings about any 
 enlarged formation of society : numbers become necessary to 
 defend wealth from the barbarians, who do not labor, and who 
 have none. As society improves and increases — and it must 
 inevitably do so, while it continues to comply with its natural 
 and obvious laws — it extends its dominion, and controls the 
 surrounding tribes, for its own safety. These succumb, are 
 enslaved, and, as they improve in intellectual respects, are 
 lifted, by regular degrees, into the bosom of that society 
 which has first enslaved them.* The superior people, which 
 conquers, also educates the inferior; and their reward, for 
 this good service, is derived from the labor of the latter, 
 which b.iiig, in all moral respects, the inferior people, can 
 yield no other recompense. Unless the civilized and superior 
 nation does this, it will inevitably fall a victim to the barba- 
 rous tribes which gather around it — forever poor, desperate 
 and daring — having no possessions to lose, and, from their 
 bestial improvidence, compelled, in all inclement seasons, to 
 resort to war with their neighbors, to avoid starvation. It is 
 no less the duty than the necessity, therefore, of civilization, 
 to overcome these tribes — to force the tasks of life upon 
 them — to compel their labor — to teach them the arts of eco- 
 nomy and providence, and, with a guiding hand and unyield- 
 ing sway, conduct them to the moral Pisgah, from whence 
 they may behold the lovely and inviting Canaan of a higher 
 and holier condition, spread out before them, and praying 
 them to come. When civilization ceases to extend her con- 
 
 * This is a natural, and therefore an inevitable result. Without refer- 
 ring to the moral law to this effect, the Southern slaveholder finds it 
 his interest to lift the nioie intelligent slave into stations of higher re- 
 bponsibil.ty, and more honorable trust, than are commonly yielded to 
 his fellows. 
 
THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 263 
 
 quest?, she falls, like Rome, the victim to the savage. The 
 ■war is as endless between her and her foe, as between any 
 two diametrically opposite principles in the same moral cir- 
 cle ; and as her sway is the more gentle, and as she conquers 
 only to improve, while the savage conquers only to destroy, 
 it follows, inevitably, that hers is the only legitimate conquest, 
 and every other is but tyranny. 
 
 Every primitive nation, of which we have any knowledge / 
 in the world's history, has been subjected to long periods of V 
 bondage. They have been all elevated and improved by its 
 tasks and labors, and a positive sanction for the use of slavery, 
 and a proof of its necessity, are fairly to be inferred from this 
 inevitable consequence ; but, as if this were not enough for 
 the purposes of authority, God himself, we are given to under- 
 stand, actually, in two remarkable instances, placed a favorite 
 people in foreign slavery, making them hewers of wood and 
 drawers of water, in the land of the stranger ; as, from their 
 refusal to comply with the laws of their creation, they had 
 shown themselves unfitted even for the very comparative de- 
 gree of social liberty allotted to men at those periods — requi- 
 ring them thus, through that ordeal, which is improperly 
 called slavery, but which is simply a process of preparation 
 for an improving and improved condition, to work out their 
 own moral deliverance. For, truly is it, that we shall not 
 only gain our bread by the sweat of our brow, but thus sub- 
 due those barbarous appetites, and degrading brutal propen- 
 sities, without the subjection of which, our minds could never 
 have that due play and exercise, which can alone fit them for 
 social dependance, and the friendly restraints of a guardian 
 government. The nature of man is one of continual conflicts, 
 and those chiefly with himself; and the proverb which incul- 
 cates the victory over himself as the most glorious of all vic- 
 tories, is one strictly and philosophically growing out of a 
 
264 THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 
 
 just knowledge of his own attributes, and the difficulties which 
 oppose their exercise. 
 
 Our general views, in modern times, on the subject of slaves 
 and slavery, are distressingly narrow. Our forefathers were 
 less precipitate, but more certain in their philosophy. They 
 did not scruple to go forward, but they were first sure that 
 they were right in doing so. We do not resemble them in 
 this. We are too ready to follow multitudes to do evil. 
 Having commenced our political career by a grand innovation 
 upon the existing condition of things, we would still innovate ; 
 and, like any other good principle suffering abuse, the zeal 
 which released us from a foreign yoke would also release us 
 from our allegiance to higher influences than kings. We are 
 losing our veneration fast. We are overthrowing all sacred 
 and hallowing associations and authorities. Marriage is now 
 a bond which we may rend at pleasure. The Sabbath is a 
 wrong and a superstition. Such is the progress of opinion and 
 doctrine among those very classes which show themselves hos- 
 tile to Southern slavery. The cry is " On !" and we do not 
 see the beginning of the end. Never was fanaticism more 
 mad thao on the subject of slavery ; which was a very good 
 thing enough when "England and the North " sold slaves, 
 and the South bought them ; and it is a good thing now, if 
 we would only reason rightly, and find out what slavery is. 
 We make no distinction between those restraints which im- 
 pose labor upon the body — improving its health, bringing out 
 its symmetry and strength, and fulfilling a destiny, which the 
 analogies of all history, not less than the faith which we pro- 
 fess, teach us is the decree of the Universal Parent — and 
 that bondage of the mind, and that denial of its exercise, 
 which are always the aim of tyrannies, and which, as in the 
 case of some of the unlaborinij people of Europe, must result 
 in the utter enervation, sluggishness, and shame of body and 
 
TOE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 265 
 
 mind alike. Pity it is, that the lousy and lounging lazzaroni 
 of Italy, cannot be made to labor in the fields, under the 
 whip of a severe task-master ! They would then be a much 
 freer — certainly a much nobler animal — than we can possibly 
 esteem them now ; — and far better had it been for our native 
 North American savage, could he have been reduced to ser- 
 vitude, and, by a labor imposed upon him, within his strength, 
 md moderately accommodated to his habits, have been pre- 
 .t painful and eating decay, which has left but 
 id skeleton of what was once a numerous and 
 — a people, that needed nothing but an Egyp- 
 of four hundred years to have been saved for 
 the future, and lifted into a greatness to which Grecian and 
 Roman celebrity might have been a faint and failing music* 
 This clamor about liberty and slavery, is, after all, unless 
 "we get some certain definitions to begin with, the most arrant 
 nonsense. " License they mean when they cry liberty !" — and 
 we may add, " license they mean when they cry slavery !" 
 The extremes are near kindred, and in all these clamors they 
 are sure to meet. The Russian boor is called a slave, and 
 
 * I will be referred to the experiment of this nature, made by the 
 Spaniards in the Island of Cuba, in which the poor savages were 
 utterly destroyed. But this is no parallel case to the proposition in 
 the text. The reason why the Spaniards failed, and the Indians 
 perished under the repartimiento system, arose from the fact, that the 
 masters had only a temporary and not & permanent interest in their 
 services. The Spanish governors were compelled to arrive at sudden 
 wealth, or not at all ; and they worked the savages to death in order 
 to obtain it. Had the Indians been allotted to them, not according 
 to geographical, but numerical divisions, such result would not have 
 followed. They should have had a limited number of slaves, and in 
 these they should have had a life interest. Their policy, then, must 
 have been to economize that labor, of which, under the existing cir- 
 cumstances, they were inhumanly profligate. The late of the Indians, 
 under such rule, might have been predicted. 
 23 
 
266 THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 
 
 the German subject of Austria is called a slave, and the 
 Italian is called a slave, and the negro in the Southern States 
 is called a slave, — and yet, how unlike to one another is the 
 condition of all these slaves! The right of ruling themselves, 
 at pleasure, is that which is assumed to be the test of free- 
 dom. The native African has that right, and what is the 
 rule of Africa ? A sufficient commentary upon it will be 
 found in the naked, unmarked outlines, hanging upon the 
 walls of our houses, and dignified with the title of maps of 
 Africa. Murder awaits the missionary and the traveller . 
 penetrate the country; and chilization seems to be as far 
 remote as ever from their attainment. And how should it be 
 otherwise ? And how should they improve, having never 
 taken the first step in such a progress ? They cannot im- 
 prove until they learn to labor, — they will not learn to labor 
 until they become stationary ; and the wandering savage has 
 seldom yet become stationary, miK ss by the coercion of a 
 superior people.* But the right to govern themselves re- 
 quires, first, a capacity for Buch government. The right can 
 only result from a compliance with the laws of their creation ; 
 and the capacity requires long ages of preparation, of great 
 trial, hardship, severe labor and perilous enterprise. The 
 responsibilities and the duties of self-government, demand a 
 wonderful and wide-spread knowledge and practice of morals, 
 
 * For the sake of the African world, it id to be regretted that, 
 instead of abolishing the slave trade, the nations had not contented 
 themselves with regulating it. Vessels should have been licensed for 
 the trade, of particular burden and construction, and carrying limited 
 numbers ; by which means the disgusting and dreadful horrors which 
 resulted f/ora the compression of the unhappy captives, in great num- 
 bers, into foetid and narrow dungeons, would have been avoided, with 
 all of the evils consequent upon their change of condition ; leaving 
 them only to the thousand benefits, which make the American slave 
 so superior an animal to the African freemen. 
 
THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 267 
 
 before such a capacity can arise ; and it would be an awkward 
 
 and difficult inquiry at this moment to discover any one of 
 
 the leading nations of the globe where such a capacity exists. 
 
 I will not even believe it to exist in the United States, until 
 
 I see the people willing to tax themselves directly for their own 
 
 protection. I will not believe it, so long as they need to be 
 
 drcci ' Hrect and circuitous taxation, into the expendi- 
 
 necessary for their own good. They are not 
 
 ok in the face the cost of their own liberties. 
 
 the English government denies the existence 
 
 j such capacity among its people ;* and France! — what 
 
 * Great Britain has freed her slaves, yet denies equality to a large 
 portion of her own people — yea, denies them equal liberties of con- 
 science But how has she freed the blacks ? If they had an unquali- 
 fied right of freedom, by what right has she limited iheir freedom, 
 in making them apprentices for a term of years? Their rights, if 
 absolute, demanded, on her part, an absolute release of them. While 
 I write, I am reminded of a paragraph in the Table Talk of Cole- 
 ridge. It is kindred to our notions, and we give it accordingly. He 
 says • " You are always talking of the rights of the negroes. As a 
 rhetorical mode of stimulating the people of England here, 1 do not 
 object; but I utterly condemn your frantic praciice of declaiming 
 about their rights to the blacks themselves. They ought to be forci- 
 bly reminded of the state in which their brethren in Africa still are, 
 and taught to be thankful for the providence which lias placed them 
 within the means of grace. I know no right except such as flows from 
 righteousness ; and as every Christian believes his righteousness to be 
 imputed, so must his right be an imputed right too. It must flow out 
 of a duty, and it is under that name that the process of humanization 
 ought to begin and to be conducted throughout." In another para- 
 graph, devoted more distinctly to the proceedings of the British par- 
 liament, Mr. Coleridge speaks thus: "Have you been able to dis- 
 cover any principle in this emancipation biil for the slaves, except a 
 principle of fear of the abolition party struggling with a fear of caus- 
 ing some monstrous calamity to the empire at large ? Well ! I will 
 not prophesy ; and God grant that this tremendous and unprecedented 
 act of positive enactment may not do the harm to the cause of human- 
 ity and freedom which I cannot but fear I" 
 
268 THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 
 
 have all her bloody days, through successive ages, effected 
 for her liberties, but cries fur more blood, an increasing dis- 
 content, and the fever and phrensy which continually defy 
 and defeat her own laws, in the appetite which calls for 
 fresher uproar? Perhaps, the very homogeneousness of a 
 people is adverse to the most wholesome forms of liberty. It 
 may make of a selfish people (which has succeeded by the 
 aid of other nations in the attainment of a certain degree of 
 moral enlargement) a successful people — in the merely world- 
 ly sense of the word — but it can never make them, moral'. ;, 
 a great one.* For that most perfect form of liberty, which 
 prompts us to love justice for its own sake, it requires strange 
 admixtures of differing races — the combination and compari- 
 son of the knowledge which each has separately arrived at — 
 the long trials and conflicts which precede their coming to- 
 gether ; and their perfect union in the end, after that subjec- 
 tion on the part of the inferior class, which compels them to 
 a knowledge of what is possessed by the superior. This was 
 the history of the Saxon boors under the Norman conquest — 
 a combination, which has resulted in the production of one of 
 the most perfect specimens of physical organization and moral 
 susceptibilities, which the world has ever known. And where 
 this amalgamation cannot be effected — as in the case of the 
 Israelites — who are too homogeneous for commixture or even 
 communion with other people, — the slave, in the progress of 
 
 * The moment that a people boasts of its homogeneousness, we 
 may begin to doubt its farther improvement, particularly if the com- 
 munity be a small one. The homogeneousness of the Jews is, proba- 
 bly, the true reason of their national inferiority. They are a people, 
 without a nation. All insulated communities degenerate ; until, in 
 time, they cease even to have issue. The intermarriages of islanders, 
 villagers, and other homogeneous people, should be forbidden by 
 law ; and so should the intermarriages among cousins. Perhaps, it 
 would be well, if our men in America always chose their wives from 
 other States and sections than their own. 
 
THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 269 
 
 events, acquires the knowledge of the master. When Moses 
 could emulate the Egyptian priesthood, he was able to em- 
 body and to represent his people, and to lead them forth from 
 bondage; for then they had acquired all the knowledge 
 which was possessed by the Egyptian ; and as they could 
 Br jve nothing further from the instruction of their masters, 
 1 naturally arrived for their emancipation. Up- 
 )tibility of acquisition, on the part of the slave, 
 vhole secret of his release from bondage. It is 
 id moral inferiority which has enslaved, or sub- 
 jected him to a superior. It is his rise, morally and intellec- 
 tually, into the same form with his master, which alone can 
 emancipate him.— (See Appendix.) It is possible that a time 
 will come, when, taught by our schools, and made strong by 
 our training, the negroes of the Southern States may arrive 
 at freedom ; then, at least, his condition may be such as 
 would entitle him to go forth out of bondage. It may be, 
 when that time comes, that, like Pharoah, we too shall prove 
 unwilling to give up our bondmen. But that that time is 
 very far remote, is sufficiently evident from the condition of 
 the free negroes in the Northern States, and elsewhere— the 
 British West Indies, for example. There, in both regions, 
 without restraints of any kind, they rather decline to a worse 
 brutality, with every increase of privilege. In the former 
 region, after a fifty years' enjoyment of their own rule, they 
 have yet founded no city to themselves, raised no community 
 of their own ; but are willing to remain the boot-cleaners and 
 the bottle-washers of the whites, in a state of degrading infe- 
 riority, which they are too obtuse to feel ; and are only made 
 conscious of their degradation, by the occasional kicks and 
 cuffs which they are made to endure, at the humor of the 
 whites, and without any prospect of redress. They have not 
 that moral courage— the true source of independence— which 
 23* 
 
270 THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 
 
 would prompt them, like the poor white pioneer, to sally 
 forth into the wilderness, hew out their homes, and earn their 
 rights by a complianee with their duties. They feel their 
 inferiority to the whites, even when nominally freemen ; and 
 sink into the condition of seniles, in fact, if not in name, in 
 compliance with their natural dependence, and unquestion- 
 able moral deficiencies. What they show themselves now, 
 with every example around them stimulating them to free- 
 dom and ambition, taken in connection with what they \\-:\e 
 been shown to be from the earliest known periods of history, 
 ought to be conelusive, with every person of common sense, 
 not only that they have no capacity for an individual inde- 
 pendent existence, but that they were always designed for a 
 subordinate one. And why should we assume for the Deity, 
 that he has set out with a design, in the creation and govern- 
 ment of men, differing from those laws which he has pre- 
 served in the case of all his other creatures. Why should 
 there not be as many races of men, differing in degree, in 
 Btrength, capacity, art, endowment, as we find them differing 
 in shape, stature, color, organization ? Why, indeed, should 
 there not be differing organizations amonix men, which shall 
 distinctly shadow forth the several duties, and the assigned 
 stations, which they are to fulfil and occupy in life. This 
 would seem to be a necessity, analogous to what is apparent 
 every where in all the other works of God's creation. Nay, is 
 it not absolutely consistent with all that we learn from history 
 of the uses of men and nations ? As we note their progress, 
 we detect their mission ; and, this done, they themselves dis- 
 appear. The African seems to have his mission. He does 
 not disappear, but he still remains a slave or a savage ! 
 I do not believe that he ever will be other than a slave, or 
 that he was made to be otherwise ; but that he is designed as 
 an implement in the hands of civilization always. You may 
 
THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 
 
 271 
 
 eradicate him from place, but not from life. If he ceases to 
 exist in Virginia or Carolina, Georgia or Louisiana, it is only 
 because he is doing the allotted tasks of his master in regions 
 farther South. I look upon Negro Slavery as the destined 
 ao-ent for the civilization of all the states of Mexico, and all 
 the American states beyond. 
 
 The circumstance which, more than anything beside — 
 apart from his original genius — prepared the Anglo-American 
 for the comparative condition of freedom which he enjoys, 
 was the desperate adventure, the trying necessity, and the 
 thousand toils through which he had to go, in contending 
 with the sterility of an unfriendly soil, and the continual and 
 thwarting hostility of surrounding and savage men. The 
 very sterility of New-England, by imposing upon all classes 
 the necessity of labor, gave strength and energy to her sons, 
 and stability to_her institutions. Her severe austerity arose 
 even more from her own toils and trials, than from her puri- 
 tan ancestry; and, bating the bigotry and miserable exclu- 
 siveness which, among the vast majority of her people, can 
 find no greatness and little worth beyond her own borders, 
 she confessedly stands among the most successful, in worldly 
 affairs, of any people on the face of the earth. The fertility 
 of the soil in the South, by readily yielding to the hands of 
 Labor, is, without any paradox, the true source of our enerva- 
 tion, and of the doubtful prosperity of our country — as a 
 country merely. Individuals are successful and prosperous, 
 but not the face of the country ; and however much this may 
 be the subject of regret on the one hand, like the trumpet of 
 Miss Martineau, it is not without its advantages. It results, 
 we may state, in individuality of character among its people ; 
 who never, in consequence, devolve upon societies, combina- 
 tions, or their neighbors, their several duties of charity, hos- 
 pitality and friendship ; and who sufficiently esteem their 
 
272 THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 
 
 own morals, their sense of honor and humanity, to think they 
 can do justice to the claims of their dependants, without the 
 interference or tuition of any gratuitous philanthropy. 
 
 The chapter which Miss Martineau devotes to the "Morals 
 of Slavery," should rather be styled the morals of the com- 
 munity. The excesses to which she refers, and in some 
 respects particularizes, are excesses not confined to the slave 
 States, and which do not, in any State, result from slavery. 
 We contend for the morality of slavery among us, as we 
 assert that the institution has wrought, and still conti- 
 nues to work, the improvement of the negro himself; and 
 we confidently challenge a comparison between the slave 
 of Carolina, and the natives of the region from which his 
 ancestors have been brought. No other comparison, with 
 any other people, can properly be made. We challenge 
 Comparison between the negro slave in the streets of Charles- 
 ton, and the negro freeman — so called — in the streets of 
 New- York. Compare either of these with the native Indian, 
 and, so far as the civilized arts, and the ideas of civilization 
 are involved in the comparison, you will find that the negro 
 who has been taught by the white man, is always deferred 
 to, in matters of counsel, by his own Indian master. The 
 negro slave of a Muscoghee warrior, to my knowledge, in 
 frequent instances, is commonly his best counsellor; and the 
 primitive savage follows the direction of him, who, having 
 been forced to obey the laws of his creation, has become 
 wiser, in consequence, than the creature who wilfully refuses.* 
 
 * " The Indian," says Miss Martineau, " looks with silent wonder 
 upon the settler, who becomes visibly a capitalist in nine months, 
 on the same spot where the red man has remained equally poor all 
 his life." Elsewhere and everywhere she describes the negro slaves 
 of the Indians as looking better than their masters. She attributes 
 this to the milder form of their slavery to that of the whites ; though 
 
THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 273 
 
 This subjection to the superior mind is the process through 
 which every inferior nation has gone, and the price which the 
 inferior people must always pay, for that knowledge of, and 
 compliance with, their duties, which alone can bring them to 
 the possession of their rights, and to the due attainment of 
 their liberties — these liberties always growing in value and 
 number with the improving tastes and capacities for their 
 appreciation. Show me any people, which, complying with 
 this inevitable condition, has not improved ! Show me one, 
 refusing to comply, which has not perished ! Look at the 
 history of man throughout the world, with the eye of a calm, 
 unselfish, deliberate judgment, and say if this be not so. 
 Regard the slave of Carolina, with a proper reference to the 
 condition of the cannibal African from whom he has been 
 rescued, and say if his bondage has not increased his value to 
 himself, not less than to his master. We contend that it 
 found him a cannibal, destined in his own country to eat his 
 fellow, or to be eaten by him ; — that it brought him to a 
 land in which he suffers no risk of life or limb, other than 
 that to which his owner is equally subjected ; — that it in- 
 
 the obvious inference should have been the greater advantages of 
 white slavery in so educating the inferior African, as to lift him into 
 a mental condition vastly superior to that of the red man, who, in a 
 state of nature, is decidedly more intellectual than the black in a like 
 state. She says, speaking of the religious education of the Indian — 
 " I fear that the common process has here been gone through, of 
 taking from the savage the venerable and true wdiieh he possessed, 
 and to force upon him something else which is neither venerable nor 
 true." This is one of those vague phrases and seem'ng philosophies 
 with which the book abounds. The fact is, that the only " venera- 
 ble and true" which is necessary, for the improvement of the Indian, 
 is the compulsion of labor, whose laws are surely sufficiently venera- 
 ble, and as surely ought to be true, considering where we find them — 
 the venerable and true which he never yet has been taught, and is 
 not now very likely to acquire. 
 
274 THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 
 
 creases his fecundity infinitely beyond that of the people from 
 ■whom he lias been taken — that it increases his health and 
 strength, improves his physical symmetry and animal organi- 
 zation — that it elevates his mind and morals — that it extends 
 his term of life — that it gives him better and more certain 
 food, better clothing, and more kind and valuable attendance 
 •when he is sick. These clearly establish the morality of the 
 slave institutions in the South ; and, though they may not 
 prove them to be as perfect as they may be made, as clearly 
 show their propiiety and the necessity of preserving them. 
 Indeed, the slaveholders of the South, having the moral and 
 physical guardianship of an ignorant and irresponsible people 
 under their control, are the great moral conservators, in one 
 powerful interest, of the entire world. Assuming slavery to 
 be a denial of justice to the negro, there is no sort of propri- 
 ety in the application of the name of slave to the servile of 
 the South. He is under no despotic power. There are laws 
 which protect him, in his place, as inflexible as those which 
 his proprietor is required to obey, in his place. Providence 
 has placed him in our hands, for his good, and has paid us 
 from his labor for our guardianship* Tne question with 
 us is, sini] ly, as to the manner in which we have fulfilled our 
 trust. How have we employed the talents which were given 
 us — how have we discharged the duties of our guardianship ? 
 What is the condition of the dependant ? Have we been 
 careful to graduate his labors to his capacities ? Have we 
 
 * The slaveholder has no right to free his slave — unless he is per- 
 fectly assured of a mental and moral capacity in the slave, sufficiently 
 strong and fixed, to enable him not only to maintain liis elevation, 
 but to improve it. Having done so, let him appeal- before God, if 
 he dare, and account for the trust committed to his hands. The 
 moral and mental worth of the slave, can, alone, give us the right 
 to discharge him from his depeudance. 
 
THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 275 
 
 bestowed upon him a fair proportion of the fruits of his in- 
 dustry ? Have we sought to improve his mind in correspon- 
 dence with his condition? Have we raised his condition to 
 the level of his improved mind ? Have we duly taught him 
 his moral duties — bis duties to God and man ? And have 
 we, in obedience to a scrutinizing conscience, been careful to 
 punish only in compliance with his deserts, and never in 
 brutali'y or wantonness? These are the grand questions for 
 the tribunal of each slaveholder's conscience. He must an- 
 swer them to his God. These are the only questions, and 
 they apply equally to all his other relations in society. Let 
 him carefully put them to himself, and shape his conduct, as 
 a just man, in compliance with what he should consider a 
 sacred duty, undertaken to God and man alike. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 In farther illustration of some of the topics embodied in 
 tlii<, and other passages of this essay, I make an extract from 
 a dialogue contained in the collection entitled "The Wigwam 
 and the Cabin :" 
 
 " Savages are children in all but physical respects. To do 
 anything with them, yon must place them in that position of 
 responsibility, and teach them that law, without the due re- 
 cognition of which, any attempt to educate a child must be 
 an absurdity — you must teach them obedience. They must 
 be made to know, at the outset, that they know' nothing, and 
 they must implicitly defer to the superior. This lesson thej 
 will never learn, so long as they pos-css the power, at any 
 moment, to withdraw from his control." 
 
 " Vet, even were this to be allowed, there must be a limit. 
 There must come a time when you will be required to eman- 
 cipate them. In what circumstances will you tind that time ? 
 You cannot keep them under this coercion always; when will 
 you set them free I" 
 
 " When they are fit for freedom." 
 
 " How is that to be determined I Who shall decide their 
 fitness ?" 
 
 "Themselves; as in the case of the children of Israel. 
 The children of Israel went out from bondage as soon as their 
 own intellectual advancement had been such as to enable 
 them to produce from their own ranks a leader like Moses : — 
 one whose genius was equal to that of the people by whom 
 they had been educated, and sufficient for their own proper 
 government thereafter." 
 
 " But has not an experiment of this sort already been tried 
 in our country P 1 
 
 " Nay, I think not — I know of none." 
 
 i 
 
THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 277 
 
 " Yes : an Indian boy was taken, in infancy, from his pa- 
 rents, carried to one of the Northern States, trained in all the 
 learning and habits of a Northern college and society, asso- 
 ciated only with whites, beheld no manners, and heard no 
 morals, but those which are known to Christian communities. 
 His progress was satisfactory — he learned rapidly — was con- 
 sidered something of a prodigy, and graduated with eclat. 
 He was then left, with the same option which the rest enjoyed, 
 to the choice of a profession. And what was his choice ? 
 Do you not remember the beautiful little poem of Freneau 
 on this subject? He chose the buckskin leggins, the mocca- 
 sins, bow and arrows, and the wide, wild forests, where his 
 people dwelt." 
 
 " Freneau's poem tells the story somewhat differently. The 
 facts upon which it is founded, however, are, I believe, very 
 much as you tell them. But what an experiment it was ! 
 How very silly ! They take a copper-colored boy from his 
 people, and carry him, while yet an infant, to a remote region. 
 Suppose, in order that the experiment may be fairly tried, 
 that they withhold from him all knowledge of his origin. He 
 is brought up precisely as the other lads around him. But 
 what is the first discovery which he makes ? That he is a 
 copper-colored boy ; that he is, alone, the only copper-colored 
 boy ; that, wherever he turns, he sees no likenesses of himself. 
 This begets his wonder, then his curiosity, and finally his sus- 
 picion. He soon understands — for his suspicion sharpens 
 every faculty of observation — that he is an object of experi- 
 ment. Nay, the most cautious policy in the world could 
 never entirely keep this from a keen-thonghted urchin. His 
 fellow pupils teach him this. He sees that, to them, he is an 
 object of curiosity and study. They regard him, and he soon 
 regards himself, as a creature set apart, and separated, for 
 some peculiar purposes, from all the rest. A stern and sin- 
 gular sense of individuality and isolation is thus forced upon 
 him. He asks — Am I, indeed, alone? — Who am I? — What 
 ami? These inquiries naturally occasion others. Does he 
 read ? Books give him the history of his race. Nay, his 
 own story probahly meets his eye, in the newspapers. He 
 learns that he is descended from a nation dwelling among the 
 secret sources of the Susquehaunah. He pries in all corners 
 24 
 
278 THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 
 
 for more information. The more secret his search, the more 
 keenly does lie pursue it. it becomes the great jiassioii of 
 his mind. He learns that his people are fierce warriors and 
 famous hunters, lie hears of their suites with the white 
 man — their successful strifes, when the nation could send 
 forth its thousand bow-men, and the whites were few and 
 feeble. Perhaps the young pale faces around him speak of 
 his people, even now, as enemies ; at least, as objects of sus- 
 picion, and possibly antipathy. All these things tend to ele- 
 vate and idealize, in his mind, the history of his people. He 
 cherishes a sympathy, even beyond the natural desires of the 
 heart, for the perishing race from which he feels himself, 'like 
 a limb, cast bleeding and torn.' The curiosity to see his an- 
 cestry — the people of his tribe and country — would be the 
 most natural feeling of the white boy, under similar circum- 
 stances ; shall we wonder that it is the predominant passion 
 in the bosom of the Indian, whose very complexion forces 
 him away from all connection with the rest ! My idea of 
 the experiment — if such a proceeding can be called an expe- 
 riment — is soon spoken. As a statement of facts, 1 see no- 
 thing to provoke wonder. The result was the most natural 
 thing in the world, and a man of ordinary powers of reflec- 
 tion might easily have predicted it, precisely as it happened. 
 The only wonder is that there should be found, among per- 
 sons of ordinary education and sagacity, men who siiould 
 have undertaken such an experiment, and fancied that they 
 "Were busy in a moral and philosophical problem." 
 "Why, how would you have the experiment tried V 
 "As it was tried upon the Hebrews, upon the ISaxons, upon 
 every savage people who ever became civilized. It cannot be 
 tried upon an individual ; it must be tried uj on a natiou — at 
 least upon a community, sustained by no succor from with- 
 out — having no forests or foreign shores, upon which to turn 
 their eyes for refuge — having no mode or hope of es- 
 cape — under the full control of an already civilized people — 
 and sufficiently numerous among themselves to tind sympa- 
 thy against those necessary rigors which at hist will stem 
 oppressive, but whuh will be the only hopeful process by 
 which to enforce the work of improvement. They must rind 
 this sympathy from beholding others, like themselves in as- 
 
THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 279 
 
 pect, form, feature and condition, subject to the same unusual 
 restraints. In this contemplation, they will be content to 
 pursue their labors, under a rule which they cannot dis- 
 place. But the natural law must be satisfied. There must 
 be opportunities yielded for the indulgence of the legitimate 
 passions. The young, of both sexes, among the subjected 
 people, must commune- and form ties, in obedience to the 
 requisitions of nature and according to their national customs. 
 What if the Indian student, on whom the 'experiment' was 
 tried, had paid his addresses to a white maiden ? What a 
 revulsion of the moral and social sense would have followed 
 his proposition, in the mind of the Saxon damsel ; and, were 
 she to consent, what a commotion in the community in which 
 she lived! And this revulsion and commotion would be 
 perfectly natural, and, accordingly, perfectly proper. God 
 has made an obvious distinction between the races of men, 
 setting them apart, and requiring them to be kept so, by 
 subjecting them to the resistance and rebuke of one of the 
 most jealous sentinels of sense which we possess — the eye. 
 The prejudices of this sense require that the natural barriers 
 should be maintained, and hence it becomes necessary that 
 the race in subjection should be sufficiently numerous to ena- 
 ble it to carry out the great object of every distinct commu- 
 nity, though, perchance, it may happen to be an inferior one. 
 In process of time, the beneficial and blessing effeets of labor 
 would be felt and understood by the most ignorant and savage 
 of tin- race. Perhaps not in one generation, or in two, but 
 after the fifth and seventh, as it is written, ' of those who keep 
 my commandments.' They would soon discover that, though 
 compelled to toil, their toils neither enfeebled their strength 
 nor impaired their happiness ; that, on the contrary, they still 
 resulted in their increasing strength, health and comfort; that 
 their food, which before was precarious, depending on the 
 caprices of the seasons, or the uncertainties of the chase, was 
 now equally plentiful, wholesome and certain. They would 
 also perceive that, instead of the sterility which is usually the 
 destiny of all wandering tribes, and one of the processes by 
 which they perish, the fecundity of their people was wonder- 
 fully increased. These discoveries — if time be allowed to 
 make them — would tacitly reconcile them to that inferior 
 
280 THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 
 
 position of their race, which i^ proper and inevitable, so long 
 as their intellectual inferiority shall continue. And what 
 would have been the effect upon our Indians — decidedly the 
 noblest race of aborigines that the world has ever known — if, 
 instead of buying their scalps, at prices varying from five to 
 fifty shillings, each, we had conquered and subjected them? 
 Will any one pretend to say that they would not have in- 
 creased, with the restraints and enforced toils of our superior 
 genius? — that they would not, by this time, have formed a 
 highly valuable and noble integral in the formation of our 
 national strength and character ? Perhaps their civilization 
 Mould have been comparatively easy. Hie Hebrews required 
 four hundred years; the Britons and Saxons, possibly, half 
 that time, after the Norman Conquest Differing in color 
 from their conquerors, though, I suspect, with a natural genius 
 superior to that of the ancient Britons^ at the time of the 
 Roman invasion under Julius Caesar, the struggle between 
 the two races must have continued i'or some longer time ; but 
 the union would have been finally effected, and then, as in 
 the case of the Englishman, we should have possessed a race, 
 in their progeny, which, in moral and physical structure, might 
 have challenged competition with the world." 
 
 " Ay, but the difficulty would have been in the conquest." 
 " True, that would have been the difficulty. The American 
 coloni-ts were few in number and feeble in resource. The 
 nations from which they emerged put forth none of their 
 strength, in sending tin m forth. Never were colonies so in- 
 adequately provided, so completely left to themselves; and 
 hence the peculiar injustice and insolence of the subsequent 
 exactions of the British, by which they required their colonies 
 to support their schemes of aggrandizement and expenditure, 
 by submitting to extreme taxation. Do you suppose, if the 
 early colonists had been powerful, that they would have ever 
 deigned to treat for lands with the roving hordes of savages 
 whom they found on the continent ? Never ! Their purchases 
 and treaties were not for lands, but tolerance. They bought 
 permission to remain without molestation. The amount pro- 
 fessedly paid for land was simply a tribute, paid to the supe- 
 rior strength of the Indian, precisely as we paid it to Algiers 
 and the Mussulmens, until we grew strong enough to whip 
 
THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 281 
 
 them into respect. If, instead of a few ships, and a few hun- 
 dred men, timidly making their approaches along the shores 
 of Manhattan, Penobscot and Ocracocke, some famous leader, 
 like JEneas, had brought his entire people — suppose them to 
 be the persecuted Irish — what a wondrous difference would 
 have taken piace. The Indians would have been subjected — 
 would have sunk into their proper position of humility and 
 dependence — and, by this time, might have united with their 
 conquerors, producing, perhaps, along the great ridge of the 
 Alleghany, the very noblest specimens of humanity, in mental 
 and bodily stature, that the world has ever witnessed. The 
 Indians were taught to be insolent, by the fears and feebleness 
 of the whites. They were flattered by fine words, by rich 
 presents, and abundance of deference, until the ignorant sav- 
 age — but a single degree above the brute — who, until then, 
 had never been sure of his porridge for more than a day 
 ahead — took airs upon himself, and became one of the most 
 conceited and arrogant lords in creation. The colonists grew 
 wiser as they grew stronger ; but the evil was already done, 
 and we are reaping some of the bitter fruits, at this day, of 
 seed unwisely sown in that. It may be that we shall yet see 
 the experiment tried fairly." 
 
 "Ah, indeed — where?" 
 
 " Ln Mexico, by the Texans. Let the vain, capricious, igno- 
 rant and dastardly wretches, who now occupy and spoil the 
 face and fortunes of the former country, persevere in pressing 
 war upon those sturdy adventurers, and their doom is written. 
 \fear it may be the sword ; I hope it may be the milder fate 
 of bondage and subjection. Such a fate would save, and 
 raise them finally to a far higher condition than they have 
 ever before enjoyed. Thirty thousand Texans, each with his 
 horse and rifle, would soon make themselves masters of the 
 city of Montezuma, and then may you see the experiment 
 tried upon a scale sufficiently extensive to make it a fair one. 
 But your Indian student, drawn from 
 
 ' Susqueliannah's farthest springs/ 
 
 and sent to Cambridge, would present you some such moral 
 picture as that of the prisoner described by Sterne. His 
 chief employment, day by day, would consist in notching 
 24* 
 
282 THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 
 
 upon his stick the underrating record of his daily suffering. 
 It would be, to him, an experiment almost as full of torture 
 as that of the Scottish boot, the Spanish thumbscrew, or any 
 of those happy devices of ancient days, for impressing pleas- 
 ant principles upon the mind, by impressing unpleasant feel- 
 ings upon the thews, joints and sinews. 1 wish that some 
 one of our writers, familiar with mental analysis, would make 
 this poem of Freneau the subject of a story. I think it would 
 vield admirable material. To develope the thoughts and 
 feelings of an Indian hoy, taken from his people ere yet he 
 has formed such a knowledge of them, or of others, as to 
 have begun to discuss or compare their differences — follow 
 him to a college such as that of Princeton or Cambridg< — 
 watch him within its walls — amid the crowd, but not of it — 
 looking only within himself, while all others are looking into 
 him, or trying to do so — surrounded by active, sharp-witted 
 lads, of the Anglo-Norman raot — undergoing an hourly re- 
 peated series of moral spasms, as he hears them wantonly or 
 thoughtlessly dwell upon the wild and ignorant people from 
 whom he is chosen — listening, though without seeming to 
 listen, to their crude speculations upon the great problem, 
 which is to be solved only by seeing how well he can endure 
 his spasms, and what use he will make of his philosophy, if 
 he survives it — then, when the toils of study and the tedious 
 restraints and troubles of prayer and recitation are got over, 
 to behold and describe the joy with which the happy wretch 
 flings by his fetters, when he is dismissed from those walls 
 which have witnessed his tortures, even supposing him to 
 remain (which is very unlikely) until his course of study is 
 pronounced to be complete ! With what curious pleasure 
 will he stop, in the shadow of the first deep forest, to tear 
 from his limbs those garments which make him seem unlike 
 his people ! How quick will be the beating at his heart, as 
 he endeavors to dispose about his shoulders the blanket robe, 
 in the manner in which it is worn by the chief warrior of his 
 tribe! With what keen effort — should he have had any pre- 
 vious knowledge of his kindred — will he seek to compel his 
 memory to restore every, the slightest, custom or peculiarity 
 which distinguished them, when his eyes were first withdrawn 
 from the parental tribe ; and how closely will he imitate their 
 
THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 283 
 
 indomitable pride, and lofty, cold, superiority of look and 
 gesture, as, at evening, he enters the native hamlet, and takes 
 his seat, in silence, at the door of the council house, waiting, 
 without a word, for the summons of the elders !" 
 
 " Quite a picture. I think with you, that, in good hands, 
 such a subject would prove a very noble one." 
 
 " But trie story would not finish here. Supposing all this 
 to have taken place, just as we are told it did — supposing the 
 boy to have graduated at college, and to have flung away the 
 distinction— to have returned, as has been described, to his 
 costume — to the homes and habits of his people ; — it is not 
 so clear that he will fling away all the lessons of wisdom, all 
 the knowledge of facts, which he will have acquired from the 
 tuition of the superior race. A natural instinct, which is 
 above all lessons, must be complied with ; but, this done, 
 and when the first tumults of his blood have subsided, which 
 led him to defeat the more immediate object of his social 
 training, there will be a gradual resumption of the educa- 
 tional influence in his mind, and his intellectual habits will 
 begin to exercise themselves anew. They will be provoked, 
 necessarily, to this exercise, by what he beholds around him. 
 He will begin to perceive, in its true aspects, the wretchedness 
 of that hunter state, which, surveyed at a distance, appeared 
 only the embodiment of stoical heroism and the most elevated 
 pride. He will see and lament the squalid poverty of his 
 people, which, his first lessons in civilization must have shown 
 him, is due only to the mode of life and pursuits in which 
 they are engaged. Their beastly intoxication will offend his 
 tastes ; their superstition and ignorance — the circumscribed 
 limits of their capacity for judging of things and relations, 
 beyond the life of the bird or beast of prey — will awaken in 
 him a sense of shame, when he feels that they are his kin- 
 dred. The insecurity of their liberties will awaken his fears, 
 for he will instantly see that the great body of the people, in 
 every aboriginal nation, are the veriest slaves in the world ; 
 and the degrading exhibitions which they make, in their tilth 
 and drunkenness, which reduce the man to a loathsomeness 
 of aspect which is never reached by the vilest beast which he 
 hunts or scourges, will be beheld by the Indian student in 
 very lively contrast with all that has met his eyes during that 
 
284 THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 
 
 novitiate among the white sages, the processes of which have 
 been to him so humiliating and painful. His memory reverts 
 to that period with feelings of reconciliation. The torture is 
 over, and the remembrance of former pain, endured with 
 manly fortitude, is comparatively a pleasure. A necessary 
 reaction in his mind takes place; and, agreeably to the laws 
 of nature, what will, and what should follow, but that he will 
 seek to become the tutor and the reformer of his people ? 
 They, themselves, will tacitly raise him to this position ; for 
 the man of the forest will defer even to the negro who has 
 been educated by the white man. He will try to teach them 
 habits of greater method and industry ; he will overthrow 
 the altars of their false gods ; he will seek to bind the wan- 
 dering tribes together, under one head, and in one nation ; 
 he will prescribe uniform laws of government He will suc- 
 Ceed in some things; he will fail in others. He will offend 
 the pride of the self- conceited and the mulish — the priesthood 
 will he the first to declare against him — and he will be mur- 
 dered, most probably, as was Romulus, and afterwards deified. 
 If he escapes this fate, he will yet, most likely, perish from 
 mortification under failure, or in consequence of those mental 
 strifes which spring from that divided allegiance between the 
 feelings belonging to his savage, and those which have had 
 their origin in his Christian schools — those natural strifes 
 between the acquisitions of civilization on the one hand, and 
 those instinct tendencies of the blood which distinguish his 
 connection with the inferior race. In this conflict, he will, at 
 length, when the enthusiasm of his youthful zeal has become 
 chilled by frequent and unexpected defeat, falter, and finally 
 fail. But will there be nothing done for this people ? Who 
 can say ] I believe that no seed falls, without profit, by the 
 wayside. Even if the truth produces no immediate fruits, it 
 forms a moral manure, which fertilizes the otherwise barren 
 heart, in preparation for the more favorable season. The In- 
 dian student may fail, as his teachers did, in realizing the ob- 
 ject for which he has striven ; and this sort of failure is, by 
 the way, one of the most ordinary of human allotment. The 
 desires of man's heart, by an especial providence, that always 
 wills him to act for the future, generally aim at something 
 far beyond his own powers of performance. But the labor 
 
THE MORALS OF SLAVERY. 285 
 
 has not been taken in vain, in the progress of successive agps, 
 which has achieved even a small part of its legitimate purpo- 
 ses. The Indian student has done for his people much more 
 than the white man achieves, ordinarily, for his generation, if 
 he has only secured to their use a single truth which they 
 knew not before — if he has overthrown only one of their 
 false gods — if he has smitten off the snaky head of only one 
 of their superstitious prejudices. If he has added to their 
 fields of corn a field of millet, he has induced one farther 
 physical step towards moral improvement. Nay, if there be 
 no other result, the very deference which they will have paid 
 him, as the eUve of the white man, will be a something gained, 
 of no little importance, towards inducing their more ready, 
 though still tardy, adoption of the laws and guidance of the 
 superior race." 
 
PROFESSOR DEW 01 SLAVERY* 
 
 In looking to the texture of the population of our country, 
 there is nothing so well calculated to arrest the attention of 
 the observer, as the existence of negro slavery throughout a 
 large portion of the confederacy. A race of people, differing 
 from us in color and in habits, and vastly inferior in the scale 
 of civilization, have been increasing and spreading, "growing 
 with our growth, and strengthening with our strength," until 
 they have become intertwined and intertwisted with every 
 fibre of society. Go through our Southern country, and every 
 where you see the negro slave by the side of the white man ; 
 you find him alike in the mansion of the rich, the cabin of 
 the poor, the workshop of the mechanic, and the field-* of the 
 planter. Upon the contemplation of a population framed 
 like this, a curious and interesting question readily suggests 
 itself to the inquiring mind : — Can these two distinct races of 
 people, now living together as master and servant, be ever 
 separated ? Can the black be sent back to his African home, 
 or will the day ever arrive when he can be liberated from his 
 thraldom, and mount upwards in the scale of civilization and 
 rights, to an equaiity with the white ? This is a question of 
 
 * Review of the debate in the Virginia Legislature, 1831-'32. By 
 Thomas R. Dew, Professor of Hittory, Metaphysics, and Political Law, 
 William and Mary College, Virginia. Abol. ton of Slavery. 1. De- 
 bate in the Virginia Legislature of '31 '32, on the Abo.ition of Slavery. 
 Richmond. 2. Letter of Appomattox to the People of Virginia, on 
 the subject of the Abolition of Slavery. Richmond. 
 
288 PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 truly momentous character; it involves the whole framework 
 of society, contemplates a separation of its elements, or a 
 radical change in their relation, and requires, for its adequate 
 investigation, the most complete and profound knowledge of 
 the nature and sources of national wealth and political ag- 
 grandizement, an acquaintance with the elastic and powerful 
 spring of population, and the causes which invigorate or pa- 
 ralyze its energies, together with a clear perception of the 
 varying rights of man, amid all the changing circumstances 
 by which he may be surrounded, and a profound knowledge 
 of all the principles, passions, and susceptibilities which make 
 up the moral nature of our species, and according as they are 
 acted up<»n by adventitious circumstances, alter our condition, 
 and produce all that wonderful variety of character which so 
 strongly marks and characterizes the human family, j Well, 
 then, does it behoove even the wisest statesmen to approach 
 this august subject with the utmost circumspection and diffi- 
 dence ; its wanton agitation even is pregnant with mischief; 
 but rash and hasty action threatens, in our opinion, the whole 
 Southern country with irremediable ruin. The evil of yes- 
 terday's growth may be extirpated to-day, and the vigor of 
 society may heal the wound ; but that which is the growth of 
 ayes, may require ayes to remove. The Parliament of Great 
 Britain, with all its philanthropic zeal, guided by the wisdom 
 and eloquence of such statesmen as Chatham, Fox, Burke, 
 Titt, Canning and Brougham, has never yet seriously agitated 
 this question, in regard to the West India possessions. Re- 
 volutionary France, actuated by the most intemperate and 
 phrenetic zeal for liberty and equality, attempted to legislate 
 the free people of color, in the Island of St. Domingo, into 
 all the rights and privileges of the whites ; and, but a season 
 afterwards, convinced of her madness, she attempted to retrace 
 her steps. But it was too late. The deed had been done. 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 289 
 
 The bloodiest and most shocking insurrection ever recorded 
 in the annals of* history had broken out, and the whole Island 
 was involved in frightful carnage and anarchy, and France, in 
 the end, has been stript "of the brightest jewel in her crown," 
 the fairest and most valuable of all her colonial possessions. 
 Since the revolution, France, Spain and Portugal, large owners 
 of colonial possessions, have not only not abolished slavery in 
 their colonies, but have not even abolished the slave trade in 
 practice. 
 
 In our Southern slaveholding country, the question of eman- 
 cipation has never been seriously discussed in any of our 
 legislatures, until the whole subject, under the most exciting 
 circumstances, was, during the last winter, brought up for 
 di-cussion in the Virginia Legislature, and plans of partial or 
 total abolition were earnestly pressed upon the attention of 
 that body. It is well known that, during the last summer, in 
 the county of Southampton, in Virginia, a few slaves, led on 
 by Nat Turner, rose in the night, and murdered, in the most 
 inhuman and shocking manner, between sixty and seventy of 
 the unsuspecting whites of that county. The news, of course, 
 was rapidly diffused, and, with it, consternation and dismay 
 were spread throughout the State, destroying, for a time, all 
 feeling of security and confidence ; and, even when subsequent 
 development had proved that the conspiracy had been origi- 
 nated by a fanatical negro preacher, (whose confessions prove, 
 beyond a doubt, mental aberration,) and that this conspiracy 
 embraced but few slaves, all of whom had paid the penalty 
 of their crimes, still the excitement remained, still the repose 
 of the commonwealth was disturbed, for the ghastly horrors 
 of the Southampton tragedy could not immediately be ban- 
 ished from the mind — and rumor, too, with her thousand 
 tongues, was busily engaged in spreading tales of disaffection, 
 plots, insurrections, and even massacres, which frightened the 
 25 
 
290 PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 timid, Rod harassed and mortified the whole of the slavehold- 
 ing population. During this period of excitement, when rea- 
 son whs almost banished from the mind, and the imagination 
 was suffered to conjure up the most appalling phantoms, and 
 picture to itself a crisis, in the vista of futurity, when the 
 overwhelming numbers of the blacks would rise superior to 
 all restraint, and involve the fairest portion of our land in 
 universal nun and d« solution. \u- are not to wonder that, even 
 in the lower part of Virginia, many should have seriously 
 inquired if this supposed monstrous evil could not In* remove d 
 from our bosom ? Some looked to the removal of the free 
 people of color, by the effo ts of the Colonization Socii ty, as 
 an antidote to all our ills. Some were disposed to strike at 
 the root of the evil: to call on the General Government for 
 aid, and, by the labors of Hercules, to extirpate the curse of 
 slavery from the land. Others again, whoconld not bear that 
 Virginia should stand towards the ( reneral ( rovernment (whose 
 unconstitutional action she bad ever been foremost to resist) 
 in the attitude of a suppliant, looked forward to the legislative 
 action of the State, as capable of achieving the desired result. 
 In this state of excitement and un allayed apprehension, the 
 
 . islature met, and plans for abolition were proposed, and 
 earnestly advocated in debate. 
 
 Upon the impropriety of this debate, we beg leave to make 
 a few observations. Any scheme of abolition, proposed so 
 soon after the Southampton tragedy, would necessarily appeal 
 to be the result of that most inhuman massacre. Suppose 
 the negroes, then, to be really anxious for their emancipation, 
 uo matter on what terms, would not the extraordinary effect 
 produced on the Legislature by the Southampton insurrection, 
 in all probability, have a tendency to excite another ? And 
 we must recollect, from the nature of things, no plan of abo- 
 lition could act suddenly on the whole mass of slave popula- 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 291 
 
 tion in the State. Mr. Randolph's was not even to commence 
 its operation till 1810. Waiting, then, one year or more, 
 until the excitement could be allayed, and the empire of rea- 
 son could once more have been established, would surely have 
 been productive of no injurious consequences ; and, in the 
 mean time, a Legislature could have been selected, which 
 would much better have represented the \iews and wishes of 
 their constituents, on this vital question. Virginia could have 
 ascertained the sentiments and wishes of other slaveholding 
 States, whose concurrence, if not absolutely necessary, might 
 be highly desirable, and should have been sought after and 
 attended to, at least, as a matter of State courtesy. Added 
 to this, the texture of the Legislature was not of that charac- 
 ter calculated to ensure the confidence of the people, in a 
 movement of this kind. If ever there was a question debated 
 in a deliberative body, which called for the most exalted talent, 
 the longest and mo^t tried experience, the utmost circumspec- 
 tion and caution, a complete exemption from prejudice a*id 
 undue excitement, where both are apt to prevail, an ardent 
 and patriotic desire to advance the vital interests of the State, 
 uncombined with mere desire for vain and ostentatious display, 
 and with no view to party or geographical divisions, that 
 question was the question of the abolition of slavery, in the 
 Virginia Legislature. " Grave and reverend seniors," u the 
 very fathers of the Republic," were indeed required, for the 
 settlement of a question of such magnitude. It appears, 
 however, that the Legislature was composed of an unusual 
 number of young and inexperienced members, elected in the 
 month of April, previous to the Southampton massacre, and 
 at a time of profound tranquillity and repose, when, of course, 
 the people were not disposed to call from their retirement 
 their most distinguished and experienced citizens. 
 
 We are very ready to admit, that in point of ability and 
 
292 PROFESSOR DEW OX SLAVERY. 
 
 eloquence, the debate transcended our expectations. One of 
 the leading political papers in the State remarked, " We have 
 never heard any debate so eloquent, so sustained, and in which 
 so great a number of speakers had appeared, and commanded 
 the attention of so numerous and intelligent an audience." 
 
 "Day after day, multitudes throng to the capital, 
 
 and have been compensated by eloquence which would have 
 illustrated Rome or Athens." But, however fine might have 
 been the rhetorical display, however ably some isolated points 
 may have been discussed, Btill we affirm, with confidence, that 
 no enlarged, wise and practical plan of operations was pro- 
 
 posed by the abolitionists. We will go farther, and assert 
 
 that their arguments, in most cases, were of a wild and in- 
 temperate character, based upon false principles, and assump- 
 tions of the most vicious ami alarming kind, subversive of t be 
 rights of property and the order and tranquillity of society, 
 and portending to the whole Blaveholding country — if they 
 ever shall be followed out in practice — the most inevitable 
 and ruinous consequences. Far be it, however, from us, to 
 accuse the abolitionists in the Virginia Legislature of any 
 settled or malevolent design to overturn or convulse the fabric 
 of society. We have no doubt that they were acting con- 
 scientiously for the best; but it often happens that frail, im- 
 perfect man, in the too ardent and confident pursuit of imagi- 
 nary good, runs upon his utter destruction. 
 
 We have not formed our opinion lightly upon this subject; 
 we have given to the vital question of abolition the most ma- 
 ture and intense consideration which we are capable of be- 
 stowing, and we have come to the conclusion — a conclusion 
 which seems to be sustained by facts and reasoning as irre- 
 sistible as the demonstration of the mathematician — that every 
 plan of emancipation and deportation which we can possibly 
 conceive, is totally impracticable. We shall endeavor to prove 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 293 
 
 that the attempt to execute these plans can only have a ten- 
 dency to increase all the evils of which we complain, as re- 
 sulting from slavery. If this be true, then the great question 
 of abolition will necessarily be reduced to the question of 
 emancipation, with a permission to remain, which, we think, 
 can easily be shown to be utterly subversive of the interests, 
 security and happiness of both the blacks and whites, and 
 consequently, hostile to every principle of expediency, moral- 
 ity, and religion. We have heretofore doubted the propriety, 
 even, of too frequently agitating, especially in a public man- 
 ner, the question of abolition, in consequence of the injurious 
 effects which might be produced on the slave population. 
 But the Virginia Legislature, in its zeal for discussion, boldly 
 set aside all prudential considerations of this kind, and openly 
 and publicly debated the subject, before the world. The seal 
 has now been broken— the example has been set from a high 
 quarter; we shall, therefore, waive all considerations of a 
 prudential character, which have hitherto restrained us, and 
 boldly grapple with the abolitionists and this great question. 
 We fear not the result, so far as truth, justice and expediency 
 alone are concerned. But we must be permitted to say that 
 we do most deeply dread the effects of misguided philanthro- 
 py, and the marked, and, we had like to have said, imperti- 
 nert intrusion in this matter, of those who have no interest 
 at stake, and who have not intimate and minute knowledge 
 of the whole subject, so absolutely necessary to wise action. 
 
 Without further preliminary, then, we shall advance to the 
 discussion of the question of abolition, noticing not only the 
 plans proposed in the Virginia Legislature, but some others, 
 likewise. And, as the subject of slavery has been considered 
 in every point of view, and pronounced, in the abstract, at least, 
 as entirely contrary to the law of nature, we propose taking, in 
 25* 
 
294 PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 the first place, a hasty view of the origin of slavery, and point out 
 the influence which it lias exerted on the progress of civilization, 
 and to this purpose it will be necessary to look back to other 
 ages — cast a glance at nations differing from us in civilization 
 and manners, and see whether it is possible to mount to the 
 source of slavery. 
 
 1. Origin of Slavery, and its Effects on the Progress of 
 Civilization. 
 
 Upon an examination of the nature of man, we find him 
 to be almost entirely the creature of circumstances — his habits 
 and sentiments are, in a great measure, the growth of adven- 
 titious causes — hence the endless variety and condition of our 
 species. We are almost ever disposed, however, to identify 
 the course of nature with the progress of events in our own 
 narrow contracted sphere ; we look upon any deviation from 
 the constant round in which we have been spinning out the 
 thread of our existence, as a departure from nature's great 
 BJStera, and, from a known principle of our nature, our first 
 impulse is to condemn. It is thus that the man born and 
 matured in the lap of freedom, looks upon slavery as unna- 
 tural and horrible ; and, if he be not instructed upon the 
 subject, is sure to think that so unnatural a condition could 
 never exist, but in few countries or ages, in violation of every 
 law of justice or humanity ; and he is almost disposed to 
 implore the divine wrath, to shower down the consuming fire 
 of heaven on the Sodoms and Gomorrahs of the world, w here 
 this unjust practice prevails. 
 
 But, when he examines into the past condition of mankind, 
 he stands amazed at the fact which history develops to his 
 view. " Almost every page of ancient history, 11 says Wallace, 
 in his Dissertation on the Numbers of Mankind, "demon- 
 strates the great multitudes of slaves ; which gives occasion 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 295 
 
 to a melancholy reflection, that the world, when best peopled, 
 was not a world of freemen, but of slaves."* » And in every 
 age and country, until times comparatively recent/' says Hal- 
 lam, "personal servitude appears to have been the lot of a 
 large, perhaps the greater portion of mankind."! 
 
 Slavery was established and sanctioned by divine authority, 
 among even the elect of heaven, the favored'children of Israel! 
 Abraham, the founder of this interesting nation, and the cho- 
 sen servant of the Lord, was the owner of hundreds of slaves. 
 That magnificent shrine, th# Temple of Solomon, was reared 
 by the hands of slaves.' Egypt's venerable and enduring piles 
 were reared by similar hands. Slavery existed in Assyria and 
 Babylon. The ten tribes of Israel were carried off in bondage 
 to the former by Shalmanezar, and the two tribes of Judah 
 were subsequently carried in triumph by Nebuchadnezzar, to 
 beautify and adorn the latter. Ancient Phoenicia and Car- 
 thage had slaves. The Greeks and Trojans, at the siege of 
 Troy, had slaves. Athens, and Sparta, and Thebes, indeed 
 the whole Grecian and Roman worlds, had more slaves than 
 freemen. And in those ages which succeeded the extinction 
 of the Roman empire in the West, « servi, or slaves," says 
 Dr. Robertson, "seem to have been the most numerous 
 class."! Even in this day of civilization, and the regeneration 
 of governments, slavery is far from being confined to our 
 hemisphere alone. The serf and labor rents prevale.it through- 
 out the whole of Eastern Europe, and a portion of Western 
 Asia, and the ryot rents throughout the extensive and over 
 populated countries of the East, and over the dominions of 
 the Porte in Europe, Asia and Africa, but too conclusively 
 
 * P. 9.*?, Edinburgh edition. 
 
 f Middle Ages, vol. 1, p . 120, Philapelphia edition. 
 
 t See Robertson's Works, vol. 3, p. 186. 
 
29G PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 mark the existence of slavery over these boundless regions. 
 And when we turn to the continent of Africa, we find slavery, 
 in all its most horrid forms, existing throughout its whole 
 extent, the slaves being at least three times more numerous 
 than the freemen ; so that, looking to the whole world, we 
 may, even now, with confidence assert, that slaves, or those 
 whose condition is infinitely worse, form by far the largest 
 portion of the human race ! 
 
 Well, then, may we here pause, and inquire a moment — 
 for it is surely worthy of inquiry — how has slavery arisen and 
 thus spread over our globe '. We shall not pretend to enu- 
 merate accurately, aud in detail, all the causes which have 
 led to slavery; but we 1>< lieve the principal may be summed 
 up wider the following heads : 1st. LawsofWar; 2d. State 
 of Property and Feebleness of Government; 3d. Bargain 
 and Sale ; and -4th. Crime. 
 
 1st. haws of War. — There is no circumstance which more 
 honorably and creditably characterizes modern warfare, than 
 the humanity with which it is waged, and the mildness with 
 which captives are treated. Civilized nations, with but few 
 exceptions, now act in complete conformity with the wise rule 
 laid down by Qrotius, " that in war we have a right only to 
 the use of those means which have a connection morally ne- 
 cessary with the end in view." Consequently, we have no 
 just right, where this rule is adhered to by our adversary, to 
 enslave or put to death enemies non-€ombatant, who may be 
 in our possession : for this, in modern times, among civilized 
 nations, is not morally necessary to the attainment of the end 
 in view. On the contrary, if such a practice were commenced 
 now, it would only increase the calamities of the belligerents, 
 by converting their wars into wars of extermination, or rapine 
 and plunder, terminated generally with infinitely less advan- 
 tage, and more difficulty to each of the parties. But humane 
 
 
PROFESSOR DEW OX SLAVERY. 297 
 
 ' and advantageous as this mitigated practice appears, we are 
 
 i not to suppose it universal, or that it has obtained in all ages. 
 On the contrary, it is the growth of modern civilization, and 
 has been confined, in a great measure, to civilized Europe and 
 
 j its colonies. 
 
 Writers on the progress of society designate three stages in 
 which man has been found to exist. First, the hunting or 
 fishing state ; second, the pastoral ; third, agricultural. Man, 
 in the hunting state, has ever been found to wage war in the 
 most cruel and implacable manner, extermination being the 
 object of the belligerent tribes. " Never has there been a finer 
 field presented to the philosopher, for a complete investigation 
 of the character of any portion of our species, than the whole 
 American hemisphere presented, for the complete investigation 
 of the character of savages, in the hunting and fishing state. 
 Dr. Robertson has given us a most appalling description of 
 the cruelties with wh'ch savage warfare was waged, through- 
 out the whole continent of America, and the barbarous man- 
 
 inerin which prisoners were everywhere put to death. He 
 
 I justly observes, that the bare description is enough to chill the 
 heart with horror, wherever men have been accustomed, by 
 
 i milder institutions, to respect their species, and to melt into 
 tenderness at the sight of human sufferings. The prisoners 
 are tied naked to a stake, but so as to be at liberty to move 
 
 |round it. All who are present — men, women and children — 
 rush upon them like furies. Every species of torture is applied, 
 that the rancor of revenge can invent: some burn their limbs 
 with red hot iron, some mangle their bodies with knives, 
 others tear their flesh from their bones, pluck out their nails 
 by the roots, and rend and twist their sinews. Nothing sets 
 bounds to their rage but the dread of abridging the duration 
 of their vengeance, by hastening the death of the sufferers ; 
 and such is their cruel ingenuity in tormenting, that, by avoid- 
 
298 PROFESSOR DEW OX SLAVERY. 
 
 ing industriously to hurt any vital part, they often prolong 
 the scene of anguish for several days."* 
 
 Let us now inquire into the cause of such barbarous prac- 
 tices, and we shall rind that they must be imputed principally 
 to the passion of revenge. In the language of the same elo- 
 quent writer whom we have just quoted, "in small com- 
 munities, every man is touched with the injury or affront 
 offered to the hody of which he is a member, as if it were a 
 personal attack on his own honor and safety. War, which, 
 between extensive kingdoms, is carried on with little animosi- 
 ty, is prosecuted by small tribes with all the rancor of a pri- 
 vate quarrel. When polished nations have obtained the 
 glory of victory, or have acquired an addition of territory, 
 they may terminate a war with honor. But savages are not 
 satisfied, until they extirpate the community which is the | 
 object of their hatred. They tight not to conquer, hut de- 
 stroy." "The desire of vengeance is the first, and almost the ' 
 only principle, which a savage instils into the minds of his . 
 children. The desire of vengeance, which takes possession of ' 
 the hearts of savages, resembles the instinctive rage of an 
 animal, rather than the passion of a man."f Unfortunately, 
 too, interest conspires with the desire of revenge, to render 
 savage warfare horrible. The wants of the savage, it is true, 
 are few and simple; but, limited as they are, according to 
 their mode of life, it is extremely difficult to supply them. 
 Hunting and fishing afford, at best, a very precarious subsist- 
 ence. Throughout the extensive regions of America, popu- | 
 lation was found to he most sparsely settled; hut, thin as it ! 
 was, it was most wretchedly and scantily supplied with pro- 
 visions. Under these circumstances, prisoners of war could 
 
 * See Robertson's America, Phil, ed., vol. 1, p. 197. 
 f Ibid., vol. l,pp. 192, 193. 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 299 
 
 not be kept, for the feeding f them would be sure to pro- 
 ; duce a famine.* Tin y would not be sent back to their tribe, 
 • for that would strengthen the enemy. Tney could not even 
 imake slaves of them, for their labor would have been worth- 
 less. Death, then, was, unfortunately, the punishment, which 
 was prompted both by interest and revenge. And, accord- 
 ingly, throughout the whole continent of America, we find, 
 with but one or two exceptions, that this was the dreadful 
 fate which awaited the prisoners of all classes, men, women 
 and children. In fact, this has been the practice of war, 
 wherever man was found in the first stages of society, living 
 on the precarious subsistence of the chase. The savages of 
 the Islands of Andaman, in the East, supposed by many to 
 be lowest in the scale of civilization, of Van Diemen's Land, 
 of New Holland, and of the Islands of the South Pacific^ are 
 all alike— they all agree in the practice of exterminating ene- 
 mies, by the most perfidious and cruel conduct, and, through- 
 out many extensive regions, the horrid practice of feasting on 
 |the murdered prisoners pre vailed. J 
 
 | * " If a few Spaniards settled in any district, such a small addition 
 of supernumerary mouths soon exhausted their scanty store, and brought 
 pn famine." — Robertson, p. 182. 
 
 I t Captain Cook says, of the natives in the neighborhood of Queen 
 Charlotte's Sound, "If I had followed ihe advice of all our p.eiended 
 
 netuLs 1 might have extirpated the whole race, for the people of each 
 hamlet or village, by turns, applied to me to d&stioy the other 
 
 t appears to me that the New Zealandera mast live in peipetual ap- 
 
 reheusion of being destroyed by each other." 
 t " Among the Iroquois," says Dr. Robertson, " the phrase by which 
 Ihey express their resolution of making war against an enemy is, • let 
 M go and eat that nation.' If they so.'ic t the aid of a neighboring 
 Vie, they invite it to « eat broth made of the fle.h of then- enemies.' " 
 jkmong the Abnakis, according to the « Lrttrea Edif. et Curieuee," the 
 jhiet; after dividing his warriors into parties, says to each, * to you is 
 
300 PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 What is there, let us ask, which is calculated to arrest this 
 horrid practice, and to communicate an impulse towards civi- 
 lization I Strange as it may sound in modern ears, it is the 
 institution of property and the existence of slavery. Judging! 
 from the universality of the fact, we may assert that domestic 
 slavery seems to be the only means of fixing the wanderer to 
 the soil, moderating his savage temper, mitigating the horrors 
 of war, and abolishing the practice of murdering the captives] 
 In the pure hunting state, man has little idea of property] 
 and consequently there is little room for distinction, except 
 what arises from personal qualities. People in this state re- 
 tain, therefore, a high sense of equality and independence. 
 It is a singular fact, that the two extremi s of society are most 
 favorable to liberty and equality — the most savage, and the 
 most refined and enlightened— the former, in consequence of 
 the absence of the institution of property, and the latter from ; 
 the diffusion of knowledge, and the consequent capability of | 
 self-government. The former is characterized by a wild, li- I 
 centious independence, totally subversive of all order and 
 tranquillity; and the latter by a well-ordered, well-established 
 liberty, which, while it leaves to each the enjoyment of the 
 fruits of his industry, secures him against the lawless violence 
 and rapine of his neighbors. Throughout the whole Ameri- 
 can continent, this equality and savage independence seem to 
 have prevailed, except in the comparatively great kingdoms 
 of Mexico and Peru, where the right to property was estab- 
 lished. 
 
 So soon as the private right to property is established, 
 
 given such a hamlet to eat, to you such a village," etc. Captain Cook, 
 in his third voyage, says of the New Zealatulers, " Perhaps the desire 
 of making a good meal (on prisoners) is no small inducement" to go 
 to war. 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 301 
 
 slavery commences ; and with the institution of slavery, the 
 cruelties of war begin to diminish. The chief finds it to his 
 interest to make slaves of his captives, rather than put them 
 to death. This system commences with the shepherd state, 
 and is consummated in the agricultural. Slavery, therefore] 
 seems to be the chief means of mitigating the horrors of war. 
 Accordingly, wherever, among barbarous nations, they have 
 so far advanced in civilization as to understand the use wlich 
 may be made of captives, by converting them into slaves, 
 there the cruelties of war are found to be lessened. 
 
 Throughout the whole continent of Africa, in consequence 
 of the universal prevalence of slavery, war is not conducted 
 with the same barbarous ferocity as by the American Indian. 
 And hence it happens that some nations become most ciuel 
 to those whom they would most wish to favor. Thus, on the 
 borders of Persia, some of the tribes of Tartars massacre all 
 the true believers who fall into their hands, but preserve he- 
 retics and infidels, because their religion forbids them to make 
 slaves of true believers, and allows them to use or sell all 
 others, at their pleasure.* 
 
 Id looking to the history of the world, we find that inte- 
 rest, and interest alone, has been enabled successfully to war 
 against the fiercer passion of revenge. The only instance of 
 mildness in war, among the savages of North America, results 
 from the operation of interest. Sometimes, when the tribe 
 has suffered great loss of numbers, and stands very much in 
 need of recruits, the prisoner is saved, and adopted (says Ko- 
 bertson) as a member of the nation. Pastoral nations require 
 but few slaves, and, consequently, they save but few prisoners 
 for this purpose. Agricultural require more, and this state 
 
 * Tacitus tells us that civil wars are always the most cruel, because 
 the prisoners are not made slaves. 
 26 
 
302 PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 is the most advantageous to slavery. Prisoners of war are 
 generally spared by such nations, in consideration of the use 
 which may be made of their labor. 
 
 It is carious, in this respect, to contrmj late the varied suc- 
 cess with which, under various circumstances, the principle of 
 self-interest combats that of vengeance. The barbarians who 
 overran the Roman Empire existed principally in the | astoral 
 state. They brought along with them their wives and children, 
 and consequently they required extensive regions for their sup- 
 port, and but few slaves. We rind, accordingly, the y waged a 
 most cruel, exterminating war, not even sj firing women and 
 children. M Hence," says Dr. Robertson, in bis preliminary vol- 
 ume to the History of Charles V., M if a man were called to fix 
 upon a period in the history of tlie world, during which the 
 condition of the human race was most calamitous and afflicted, 
 he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from 
 the death of Theodosius the Great, (A.D. 395.) to the reign 
 of Alboinus in Lombardy." (A.D. 571.) At the last men- 
 tioned epoch, the barbarian inundations spent themselves, and, 
 consequently, repose was given to the world. 
 
 Slavery was very common at the siege of Troy ; but, in 
 consequeiice of the very rude state of agriculture prevalent in 
 those days, and the great reliance placed on the spontaneous 
 productions of the earth, the same number of slaves was not 
 requ,r<d as in subsequent ages, when agriculture had made 
 greater advances. Hence we find the laws of war of a very 
 cruel character, the principle of revenge triumphing over 
 tvery other. These are the evils, we are informed by Homer, 
 that follow the capture of a town : "The men are killtd, the 
 city is buna d to the ground, the women and children of all 
 ranks are carried off for slaves," (Iliad, L. 9.) Again : 
 u Wretch that I am," says the venerabie Priam, " what evil 
 does the great Jupiter bring on me in my old age ? JVJy sons 
 
PROFESSOR DEW OX SLAVERY. 303 
 
 slain, my daughters dragged into slavery, violence pervading 
 even the chambers of my palace, and the very infants dashed 
 against the ground, in horrid sport of war. I myself, slain 
 in the vain office of defence, shall be the prey of my own 
 dogs, perhaps, in the very palace gates I 1 ' (Iliad, L. 22.) 
 
 In after times, during the glorious days of the republics of 
 both Greece and Rome, the wants of man had undergone an 
 enlargement; agriculture had been pushed to a high state of 
 improvement, population became more den-e, and conse- 
 quently a more abundant production, aud more regular and 
 constant application of labor, became necessary. At this 
 period, slaves were in great demand, and, therefore, the pri- 
 soners of war were generally spared, in order that they might 
 be made slaves. And this mildness did not arise so much 
 from their civilization, as from the great demand for slaves. 
 All the Roman generals, even the mild Julius, were sufficiently 
 cruel to put to death, when they did not choose to make 
 slaves of the captives. Hence, as cruel as were the Greeks 
 and Romans in war, they were much milder than the sur- 
 rounding barbarous nations. In like manner, the wars in 
 Africa have been made, perhaps, more mild by the dave trade 
 than they would otherwise have been. Instances are fit quent, 
 where the prisoner has been immediately put to death, be- 
 cause a purchaser could not be found. The report of the 
 Lords, in 1 789, speaks of a female captive in Africa, for 
 whom an anker of brandy had been offered ; but before the 
 messenger arrived, her head had been cut off. Sir George 
 Young saved the life of a beautiful boy, about five years old 
 at Sierra Leone. The child was about to be thrown into the 
 river by the person who had him to sell, because he was too 
 young to be an object of trade; but Sir George offered a 
 quarter cask of Madeira for him, which was accepted.* A 
 
 * See Edward's West Indies, vol. 2, book 4, chap. 4. 
 
304 PROFESSOR DEW OX SLAVERY. 
 
 multitude of such instances might easily be cited, from com- 
 manders of vessels and travellers, who have ever visited 
 Africa. And thus do we find, by a review of the history of 
 the world, that slavery alone, which addresses itself to the 
 principle of self-interest, is capable of overcoming that inor- 
 dinate desire of vengeance which glows in the breast of the 
 savage; and, therefore, we find the remark made by Voltaire, 
 in his Phi. I >;e., that "slavery is as ancient as war, and war 
 as human nature," i> not strictly correct: for many ware have 
 been too cruel to admit of slavery. 
 
 Let us now close this head, by an inquiry into the justice 
 of slavery, flowing from the laws of war. And here we may 
 observe, in the first place, that the whole of the ancient world, 
 and all nations of modern times verging on a state of bar- 
 barism, never for a moment doubted this right All history 
 proves that they looked upon slavery as a mild punish- 
 ment, in comparison with what they had a right to in- 
 flict And, so far from being conscience-stricken, when they 
 inflicted the punishment of death or slavery, they seemed to 
 glory in the severity of the punishment, and to be remorseful 
 only when, from some cause, they had Dot inflicted the worst. 
 11 Why so tender-hearted," says Agamemnon to Menelaus, 
 seeing him hesitate, while a Trojan of high rank, who had 
 the misfortune to be disabled, by being thrown from his cha- 
 riot, w -a- 1 egging for life, u are you and your horse so be- 
 holden to the Trojans? Let not one of them escape destruc- 
 tion from our hands — no, not the child within his mother's 
 womb. Let all perish un mourned." And the poet even 
 gives his sanction to this inhumanity of Agamemnon, who 
 was never characterized as inhuman : 4i It was justly ppoken, 
 (says Homer,) and he turned his brother's mind." And the 
 suppliant was murdered by the hand of the king of men. 
 " When the unfortunate monarch of Troy came to beg the 
 
PROFESSOR DEW OX SLAVERY. 305 
 
 body of liis heroic son, ([lector,) we find the conduct of 
 Achilles marked by a superior spirit of generosity. Yet, in 
 the very act of granting the pious request, he doubts if he is 
 quite excusable to the soul of his departed friend, for remit- 
 ting the extremity of vengeance which he had meditated, and 
 restoring the corse to secure the rites of burial."* To ask 
 them, whether men, with notions similar to these, had a right 
 to kill or enslave the prisoners, would almost be like gravely 
 inquiring into the right of tigers and lions to kill each other, 
 and devour the weaker beasts of the forest. If we look to 
 the republics of Greece and Rome, in the days of their glory 
 and civilization, we shall find no one doubting the right to 
 make slaves of those taken in war. "No legislator of anti- 
 quity," says Voltaire, "ever attempted to abrogate slavery ; 
 on the contrary, the people the most enthusiastic for liberty — 
 the Athenians, the Lacedemonians, the Romans, and the Car- 
 thagenians — were those who enacted the most severe laws 
 against their serfs. Society was so accustomed to this degra- 
 dation of the species, that Epictetus, who was assuredly worth 
 more than his master, never expresses any surprise at his 
 being a slave.' 1 ! Julius Caesar has been reckoned one of the 
 mildest and most clement military chieftains of antiquity, and 
 yet there is very little doubt, that the principal object in the 
 invasion of Britain, was to procure slaves for the Roman slave 
 markets. When he left Britain, it became necessary to col- 
 lect together a large fleet, for the purpose of transporting his 
 captives across the channel. He sometimes ordered the cap- 
 tive chiefs to be executed, and he butchered the whole of 
 Cato's Senate, when he became master of Utica. Paulus 
 Emilius, acting under the special orders of the Roman Senate, 
 
 * See Mitford's Greece, vol. 1, chap. 2, sec. 4. 
 t See Philosophical Dictionary, titie " Slaves." 
 26* 
 
306 PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 laid all Epirus waste, and brought 150,000 captives in chains 
 to Italy, all of whom were sold in the Roman slave markets. 
 Augustus Caesar was considered one of the mildest, most 
 pacific, and most politic of the Roman Emperors; yet, when 
 he rooted out the nation of the Salassii, nn 1 k > dwelt upon the 
 Alps, he sold 30,000 persons into slavery. Cato was a large 
 owner of slaves, most of whom he had purchased in the slave 
 markets at the sale of prisoners of war.* Aristotle, the great- 
 est philosopher of antiquity, and a man of as capacious mind 
 as the world ever produced, wasa warm advocate of slavery — 
 maintaining that it was reasonable, necessary, and natural; 
 and, accordingly, in his model of a republic, there were to be 
 comparatively few freemen served by many Blaves.f 
 
 \i' we turn from profane history to Holy Writ — that sacred 
 fountain whence are derived those pure precepts, and holy 
 laws and regulations by which the Christian world has eu-r 
 been governed — we shall rind that the children of Israel, under 
 tli.- guidance of Jehovah, massacred or enslaved their prison- 
 ers of war. So far from considering slavery a curse, they 
 considered it a punishment much too mild, and regretted, 
 from this cause alone, its infliction. 
 
 The children of Israel, when they marched upon the tribes 
 of Canaan, were in a situation very similar to the northern 
 invaders who overran the Roman Empire. They had their 
 wives and children along with them, and wished to make 
 Canaan their abode. Extermination, therefore, became neces- 
 sary ; and accordingly, we 6nd that the Gibeonites alone, who 
 practised upon the princes of Israel by a fraud, escaped the 
 dreadful scene of carnage. They were enslaved, and so far 
 from regretting their lot, they seem to have delighted in it ; 
 and the children of Israel, instead of mourning over the des- 
 
 * See Plutarch's Lives, Cato the Elder. 
 \ Aristotle's Politics, book 1, chap. 4. 
 
PROFESSOR DEW OX SLAVERY. 
 
 307 
 
 tiny of the enslaved Gibeonites, murmured that they were 
 not massacred — " and all the congregation murmured against 
 the princes." Arid the answer of the princes was, " we will 
 even let them live, lest wrath be upon us, bt cause of the oath 
 which we swear unto them. 1 ' " But let them be hewers of 
 wood and drawers of water unto all the congregation, as the 
 princes had promised them."* 
 
 But it is needless to multiply instances farther to illustrate 
 the ideas of the ancient world in regard to their rights to kill 
 or enslave at pleasure the unfortunate captive. Nor will we 
 now cite the example of Africa, the great storehouse of slavery 
 for the modern world, which so completely sustains our posi- 
 tion in regard to the opinions of men on this subject, farther 
 than to make an extract from a speech delivered in the Bri- 
 tish House of Commons, by Mr. Henniker, in 1789, in which 
 the speaker asserts that a letter had been received by George 
 III., from one of the most powerful of African potentates, 
 the Emperor of Dahomey, which letter admirably exemplifies 
 an African's notions about the right to kill or enslave prison- 
 ers of war. " lie (Emperor of Dahomey) stated," said Mr. 
 II., " that as he understood King George was the greatest of 
 white kings, so he thought himself the greatest of black ones. 
 He asserted that he could lead 500,000 men armed into the 
 field, that being the pursuit to which all his subjects were 
 bred, and the women only staying at home to plant and 
 manure the earth. He had himself fought two hundred 
 and nine battles, with great reputation and success, and had 
 conquered the great king of Ardah. The king's head was to 
 this dav preserved with the flesh and hair; the heads of his 
 generals were distinguished by being placed on eaeh side of 
 the doors of their Fetiches ; with the heads of the inferior 
 officers they paved the space before the doors ; and the heads 
 * See 9th chapter of Joshua. 
 
308 PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 of the common soldiers formed a sort of fringe or outwork 
 round the walls of the palace. Since this war, be had expe- 
 rienced the greatest good fortune, and he hoped in good 
 time to be able to complete the out walls of all his great 
 houses, to the number of sewn, in the same manner.*'* 
 
 Mr. Norris, who visited this empire in 1772, actually testi- 
 fies to the truth of this letter. He found the palace of the 
 Emperor an immense assemblage of cane and mud tents, 
 enclosed by a high wall. The skulls and jaw bones of ene- 
 mies slain in battle, formed the favorite ornaments of the 
 palaces and temples. The king's apartmeBta were paved, and 
 the walls and roof stuck over with these horrid trophies. 
 And if a farther supply appeared at any time desirable, he 
 announced to his general, that " his house wanted thatch,* 1 
 when a war tor that purpose was immediately undertaken.! 
 Who can for a moment be so absurd as to imagine that sueh 
 a prince as this could doubt of his right to make slaves in 
 war. when he gloried in being able to thatch his houses with 
 the heads of his enemies . ; Who could doubt that any thing 
 else than a strong sense of interest, would ever put an end to 
 Buch barbarity and ferocity ? Our limits will not allow us to 
 be more minute, however interesting the subject. 
 
 And, therefore, we will now examine into the right, accord- 
 ing to the law of nations — the strict jus gentium — and we 
 shall find all the writers agree in the justice of slavery, under 
 certain circumstances. Grotius says that, as the law of na- 
 ture permits prisoners of war to be killed, so the same law 
 has introduced the right of making them slaves, that the 
 captors, in view to the benefit arising from the labor or sale 
 of their prisoners, might be induced to spare them.J From 
 
 * See Haz^itz's British Eloquence, vol. 2. 
 •f- See Family Library, No. 16, p. 199. 
 \ L 3, chap. 7, sec. 5. 4 Book 6, chap. 3. 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 309 
 
 ; the general practice of nations before the time of Puffendorf, 
 ! he came to the conclusion that slavery has been established 
 i " by the free consent of the opposing parties."* 
 
 Rutherforth, in his Institutes, says, " since all the members 
 ; of a nation, against which a just war is made, are bound to 
 J repair the damages that gave occasion to the war, or that 
 are done in it, and likewise to make satisfaction for the ex- 
 penses of carrying it on ; the law of nations will allow those 
 who are prisoners to be made slaves by the nation which takes 
 them ; that so their labor, or the price for which they are 
 sold, may discharge these demands." But he most powerful- 
 ly combats the more cruel doctrine laid down by Grotius, that 
 the master has a right to take away the life of his slave. 
 Bynkershoek contends for the higher right of putting prison- 
 ers of war to death : " We may, however, (enslave,) if we 
 please," he adds, " and indeed we do sometimes still exercise 
 that right upon those who enforce it against us. Therefore 
 the Dutch are in the habit of selling to the Spaniards as 
 slaves, the Algerines, Tunisians, and Tripolitans, whom they 
 take prisoners in the Atlantic or Mediterranean. Nay, in the 
 year 1661, the States General gave orders to their admiral to 
 sell as slaves all the pirates that he should take. The same 
 thin w was done in 1664"f Vattel, the most humane of all 
 the standard authors on national law, asks — " are prisoners of 
 war to be made slaves ?" To which he answers, " Yes ; in 
 cases which give a right to kill them, when they have ren- 
 dered themselves personally guilty of some crime deserving 
 death."J Even Locke, who has so ably explored all the facul- 
 ties of the mind, and who so nobly stood forth against the 
 monstrous and absurd doctrines of Sir Robert Filmer, and the 
 
 * Book, chap. 9, sec. 11. 
 
 t Treatise on the Law of War, Du Ponceau's Ed. p. 21. 
 
 \ See Law of Nations, book 3, chap. 8, sec. 152. 
 
310 PROFESSOR DEW OX SLAVERY. 
 
 passive submissionhts of his day, admits the right to mate 
 slaves of prisoners whom we might justly have killed. Speak- 
 ing of a prisoner who has forfeited his lit'.-, he says, *' he to 
 whom he has forfeited it may, when he has him in his power, 
 d 'lay to take it, and make use of him to his own service, and 
 he does him no injury b) it."* Blackstone, it would seem, 
 denies the right to make prisoners of war slaves; for he says 
 we had no right to enslave, unless we had the right to kill, 
 and we had no right to kill, unless " in cases of absolute ne- 
 cessity, ^or self-defence ; and it is plain this ab : olute necessity 
 did not subsist, si ace the victor did not actually kill him, but 
 made him prisoner."! Upon this we have to remark, 1st, 
 that Judge Blackstone here speaks of slavery in its pure, un- 
 mitigated form, "whereby an unlimited power is given to the 
 master over the life and fortune of the slave. "J Slavery 
 scarcely exists any where in this form, ami if it did, it would 
 be a continuance of a state of war, as Rousseau justly ob- 
 serves, b -tween the captive and the captor. Again: Black- j 
 stone, in his argument upon this subject, seems to misunder- i 
 stand the grounds upon which civilians place the justification I 
 of slavery, as arising from the laws of war. It is well known 
 that most of the horrors of war spring from the principle of! 
 retaliation, and not, as Blackstone supposes, universally from 
 "absolute necessity." If two civilized nations of modern 
 times are at war, and one hangs up, without any justifiable 
 cause, all of the enemy who fall into its possession, the other 
 does not hesitate to inflict the same punishment upon an equal! 
 number of its prisoners. It is the " lex talionis" and not the 
 absolute necessity, which gives rise to this. 
 
 The colonists of this country up to the revolution, during,} 
 
 * On Civil Government, chap. 6. 
 
 f See Tucker's Blacks tone, vol. 2, p. 423. 
 
 \ Blackstone's Commentaries, in loco citato. 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 311 
 
 , and even since that epoch, have put to death the Indian cap- 
 
 I lives, whenever the Indians had been in the habit of massacre- 
 
 jing indiscriminately. It was not so much absolute necessity 
 
 as the law of retaliation, which justified this practice; and, the 
 
 civilians urge that the greater right includes the lesser; and, 
 
 a consequently, the right to kill involves the more humane and 
 
 Imore useful right of enslaving. In point of fact, it would 
 
 seem that the Indians were often enslaved by the colonists.* 
 
 Although we find no distinct mention made, by any of the 
 
 histoiians, of the particular manner in which this slavery 
 
 ' arose, yet it is not difficult to infer that it must have arisen 
 
 | from the laws of war, being a commutation of the puni>h- 
 
 I ment of death for slavery. Again : If the nation with which 
 
 you are at war makes slaves of all your citizens falling into its 
 
 < possession, surely you have the right to retaliate and do so 
 
 I likewise. It is the " lex talinnis" and not absolute necessity, 
 
 I which justifies you; and, if you should choose from policy to 
 
 I waive your right, your ability to do so would not, surely, 
 
 I prove that you had no right at all to enslave. Such a doc- 
 
 1 trine as this would prove that the rights of belligerents were 
 
 I in the inverse ratio of their strength — a doctrine which, push- 
 
 l ed to the extreme, would always reduce the hostile parties to 
 
 ] a precise equality — which is a perfect absurdity. If we were 
 
 | to suppose a civilized nation in the heart of Africa, sur- 
 
 i rounded by such princes as the King of Dahomey, there is no 
 
 [ doubt that such a nation would be justifiable in killing or 
 
 | enslaving at its option, in time of war, and if it did neither, 
 
 i it would relinquish a perfect ugJtt.\ We have now consi- 
 
 * See Tucker's Blackstone, vol 2, Appendix, note H. 
 
 t We shall hereafter see that our colony at Liberia may, at some 
 
 ; future day, be placed in an extremely embarrassing condition from 
 
 this very cause. It may not in future wars have stiength sufficient 
 
 , to forego the exercise of the right of killing or enslaving, and if it 
 
312 PROFESSOR DEW OX SLAVERY. 
 
 dered the most fruitful source of slavery — laws of war — and 
 shall proceed mure briefly to the consideration of the other 
 thive which we have mentioned, taking- up — 
 
 2. State of Property and Feebleness of Government. — In 
 tracing- the manneis and customs of a people v\ho have 
 emerged from a state of barbarism, and examining into the 
 nature and character of their institutions, we rind it of the 
 first importance to look to the condition of property, in order 
 that we may conduct our inquiries with judgment and know- 
 ledge. The character of the government, in spite of all its 
 forms, depends more on the condition of property, than on 
 any one circumstance beside. The relations which the diffe- 
 rent classes of society bear towards each other, the distinction 
 into high and low, noble and plebeian, in fact, depend almost 
 exclusively upon the state of property. It may be with 
 truth affirmed, that the exclusive owners of the property ever 
 have been, ever will, and perhaps ever ought to be, the vir- 
 tual rulers of mankind. If, then, in any age or nation, there 
 should be but one species of property, and that should be 
 exclusively owned by a portion of citizens, that portion would 
 become inevitably the masters of the residue. And if the 
 government should be so feeble as to leave each one, in a 
 great measure, to protect himself, this circumstance would 
 have a tendency to throw the property into the hands of a 
 few, who would rule with despotic sway over the many. And 
 this was the condition of Europe during the middle ages, 
 under what was termed the feudal system. There was, in 
 fact, but one kind of property, and that consisted of land* 
 Nearly all the useful arts had perished — commerce and manu- 
 factures could scarcely be said to exist at all, and a daik night 
 
 have the strength, it may not have the mildness and humanity. Re- 
 venge is sweet, and the murder of a brother or father, and the slavery 
 of a mother or sister, will not easily be forgotten. 
 
PROFESSOR DEW OX SLAVERY. 313 
 
 of universal ignorance enshrouded the human mind. The 
 landholders of Europe, the feudal aristocrats, possessing all 
 the property, necessarily and inevitably as fate itself, usurped 
 all the power ; and in consequence of the feebleness of gov- 
 ernment, and the resulting necessity that each one should do 
 justice for himself, the laws of primogeniture and entails were 
 resorted to as a device to prevent the weakening of families 
 by too great a subdivision or alienation of property, and from 
 the same cause, small allodial proprietors were obliged to 
 give up their small estates to some powerful baron or large 
 landholder, in consideration of protection, which he would be 
 unable to procure in any other manner.* Moreover, the 
 great landholders of those days had only one way of spend- 
 ing their estates, even when they were not barred by entails, 
 and that was by employing a large number of retainers — for 
 they could not then spend their estates as spendthrifts gene- 
 rally squander them, in luxuries and manufactures, in conse- 
 quence of the rude state of the arts— a'l the necessities of 
 man being supplied directly from the farms ;f and the great 
 author of the Wealth of Nations has most philosophically 
 remarked, that few great estates have been spent from bene- 
 volence alone. And the people of those days could find no 
 employment except on the land, and, consequently, were 
 entirely dependant on the landlords, subject to their caprices 
 and whims, paid according to their pleasure, and entirely 
 
 * Upon this subject, see Robertson's 1st vol. Hist. Charles V.. Hal- 
 lam's Middle Ages, Gilbert Stuart on the Progress of Society, and all 
 the write; s on feudal tenures. 
 
 t" There is not a vestige to be discovered, for several centuries, of 
 any considerable manufactures Rich men kept domestic arti- 
 sans among their servants; even kings, in the ninth centur}', had their 
 clothes made by the women upon their farms." — Hallam's Middle 
 Ages, voL 2, pp. 280, 261, Pbilad. edition. 
 21 
 
314 PROFESSOR DEW OX SLAVERY. 
 
 under their control ; in fine, they were slaves complete. Even 
 the miserable cities of the feudal times were not independent, 
 but wore universally subjected to the barons or great land- 
 holders, whose powerful protection against the lawless rapine 
 of the times, could only be purchased by an entire surrender 
 of liberty.* 
 
 Thus the property of the feudal ages was almost exclusive- 
 ly of oik- kind. The feebleness of government, toe-ether with 
 the laws of primogeniture and entails, threw that property in- 
 to the hands of a few, and the difficulty of alienation, caused 
 by the absence of all other species of property, had a ten- 
 dency to prevent that change of possession which we so con- 
 stantly witness in modern times. Never was there, then, 
 perhaps, so confirmed and so permanent an aristocracy as 
 that of the feudal ages ; it naturally sprang from the condi- 
 tion of property and the obstacles to its alienation. The aris- 
 tocracy alone embraced in those days the freemen of Europe; 
 all the rest were slaves, call them by what name you please,, 
 and doomed by the unchanging laws of nature, to remain so, 
 till commerce and manufactures had arisen, and with them 
 had s irung into existence a new class of capitalists, the tiers 
 etat of Europe, whose existence first called for new forms of 
 government, and whose exertions either have or will revolu- 
 tionize the whole of Europe. A revolution in the state of 
 property is always a premonitory symptom of a revolution in 
 government and in the state of society, and without the one 
 you cannot meet with permanent success in the other. The [ 
 slave of southern Europe could never have been emancipated, | 
 except through the agency of commerce and manufactures, 
 and the consequent rapid rise of cities, accompanied with a t 
 more regular and better protected industry, producing a vast , 
 augmentation in the products which administer to our neces- j 
 * Upon this subject. seeboth Hallam raid Robertson. 
 
PROFESSOR DEW OX SLAVERY. 315 
 
 sities and comforts, and increasing, in a proportionate degree, 
 the sphere of our wants and desires. In the same way we shall 
 show, before bringing this article to a close, that if the slaves 
 of our southern country shall ever be liberated, and suffered 
 to remain among us, with their present limited wants and 
 longing desire for a state of idleness, they will fall, inevitable, 
 by the nature of things, into a state of slavery, from which 
 no government could rescue them, unless by a radical change 
 of all their habits, and a most awful and fearful change in the 
 whole system of property throughout the country. The state 
 ' of property, then, may fairly be considered a very fruitful 
 I source of slavery. It was the most fruitful source during the 
 < feudal ages — it is the foundation of slavery throughout the 
 north-eastern regions of Europe and the populous countries of 
 the continent of Asia. We are even disposed to think, con- 
 I trary to the general opinion, that the condition of property 
 j operated prior to the customs of war in the production of 
 slavery. We are fortified in this opinion, by the example of 
 Mexico and Peru in South America. In both of these empires, 
 I certainly the farthest advanced and most populous of the new 
 [ world, " private property," says Dr. Robertson, "was perfectly 
 understood, and established in its full extent." The most 
 abject slavery existed in both these countries; and what still 
 farther sustains our position, it very nearly, especially in 
 Mexico, resembled that of the feudal ages. " The great body 
 of the people was in a most humiliating state. A considera- 
 ble number, known by the name of Mayeques, nearly resem- 
 bling the condition of those peasants who, under various 
 denominations, were considered, during the prevalence of the 
 feudal system, as instruments of labor attached to the soil. 
 Others were reduced to the lowest form of subjection, that of 
 domestic servitude, and felt the utmost rigor of that wretched 
 state."* 
 
 * Robertson's America, pp. 105, 10*7. 
 
316 PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 Now, slavery in both these countries, must have arisen 
 from the state of property, for the laws of war are entirely 
 too cruel to admit of captives among the Mexicans. " They 
 fought," says Dr. Robertson, " to gratify their vengeance, by 
 shedding the blood of their enemies — no captive was ever 
 ransomed or spared."* And the Peruvians, though much 
 milder in war, seem not to have made slaves of their captives, 
 though we must confess that there is great difficulty in ex- 
 plaining their great comparative clemency to prisoners in war, 
 unless by supposiog they were made slaves.f We have no 
 doubt, likewise, if we could obtain sufficient insight into the 
 past history and condition of Africa, that slavery would be 
 found to have arisen in many of those countries, rather from 
 the state of property than the laws of war; for even to this 
 day, many of the African princes are too cruel and sanguinary 
 in war to forego the barbarous pleasure of murdering the 
 captives, and yet slavery exists in their dominions to its full 
 extent. 
 
 We will not here pause to examine into the justice or in- 
 justice of that species of slavery, which is sure to arise from 
 a faulty distribution of property, because it is the inevitable 
 result of the great law of necessity, which itself has no law, 
 and, consequently, about which it is utterly useless to argue. 
 We will, therefore, proceed at once to the third cause assigned 
 for slavery — bargain and sale. 
 
 3. Cause of Slavery, Bargain and Sale. — This source of 
 slavery might easily be reduced to that which depends on the 
 
 * Robertson's America, vol. 2, p. 114. 
 
 | We are sorry we have not the means of satisfactorily investiga- 
 ting this subject If slavery was established among them from the 
 laws of war, it would be one of the most triumphant examples which 
 history affords of the effect of slavery, in mitigating the cruelties of 
 war ; for it is a singular fact, that the Peruvians were the only people 
 in the new world who did not murder their prisoners. 
 
FE0FESS0R DEW OX SLAVERY. 31 Y 
 
 state of property, but for the pake of perspicuity, we prefer 
 keeping them apart. Adam Smith has well observed, that 
 there is a strong propensity in man " to truck, barter, and 
 exchange, one thing for another," and both the parties gene- 
 rally intend to derive an advantage from the exchange. This 
 disposition seems to extend to every thing susceptible of being- 
 impressed with the character of property or exchangeable 
 value, or from which any great or signal advantage may be 
 derived— it has been made to extend, at times, to life and 
 liberty. Generals, in time of war, have pledged their lives 
 for the performance of their contracts. At the conclusion of 
 peace, semi-barbarous nations have been in the habit of inter- 
 changing hostages — generally the sons of princes and noble- 
 men — for the mutual observance of treaties, whose lives were 
 forfeited by a violation of the plighted faith ; and in all ages, 
 where the practice has not been interdicted by law, indivi- 
 duals have occasionally sold their own liberty, or that of 
 others dependent on them. We have already seen how the 
 small allodial possessors, during the feudal ages, were obliged 
 to surrender their lands and liberty to some powerful baron, 
 fur that protection which could be procured in no other man- 
 ner. Throughout the whole ancient world, the sale of one's 
 own liberty, and even that of his children, was common. The 
 non-payment of debts, or failure to comply with contracts, 
 frequently subjected the unfortunate offender to slavery, in 
 both Greece and Rome. Instances of slavery from bargain 
 and sale, occur in Scripture. Joseph was sold to the Ishmael- 
 ites for twenty pieces of silver, arid carried down to Egypt in 
 slavery. But this was a black and most unjustifiable act on 
 the part of his envious b'Others. There are other parts of 
 Scripture, where the practice of buying and selling slaves 
 seems to be justified. The Hebrew laws permitted the sell- 
 ing of even the Jews into slavery for six years. " If thou 
 27* 
 
318 PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 buy a Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve, and in the 
 seventh he shall go out free for nothing." And if the ser- 
 vant chose, at the expiration of six years, to remain with his 
 master as a slave, he might do so on having his ear bored 
 through with an awl. It seems fathers could se.l their chil- 
 dren — thus : " And if a man sell his daughter to be a maid 
 servant, she shall not go out as the men servants do."* An 
 unlimited right to purchase slaves from among foreigners 
 seems to have been granted, whether they had been slaves or 
 not before the purchase ; thus, in the twenty-fifth chapter of 
 Leviticus, we find the following injunction : " Both thy bond- 
 men and bondmaids which thou shalt have, shall be of the 
 heathen that are round about you ; of them shall ye buy 
 bondmen and bondmaids. Moreover, of the children of 
 strangers who sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and 
 of the families that are with you, which they begat in your 
 land; and they shall be your possession. And ye shall take 
 them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit 
 them for a possession ; they shall be your bondmen for ever T\ 
 We may well suppose that few persons would ever be induced 
 to sell themselves or children into slavery, unless under very 
 severe pressure from want. Accordingly, we find the prac- 
 tice most prevalent among the most populous and the most 
 savage nations, where the people are most frequently subjected 
 to dearths and famines. Thus, in Hindustan and China, 
 there is nothing more frequent than this practice of selling 
 liberty. " Every year," said a Jesuit who resided in Hindos- 
 tan, " we baptize a thousand children whom their parents can 
 no longer feed, or who being likely to die, are sold to us by 
 their mothers, in order to get rid of them." The great legis- 
 lator of Ilindostan, Menu, in his ordinances, which are de- 
 scribed by Sir William Jones, justifies this practice in time of 
 * See 2 1st chapter of Exodus. t 44, 45, and 46 verses. 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 819 
 
 I scarcity. " Ajigarta," says Menu, in one of his ordinances, 
 
 i " dying- with hunger, was going to destroy his own son by 
 
 j selling him for some cattle ; yet he was guilty of no crime, 
 
 for he only sought a remedy against famishing." *• In China," 
 
 says Duhakle, "a man sometimes sells his son, and even him- 
 
 i self and wife, at a very moderate price. The common mode 
 
 . is to mortgage themselves with a condition of redemption, 
 
 I and a great number of men and maid servants are thus bound 
 
 j in a family." There is no doubt but at this moment, in 
 
 I every densely populated country, hundreds would be willing 
 
 ; to sell themselves into slavery if the laws would permit them, 
 
 whenever they were pressed by famine. Ireland seems to be 
 
 I the country of modern Europe most subjected to these dread- 
 
 j ful visitations. Suppose, then, we reverse the virion of the 
 
 Kentucky Senator,* and imagine that Ireland could be severed 
 
 during those periods of distress from the Britannic isle, and 
 
 i could float, like the fabled island of Delos, across the ocean, 
 
 and be placed by our side, and our laws should inhumanely 
 
 forbid a single son of Erin from entering our territory, unless 
 
 j as a slave, to be treated exactly like the African, is there any 
 
 I man, acquainted with the state of the Irish, in years of scar- 
 
 I city, who would doubt for a moment, but that thousands, 
 
 much as this oppressed people are in love with liberty, would 
 
 enter upon this hard condition, if they could find purchasers. 
 
 Indeed, the melancholy fact has too often occurred in Ireland, 
 
 j of individuals committing crimes merely for the purpose of 
 
 being thrown into the houses of correction, where they could 
 
 obtain bread and water ! 
 
 Among savages, famines are much more dreadful than 
 
 among civilized nations, where they are provided against by 
 
 previous accumulation and commerce. Dr. Robertson has 
 
 given us a glowing, and no doubt, correct picture, of the 
 
 * Mr. Clay, in the debate on his resolutions on the tariff, 1832. 
 
320 PROFESSOR PEW OX SLAVERY. 
 
 dreadful ravages of famine among the North American In- 
 dian-, and on such occasions, we are informed by the *' Lettres 
 Edifiantes et Curieuse," that the tics of nature arc no lo 
 binding. A father will sell his son for a knife or hatchet* 
 But, unfortunately, among savages in the hunting state, 
 scarcely any one can do more than maintain himself and one 
 or two children, and therefore cannot afford to keep a slave. 
 
 If we turn to Africa, we Bhall find this cause of slaverf 
 frequently operating with all its power; and, aecordii 
 Parke lias ranked famine as the second among the four caused 
 which he assigns for slavery in Africa. "There are many 
 instances of fre< men," Bays he, "voluntarily surrendering up 
 their liberty to Bave their lives. During a great scarcity^ 
 which lasted for three years, in the countries of the Gambia, 
 great numbers of people b came slaves in this manner. ]>r. 
 Laidley assured me, that at that time, many freemen came 
 and begged with greal earnestm put vpon his alavt 
 
 chain, to Bave them from perishing with hunger. Large 
 families are very often exposed to absolute want, and as the 
 parents have almost unlimited authority over their children, it 
 frequently happens in all parts of Africa, that some of the 
 latter are Bold to purchase provisions for the rest of the family. 
 When 1 was at Jarra, Damon Jumma pointed out tome 
 three young Blaves which he had purchased in this manner."f 
 Bruce, in his travels in Africa, saw whole villages and districts 
 of country depopulated by the famines which had visited 
 them, and gives us a most appalling picture of the walking 
 skeletons and lawless rapine which wove every where exhibited 
 during those frightful periods of distress. We cannot wonder, 
 then, under these circumstances, that famine should be a 
 
 * Tom. 8. 
 
 f Parke's Travels in Africa, chap. 22, p. 216, N. Y. ed. 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 321 
 
 fruitful source of slavery, by giving rise to a sale of liberty 
 for the preservation of life. 
 
 The remark of Judge Blackstone, as to this kind of slavery, 
 is known to every one — that every sale implies a " quid pro 
 quo''' — but that, in the case of slavery, there can be no equi- 
 valent, no quid pro quo — for nothing is an equivalent for 
 liberty ; and even the purchase money, or the price, whatever 
 it might be, would instantly belong to the master of the 
 slave.* Upon this we w ? ould remark, that Blackstone seems 
 to have his attention fixed exclusively on those countries 
 where every man can easily maintain himself, and where, con- 
 sequently, his life can never be in jeopardy from want. If 
 there is any country in the world to which this argument will 
 apply, that country is ours. We believe every man here may 
 obtain a subsistence, either by his own exertions, or by the 
 aid of the poor rates. But this is far from being the case 
 with semi-barbarous or densely populated countries. Again : 
 Blackstone alludes to that pure state of slavery, where a 
 man's life, liberty, and property, are at the mercy of his mas- 
 ter. That is far from being the condition of slavery now. 
 In most parts of the world the slave is carefully protected in 
 life, limb, and even in a moderate share of liberty, by the 
 policy of the laws ; and his nourishment and subsistence are 
 positively enjoined. Where this is the case, we can imagine 
 many instances in which liberty might have an equivalent. 
 Who for a moment can doubt but that the abundant daily 
 supplies of subsistence, consisting of wholesome meat, bread, 
 and frequently vegetables and refreshing drinks besides, which 
 are furnished to our slaves, are more than an equivalent for 
 the liberty of the Chinese laborer, who exhausts himself with 
 hard labor — feeds on his scanty and unseasoned rice — tastes 
 do wholesome meat from the beginning to the end of the 
 * Tucker's Blackstone, vol. 2, p. 423. 
 
322 PROFESSOR DEW OX SLAVERY. 
 
 toilsome year — sees his family frequently perishing before bis 
 eyes, or more cruel still, consents himself to be the execu- 
 tioner, in order that he may release them from the intolerable 
 torments of unsatisfied wants, and who, even in seasons of 
 ordinary supply, fishes up with eagerness the vilest garbage 
 from the river or canal, and voraciously devours meat whichi 
 with us, would be left to be fed on by the vultures of the air. 
 The fact is, the laborer in this hard condition is already a 
 slave, or rather in a situation infinitely worse than slavery — 
 he is subjected to all the hardships and degradation of the 
 slave, and derives none of the advantages. In tlie case of 
 famine, the equivalent seems to be life for liberty ; and when 
 this is the case, although the philosopher may consider 
 death as preferable to slavery, "yet," savs Parke, "the poor 
 negro, when fainting- with hunger, thinks, like Esau of old, 
 ' behold lam at the point to die, and what profit .shall this 
 birthright do to meP n The reason why ] ersons do not more 
 frequently sell themselves into slavery is, because they are 
 forbidden by tin.' laws, or can find no purchasers. So far 
 from persons not selling their liberty ' there is no 
 
 equivalent, it is directly the contrary in most countries ; the 
 price or equivalent, consisting of continued support, protec- 
 tion, Arc, is too great — more than can be afforded. The capi- 
 talist in Great Britain could not afford to purchase the opera- 
 tive, and treat him as we do the slave ; the price paid, the 
 quid pro quo of Blackstone, would be more than the liberty 
 would be worth. \Ye have no doubt, if the English laws 
 were to allow of slavery, such as we have in this country, 
 there would be many more persons wishing to sell their 
 liberty than of those wishing- to buy! But whether the re- 
 marks of Judge Blackstone are correct in theory or not, is a 
 matter of no practical importance ; for, in point of fact, as we 
 have shown by undeniable testimony, bargain and sale have 
 
rR©FESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 323 
 
 ever been a most fruitful source of slavery in ancient time c , 
 
 and among- many people of the present day ; and, conse- 
 
 1 quently, we could not pretermit it in a general survey of the 
 
 ! sources of slavery. "We shall now proceed to a consideration 
 
 1 of the last mentioned source of slavery. 
 
 4. Crime. — All governments, even those of the states of 
 our confederacy, have ever been considered as perfectly justi- 
 | fiable in enslaving for crime. All our penitentiaries are 
 ; erected upon this principle, and slavery in them, of the most 
 ; abject and degrading character, endures for a certain number 
 I of months, years, or for life, according to the offence. In 
 J South America and Russia, the criminals are frequently sen- 
 ! tenced to slavery in the mines, and in France and England, 
 ■ to the gallies and work-houses ; but as it is principally with 
 , domestic slavery that we are concerned in this article, we 
 I shall not consider farther that which is of a public character. 
 Throughout the ancient world, domestic slavery, arising 
 I from crime, seems to have been very common. W^e have 
 already spoken of the slavery which was inflicted frequently 
 on insolvent debtors in both Greece and Rome. In Africa, 
 too, we find insolvency a very frequent source of slavery. 
 " Of all the offences,' 1 says Parke, " if insolvency may be so 
 called, to which the laws of Africa have affixed the punish- 
 ment of slavery, this is the most common. A negro trader 
 commonly contracts debts on some mercantile speculation, 
 either from his neighbors to purchase such articles as will sell 
 to advantage in a distant market, or from the European 
 traders on the coast — pajment to be made in a given time. 
 In both cases, the situation of the adventurer is exactly the 
 same : if he succeeds, he may secure an independency ; if he 
 is unsuccessful, his person and services are at the disposal of 
 another ; for, in Africa, not only the effects of the insolvent, 
 but the insolvent himself, is sold to satisfy the lawful demands 
 
324 PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 of his creditors."* Insolvency, however, is, after all, rather 
 a misfortune than a crime ; and we rank it here as a crime, 
 mure in deference to the institutions of the ancients, and the 
 customs of certain modern nations, than as an indication of 
 our own sentiments — for we are decidedly of opinion, that 
 slavery is much too high a penalty to be attached to what, in 
 many cases, is sheer misfortune. But, besides insolvency, the 
 laws ot Africa affix slavery as a punishment to the crimes of 
 murder, adultery, and witchcraft. In case of murder, the 
 nearest relation of the murdered, after conviction, may either 
 kill or sell into slavery, at his option. In adultery, the 
 ohYnded party may enslave or demand a ransom at pleasure ; 
 and as to witchcraft, Parke not having met with any trial for 
 this offence, could only assure us that it was the source of 
 slavery, though not common.f We have now surveyed the 
 principal sources of slavery, and although we do not pretend 
 to be minute and complete in the division which we have 
 made, we hope we have said enough upon this branch to 
 show that slavery is inevitable in the progress of society, 
 from its first and most savag-e state, to the last and most 
 refined. We started out with announcing the fact, startling 
 to those who have never reflected upon the subject, that 
 slavery existed throughout the whole of the ancient, and in a 
 very large portion of the modern world. We have farther 
 shown by the preceding reasoning, that this was no accident, 
 the mere result of chance, but was a necessary and inevitable 
 consequence of the principles of human nature and the state 
 of property. We shall now proceed to inquire briefly into 
 the advantages which have resulted to mankind from the 
 institution of slavery. 
 
 Advantages ivhich have resulted to the world from the in- 
 
 * Parke's Travels in Africa, p. 216. 
 f Parke's Travels, p. 217. 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 325 
 
 stitution of slavery. — When we turn our thoughts from this 
 world " of imperfections" to the God of nature, we love to 
 contemplate Him as perfect and immaculate, and amid all the 
 I divine attributes with which we delight to clothe Him, none 
 j stands more conspicuous than his benevolence. To look upon 
 ! Him in this light, may be said to be almost the impulse of 
 , an instinct of our nature, and the most enlarged experience 
 ! and perfect knowledge combine in fortifying and strengthen- 
 ing this belief. Accordingly, when we look abroad to the 
 works of Omnipotence, when we contemplate the external, 
 the physical world, and again, when we turn to the world of 
 mind, we never find evil the sole object and end of creation. 
 Happiness is always the main design ; evil is merely inciden- 
 tal. All the laws of matter, every principle, and even passion 
 of man, when rightly understood, demonstrate the general be- 
 nevolence of the Deity, even in this world. '' It is, perhaps," 
 says Mr. Allison, " the most striking and the most luminous fact 
 in the history of our intellectual nature, that that principle of 
 curiosity which is the instinctive spring of all scientific inquiry 
 into the phenomena of matter or mind, is never satisfied until 
 it terminates in the discovery, not only of design, but of be- 
 nevolent design." Well, then, might we have concluded, 
 from the fact that slavery was the necessary result of the laws 
 of mind and matter, that it marked some benevolent design, 
 and ivas intended by our Creator for some useful purpose. 
 Let us inquire, then, what that useful purpose is, and we have 
 no hesitation in affirming that slavery has been, perhaps, the 
 principal means for impelling forward the civilization of man- 
 kind. Without its agency, society must have remained sunk 
 into that deplorable state of barbarism and wretchedness 
 which characterized the inhabitants of the Western World, 
 when first discovered by Columbus. 
 
 We have already spoken of the great advantage of slavery 
 28 
 
326 PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 in mitigating the horrors of savage warfare ; but not only is 
 this most desirable effect produced, but it has a farther ten- 
 dency to cheek the frequency of war, and to destroy that 
 migratory spirit in nations and tribes, so destructive to the 
 peace and tranquillity of the world. Savages, living in the 
 hunting state, must have an extensive range of country, for 
 the supply of the wants of even a few persons. " Hence," 
 says Dr. Robertson, "it is of the utmost importance to pre- 
 vent neighboring tribes from destroying or disturbing the 
 game in their hunting grounds, they guard this national pro- 
 perty with a jealous attention. But as their territories are 
 extensive, and the boundaries of them not exactly ascertained, 
 innumerable subjects of disputes arise, which seldom termi- 
 nate without bloodshed."* Uncertain boundaries, constant 
 roaming through the forests, in search of game, and all the 
 unchecked and furious passions of the savage, lead on to 
 constant and exterminating wars among the tribes. What, 
 then, let us ask, can alone prevent this constant scene of 
 strife and massacre \ Nothing but that which can bind them 
 down to the soil, which can establish homes and ji csides, 
 which can change the wandering character of tin- savage, and 
 make it his inter, st to cultivate peace instead of war. Slav* ry 
 produces these effects. It m c< Bsarilj U ads on to the taming and 
 rearing of numerous flock.-, and to the cultivation of the soil. 
 Hunting can never support slavery. Agriculture first sug- 
 gests the notion of servitude, and, as often happens in the 
 politico-cconcmical world, the effect becomes, in turn, a pow- 
 erfully operating cause. Slavery gradually fells the forest, 
 and thereby destroys the haunts of the wild beasts ; it gives 
 rise to agricultural production, and thereby renders mankind 
 less dependent on the precarious and diminishing production 
 
 * History of Amor.'ca, \ol 1, p. 192. 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 32 7 
 
 of the chase; it thus gradually destroys the roving and un- 
 quiet life of the savage ; it furnishes a home, and binds him 
 down to the soil ; it converts the idler and the wanderer into 
 the man of business and the agriculturist 
 
 If we look to the condition of Africa, and compare it with 
 that of the American Indians, we shall find a complete illus- 
 tration of these remarks, and Africa, as we shall soon see, 
 would enjoy a much greater exemption from war, if it were 
 not for the slave trade, whose peculiar operation we shall 
 presently notice. 
 
 But, secondly, the labor of the slave, when slavery is first 
 introduced, is infinitely more productive than that of the 
 freeman. Dr. Robertson, in his lli&tory of America, speaks 
 of the acquisition of dominion over the inferior animals, as a 
 step of capital importance in the progress of civilization. It 
 may with truth be affirmed, that the taming of man and ren- 
 dering him tit for labor, is more important than the taming 
 and using the inferior animals, and nothing seems so well cal- 
 culated to effect this as slavery. Savages have ever been 
 found to be idle and unproductive, except in the chase. "The 
 aborigines of North America resembled rather beasts of prey," 
 says Dr. Robertson, " than animals formed for labor. They 
 were not only averse from toil, but seemed at first entirely 
 incapable of it. There is nothing which so completely proves 
 the general indolence and inactivity of the Indian, as their 
 very moderate appetites. Their constitutional temperance 
 exceeded that of the most mortified hermits, and the appe- 
 tites of the Spaniards (generally reckoned very temperate in 
 Europe) appeared to the natives insatiably voracious, and 
 they affirmed that one Spaniard devoured, in a day, more 
 food than was enough for ten Indians.* 
 
 * Robertson's x\meiica, vol. l.book 4. 
 
328 PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVEKV. 
 
 The improvidence and utter ' the Bavage are 
 
 noticed, too, by all the historians. "They follow blindly," 
 
 >n, 4> the impulse of the appetite which they feel, 
 Lut are entirely regardless of distant consequences, and even 
 of those removed in th - i immediate ap 
 
 hension. When, on the h of evening, a Carabee feels 
 
 himself disposed to go to rest, deration will tempt 
 
 him to sell his hammock ; hut in the morning, when he is 
 sallying out to the business or pastime of the day, he will 
 part with it for the slightest toy that catches his fancy. At 
 of winter, while the impression of what he has Buf- 
 fered from tii«- rigor of the climate is fresh in the mind of the 
 North American, besets himself with vigor to prepare i 
 rials for erecting a comfortable hut. to protect him against the 
 inclemency of the succeeding season; bi »n as the 
 
 mes mild, he forgets what is past, abandons his 
 
 D I 
 
 work, and never thinks of it more, until the return of cold 
 compels him, when too late, to r< sume it."* There is nothing 
 but slavery which can destroy those habits of indolence and 
 sloth, and eradicate the character of improvidence and i 
 lessness, which mark the independent savage. He may truly 
 ma pared to the wild beast of the forest — he must be 
 broke and tamed, before he fit for labor, and for the 
 
 task of rearing and providing for a family. There is nothing 
 but slavery that can effect this ; the mean- may appear ex- 
 ceedingly harsh and cruel, and, as among wild beasts, many 
 may die in the pro I ming and subjugating, bo among 
 
 savages, many may not be able to stand the hardships of ser- 
 vitude ; but, in the end, it leads on to a milder and infinitely 
 better condition than that of savage independence, gives rise 
 to greater production, increases the provisions in nature's 
 
 * History of America, vol. 1, pp. 170, 171. 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 329 
 
 great storehouse, and invites into existence a mere numerous 
 population, better fed and better provided, and thus gives rise 
 to socVty. and, consequently, speeds on more rapidly the 
 cause of civilization. But upon this great, this delicate and 
 ill-important subject, we wish to risk no vain theori >s, no un- 
 founded conjectures— from beginning to end, we shall speak 
 Conscientiously, and never knowingly plant in our bosom a 
 thorn which may rankle there. Let us, then, see whether 
 the above assertions may not be satisfactorily proved, para- 
 doxical as they may at first appear, by fact and experience. 
 If we turn to the Western World, where an ample field is 
 presented for the contemplation of man, in his first and rudest 
 state, we find tint slavery existed nowhere throughout the 
 American continent, except in Peru and Mexico, and these 
 were decidedly the most flourishing portions of this vast con- 
 tinent, " When compared," says Dr. Robertson, " with other 
 parts of the New World, Mexico and Peru may be considered 
 as polUhed states. Instead of small, independent, hostile tribes, 
 struggling for subsistence amidst woods and marshes, stran- 
 gers to industry and arts, unacquainted with subordination, 
 and almost without the appearance of regular government, 
 we find countries of great extent subjected to the dominion of 
 one sovereign, the inhabitants collected together in cities, the 
 wisdom and foresight of rulers employed in providing for the 
 maintenance and security of the people, the empire of laws 
 in some measure established, the authority of religion recog- 
 nized, many of the arts essential to life brought to some de- 
 gree of maturity, and the dawn of such as are ornamental 
 beginning to appear."* 
 
 Again: In the Islands of the South Sea, Captain Cook was 
 astonished at the populousness of Otaheite and the Society 
 
 * Robertson's America, vol. 2, page 101. 
 28* 
 
330 PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 Islands. Slavery seems to have been established throughout 
 these Islands, and compensated, no doubt, in part, for many 
 of those abomidable practices which Beem to have been pre- 
 valent among the natives. 
 
 Again: On turning to Africa, where we find the most 
 abundant and complete exemplifications of every species of 
 slavery, and its effects, and where, consequently, the philoso- 
 phy of the subject may be most advantageously studied, we 
 find most conclusive proof of our assertions. "It deserves 
 particular notice, that the nations in this degrading condition 
 (state of slavery) are the most numerous, the most powerful, 
 and the most advanced in all the ait- and improvements of 
 life; that, if we except the human sacrifices to which blind 
 veneration prompts them, they display even a disposition 
 more amiable, manners more dignified ami polished, and 
 moral conduct more correct, than prevail among the citizens 
 of the small frei who are usually idle, turbulent, 
 
 quarrelsome and I rhe Africans, too, display, in 
 
 a remarkable degree, th< home, and fondness for their 
 
 native scenes — a mark of considerable advancement in civili- 
 zation. "Few of them," says the author of the History of 
 Africa just quoted, " are nomadic and wandering; tin y g< ne- 
 rally have native Beats, to which they cling with strong feel- 
 ings of local attachment. Even the tenants of the desert, 
 who roam widely in quest of commerce and plunder, have 
 their little watered valleys, or circuit of hills, in which they 
 make their permanent abode. v f Can any general facts more 
 strikingly illustrate our position than those which we have 
 just mentioned? 
 
 But there is other, and abundant testimony, on this subject; 
 
 * See Family Library, ±so. 16, page 237, Africa, 
 t Family Library, No. 16, page 228. 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 331 
 
 the difference between the negroes imported into the "West 
 Indies still farther substantiates all we have said. The ne- 
 groes from Whida, or Fida, called in the West Indies Papaios, 
 are the best disposed and most docile slaves. The reason 
 seems to be, that the great majority of these people are in a 
 state of absolute slavery in Africa ; and " Bosnian,"' says 
 Bryan Edwards, "speaks with rapture of the improved state 
 of their soil, the number of villages, and the industry, riches? 
 and obliging manners of the natives."* So that slavery seems 
 to be an incalculable advantage to them, both in the West 
 Indies and in their own country. 
 
 The Koromantyn, or Gold Coast negro, is generally stub- 
 born, intractable, and unfit for labor, at first. His habits, in 
 his native country, are very similar to those of the North 
 American Indian. He must be broke and tamed, before he 
 is fit for labor. When they are thus tamed, however, they 
 become the best laborers in the West Indies. " They some- 
 times,"' says Bryan Edwards, " take to labor with great promp- 
 titude and alacrity, and have constitutions well adapted to it." 
 And he gives, as a reason for this, that "many of them have 
 undoubtedly been slaves in Africa." Still, this country seems 
 yet too barbarous for a regular system of slavery. Accord- 
 ingly, the Koromantyns are described as among the most 
 ferocious of the Africans in war, never sparing the life of an 
 enemy, except to make him a slave, and that but rarely. 
 Their whole education and philosophy, consequently, seem 
 directed, as is the case with all savages, to prepare and steel 
 them against the awful vicissitudes to which they are ever 
 liable — they have their yell of war, and their death songs too. 
 Nothing but slavery can civilize such beings, give them habits 
 
 * Edward's West Indies, vol. 2, pp. 278, 279. 
 
332 PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 of industry, and make them cling to life for its enjoy- 
 in on; 
 
 Strange as it may seem, we have little hesitation in decla- 
 ring it as our opinion, that a much greater number of Indians, 
 within the limits of the United States, would have been saved, 
 had we rigidly persevered in enslaving them, than by our pre- 
 sent policy. It is, perhaps, the most melancholy fact con- 
 nected with the history of our young republic, that in propor- 
 tion as the whites have been advancing, the Indians have been 
 constantly and rapidly decreasing in numbers. When our 
 >rs first settled on this continent, the savages were 
 around and among them, and were everywhere spread over 
 this immense territory. Now, where are they \ Where are 
 the warlike tribes that went to battle under their chieftains! 
 They have rapidly disappeared, as the pale faces have ad- 
 vanced. Their numbers have dwindled to insignificance. 
 Within the limits of the original State*, tlie primitive stock 
 duced to 1G,000. Within the whole of the Uni- 
 ted State*, ea>t of the Mississippi, there are but 10-"), 000; 
 and on the whole of our territory, east and west of the Mis- 
 sissippi, extending over 24 derees of latitude and 5S of lon- 
 gitude, there are but 313,180! ! Miserable remnant of the 
 myriads of former days ! And yet the government of our 
 country has exhausted every means for their civilization, and 
 
 * This increasing love of lite, as an effect of slavery, is exemplified 
 in the following anecdote, related by Edwards : " A gentleman of 
 Jamaica, visiting a valuable Koromantyn negro, that was sick, and 
 perceiving that be was thoughtful and dejected, endeavored, by pooth 
 ing and encouraging language, to raise his drooping spirits. ' Massa,' 
 said the negro, in a tone, of self- reproach and conscious degeneracy, 
 'since me come to white man's county, me lub (love) life too much.' '» 
 History of the West Indies, vol. 2, p. 275. 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 333 
 
 the philanthropist has not been idle in their behalf. Schools 
 have been erected, both public and private, missionaries have 
 been sent among them, and all in vain. The President of the 
 United States now tells you that their removal farther West 
 is necessary — that those who live on our borders, in spite of 
 our efforts to civilize them, are rapidly deteriorating in cha- 
 racter, and becoming every day more miserable and destitute. 
 We agree with the President in this policy — to remove them 
 is all we can now do fur them. But, after all, the expedient 
 is temporary, and the relief is short lived. Our population 
 will again, and at no distant day, press upon their borders, 
 their game will be destroyed, the intoxicating beverage will 
 be furnished to them, they will engage in wars, and their 
 total extermination will be the inevitable consequence. The 
 hand-writing has indeed appeared on the wall. The myste- 
 rious decree of Providence has gone forth against the red 
 man. His destiny is fixed, and final destruction is his inevi- 
 table fate. Slavery, we assert again, seems to be the only 
 means that we know of, under heaven, by which the ferocity 
 of the savage can be conquered, his wandering habits eradi- 
 cated, his slothfulness and improvidence — by which, in fine, 
 his nature can be changed. The Spaniards enslaved the In- 
 dians in South-America, and they were the most cruel and 
 relentless of masters. Still, under their system of cruel and 
 harsh discipline, an infinitely larger proportion of the abo- 
 rigines were saved than with us, and will, no doubt, in the 
 lapse of ages, mix and harmonize with the Europeans, and be, 
 in all respects, their equals.* 
 
 * Humboldt, in his recapitulation of the population of New Spain, 
 
 gives us the following table : 
 
 Indigenous, or Indians, 2,500,000 
 
 wt L . c< • i {Creoles, 1,025 000) . i iCO 000 
 
 \\ hues, or Spaniards, j Europeans> 70j000 \ - l,10U,uuu 
 
334 PROVKMOV DEW OS slavery. 
 
 From their inhuman treatment of the Indians, at first, 
 numbers died in the process of taming and subjugating; but, 
 in the end, their system has pro> hum me than ours, 
 
 and deraonstrat ibt, that nothing is so fit as 
 
 slavery, to change the nature of 1 rve," 
 
 - Humboldt, u and the observation is consoling to human- 
 ity, that not only has the number of Indians in South Ame- 
 rica and Mexico been on the increase, for the last century, 
 (In* published his work in 1808,) but that the whole of the 
 vast region which we by the general nan 
 
 New Spain, is much better inhabited at present than it was 
 ival of tii • Ei :es a very re- 
 
 markable in-' □ unjust slavery, on 
 
 the industry and agriculture of the country. lie speaks of 
 the Alcaldias Ma >viucial ma - and 
 
 judges in Me: g the Indians to purchase cattle of 
 
 them, and afterwards reducing them to slavery, for non-pay- 
 ment of 1 contracted. And he add?, upon the 
 authority of Fray hat " the 
 individual happiness of these unfortunate wrel not, 
 certainly, increased by the sacrifice of their liberty, for a horse 
 or a mule to work for their master's profit; but yet, in this 
 
 African negroes, - G,l 00 
 
 1.33 1.000 
 
 [Humbol It's New Spain, N. Y. ed . vol. 2, p 2 10. 
 
 Again: The number of Indians in Peru is esiimated at GJO.O00 
 
 » 
 
 nearly double of the whole Indian population of ihe United States.—- 
 [Vol. 1. p. CO. 
 
 * We shall soon see that there ia not, in the annals of history, an 
 instance of biicIi rapid improvement in civilization, as that and rgood 
 by the negro slaves in our couutry, since the time they were first 
 Lit u i i among us. 
 
 t Humboldt's New Spain, vol.l, p. 71. 
 
PROFESSOR DEW OX SLAVERY. S3 5 
 
 stale of things, brought on by abuses, agriculture and indus- 
 ; try ivere seen to increase?* 
 
 We beg our readers to bear in mind, that we are here 
 (merely discussing the effects of slavery, and not passing our 
 opinions upon the justice or injustice of its oiigin. We shall 
 (now close our remarks upon this head, by the citation of an 
 ['instance furnished by our own country, of the great advan- 
 tage of slavery to masters — for, among savages, the benefit 
 seems to extend to both master and slave. There is an able 
 article in the G6tli number of the North American Review, on 
 the "Removal of the Indians," from the pen of Governor 
 Cass, whom we have no hesitation, from the little we have 
 I seen of his productions, to pronounce one of the most philo- 
 sophical and elegant writers in this country. In this article, 
 after pointing out the true condition of the Indian tribes in 
 the neighborhood of the whites, and proving, beyond a doubt, 
 that they are injured, instead of benefitted, by their juxta- 
 position, he admits that the Cherokees constitute a solitary, 
 and but a partial exception — that some individuals among 
 them have acquired property, and, with it, more enlarged 
 and just notions of the value of our institutions. He says 
 that these salutary changes are confined principally to the 
 half breeds, and their immediate connexions, and are not 
 sufficiently numerous to overturn his reasoning, against the 
 practicability of civilizing the Indians. Now, what are the 
 causes of this dawn of civilization among the Cherokees ? 
 "The causes which have led to this state of things," says 
 Governor Cass, "are too peculiar ever to produce an extensive 
 result. . . . They have been operating for many years, 
 and amonr/ the most prominent of them, has been the intra- 
 j duction of slaves, by which means, that unconquerable aver- 
 
 •Vol. 1, pp. 140,147. 
 
336 PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 sion to labor, so characteristic of all savage tribes, can be 
 indulged."* 
 
 We hope, now, we have Baid i oough to convince even the, 
 most Bceptical, of the powerful effects of slavery, in changing 
 the habits peculiar to the Indian orsa rtinghim 
 
 into the agriculturist, and changing his slothfulness and aver- 
 sion to labor into industry and economy, thereby rendering 
 his labor more productive, his m< ans of subsistence more 
 abundant and regular, and his happiness more secure and 
 constant We caunot close ourremarkson the general effects 
 ivery on the progi civilization, without pointing 
 
 out the peculiar influence on that portion of the human race, 
 which the civilized nations of modern times so much delight 
 to honor and to cherish — thl 
 
 3. Influence of slavery on tht of the j\ wale 
 
 sex. — The bare Dame of this inter* -ting half of the human 
 family, is well calculated to awaken in the breast of the \ 
 erous the feeling of tenderness and kindness. The wrongs 
 and Bufferings of meek, quii t. forbearing woman, awaken the 
 generous sympathy of every noble heart. Man never sutlers 
 without murmuring, and never relinquishes his rights without 
 a struggle. It is not always so with woman: her physical 
 weakness incapacitates her for the com bat ; her sexual organi- 
 zation, and the part which she takes in bringing foith and 
 nurturing the rising generation, render her necessarily domes- 
 tic in her habits, and timid and patient in her Bufferings. If 
 man choose to exercise his power against woman, she is sure 
 
 * See North American Review, No. 66, article 3. The Spaniards, 
 when they first conquered Mexico and Peru, were, as we have already 
 the most cruel and relentless of masters. They are now the mo^t 
 humane and kind, and perhaps the Portuguese come next, who were 
 equally cruel with the Spaniard?, during the fir&t ceutury alter their 
 settlement in the New World. 
 
TROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 337 
 
 to fall an easy prey to his oppression. Hence, we may al- 
 ways consider her progressing elevation in society as a mark 
 of advancing civilization, and, more particularly, of the aug- 
 mentation of disinterested and generous virtue. The lot of 
 women, among savages, has always been found to be painful 
 and degrading. Dr. Robertson says that, in America, their 
 condition " is so peculiarly grievous, and their depression so 
 complete, that servitude is a name too mild to describe their 
 wretched state. A wife, among most tribes, is no better than 
 a beast of burthen, destined to every office of labor and fa- 
 tigue. While the men loiter out the day in sloth, or spend 
 it in amusement, the women are condemned to excessive toil. 
 Tasks are imposed on them without pity, and services are 
 received without complacence or gratitude. Every circum- 
 stance reminds women of this mortifying inferiority. They 
 must approach their lords with reverence. They must regard 
 them as more exalted beings, and are not permitted to eat in 
 their presence. There are districts in America where this 
 dominion is so grievous, and so sensibly felt, that some wo- 
 men, in a wild emotion of maternal tenderness, have destroyed 
 their female children in their infancy, in order to deliver them 
 from that intolerable bondage to which they knew they were 
 doomed."* 
 
 This harrowing description of woman's servitude and suf- 
 ferings, among the aborigines of America, is applicable to all 
 savage nations. In the Islands of Andaman, in Van Die. 
 man's Land, in New Zealand,! and New Holland, the lot of 
 woman is the same. The females carry, on their heads and 
 bodies, the traces of the superiority of the males. Mr. Col- 
 
 * Robertson's America, vol. 1, p. 177. 
 
 \ In New Zealand, agriculture has worked a most wonderful change 
 in the lot of woman. She is now more respected and loved. See 
 Library of Entertaining Knowledge, vol. 5, New Zealanders. 
 29 
 
338 PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 lins savs, of the women of New South Wales, "Their condi- 
 tion is' so wretched, that I have often, on seeing a female 
 child borne on its mother's shoulders, anticipated the miseries 
 to which it wh born, and thought it would be mercy to de- 
 stroy it." And thus it is that the most important of all con- 
 nections, the marriage tie, is perverted, to the production of 
 the degradation and misery of the one sex, and the arrogant 
 assumption and unfeeling cruelty of the other. But the evil 
 stops not with the Bufferings of woman— her prolificness is in 
 a measure destroyed. Unaided by the male in the rearing 
 of her children, and being forced to bear them on their shoul- 
 ders, when the huntsmen are roaming through the forest, 
 many of their offspring must die, from the vicissitudes to 
 which they are (subjected at so tender an age. Moreover, 
 " among wandering tribes," says Dr. Robertson, "the mother 
 cannot attempt to rear a second child until the first has at- 
 tained Buch a degree of rigor as to be in some measure inde- 
 pendent of her care. . . . When twins are born, one of 
 them is commonly abandoned, because the mother is not 
 equal to the task of rearing both. When a mother dies 
 while she is nursing a child, all hope of preserving its life 
 fails, and it is buried, together with her, in the -aim- grave."* 
 It is not necessary that we should continue farther this shock- 
 ing picture ; but let ua proceed at once to inquire if the in- 
 stitution of slavery is not calculated to relieve the sufferings 
 and wrongs of injured woman, and elevate her in the scale 
 of existence ? Slavery, we have just seen, changes the hunt- 
 ing to the shepherd and agricultural states,— gives rise to aug- 
 mented productions, and, consequently, furnishes more abun- 
 dant supplies for man. The labor of the slave thus becomes 
 a substitute for that of the woman ; man no longer wanders 
 
 * Robertson's America, vol. 1, p. 177. 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 339 
 
 through the forest, in quest of game ; and woman, consequent- 
 ly, is relieved from following on his track, under the enerva- 
 ting and harassing burthen of her children. She is now sur- 
 rounded by her domestics, and the abundance of their labor 
 lightens the toil and hardships of the whole family. She 
 ceases to be a mere " beast of burthen ;" becomes the cheer- 
 ing and animating centre of the family circle — time is afford- 
 ed for reflection and the cultivation of all those mild and fas- 
 cinating virtues, which throw a charm and delight around 
 our homes and firesides, and calm and tranquillize the harsher 
 tempers and more restless propensities of the male : Man, 
 too, relieved from that endless disquietude about subsistence 
 for the morrow — relieved of the toil of wandering over the 
 forest — more amply provided for by the productions of the 
 soil — finds his habits changed, his temper moderated, his 
 kindness and benevolence increased ; he loses that savage and 
 brutal feeling which he had before indulged towards all his 
 unfortunate dependants ; and, consequently, even the slave, 
 in the agricultural, is happier than the free man in the hunt- 
 ing state. 
 
 In the very first remove from the most savage state, we 
 behold the marked effects of slavery on the condition of wo- 
 man — we find her at once elevated, clothed with all her 
 charms, mingling with and directing the society to which she 
 belongs, no longer the slave, but the equal and the idol of 
 mau. The Greeks and Trojans, at the siege of Troy, were in 
 this state, and some of the most interesting and beautiful 
 passages in the Iliad relate to scenes of social intercourse and 
 conjugal affection, where woman, unawed and in all the pride 
 of conscious equality, bears a most conspicuous part. Thus, 
 Helen and Andromanche are frequently represented as ap- 
 pearing in company with the Trojan chiefs, and mingling 
 freely in conversation with them. Attended only by one or 
 
340 PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 two maid servants, they walk through the streets of Troy, as 
 business or fancy directs : even the prudent Penelope, perse- 
 cuted as she is by her suitors, does not scruple occasionally to 
 appear among them ; and scarcely more reserve seems to be 
 imposed on vjrgins than married women. Mitford has well 
 observed, that " Homer's elegant eulogiums and Hesiod's se- 
 vere sarcasm, equally prove woman to have been in their days 
 important members of society. The character of Penelope in 
 the Odyssee, is the completesl panegyric on the sex that ever 
 was composed ; and no language even give a more elegant 
 or more highly colored picture of conjugal affection, than is 
 displayed in the conversation of Hector and Andromanche, in 
 the 6th book of the Iliad.'"-'' 
 
 The Teutonic races who inhabited the mountains and fast- 
 nesses of Germany, were similarly situated to the Greeks ; 
 and even before they left their homes to move down upon the 
 Roman Empire, they were no more distinguished by their 
 deeds in arms, than for devotion and attention to the weaker 
 sex. So much were they characterized by this elevation of 
 the female sex, that Gilbert Stuart does not hesitate to trace 
 the institution of chivalry, whose origin has never yet been 
 satisfactorily illustrated, to the German manners.f 
 
 Again : if we descend to modern times, we see much the 
 largest portion of Africa existing in this second stage of civili- 
 zation, and, consequently, we find woman in an infinitely bet- 
 ter condition than we any where find her among the abori- 
 gines on the American continent. And thus is it a most 
 singular and curious fact, that woman, whose sympathies are 
 ever alive to the distress of others; whose heart is filled with 
 benevolence and philanthropy, and whose fine feelings, un- 
 
 * See Mitford's Greece, vol. 1, pp. 16G, 167, Bost. Ed 
 f See Stuart's View of Society, particularly book 1, cliap. 2, sec. 4 
 and 5. 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 341 
 
 cheeked by considerations of interest or calculations of remote 
 consequences, have ever prompted to embrace with eagerness 
 even the wildest and most destructive schemes of emancipa- 
 tion, has been in a most peculiar and eminent degree indebted 
 to slavery, for that very elevation in society which first raised 
 her to an equality with man. We will not stop here to in- 
 vestigate the advantages resulting from the ameliorated con- 
 dition of woman : her immense influence on the destiny of 
 our race is acknowledged by all : upon her must ever devolve, 
 in a peculiar degree, the duty of rearing into manhood a crea- 
 ture, in its infancy the frailest and feeblest which Heaven has 
 made — of forming the plastic mind — of training the igno- 
 rance and imbecility of infancy into virtue and efficiency. 
 There is, perhaps, no moral power, the magnitude of which 
 swells so far beyond the grasp of calculation, as the influence 
 of the female character on the virtues and happiness of man- 
 kind : it is so searching, so versatile, so multifarious, and so 
 universal : it turns on us like the eye of a beautiful portrait, 
 wherever we take our position ; it bears upon us in such an 
 infinite variety of points, on our instincts, our passions, our 
 vanity, our tastes, and our necessities ; above all, on the first 
 impressions of education and the associations of infancy." The 
 rule which woman should act in the great drama of life, is 
 truly an important and an indispensable one ; it must and 
 will be acted, and that too, either for our w T eal or woe : all 
 must wish then, that she should be guided by virtue, intelli- 
 gence, and the purest affection ; which can only be secured 
 by elevating, honoring, and loving her, in whose career we 
 feel so deep an interest. 
 
 "We have thus traced out the origin and progress of slav- 
 ery, and pointed out its effects in promoting the civilization 
 of mankind. We should next proceed to an investigation of 
 those causes, of a general character, which have a tendency, 
 29* 
 
342 PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 in the progress of society, gradually to remove and extinguish 
 slavery ; but these we shall have such frequent opportunities 
 of noticing in the sequel, while discussing various schemes of 
 abolition that have been proposed, that we have determined 
 to omit their separate consideration. 
 
 We shall now proceed to inquire into the origin of slavery 
 in the United States. 
 
 It is well known to all, at all conversant with the history 
 of our country, that negro slavery in the United States, the 
 AYest India Islands, and South America, was originally de- 
 rived from the African slave trade, by which the African 
 negro was torn from his home, and transferred to the western 
 hemisphere, to live out his days in bondage ; Ave shall briefly 
 advert — First, to the origin and progress of this trade — Se- 
 condly, to its effects on Africa ; and lastly, to the considera- 
 tion of the part which the United States have taken in this 
 traffic, and the share of responsibility which must be laid at 
 their door. 
 
 1. Origin and Progress of the African Slave Trade. — 
 This trade, which seems so shocking to the feelings of man- 
 kind, dates its origin as far back as the year 1442 : Antony 
 Gonzales, a Portuguese mariner, while exploring the coast of 
 Africa, in 1440, seized some Moors near Cape Bojador, and 
 was subsequently forced by his king, the celebrated Prince 
 Ilenry, of Portugal, to carry them back to Africa : he carried 
 them to Rio del Oro, and received from the Moors in ex- 
 change, ten blacks and a quantity of gold dust, with which he 
 returned to Lisbon; and this, which occurred in 1442, was the 
 simple beginning of that extensive trade in human flesh, 
 which has given so singular an aspect to the texture of our 
 population, and which has and will continue to influence the 
 character and destiny of the greatest portion of the inhabi- 
 tants of the two Americas. 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 343 
 
 " The success of Gonzales not only awakened the admira- 
 tion, "but stimulated the avarice, of his countrymen, who, in 
 the course of a few succeeding years, fitted out no less than 
 thirty seven ships, in the pursuit of the same gainful traffic. 
 So early as the year 1502, the Spaniards began to employ a 
 few negroes in the mines of Hispaniola, and in the year 1517, 
 the Emperor, Charles V., granted a patent to certain persons, 
 for the exclusive supply of 4,000 negroes annually, to the 
 islands of Hispaniola, Cuba, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico."* 
 
 African slaves were first imported into this country in 1620, 
 more than a century after their introduction into the West 
 Indies. It seems that, in the year 1620, the trade to Virgi- 
 nia was thrown open to all nations, and a Dutch vessel avail- 
 ing itself of the commercial liberty which prevailed, brought 
 into James River twenty Africans, who were immediately 
 purchased as slaves ; " and as that hardy race," says Robert- 
 son, " was found more capable of enduring fatigue under a 
 sultry climate than Europeans, their number has been increas- 
 ed by continual importations."! Slavery was thus introduced 
 into the New World, and its fertile soil and extensive territory 
 its sparse population and warm climate, so congenial to the 
 African constitution, soon gave a powerful stimulus to the 
 trade, and drew towards it the mercantile enterprise of every 
 commercial nation of Europe. England being the most com- 
 mercial of European nations, naturally engrossed a large por- 
 tion of the trade ; Bryant Edwards says, that from the year 
 1680 to 1786, there were imported into the British posses- 
 sions alone, 2,130,000 slaves — making an average annual 
 importation of more than 20,000. 
 
 The annual importation into the two Americas from all 
 
 * See Bryant Edward's West Indies, vol. 3, p. 238, and the sequel. 
 f See upon this subject 2d chapter of the first volume of Marshall's 
 Life of "Washington, and Robertson's Virginia. 
 
344 PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 quarters, Las frequently transcended 100,000 ! But our 
 limits will not allow us to enter more fully into this subject ; 
 and, therefore, we must content ourselves by calling the at- 
 tention of the reader to the 9th section of Walsh's Appeal on 
 the subject of negro slavery and the slave trade, in which he 
 has brought together all the information upon this subject up 
 to the time at which he wrote (1819.) 
 
 We will now proceed to consider, 2d — The effects of the 
 Slave Trade on the condition of Africa — and first, will brief- 
 ly advert to the supposed advantages. It is well known that 
 almost the whole of Africa exists in a barbarous state — only 
 one or two removes above the Indian of America. At the 
 commencement of the slave trade, slavery, as we have already 
 seen, was established throughout Africa, and had led on to 
 great mitigation of the cruel practices of war; but still, in 
 consequence of the limited demand for slaves under their very 
 rude system of agriculture, the prisoner of war was frequently 
 put to death. 
 
 So soon, however, as the slave trade was established, great 
 care was taken in the preservation of the lives of prisoners, in 
 consequence of the great demand for them occasioned by the 
 slave traffic ; so that, although an extension has been given 
 to the system of slavery, many lives are supposed to have 
 been saved by it. 
 
 Again : it has been contended that the slave trade, by 
 giving a value to the African negro which would not otherwise 
 have been attached to him, has produced much more mild- 
 ness and kindness in the treatment of slaves in Africa ; that 
 the utmost care is now taken in the rearing of children, and, 
 consequently, that although Africa has lost many of her 
 inhabitants from this cause, yet a stimulus has thereby been 
 given to population, which has in some measure made up the 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 345 
 
 " Africa," says Malthus, "has been at all times the princi- 
 pal mart of slaves. The drains of its population in this way 
 liave been great and constant, particularly since their intro- 
 duction into the European colonies ; but, perhaps, as Doctor 
 Franklin observes, it would be difficult to find the gap that 
 has been made by a hundred years' exportation of negroes, 
 which has blackened half America."* Lastly, it has been urg- 
 ed, and with great apparent justness, that the slave trade has 
 contributed greatly to the civilization of a large portion of 
 the African population ; that, by transportation to the west- 
 ern world, they have been placed in contact with the civilized 
 white, and have been greatly benefitted by the change ; that 
 the system of slavery throughout our continent and the 
 islands, is much less cruel than in Africa ; that there nowhere 
 prevails in America, the horrid practice of sacrificing the slave 
 on the death of his master, in order that he may be well 
 attended in another world ; a practice which all travellers in 
 Africa assert to be extremely common in many nations ; and 
 finally, that the climate of our temperate and torrid zones, is 
 much more suitable to the African constitution, than even 
 their own climate ; and, consequently, that the physical con- 
 dition of the race has greatly improved by the transplanta- 
 tion. 
 
 There is certainly much truth in the above assertions ; but 
 still we cannot agree that the advantages of Africa from the 
 slave trade, have preponderated over the disadvantages. Al- 
 though wars have been made more mild by the trade, yet 
 they have been made much more frequent : an additional 
 and powerful motive for strife has been furnished. Countries 
 have been overrun, and cities pillaged, mainly with a view of 
 procuring slaves for the slave dealer. Brougham likens the 
 
 * See Malthus on population, vol. 1, page 119, Georgetown Edi- 
 tion, 
 
346 PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 operation of the slave trade in this respect, to the effect which 
 the different menageries in the world and the consequent de- 
 mand for wild beasts, have produced on the inferior animals 
 of Africa. They are now taken alive, instead of being killed 
 as formerly ; but they are certainly more hunted and more 
 harassed than if no foreign demand existed for them. The 
 unsettled state of Africa, caused by the slave trade, is most 
 undoubtedly unfavorable to the progress of civilization in that 
 extensive region. In proof of the fatal effects of the slave 
 trade on the peace, order, and civilization of Africa, Mr. AYil- 
 berforce asserted, and his assertion is upheld by the state- 
 ments of all travellers who have penetrated far into the inte- 
 rior, that while in every region the sea coast and the banks of 
 navigable rivers, those districts which, from their situation, 
 had most intercourse with civilized nations, were found to be 
 most civilized and cultivated ; the effects of the slave trade 
 had been such in Africa, that those parts of the coast which 
 had been the seats of the longest and closest intercourse with 
 European nations in carrying on a flourishing slave trade, 
 were far inferior in civilization and knowledge to many tracts 
 of the interior country, where the face of the white man had 
 never been seen ; and thus has the slave trade been able to 
 reverse the ordinary effects of Christianity and Mahomedan- 
 ism, and to cause the latter to be the instructor and enlight- 
 ener of mankind, while the former left them under the undis- 
 turbed or rather increased influence of all their native super- 
 stitions.* 
 
 Again : the condition of the negro during what is called 
 the middle passage, is allowed by all to be wretched in the 
 extreme. The slave traders are too often tempted to take on 
 
 * It is proper to state here, that Parke ascribes the superior condi- 
 tion of the interior districts of Africa, principally to a more healthy 
 climate. 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 347 
 
 board more slaves than can be conveniently carried ; they are 
 then stored away in much too narrow space, and left to all 
 the horrors and privations incident to a voyage through trop- 
 ical seas. The Edinburgh Review asserts, that about seven- 
 teen in a hundred died generally during the passage, and 
 about thirty-three afterwards in the seasoning — making the 
 loss of the negroes exported, rise to the frightful amount of 50 
 per cent. It has been further asserted, that the treatment of 
 the negroes after importation, has been generally so cruel, as 
 that the population has not, by its procreative energies, kept 
 up its numbers in any of the West India islands ; that it 
 has been cheaper for the West Indian to work out his ne- 
 groes, and trust to the slave trade for a supply, than to raise 
 them in the islands where provisions are so dear. We be- 
 lieve the accounts of the ill treatment of slaves in the West 
 Indies have been greatly exaggerated, and have no doubt that 
 their condition has generally been better than in Africa ; but 
 still it is true, that breeding has been discouraged generally 
 where the slave trade was in full operation ; and children 
 not being allowed full attention from the mother, have too 
 frequently died from the want of care. And this is most 
 probably a principal reason of the slow increase of the slaves 
 in the West Indies, by procreation.* , Upon the whole, then, 
 we must come to the conclusion, that the slave trade has been 
 disadvantageous to Africa ; has caused a violation of the prin- 
 ciples of humanity, and given rise to much suffering and to 
 considerable destruction of human life.f Judging by its ef- 
 
 * Another cause of the difficulty of keeping up the slave population 
 of the West Indies, is the great disproportion between the sexes 
 among those imported — the males being greatly more numerous than 
 the females. 
 
 t "We do not by any means wish to be understood as contending 
 that negro slavery in our hemisphere, has lessened the number of ne- 
 
348 PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 fects, we must condemn it, and consequently, agree that slav- 
 ery in our hemisphere was based upon injustice in the first 
 instance. 
 
 But we believe that there arc many circumstances of an 
 alleviating character, which form at least, a strong apology for 
 the slave trade, thus : slavery exists throughout the whole of 
 Africa ; the slave must necessarily be looked upon in the light 
 of property, and subject to bargain, sale, and removal, as all 
 kinds of moveable property are. The Adscripts Glebes, or 
 slaves attached to the soil, and not suffered to be removed, 
 fare the worst. When they multiply too greatly for the pro- 
 ducts of the soil on which they are situated, their subsistence 
 is scanty, and their condition is miserable. When not in pro- 
 portion to the extent of the soil, then they are sure to be 
 overworked, as there is a deficiency of labor. It is cer- 
 tainly best, therefore, if slavery exists, at all, that buying 
 and selling should be allowed, and upon this principle the 
 middle passage certainly constitutes the greatest objection to 
 the slave trade, when those alone are imported who were 
 slaves in Africa. 
 
 But again : it is extremely difficult, in all questions of mo- 
 rality, to say, how far ignorance, conscientious opinions, and 
 concomitant circumstances, may atone for acts extremely 
 hurtful and improper in themselves ; we all agree that these 
 produce great modifications. The bigot who burns his relig- 
 ious enemy at the stake, and conscientiously believes that he 
 has done his God a service, and the North American Indian, 
 who torments with every refinement of cruelty the prisoner 
 who has unfortunately fallen into his hands, and believes that 
 
 groes throughout the world. On the contrary, there is nothing more 
 true, than that the number has greatly increased by it. We only al- 
 lude to the destruction of life in the Middle Passage and the Season- 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 349 
 
 the Great Spirit applauds him, and that the blood of his fath- 
 ers calls for it, surely do not commit the same amount of sin 
 as the perfectly enlightened statesman, who should do the 
 same things from policy, knowing them to be wrong. In like 
 manner, the slave trade, at its origin, can lay claim to the 
 same sort of apology, from the condition of the world when it 
 arose, and the peculiar circumstances which generated it. 
 Slavery was then common throughout almost every country 
 of Europe. 
 
 Indeed, the slaves under the appellation of main mortables* 
 in France, were never liberated until the revolution in 1789. 
 The public law of Europe, too, justified the killing or enslav- 
 ing of the prisoner, at the option of the captor. Under these 
 circumstances, we are not to wonder that the slave trade, so 
 far from exciting the horrors of mankind, as now, actually 
 commanded the admiration of Europe. Gonzales, we have 
 just seen, during the reign of the celebrated Prince Henry, in 
 1442, brought the first negro slaves into Lisbon, and the deed 
 excited the admiration of all : again, three years afterwards, 
 Dinis Fernandez, a citizen of Lisbon, and an Esquire to the 
 King Don John, captured four negroes on the coast of Africa 
 and brought them into Lisbon ; and the Portuguese historian, 
 Barras, "eulogizes Dinis," says Walsh, in his notices of 
 Brazil, " that he did not stop at the time, to make forays into 
 the country, and capture more slaves on his own account, but 
 brought those he had caught back to his master, who was 
 mightily pleased, not only with the discoveries he had made, 
 but with the people he had carried with him, which had not 
 been delivered from the hands of the Moors like the other ne- 
 
 * It is a singular fact, that the slaves belonging to the Church were 
 the last liberated — a striking illustration of the feeble effects of religion 
 and philanthropy, when arrayed against interest. 
 
 30 
 
350 PROFESSOR DEW OX SLAVERY. 
 
 groes, which had up to that time come into the kingdom, but 
 had been caught on their own soil." 
 
 The famous Bartholomew de Las Casas, Bishop of Chiapi, 
 who is said to have been the first to recommend the importa- 
 tion of Africans into the New World, was a man of the mild- 
 est and most philanthropic temper, yet he never doubted at 
 all the right to enslave Africans, though he was the zealous 
 advocate and protector of the Indian. " While he contended, 
 says Robertson, " for the liberty of people born in one quar- 
 ter of the globe, he labored to enslave the inhabitants of 
 another region ; and in the warmth of his zeal to save the 
 Americans from the yoke, pronounced it to be lawful and ex- 
 pedient to impose one Still heavier upon the Africans."* 
 
 We have already seen that Charles V. granted a com- 
 mission to a company to supply his American possessions 
 with 4,000 slaves per annum. Ferdinand and Isabella like- 
 wise had permitted the trade before him. 
 
 John llawkins was the first Englishman who embarked in 
 the trade, and he seems by his daring and enterprise in the 
 business, to have greatly pleased his sovereign, Queen Eliza- 
 beth, who so far from disgracing him, conferred on him the 
 honors of knighthood, and made him treasurer of the navy.f 
 Elizabeth, James L, Charles I. and II., were all in the habit of 
 chartering companies to carry on the trade. No scruples of 
 conscience seem ever to have disturbed the quiet of these roy- 
 al personages, or of the agents whom they employed. The 
 last chartered company was called the Royal African company, 
 and had among the subscribers, the King, (Charles II.) the 
 Duke of York, his brother, and many other persons of high 
 rank and quality.^ In fact, women, the most virtuous and 
 
 * Robertson's America. 
 
 t See Edward's West Indies, vol. 3, page 242. 
 
 % Edward's West Indies, vol. 2, pp. 247-8. 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 351 
 
 humane, were often subscribers to this kind of stock, and 
 seem never to have reflected upon the injustice and iniquity 
 of the traffic, which has so long scandalized civilized Europe. 
 It would indeed be a most difficult question in casuistry, to 
 determine the amount of sin and wickedness committed by 
 the various governments of Europe, in sanctioning a trade 
 which the condition of Europe, Africa, and America, and all 
 the habits and practices of the day, seemed so completely to 
 justify. 
 
 We shall now proceed, 3dly, to the consideration of the 
 share of responsibility which attaches to the United States in 
 the commission of the original sin by which slavery was first 
 introduced into this country. — The colonies, being under the 
 control and guidance of another country, were of course re- 
 sponsible for no commercial acts and regulations in which 
 they had no share whatever. The slave trade, on the part of 
 Great Britain, commenced during the reign of Elizabeth, who, 
 personally, took a share in it. The colonies did not then ex- 
 ist. It was encouraged in the successive reigns of Charles I. 
 and II. and James II.; and William III. outdid them all : 
 with Lord Sumers for his minister, he declared the slave trade 
 to be highly beneficial to the nation. The colonies, all this 
 time, took no share in it themselves, merely purchasing what 
 the British merchants brought them, and doing therein what 
 the British government invited them to do, by every means 
 in their power. x\nd now let us see who it was that first 
 marked it with disapprobation, and sought to confine it with- 
 in narrow bounds. The colonies began in 1*760. South- 
 Carolina, a British colony, passed an act to prohibit further 
 importation ; but Great Britain rejected this act with indig- 
 nation, and declared that the slave trade was beneficial and 
 necessary to the mother country. The governors of the colo- 
 nies had positive orders to sanction no law enacted against the 
 
352 PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 slave trade. In Jamaica, in the year 17G5, £3- attempt was 
 made to abolish the trade to that island. The governor de- 
 clared that his instructions would never allow him to sign the 
 bill. It was tried again on the same island in 1774, but 
 Great Britain, by the Earl of Dartmouth, president of the 
 board, answered : " We cannot alloiv the colonics to check or 
 discourage in any degree a traffic so beneficial to the nation? 
 The above historical account we have taken from a JJritish 
 writer. (Barnham'a Observations on the Abolition of Negro 
 Slavery.) 
 
 Among all the colonies, none seem to be more eager and 
 more pressing fur the abolition of the slaw trad.' than Virgi- 
 nia — in which State the citizens, wonderful to relate, seem 
 now more remorseful and conscience-stricken than any where 
 else in the whole southern country. Judge Tucker, in his 
 Notes on Blackstone's Commentaries, has collected a list of 
 no less than twenty-three act- imposing duties on slaves, 
 which occur in the compilation of Virginia laws. Hie firs! 
 bean date as far back as 1G09 ; and the real design of all of 
 them was not revenue, but the repression of the importation. 
 In 1772, most of tbe duties previously imposed were re-enact- 
 ed, and the Assembly transmitted, at the same time, a peti- 
 tion to the throne, which, as Mr. Walsh most justly observes, 
 speaks almost all that could be desired, for the confusion of 
 our slanderers. The following are extracts: "We are en- 
 couraged to look up to the throne and implore your majesty's 
 paternal assistance in averting a calamity of a most alarming 
 nature." " The importation of slaves into the colonies from 
 the coast of Africa, hath long been considered a trade of great 
 inhumanity, and, under its present encouragement, we have 
 too much reason to fear, will endanger the very existence of 
 your Majesty's American dominions." 
 
 u Deeply impressed with these sentiments, we most hum- 
 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 353 
 
 bly beseech your majesty to remove all those restraints on 
 your majesty's governors of this colony which inhibit their 
 assenting to such laws as might check so very pernicious a 
 commerce." The petition, of course, was unavailing. The 
 first Assembly which met in Virginia, after the adoption of 
 her constitution, prohibited the traffic ; and the " inhuman 
 use of the royal negative" against the action of the colony 
 upon this subject, is enumerated in the first clause of the first 
 Virginia constitution, as a reason of the separation from the 
 mother country. 
 
 The action of the United States Government likewise upon 
 the slave trade, seems to have been as deeply and efficient as 
 could possibly have been expected from a government neces- 
 sarily placed under great restraint and limitation. 
 
 Not being able to enter into the details, we quote, with 
 great pleasure, the following remark of Mr. Walsh, who, with 
 great indefatigable zeal and industry, has collected all the 
 important information on the subject of the slave trade, and 
 furnished the world with a complete and triumphant vindica_ 
 tion of the United States, against the taunts and illiberal 
 insinuations of British writers. " It is seen," says Mr. Walsh 
 " by the foregoing abstract, that federal America interdicted 
 the trade from her ports, thirteen years before Great Britain ; 
 that she made it punishable as a crime seven years before ; 
 that she had fixed four years sooner the period of non-impor- 
 tation — which period was earlier than that determined upon 
 by Great Britain for her colonies. We ought not to overlook 
 the circumstance, that these measures were taken by a Legis- 
 lature composed in considerable part of the representatives of 
 Slaveholding States ; slaveholders themselves, in whom, of 
 course, according to the Edinburgh Review, 'conscience had 
 suspended its functions,' and 'justice, gentleness and pity 
 were extinguished.' In truth, the representatives from our 
 30* 
 
354 PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 Southern States have been foremost in testifying their abhor- 
 rence of the traffic."* Are we not then fully justified, from 
 a historical review of the part which the colonists took, before 
 and after the independence, in relation to the slave trade, in 
 asserting that slavery was forced upon them, and the slave 
 trade continued contrary to their wishes ? If ever a nation 
 stood justified before heaven, in regard to an evil, which 
 had become interwoven with her social system, is not that 
 country ours ? Are not our hands unpolluted with the origi- 
 nal sin, and did we not wish them clean of the contagion the 
 moment our independent existence was established ? Where 
 is the stain that rests upon our escutcheon ? There is none ! 
 United America has done her duty, and Virginia has the 
 honor of taking the lead of the abolition of the slave trade, 
 whose example has been so tardily and reluctantly follow- 
 ed by the civilized nations of Europe. Virginia, therefore, 
 especially, has nothing to reproach herself with — " the still 
 small voice of conscience 1 ' can never disturb her quiet. She 
 truly stands upon this subject, like the Chevalier Bayard — 
 " sans pcur et sans rcproche." 
 
 We have now finished the first principal division of our 
 subject — in which we have treated, we hope satisfactorily, of 
 the origin of slavery in ancient and modern times, and have 
 closed with a consideration of the slave trade, by which slav- 
 ery has been introduced into the United States. We hope 
 that this preliminary discussion will not be considered inap- 
 propriate to our main subject. We have considered it indis- 
 pensably necessary to point out the true sources of slavery, 
 and the principles upon which it rests, in order that we might 
 appreciate fully the value of those arguments based upon the 
 principles that " all men are born equal" — that u slavery in 
 the abstract is wrong" — that " the slave has a natural right to 
 * See Walsh's Appeal, 2d edition, page 323. 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 355 
 
 regain his liberty," &c. &c. — all of which doctrines were most 
 pompously and ostentatiously put forth by some of the abo- 
 litionists in the Virginia Legislature. No set of legislators 
 ever have, or ever can, legislate upon purely abstract princi- 
 ples, entirely independent of circumstances, without the ruin 
 of the body politic, which should have the misfortune to be 
 under the guidance of such quackery. Well and philosophi- 
 cally has Burke remarked, that circnmstances give in reality 
 to every political principle its distinguishing color and dis- 
 criminating effect. The circumstances are what render every 
 political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind, and we 
 cannot stand forward and give praise or blame to anything 
 which relates to human actions and human concerns, on a 
 simple view of the object as it stands, stript of every relation, 
 in all the nakedness and solitude of metaphysical abstraction. 
 The historical view which we have given of the origin and 
 progress of slavery, shows most conclusively that something 
 else is requisite to convert slavery into freedom, than the mere 
 enunciation of abstract truths, divested of all adventitious cir- 
 cumstances and relations. We shall now proceed to the 
 second great division of our subject, and inquire seriously and 
 fairly, whether there be any means by which we may get rid 
 of slavery. 
 
 77. Plans for the Abolition of Negro Slavery. — Under 
 this head we will examine first, those schemes which propose 
 abolition and deportation ; and secondly, those which contem- 
 plate emancipation without deportation. 
 
 1st. Emancipation and Deportation. — In the late Virginia 
 Legislature, where the subject of slavery underwent the most 
 thorough discussion, all seemed to be perfectly agreed in the 
 necessity of removal in case of emancipation. Several mem- 
 bers from the lower counties, which are deeply interested in 
 this question, seemed to be sanguine in their anticipations of 
 
356 PROFESSOR DEW OX SLAVERY. 
 
 the final success of some project of emancipation and depor- 
 tation to Africa, the original Lome of the negro. " Let us 
 translate them," said one of the most respected and able 
 members of the Legislature, (Gen. Broadnax,) "to those 
 realms from -which, in evil times, under inauspicious influ- 
 ences, their fathers were unfortunately abducted. Mr. Speaker, 
 the idea of restoring these people to the region in which na- 
 ture had planted them, and to whose climate she had fitted 
 their constitutions — the idea of benefitting, not only our con- 
 dition and their condition, by the removal, but making them 
 the means of carrying back to a great continent, lost in the 
 proibundesi depths of savage barbarity, unconscious of the ex- 
 istence even of the God who created them, not only the arts 
 and comforts, and multiplied advantages of civilized life, but 
 what is of more value than all, a knowledge of true religion — 
 intelligence of a Redeemer — is one of the grandest and no- 
 blest, one of the most expansive and glorious ideas whichever 
 entered into the imagination of man. The conception, wheth- 
 er to the philosopher, the statesman, the philanthropist, or 
 the christian, of rearing up a colony which is to be the nu- 
 cleus aiound which future emigration will concentre, and open 
 all Africa to civilization, and commerce, and science, and arts, 
 and religion — when Ethiopia Bhall stretch out her hands, in- 
 deed, is one which warms the heart with delight." (Speech 
 of Gen. Broadnax, of JHnwiddie, pp. 30 and 37.) We fear 
 that this splendid vision, the creation of a brilliant imagina- 
 tion, influenced by the pure feelings of a philanthropic and 
 generous heart, is destined to vanish at the severe touch of 
 analysis. Fortunately for reason and common sense, all these 
 projects of deportation may be subjected to the most rigid 
 and accurate calculations, which are amply sufficient to dispel 
 all doubt, even in the minds of the most sanguine, as to their 
 practicability. 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 357 
 
 We take it for granted, that the right of- the owner to his 
 slave is to be respected, and, consequently, that he is not re- 
 quired to emancipate him, unless his full value is paid by the 
 State. Let us, then, keeping this in view, proceed to the 
 very simple calculation of the expense of emancipation and 
 deportation in Virginia. The slaves, by the last census 
 (1830,) amounted within a small fraction to 470,000 ; the 
 average value of each one of these is, $200 ; consequently, 
 j the whole aggregate value of the slave population of Virgi- V 
 nia, in 1830, was $94,000,000 ; and allowing for the increase 
 since, we cannot err far in putting the present value at $100, 
 000,000. The assessed value of all the houses and lands in 
 the State, amounts to $206,000,000, and these constitute the 
 material items in the wealth of the State, the whole personal 
 property besides bearing but a very small proportion to the va- 
 lue of slaves, lands, and houses. Now, do not these very simple 
 statistics speak volumes upon this subject ? It is gravely recom- 
 mended to the State of Virginia to give up a species of property 
 which constitutes nearly one-third of the wealth of the whole 
 State, and almost one-half of that of Lower Virginia, and 
 with the remaining two-thirds to encounter the additional 
 enormous expense of transportation and colonization on the 
 coast of Africa. But the loss of $100,000,000 of property is 
 scarcely the half of what Virginia would lose, if the immutable 
 laws of nature could suffer (as fortunately they cannot) this 
 tremendous scheme of colonization to be carried into full ef- 
 fect. Is it not population which makes our lands and houses 
 valuable ? Why are lots in Paris and London worth more than 
 the silver dollars which it might take to cover them ? Why 
 are lands of equal fertility in England and France, worth 
 more than those of our Nothern States, and those again worth 
 more than Southern soils, and those in turn worth more than 
 the soils of the distant West ? It is the presence or absence 
 
J 
 
 358 PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 of population which alone can explain the fact. It is, in truth, 
 the slave labor in Virginia which gives value to her soil and 
 her habitations ; take away this, and you pull down the Atlas 
 that upholds the whole system ; eject from the State the whole 
 slave population, and we risk nothing in the prediction, that 
 on the day in which it shall be accomplished, the worn soils 
 of Virginia would not bear the paltry price of the government 
 lands in the West, and the Old Dominion will be a " waste 
 howling wilderness ;" — " the grass shall be seen growing in 
 the streets, and the foxes peeping from their holes." 
 
 But the favorers of this Bcheme say they do not contend 
 for the Budden emancipation and deportation of the whole 
 black population ; they would send off only the increase, and 
 thereby keep down the population to its present amount, 
 while the whites, increasing at their usual rate, would tinally 
 become relatively so numerous as to render the presence of 
 the blacks among us for ever afterwards entirely harmless. 
 This scheme, which at first, to the unreflecting, seems plana 
 ble, and much less wild than the project of sending off the 
 whole, is nevertheless impracticable and visionary, as we 
 think a few remarks will prove. It is computed that the 
 annual increase of the slaves and free colored population of 
 Virginia is about six thousand. Let us first, then, make a 
 calculation of the expense of purchase and transportation. 
 >0 each, the six thousand will amount in value to 111 
 200,000. At 830 each, for transportation, which we shall 
 soon see is too little, we have the whole expense of purchase 
 and transportation 81,880,000, an expense to be annually in- 
 curred by Virginia to keep down her black population to its 
 present amount. And let us ask, is there any one who can 
 seriously argue that Virginia can incur such an annual ex- 
 pense as this for the next twenty-five or fifty years, until the 
 whites have multipled so greatly upon the blacks, as, in the 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 359 
 
 I opinion of the alarmists, for ever to quiet the fears of the 
 i community ? Vain and delusive hope, if any were ever wild 
 ; enough to entertain it ! Poor old Virginia ! the leader of 
 j the poverty stricken team, which have been for years so heav- 
 ! ily dragging along under the intolerable burthen of the Fed- 
 • eral Government, must inevitably be crushed, whenever this 
 I new weight is imposed on her, in comparison with which federal 
 ! exactions are light and mild. We should as soon expect the 
 ( Chamois, the hardy rover over Alpine regions, by his unas- 
 sisted strength to hurl down the snowy mantle which for ages 
 I has clothed the lofty summit of Mount Blanc, as that Virgi- 
 inia will be ever able, by her own resources, to purchase and 
 colonize on the coast of Africa six thousand slaves for any 
 i number of years in succession. 
 
 But this does not develope, to its full extent, the monstrous 
 absurdity of this scheme. There is a view of it yet to be tak- 
 en, which seems not to have struck very forcibly any of the 
 speakers in the Virginia Legislature, but which appears to us, 
 of itself perfectly conclusive against this whole project. We 
 have made some efforts to obtain something like an accurate 
 account of the number of negroes every year carried out of Vir- 
 ginia to the South and Southwest. We have not been enabled 
 to succeed completely ; but from all the information we can 
 obtain, we have no hesitation in saying, that upwards of 6,000 
 are yearly exported to other States. Virginia is, in fact, a 
 \negro raising State for other States ; she produces enough for 
 her own supply, and six thousand for sale. Now, suppose 
 the government of Virginia enters the slave market resolved 
 to purchase six thousand for emancipation and deportation, 
 is it not evident that it must overbid the Southern seeker, and 
 thus take the very slaves who would have gone to the South ? 
 The very first operation, then, of this scheme, provided slaves 
 be treated as property, is to arrest the current which has 
 
3Q0 PROFESSOR DEW OX SLAVERY. 
 
 been hitherto flowing to the South, and to accumulate the 
 evil in the State. As sure as the moon in her transit over 
 the meridian arrests the current which is gliding to the 
 ocean, so sure will the action of the Virginia government, in 
 an attempt to emancipate and send off 0,000 slaves, stop 
 those who are annually going out of the State; and when 
 000 are sent off in one year, (which we never expect to 
 see) it will be found, on investigation, that they are those 
 w ho would have been sent out of the State by the operation 
 of our slave trade, and to the utter astonishment and confu- 
 sion of our abolitionists, the black population will be found 
 advancing with its usual rapidity-the only operation of the 
 scheme being to substitute our government, alias, ourselves, as 
 purchasers, instead of the planters of the South. Tins is a 
 view which every legislator in the State should take, lie 
 should beware, lest in his zeal for action, this efflux, which is 
 now so salutary to the State, and such an abundant source ol 
 wealth, be suddenly dried up, and all the evils of slavery be 
 increased instead of diminished. If government really could 
 enter with capital and zeal enough into the boundless project, 
 we might even in a few years see the laws of nature reversed, 
 and the tide of slavery flowing from the South in Virginia, to 
 satisfy the philanthropic demand for colonization. The only 
 means which the government could use to prevent the above 
 described effect, would be either arbitrarily to fix the price ot 
 slaves below their market value, which would be a clear viola- 
 tion of the right of property, (which we shall presently notice,) 
 or to excite a feeling of insecurity and apprehension as to this 
 kind of property, and thus dispose the owner to part with it at| 
 less than its true value ; but surely no statesman would open- 
 ly avow such an object, although it must be confessed that some 
 of the speakers, even, who contended that slaves should ever 
 
PBOFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 361 
 
 be treated as property, avowed sentiments which were calcula- 
 ted to produce such a result. 
 
 It is said, however, that the southern market will at all 
 events be closed against us, and consequently, that the pre- 
 ceding argument falls to the ground. To this we answer, that 
 as long as the demand to the south exists, the supply will be 
 furnished in some way or other, if our government do not un- 
 wisely tamper with the subject. Bryant Edwards has said, 
 that " an attempt to prevent the introduction of slaves into 
 the West Indies would be like chaining the winds, or giving 
 laws to the ocean." We may with truth affirm, that an at- 
 tempt to prevent a circulation of this kind of property through 
 the slave-holding States of our confederacy, would be equally 
 if not more impracticable. But there is a most striking illus- 
 tration of this now exhibiting before our eyes — the South- 
 ampton massacre produced great excitement and apprehen- 
 sion throughout the slave-holding States, and two of them, 
 hitherto the largest purchasers of Virginia slaves, have inter- 
 dicted their introduction under severe penalties. Many in 
 our State looked forward to an immediate fall in the price of 
 slaves from this cause ; and what has been the result ? Why, 
 wonderful to relate, Virginia slaves are now higher than they 
 have been for many years past ; and this rise in price has no 
 doubt been occasioned by the number of southern purchasers 
 who have visited our State, under the belief that Virginians 
 had been frightened into a determination to get clear of their 
 slaves at all events ; " and from an artificial demand in the 
 slave purchasing States, caused by an apprehension on the 
 part of the farmers of those States, that the regular supply of 
 slaves would speedily be discontinued by the operation of their 
 non-importation regulations ;"* and we are, consequently, at 
 
 * From Louisiana, many of the farmers themselves have come into 
 31 
 
3G2 TROFESSOIt DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 this moment exporting slaves more rapidly, through the ope- 
 ration of the internal Blave trade, than for many years past 
 
 Let us now examine a moment into the object proposed to 
 be accomplished by this Bcheme. It is contended, that tree 
 labor is infinitely superior to Blave labor in every point of 
 view, and ther< fore it is highly desiral h tnge the lat- 
 
 ter forthe former, and that this will be gradually accomplish- 
 ed by emancipation and deportation : because the vacuum 
 occasioned by the exportation of the slaves will be filled up 
 by thf influx offreemi u from the north and other porti< 
 the Union — and thus, for every slave we lose, it is con to i 
 that we shall receive in exchange a free laborer, much more 
 ■ 1 moral. If we are not greatly mistaken, this, 
 on analysis, will be found to be a complete specimen of that 
 arithmetical scha ' Inch has ever proved so 
 
 ptivein politii . ruinous in itspractical consequen- 
 
 : and first, let us Bee whether anything will bo gained in 
 point of products slave labor for 
 
 free, even upon the avowed principles of the abolitionists 
 themselves. The great i ' ive labor seems to 
 
 be — First, that it is unproductive, or at least, n< I as produc- 
 tive as free labor ; and secondly, that it is calculated to^repel 
 free labor from the sphere in which il ed. This lat- 
 
 ter effect has been briefly and more ingeniously urged by a 
 writer in the Richmond Enquirer of the 3rd of March, 1832, 
 over the signature of "York," than by any one, who is known 
 
 our State, for the purpose of purchasing their own slaves, and thereby 
 evading the laws. There are, in fact, bo many plana which will effect- 
 ually defeat all these preventive regulations, that wc may consider 
 their rigid enforcement utterly impracticable ; and moreover, as the 
 excitement produced by the late insurrection in Virginia, dies away, 
 so will these laws be forgotten, and remain as dead letters upon the 
 statute books. 
 
PROFESSOR DEW OX SLAVERY. 363 
 
 to ns, and we shall consequently introduce an extract from Lis 
 essay. 
 
 "Society naturally resolves itself," says this writer, "into 
 three classes. The first comprehends professional men, capi- 
 talists and large landed proprietors ; the second embraces 
 artisans and small proprietors ; and the third is composed of 
 common laborers. Now, we are a society placed in the 
 anomalous predicament of being totally without a laboring 
 class ; for all our labor is performed by slaves, who consti- 
 tute no part of that society, and who quoad that society, may 
 be regarded as brutes or machines. This circumstance ope- 
 rates directly as a check upon the increase of white popula- 
 tion. For, as some intelligence or property is required to en- 
 able a man to belong to either of the two first classes above 
 enumerated, (and which I have remarked are the only classes 
 which we have,) and so no one with ordinary self-respect can 
 submit to sink below them, and become outcasts, the imme- 
 diate tendency of the supernumerary members is to emigra- 
 tion." We will not, for the present, dispute the premises of 
 the very intelligent and graceful writer, from whom we have 
 copied the above extract ; we have endeavored throughout 
 the review, to show that our adversaries are not justified in 
 their conclusions, even if we admit the truth of their premises. 
 Now, what is the conclusion arrived at by our adversaries 
 from the premises just mentioned ? That we must deport 
 our slaves as fast as possible, and leave the vacuum to be fill- 
 ed by free labor. In the first place, then, we say upon their 
 own principles even, they cannot expect free labor to take the 
 place of slave, for every one acknowledges it utterly impossi- 
 ble to send away, at once, all our slaves — there is scarcely, 
 we presume, a single abolitionist in Virginia, who has ever 
 supposed that we can send away more than the annual in- 
 crease. Now, then, w r e ask, how can any one reasonably ex- 
 
3G4 PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 pcct tli.it the taking away of two or tlirce nog-roes from a body 
 of one hundred, (and this is a much greater proportion than 
 
 the abolitionists hope to colonize,) can destroy that prejudice 
 against laboring with the blacks, which is represented, as 
 preventing the whites from laboring, and as sending them 
 in multitudes to the West. If we are too proud to work in a 
 field with fifty negro men this year, we shall surely be no more 
 disposed to do it next year, because one negro, the increase of 
 fifty, has been sent to Liberia ; and consequently the above 
 reasoning, if it prove any thing, proves that we must prevent 
 our laboring classes (the Macks) from increasing, because 
 whites will not work with them — although the whites will be 
 just as averse to working with them after you have checked 
 their increase as before. 
 
 Bnt let us suppose, that by some kind of logical legerdm 
 main, it can be proven that five labor will supply the place 
 of slave labor, which is deported to Africa — even then, we 
 think, they will fail upon their other great principle, that free 
 labor is better than slave, the truth of which principle, for 
 the present, we are willing to allow — and their whole argu- 
 ment fails, for this plain and palpable reason, that free labor, 
 by association with slave labor, must inevitably be brought 
 down to its level, and even below it, — for the vices of the 
 slave you may correct, by means of your authority over him, 
 but those of the associate free laborer you cannot. Every 
 farmer in Virginia, can testify to the truth of this assertion. 
 lie knows full well, that if he employs a white laborer to 
 work with a black one, even at job work, where of course the 
 inducement of labor is greatest — he will do no more than the 
 negro, and perhaps, in a majority of cases, he will not do as 
 much. What then might we expect of him, if he should 
 enter the field with fifty fold his number of blacks, to work 
 along with them regularly through the four seasons of the 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 3C5 
 
 year ? We hazard little in saying, he would be a more un- 
 productive laborer than the black, for lie would soon have all 
 his idle propensities, without being subjected to the same sal- 
 utary restraint. 
 
 It is a well knowngeneral fact, to all close observers of man- 
 kind, that if two different grades of labor as to productiveness 
 be associated together in the same occupation, the higher has 
 a tendency to descend to the level of the lower. Schmalz, in 
 his Political Economy, says, that the indolence and carelessness 
 of the serfs in the north of Europe, corrupt the free laborers 
 who come in contact with them. Jones, in his volume on 
 Rents, says, " a new road is at this time (1831) making, 
 which is to connect Hamburg and the Elb with Berlin ; it 
 passes over the sterile sands, of which so much of the north 
 of Germany consists, and the materials for it are supplied by 
 those isolated blocks of granite, of which the presence on the 
 surface of those sands forms a notorious geological puzzle. 
 These blocks, transported to the line of road, are broken to 
 the proper size by workmen, some of whom are Prussian 
 free laborers, others Leibeigeners of the Mecklenburg terri- 
 tory, through a part of which the road passes. They are paid 
 a stipulated sum for breaking a certain quantity, and all are 
 paid alike. Yet the Leibeigeners could not at first be pre- 
 vailed upon to break more than one-third of the quantity 
 which formed the ordinary task of the Prussians. The men 
 were mixed in the hope that the example and the gains of the 
 more industrious would animate the sluo-o-ish. Now, mark 
 the result. A contrary effect followed ; the Leibeigeners did 
 not improve, but the exertions of other laborers sensibly slack- 
 ened, and at the time my informant (the English Engineer 
 who superintended the work) was speaking to me, the men 
 were again at work in separate gangs, carefully kept asun 
 
 3P 
 
3CG TROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 der."* And thus do we find, by an investigation of this 
 subject, that if we should introduce, by .any means, free labot 
 in the stead of slave labor deported to Africa, that it will be 
 certain to deteriorate by association with slave labor, until it 
 sinks down to and even below its level. So far, we have ad- 
 mitted the possibility of exchanging slave for free labor, and 
 have endeavored to prove, upon the principles of the aboli- 
 tionists, that nothing would be gained by it. We will endea- 
 vor to prove, and we think we can do it incontestibly, that 
 the scheme of the abolition and deportation will not and can- 
 not possibly effect this exchange of slave labor for free, even 
 if it were desirable. And in order that we may examine the 
 project fully in this point of view, we will endeavor — first, to 
 trace out its operation on the slave population, and then on 
 the white. 
 
 Since the publication of the celebrated work of Dr. Malthus, 
 on the "principle of population," the knowledge of the causes 
 which etlect its condition and increase, is much more 
 widely diffused. It is now well known to every student of 
 political economy, that in the wide range of legislation, there 
 is nothing more dangerous than too much tampering with the 
 elastic and powerful spring of population. 
 
 The energies of government are for the most part feeble or 
 impotent when arrayed against its action. It is this procrea- 
 tive power of human species either exerted or dormant, which 
 so frequently brushes away in reality the visionary fabrics of 
 the philanthropists, and mars the cherished plots and schemes 
 of statesmen. Euler has endeavored to prove, by some cal- 
 culations, that the human species, under the most favorable 
 circumstances, is capable of doubling itself once in twelve 
 years. 
 
 * See Jones's Political Economy, vol. 1 , pp. 51, 52 — London Edition. 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 36 Y 
 
 In our Western country, the progress of population has, in 
 many extensive districts, been so rapid as to show, in our opin- 
 ion most conclusively, that it is capable of doubling itself once 
 in fifteen years without the aid of emigration. The whole of 
 our population, since the independence of the United States, 
 has shown itself fully capable of duplication in periods of 
 twenty-five years, without the accession from abroad.* In 
 some portions of our country the population is stationary, in 
 others but very slowly advancing. We will assume then for 
 the two extremes in our country, the stationary condition on 
 the one side, and such increase on the other as to give rise to 
 a duplication every fifteen years. Now as throughout the 
 whole range comprehended between these extremes, popula- 
 tion is capable of exerting various degrees of energy, it is very 
 evident that the statesman who wishes to increase or dimin- 
 ish population, must look cautiously to the effect of his mea- 
 sures on its spring, and see how this will be acted on. If, for 
 example, his object be to lessen the number of slowly increas- 
 ing population, he must be convinced that his plan does not 
 stimulate the procreative energies of society to produce more 
 than he is capable of taking away ; or if his object be to in- 
 crease the numbers, take heed lest this project deaden and 
 paralyze the source of increase so much as to more than coun- 
 terbalance any effort of his. Now looking at the texture of 
 the Virginia population, the desideratum is to diminish the 
 blacks and increase the whites. Let us see how the scheme 
 of emancipation and deportation will act. We have already 
 shown that the first operation of the plan, if slave property 
 were rigidly respected and never taken without full compen- 
 sation, would be to put a stop to the efflux from the State 
 through other channels ; but this would not be the only effect. 
 
 ^_* The longest period of duplication has been about twenty-three 
 
368 rnoFESSOR dew ox slavery. 
 
 Government entering into the market with individuals, would 
 elevate the price of slaves beyond their natural value, raid 
 consequently, the raising of them would become an object of 
 primary importance throughout the whole State. We can 
 readily imagine that the price of slaves might become so great 
 that each master would do all in his power to encourage 
 marriage among them — would allow the females almost en- 
 tire exception from labor, that they might the better breed 
 and nurse — and would so completely concentrate his efforts 
 upon this object, as to Deglect other schemes and less produc- 
 tive sources of wealth. Under these circumstances, the pro- 
 lific African might, no doubt, be stimulated to press hard 
 upon one of the limits above stated, doubling in numbers in 
 fifteen years ; and such is the tendency which our abolition 
 scheme-, if seriously engaged in, will most undoubtedly pro- 
 duce; they will be certain to stimulate the procreative pow- 
 ers of that very race which they are aiming to diminish; they 
 will enlarge and invigorate the very monster which they are 
 endeavoring to stifle, and realize the beautiful but melancholy 
 fable of Si>yphus, by an eternal renovation of hope and dis- 
 appointment- If it were possible for Virginia to purchase and 
 send off annually for the next twenty-rive or fifty years, 12,000 
 slaves, we should have very little hesitation in affirming, that 
 the number of slaves in Virginia would not be at all lessened 
 by the operation, and at the conclusion of the period such 
 habits would be generated among our blacks, that for a long 
 time after the cessation of the drain, population might advance 
 so rapidly as to produce among us all the calamities and 
 miseries of an over-crowded people. 
 
 We are not now detailing in mere conjecture ; there is 
 ample proof of the correctness of these anticipations in the 
 
 years seven months, so that the addition of one year and five months 
 more than compensate for the emigration. 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 369 
 
 history of own hemisphere. The West India Islands, as wo 
 have before seen, are supplied with slaves more cheaply by 
 the African slave trader than they can raise them, and conse- 
 quently the black population in the islands nowhere keeps up 
 its numbers by natural increase. It appears by a statement 
 of Mr. F. Buxton, recently published, that the total number 
 of slaves in the British West Indies, in 1817, was 730,112. 
 After the lapse of eleven years, in 1828, the numbers were 
 reduced to 678,527, making a loss on the capital of 1817, in 
 the short space of eleven years, of 51,585.* In the Mauritius, 
 in the same space of time, the loss on the capital of 1817, 
 amounting to but 76,774, was 10,767. Even in the Island 
 of Cuba, where the negro slave is treated as humanely as any 
 where on the globe, from 1804 to 1817, the blacks lost 4,461, 
 upon the stock of 1804. " Prior to the annexation of Louisi- 
 ana to the United States," says Mr. Clay in his Colonization 
 Speech of 1830, " the slaves from Africa were abundant. The 
 price of adults was generally about $100, a price less than 
 the cost of raising an infant. Then it was believed that the 
 climate of that province was unfavorable to the rearing of ne- 
 gro children, and comparatively few were raised. After the 
 United States abolished the slave trade, the price of adults 
 rose very considerably — greater attention was, consequently, 
 bestowed on their children, and now nowhere is the African 
 female more prolific than she is in Louisiana, and the climate 
 of no one of the Southern States is supposed to be more fav- 
 orable to the rearing of her offspring." For a similar reason 
 
 * Bryant Edwards attributes the decrease of the slaves in the "West 
 Indies principally to the disproportion of the sexes. But in the pre- 
 sent instance, we are constrained to attribute it to another cause, for 
 we find of the 130,112 slaves in the sugar islands in 1817, 369,517 
 were males, and 363,535 were females, being very nearly an equal 
 division of the sexes. 
 
370 TROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 now, the slaves in Virginia multiply more rapidly than in 
 most of the Southern States; the Virginians can raise cheap- 
 er than they can buy ; in fact, it is one of their greatest sources 
 of profit. In many of the other slaveholding States, this 
 is not the case, and consequently, the same care is not taken 
 to encourage matrimony and the rearing of children. 
 
 For a similar reason, in ancient times, few slaves were 
 reared in populous districts and large towns, these being sup- 
 plied with slaves raised at a distance or taken in war, at a 
 cheaper rate than they could be raised. " The comparison is 
 shocking," says Mr. Hume, " between the management of hu- 
 man beings and that of cattle ; but bring extremely just when 
 applied to the present subject, it may be proper to trace the 
 consequences of it. At the capital, near all great cities, in all 
 populous, rich, industrious provinces, few cattle are bred. Pro- 
 visions, lodging, attendance, labor, are there dear, and men 
 find their accounts better in buying the cattle after they come 
 to a certain age, from the remote and cheaper countries. 
 These are, consequently, the only breeding countries for cat- 
 tle ; and by parity of reason for men too, when the latter are 
 put on the same footing with the former, as to buying and 
 selling. To rear a child in London till he could be serviceable, 
 would cost much dearer than to buy one of the same age from 
 Scotland or Ireland, where he had been bred in a cottage, 
 covered with rags, and fed on oatmeal and potatoes. Those 
 who had slaves, therefore, (in ancient times,) in all the richer 
 and more populous countries, would discourage the pregnancy 
 of the females, and either prevent or destroy the birth.* . . 
 A perpetual recruit was, therefore, wanted from the poorer 
 
 * Such means as the last mentioned, will never be resorted toby 
 
 any civilized nation of modern times, either in Europe or America ; 
 but others of a less objectionable character most certainly -will be, 
 whenever the rearing of slaves entails a great expense on the master 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 311 
 
 and more desert provinces. ... All ancient authors 
 tell us that there was a perpetual flux of slaves to Italy from 
 ; the remoter provinces, particularly Syria, Cilicia,* Cappado- 
 | cia, and the lesser Asia, Thrace and Egypt. Yet the number 
 ! of people did not increase in Italy."]- It is thus we see every- 
 where, that the spring of population accommodates itself to 
 the demand for human beings, and becomes inert or active in 
 proportion to the value of the laborer and the small or great 
 expense of rearing him. 
 
 It was upon this very principle that Mr. Pitt, in 1*791, 
 based the masterly and unanswerable argument contained in 
 his splendid speech on the abolition of the slave trade ; in 
 which he proved, upon data furnished by the West India 
 planters themselves, that the moment an end was put to slave 
 trade, the natural increase of negroes would commence, and 
 more than keep up their numbers in the islands. 
 
 But our opponents, perhaps, may be disposed to answer, 
 that this increase of slavery from the stimulus to the black 
 population afforded by the colonization abroad, ought not to 
 be objected to on our own principles, since each slave will be 
 worth two hundred dollars or more. This answer would be 
 correct enough if it were not that the increase of the blacks is 
 effected at our expense, both as to wealth and numbers ; and 
 to show this, we will now proceed to point out the operation 
 of the scheme under consideration upon the white population. 
 Malthus has clearly shown that population depends on the 
 means of subsistence, and will, under ordinary circumstances, 
 increase to a level with them. Now, by means of subsistence, 
 we must not only comprehend the necessaries of life, such as 
 
 * " 10,000 slaves in a day have olten been sold for the use of the 
 Romans at Dl4os, in Cilicia." — Strabo, Lib. 14. 
 
 t See Hume's Essays, part 2d, essay 11th, on Fopulousness of An- 
 cient Empires. 
 
372 PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 food, clothing, shelter, &c, but likewise such conveniences, 
 comforts, and even luxuries, as the habits of the society may- 
 render it essential for all to enjoy. Whatever, then, has a 
 tendency to destroy the wealth and diminish the aggregate 
 capital of society, has the effect, as long as the standard of 
 comfort* remains the same, to check the progress of the pop- 
 ulation. 
 
 It is sure to discourage matrimony and cause children to be 
 less carefully attended to, and to be less abundantly supplied. 
 The heavy burthens which have hitherto been imposed on 
 Virginia, through the operation of the federal exactions, to- 
 gether with the high standard of comfort prevalent through- 
 out the whole State, (about which we shall, by and by, make 
 a few observations,) have already imposed checks upon the 
 progress of the white population of the State. If not one 
 single individual were to emigrate from the State of Virginia, 
 it would be found, so inert has become the principle of in- 
 crease in the State, that the population would not advance 
 with the average rapidity of the American people. Now, 
 under these circumstances, an imposition of an additional 
 burthen of §1,380,000 for the purpose of purchase and de- 
 portation of slaves, would add so much to the taxes of the 
 citizens — would subtract so much from the capital of the 
 State, and increase so greatly the embarrassments of the 
 whole population, that fewer persons would be enabled to 
 support families, and consequently to get married. This 
 great tax, added to those we are already suffering under, 
 would weigh like an incubus upon the whole State — it would 
 operate like the blighting hand of Providence that should ren- 
 der our soil barren and our labor unproductive. It would 
 
 * By standard of comfort, we mean that amount of necessaries, con- 
 veniences, luxuries, winch the habits of any people render essential to 
 them. 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 373 
 
 diminish the value of the fee simple of Virginia, and not only 
 check the natural increase of population within the Common- 
 wealth, but would make every man desirous of quitting the 
 scenes of his home and his infancy, and fleeing from the heavy 
 burthen which would forever keep him and his children bu- 
 ried in the depths of poverty. His sale of negroes would 
 partly enable him to emigrate ; and we have little doubt, 
 that whenever this wild scheme shall be seriously commenc- 
 ed, it will be found that more whites than negroes will be 
 banished by its operation from the State. And there will be 
 this lamentable difference between those who are left behind: 
 a powerful stimulus will be given to the procreative energies 
 of the blacks, while those of the whites will be paralyzed and 
 destroyed. Every emigrant from among the whites will cre- 
 ate a vacuum not to be supplied — every removal of a black 
 will stimulate the generation of another. 
 
 v Uno avuko non deficit alter." 
 
 The poverty stricken master would rejoice in the prolific- 
 ness of his female slave, but pray Heaven in its kindness to 
 strike with barrenness his own spouse, lest, in the plenitude of 
 his misfortunes, brought on by the wild and quixotic philan- 
 thropy of his government, he might see around him a nume- 
 rous offspring unprovided for, and destined to galling indi- 
 gence. 
 
 It is almost useless to inquire whether this deportation of 
 slaves to Africa would, as some seem most strangely to antici- 
 pate, invite the whites of other States into the Common- 
 wealth. Who would be disposed to enter a State with worn 
 out soil, and a black population mortgaged to the payment of 
 millions per annum, for the purpose of emancipation and de- 
 portation, when in the West the most luxuriant soils, unin- 
 32 
 
 
371 PROFESSOR DEW OX SLAVERS'. 
 
 cumbered with heavy exactions, could be purchased for the 
 paltry Bum of |1 25 per acre? 
 
 Where, then, is that multitude of whites to come from, 
 which the glowing fancy of orators has sketched ont as flow- 
 ing into and tilling up the vacuum created by the removal of 
 slaves? The fact is, throughout the whole debate in the Vir- 
 ginia Legislature, tin; speakers seemed to consider the increase 
 of population as a sort of fixed quantity, which would remain 
 the same under the endless change of circumstance, and con- 
 sequently that every man exported from among the Macks, 
 Lessened pro t<nti<> exactly the black population, and that the 
 whites, moving on with their usual speed, would till the void ; 
 which certainly was an erroneous supposition, and manifested 
 an almost unpardonable inattention to the wonderful elasticity 
 of the powerful spring of population. The removal of inhab- 
 itants, accompanied with great loss of productive labor and 
 capital, so far from leaving the residue in a better situation, 
 and disposing them to increase and multiply, produces the 
 directly opposite effect ; it deteriorates the condition of society, 
 and deadens the spring of population. It, is curious to look 
 to the history of the world, ami see how compl< t< ly this posi- 
 tion is sustained by facts. Since the downfall of the Roman 
 Empire, there have been three forced emigrations of very 
 considerable extent, from three of the countries of Europe. 
 The Moors were expelled from Spain, the Protestants from 
 the Netherlands, and the Huguenots from France ; each of 
 these expulsions came well nigh ruining the country from 
 which it took place. We are best acquainted with the effects 
 of the expulsions of the Huguenots from France, because it 
 happened nearer to our own times, during the reign of Louis 
 XIV. In this case, only 500,000 are supposed to have left 
 France, containing then a population of 20 or 25,000,000 of 
 souls. The energies of this mighty country seemed at once 
 
 
 . 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 3*75 
 
 ar- 
 
 rac- 
 
 paralyzed by this emigration, her prosperity was instantly 
 rested, her remaining population lost the vigor which chara 
 tensed them as long as this leaven was among them, and to 
 this day France has not recovered from the tremendous blow. 
 Her inferiority to England in industry and all the useful arts | 
 is in a great measure to be traced back to this stupid intol- 
 erance of her great monarch Louis XIV. The reason why 
 these expulsions were so very injurious to the countries in 
 question, was because the emigrants were the laboring classes 
 of society, and their banishment consequently dried up the 
 sources of production, and lessened the aggregate wealth and 
 capital of the people. Now, these expulsions are nothing in 
 comparison with that contemplated by our abolitionists. In 
 France, only one in fifty of the population was expelled, and 
 no expense was incurred in the deportation ; but, in Virginia, 
 the proportion to be expelled is much greater, and the ex- 
 ense is to devolve on the government. 
 When the emigration is accompanied with no loss of capital 
 to the State, and no abstraction of productive labor, then the 
 population will not be injuriously affected, but sometimes great- 
 ly benefitted. In the hunting state, the expulsion of half of 
 the tribe would benefit the remainder in a politico-economical 
 light, because they live on the game of the forest, which be- 
 comes more abundant as soon as the consumers diminish. 
 Pastoral nations, for a like reason, are rarely injured by emi- 
 gration, for they live on cattle, and the cattle live on the spon- 
 taneous produce of the earth, and when a colony is sent off, 
 the remainder will generally be benefitted, since the consump- 
 tion is relieved while the production is not diminished. And 
 this satisfactorily explains the difficulty which has so much 
 puzzled historians ; how the North of Europe, which Gibbon, 
 Hume, and Robertson, all maintain was in a pastoral state, 
 and not nearly so thickly settled as at present, should never- 
 
37G PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 theless have been able for several centuries to furnish those 
 terrible Bwarms of barbarians, who, "gathering fresh darkness 
 and terror" as they rolled on upon the south, at length, with 
 their « <l multitudes, " obscured the sun of Italy, and 
 
 sunk the Roman work! in night" This example of the bar- 
 barians in the north of Europe, sending so many hundreds of 
 thousands of emigrants to the Boutb, is a beautiful illustra- 
 tion of the capacity of population to counteract the effects 
 of emigration, in all those cases where the spring of popula- 
 tion is not weak. -iicd.. m as new swarms left the coun- 
 try, the means of subsist* nee were more ample for the residue ; 
 the vigor of population Boon supplied the deficiency ; and then 
 another swarm went forth and relieved again the national 
 hive. Our purchase and deportation of slaves would produce 
 a similar effect on our blacks, but it would be entirely at the 
 expense of both the numbers and wealth of the whites, and 
 would be, therefore, one of the most blighting curses that I 
 could scathe the land. Ireland, at present, is suffering heavy af- | 
 Mictions from an ov< I population; but her government 
 could not relieve her by sending off the pauj ers, and for the I 
 simp 1 that it would require an expense on the part \ 
 of 1 Inland, which would produce as great or even greater ab- 
 straction of capital than of unproductive mouths, and would, 
 moreover, give more vigor to the spring of population. If 
 other nations would incur the expense for her, then perhaps 
 there mighl be for her a temporary benefit ; but in a short time 
 such a stimulus would be given to population, as would coun- 
 teract all the vain efforts of man, and in the end, leave her 
 in a worse condition than before. "We doubt whether Eng- 
 land, France, and Germany, by a steady concentration of all 
 their financial resources upon the deportation and comfortable 
 settlement and support of the superabundant population of 
 Ireland, would, at the expiration of fifty years, be found to 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 377 
 
 have lessoned the numbers by one single individual. The 
 effect would merely be, to pledge the resources of these three 
 ; nations to the support of the Irish population, and to substi- 
 | tute the procreation of Irishmen for that of Englishmen, 
 ! Frenchmen, and Germans ; and as soon as this support was 
 withdrawn, the very habits which had been generated by it in 
 Ireland, would be its greatest curse. The only effectual 
 means of relieving Ireland, will be to raise the standard of 
 comfort in that country, and to arrest the population by the 
 preventive checks which would lessen the marriages. Until 
 this be done, in some way or other, Ireland is doomed to suf- 
 fer the heavy penalty. 
 
 We are now prepared to explain how it is that so many 
 negroes have been exported from Africa by the slave trade, 
 while the gap, says Franklin, is almost imperceptible. Gen. 
 Broadnax, in his speech, computes the average number now 
 annually sent out from Africa, by the operation of the slave 
 trade, to be 100,000 ; and, he adds, if all this can be effected 
 against so many risks and hazards, and in violation of the 
 laws of God and man, shall it be said that the whole State of 
 Virginia cannot export 6,000 to Africa in a year ? Yes, 
 strange as it may seem, this is all true ; and the simple rea- 
 son of the great difference is that Africa incurs no expense, 
 but on the contrary, generally receives a full equivalent for 
 the deported slave, which augments her means of subsistence, 
 and stimulates the spring of population. The slave trade, 
 which takes off 100,000 human beings from Africa, for the 
 slave markets of the West Indies and South America, has, by 
 its operation, quickened the procreative powers of society in 
 Africa to such an extent, as not only to keep up her numbers, 
 but to furnish besides 100,000 souls for exportation. Could 
 we suppose it possible for this slave trade to be annihilated 
 at a blow ; repugnant and shocking as it is to every feeling of 
 32* 
 
378 PROFESSOR DEW OX SLAVERY. 
 
 humanity, it would be found that its sudden cessation would 
 plunge the whole of Western Africa, for a season, into the 
 most dreadful anarchy and appalling distress. It would he 
 
 found that the habits of the people had been formed to suit 
 the slave trade, and accordingly, would be much too favorabM 
 to the rapid increase of population without that trade — prison- 
 ers of war would be slaughtered, infants murdered, marri- 
 ages discouraged, and swarms of redundant citizens sent forth 
 to ravage neighboring countries ; and all this would arise from 
 the too rapid increase of population, for the means of subsis- 
 tence, caused by the Budden stopping of the slave trade. It 
 will be thus seen, that the 100,000 annually sent oft" from 
 Africa, are a source of profit and not of expenditure. Saddle 
 Africa with the whole of this burthen, and we are perfectl! 
 sure that the entire resources of that immense continent 
 would not suffice to purchase up, send offj and colonize 5,000 
 per annum. There is the same difference between this expos 
 tation from Africa, and that proposed by the abolitionists 
 from Virginia, that there is between the agriculturist who 
 sends his produce to a foreign state or country, and receives 
 back a full equivalent, and him who is condemned to send 
 his abroad at his own expense, and to distribute it gratuitous- 
 ly. We imagine that no one who was acquainted with the 
 condition of these two farmers would wonder that one should 
 grow wealthy, and the other miserably poor. The 0,000 
 slaves which Virginia annually sends oft' to the South are a 
 source of wealth to Virginia ; but the 1,000 or 2,000 whites 
 who probably go to the West, are a source of poverty ; be- 
 cause, in the former case, we have an equivalent left in the 
 place of the exported slave — in the latter, we lose both labor 
 and capital, without an equivalent ; and precisely such a re- 
 sult in a much more aggravated form, will spring from this 
 mad colonization scheme, should it ever be carried into ope- 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 3*9 
 
 ration. If the governments of Europe were silly enough to 
 appropriate their resources to the purchase of our slaves, at 
 their full marketable value, for the purpose of deportation, 
 they should, for aught that we could do, have every one that 
 they could buy. An equivalent would thus be left for the 
 deported slave, and however much others might sutler for 
 their folly, we should escape.* 
 
 Against most of the great difficulties attendant on the plan 
 of emancipation above examined, it was impossible for the 
 abolitionists entirely to close their eyes ; and it is really curi- 
 ous to pause a moment and examine some of the reflections 
 and schemes by which Virginia was to be reconciled to the 
 plan. We have been told that it would not be necessary to 
 purchase all the slaves sent away — that many would be sur- 
 rendered by their owners without an equivalent. "There are 
 a number of slaveholders," said one who has all the lofty 
 feeling and devoted patriotism which have hitherto so proud- 
 ly characterized Virginia, " at this very time, I do not speak 
 from vain conjecture, but from what I know from the best 
 information, and this number would continue to increase, who 
 would voluntarily surrender their slaves, if the State would 
 provide the means of colonizing them elsewhere. And there 
 would be again another class, I have already heard of many, 
 while they could not afford to sacrifice the entire value of 
 their slaves, would cheerfully compromise with the State for 
 half their value." In the first place, we would remark, that 
 the gentleman's anticipation would certainly prove delusive — 
 
 * Perhaps one of the greatest blessings (if it could be reconciled to 
 our conscience,) which could be conferred on the Southern portion of 
 the Union, would arise from the total abolition of the African slave 
 trade, and the opening of the West India and South American mar- 
 kets to our slaves. We do not believe that deportation to any other, 
 or in any other way, can ever effect the slightest diminution. 
 
380 rnoFESSOR dew ox slavery. 
 
 the surrender of a very few Blaves would enhance the import- 
 ance and value of the residue, and make the owner much 
 more reluctant to part with them. Lot any fanner in I. 
 Virginia ask himself how many he can spare from his planta- 
 tion — and he will besurprised to see how few can be dispi 
 with. If that intelligent gentleman, from the storehouse of 
 his knowledge, would but call up the history of the past, lie 
 would sec that n h,ilanthropy, with all her splendid 
 
 tings, has never yet accomplished one ' i me ; he 
 
 would find the remark of that great judge of human nature, 
 the illustrious author of the •'Wealth of Nations," that no 
 people had the generosity to liberate their slaves, until it be- 
 came their interest to do bo, but too true ; and the phi! 
 phic page of Hume, Robertson, Stuart, and Sismondi, would 
 inform him that the serfs of Europe have been only gradually 
 emancipated through the operation of self-interest, and not 
 philanthropy ; and we shall ■ that it was fortunate 
 
 for both parties that this was thee 
 
 But it is strange, indeed, that gentlemen have never reflect* 
 ed, that the pecuniary loss to the State will be precisely the 
 same, whether the be purchased or gratuitously sur- 
 
 rendered. In the latter case, the burthen is only shifted from 
 the whole State to that portion where the surrender is made 
 — thus, if we own $10,000 worth of -this property, and sur- 
 render the whole to government, it is evident that we lose the 
 amount of >< 1 0,000 ; and if the whole of Lower Virginia 
 could at once be induced to give up all of this property, and 
 it could be sent away, the only effect of this generosity and 
 self-devotion would be to inflict the blow of desolation more 
 exclusively on this portion of the State — the aggregate loss 
 would be the same, the burthen would only be shifted from 
 the whole to a part — tie' West would dodge the blow, and 
 perhaps every candid citizen of Lower Virginia would confess 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 381 
 
 that he is- devoid of that refined incomprehensible patriotism 
 which would call for self-immolation on the shrine of folly, 
 and would most conscientiously advise the Eastern Virginians 
 never to surrender their slaves to the government without a 
 fair equivalent. Can it be genuine philanthropy to persuade 
 them alone to step forward and bear the whole burden ? 
 
 Again : some have attempted to evade the difficulties by 
 seizing on the increase of the negroes after a certain time. 
 Thus, Mr. Randolph's plan proposed that all born after the 
 year 1840, should be raised by their masters to the age of 
 eighteen for the female, and twenty-one for the male, and 
 then hired out, until the neat sum arising therefrom ainount- 
 j ed to enough to send them away. Scarcely any one in the 
 Legislature — we believe not even the author himself — entirely 
 approved of this plan.* It is obnoxious to the objections we 
 have just been stating against voluntary surrender. It pro- 
 poses to saddle the slaveholder with the whole burthen ; it 
 infringes directly the rights of property ; it converts the 
 fee simple possession of this kind of property into an estate 
 for years ; and it only puts off the great sacrifice required of 
 the State to 1840, when most of the evils will occur that have 
 already been described. In the meantime, it destroys the 
 value of slaves, and with it all landed possessions — checks the 
 productions of the State, imposes (when 1840 arrives) upon 
 the master the intolerable and grievious burthen of raising his 
 young slaves to the ages of eighteen and twenty-one, and 
 then liberating them to be hired out under the superinten- 
 dence of government, (the most miserable of all managers,) 
 until the proceeds arising therefrom shall be sufficient to send 
 
 * The difficulty of falling upon any definite plan which can for a 
 moment command the approbation of even a few of the most intelli- 
 gent abolitionists, is an unerring symptom of the difficulty and im- 
 practicability of the whole. 
 
382 PROFESSOR DEW OX SLAVERY. 
 
 them away. If any man, at all conversant with political econ- 
 omy, should ever anticipate the day when this shall happen, 
 we can only say that his faith is great indeed, enough to re- 
 move mountains, and that he has studied in a totally different 
 school from ourselves. Let us ask, in the language of one of 
 Virginia's most cherished statesm -n, who has stood by and 
 defended with so much zeal and ability the interests of Lower 
 Virginia — and who Bhone forth one of the brightest stare in 
 that constellation of talent which met together in the Virgi- 
 nia Convention — " Is it supposed that any tyranny eau subdue 
 us to the patient endurance of such a state of things? Every 
 prudent slaveholder in the Blaveholding part of the State, 
 would either migrate with his slaves to some State where his 
 rights in slave property would he secured to him by the laws, 
 or would surrender at once his rights in the parent stock as 
 well as in their future increase, and seek some land where ho 
 may enjoy at least the earnings of his own industry. In the 
 first case, the country would 1> d; in the other, it 
 
 would be abandoned to the slaves, to be cultivated under the 
 management of the State. The plan would result in a sacri- 
 fice, more probably an abandonment, of our landed, as well 
 as the abolition of our slave property. Can any thing but 
 force — can any force tame us to wrongs like these?"* Again ; 
 we entirely agree with the assertion of Mr. Brown, one of 
 the ablest and most promising of Virginia's sons, that the in- 
 genuity of man, if exerted for the purpose, could not devise a 
 more efficient mode of producing discontent among our 
 slaves, and thus endangering the peace of the community. 
 There are born annually of this population about 20,000 
 children. Those which are born before the year 1840 are to 
 be slaves ; those which are born after that period to be free at 
 a certain age. These two classes will be reared together ; 
 * Letters of Appomattox to the people of Virginia, 1st letter, p. 13. 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 383 
 
 they will labor together, and commune together. It cannot 
 escape the observation of him who is doomed to servitude, 
 that although of the same color and born of the same parents, 
 a far different destiny awaits his more fortunate brother— as 
 his thoughts again and again revert to the subject, he begins 
 to regard himself as the victim of injustice. Cheerfulness 
 and contentment will flee from his bosom ; and the most 
 harmless and happy creature that lives on earth, will be 
 transformed into a dark, designing and desperate rebel — 
 {Brown's Sjyeech, pp. 8, 9.) 
 
 There are some again who exhaust their ingenuity in devis- 
 ing schemes for taking off the breeding portion of the slaves 
 to Africa, or carrying away the sexes in such disproportions 
 as will, in a measure, prevent those left behind from breed- 
 ing All of these plans merit nothing more than the appel- 
 lation of vain juggling legislative conceits, unworthy of a 
 statesman and a moral man. If our slaves are ever to be 
 sent away in any systematic manner, humanity demands that 
 they should be 'carried in families. The voice of the world 
 would condemn Virginia if she sanctioned any plan of depor- 
 tation by which the male and female, husband and wife, pa- 
 rent and child, were systematically and relentlessly separated. 
 If we are to indulge in this kind of regulating vice, why not 
 cure the ill at once, by following the counsel of Xenophon in 
 his Economics, and the practice of old Cato the Censor ? Let 
 us keep the male and female separated* in ergastula or dun- 
 geons, if it be necessary, and then one generation will pass 
 away, and the evil will be removed to the heart's content of 
 our humane philanthropists ! But all these puerile conceits 
 
 * See Hume's Essay on the Populousnesa of Ancient Nations, where 
 he ascribes this practice of Cato and others, to prevent their slaves 
 i from breeding. 
 
384 PROFESSOR DEW OX SLAVEKY. 
 
 tall far short of surmounting the great difficulty which, like 
 Memnon, is eternally present and cannot be removed. 
 
 ■ Sedet etcrnumqu.- 
 
 There is Blave property of the value of *ioo,000,000 in 
 
 the S ate of Virginia, <fea, and it matters but little how you 
 
 . it, whether b; of the cautious practi- 
 
 . or with the frightful despatch of the Belf-confideaj 
 
 quack ; when it is gone, no matter how, the deed will be 
 
 done, and Virginia will be a d. 
 
 We .-hall now proceed to examine briefly, the most dan- 
 gerous <>t' all tin- wild doctrines advano d by the abolitionisfl 
 in the Virginia Legislature, and the one which, no doul 
 be finally acted upon, if ever this business of emancipation 
 shall be seriously commenced. It was contended ihut prm 
 2>( ft ;t is the creature of civil » subject to actum 
 
 even to destruction. But Lest we may misrepresent, we will 
 give the Ian the gentleman who first boldly and ex- 
 
 ultingly announced it. " M • briefly these," said 
 
 Mr. Faulkner; u tbey go to the foundation upon which the 
 social edifice rest — property is the creature of civil society. 
 So long as that property is nol dangerous to the good order 
 ity, it may and will be tolerated. I'ut, sir, SO BOOH as 
 it is ascertained to jeopardize the peace, the happiness, tin- 
 good order, nay the very existence of society, from that mo- 
 ment the right by which they hold their property is goi 
 eicty ceases to give its consent, the condition upon which they 
 are permitted to hold it is violated, their right ceases. Why, 
 sir, it is ever a rule of municipal law, and we use this merely 
 as an illustration of the great principles of society, sic 
 tuo ut alienum non hedas. So hold your property as not to 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 385 
 
 injure the property, still less tlie lives and happiness, of your 
 ', neighbors. And the moment, even in the best regulated 
 j communities, there is in practice a departure from this princi- 
 i pie, you may abate the nuisance. It may cause loss, but it is 
 what our black letter gentlemen term damnum absexue inju- 
 , ria, a loss of which the law affords no remedy." Now, for 
 the application of these principles : " Sir, to contend that full 
 value shall be paid for the slaves by the commonwealth, now, 
 or at any future period of their emancipation, is to deny all 
 right of action upon this subject whatsoever. It is not within 
 the financial ability of a State to purchase them. We have 
 not the means — the utmost extremity of taxation would fall 
 short of an adequate treasury. What then shall be done ? 
 We must endeavor to ascertain some middle ground of com- 
 promise between the rights of the community and the rights 
 of individuals, some scheme which, while it responds to the 
 demands of the people for the extermination of the alarming 
 evils, will not in its operations disconcert the settled institu- 
 tions of society, or evolve the slaveholder in pecuniary ruin 
 and embarrassment." (Faulkner's Speech, pp. 14, 15, 16.) 
 
 To these doctrines we call the serious attention of the whole 
 slaveholding population of our Union, for all alike are con- 
 cerned. It is time, indeed, for Achilles to rise from his inglo- 
 rious repose and buckle on his armor, when the enemy are 
 about to set fire to the fleet. This doctrine, absurd as it may 
 seem, in the practical application made by the speaker, will 
 be sure to become the most popular with those abolitionists in 
 Virginia, who have no slave property to sacrifice. It is the 
 remark of Ilobbes, that men might easily be brought to deny 
 that " things equal to the same are equal to each other," if 
 their fancied interests were opposed in any way to the admis- 
 sion of the axiom. We find that the highly obnoxious doc- 
 trine just spoken of, was not entertained by the gentleman 
 S3 
 
386 PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 from Berkeley alone, but was urged to an equally offensive 
 extent by Mr. M'Dowell, who is supposed by his friends to 
 have made the most able and eloquent speech in favor of 
 abolition. lie says, "when it (property) loses its utility, 
 when it no longer contributes to the personal benefits and 
 wants of its holders in any equal degree with the expense or 
 the ri>k, or the danger of keeping it, much more when it jeo- 
 pards the security of the public, — when this is the case, then 
 the original purpose for which it is authorized is lost, its char- 
 acter of property in the just and beneficial sense of it is gone, 
 and it may be regulated without private injustice, in any 
 manner which the general good of the community, by whose 
 laws it was licensed, may require." (AfDowcIFs Speech, 
 tee Richmond Whiff, 24th March, 1832.) It is thus, if we 
 may borrow the justly indignant language of Mr. Goode's elo- 
 quent and forcible speech, that "our property has been com- 
 pared to a nuisance which the commonwealth may abate at 
 pleasure. A nation of souls to be abated by the mere effort 
 of the will of the General Assembly. A nation of freemen to 
 hold their property by the precarious tenure of the precarious 
 will of the General Assembly ! and to reconcile us to our 
 condition, we are assured by the gentleman from Berkeley, 
 that the General Assembly, in the abundance of its liberality, 
 is ready to enter into a compromise, by which we shall be 
 permitted to hold our own property twenty-eight years ! on 
 condition that we then surrender it absolutely and uncondi- 
 tionally. Sir, I cannot but admire the frankness with which 
 these gentlemen have treated this subject. They have exhib- 
 ited themselves in the fullness of their intentions ; given us 
 warning of their designs ; and we now see in all its naked- 
 ness the vanity of all hope of compensation." {Go-ode's 
 Speech, p. 29.) 
 
 The doctrine of these gentlemen, so far from being true in 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 38*7 
 
 its application, is not true in theory. The great object of gov- 
 ernment is the protection of property ; — from the days of the 
 ' patriarchs down to the present time, the great desideratum 
 i has been to find out the most efficient mode of protecting pro- 
 l perty. There is not a government at this moment in Christen- 
 dom, whose peculiar practical character is not the result of the 
 j state of property. 
 
 No government can exist which does not conform to the 
 state of property ; it cannot make the latter conform entirely 
 to the government ; an attempt to do it would and ought to 
 revolutionize any state. The great difficulty in forming the 
 government of any country arises almost universally from the 
 state of property, and the necessity of making it to conform to 
 that state ; and it was the state of property in Virginia which 
 really constituted the whole difficulty in the late Convention. 
 There is a right which these gentlemen seem likewise to have 
 had in their minds, which writers on the law of nations call the 
 right of eminent or transcendental domain ; that right by 
 which, in an exigency, the government or its agents may seize 
 on persons or property, to be used for the general weal. Now, 
 upon this there are two suggestions which at once present 
 themselves. First, that this right only occurs in cases of real 
 exigency ;* and secondly, that the writers on the national 
 law— and the constitution of the United States expressly 
 sanctions the principle — say, that no property can be thus 
 taken without full and fair compensation.-)- 
 
 * It is, then, the right of necessity, and may be defined that right 
 which authorizes the performance of an act absolutely necessary for 
 the discharge of an indisputable duty. But private property must al- 
 ways be paid for. 
 
 t The Congress of the United States, in the case of Marigny d'Au- 
 terive, placed slave property upon precisely the same footing, in this 
 respect, with all other kinds. 
 
388 PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 These gentlemen, we hope to prove conclusively before fin- 
 ishing, have failed to show the exigency ; and even if they 
 have proved that, fckey deny the right of compensation, and 
 upon what principle . ; why, that the whole State is not com- 
 petent bo afford it, and may therefore justly abate the nui- 
 sance. And is it possible that a burthen, in this Christian 
 land, is most unfeelingly and remorselessly to be imposed 
 upon a portion of the State, which, by the very confession of 
 the gentlemen who urge it, could not be borne by the whoa 
 without inevitable ruin i Bu( it was the main object of their 
 speeches to Bhow, that slave property is valueless, that it is a 
 burthen, a nuisance to the owner ; and they seemed most 
 anxious t<» enlighten the poor ignorant farmers on this point, 
 who hold on with such pertinacity to this kind of properM 
 which is inflicting its bitterest sting upon them. Now, is it 
 not enough for the slaveholder to reply, that the circumstance 
 of the >lave bearing the price of two hundred dollars in the 
 market, it an evidence of his value with every one acquainted 
 with the element^ of political economy ; that, generally speak- 
 ing, the market \alue of the slave is even less than his real 
 value ; for no one would like to own and manage slaves unless 
 equally or more profitable than other kinds of investments in 
 the same community ; and, if this or that owner may be 
 pointed out as ruined by this species of property, might we 
 not point to merchants, mechanics, lawyers, doctors, and di- 
 vines, all of whom have been ruined by their several pursuits ; 
 and must all these employments be abated as nuisances to 
 satisfy the crude, undigested theories of tampering legislators ? 
 " It is remarkable,* 1 we quote the language of the author of 
 the Letters of Appomattox, "that this 'nuisance' is more 
 offensive in a direct ratio to its distance from the complaining 
 party, and in an inverse ratio to the quantity of offending 
 matter in his neighborhood ; that a ' magazine of gun-powder 1 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 389 
 
 in the town of Norfolk is a ' nuisance' to the county of Berke- 
 ley, and to all the people of the West ! The people of the 
 ! West, in which there are comparatively few slaves, in which 
 I there never can be any great increase of that kind of property, 
 because their agriculture does not require it, and because in a 
 . great part of their country the negro race cannot be acclima- 
 I ted — the people of the West find our slave property in our 
 planting country, where it is valuable, a 'nuisance' to them. 
 This reverses the proverb, that men bear the ills of others bet- 
 ter than their own. I have known men to sell their slave 
 property and vest the proceeds in the stocks, and become 
 zealous for the abolition of slavery. And it would be a mat- 
 ter of curiosity to ascertain (if it could be done) the aggregate 
 i number of slaves, held by all the orators and all the printers 
 who are so willing to abate the nuisance of slave property held 
 by other people. I suspect the census would be very short." 
 Letters of Appomattox to the people of Virginia. 
 
 The fact is, it is always a most delicate and dangerous task 
 for one set of people to legislate for another, without any 
 community of interest. It is sure to destroy the great principle 
 of responsibility, and in the end to lay the weaker interest at 
 the mercy of the stronger. It subverts the very end for which 
 all governments are established, and becomes intolerable, and 
 consequently against the fundamental rights of man, whether 
 prohibited by the constitution or not. 
 
 If a convention of the whole State of Virginia were called, 
 and in due form the right of slave property were abolished by 
 the votes of Western Virginia alone, does any one think that 
 Eastern Virginia would be bound to yield to the decree ? 
 Certainly not. The strong and unjust man in a state of na- 
 ture robs the weaker, and you establish government to pre- 
 vent this oppression. Now, only sanction the doctrine of 
 Virginia orators, let one interest in the government (the West) 
 33* 
 
390 PROFESSOR DEW OX SLAVERY. 
 
 rob another at pleasure (the East) ; and is there any man 
 who can fail to see that government is systematically produc- 
 ing that very oppression for which it is intend* d to remedy, 
 and for -which alone it is established ? In forming the late 
 Constitution of Virginia, the East objected to the " white basis 
 principle," upon the very grounds that it would enable West* 
 ern to oppress Eastern Virginia, through the medium of slave 
 property. The most solemn MMV< rations of a total unwil- 
 lingness, on the part of the West, to meddle with or touch 
 the Blare population, beyond the rightful and equitable de- 
 mands of revenue, were repeatedly made by their orators. And 
 now, what has the lapse of two short years developed ? Why, 
 that the West, unmindful of former professions, and regard* 
 lest of the eternal principles of justice, is urging on an inva- 
 sion and final abolition of that kind of property which it was 
 solemnly pledged to protect ! Is it possible that gentlemen 
 can have reflected upon the consequences which even the 
 avowal of such doctrines are calculated to produce ? Are they 
 conciliatory ? Can they be taken kindly by the East \ Is 
 it not degrading for freemen to stand quailing with the fear of 
 losing that property which they have been accumulating for 
 ages, to stand waiting in fearful anxiety for the capricious edict 
 of the West, which may say to one man, ''Sir, you must give 
 up your property, although you have amassed it under the 
 guarantee of the laws and constitution of your State and of the 
 United States ;" and to another, who is near him, and has an 
 equal amount of property of a different description, and has 
 no more virtue and no more conscience than the slaveholder, 
 " you may hold yours, because we do not yet con^der it a 
 'nuisance';' 1 This is language which cannot fail to awaken 
 the people to a sense of their danger. These doctrines, when- 
 ever announced in debate, have a tendency to disorganize and 
 unhinge the condition of society, and to produce uncertainty 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. S91 
 
 and alarm ;* to create revulsions of capital ; to cause the land 
 of Old Virginia, and real source of wealth, to be abandoned; 
 and her white wealthy population to flee the State, and seek 
 an asylum in a land where they will be protected in the en- 
 joyment of the fruits of their industry. In fine, we would say, 
 these doctrines are ' nuisances,' and if we were disposed to re- 
 taliate, would add that they ought to be ' abated.' We will 
 close our remarks on this dangerous doctrine, by calling upon 
 Western Virginia and the non-slaveholders of Eastern Virgi- 
 nia, not to be allured by the syren song. It is as delusive as 
 it may appear fascinating ; all the sources of wealth and de- 
 partments of industry, all the great interests of society, are 
 really interwoven with one another — they form an indissolu- 
 j ble chain ; a blow at any part quickly vibrates through the 
 whole length — the destruction of one interest involves anoth- 
 er. Destroy agriculture, destroy tillage, and the ruin of the 
 farmer will draw down ruin upon the mechanic, the mer- 
 chant, the sailor and the manufacturer — they must all flee to- 
 gether from the land of desolation. 
 
 We hope we have now satisfactorily proved the impractica- 
 bility of sending off the whole of our slave population, or even 
 the annual increase ; and we think we have been enabled to 
 do this, by pointing out only one-half the difficulties which 
 attend the scheme. We have so far confined our attention to 
 ths expense and difficulty of purchasing the slaves, and send- 
 ing them across the ocean. We have now to look a little to 
 the recipient or territory to which the blacks are to be sent ; 
 
 * We look upon these doctrines as calculated to produce precisely 
 the same results as are produced by the government of Turkey, which, 
 by rendering property insecure, has been able to arrest, and perma- 
 nently to repress, the prosperity of the fairest and most fertile portions 
 of the srlobe. 
 
392 PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 and if we know any thing of the history and nature of colo- 
 nization, we Bhall be completely upheld in the assertion, that 
 the difficulties on this scoiv are just as great and insurmount- 
 able m those which we have Bhown to be attendant on the 
 purchase and deportation. We shall be enabled to prove, if 
 we may use the expression, a doable impracticability attend- 
 ant on all these schemes. 
 
 */ The Impossibility of Colonizing the Blacks, — The whole 
 subject of colonization is much more difficult and intricate than 
 is generally imagined, and the difficulties are often very dif- 
 ferent from what would, on Blight reflection, be anticipated. 
 They are of three kinds — physical, moral, and national. The 
 former embraces unhealthy climate or want of proper season- 
 ing ; a difficulty of procuring subsistence and the convenien- 
 ces of life ; ignorance of the adaptations and character of the 
 soils ; want of habitations, and the necessity of living togeth- 
 er in multitudes for the purposes of defence, whilst purposes 
 of agriculture require that they should live as dispersed as 
 possible. The moral difficulties arise from a want of adapta- 
 tion on the part of the new colonists to their new situation, 
 want of conformity in habits, manners, tempers, and disposi- 
 tions, producing a heterogeneous mass of population, unce- 
 mented and unharmonizing. Lastly, the difficulties of a 
 national character embrace all the causes of altercation and 
 rupture between the colonists and neighboring tribes or 
 nations ; all these dangers, difficulties and hardships, are much 
 greater than generally believed. Every new colony requires 
 the most constant attention, the most cautious and judicious 
 management, in both the number and character of the emi- 
 grants, a liberal supply of both capital and provisions, togeth- 
 er with a most watchful and paternal government on the part 
 of the mother country, which may defend it against the incur- 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 393 
 
 sions and depredations of warlike or savage neighbors. Hence, 
 the very slow progress made by all colonies in the first settle- 
 ments. 
 
 The history of colonization is well calculated of itself to 
 dissipate all the splendid visions which our chimerical philan- 
 thropists have indulged, in regard to its efficacy in draining 
 off a redundant or noxious population. The rage for emigra- 
 tion to the New World, discovered by Columbus, was at first 
 very considerable ; the brilliant prospects which were present- 
 ed to the view of the Spaniards, of realizing fortunes in the 
 abundant mines, and on the rich soils of the islands and the 
 continent, enticed many at first to leave their homes in search 
 of wealth, happiness, and distinction ; and what was the 
 consequence ? " The numerous hardships with which the 
 members of infant colonies have to struggle," says Robertson, 
 " the diseases of unwholesome climates, fatal to the constitu- 
 tions of Europeans ; the difficulty of bringing a country 
 covered with forests into culture ; the want of hands neces- 
 sary for labor in some provinces, and the slow reward of 
 industry in all, unless where the accidental discovery of mines 
 enriched a few fortunate adventurers, were evils immensely 
 felt and magnified. Discouraged by the view of these, the 
 spirit of migration was so much damped, that sixty years 
 after the discovery of the New "World, the number of Span- 
 iards in all its provinces is computed not to have exceeded 
 15,000 !"* Even these few were settled at an expense of life, 
 both to the emigrants and the natives, which is really shocking 
 to the feelings of humanity ; and we cannot peruse the ac- 
 counts of the conquests of Mexico and Peru, without feeling 
 that the race destroyed was equal, in moral worth at least, to 
 their destroyers. 
 
 In the settlement of Virginia, begun by Sir Walter Raleigh, 
 * Robertson's America, vol. 2, p. 151. 
 
394 PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVEHY. 
 
 and established by Lord Delaware, three attempts completely 
 failed ; nearly half of the first colony was destroyed by the 
 savages, and the rest, consumed and worn down by fatigue 
 and famine, deserted the country and returned home in de- 
 spair. The second colony was cut off to a man, in a manner 
 unknown ; but they were supposed to have been destroyed 
 by the Indians. The third experienced the same dismal fate; 
 and the remains of the fourth, after it had been reduced by 
 famine and disease, in the course of ^ix months, from five 
 hundred to sixty persons, were returning in a famished aud 
 desperate condition to England, when they were met in the 
 mouth of the Chesapeake, by Lord Delaware, with a squad- | 
 ron loaded with provi>ions, and every tiling for their relief 
 and defence.* The first puritans and settlers, in like manner 
 suffered " woes unnumbered," — nearly half perished by want, 
 scurvy, and the severity of the climate. 
 
 The attempts to settle New Holland, have presented a me- : 
 lancholy and affecting picture of the extreme hardships which ' 
 infant colonies have to struggle with, before their produce is ! 
 even equal to the support of the colonists. The establish- | 
 ment of colonies, too, in the eastern part of the Russian do- 
 minions, has been attended with precisely the same difficulties 
 and hardships. 
 
 After this very brief general review of the history of mod- 
 ern colonization, we will now proceed to examine into the 
 prospects of colonizing our blacks on the coast of Africa, in 
 such numbers as to lessen those left behind. And in the first 
 place we will remark, that almost all countries, especially 
 those in southern and tropical latitudes, are extremely unfa- 
 vorable to life when first cleared and cultivated. Almost the 
 whole territory of the United States and South America, offer 
 
 * Malthus on population, given upon the authority of both Burke's 
 and Robertson's Virginia. 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 395 
 
 i conclusive illustration of this fact. We are daily witnessing, 
 in the progress of tillage, in our country, the visitation of 
 diseases of the most destructive kind, over regions hitherto 
 pntirely exempt ; our bilious fevers, for example, seem to 
 travel, in a great measure, with the progress of opening, clear- 
 ing, and draining of the country. Now, when we turn our 
 attention to Africa, on which continent all agree that we must 
 icolonize, if at all, we find almost the whole continent possess- 
 ing an insalubrious climate, under the most favorable circum- 
 stances ; and, consequently, we may expect this evil will be 
 enhanced during the incipient stages of society at any given 
 Ipoint, while the progress of clearing, draining, and tilling is 
 jgoing forward. All the travellers through Africa agree in 
 (their descriptions of the general insalubrity of the climate. 
 Park and Buffon agree in stating, that longevity is very rare 
 among the negroes. At forty they are described as wrinkled 
 and gray haired, and few of them survive the age of fifty-five 
 ior sixty. A Shangalla woman, says Bruce, at twenty-two, is 
 more wrinkled and deformed by age, than a European at six- 
 ty. This short duration of life is attributable to the climate ; 
 for in looking over the returns of the census in our country, 
 we find a much larger proportional number of cases of long- 
 evity among the blacks than the whites. " If accurate regis- 
 ters of mortality," says Malthus, (and no one is more indefati- 
 gable in his researches or more capable of drawing accurate 
 conclusions,) " were kept among those nations, (African,) I 
 have little doubt that, including the mortality of wars, one in 
 seventeen or eighteen, at least, dies annually, instead of one in 
 thirty-four or thirty -six, as in the generality of European 
 states."* The sea coast is described as being generally much 
 more unhealthy than the interior. " Perhaps it is on this 
 account chiefly," says Park, "that the interior countries 
 * See Malthus on Population, Book 1, 1.8. 
 
396 PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 abound more with inhabitants than the maritime districts."* 
 The deleterious effects of African climate, are of course much 
 greater open those accustomed to different latitudes and not 
 yet acclimated. It is melancholy, indeed, to peruse the dread- 
 ful hardships and unexampled mortality attendant upon those 
 companies which have, from time to time, actuated by the 
 most praiseworthy views, penetrated into the interior of 
 Africa. 
 
 It is difficult to say, which has presented the most obstacles 
 to the inquisitive traveller, the suspicion and barbarity of the 
 natives, or the dreadful insalubrity of the climate. Now, it is 
 to this continent, the original home of our blacks, to this de- 
 structive climate, we propose losend the slave of our country 
 atbr the lapse of ages has completely inured him to our colder 
 and more salubrious continent. It is true, that a territory 
 has already been secured for the Colonization Society of this 
 country, which is said to enjoy an unusually healthful climate. 
 Granting that this may be the case, still when we come to 
 examine into the capacity of the purchased territory for the 
 reception of emigrants, we find that it only amounts to about 
 10,000 square miles, not a seventh of the superfices of Virgi- 
 nia. When other sites are fixed upon, we may not, and can- 
 not expect to be so fortunate ; are not the most healthy dis- 
 tricts in Africa the most populous, according to Park and all 
 travellers ? Will not these comparatively powerful nations, in 
 all probability, relinquish their territory with great reluctance? 
 AVill notour lot be consequently cast on barren sands or amid 
 the pestilential atmosphere ; and then what exaggerated tales 
 and false statements must be made, if we would reconcile the 
 poor blacks to a change of country pregnant with their 
 fate? 
 
 * See Tark's Travels in Africa, p. 193, New York Edition. 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 397 
 
 But we believe that the very laudable zeal of many consci- 
 entious philanthropists has excited an overweening desire to 
 i make our colony in Liberia, in every point of view, appear 
 i greatly superior to what it is. We know the disposition of all 
 ' travellers to exaggerate ; we know the benevolent feelings of 
 ] the human heart, which prompts us to gratify and minister to 
 I the desires and sympathies of those around us, and we know 
 . that philanthropic schemes, emancipation and colonization so- 
 cieties, now occupy the public mind, and receive the largest 
 share of public applause. Under these circumstances we are 
 not to wonder if coloring should sometimes impair the state- 
 ments of those who have visited the colony ; for ourselves, we 
 may be too sceptical, but are rather disposed to judge from 
 facts which are acknowledged by all, than from general state- 
 ments from officers and interested agents. In 1819, two agents 
 were sent to Africa to survey the coast and make a selection of 
 a suitable situation for a colony ; in their passage home in 1820, 
 one died. In the same year, 1820, the Elizabeth was charter- 
 ed and sent out with three agents and eighty emigrants. All 
 three of the agents and twenty of the emigrants died, a propor- 
 tional mortality greater than in the middle passage, which has 
 so justly shocked the human feelings of mankind, and much 
 greater than that occasioned by that dreadful plague (the Cho- 
 lera) which is now clothing our land in mourning and causing 
 our citizens to flee in every direction to avoid impending de- 
 struction. In the spring of 1821, four new agents were sent 
 out, of whom one returned sick, one died in August, one in Sep- 
 tember, and we know not what became of the fourth.* It is 
 agreed on all hands, that there is a seasoning necessary, and 
 
 * These facts we have stated upon the authority of Mr. Carey, of 
 Philadelphia, who has given us an interesting, but I fear too flattering 
 account of the colony, in a series of letters addressed to the Hon. 
 Charles E. Mercer. 
 34 
 
398 PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 a formidable fever to be encountered, before the colonies can 
 enj.v tolerable health. Mr. Ashmun, who afterwards fella 
 victim to the climate, insisted that the night air of Liberia was 
 free from all noxious effects : and yet we find that the emi- 
 grants curried by the Yalador to Liberia, a year or two since, 
 are said to have fared well, losing only two, in consequence If 
 every precaution having been taken against the night air, 
 while the most dreadful mortality destroyi d those of the Caro- 
 linian, which went out nearly cotemporaneously with the Va- 
 la.lor. The letter of Mr. Reyi olds, marked < ; . at the concM 
 sion of the Fifteenth Annual Report of the American Coloni- 
 zation Society, instructs as in the proper method of preservin| 
 health on the coasi of Africa, and in spite of the flatten™ 
 accounts and assurances of ag< nts and ) hilanthropists, we 
 should be disposed to take warning from these salutary Lints. 
 The following are some of them : 
 
 " 1st. On no account to sutler any of the crew to be out of 
 the ship at sunset. 
 
 " 2d. To have a Bail Btretched on the windward side of the 
 vessel; and an awning was also provided, which extended ova 
 the l OOp and tin- whole main deck, to defend the crew from 
 the night air, 
 
 " 3d. The night watch was encouraged to smoke tobacco. 
 
 "4th. To distribute French brandy to the crew whilst in 
 port, in lieu of rum. (The (ditor of the re] orl modestly re- 
 commends strong coffee.) The crew, on rising, were served 
 with a libera] allowance of strong coffee, before commencing 
 their day's work. 
 
 "The result was, that the ships on each side of the Cam- 
 bridge lost the greater part of their crew ; and not one man of 
 her crew were seriously unwell.'" (Fifteenth Annual Re% art, 
 p. 54, published in Georgetown, 1832.) 
 
 We have said enough to show that the contiguance of Af- 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 399 
 
 rica, and its coasts particularly, are extremely unhealthy— that 
 the natives themselves are not long lived— and that unaccli- 
 jmated foreigners are in most imminent danger- That there 
 |may be some healthy points on the sea shore, and salubrious 
 'districts in the interior, and that Liberia may be fortunately 
 one of them, we are even willing to admit -but then we 
 know that generally the most insalubrious portion will fell in- 
 to our possession, because those of an opposite character are 
 already too densely populated to be deserted by the natives— 
 and consequently, let us view the subject as we please, we have 
 this mighty evif of unhealthy climate to overcome. We have 
 seen akeadv, in the past history of our colony, that the slight- 
 est blunder, in landing on an unhealthy coast, in exposure to 
 a deadly night air, or in neglecting the necessary precautions 
 during the period of acclimating, has proved most frightfully 
 fatal to both black and whites. Suppose now, that instead of 
 the one or two hundred sent by the Colonization Society, Vir- 
 ginia should actually send out six thousand— or if we extend 
 our views to the whole United States, that sixty thousand 
 should be annually exported, accompanied of course by some 
 hundreds of whites, what an awful fatality might we not occa- 
 sionally expect? The chance for blundering would be infin- 
 itely increased, and if some ships might fortunately distribute 
 their cargoes with the loss of a few lives, others again might 
 lose all their whites and a fourth or more of the blacks, as we 
 know has already happened; andaHhough this fatality might 
 arise from blunder or accident, yet would it strike the imagi- 
 nation of men— and that which may be kept comparatively 
 concealed now, would, when the number of emigrants swelled 
 to such multitudes, produce alarm and consternation. We 
 look confidently to the day, if this wild scheme should be per- 
 severed in for a few years, when the poor African slave, on 
 bended knee, might implore a remission of that fatal sentence 
 which would send him to the land of his forefathers. 
 
400 PROFESSOR DEW OX SLAVERY. 
 
 But the fact is, that all climates will prove fatal to emigrants 
 who come out in too great crowds, whether they are naturally 
 unhealthy or not. One of the greatest attempts at coloniza- 
 tion in modern times, was the effort of the French to plant at 
 once 12,000 emigrants on the coast of Guiana. The conse- 
 quence was, that in a very short time 10,000 of them lost 
 their lives in all the horrors of despair, 2,000 returned to 
 France, the scheme failed, and 25,000,000 of francs, says Ray- 
 nal, were totally lost. Seventy-five thousand christians, says 
 Mr. Eaton in his account of the Turkish empire, were expelled 
 by Russia from the Crimea, and forced to inhabit the country 
 deserted by the ETogai Tartars, and in a few years only 7,000 
 of them remained. In like manner, if 6,000, or much more> 
 if 60,000 negroes, with careless and filthy habits, were annu- 
 ally sent to Africa, we could not calculate, for the first one or 
 two years, upon less than the death of one-half or perhaps 
 three-fourths ; and, repugnant as the assertion may be to the 
 feelings of benevolence, we have no hesitation in saying, that 
 nothing but a most unparalleled mortality among the emi- 
 grants would enable us to support the colony for even a year 
 or two. Aristotle was of opinion, that the keeping of 5,000 
 soldiers in idleness would ruin an empire. If the brilliant an- 
 ticipations of our colonization friends shall be realized, and the 
 day actually arrives, when 60,000, or even 6,000 blacks can 
 b" annually landed in health upon the cost of Africa, then will 
 the United States, or broken down Virginia, be obliged to 
 support an empire in idleness. " The first establishment of a 
 new colony," sa} T s Malthus, " generally presents an instance of 
 a country peopled considerably beyond its actual produce; and 
 the natural consequence seems to be, that this population, if 
 not amplv supplied by the mother country, should, at the com- 
 mencement, be diminished to the level of the first scanty pro- 
 ductions, and not begin permanently to increase till the re- 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 401 
 
 maining numbers had so far cultivated the soil as to make it 
 yield a quantity of food more than sufficient for their own sup- 
 port, and which consequently they could divide with a family. 
 The frequent failures of new colonies tend strongly to show 
 the order of precedence between food and population."* It 
 is for this reason the colonies so slowly advance at first, and it 
 becomes necessary to feed (if we may so express ourselves) 
 ■with extreme caution, and with limited numbers, in the begin- 
 ning. But a few additional mouths will render support from 
 the mother country necessary. If this state of things con- 
 tinues for a short time, you make the colony a great pauper 
 establishment, and generate all those habits of idleness and 
 worthlessness which will ever characterize a people dependent 
 on the bounty of others for their subsistence. If Virginia should 
 send out 6,000 emigrants to Africa, and much more, if the 
 United States should send out 60,000, the whole colony would 
 inevitably perish, if the wealth of the mother country was not 
 exhausted for their supply. Suppose a member in Congress 
 should propose to send out an army of 60,000 troops, and 
 maintain them on the coast of Africa ; would not every sen- 
 sible man see at once that the thing would be impracticable, 
 if even the existence of our country depended upon it ? — it 
 would ruin the greatest empire on the globe — and yet, strange 
 to tell, the philanthropists of Virginia are seriously urging her 
 to attempt that which would every year impose upon her a bur- 
 then proportionally greater than this ! 
 
 If any man will for a moment revert to the history of Liberia, 
 which has been as flourishing or even more flourishing than 
 similar colonies, there will be seen at once enough to convince 
 the sceptical of the truth of this assertion. What says Mr. Ash- 
 ibud, perhaps the most intelligent and most judicious of colonial 
 
 * Malthus on Population, vol. 2, pp. HO, 141. 
 34* 
 
402 PROFESSOR DEW OX SLAVERY. 
 
 agents ? " If rice grew spontaneously, " said lie, " and covered 
 the country, yet it is possible by sending few or none able to 
 reap and clean it, to starve 10,000 helpless children and infirm 
 old people in the midst of plenty. Rice does not grow spon- 
 taneously, however; nor can any thing necessary for the sub- 
 sistence of the human species be procured here without the 
 sweat of the brow. Clothing, tools, and building materials are 
 much dearer here than in America. But send out emigrants, 
 laboring men and their families only, or laborious men and 
 their families, accompanied only with their natural proportion 
 of inefficient^ ; and with the ordinary blessings of God, you 
 may depend on their causing you a light expense in Liberia," 
 &c. Again, " if such persons, (those who cannot work,) are 
 to be supported by American funds, why not keep them in 
 America, where they can do something by picking cotton and 
 stemming tobacco, towards supporting themselves ? I know 
 that nothing is effectually done in colonizing this country, till 
 the colony's own resources can sustain its own, and a consid- 
 erable annual increase of population." Here then are state- 
 ments from one of the most zealous and enthusiastic in the 
 cause of colonization, one who has sacrificed his life in the 
 business, which clearly show, that the Colonization Society, 
 with its very limited means, has ever supplied the colony with 
 emigrants. What then might not be expected from the tre- 
 mendous action of the State and General Government on this 
 subject 1 they would raise up a pauper establishment, which, 
 we conscientiously believe, would require the disposable wealth 
 of the rest of the world to support, and the thousands of emi- 
 grants who would be sent, so far from being laborious men, 
 would be the most idle and worthless of a race, who only de- 
 sire liberty because they regard it as an exemption from labor, 
 and toil. Every man, too, at all conversant with the subject, 
 knows that such alone are the slaves which a kind master will 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 403 
 
 ever consent to sell, to be carried to a distant land. Sixty 
 thousand emigrants per annum to the United States, would 
 even now sink the wages of labor, and embarrass the whole 
 of our industrious classes, although we have at this moment 
 lands capable of supporting millions more when gradually 
 added to our population. 
 
 The Irish emigrants to Great Britain, have already begun 
 to produce disastrous effects. " I am firmly persuaded," says 
 Mr. McCulloch, " that nothing so deeply injurious to the char- 
 acter and habits of our people, has ever occurred, as the late 
 extraordinary influx of Irish laborers. If another bias be not 
 given to the current of emigration, Great Britain will necessa- 
 rily continue to be a grand outlet for the pauper population of 
 Ireland, nor will the tide of beggary and degradation cease to 
 flow, until the plague of poverty has spread its ravages over 
 both divisions of empire."* Where, then, in the wide world, 
 can we find a fulcrum upon which to place our mighty lever 
 of colonization ? nowhere ! we repeat it, nowhere ! unless we 
 condemn emigrants to absolute starvation. Sir Josiah Childe, 
 who lived in an age of comparative ignorance, could well have 
 instructed our modern philanthropists in the true principles of 
 colonization. " Such as our employment is" says he, " so will 
 our people be ; and if we should imagine we have in England 
 employment but for one hundred people, and we have born 
 and bred (or he might have added brought) amongst us one 
 hundred and fifty — fifty must flee away from us, or starve, or be 
 hanged to prevent it."f And so say we in regard to our colo- 
 nization ; if our new colony cannot absorb readily more than 
 one or two hundred per annum, and we send them 6,000 or 
 60,000, the surplus "must either flee away, or starve, or be 
 
 * McCulloch's Wealth of Nations, 4th vol. pp. 154, 55. Edinburgh 
 Edition, 
 t Sir Josiah Childe's Discourse on Trade. 
 
404 PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 hanged," or be fed by the mother country, (which is impos- 
 sible.) 
 
 So far we have been attending principally to the difficulties 
 of procuring subsistence ; but the habits and moral character 
 of our slaves prevent others of equal importance and magni- 
 tude. Dr. Franklin says that one of the reasons why we see 
 so many fruitless attempts to settle colonies at an immense 
 public and private expense by several of the powers of Europe, 
 is that moral and mechanical habits adapted to the mother 
 country, are frequently not so to the new settled one, and to 
 external events, many of which are unforeseen; that it is to be 
 remarked that none of the English colonies became any way 
 considerable, till the necessary manners were born and grew 
 up in the country. Xow with what peculiar and overwhelm- 
 ing force docs this remark apply to our colonization of liberated 
 blacks \ We are to send out thousands of these, taken from 
 a state of slavery and ignorance, unaccustomed to guide and 
 direct themselves, void of all the attributes of free agents, with 
 dangerous notions of liberty and idleness, to elevate them at 
 once to the condition of freemen, and invest them with the 
 power of governing an empire, which will require more wis- 
 dom, more prudence, and at the same time more firmness, than 
 ever government required before. We are enabled to support 
 our position by a quotation from an eloquent supporter of the 
 American colonization scheme. " Indeed," said the Rev. Mr. 
 Bacon, at the last meeting of the American Colonization So- 
 ciety, "it is something auspicious, that in the earlier stages of 
 our undertaking, there has been a general rush of emigration 
 to the colony. In any single year since Cape Montserado w T as 
 purchased, the influx of a thousand emigrants might have 
 been fatal to our enterprise. The new-comers into any com- 
 munity must always be a minority, else every arrival is a revo- 
 lution ; they must be a decided minority, easily absorbed in 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 405 
 
 the system and mingled with the mass, else the community 
 is constantly liable to convulsion. Let 10,000 foreigners, rude 
 , and ignorant, be landed at once in this district (of Columbia), 
 i and what would be the result? Why you must have an arm- 
 i ed force here to keep the peace — so one thousand now landing 
 ! at once in our colony, might be its ruin."* 
 
 The fact is, the true and enlightened friends of colonization 
 must reprobate all those chimerical schemes proposing to de- 
 port anything like the increase of one State, and more particu- 
 larly of the whole United States. The difficulty just explained, 
 has already been severely felt in Liberia, though hitherto sup- 
 plied very scantily with emigrants, and those generally the 
 most exemplary of the free blacks ; thus, in 1 828, it was the de- 
 cided opinion of Mr. Ashmun, " that for at least two years to 
 come, a much more discriminating selection of settlers must 
 be made, than ever has been — even in the first and second ex- 
 peditions by the Elizabeth and Nautilus, in 1820 and '21, or 
 that the prosperity of the colony will inevitably and rapidly 
 decline? Now, when to all these difficulties we add the pros- 
 pect of frequent wars with the natives of Africa,f the great ex- 
 pense we must incur to support the colony, and the anomolous 
 position of Virginia, an imperium in imperio, holding an em- 
 pire abroad, we do not see how the whole scheme can be pro- 
 nounced anything less than a stupendous piece of folly. 
 
 The progress of the British colony at Sierra Leone is well 
 calculated to illustrate the great difficulties of colonizing ne- 
 groes on the coast of Africa : and we shall at once present our 
 readers with a brief history of this colony, given by one who 
 seems to be a warm advocate of colonization, and, consequent- 
 ly, disposed to present the fact in the most favorable aspect. 
 
 * See Fifteenth Annual Report of American Colonization Society, 
 p. 10. 
 
 f The colony has already had one conflict with the natives, in which 
 it had liked to be overwhelmed. 
 
40G PROFESSOR DKW OX SI.AVF.KV. 
 
 On the 8th of April, 1787, 400 negroes and Go European 
 Bailed from England, supplied with provisions for sis • 
 months, for Sierra Leone. Now mark the consequences: — I 
 ''The result was unfortunate and even discouraging. The 
 erowdi ? condition of the transports, the unfavorabU season at 
 which they arrived on the coast, and the intemperance and im- 
 prudence of the emigrants, brought on a mortality which re- 
 duced their numbers nearly one-half during the first year, 
 
 >n after landing, until forty individuals 
 remained. In 1788, Mr. Sharp sent out 39 more, and tl 
 number of the deserters returned, and the settlement gradual' 
 ly gained Btrength. But during the next year, a controversy 
 with a neighboring nativt chiefs endedin wholly dispersing the 
 colony; and some time elapsed before the remnants could he 
 again collected. A charter of incorporation v*;is obtained in 
 lT'.M. Not long afterwards, about 1,200 new emigrants were 
 introduced, being originally refugees from this country, (U, 
 who had placed themselves under British protec- 
 tion. Still, affaire were very badly managed. One-tenthoi 
 the Nova Scotians, and half of the Europeans, died during 
 one season, as much from want of provisions as any other 
 cause. Two years afterwards, a Btore-ship belonging to the 
 company, which had been made the receptacle of African pro- 
 due, was loci by fire, with a cargo valued at £15,000. Then 
 insurrections arose among the blacks! Worst of all, in 
 L794, a large French Bquadron, wholly without provisions, nt- 
 tacked the settlement, and although the colore were immediate- 
 ly struck, proceeded to an indiscriminate pillage.* . . . 
 (Some vcars) afterward-, a large number of the worst part of 
 
 * We would beg leave most respectfully to ask our Virginia abolitionists, 
 how an insult of this character offered to any colony which we might es- 
 tablish in Africa, would be resented ? Would the Nation of Virginia de- 
 clare war on the aggressor? and if she did, where would be her navy, 
 her sailors, her soldiers, and the constitutionality of the act ? 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 40*7 
 
 the settlers, chiefly the Nova Scotians, rebelled against the Co- 
 lonial Government. The Governor called in the assistance of 
 jthe neighboring African tribes, and matters were on the eve 
 \ of a battle, when a transport arrived in the harbor, bring- 
 ing 550 Maroons from Jamaica. Lots of land were given to 
 these men ; they proved regular and industrious, and the in- 
 surgents laid down their arms. Wars next ensued with the 
 natives, which were not finally concluded until 1807. On the 
 first January, 1808, all the rights and possessions of the com- 
 pany were surrendered to the British Crown ; and in this situa- 
 tion they have ever since remained." [See T6//i No. of the 
 North American Rev i etc, p,p>. 120 and 121.] The progress 
 of the colony since 1808, has been as little flattering as before 
 that period ; and even Mr. Everett, before the Colonization So- 
 ciety in Washington, has been forced to acknowledge its fail- 
 ure. [See Mr. Everett' 's Speech, 15th Anr.ual Report^] 
 
 Thus this negro colony at Sierra Leone illustrates, most fully, 
 the fearful and tremendous difficulties which must ever attend 
 every infant colony formed on the coast of Africa. During 
 the brief period of its existence, it has been visited by all the 
 plagues that colonial establishments " are heir to." It has 
 been cursed with the intemperance, imprudence, and desertion 
 of the colonists, with want of homogeneous character, and con- 
 sequent dissentions, civil wars and insurrections. It has ex- 
 perienced famines, and suffered insult and pillage. Its num- 
 bers have been thinned by the blighting climate of Africa. 
 Its government has been wretched, and it has been almost 
 continually engaged in war with the neighboring African 
 tribes.* 
 
 * Perhaps it may be said, that all these things may be avoided in 
 our colonies, by wise management and proper caution. To this we 
 answer, that in speculating upon the destiny of multitudes or nations, 
 we must embrace within our calculation all the elements as they ac- 
 
408 TROFESSOR DEW OX SLAVERY. 
 
 Some have supposed that the circumstance of the Africans 
 being removed a stage or two above the savages of North 
 America, will render the colonization of Africa much easier 
 than that of America. We draw directly the opposite con- 
 clusion. The Indians of North America had nowhere taken 
 p iBsession of the soil; they were wanderers over the face of 
 the country ; their titles could be extinguished for slight con- 
 Biderations; and it is ever melancholy to reflect that their 
 habits of improvidence and of intoxication, and even their cruel 
 practices in war, have all been (such has been for them the 
 woful march of events) favorable to the rapid increase of the 
 whites, who have thus been enabled to exterminate the red 
 men, and take their pla 
 
 The natives of Africa exist in the rude agricultural state, 
 much more numerously than the natives of America. Their 
 titles to land will be extinguished with much more difficulty 
 and expense. The very first contact with our colony will car- 
 ry to them the whole art and implement of war.* As our 
 
 tually exist, civil, political, moral and physical, and our deductions to 
 be true, must be taken not from the beau ideal which a vivid imagina- 
 tion may sketch out, but from the average of concomitant circumstances. 
 It would be a poor apology which a statesman could offer, for the fail- 
 ure of a certain campaign which he had planned, to .say that he had 
 calculated that every officer in the army waa a Napoleon or a C 
 and that every regiment was equal to Caesar's 10th Legion or the Im- 
 perial Guard of Napoleon. The physicians say there is not much dan- 
 ger to be apprehended from Cholera, when due caution and prudence 
 are exercised. Yet, we apprehend it would be a very unfair conclu- 
 sion if we were to assert, that when the Cholera breaks out in Charles- 
 ton there will not be one single death ; and yet we have just as much 
 right to make this assertion, as to say that our colony in Africa will be 
 free from all the accidents, plagues and calamities, to which all such 
 establishments have ever been subjected. 
 
 * Powder and fire-arms formed material items in the purchase of 
 Liberia. 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 409 
 
 colonists spread and press upon them, border wars will arise ; 
 and in vain will the attempt be made to extirpate the African 
 nations, as we have the Indian tribes : every inhabitant of Li- 
 beria who is taken prisoner by his enemy, will be consigned ac- 
 cording to the universal practice of Africa, to the most wretch- 
 ed slavery, either in Africa or the West Indies. And what 
 (will our colony do ? Must they murder, while their enemies 
 enslave ? Oh, no, it is too cruel, and will produce barbarizing 
 land exterminating wars ? Will they spare the prisoners of 
 war? No! There does not and never will exist a people on 
 earth, who would tamely look on and see their wives, mothers, 
 brothers and sisters, ignominiously enslaved, and not resent 
 the insult. What, then, will be done \ Why, they will be 
 certain to enslave too ; and if domestic slavery should be in- 
 terdicted in the colony, it would be certain to encourage the 
 slave trade ;* and if we could ever look forward to the time 
 when the slave trade should be destroyed, then the throwing 
 back of this immense current upon Africa would inundate all 
 the countries of that region. It would be like the checking 
 of the emigration from the northern hives upon the Roman 
 | world. The northern nations, in consequence of this check, 
 soon experienced all the evils of a redundant population, and 
 broke forth with their redundant numbers in another quarter ; 
 both England and France were overrun, and the repose of all 
 Europe was again disturbed. So, would a sudden check to 
 jl the African slave trade, cause the redundant population of Af- 
 rica to break in, like the Normans and the Danes, on the 
 abodes of civilization situated in their neighborhood. Let, 
 then, the real philanthropist ponder over these things, and 
 tremble for the fate of colonies which may be imprudently 
 * We fear our colony at Liberia is not entirely free from this stain 
 even now ; it is well known that the British colony at Sierra Leone has 
 frequently aided the slave trade. 
 35 
 
410 PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 planted on the African soil. The history of the world has too 
 conclusively shown, that two races, differing in manners, cus- 
 toms, language, and civilization, can never harmonize upon a 
 footing of equality. One must rule the other, or extermina- 
 ting wars must be waged. In the case of the savages of N< .rth 
 America, we have been successful in exterminating them ; but 
 in the case of African nations, we do think, from a view of 
 til.- whole subject, that our colonists will most probably be 
 the victims ; but the alternative is almost equally shocking 
 should this not be the case. They must then be the extendi 
 nators or enslavers of all the nations of Africa with which 
 they come in contact. The whole history of colonization, in- 
 
 presents one of the most gloomy and horrific pictures to 
 the imagination of the genuine philanthropist, which can pos- 
 sibly be conceived. The many Indians who have been mur- 
 di red, or driven in despair from the haunts and hunting 
 grounds of their fathers — the heathen driven from his herit- 
 age, or hurried into the presence of his God in the full blossom 
 of all his heathenish sins — the cruel slaughter of Ashantees — 
 the murder of Burmese — all, «U but too eloquently tell the 
 misery and despair portended by the advance of civilization to 
 
 \ age and the pagan, whether in America, Africa or Asia. 
 In the very few cases where the work of desolation ceased, 
 and a commingling of races ensued, it has been found that 
 th«- civilized man has Mink down to the level of barbarism, and 
 there has ended the mighty work of civilization ! Such are 
 the melancholy pictures which sober reason is constrained to 
 draw of the future destinies of our colony in Africa. And what, 
 then, will become of that grand and glorious idea of carrying 
 religion, intelligence, industry, and the arts, to the already 
 wronged and injured African ? It is destined to vanish, and 
 prove worse than mere delusion. The rainbow of promise 
 will be swept away, and we shall awake at last to all the sad 
 
PROFESSOR DEW OX SLAVERY. 411 
 
 realities of savage warfare and increasing barbarism. TVe 
 Lave thus stated some of the principal difficulties and dangers 
 iaccompanying a scheme of colonization, upon a scale as large 
 las proposed in the Virginia Legislature. We have said enough 
 to show, that if we ever send off 6,000 per annum, we must 
 incur an expense far beyond the purchase money. 
 
 The expense of deportation to Africa we have estimated at 
 (thirty dollars ; but when there is taken into the calculation 
 the further expense of collecting in Virginia,* of feeding, pro- 
 
 * Even supposing the number of blacks to be annually deported 
 should ever be fixed by the State, the difficulty of settling upon a proper 
 plan of purchase and collection will be infinitely greater than any man 
 would be willing to admit, who has not seriously reflected on the sub- 
 Iject, and the apple of discord will be thrown into the Virginia Legisla- 
 ture the moment it shall ever come to discuss the details. Suppose, for 
 example, six thousand are to be sent off annually ; will you send negro 
 buyers through the country to buy up slaves wherever they can be 
 bought, until six thousand are purchased ! If you do, you will inevita- 
 bly gather together the very dregs of creation, the most vicious, the 
 most worthless, and the most idle, for these alone will be sold ! — a fright- 
 ful population, whose multitudes, when gathered together and poured 
 upon the infant settlements in Africa, will be far more destructive than 
 the lava flood from the volcano. Again, some portions of the State 
 might sell cheaper than others, and an undue proportion of slaves would 
 be purchased from these quarters, and cause the system to operate un- 
 equally. Will you divide the State into sections, and purchase from 
 each according to black population? Then, what miserable sectional 
 controversies should we have in the State? What dreadful grumbling 
 in the west? Moreover, the same relative numbers abstracted from a 
 very dense and very sparse population, will produce a very different 
 effect on the labor market. Thus, we will suppose along the margin of 
 the James River, from Richmond to Norfolk, the blacks are twenty for 
 one white, and that in some country beyond the Blue Ridge, this propor- 
 tion is reversed. Suppose, further, that a twentieth of the blacks are to 
 be bought up and sent off, this demand will have but a slight effect ou 
 the labor market in the country beyond the Ridge, because it calls for 
 only one in four hundred of the population ; whereas the effect should 
 
412 PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 tecting,'&c, in Africa, the amount swells beyond all calcula- 
 tion. Mr. Tazewell, in his able report on the colonization of 
 free people on the African coast, represents this expense as 
 certainly amounting to one hundred dollars; and, judging 
 from actual experience, was disposed to think two hundred 
 dollars would fall below the fair estimate. If the Virginia 
 scheme shall ever be adopted, we have no doubt that both 
 these estimates will fall below the real expense. The annual cost 
 of removing six thousand, instead of being $1,380,000, will 
 swell beyond £2,400,000, — an expense sufficient to destroy the 
 entire value of the whole property of Virginia. Voltaire, in 
 his Philosophical Dictionary, has said, that such is the inhe- 
 rent and preservative vigor of nations, that governments can- 
 not possibly ruin them ; that almost all governments which 
 have been established in the world had made the attempt, 
 but had failed. If the sage of France had lived in our days, 
 he would haw had a receipt furnished By some of our philan- 
 thropists, by which this work might have been accomplished! 
 We read in Holy Writ of one great emigration from the land 
 of Egypt, and the concomitant circumstances should bid us 
 well beware of an imitation, unless assisted by the constant 
 presence of Jehovah. Ten plagues were sent upon the land 
 of Egypt before Pharaoh would consent to part with the Is- 
 raelites, the productive laborers of his kingdom. But a short 
 time convinced him of the heavy loss which he sustained by 
 
 be great along the James River, as it would take away one in twenty- 
 one of the population. The slaves, in every section, would command 
 a different price, tmd we would be obliged to establish our Octroi and 
 Douanier, and tax or prevent the migration of negroes from one section 
 to another. But we will not pursue further the examination of mere 
 details, which do not fall within our original design. It will be discov- 
 ered from even a slight analysis, that every single branch of this gigantic 
 scheme of folly, like the teeth of the fabled dragon, will bring you forth 
 an armed man to an est your progress. 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 413 
 
 their removal, and lie gave pursuit ; but God was present 
 with the Israelites. He parted the waters of the Red Sea 
 for their passage, and closed them over the Egyptians. He 
 led on his chosen people through the wilderness, testifying 
 his presence in a pillar of fire by night, and a cloud of smoke 
 by day. He supplied them with manna in their long jour- 
 ney, sending a sufficiency on the sixth for that and the sev- 
 enth day. When they were thirsty, the rocks poured forth 
 waters, and when they finally arrived in the land of promise, 
 after the loss of a generation, the mysterious will of heaven 
 had doomed the tribes of Canaan to destruction ; fear and 
 apprehension coufounded all their counsels ; their battlements 
 j sunk down at the trumpet's sound ; the native hosts, under 
 heaven's command, were all slaughtered ; and the children of 
 Israel took possession of the habitations and property of the 
 slaughtered inhabitants. The whole history of this emigra- 
 tion beautifully illustrates the great difficulties and hardships 
 of removal to foreign lands of multitudes of people. And as 
 a citizen of Virginia, we can never consent to so grand a 
 scheme of colonization on the coast of Africa, until it is sanc- 
 tioned by a decree of heaven, made known by signs, far more 
 intelligible than an eclipse and greenness of the sun — till 
 manna shall be rained down for the subsistence of our black 
 emigrants — till seas shall be parted, and waters flow from 
 rocks for their accommodation — till we shall have a leader 
 like Moses, who, in the full confidence of all his piety and reli- 
 gion, can, in the midst of all the appalling difficulties and ca- 
 lamities by which he may be surrounded, speak forth to his 
 murmuring people, in the language of comfort, " Fear ye not, 
 stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will 
 shew to you to-day." 
 
 But, say some, if Virginia cannot accomplish this work, let 
 us call upon the General Government for aid — let Hercules 
 35* 
 
414 PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 be requested to put his shoulders to the wheels, and roll us 
 through the formidable quagmire of our difficulties. Delu- 
 sive prospect ! Corrupting scheme ! We will throw all con- 
 stitutional difficulties out of view, and ask if the Federal Gov- 
 ernment can be requested to undertake the expense for Vir- 
 ginia, without encountering it for the whole slaveholding 
 population ? And then, whence can be drawn the funds to 
 purchase more than 2,000,000 of slaves, worth at the lowest 
 calculation $400,000,000 ; or if the increase alone be sent off, 
 can Congress undertake annually to purchase at least GO, 000 
 slaves, at an expense of 812,000,000, and deport and colonize 
 them at an expense of twelve or fifteen millions more?* But 
 the fabled hydra would be more than realized in this project. 
 We have no doubt that if the United States in good faith 
 should enter into the slave markets of the country, determin- 
 ed to purchase up the whole annual increase of our slaves, so 
 unwise a project, by its artificial demand, would immediately 
 produce a rise in this property, throughout the whole south- 
 ern country, of at least 33J per cent. It would stimulate and 
 invigorate the spring of black population, which, by its tre- 
 mendous action, would set at nought the puny efforts of man, 
 and, like the Grecian matron, unweave in the night what had 
 been woven in the day. We might well calculate upon an 
 annual increase of at least four and a half per cent, upon our 
 two millions of slaves, if ever the United States should create 
 the artificial demand which we have just spoken of; and then, 
 instead of an increase of 60,000, there will be 90,000, bearing the 
 average price of 8300 each, making the enormous annual expense 
 of purchase alone 827,000,000 ! and difficulties, too, on the 
 side of the colony, would more than enlarge with the increase 
 
 * We must recollect, that the expense of colonizing increases much 
 more rapidly than in proportion to the simple increase of the number of 
 emigrants. 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 415 
 
 of the evil at home. Our Colonization Society has been more 
 than fifteen years at work ; it has purchased, according to its 
 funds, a district of country as congenial to the constitution of 
 the black as any in Africa ; it has, as we have seen, frequent- 
 ly over-supplied the colony with emigrants ; and mark the re- 
 sult, for it is worthy of all observation, there now are not 
 more than 2000 or 2500 inhabitants in Liberia! And these 
 are alarmed lest the Southampton insurrection may cause such 
 an emigration as to inundate the colony. When, then, in the 
 lapse of time, can we ever expect to build up a colony which 
 can receive sixty or ninety thousand slaves per annum ? And if 
 this should ever arrive, what guarantee could be furnished us 
 that their ports would always be open to our emigrants ? 
 Would law or compact answer ? Oh, no ! Some legislator, 
 in the plenitude of his wisdom, might arise, who could easily 
 and truly persuade his countrymen that these annual impor- 
 tations of blacks were nuisances, and the laws of God, what- 
 ever might be those of men, would justify their abatement. 
 And the drama would be wound up in this land of promise 
 and expectation, by turning the cannon's mouth against the 
 liberated emigrant and deluded philanthropist. The scheme 
 of colonizing our blacks on the coast of Africa, or anywhere 
 else, by the United States, is thus seen to be more stupen- 
 dously absurd than even the Virginia project. King Canute, 
 the Dane, seated on the sea shore, and ordering the rising 
 flood to recede from his royal feet, was not guilty of more 
 vanity and presumption than the Government of the United 
 States would manifest, in the vain effort of removing and 
 colonizing the annual increase of our blacks. So far from 
 being able to remove the whole annual increase every year, 
 we shall not be enabled to send off a number sufficiently 
 great to check even the geometrical rate of increase. Our 
 black population is now producing 60,000 per annum, and 
 
41 G PROFESSOR DEW OX SLAVERY. 
 
 next year we must add to tins sum 1,800, which the incre- 
 ment alone is capable of producing, and the year after, the 
 increment upon the increment, <tc. Now, let us throw out of 
 view, for a moment, the idea of grappling with the whole 
 annual increase, and see whether by colonization we can ex- 
 pect to turn this geometrical increase into an arithmetical one. 
 We will th.ii take the annual increase, 60,000, as our capital, 
 and it will be necessary to send off the increase upon this 
 1800, to prevent the geometrical increase of the whole black 
 population. Let us, then, for a moment, inquire whether the 
 abolitionists can expect to realize this petty advantage. 
 
 Mr. Bacon admits, that 1,000 emigrants now thrown on 
 Liberia, would ruin it. We believe that every reflecting so- 
 ber member of the Colonization Society will acknowledge 
 that 500 annually, are fully as many as the colony can now 
 receive. We will assume this number, though no doubt 
 greatly beyond the truth ; and we will admit further, (what 
 we could easily demonstrate to be much too liberal a conces- 
 sion,) that the capacity of the colony for the reception of emi- 
 grants may be made to enlarge in a geometrical ratio, equal 
 to that of the rate of increase of the blacks in the United 
 States. Now, with these very liberal concessions on our part, 
 let us examine into the eflect of the colonization scheme. At 
 the end of the first year, we shall have for the amount of the 
 60,000, increasing at the rate of three and a half per cent., 
 61,800 ; and subtracting 500, we shall begin the second year 
 with the number of 61,300, which, increasing at the rate of 
 three and a half per centum, gives 63,139 for the amount at 
 the end of the second year. Proceeding thus, we obtain, at 
 the end of twenty-five years, for the amount of the 60,000, 
 101,208. The number taken away, that is the sum of 
 500 + 500 X 1,003 + 500 X 1,003, etc., will be 18,197. It 
 is thus seen, that in spite of the efforts of the colonization 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 417 
 
 scheme, the bare annual increase of our slaves will produce 
 41,208 more than can be sent off; which number, of course, 
 ! must be added to the capital of 60,000 ; and long, very long, 
 i before the colony in Africa, upon our system of calculation, 
 even could receive the increase upon this accumulating capi- 
 tal, its capacity as a recipient would be checked by the limi- 
 tation of territory, and the rapid filling up of the population, 
 both by emigration and natural increase. And thus, by a 
 simple arithmetical calculation, we may be convinced that the 
 effort to check even the geometrical rate of increase, by send- 
 ing off the increment upon the annual increase, of our slaves, 
 is greatly more than we can accomplish, and must inevitably 
 terminate in disappointment — more than realizing the fable 
 of the frog and the ox ; for in this case we should have the 
 frog swelling, not for the purpose of rivalling the ox in size, 
 but to swallow him down, horns and all ! 
 
 Seeing, then, that the effort to send away the increase, on 
 even the present increase of our slaves, must be vain and 
 fruitless, how stupendously absurd must be the project, pro- 
 posing to send off the whole increase, so as to keep down the 
 negro population at its present amount ! There are some 
 things which man, arrayed in all his " brief authority," can- 
 not accomplish, and this is one of them. Colonization schem- 
 ers, big and busy in the management of all their little ma- 
 chinery, and gravely proposing it as an engine by which our 
 black population may be sent to the now uncongenial home 
 of their ancestors, across an ocean of thousands of miles in 
 width, but too strongly remind us of the vain man who, in 
 all the pomp and circumstance of power, ordered his servile 
 attendants to stop the rise of ocean's tide, by carrying off its 
 accumulating waters. Emigration has rarely checked the 
 increase of population, by directly lessening its number ; it 
 can only do it by the abstraction of capital, and by paralyzing 
 
418 TROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 the spring of population, and then it blights and withers the 
 prosperity of the land. The population of Europe has not 
 been thinned by emigration to the new world — the province 
 of Andalusia, in Spain, which sent out the greatest number of 
 (■migrants to the Islands, and to Mex'co and Peru, has been 
 precisely the district in Spain which has increased its popu- 
 lation most rapidly. Ireland now sends forth a greater num- 
 ber of emigrants than any other country in the world, and yet 
 the population of Ireland is now increasing faster than any 
 other population of Europe I 
 
 "We hope we have now said enough of these colonization 
 schemes to show that we can never expect to send off our 
 black population, by their means— and we cannot conclude 
 without addressing a word of caution to the generous sons of 
 the Old Dominion. It behooves them well to beware with 
 what intent they look to the Federal Government for aid in 
 the accomplishment of these delusive — these impracticable 
 projects. The guileful tempter of our original parents se- 
 duced them with the offer of an apple, which proved their 
 heaviest curse, drove them from the garden of Eden, and de- 
 stroyed for ever their state of innocence and purity. Let 
 Virginia beware, then, that she be not tempted by the apple, 
 to descend from that lofty eminence which she h;is hitherto 
 occupied in our confederacy, and sacrifice upon the altar of 
 misconceived interests those pure political principles by which 
 she has hitherto been so proudly characterized. This whole 
 question of emancipation and deportation is but too well cal- 
 culated to furnish the political lever, by which Virginia is to 
 be prised out of her natural and honorable position in the 
 Union, and made to sacrifice her noble political creed. We 
 have witnessed with feelings of no common kind, the almost 
 suppliant look cast towards the General Government, by some 
 of the orators in the Virginia debate. It has pained us to 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 419 
 
 read speeches, and pamphlets, and newspaper essays, suggest- 
 ing changes in the constitution, or at once boldly imploring, 
 without such changes, the action of the Federal Government. 
 Unless the sturdy patriots of Virginia stand forth, we fear, in- 
 deed, that her noble principles will be swept away by the tide 
 of corruption. The agitation of the slave question in the last 
 Virginia Legislature, has already begun the work, and the 
 consent of Virginia to receive Federal aid in the scheme of 
 emancipation and deportation would complete it. As long as 
 a State relies upon its own resources, and looks to no foreign 
 quarter for aid or support, so long does she place herself 
 without the sphere of temptation, and preserve her political 
 virtue. This is one principal reason why Virginia has pro- 
 duced so many disinterested patriots. We will go further 
 still ; the generous, disinterested and noble character of south- 
 ern politicians generally, is, in a great measure, attributable 
 to this very cause. The South has hitherto had nothing to 
 ask of the Federal Government — she has been no dependant, 
 no expectant at the door of the Federal Treasury — she has 
 never, therefore, betrayed the interest of the Union, for some 
 paltry benefit to herself. But let her once consent to suppli- 
 cate the aid of the General Government on this slave ques- 
 tion — and that moment will she sacrifice her high political 
 principles, and become a dependant on that government. 
 When Virginia shall consent to receive this boon, her hands 
 will be tied for ever, the emancipating interest will be added 
 to the internal improvement and ta riff interests, and Virginia 
 can no more array herself against the torrent of Federal op- 
 pression. Hitched to the car of the Federal Government, she 
 will be so ignominiously dragged forward, a conscience-strick- 
 en partner in the unholy alliance for oppression ; and in that 
 day, the genuine patriot may well cast a longing, lingering 
 look back to the days of purer principles, and " sigh for the 
 
420 PROFESSOR DEW OX SLAVERY. 
 
 loss of Eden." And in this melancholy, saddening retrospect, 
 lie will not have the poor consolation left, of seeing his noble 
 State reap the paltry reward, which had so fatally tempted 
 her to an abandonment of her principles. Can any reflecting 
 man, for a moment, believe that the North and West, form- 
 ing the majority of our Confederacy, would ever seriously con- 
 sent to that enormous expenditure which would be necessary 
 to carry into effect this gigantic colonization scheme — a 
 scheme whose direct operation would be, to take away that 
 very labor, which now bears the burthen of federal exactions 
 — a scheme whose operation would be to dry up the sources 
 of that very revenue, upon which its success entirely depends! 
 Vain and delusive hope ! Not one negro slave will ever be 
 Bent away from this country by federal funds — and heaven 
 forbid that they should ; and yet we fear the longing, linger- 
 ing hope, will corrupt the pure principles of many a deluded 
 patriot. 
 
 We have thus examined fully this scheme of emancipation 
 and deportation, and trust we have satisfactorily shown, that 
 the whole plan is utterly impracticable, requiring an expense 
 and sacrifice of property far beyond the entire resources of the 
 State and Federal Governments, We shall now proceed to 
 inquire, whether we can emancipate our slaves with permis- 
 sion that they remain among us. 
 
 Emancipation without I Deportation. — We candidly confess, 
 that we look upon this last mentioned scheme as much more 
 practicable, and likely to be forced upon us, than the former. 
 We consider it, at the same time, so fraught with danger and 
 mischief both to the whites and blacks — so utterly subversive 
 of the welfare of the slaveholding country, in both an economi- 
 cal and moral point of view, that we cannot, upon any princi- 
 ple of right or expediency, give it our sanction. Almost all 
 the speakers in the Virginia Legislature seemed to think there 
 
PROFESSOR DEW OX SLAVERY. 421 
 
 ought to be no emancipation without deportation. Mr. Clay, 
 ;too, in his celebrated colonization speech of 1830, says, "if the 
 jquestion were submitted whether there should be immediate 
 ior gradual emancipation of all the slaves in the United States, 
 without their removal or colonization, painful as it is to ex- 
 jpress the opinion, I have no doubt that it would be unwise to 
 'emancipate them. I believe that the aggregate of evils which 
 would be engendered in society, upon the supposition of gene- 
 ral emancipation, and of the liberated slaves remaining princi- 
 pally among us, would be greater than all the evils of slave- 
 ry, great as they unquestionably are." Even the northern 
 philanthropists themselves admit, generally, that there should 
 be no emancipation without removal. Perhaps, then, under 
 these circumstances, we might have been justified in closing 
 our review with a consideration of the colonization scheme ; 
 but as we are anxious to survey this subject fully in all its 
 aspects, and to demonstrate upon every ground the complete 
 justification of the whole southern country in a further con- 
 tinuance of that system of slavery which has been originated 
 by no fault of theirs, and continued and increased contrary to 
 their most earnest desires and petitions, we have determined 
 briefly to examine this scheme likewise. As we believe the 
 scheme of deportation utterly impracticable, we have come to 
 the conclusion that in the present great question, the real and 
 decisive line of conduct is either abolition without removal, or 
 a steady perseverance in the system now established. " Pal- 
 try and timid minds," says the present Lord Chancellor of 
 England on this very subject, " shudder at the thought of 
 mere activity, as cowardly troops tremble at the idea of calm- 
 ly waiting for the enemy's approach. Both the one and the 
 other hasten their fate by relentless and foolish movements." 
 
 The ground upon which we shall rest our argument on this 
 subject is, that the slaves, in both an economical and moral 
 36 
 
422 PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 point of view, are entirely unfit for a state of freedom among 
 the whites ; and we shall produce such proofs and illustra- 
 tions of our position, as seem to us perfectly conclusive. That 
 condition of our species from which the most important con- 
 sequences flow, says Mr. Mill, the Utilitarian, is the necessity 
 of labor for the supply of the fund of our necessaries and con- 
 veniences. It is this which influences, perhaps more than any 
 other, even our moral and religious character, and determines 
 more than everything else besides, the social and political 
 state of man. It must enter into the calculations of not only 
 the political economist, but even of the metaphysician, the 
 moralist, the theologian, and politician. 
 
 We shall, therefore, proceed at once to inquire what effect 
 would be produced upon the slaves of the South in an eco- 
 nomical point of view, by emancipation with permission to 
 remain — whether the voluntary labor of the freed-man would 
 be as great as the involuntary labor of the slave ? Fortunate- 
 ly for us, this question has been so frequently and fairly sub- 
 jected to the test of experience, that we are no longer left to 
 vain and fruitless conjecture. Much was said in the Legisla- 
 ture of Virginia about superiority of free labor over slave, and 
 perhaps, under certain circumstances, this might be true ; hut, 
 in the present instance, the question is between the relative 
 amounts of labor which may be obtained from slaves before 
 and after their emancipation. Let us, then, first commence 
 with our country, where, it is well known to everybody, that 
 slave labor is vastly more efficient and productive than the 
 labor of free blacks. 
 
 Taken as a whole class, the latter must be considered the 
 most worthless and indolent of the citizens of the United 
 States.' It is well known that throughout the whole extent 
 of our Union, they are looked upon as the very drones and 
 pests of society. Nor does this character arise from the disa- 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 423 
 
 bilities and disfranchisement by which the law attempts to 
 guard against them. In the non-slaveholding States, where 
 they have been more elevated by law, this kind of population 
 is in a worse condition, and much more troublesome to socie- 
 ty, than in the slaveholding, and especially in the planting 
 States. Ohio, some years ago, formed a sort of land of pro- 
 mise for this deluded class, to which many have repaired from 
 the slaveholding States,— and what has been the consequence ? 
 They have been most harshly expelled from that State, and 
 forced to take refuge in a foreign land. Look through the 
 Northern States, and mark the class upon whom the eye of 
 the police is most steadily and constantly kept— see with what 
 vigilance and care they are hunted down from place to place — 
 and you cannot fail to see that idleness and improvidence are 
 at the root of all their misfortunes. Not only does the expe- 
 rience of our own country illustrate this great fact, but others 
 furnish abundant testimony. 
 
 rt The free negroes," says Brougham, " in the West Indies 
 are, with a very few exceptions, chiefly in the Spanish and 
 Portuguese settlements, equally averse to all sorts of labor 
 which do not contribute to the supply of their immediate and 
 most urgent wants. Improvident and careless of the future, 
 they are not actuated by that principle which inclines more 
 civilized men to equalize their exertions at all times, and to 
 work after the necessaries of the day have been procured, in 
 order to make up for the possible deficiencies of the morrow ; 
 nor has their intercourse with the whites taught them to con- 
 sider any gratification as worth obtaining, which cannot be 
 produced by slight exertion of desultory and capricious in- 
 dustry."* 
 
 In the report of the Committee of the Privy Council in 
 Great Britain, in 1 788, the most ample proof of this assertion 
 * Brougham's Colonial Policy, Book IV., Sec. 1. 
 
424 PROFESSOR DEW OX SLAVERY. 
 
 is brought forward. In Jamaica and Barbadoes, it was stated, 
 that free negroes were never known to work for hire, and they 
 have all the vices of the slave. Mr. Braithwait, the agent for 
 Barbadoes, affirmed, that if the slaves in that island were of- 
 fered their freedom on condition of working for themselves, 
 not one-tenth of them would accept it. In all the other colo- 
 nies the statements agree most accurately with those collected 
 by the Committee of the Privy Council. "M. Malouet, wUJ 
 bore a special commission from the present government ij 
 examine the character and habits of the Maroons in Dutch 
 Guiana, and to determine whether or not they were adapted 
 to become hired Laborers, informs as that they will only work 
 one day in the week, which they find abundantly sufficient, in 
 the fi itile soil and genial climate of the new world, to supply 
 all the wants that they have yet learnt to feel. The rest of 
 their time is spent in absolute indolence and sloth. ' Le 
 reposj says he, % et Voisivete sont devenus dans Jeur ctat social 
 leur a ni q uc passion T He gives the very Bame description of 
 the free negroes in the French colonies, although many of 
 them possessed lands and slaves. The spectacle, he tells us, 
 was never yet exhibited of a free negro supporting his family 
 by the culture of his little property. All other authors agree 
 in giving the same description of free negroes in the British, 
 French and Dutch colonies, by whatever denomination they 
 may be distinguished, whether Maroons, Caraibes, free Macks, 
 or fugitive slaves. The Abbe Raynald, with all his ridiculous 
 fondness for savages, cannot, in the present instance, so far 
 twist the facts according to his fancies and feelings, as to give 
 a favorable portrait of this degraded race."* 
 
 From these facts, it would require no great sagacity to come 
 to the conclusion, that slave cannot be converted into free 
 labor without imminent danger to the prosperity and wealth 
 * Brougham's Colonial Policy. 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 425 
 
 of the country where the change takes place — and in this par- 
 ticular it matters not what ma}' be the color of the slave. In 
 i the commencement of the reign of Charles V., the representa- 
 , tions of Las Casas determined Cardinal Ximenes, the prime 
 minister of Charles, to make an experiment of the conversion 
 , of slave labor into free, and for this purpose pious commis- 
 i sioners were sent out, attended by Las Casas himself, for the 
 purpose of liberating the Indian slaves in the new world. Now 
 mark the result. These commissioners, chosen from the clois- 
 ter, and big with real philanthropy, repaired to the Western 
 world intent upon the great work of emancipation. " Their 
 ears," says Robertson, " were open to information from every 
 I quarter — they compared the different accounts which they re- 
 ceived — and after a mature consideration of the whole, they 
 were fully satisfied that the state of the colony rendered it im- 
 possible to adopt the plan proposed by Las Casas, and recom- 
 mended by the Cardinal. They plainly perceived that no al- 
 lurement was so powerful as to surmount the natural aversion 
 of the Indians to any laborious effort, and that nothing but 
 the authority of a master could compel them to work ; and if 
 they were not kept constantly under the eye and discipline 
 of a superior, so great were their natural listlessness and in- 
 difference, that they w T ould neither attend to religious instruc- 
 tion, nor observe those rights of Christianity which they had 
 been already taught. Upon all these accounts the superin- 
 tendents found it necessary to tolerate repartimientos, and to 
 suffer the Indians to remain under subjection to their Spanish 
 masters."* In the latter part of his reign, Charles, with most 
 imprudent and fatal decision, proclaimed the immediate and 
 universal emancipation of all the Indians— and precisely what 
 any man of reflection might have anticipated, resulted. Their 
 industry and freedom were found entirely incompatible. The 
 * Robertson's America, vol. 1, p. 123. 
 36* 
 
420 PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 alarm was instantaneously spread over the whole Spanish 
 colonies. Peru, for a time lost to the monarchy, was only re- 
 stored by the repeal of the obnoxious law ; and in New Spain, 
 quiet was only preserved by a combination of the governor 
 and subjects to suspend its execution. During the mad career 
 of the French revolution, the slaves in the French colonies 
 were, for a time, liberated ; and even in Cayenne, where the 
 experiment succeeded best in consequence of the paucity of 
 slaves, it completely demonstrated the superiority of slave 
 over free black labor ; and generally the re-establishment a 
 slavery was attended with the most happy consequences, anj 
 even courted by the negroes themselves, who became heartily 
 tired of their short-lived liberty. Of the great experiment 
 which has been recently made in Colombia and Guatemala 
 we shall presently speak. We believe it has completely 
 proved the same well established fact — the great superiority 
 of slave over free negro labor. 
 
 Mr. ( Harkson, in his pamphlet on slavery, has alluded in 
 terms of high commendation to an experiment made in Bar- 
 badoes, on Mr. Steele's plantation, which, he contends, has 
 proved the Bafety and facility of the transition from slave to 
 free labor. It seems Mr. Steele parcelled out his land among 
 his negroes, and paid them wages tor their labor. Now, we 
 invite particularly the attention of our readers to the following 
 extracts from the letter of Mr. Scaly, a neighbor of Mr. Steele, 
 which will not only serve to establish our position, but afford 
 an illustration of the melancholy fact, that the best of men 
 cannot be relied on when under the influence of prejudice and 
 passion. "It so happened," says Mr. Scaly, "that I resided 
 on the nearest adjoining estate to Mr. Steele, and superintend- 
 ed the management of it myself for many years; I had, there- 
 fore, a better opportunity of forming an opinion than Mr. 
 Clarkson can have — he has read Mr. Steele's account — / wit- 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 427 
 
 nessed the operations and effects of his plans. He possesses 
 one of the largest and most seasonable plantations, in a de- 
 lightful part of the island ; with all these advantages, his estate 
 was never in as good order as those in the same neighbor- 
 hood, and the crops were neither adequate to the size and 
 resources of the estate, nor in proportion to those of other es- 
 tates in the same part of the island. Finally, after an experi- 
 ment of thirty years under Mr. Steele, and his executor, Mr. 
 T. Bell, Mr. Steele's debts remained unpaid, and the planta- 
 tion was sold by a decree of the Court of Chancery. After 
 the debts and costs of suit were paid, very little remained out 
 of 45,000Z. to go to the residuary legatees. 
 
 " It was very well known that the negroes rejoiced when 
 the change took place, and thanked their God that they were 
 relieved from the copyhold system. Such was the final result 
 and success that attended this system, which has been so 
 much eulogized by Mr. Clarkson. After the estate was sold 
 and the system changed, I had equally an opportunity of ob- 
 serving the management, and certainly the manifest improve- 
 ment was strong evidence in favor of the change. Fields, 
 which had been covered with bushes for a series of years, 
 were brought into cultivation, and the number of pounds of 
 sugar was in some years more than doubled under the new 
 management : the provision crops also were abundant ; con- 
 sequently, the negroes and stock were amply provided for." 
 Again : the Attorney-General of Barbadoes corroborates the 
 statements of Mr. Sealy in the most positive terms. He says, 
 " I was surprised to see it asserted lately in print, that his, — 
 Steele's plantation, — succeeded well under the management. 
 I know it to be false. It failed considerably ; and had he 
 lived a few years longer, he would have died not worth a 
 farthing. Upon his death, they reverted to the old system, to 
 which the slaves readily and willingly returned ; the planta- 
 
428 PROFESSOR DEW ON' SLAVERY. 
 
 tion now succeeds, and the slaves are contented and happy, 
 and think themselves much better off than under the copy- 
 hold system, for their wages would not afford them many 
 comforts which they have now."* (Upon this subject see No. 
 LX. London Quarterly. Art — West India Colonies.) But 
 a short time since, a highly respectable, and one of the most 
 intelligent farmers of Virginia, informed us that he had actu- 
 ally tried, upon a much smaller scale, a similar experiment, 
 and that it entirely failed ; the negroes, devoid of judgment 
 and good management, became lazy and improvident, and 
 every time one was so unfortunate as to fall sick, it immedi- 
 ately became necessary to support him. The whole plan soon 
 disgusted the master, and proved that the free labor system 
 would not answer for the best of our negroes ; for those he tried 
 wore his best. Now these experiments were the more con- 
 clusive, because the master reserved the right of re-imposing 
 slavery upon them in case the experiment should not meet 
 his approbation : every stimulus was thus offered, in case their 
 f reedom was really desirable, to work hard, but their natural 
 
 * If it were not that the experiment would be too danserous and 
 costly, we would have no objection to see our slaves gratified with the 
 enjoyment of freedom for a short time. There is no doubt but that 
 they, like the Poles, Livonians, &c, and the negroes of Mr. Steele, 
 would soon sigh again for a master's control, and a master's support 
 and protection. It is a well known fact that upon the borders of the 
 free States, our slaves are not so much disposed to elope, as those who 
 are situated further off; and the reason is, they are near enough to wit- 
 ness the condition of the free black laborer, and they know it is far more 
 wretched than their own. A citizen of the West, who is as well acquaint- 
 ed with this whole subject as any other in the State or in the United 
 States, informed us, a short time since, that the slaves of Botetourt and 
 Montgomery were much more disposed to elope and settle in Ohio, than 
 those of Cabel and Mason, situated on the borders — because the former 
 are not so well acquainted with the real condition of the free blacks as 
 the latter. 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 429 
 
 indolence and carelessness triumphed over love of liberty, and 
 demonstrated the fact, that free labor, made out of slaves, is 
 ■ the worst in the world. 
 
 So far we have adduced instances from among mixed pop 
 i ulations alone. Some have imagined that the indolence of 
 • liberated blacks in these cases, has arisen entirely from the 
 j presence of the whites, acknowledged to be the superior race 
 I both by law and custom ; that, consequently, if the blacks 
 could be freed from the degrading influence exerted by the 
 mere pressure of the whites, they would quickly manifest 
 more desire to accumulate and acquire all the industrious 
 habits of the English operative or New England laborer, Al- 
 though this is foreign to our immediate object, which is to 
 prove the inefricacy of free black labor in our country, where, 
 of course, whites must always be present, we will, nevertheless, 
 examine this opinion, because it has been urged in favor of 
 that grand scheme of colonization recommended by some of 
 the orators in the Virginia Legislature. Our own opinion 
 is, that the presence of the whites ought rather to be an in- 
 centive and encouragement to labor. Habits of industry are 
 more easily acquired when all are busy and active around us. 
 A man feels a spirit of industry and activity stir within him, 
 from moving amongst such societies as those of Marseilles, 
 Liverpool, and New York, where the din of business and bus- 
 tle assails his ears at every turn, whereas, he soon becomes 
 indolent and listless at Bath or Saratoga. Why, then, are our 
 colored free men so generally indolent and worthless among 
 the industrious and enterprising citizens of even our Northern 
 and New England States ? It is because there is an inherent 
 and intrinsic cause at work, which will produce its effect un- 
 der all circumstances. In the free black, the principle of idle- 
 ness and dissipation triumphs over that of accumulation and 
 the desire to better our condition ; the animal part of the 
 
430 PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 man gains the victory over the moral, and he, consequently, 
 prefers sinking down into the listless, inglorious repose of the 
 brute creation, to rising to that energetic activity which can 
 only be generated amid the multiplied, refined, and artificial 
 wants of civilized society. The very conception which nine 
 slaves in ten have of liberty, is that of idleness and sloth with 
 the enjoyment of plenty ; and we are not to wonder that 
 they should hasten to practice upon their theory so soon as 
 liberated. But the experiment has been sufficiently tried to 
 prove most conclusively that the free black will work nowhere 
 except by compulsion. 
 
 St. Domingo is often spoken of by philanthropists and 
 schemers ; the trial has there been made upon a scale suffi- 
 ciently grand to test our opinions, and we are perfectly will- 
 ing to abide the result of the experiment. 
 
 The main purpose of the mission of Consul-General Mc- 
 Kenzie, to Ilayti, by the British Government, was to clear up 
 this very question. We have made every exertion to pro" 
 cure the very valuable notes of that gentleman, on Ilayti, 
 but have failed ; we are, therefore, obliged to rely upon the 
 eighty-ninth numbers of the London Quarterly, in one article 
 of which mention is made of the result of M'Kenzie's obser- 
 vations. " By all candid persons," says the Review, " the 
 deliberate opinion which that able man has formed from care- 
 ful observation, and the whole tenor of the evidence he has 
 furnished, will be thought conclusive. Such invincible repug- 
 nance do the free negroes of that Island feel to labor, that 
 the system of the code rural of 1826, about the genuineness 
 of which so much doubt was entertained a few years ago, is 
 described as falling little short of the compulsion to which the 
 slaves had been subjected previous to their emancipation. 
 ' The consequences of delinquincy,' he says, ' are heavy fine 
 and imprisonment, and the provisions o' the law are as despotic 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 431 
 
 as can well be conceived.' He afterwards subjoins : — Such 
 have been the various modes for inducing or compelling labor 
 i for nearly forty years. It is next necessary to ascertain, as 
 i far as it is practicable, the degree of success which has attend- 
 ed each ; and the only mode with which I am acquainted, is 
 to give the returns of the exported agricultural produce dur- 
 i ing the same period, marking, where it can be done, any ac- 
 ; cidental circumstance that may have had an influence.' He 
 then quotes the returns at length, and observes — ' There is 
 one decided inference from the whole of these six returns, viz : 
 the positive decrease of cane cultivation, in all its branches — 
 the diminution of other branches of industry, though not 
 I equally well marked, is no less certain, than the articles of 
 1 spontaneous growth maintain, if not exceed, their former 
 amount.' "We may further add, that even the light labor re- 
 quired for trimming the planting coffee trees, has been so 
 much neglected, that the export of coffee in 1830, falls short 
 of that of 1829, by no less than 10,000,000 lbs." (See Lon- 
 don Quarterly Review, No. 89, Art. West India Question.) 
 We subjoin here, to exhibit the facts asserted by Mr. 
 M'Kenzie in a more striking manner, a tabular view of some 
 of the principle exports from St. Domingo, during her subjec- 
 tion to France, and during the best years of the reigns of 
 Toussaint, Dessalines, and Boyer,* upon the authority of 
 James Franklin, on the present state of Hayti. 
 
 Produce. 
 
 French. 
 
 Toussaint. 
 
 Dessalines. 
 
 Boyer. 
 
 
 1791. 
 
 1802. 
 
 1804. 
 
 1822. f 
 
 
 lbs. 
 
 lbs. 
 
 lbs. 
 
 lbs, 
 
 Sugar, 
 
 163,405,220 
 
 53,400,000 
 
 41,600,000 
 
 652,541 
 
 Coffee, 
 
 68,151,180 
 
 34,370,000 
 
 31.000,000 
 
 35,117,834 
 
 Cotton, 
 
 6,286,126 
 
 4,050,000 
 
 3,000,000 | 
 
 891,950 
 
 * It is known that under Boyer there was a union of the Island un- 
 der one government. 
 f The other years give the returns of the French part of the Island; 
 
4-02 PROFESSOR DEW OX SLAVERY. 
 
 There has been a gradual diminution of the amount of the 
 products of Hayti, since 1822. In 1825, the whole value of 
 exerts was about £8,000,000, more than *1, 000,000 less 
 than in 1822, and the revenue of the Island was not equal to 
 the public expenditure. Is not this fair exp< riment for forty 
 years, under more favorable circumstances than any reasonable 
 man had a right to anticipate, sufficient to convince and over- 
 whelm the meet sceptical as to the unproductiveness of slave 
 labor convert d into free labor I 
 
 But the British colony at Sierra Leone is another case in 
 point, to establish the Bame position. Evidence was taken in 
 1830, before a committee ofthe Bouse of Commons. Capt. 
 Bnllen, R. \., Btated that at Sierra Leone, they gave the 
 blacks a portion of land to cultivate, and they cultivate just 
 as much as will keep them, and not an inch more. Mr. -lack- 
 son, one ofthe Judges of the mixed Commission Court, being 
 asked — "Taking into consideration the situation of Sierra 
 Leone, and the attention paid by government to promote 
 their comfort, what progress have they made towards civiliza- 
 tion or the comforts of civilized life?" makes this answer — "I 
 should say very inadequate to the efforts which have been 
 made to promote their comfort and civilization." Capt. 
 Spenoe, being asked a similar question, replies — "I have 
 formed a very different opinion as to their progress of indus- 
 try. I have not been able to observe that they seem inclined 
 to cultivate the country farther than vegetables and things of 
 that kind. They do not seem inclined to cultivate for expor- 
 tation. Their wants are very few, and they are very wild ; 
 and their wants are supplied by the little exertion they make. 
 They have sufficient to maintain them in clothing and food, 
 and these are all their wants." 
 
 this for the Spanish and Ficnch, ought therefore, to be proportionably 
 greater. 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 433 
 
 Our own colony, upon the coast of Africa proves, too, the 
 same fact. It has been fed slowly and cautiously, with emi- 
 grants, and yet Mr. Ashmun's entreaties to colonization 
 friends in the United States, to recollect that rice did not grow 
 spontaneously in Africa, to send out laboring men, of good 
 i character, <fcc, but too conclusively show, in spite of the col- 
 I ored and exaggerated statements of prejudiced friends, the 
 ! great difficulty of making the negroes work even in Liberia ;* 
 and we have no doubt, that if 6,000 or 60,000 could be col- 
 onized annually in Africa, there would not be a more worth- 
 less and indolent race of people upon the face of the globe, 
 than our African colonies would exhibit. 
 
 We have now, we think, proved our position, that slave la- 
 bor, in an economical point of view, is far superior to free 
 negro labor ; and have no doubt that if an immediate eman- 
 cipation of negroes were to take place, the whole southern 
 country would be visited with an immediate general famine, 
 from which the productive resources of ali the other States of 
 the Union could not deliver them. 
 
 It .is now easy for us to demonstrate the second point in our 
 argument — that the slave is not only economically but moral- 
 ly unfit for freedom. And first, idleness and consequent want 
 are, of themselves, sufficient to generate a catalogue of vices 
 of the most mischievous and destructive character. Look to 
 the penal prosecution of every country, and mark the situation 
 
 * We understand, from most undoubted authority, that Mr. Bar- 
 bour, a negro gentleman from Liberia, who lately visited the Virginia 
 Springs, for the purpose of re- establishing his health, which had given 
 way under the deleterious influence of an African climate, bears most 
 unequivocal testimony to the idleness of the blacks in Liberia — thinks 
 that the statement whi^h has been generally given of the colony great- 
 ly exaggerated — considers it a partial failure at least ; and laughs at 
 the idea of its being made a recipient for the immense and rapidly 
 increasing mass of our whole black population. 
 37 
 
434 PROFESSOR DEW OX SLAVERY. 
 
 of those who fall victims to the laws. And what a frightful 
 proportion do we find among the indigent and idle classes of 
 society ! Idleness generates want, want gives rise to tempta- 
 tion, and strong temptation makes the villain. The mo>l ap- 
 propriate prayer for frail, imperfect man, is " lead us not into 
 temptation." Mr. Archer, of Virginia, well observed in his 
 speech, before the Colonization Society, that " the free blaeks 
 were destined by an insurmountable barrier — to the want of 
 occupation — thence to the want of food — thence to the dis- 
 tresses which ensue from that want — thence to the settled 
 deprivation which grows out of those distresses, and is nursed 
 at their bosoms ; and this condition was not casualty, bat fate. 
 The evidence was not speculation in political economy — it was 
 geometrical demonstration." 
 
 We are not to wonder that this class of citizens should be 
 bo depraved and immoral. An idle population will always be 
 worthless ; and it is a mistake to think that they are only 
 worthless in the Southern States, where it is erroneously sup- 
 posed the slavery of a portion of their race depress them below 
 their condition in the free States ; on the contrary, we are 
 disposed rather to think their condition better in the slave 
 than the free States. Mr. Everett, in a speech before the 
 Colonization Society, during the present year, says: "they 
 (the free blacks) form, in Massachusetts, about one seventy-fifth 
 part of the population ; one-sixth of the convicts in our prisons 
 are of this class." The average number of annual convictions 
 in the State of Virginia, estimated by the late Governor Giles, 
 from the penitentiary reports, up to 1829, is seventy-one for 
 the whole population — making one in every sixteen-thoiisand 
 of the white population, one in every twenty-two thousand of 
 the slaves, and one for every five thousand of the free colored 
 people. Thus, it will be seen, that crimes among the five 
 blacks are more than three times as numerous as among the 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 435 
 
 whites, and four and a half times more numerous than among 
 the slaves. But, although the free blacks have thus much 
 the largest proportion of crime to answer for, yet the propor- 
 tion is not so great in Virginia as in Massachusetts. Although 
 they are relatively to the other classes more numerous, mak- 
 ing the one-thirtieth of the population of the State, not one- 
 eighth of the whole number of convicts are from among them 
 in Virginia, while in Massachusetts there is one-sixth. We 
 may infer, then, they are not so degraded and vicious in Vir- 
 ginia, a slaveholding State, as in Massachusetts, a non slave- 
 holding State. But there is one fact to which we invite 
 particularly the attention of those philanthropists who have the 
 elevation of Southern slaves so much at heart— that the slaves 
 in Virginia furnish a much smaller annual proportion of 
 convicts than the whites, and among the latter a very large 
 proportion of convicts consist of foreigners or citizens of other 
 
 States. 
 
 There is one disadvantage attendant upon free blacks, in 
 the slaveholding States, which is not felt in the non-slave- 
 holding. In the former, they corrupt the slaves, encourage 
 them to steal from their masters by purchasing from them, 
 and they are, too, a sort of moral conductor by which the 
 slaves can better organize and concert plans of mischief among 
 themselves. 
 
 So far we have been speaking of the evils resulting from 
 mere idleness ; but there are other circumstances which must 
 not be omitted in an enumeration of the obstacles to emanci- 
 pation. The blacks have now all the habits and feelings of 
 slaves, the whites have those of masters ; the prejudices are 
 formed, and mere legislation cannot improve them. "Give 
 me," said a wise man, "the formation of the habits and man- 
 ners of a people, and I care not who makes the laws." Declare 
 the negroes of the South free to-morrow, and vain will be your 
 
436 PROFESSOR DEW OX SLAVERY. 
 
 decree, until you have prepared them for it ; you depress, 
 instead of elevating. The law would, in every point of vies 
 be one of the most cruel and inhuman which could p 
 be passed. The law would make them freemen, and custoa 
 or prejudice, we care not which you call it, would degrafl 
 them to the condition of slaves; and soon should we see, that 
 "it is happened unto them, according to the true proverb, the 
 dog is turned to his own vomit again, and the bow that has 
 been washed, to her wallowing in the mire." " JVe quid ni- 
 mitt n should be our maxim ; and we must never endeavor to 
 elevate beyond what circumstances will allow. It is better 
 that each one should remain in society in the condition in 
 which he has been born and trained, and not to mount too 
 fast without preparation. If a Virginia or South-Carolina 
 former wished to make his overseer perfectly miserable, he 
 could not better do it, than by persuading him that he was 
 not only a freeman, but a polished gentleman likewise, and 
 consequently, induce him to enter his drawing room. lie 
 would soon sigh for the fields, and less polished but more suit- 
 able companions. Bence, in the Southern States, the condi- 
 tion of the free black- is bett< r than in the Northern ; in the 
 latter, he is told, that he is a freeman and entirely equal to 
 the white, and prejudice assigns to him a degraded station — 
 light is furnished him by which to view the interior of the 
 fairy palace which is fitted up for him, and custom expels him 
 from it, after the law has told him it was his. He, conse- 
 quently, leads a life of endless mortification and disappoint 
 ment. Tantalus like, he has frequently the cup to his lips, 
 and imperious custom dashes it untasted from him. In the 
 Southern States, law and custom more generally coincide : the 
 former makes no profession which the latter does not sanction, 
 and consequently, the free black has nothing to grieve and 
 disappoint him. 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 437 
 
 "We have already said, in the course of this review, that if 
 we were to liberate the slaves, we could not, in fact, alter their 
 condition — they would still be virtually slaves ; talent, habit, 
 and wealth, would make the white the master still, and the 
 emancipation would only have the tendency to deprive him 
 of those sympathies and kind feelings for the black which now 
 characterize him. Liberty has been the heaviest curse to the 
 slave, when given too soon ; we have already spoken of the 
 eagerness and joy with which the negroes of Mr. Steele, in 
 Barbadoes, returned to a state of slavery. The east of Europe 
 affords hundreds of similar instances. 1791, Stanislaus Au- 
 gustus, preparing a hopeless resistance to the threatened 
 attack of Russia, in concert with the states, gave to Poland a 
 constitution which established the complete personal freedom 
 of the peasantry. The boon has never been recalled, and 
 what was the consequence ? " Finding (says Jones, in his 
 volume on Rents) their dependence on their proprietors for 
 subsistence remained undiminished, the peasants showed no 
 very grateful sense of the boon bestowed upon them ; they 
 feared they should now be deprived of all claim upon the 
 proprietors for assistance, when calamity or infirmity over- 
 took them. It is only since they have discovered that the 
 connection between them and the owners of the estates on 
 which they reside is little altered in practice, and that their 
 old masters very generally continue, from expediency or hu- 
 manity, the occasional aid they formerly lent them, that they 
 have become reconciled to their new character of freemen." 
 " The Polish boors are, therefore, in fact still slaves" says 
 Burnett, in his ' View of the present state of Poland' " and 
 relatively to their political existence, absolutely subject to the 
 will of their lord as in all the barbarism of the feudal times.'' 
 " I was once on a short journey with a nobleman, when we 
 stopped to bait at a farm-house of a village. The peasants 
 37* 
 
438 PROFESSOR DEW OX SLAVERT. 
 
 got intelligence of the presence of their lord, and assembled 
 
 in a body of twenty or thirty, to prefer a petition to him. I 
 was never more struck with the appearance of these poor 
 wretches, and the contrast of their condition with that of their 
 master: I stood at a distance, and perceived that he did not 
 yield to their supplication. When he dismissed them, I had 
 the curiosity to inquire the object of their petition, and he 
 replied, that they had begged for an increased allowance of 
 land, on the plea that what they had was insufficient for their 
 support. lie added, 'I did not grant it them because their 
 present allotments is the usual quantity, and as it has sufficed 
 hitherto, so I know it will in time to come. < Besides, 1 said 
 he, 'if I give them more, I well know that it will not in real- 
 ity better their circumstances.' Poland does not furnish a 
 man of more humanity than the one who rejected this appar- 
 ently reasonable petition ; but it must be allowed that he had 
 reasons for what he did. Those degraded and wretched be- 
 ings, instead of hoarding the small surplus of their absolute 
 necessaries, are almost universally accustomed to expend it in 
 that abominable spirit, which they call schnaps. It is incred- 
 ible what quantities of this pernicious liquor are drunk by the 
 peasant men and women. The first time I saw any of these 
 withered creatures was at Dantzic. I was prepared by print- 
 ed accounts, to expect a sight of singular wretchedness ; but 
 I shrunk involuntarily from the sight of the reality. Some 
 involuntary exclamation of surprise, mixed with compassion 
 escaped me ; a thoughtless and a feelingless person (which 
 are about the same thing) was standing by— 'Oh, sir,' says 
 he, 'you will find plenty of such people as these in Poland- 
 and you may strike them, and kick them, or do what you' 
 please with them, and they will never resist you : they dare 
 not.' Far be it from me to ascribe the feelings of this man to 
 the more cultivated and humanized Poles ; but each such in- 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 439 
 
 cidental and thoughtless expressions betray too sensibly the gen- 
 eral state of the feeling which exists in regard to these oppres- 
 sed men." The traveller will now look in vain, throughout 
 our slaveholding country, for such misery as is here depicted ; 
 and in spite of all the tales told by gossipping travellers, he 
 will find no master so relentless as the Polish proprietor, and 
 no young man so "thoughtless" and " feelingless" as the 
 young Pole above mentioned. But liberate our slaves, and in 
 a very few years we shall have all these horrors and reproach- 
 es added unto us. 
 
 In Livonia, likewise, the serfs were permaturely liberated ; 
 and mark the consequences. Von Helen, who travelled through 
 Livonia in 181 9, observes : " Along the high road through Li- 
 vonia are found, at short distances, filthy public houses, called 
 in the country Rhatcharuas, before the doors of which are 
 usually seen a multitude of wretched carts and sledges belong- 
 ing to the peasants, who are so addicted to brandy and 
 strong liquors,* that they spend whole hours in those places. 
 Nothing proves so much the state of barbarism in which those 
 men are sunk, as the manner in which they received the de- 
 cree issued about this time. These savages, unwilling to de- 
 pend upon their own exertions for support, made all the resis- 
 tance in their power to that decree, the execution of which 
 was at length entrusted to an armed force." The Livonian 
 peasants, therefore, received their new privileges yet more 
 ungraciously than the Poles, though accompanied with the 
 gift of property and secure means of subsistence, if they chose 
 to exert themselses. By an edict of Maria Theresa, called by 
 the Hungarians the ubarium, personal slavery and attachment 
 to the soil were abolished, and the peasants declared to be 
 " hominus libera? transmigrationis ;" and yet, says Jones, " the 
 
 * We believe, in case of an emancipation of our blacks, that drunk- 
 enness would be among them like the destroying angel. 
 
440 TROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 authority of the owners of the soil over the persons and pro- 
 perty of their tenantry lias been very imperfectly abrogated ; 
 the necessities of the peasants oblige them frequently to resort 
 to their landlords for loans of food ; they become laden with 
 heavy debts, to be discharged by labor.* The proprietors 
 retain the right of employing them at pleasure, paying them, 
 in lieu of subsistence, about one-third of the actual value of 
 their labor ; and lastly, the administration of justice is still in 
 the hands of the nobles ; and one of the first sights which 
 strikes a foreigner, on approaching their mansions, is a sort of 
 low-frame work of posts, to which a serf is tied when it is 
 thought proper to administer the discipline of the whip, for 
 offences which do not seem grave enough to demand a formal 
 trial." 
 
 Let us for a moment revert to the black republic of Ilavti, 
 and we shall see that the negroes have gained nothing by 
 their bloody revolution. Mr. Franklin, who derives his in- 
 formation from personal inspection, gives the following account 
 of the present state of the island : "Oppressed with the weight 
 of an overwhelming debt, contracted without an equivalent, 
 with an empty treasury, and destitute of the ways and means 
 for supplying it; the soil almost neglected, or at least very 
 partially tilled ; without commerce or credit. Such is the 
 present state of the republic ; and it seems almost impossible 
 that, under the system which is now pursued, there should 
 be any amelioration of its condition, or that it can arrive at 
 
 * Almost all our free negroes -will run in debt to the full amount of 
 their credit. "I never knew a free negro (says an intelligent corres- 
 pondent in a late letter) who would not contract debts, if allowed, to a 
 greater amount than he could pay ; and those whom I have suffered 
 to reside on my land, although good mechanics, have been generally 
 so indolent and impoverished as to be in my debt at the end of the 
 year, for provisions, brandy, &c, when I would allow it." 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 441 
 
 any very high state of improvement. Hence, there appears 
 every reason to apprehend that it will recede into irrecovera- 
 ble insignificance, poverty, and disorder .' ' (p. 265.) And 
 the great mass of the Haytiens are virtually in a state of as 
 abject slavery as when the island was under the French do- 
 minion. The government soon found it absolutely necessary 
 to establish a system of compulsion in all respects as bad, and 
 more intolerable than, when slavery existed. The ^ode Henri 
 prescribed the most mortifying regulations, to be obeyed by 
 the laborers of the island ; work ivas to commence at day-liyht 
 and continue uninterruptedly till eight o'clock ; one hour was 
 then allowed to the laborer to breakfast on the spot; at nine, 
 work commenced again, and continued until twelve, when two 
 hours repose was given to the laborer ; at two, he commenced 
 again and worked uniil night. All these regulations were 
 enforced by severe penal enactments. Even Toussaint POu- 
 verture, who is supposed to have had the welfare of the 
 negroes as much at heart as any other ruler in St. Domingo, 
 in one of his proclamations in the ninth year of the French 
 Republic, peremptorily directs — a &\\free laborers, men and 
 women, now in a state of idleness, and living in towns, vil- 
 lages, and on other plantations than those to which they belong, 
 with the intention to evade work, even those of both sexes 
 who had not been employed in field labor since the revolu- 
 tion, are required to return immediately to their respective 
 plantations." And in article seven, he directs, that the " over- 
 seers and drivers of every plantation shall make it their busi- 
 ness to inform the commanding officer of the district in regard 
 to the conduct of the laborers under their management, as 
 well as those who shall absent themselves from their planta- 
 tions without a pass, and of those who, residing on the plan- 
 tations, shall refuse to work ; they shall be forced to go to 
 labor in the field, and if they prove obstinate, they shall be 
 
442 PROFESSOR DEW OX SLAVERY. 
 
 arrested and carried before the military commandant, in order 
 to suffer the punishment above prescribed, according to the 
 exigence of the case, the punishment being fine and imprison- 
 ment." And here is the boasted freedom of the negroes of 
 St. Domingo : the appalling vocabulary of " overseer," " dri- 
 ver," " pass," d'c, is not even abolished. Slavery to the gov- 
 ernment and its military officers is substituted for private sla- 
 very ; the black master ha- stepped into the shoes of the 
 white ; and we all know that he is the most cruel of masters, 
 and more dreaded by the negro than any of the ten plagues 
 of Egypt. We are well convinced that there is not a single 
 negro in the commonwealth of Virginia, who would accept 
 such freedom ; and yet the happiest of the human race are 
 constantly invited to sigh for such freedom, and to sacrifice 
 all their happiness in the vain wish. But, it is not necessary 
 further to multiply examples ; enough has already been said, 
 we hope, to convince the most sceptical of the gnat disadvan- 
 tage to the slave himself, of freedom, when he is not prepared 
 for it. It is unfortunate, indeed, that prejudiced and misguid- 
 ed philanthropists so often assert as facts, what, on investiga- 
 tion, turns out not only false, but even hostile to the very 
 theories which they are attempting to support by them. We 
 have already given one example of this kind of deception, in 
 relation to Mr. Steele. We will now give another. 
 
 "In the year 1760, the Chancellor Zamoyski," says Bur- 
 nett, "enfranchised six villages in the Palatinate of Masovia. 
 This experiment has been much vaunted by Mr. Coxe, as 
 having been attended with all the good effects desired ; and 
 he asserts that the Chancellor had, in consequence, enfran- 
 chised the peasants on all his estates. Both of these assertions 
 are false. I inquired particularly of the son of the present 
 Count Zamoyski, respecting these six villages, and w T as grieved 
 to learn, that the experiment had completely failed. The 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 443 
 
 Count said, that within a few years, he had sold the estate ; 
 and added, I was glad to get rid of it, from the trouble the 
 peasants gave me. These degraded beings, on receiving then- 
 freedom, were overjoyed at they knew not what, having no 
 distinct comprehension of what freedom meant ; but merely 
 a rude notion that they may now do what they like * They 
 ran into every species of excess and extravagance which then- 
 circumstances admitted. Drunkenness, instead of being occa- 
 sional, became almost perpetual ; riot and disorder usurped 
 the place of quietness and industry ; the necessary labor sus- 
 pended, the lands were worse cultivated than before ; the small 
 rents required of them they were often unable to pay." (Bur- 
 netts View of Poland, p. 105.) Indeed, it is a calamity to 
 mankind, that zealous and overheated philanthropists will not 
 suffer the truth to circulate, when believed hostile to their 
 visionary schemes. Such examples as the foregoing ought to 
 be known and attended to. They would prevent a great deal 
 of that impatient silly action which has drawn down such 
 incalculable misery, so frequently, upon the human family 
 -There is a time for all things," and nothing in this world 
 should be done before its time. An emancipation of our V 
 slaves would check at once that progress of improvement 
 which is now so manifest among them. The whites would 
 either gradually withdraw, and leave whole districts or settle- 
 ments tn their possession, in which case they would sink rap- 
 idly in the scale of civilization ; or, the blacks, by closer inter- 
 course, would bring the whites down to their level. In the 
 contact between the civilized and uncivilized man, all history 
 and experience show, that the former will be sure to sink 
 to the level of the latter. In these cases, it is always easier to 
 
 * Precisely such a notion as that entertained by the slave* of this 
 country and the West Indies. 
 
444 PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 descend than ascend, and nothing will prevent the facilis dcs* 
 census but slavery. 
 
 The great evil, however, of these schemes of emancipation, 
 remains yet to be told. They are admirably calculated to 
 excite plots, murders and insurrections ; whether gradual or 
 rapid in their operation, this is the inevitable tendency. In 
 the former case, you disturb the quiet and contentment of the 
 slave who is left unemancipated ; and he becomes the mid- 
 night murderer to gain that fatal freedom whose blessings he 
 does not comprehend. In the latter case, want and invidious 
 distinction will prompt to revenge. Two totally different! 
 races, as we have before seen, cannot easily harmonize together, 
 and although we have no idea that any organized plan of in- 
 surrection or rebellion can ever secure for the black the supe- 
 riority, even when free,* yet his idleness will produce want 
 and worthlessness, and his very worthlessness and degradation 
 will stimulate him to deeds of rapine and vengeanee; he will 
 oftener engage in plots and massacres, and thereby draw down 
 on his devoted head, the vengeance of the provoked whites. 
 But one limited massacre is recorded in Virginia history; let 
 her liberate her slaves, and every year you would hear of in- 
 surrections and plots, and every day would perhaps record a 
 minder ; the melancholy talc of Southampton would not alone 
 blacken the page of our history, and make the tender mother 
 shed the tear of horror over 1km- babe as Bhe clasped it to her 
 bosom ; others of a deeper dye would thicken upon us; those 
 regions where the brightness of polished life has dawned and 
 brightened into full day, would relapse into darkness, thick 
 and full of horrors, and in those dark and dismal hours, we 
 might well exclaim, in the shuddering language of the poet: 
 
 * Power can never be dislodged from the hands of the intelligent, 
 the wealthy, and the courageous, by any plans that can be formed by 
 the poor, the ignorant, and the habitually subservient ; history scarce 
 furnishes such an example. 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVtiix. «~ 
 
 u "Sax. atra cava eircumvolat umbra 
 Quis cladem illius noctis, quis fuiiera fando 
 Explicit? * * * 
 
 Urbs antiqua ruit, multos dominata per annos 
 Plurima perque vias sternunter inertia passim 
 Corpora per que domos, et religiosa deorum 
 Limina. * * Orudelis ubique 
 Luctus ubique pavor, et plurima luortis imago. " 
 Colombia and Guatemala have tried the dangerous experi- 
 ment of emancipation, and we invite the attention of the 
 reader to the following dismal picture of the city of Guatemala, 
 drawn by the graphic pencil of Mr. Dunn : " With lazaroni 
 in rags and filth, a colored population drunken and revengeful, 
 her females licentious, and her males shameless, she ranks as 
 a true child of that accursed city, which still remains as a living 
 monument of the fulfilment of prophecy, and the forbearance 
 of God, the hole of every foul spirit, the ca^e of every unclean 
 and hateful bird. The pure and simple sweets of domestic 
 life, with its thousand tendernesses and its gentle affections 
 are here exchanged for the feverish joys of a dissipated hour ; 
 and the peaceful home of love is converted into a theatre of 
 mutual accusations and recriminations. This leads to violent 
 excesses ; men carry a large knife in a belt, women one fast- 
 ened in the garter. Not a day passes ivithout murder ; on 
 fast days and on Sundays, the average number killed is from 
 four to five. From the number admitted into the hospital of 
 St. Juan de Dios, it appears that in the year 1827, near fifteen 
 hundred were stabbed, of whom from three to four hundred 
 died." * Thank Heaven, no such scenes as these have yet 
 been witnessed in our country. From the day of the arrival 
 of the negro slaves upon our coast in the Dutch vessel, up to 
 the present hour, a period of more than two hundred years, 
 * See Dunn's Sketches of Guatemala, iu 1S2Y and 1S28, pp. 95, 
 
 96, aud 97. 
 38 
 
440 PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 there Lave not perished in the whole southern country, by the 
 hands of slaves, a number of whites equal to the average an- 
 nual stabbings in the city of Guatemala, containing a popula- 
 tion of 30,000 souls ! " Nor is the freed African," says 
 Dunn, " one degree raised in the scale — under fewer restraints, 
 his vices display themselves more disgustingly ; insolent and 
 proud, indolent and a liar, he imitates only the vices of his 
 superiors, and to the catalogue of his former crimes adds 
 drunkenness and theft." Do not all these appalling examples 
 but too eloquently tell the consequences of emancipation, and 
 bid us well beware how we enter on any system which will be 
 almost certain to bring down ruin and degradation both on 
 the whites and the blacks. 
 
 But in despite of all the reasoning and illustrations which 
 can be urged, the example of the northern States of our con- 
 federacy and the west of Europe afford, it is thought by some, 
 conclusive evidence of the facility of changing the slave into 
 the freeman. As to the former, it is enough to say that 
 paucity of numbers,* uncongenial climate, and the state of 
 agriculture to the North, together with the great demand of 
 slaves to the South, alone accomplished the business. In 
 reference to the west of Europe, it was the rise of the towns, 
 the springing up of a middle class, and a change of agriculture, 
 which gradually and silently effected the emancipation of the 
 slaves, in a great measure through the operation of the selfish 
 principle itself Commerce and manufactures arose in the 
 western countries, and with them sprang up a middle class of 
 freemen, in the cities and the country too, which gradually 
 and imperceptibly absorbed into its body all the slaves. But 
 fur this middle class, which acted as the absorbent, the slaves 
 
 * " There are more free negroes and mulattoes (said Judge Tucker 
 in 1803) in Virginia alone, than are to be found in the four New 
 Kngland States, and Vermont in addition to them." — (Tucker's Black 
 stone, vol. 1, part 2d, p. 60, foot note.) 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 447 
 
 could not have been liberated with safety or advantage to 
 either party. Now, in our southern country, there is no body 
 of this kind to become the absorbent, nor are we likely to have 
 such a body, unless we look into the vista of the future, and 
 imagine a time when the south shall be to the north, what 
 England now is to Ireland, and will consequently be overrun 
 with northern laborers, underbidding the means of subsistence 
 which will be furnished to the negro : then, perhaps, such a 
 laboring class, devoid of all pride and habits of lofty bearing, 
 may become a proper recipient or absorbent for emancipated 
 slaves. But even then, we fear the effects of difference of color. 
 The slave of Italy or France could be emancipated or escape 
 to the city, and soon all records of his former state would 
 perish, and he would gradually sink into the mass of freemen 
 around him. But, unfortunately, the emancipated black carries 
 a mark which no time can erase; he forever wears the in- 
 delible symbol of his inferior condition ; the Ethiopian cannot 
 change his skin, nor the leopard his spots. 
 
 In Greece and Rome — and we imagine it was so during 
 the feudal ages — the domestic slaves were frequently among 
 the most learned, virtuous, and intelligent members of society. 
 Terrence, Phaedrus, iEsop, and Epicetus, were all slaves. 
 They were frequently taught all the arts and sciences, in order 
 that they might be more valuable to their masters. " Seneca 
 relates," says Wallace, in his Numbers of Mankind, " that 
 Calvisius Labinus had many Anagnosaa slaves, or such as 
 were learned and could read to their masters, and that none 
 of them were purchased under 807/. 5s. lOd. According to 
 Pliny, Daphnis, the grammarian, cost 565 11. 10s. 10d, 
 Roscius, the actor, would gain yearly 4036/. 9s. 2d. A morio, 
 or fool, was sold for 161/. 9s. 2d." {Wallace, on the Num- 
 bers of Mankind, page 142.) There was no obstacle, there- 
 fore, to the emancipation of such men as these, (except as to 
 
448 PROFESSOR DEW OST SLAVERY. 
 
 the fool,) either on the score of color, intelligence, habits, or 
 anything else — the body of freemen could readily and without 
 difficulty or danger absorb them. Not so now — nor will it be 
 in all time to come, with our blacks. With these remarks, 
 we shall close our examination of the plans by which it has 
 been or may be proposed to get rid of slavery. If our argu- 
 ments are sound, and reasonings conclusive, we have shown 
 they are all wild and visionary, calculated to involve the south 
 in ruin and degradation ; and we now most solemnly call 
 upon the statesman and the patriot,, the editor and the phi- 
 lanthropist, to pause, and consider well, before they move in 
 this dangerous and delicate business. But a few hasty and 
 fatal steps in advance, and the work may be irretrievable. 
 For Heaven's sake, then, let us pause, and recollect, that on 
 this subject, so pregnant with the safety, happiness, and pros- 
 perity of millions, we shall be doomed to realize the fearful 
 motto, " nulla vestigia retrorsum." 
 
 There are some who, in the plenitude of their folly and 
 recklessness, have likened the cause of the blacks to Poland 
 and France, and have darkly hinted that the same aspirations 
 wdiich the generous heart breathes fur the cause of bleeding, 
 suffering Poland and revolutionary France, must be indulged 
 for the insurrectionary blacks. And has it come at last to 
 this : that the hellish plots and massacres of Dessalines, Ga- 
 briel and Xat Turner, are to be compared to the noble deeds 
 and devoted patriotism of Lafayette, Kosciusko, and Schry- 
 necki ? and we suppose the same logic would elevate Lundy 
 and Garrison to niches in the Temple of Fame, by the side of 
 Locke and Rousseau. There is an absurdity in this conception, 
 which so outrages reason and the most common feelings of 
 humanity, as to render it unworthy of serious, patient refuta- 
 tion. But we will, nevertheless, for a moment examine it^ 
 and shall find, on their own principles, if such reasoners have 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 449 
 
 any principles, that their conception is entirely fallacious. 
 The true theory of the right of revolution we conceive to be 
 the following : no men, or set of men, are justifiable in attempt- 
 ing a revolution which must certainly fail ; or if successful, 
 must produce necessarily a much worse state of things than 
 the pre-existent order. We have not the right to plunge the 
 dagger into the monarch's bosom, merely because he is a 
 monarch — we must be sure it is the only means of dethroning 
 a tyrant and giving peace and happiness to an aggrieved and 
 suffering people. Brutus would have had no right to kill 
 Caesar, if he could have foreseen the consequences. If France 
 and Poland had been peopled with a race of serfs and degraded 
 citizens, totally unfit for freedom and self-government, and 
 Lafayette and Kosciusko could have known it, they would 
 have been parricides, instead of patriots, to have roused such 
 ignorant and unhappy wretches to engage in a revolution, 
 whose object they could not comprehend, and which would 
 inevitably involve them in all the horrors of relentless carnage 
 and massacre. No man has ever yet contended that the 
 blacks could gain their liberty and an ascendancy over the 
 whites by wild insurrections; no one has ever imagined that 
 they could do more than bring clown, by their rash and bar- 
 barous achievements, the vengeance of the infuriated whites 
 upon their devoted heads. Where, then, is the analogy to 
 Poland and to France, — lands of generous achievement, of 
 learning, and of high and noble purposes, and with people, 
 capable of self-government ? We shall conclude this branch 
 of our subject with the following splendid extract from a speech 
 of Mr. Canning, which should at least make the rash legislator 
 more distrustful of his specifics : 
 
 " In dealing with a negro, we must remember that we are 
 dealing with a being possessing the form and strength of a 
 man, but the intellect only of a child. To turn him loose in 
 38* 
 
450 PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 the manhood of his physical passions, but in the infancy of 
 his uninstr acted reason, would be to raise up a creature re- 
 sembling the splendid fiction of a recent romance ; the hero of 
 "which constructs a human form with all the physical capa- 
 bilities of man, and with the thews and sinews of a giant, but 
 being unable to impart to the work of his hands a perception 
 of right and wrong, he finds too late that he has only created 
 a more than mortal power of doing mischief, and himself re- 
 coils from the monster which he has made. What is it we 
 have to deal with ? is it an evil of yesterday's origin ? with a 
 thing which has grown up in our time ? of which we have 
 watched the growth — measured the extent — and which we 
 have ascertained the means of correcting or controlling ? No, 
 we have to deal with an evil which is the growth of centuries; 
 which is almost coeval with the deluge ; which has existed 
 under different modifications since man was man. Do gentle- 
 men, in their passion for legislation, think, that after only 
 thirty years discussion, they can now at once manage as they 
 will, the most unmanageable, perhaps, of all subjects ? Or 
 do we forget, sir, that in fact not more than thirty years have 
 elapsed since we first presumed to approach even the outworks 
 of this great question. Do we, in the ardor of our nascent 
 reformation, forget that during the ages which this system has 
 existed, no preceding generation of legislators has ventured to 
 <©uch it with a reforming hand ; and have we the vanity to 
 i atter ourselves that we can annihilate it at a blow ? No, sir, 
 o ! If we are to do good, it is not to be done by sudden and 
 ■violent measures." Let the warning language of Mr. Canning 
 be attended to in our legislative halls, and all rash and intem- 
 perate legislation avoided. We will now proceed to the last 
 division of our subject, and examine a little into the injustice 
 and evils of slavery, with the view of ascertaining if we are 
 really exposed to those dangers and horrors which many seem 
 to anticipate in the current of time. 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 451 
 
 III. Injustice and Evils of Slavery. — 1st. It is said slavery 
 is wrong, in the abstract at least, and contrary to the spirit of 
 Christianity. To this we answer as before, that any question 
 must be determined by its circumstances, and if, as really is 
 the case, we cannot get rid of slavery without producing a 
 greater injury to both the masters and slaves, there is no rule 
 of conscience or revealed law of God which can condemn us. 
 The physician will not order the spreading cancer to be extir- 
 pated, although it will eventually cause the death of his patient, 
 because he would thereby hasten the fatal issue. So, if slavery 
 had commenced even contrary to the laws of God and man, 
 and the sin of its introduction rested upon our heads, and it 
 was even carrying forward the nation by slow degrees to final 
 rum — y e t, if it were certain that an attempt to remove it 
 would only hasten and heighten the final catastrophe — that it 
 was, in fact, a "vulnus immedicabile " on the body politic 
 which no legislation could safely remove, then we would not 
 only not be found to attempt the extirpation, but we would 
 stand guilty of a high offence in the sight of both God and 
 man, if we should rashly make the effort. "But the original 
 sin of introduction rest not on our heads, and we shall soon 
 see that all those dreadful calamities which the false prophets 
 of our day are pointing to, will never, in all probability, occur. 
 With regard to the assertion that slavery is against the spirit 
 of Christianity, we are ready to admit the general assertion, 
 but deny most positively, that there is any thing in the Old or 
 New Testament, which would go to show that slavery, when 
 once introduced, ought at all events to be abrogated, or that 
 the master commits any offence in holding slaves. The child- 
 ren of Israel themselves were slaveholders, and were not con- 
 dom iied for it. All the patriarchs themselves were slaveholders ; 
 Abraham had more than three hundred ; Isaac had a " great 
 
452 PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 store " * of them ; and even the patient and meek Job himself 
 had " a very great household." When the children of Israel 
 conquered the land of Canaan, they made one whole tribe 
 " hewers of wood and drawers of water," and they were at that 
 very time under the special guidance of Jehovah ; they were 
 permitted expressly to purchase slaves of the heathen, and keep 
 them as an inheritance for their posterity ; and even the child- 
 ren of Israel might be enslaved for six years. When we turn 
 to the New Testament, we find not one single passage at all 
 calculated to disturb the conscience of an honest slaveholder. 
 No one can read it without seeing and admiring that the 
 meek and humble Saviour of the world in no instance meddled 
 with the established institutions of mankind ; he came to save 
 a fallen world, and not to excite the black passions of men, 
 and array them in deadly hostility against each other. From 
 no one did he turn away ; his plan was offered alike to all — 
 to the monarch and the subject, the rich and the poor, the 
 master and the slave. He was born in the Roman world — 
 a world in which the most galling slavery existed, a thousand 
 times more cruel than the slavery in our own country ; and 
 yet he no where encourages insurrection ; he no where fosters 
 discontent; but exhorts always to implicit obedience and 
 fidelity. W T hat a rebuke does the practice of the Redeemer 
 of mankind imply upon the conduct of some of his nominal 
 disciples of the day, who seek to destroy the contentment of 
 the slaves, to rouse their most deadly passions, to break up 
 the deep foundations of society, and to lead on to a night of 
 darkness and confusion ! " Let every man [says Paul] abide 
 in the same calling wherein he is called. Art thou called 
 being a servant ? care not for it ; but if thou mayest be made 
 
 * And the man (Isaac) waxed great and went forward, and grew 
 until lie became very great ; for he had possession of flocks, and pos- 
 session of herds, and great store of servants. — (Genesis chap, 26.) 
 
PROFESSOR DEW OX SLAVERY. 
 
 453 
 
 free, use it rather."— (1 Corinth, vii. 20, 21.) Again : " Let 
 as many servants as are under the yoke, count their own mas- 
 ters worthy of all honor, that the name of God and his doc- 
 trines be not blasphemed; and they that have believing 
 masters, let them not despise them, because they are brethren, 
 but rather do them service, because they are faithful and be- 
 loved partakers of the benefit. These things teach and exhort." 
 —(1 Tim. vi. 1, 2.) Servants are even commanded in Scrip- 
 ture to be faithful and obedient to unkind masters. " Servants," 
 (says Peter,) " be subject to your masters with all fear ; not 
 only to the good and gentle, but to the froward. For what 
 glory is it if when ye shall be buffeted for your faults ye take 
 it patiently ; but if when ye do well and suffer for it, ye take 
 it patiently, this is acceptable with God. 1 — (1 Peter,\\. 18, 20.) 
 These and many other passages in the New Testament, most 
 convincingly prove, that slavery in the Roman world was no 
 where charged as a fault or crime upon the holder, and every 
 where is the most implicit obedience enjoined. * 
 
 We beg leave, before quitting this topic, to address a few 
 remarks to those who have conscientious scruples about the 
 holding of slaves, and therefore consider themselves under an 
 obligation to break all the ties of friendship and kindred— dis- 
 solve all the associations of happier days, to flee to a land 
 where this evil does not exist. We cannot condemn the con- 
 scientious actions of mankind, but we must be permitted to 
 say, that if the assumption even of these pious gentlemen be 
 correct, we do consider their conduct as very unphilosophical ; 
 and we will go further still : we look upon it as even immoral 
 upon their own principles. Let us admit that slavery is an 
 evil, and what then ? Why, it has been entailed upon us by 
 no fault of ours, and must we shrink from the charge which 
 
 * See Epliesians, vi. 5, Titus ii. 9, 10. Philemon, Colossians, iii. 
 22, and iv. 1. 
 
454 PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 devolves upon us, and throw the slave in consequence into the 
 hands of those who have noscruples of conscience — those who 
 will not perhaps treat him so kindly ? No ! this is not philo- 
 sophy, it is not morality ; we must recollect that the unprofit- 
 able man was thrown into utter darkness. To the slaveholder 
 has truly been entrusted the five talents. Let him but recol- 
 lect the exhortation of the Apostle — " Masters, give unto your 
 servants that which is just and equal; knowing that ye also 
 h:i\c a master in heaven ;" and in the final day he shall have 
 nothing on this score with which his conscience need be smit- 
 ten, and he may expect the welcome plaudit — "Well done 
 thou good and faithful servant, thou hast been faithful over a 
 few things, I will make thee ruler over many things ; enter 
 thou into the joy of thy Lord." Ilallam, in his History of the 
 Middle Ages, says, that the greatest moral evil flowing from 
 monastic establishments, consisted in withdrawing the good and 
 religious from society, and leaving the remainder unchecked 
 and unrestrained in the pursuit of their vicious practices. 
 Would not such principles as those just mentioned lead to a 
 similar result? AVe cannot, therefore, but consider them as 
 whining and sickly, and highly unphilosophical and detrimen- 
 tal to society. 
 
 2dly. But it is further said that the moral effects of slavery 
 are of the most deleterious and hurtful kind ; and as Mr. Jef- 
 ferson has given the sanction of his great name to this charge, 
 we shall proceed to examine it with all that respectful defer- 
 ence to which every sentiment of so pure and philanthropic a 
 heart is justly entitled. 
 
 " The whole commerce between master and slave," says he, 
 "is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions ; the 
 most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degra- 
 ding submission on the other. Our children see this, and 
 learn to imitate it, for man is an imitative animal — this quali- 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 40 & 
 
 ty is the germ of education in him. From his cradle to his 
 grave, he is learning what he sees others do. If a parent had 
 no other motive, either in his own philanthropy or self-love, 
 for restraining the intemperance of passion towards his slave, 
 j it should always be a sufficient one that his child is present. 
 I But generally it is not sufficient. The parent storms, the child 
 ' looks & on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same 
 airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a loose to his worst 
 | of passions, and thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in 
 the worst of tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with odious 
 peculiarities."* Now we boldly assert that the tact does not 
 bear Mr. Jefferson out in his conclusions. He has supposed 
 the master in a continual passion— in the constant exercise of 
 the most odious tyranny, and the child, a creature of imita- 
 tion, looking on and learning. But is not this master some- 
 times kind and indulgent to his slaves? Does he not mete 
 out to them, for faithful service, the reward of his cordial ap- 
 probation 3 Is it not his interest to do it \ and when thus act- 
 ing humanely, and speaking kindly, where is the child, the 
 creature of imitation, that he does not look on and learn I We 
 may rest assured, in this intercourse between a good master 
 and his servant, more good than evil may be taught the child ; 
 ;he exalted principles of morality and religion may thereby 
 be sometimes indelibly inculcated upon his mind, and instead 
 »f being reared a selfish contracted being, with nought but 
 self to look to— he acquires a more exalted benevolence, a 
 greater generosity and elevation of soul, and embraces for the 
 sphere of his generous actions a much wider field. Look to 
 the slaveholding population of our country, and you every 
 where find them characterized by noble and elevated senti- 
 ments, by humane and virtuous feelings. We do not find 
 among them that cold, contracted, calculating selfishness, which 
 * Jefferson's Notes on Virginia. 
 
456 PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 withers and repels every thing around it, and lessens or de- 
 stroys all the multiplied enjoyments of social intercourse. Go 
 into our national councils, and ask for the most generous, the 
 most disinterested, the most conscientious, and the least un- 
 just and oppressive in their principles, and see whether the 
 slaveholder will be past by in the selection. Edwards says 
 that slavery in the West Indies seems to awaken the laudable 
 propensities of our nature, such as, " frankness, sociability, be- 
 nevolence and generosity. In no part of the globe is the vir- 
 tue of hospitality more prevalent than in the British sugar 
 islands. The gates of the planter are always open to the re- 
 ception of his guests — to be a stranger is of itself a sufficient 
 introduction." 
 
 Is it not a fact, known to every man in the south, that the 
 most cruel master are those who have been unaccustomed to 
 slavery. It is well known that northern gentlemen who mar- 
 ry southern heiresses, are much severer masters than south- 
 ern gentlemen.* And yet, if Mr. Jefferson's reasoning were 
 correct, they ought to be milder : in fact, it follows from his 
 reasoning, that the authority which the father is called on to 
 exercise over his children, must be seriously detrimental ; and 
 yet we know that this is not the case ; that on the contrary, 
 there is nothing which so much humanizes and softens the 
 heart, as this very authority ; and there are none, even among 
 those who have no children themselves, so disposed to pardon 
 the follies and indiscretion of youth, as those who have seen 
 most of them, and suffered greatest annoyance. There may 
 be many cruel masters, and there are unkind and cruel fathers 
 too ; but both the one and the other make all those around 
 
 * A similar remark is made by Ramsay, and confirmed by Bryant 
 Edwards, in regard to the "West Indies. Adventurers from Europe 
 are universally more cruel and morose towards the slaves, than the 
 Creole or native West Indian. (Hist of "W. I. Book 4, Chap. I.) 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 45*7 
 
 them shudder with honor. We are disposed to think that 
 their example in society tends rather to strengthen than weak- 
 en the principle of benevolence and humanity. 
 
 Let us now look a moment to the slave, and contemplate 
 his position. Mr. Jefferson has described him as hating, rather 
 than loving his master, and as losing, too, all that amor patrice 
 which characterizes the true patriot. We assert again, that 
 Mr. Jefferson is not borne out by the fact. We are well con- 
 vinced that there is nothing but the mere relations of hus- 
 band and wife, parent and child, brother and sister, which 
 produce a closer tie, than the relation of master and servant.* 
 We have no hesitation in affirming, that throughout the whole 
 slaveholding country, the slaves of a good master are his 
 warmest, most constant, and most devoted friends ; they have 
 been accustomed to look up to him as their supporter, director • 
 and defender. Every one acquainted with southern slaves, 
 knows that the slave rejoices in the elevation and prosperity 
 of his master ; and the heart of no one is more gladdened at 
 the successful debut of young master or miss on the great 
 theatre of the world, than that of either the young slave who 
 has grown up with them, and shared in all their sports, and 
 even partaken of all their delicacies— or the aged one who has 
 looked on and watched them from birth to manhood, with the 
 kindest and most affectionate solicitude, and has ever met from 
 them all the kind treatment and generous sympathies of feel- 
 ing, tender hearts. Judge Smith, in his able speech on Foote's 
 Kesolutions, in the Senate, said, in an emergency, he would 
 rely upon his own slaves for his defence — he would put arms into 
 their hands, and he had no doubt they would defend him 
 faithfully. In the late Southampton insurrection, we know 
 
 * There are hundreds of slaves in the southern country who will de- 
 sert parents, wives or husbands, brothers and sisters, to follow a kind 
 master— so strong is the tie of master and slave. 
 39 
 
458 PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 that many actually convened their slaves and armed tliem for 
 defence, although slaves were here the cause of the evil which 
 was to be repelled. We have often heard slaveholders affirm 
 that they would sooner rely upon their slaves' fidelity and at- 
 tachment in the hour of dangeT and severe trial, than on any 
 other equal number of individuals; and we all know, that the 
 son or daughter, who has been long absent from the parental 
 roof, on returning to the scenes of infancy never fails to be 
 
 ted with the kindest welcome and the most sincere and 
 heartfelt congratulations from those slaves among whom he 
 has been reared to manhood. 
 
 Gilbert Stuart, in his History of Society, says that the time 
 when the vassals of the I' udal ages was most faithful, most 
 
 lient, and most interested in the welfare of his master, was 
 precisely when his dependence was most complete, and when, 
 quently, he relied upon his lord for everything. When 
 the feudal tenure was gradually changing, and the law was 
 interposing between landlord and tenant, the close tie between 
 them began to dissolve, and with it, the kindness on one side, 
 and the affection and gratitude on the other, waned and van- 
 ished. From all this, we are forced to draw one important 
 inference — that it is dangerous to the happiness and well-being 
 of the slave, for either the imprudent philanthropist to attempt 
 to interpose too often, or the rash legislator to obtrude his re- 
 gulating ediets, between master and slave. They only serve 
 to render the slave more intractable and unhappy, and the 
 master more cruel and unrelenting. The British West India 
 l>iand- form at this momenta mosl striking illustration of this 
 remark; the law lias interposed between master and servant, 
 and the sl; 1V e has been made idle and insolent, and conse- 
 
 atly worthless; a vague and irrational idea of liberty 
 
 D infused into his mind ; he has become restless and un- 
 happy ; and the planters are deserting the islands, because 
 
moFESSon dew on slavery. 450 
 
 the very law itself is corrupting and ruining the slave. The 
 price of slaves, it is said, since the passage of those law*, has 
 fallen fifty per cent., and the rapid declension of the number 
 of slaves, proves that their condition has been greatly injured, 
 instead of benefited. This instance is fraught with deep in- 
 struction to the legislator, and should make him pause. And 
 we call upon the reverend clergy, whose examples should be 
 pure, and whose precepts should be fraught with wisdom and 
 prudence, to beware, lest in their zeal for the black, they suf- 
 fer too much of the passion and prejudice of the human heart 
 to meddle with those pure principles by which they should be 
 governed. Let them beware of " what spirit they are of. 1 ' 
 " No sound," says Burke, " ought to be heard in the church, 
 but the healing voice of christian charity. Those who quit 
 their proper character, to assume what does not belong to them, 
 are for the most part ignorant of the character they assume, 
 and of the character they leave off. Wholly unacquainted 
 with the world in which they are so fond of meddling, and m- 
 experieneed in all its affairs, on which they pronounce with so 
 much confidence, thev have nothing of politics but the pas- 
 sions thev excite. Surely the church is a place where one 
 day's truce ought to be allowed to the dissensions and animosi- 
 ties of mankind." 
 
 In the debate in the Virginia Legislature, no speaker insinu- 
 ated even, we believe, that the slaves in Virginia were not 
 treated kindly ; and all, too, agree that they were most abun- 
 dantly fed ; and we have no doubt but that they form the hap- 
 piest portion of our society. A merrier being does not exist on 
 the face of the globe, than the negro slave of the U. States. 
 Even Captain Hall himself, with his thick « crust of preju- 
 dice," is obliged to allow that they are happy and contented, 
 and the master much less cruel than is generally imagined. 
 Why, then, since the slave is happy, and happiness is the great 
 
460 PROFESSOR DEYv" OS SLAVERY. 
 
 object of all animated creation, should we endeavor to disturb 
 bis contentment by infusing into bis mind a vain and in dew 
 nit.- desire for liberty — a sum. 'tiling which he cannot compre- 
 hend, and which must inevitably dry up the very sources of 
 bis happiness. 
 
 The fact is that all of us, and the great author of the Decla- 
 ration of Independence is like us in this respect, are too prone 
 to judge of the happiness of others by ourselves — we make 
 self the standard, and endeavor to draw down every one to 
 its dimensions — not recollecting that the benevolence of the 
 Omnipotent has made the mind of man pliant and susceptible 
 of happiness in almost every situation and employment W<i 
 might rather die than be the obscure slave that waits at our 
 back — our education and our habits generate an ambition that 
 makes us aspire at something loftier — and disposes us to loop 
 upon the slave as unsusceptible of happiness in his humble 
 sphere, when he may indeed be much happier than we are, 
 and have his ambition too; but his ambition is to excel all his 
 other slaves in the performance of bis servile duties — to please 
 and to gratify his master— and to command the praise of all 
 who witness his exertions. Let the wily philanthropist but 
 cme and whisper into the ears of such a slave that his situa- 
 tion is degrading and his lot a miserable one — let him but 
 light up the dungeon in which he persuades the slave that he 
 is caged — and that moment, like the serpent that entered the 
 garden of Eden, he destroys his happiness and his usefulness. 
 "We cannot, therefore, agree with Mr. Jefferson, in the opinion 
 that slavery makes the unfeeling tyrant and ungrateful depen- 
 dant ; and in regard to Virginia especially, we are almost dis- 
 posed, judging from the official returns of crimes and convic- 
 tions, to assert, with a statesman who has descended to his 
 tomb, (Mr. Giles,) " that the whole population of Virginia, 
 consisting of three castes — of free white, free colored, and slave 
 
PROFESSOR DEW OX SLAVERY. 461 
 
 colored population, is the soundest and most moral of any 
 other, according to numbers, in the whole world, as far as is 
 known to me." 
 
 3dly. It has been contended that slavery is unfavorable to a 
 republican spirit ; but the whole history of the world proves 
 that this is far from being the case. In the ancient republics 
 of Greece and Rome, where the spirit of liberty glowed with 
 most intensity, the slaves were more numerous than the free- 
 men. Aristotle, and the great men of antiquity, believed sla- 
 very necessary to keep alive the spirit of freedom. In Sparta, 
 the freemen were even forbidden to perform the offices of 
 slaves, lest he might lose the spirit of independence. In mo- 
 dern times, too, liberty has always been more ardently desired 
 by slaveholding communities. " Such " says Burke, " were our 
 Gothic ancestors ; such, in our days, were the Poles ; and such 
 will be all masters of slaves who are not slaves themselves." 
 " These people of the southern (American) colonies are much 
 more strongly, and with a higher and more stubborn spirit, at- 
 tached to liberty, than those of the northward." And from 
 the time of Burke down to the present day, the Southern 
 States have always borne the same honorable distinction. 
 Burke says, "it is because freedom is to them not only an en- 
 joyment, but a kind of rank and privilege." Another, and 
 j erhaps more efficient cause of this, is the perfect spirit of 
 equality so prevalent among the whites of all the slaveholding 
 States. Jack Cade, the English reformer, wished all mankind to 
 be brought to one common level. We believe slavery in the U. 
 States has accomplished this, in regard to the whites, as near- 
 ly as can be expected or even desired in this world. The me- 
 nial and low offices being all performed by the blacks, there is 
 at once takeu away the greatest cause of distinction and sepa- 
 ration of the ranks of society. The man to the north will not 
 shake hands familiarly with his servant, and converse, and 
 39* 
 
462 PROFESSOR DEW OX SLAVERY. 
 
 laugh and dine with him, no matter how honest and respecta- 
 ble he may be. But go to the south, and you will find that 
 no white man feels such inferiority of rank as to be unworthy 
 of association with those around him. Color alone is hen 
 the badge of distinction, the true mark of aristocracy, and all 
 who are white are equal in spite of the variety of occupation. 
 The same thing is observed in the West Indies. u Of the 
 character common to the white resident of the West Indies, it 
 appears to me," says Edwards, "that the leading feature is an 
 independent spirit, and a display of conscious equality through- 
 out all ranks and conditions. The poorest white person seems 
 to consider himself nearly on a level with the richest ; and em- 
 boldened by this idea, approaches his employer with extended 
 hand, and a freedom which, in the countries of Europe, is sel- 
 dom displayed by men in the lower orders of life towards their 
 superiors." And it is this spirit of equality which is both the 
 generator and preserver of the genuine spirit of liberty. 
 
 4thly. Insecurity of the <rh'<hs y arising from plots, insur- 
 rections, <(•'•., among tin blacks. This is the evil, after all, let 
 us say what we will, which really operates most powerfully 
 upon the schemers and emancipating philanthropists of those 
 sections where slaws constitute the principal • roperty. Now, 
 if we have shown, as we trust we have, that the scheme of 
 deportation is utterly impracticable, and that emancipation, 
 with permission to remain, will produce all these horrors in still 
 greater degree, it follows that this evil of slavery, allowing it 
 to exist in all its latitude, would be no argument fen* legisla- 
 tive action, and therefore we might well rest contented with 
 this issue ; but as we are anxious to exhibit this whole Bubject in 
 its true bearings, and as we do believe that this evil has been 
 most strangely and causelessly exaggerated, we have deter- 
 mined to examine it a moment, and point out its true extent. 
 It seems to us that those who insist most upon it, commit the 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 463 
 
 enormous error of looking- upon every slave in the whole slave- 
 holding country as actuated by the most deadly enmity to 
 the whites, and possessing all that reckless, fiendish temper, 
 which would lead him to murder and assassinate the moment 
 the opportunity occurs. This is far from being true ; the 
 slave, as we have already said, generally loves the master and 
 his family ;* and few indeed there are, who can coldly plot 
 the murder of men, women and children ; and if they do, there 
 are fewer still who can have the villany to execute. We can 
 sit down and imagine that all the negroes in the south have 
 conspired to rise on a certain night, and murder all the whites 
 in their respective families ; we may suppose the secret to be 
 kept, and that they have the physical power to exterminate, 
 and yet we may say the whole is morally impossible. No in- 
 surrection of this kind can ever occur where the blacks are as 
 much civilized as they are in the United States. Savages and 
 Koromantyn slaves can commit such deeds, because their 
 whole life and education have prepared them ; and they glory 
 in the achievement; but the negro of the United States has 
 imbibed the principles, the sentiments, and feelings of the 
 white ; in one word, he is civilized — at least, comparatively ; 
 his whole education and course of life are at war with such 
 fell deeds. Nothing, then, but the most subtle and poisonous 
 principles, sedulously infused into his mind, can break his al- 
 legiance, and transform him into the midnight murderer. Any 
 man who will attend to the history of the Southampton mas- 
 sacre, must at once see, that the cause of even the partial suc- 
 cess of the insurrectionists, was the very circumstance that 
 there was no extensive plot, and that Nat, a demented fanatic, 
 was under the impression that heaven had enjoined him to 
 
 * We scarcely know a single family, in which the slaves, especially 
 the domestics, do not manifest the most unfeigned grief at the deaths 
 which occur among the whites. 
 
4G4r PROFESSOR DETV ON SLAVERY. 
 
 liberate the blacks, and had made its manifestations by loud 
 noises in the air, an eclipse, and by the greenness of the sun. 
 It was th which determined him, and ignorance and 
 
 superstition, together with implicit confidence in Nat, deter- 
 mined a few others, and thus the bloody work began. So 
 fearfully and reluctantly did they proceed to the execution, 
 that we have no doubt that if Travis, the first attacked, could 
 have waked whilst they were getting into his house, or could 
 have shot down Nat or Bill, the real would have fled, and the 
 all'air would have terminated in //.■. 
 
 We have read with great attention the history of the insur- 
 rections in St. Domingo, and have no hesitation in affirming, 
 that to the reflecting mind, that whole history affords the mosl 
 complete evidence of the difficulty and almost impossibility of 
 succeeding in these plots, even under the most favorable cir- 
 cumstances. It would almost have been a mora] miracle, if 
 that revolution had not succeeded. TIi>' French revolution 
 had kindled a blaze throughout the world. The society of the 
 Ami T8 t (the friends of the blacks,) in Paris, had edu- 
 
 cated and disciplined many of the mulattoes, who were almost 
 as numerous as the whites in the island. The National Assem- 
 bly, in its mad career, declared these mulattoes to be equal in 
 all respects t > the whites, and gave them the same privileges 
 and immunities as the whites. During the ten years, too, im- 
 mediately preceding the revolution, more than 200,000 negroes 
 were imported into the island from Africa. It is a well known 
 fact, that newly imported negroes are always greatly more 
 dangerous than those horn among us ; and of those importa- 
 tions a very large proportion consisted of Koromaniyn slaves, 
 from the Gold Coast, who have all the Bavage ferocity of the 
 North American Indian.^' And lastly, the whites themselves, 
 
 ••■ It was the Koromantyns who brought about the insurrection in Ja- 
 maica, in 1760. They are a very hardy race, and the Dutch, who are 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 465 
 
 disunited and strangely inharmonious, would nevertheless 
 have suppressed the insurrections, although the blacks and 
 mulattoes were nearly fifteen-fold their numbers, if it bad not 
 been for the constant and too fetal interference of France. 
 The great sin of that revolution rests on the National Assem- 
 bly, and should be an awful warning to every legislature to 
 beware of too much tampering with so delicate and difficult a 
 Subject, as an alteration of the fundamental relations of society. 
 But there is another cause which will render the success of 
 the blacks forever impossible in the South, as long as slavery 
 exists. Tt is, that in modern times, especially, wealth and 
 talent must ever rule over mere physical force. During the 
 feudal ages, the vassals never made a settled concerted at- 
 tempt to throw off the yoke of the lord or landed proprietor, 
 and the true reason was, they had neither property nor talent, 
 and consequently the power, under these circumstances, could 
 be placed no where else than in the hands of the lords ; but 
 so soon as the tiers etat arose, with commerce and manufac- 
 tures, there was something to struggle for, and le crise des 
 revolutions, (the crisis of revolutions,) was the consequence. 
 ISTo connected, persevering, and well concerted movement, 
 ever takes place, in modern times, unless for the sake of pro- 
 perty. Now, the property, talent, concert, and we may add, 
 habit, are all with the whites, and render their continued su- 
 periority absolutely certain, if they are not meddled with, no 
 matter what may be the disproportion of numbers. We look 
 upon these insurrections in the same light that we do the 
 murders and robberies which occur in society, and in a slave- 
 
 a calculating, money-making people, and withal the most cruel master 3 
 in the world, have generally preferred these slaves, because they might 
 be forced to do most work ; but the consequence of their avarice has 
 been that they have been more cursed with insurrections than any other 
 people in the West Indies. 
 
406 PROFESSOR DEW OX SLAVERY. 
 
 holding State, — they are a sort of substitute for the latter; 
 &e robbers and murderers in what are called free State?, are 
 generally the poor and needy, who rob for money; n< 
 slaves rarely murder or rob for this purpose; they have no 
 inducement to doit — the fact is, the whole capital of the 
 South is pledged for their maintenance. The present Chief 
 Magistrate of Virginia has informed us that he has never 
 known of but one single ease in Virginia where negroes mur- 
 dered for tli*- Bake of money. Now, there is no doubt, but 
 that the common robberies and murders for money, take off, 
 in the aggregate, more men, and destroy more property, than 
 insurrections among iJie slaves^ the former are the result of 
 filed causes eternally at work, the latter of occasional causes 
 which are rarely, very rarely, in action. Accordingly, if we 
 should look to the whole <>f our southern population, and com- 
 pare the average number of deaths, by the hands of assassins, 
 with the numbers elsewhere, we would be astonished to find 
 them perhaps as few, or fewer, than in any other population 
 ef equal amount on the globe. In the city of London there 
 is, upon an average, a murder, or a house-breaking and rob- 
 bery, every nighl in the year, which is greater than the amount 
 of death- by murders, insurrection*, &c, in our whole south- 
 ern country; and yet the inhabitant of London walks the 
 streets, and sle< ps in perfect confidence, and why should not 
 we, who are in fact in much less danger?* These calamities 
 in London very properly give rise to the establishment of a 
 
 * We wish that accurate accounts could be published of all the deaths 
 which had occurred from insurrections in the United States, Weal In- 
 dies, and Smith America, since the establishment <>f slavery ; and that 
 these could be compared to the whole population that have lived since 
 that epoch, and the number of deaths which occur in other equal 
 amounts of population from popular sedition, robberies, &c, and we 
 would be astonished to see what little ciut-e we have lur the slightest 
 apprehension on this score. 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 467 
 
 police, and the adoption of precautionary measures ; and so 
 they should in our country, and every where else. And if 
 the Virginia Legislature had turned its attention more to this 
 Bubject during its last session, we think, with all due defer- 
 ence, it would have redounded much more to the advantage 
 of the State than the intemperate discussion which was gotten 
 np. 
 
 But it is agreed on almost all hands, that the danger of 
 insurrection now is not very great ; but a time must arrive, it 
 i< supposed by many, when the dangers will infinitely in- 
 crease, and either the one or the other race must necessarily 
 be exterminated. "I do believe," said one in the Virginia 
 Legislature, "and such must be the judgment of every re- 
 flecting man, that unless something is done in time to obvi- 
 ate it, the day must arrive when scenes of inconceivable horror 
 must inevitably occur, and one of these two races of human 
 beings will have their throats cut by the other." Another 
 gentleman anticipates the dark day when a negro Legislature 
 would be in session in the capital of the Old Dominion ! Mr. 
 Clay, too, seems to.be full of gloomy anticipations of the future. 
 In his colonization speech of 1830, he says, "Already the 
 slaves may be estimated at two millions, and the free popula- 
 tion at ten ; the former being in the proportion of one to rive 
 of tin.- latter. Their respective numbers will probably double 
 in periods of thirty-three. In the year 1863, the number of 
 the whites will probably be twenty, and of the blacks four 
 millions. In 1896, forty and eight; and in the year 1929, 
 about a century, eighty and sixteen millions. What mind is 
 sufficiently extensive in its reach — what nerve sufficiently 
 strong — to contemplate this vast and progressive augmenta- 
 tion, without an awful foreboding of the tremendous conse- 
 quences." If these anticipations are true, then may we in 
 despair sit quietly down by the waters of Babylon, and weep 
 
468 PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 over our lot, for we can never remove the blacks — " Hceret 
 lateri lethal is arundo." 
 
 But we have none of these awful forebodings. We do not 
 look to the time when the throats of one race must be cut by 
 the other ; on the contrary, we have no hesitation in affirm 
 ing, and we think we can prove it, too, that in 1929, taking 
 Mr. Clay's own statistics, we >hall be much more secure from 
 plots and insurrections than we are at this moment It is an 
 undeniable fact that, in the increase of population, the power 
 and security of the dominant party always increases much 
 more than in proportion to the relative augmentation of their 
 numbers. < >ne hundred men ran much more easily keep an 
 equal number in Bubjection than fifty, and a million would 
 rule a million more certainly and Becuroly than any lesser 
 number. The dominant can only be overturned by concert 
 and harmony among the Bubject party, and the greater the 
 relative numbers on both Bides, the more impossible does this 
 concert on the part of the subjected become. A police, too, 
 of the sain;- relative numbers, is much more efficient amid a 
 numerous population than a sparse one. We will illustrate 
 by example, which cannot fail to strike ev.eii the most BC< pti- 
 cal. Mr, Gibbon supposes that the hundredth man in any 
 community is as much as the people can afford to keep in pay 
 for the purposes of a police. Now suppose the community be 
 only one hundred, then one man alone is the police. J- it 
 not evident that the ninety-nine will be able at any moment 
 to destroy him, and throw off all restraint '. Suppose the 
 community one thousand, then ten will form the police, which 
 would have rather a better chance of keeping up order among 
 the nine hundred and ninety, than the one in the one hun- 
 dred — but still this would be insufficient. Let your commu- 
 nity swell to one million, and ten thousand would then form 
 the police, and ten thousand troops will strike terror in any 
 
PROFESSOR DEW OS SLAVERY. 4bJ 
 
 citv on the face of the globe. Lord Wellington lately assert- 
 ed in the British Parliament, that Paris, containing a popula- 
 tion of a million of sonls, (the most boisterous and ungoverna- 
 ble,) never required, before the reign of Louts Philippe, more 
 than forty-five hundred troops to keep it in the most perf £ 
 subjection. It is this very principle wmch explains the fact 
 so frequently noticed, that revolutions are effected much more 
 readily in small state, than in large ones. The httle repub- 
 lics of Greece underwent revolution almost every month ; he 
 dominant party was never safe for a moment. The little 
 states of modern Italy have undergone more changes and 
 revolutions than all the rest of Europe together, and if foreign 
 influence were withdrawn, almost every ship from Europe 
 even now, would bring the news of some new ™'« 
 those states. If the standing army will remain firm to the 
 government, a successful revolution in most large empires as 
 Fiance, Germany, and Russia, is almost impossible, ihe two 
 revolutions in France have been successful, m consequence of 
 the disaffection of the troops, who have joined the populai 
 
 ^Llt us apply these principles to our own case ; and for the 
 sake of simplicity, we will take a county of a mixed popida- 
 t on of twenty thousand, viz., blacks ten thousand, and whites 
 1 many :-tlie patrol which they can keep out would, ac- 
 col/to our rule, he two hundred ; double both sides, and 
 h patrol would be four hundred; quadruple and it would 
 b7e Ut hundred-uow, a patrol of eight hundred would be 
 Lb more efficient than the two hundred, though they were 
 relatively to the numbers kept in order, exactly the same ; and 
 the same principle is applicable to the progress o. populaU on 
 „ the whl slaveholding country. In 1929, our police won d 
 e much more efficient than now, if the two -J-JJ^ 
 anything like the same relative numbers. We believe 
 
470 
 
 PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 would be better for the whites that the negro population 
 should double, if they added only one-half more to their num- 
 bers, than that they should remain stationary on both sides. 
 Hence, an insuperable objection to all these deporting schemes 
 — they cannot diminish the relative proportion of the blacks 
 to the whites, but on the contrary increase it, while they 
 check the augmentation of the population as a whole, and 
 consequently lessen the security of the dominant party. We 
 do not fear the increase of the blacks, for that very increase 
 adds to the wealth of society, and enables it to keep up the 
 police. This is the true secret of the security of the West In- 
 dies and Brazil. In Jamaica, the blacks are eight-fold the 
 whites ; throughout the extensive empire of Brazil they are three 
 to one. Political prophets have been prophesying for fifty 
 years past, that the day would speedily arrive, when all the 
 West Indies would be in possession of the negroes ; and the 
 danger is no greater now than it was at the commencement. 
 We sincerely believe the blacks never will get possession, un- 
 less through the mad interference of the mother countries, and 
 even then we are doubtful whether they can conquer the 
 whites. Now, we have nowhere in the United States the 
 immense disproportion between the two races observed in 
 Brazil and the West Indies, and we are not like to have it in 
 all time to come. We have no data, therefore, upon which 
 to anticipate that dreadful crisis, which so torments the ima- 
 gination of some. The little islands of the West Indies, if 
 such crisis were fated frequently to arrive, ought to exhibit 
 one continued series of massacres and insurrections, for their 
 blacks are relatively much more numerous than with us, and 
 a small extent of territory is, upon the principle just explain- 
 ed, much more favorable to successful revolution than a large 
 one. Are we not, then, most unphilosophically and needless- 
 ly tormenting ourselves with the idea of insurrection— seeing 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 47l 
 
 that the West India Islands, even so much worse off than 
 ourselves, are, nevertheless, but rarely disturbed? It is well 
 known that where the range is sufficiently extensive, and the 
 elements sufficiently numerous, the calculation of chances may 
 be reduced to almost a mathematical certainty; thus, al- 
 though you cannot say what will be the profit or loss of a 
 particular gambling house in Paris on any one night, yet you 
 may, with great accuracy, calculate upon the profits for a 
 whole year, and with still greater accuracy, for any longer 
 period, as ten, twenty, or one hundred years. Upon the same 
 principle we speculate with much greater certainty upon 
 masses of individuals, than upon single persons. Hence, bills 
 of mortality, registers of births, marriages, crimes, &c, become 
 very important statistics, when calculated upon large masses 
 of population, although they prove nothing in families or 
 among individuals. Proceeding upon this principle, we can- 
 not fail to derive the greatest consolation from the fact, that 
 although slavery has existed in our country for the last two 
 hundred years, there have been but three attempts at insur- 
 rection — one in Virginia, one in South-Carolina, and, we be- 
 lieve, one in Louisiana — and the loss of lives from this cause 
 has not amounted to one hundred persons in all. We may 
 then calculate in the next two hundred years, upon a similar 
 result, which is incomparably smaller than the number which 
 will be taken off in free States by murders for the sake of 
 money. 
 
 But our population returns have been looked to, and it has 
 been affirmed that they show a steady increase of blacks, 
 which will* finally carry them in all proportion beyond the 
 whites, and that this will be particularly the case in Eastern 
 Virginia, We have no fears on this score either ; even if it 
 were true, the danger would not be very great. With the 
 increase of the blacks, we can afford to enlarge the police ; 
 
472 PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 and we will venture to say, that with the hundredth man at 
 our disposal, and faithful to us, we would keep down insur- 
 rection in any large country on the face of the globe. But 
 the speakers in the Virginia Legislature, in our humble 
 opinion, made most unwarrantable inferences from the census 
 returns. They took a period between 1790 and 1830, and 
 judged exclusively from the aggregate results of the whole 
 time. Mr. Brown pointed out their fallacy, and showed that 
 there was but a small portion of the period in which the blacks 
 had rapidly gained upon the whites, but during the residue 
 they were most rapidly losing their high relative increase, 
 and would, perhaps, in 1840, exhibit an augmentation less 
 than the whites. But let us go a little back. In 1740, the 
 slaves in South-Carolina, says Marshall, were three times the 
 whites ; the danger from them was greater then than it ever 
 has been since, or ever will be again. There was an insurrec- 
 tion in that year, which was put down with the utmost ease, 
 although instigated and aided by the Spaniards. The slaves 
 in Virginia, at the same period, were much more numerous 
 than the whites. Now, suppose some of those peepers into 
 futurity could have been present, would they not have pre- 
 dicted the speedy arrival of the time when the blacks, run- 
 ning ahead of the whites in numbers, would have destroyed 
 their security ? In 1703, the black population of Virginia 
 was 100,000, and the white 70,000. In South-Carolina, the 
 blacks were 90,000, and the whites 40,000. Comparing 
 these with the returns of 1740, our prophets, could they have 
 lived so long, might have found some consolation in the great- 
 er relative increase of the whites. Again, when we see in 1830, 
 that the blacks in both States have fallen in numbers below 
 the whites, our prophets, were they alive, might truly be pro- 
 nounced false. (See Holmes' 1 Annals and Marshall's Life of 
 Washington, on this subject.) 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 473 
 
 But we "will now proceed to examine more closely the 
 melancholy inference which has been drawn from the relative 
 advances of the white and black populations in Virginia, 
 during the last forty years, and to show upon principles of an 
 undeniable character, that it is wholly gratuitous, without any 
 well founded data from which to deduce it. During the 
 whole period of forty years, Virginia has been pouring forth 
 emigrants more rapidly to the West than any other State in 
 the Union ; she has indeed been " the fruitful mother of em- 
 pires." This emigration has been caused by the cheap, fertile, 
 and unoccupied lands of the West, and by the oppressive 
 action of the Federal Government on the. southern agricultu- 
 ral States. This emigration has operated most injuriously 
 upon Virginia interests, and has had a powerful tendency to 
 check the increase of the whites, without producing anything 
 like an equal effect on the blacks. 
 
 As this is a subject of very great importance, we shall en- 
 deavor briefly to explain it. We have already said in the 
 progress of this discussion, that the emigration of a class of 
 society will not injure the community, or check materially the 
 increase of population, where a full equivalent is left in the 
 stead of the emigrant. The largest portion of slaves sent out 
 of Virginia, is sent through the operation of our internal slave 
 trade ; a full equivalent being thus left in place of the slave, 
 this emigration becomes an advantage to the State, and does 
 not check the black population as much as at first we should 
 imagine, because it furnishes every inducement to the master 
 to attend to his negroes, to encourage marriage, and to cause 
 the greatest possible number to be raised, and thus it affords 
 a powerful stimulus to the spring of black population, which, 
 in a great measure, counteracts the emigration. But when 
 we come to examine into the efflux of the white population 
 from our State to the West, we find a totally different case 
 40* 
 
471 PROFESSOR D1TW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 presented to our view. The emigration of the white man not 
 only takes a laborer from the State, but capital likewfe 
 far, therefore, in this ease, from the State gaining an equiva- 
 lent for the emigrant, she not only loses him, but his capital 
 also, and thus she is impoverished, or at least advances more 
 slowly in the acquisition of wealth, from a double cause — 
 from the loss of both persons and capital. 
 
 Let us examine a little more fully, the whole extent of the 
 hich the State tints suffers, and we shall find it immea- 
 surably beyond our hasty conceptions. In the first place, we 
 cannot properly estimate the loss of labor by the number of 
 emigrants, for we -must recollect the majority of emigrants 
 from among the whites consists of males, who form decidedly 
 the more productive sex : and these males are generally be- 
 tween eighteen and thirty, precisely that period o\' life at 
 which the laborer is most productive, and has ceased to be a 
 mere consumer. Up to this period, we are generally an ex- 
 pense to those who rear us, and when we leave the State at 
 this time, it loses not only the individuals, but all the capital, 
 together with interest on that capital, which have been spent 
 in rearing and educating. Thus a father has been for years 
 spending the whole profits of his estate in educating his sons, 
 and so soon as that education is completed they roam off to 
 the West. The society of Virginia then loses both the indi- 
 viduals and the capital which had been spent upon them, 
 without an equivalent. Perhaps a young man, thus educa- 
 ted, if he v>ere to remain among us, could make, by the exer- 
 cise of his talents, two or three thousand dollars per annum. 
 This is more than ten field laborers could make by their labor, 
 and consequently the loss of one Such man as above described, 
 is equal to the loss of ten common laborers in a politieo- 
 mical view, and perhaps to more than one hundred in a 
 moral point of view. "We have made some exertion to ascer- 
 
PROFESf OB ia. BUY. 
 
 tain tbe average annual emigration of whites from the 
 
 but without sik-c.--. Supposing the number to be three 
 
 thousand, and we have no doubt thai it. is far less less than the 
 
 true amount, we would err but little in 
 
 three thousand would be at least equal to twelve thousand 
 
 taken from among mere laborers. 
 
 . v. hat is the effect of this great abstraction from v*ir- 
 gmia, of productive citizens and capital 1 Why,mo I 
 lv, to prevent the accumulation of wealth, and the increase of 
 white population. You will find, on < n, that this 
 
 emigration robs the land of its fair proportion of capital and 
 labor, and thus injures our agriculture, and entirely pr< 
 all improvements of our lands; it sweej - oil' from the 
 the circulating capita] as soon as formed, and leaves scarcely 
 any thing of value behind, but lands, negroes and houses. All 
 this has a tendency to check the increase of the wbito 
 only by the direct lessening of the population by emigration, 
 but much more by paralyzing the spring of white population. 
 The increase of the blacks, under these circumstances, becomes 
 much more- rapid, and has served in part to counteract the 
 rious effects springing from the ei of whites. 
 
 In this point of view, the* augmentation of our black popula- 
 tion should be a source of consolation, instead of alarm and 
 idenc^L Let us now see whether this state of thi 
 ; to be continued, or whether there be not some 
 .as in the political horizon, portending a better and a 
 brighter day for the Old Dominion, in the vista of the future. 
 There are to - evidently calculated to check thi-, emi- 
 
 gration of capital and citizens from Virginia, and to insure a 
 more rapid increase of her white population, and 
 tion of her wealth. ] . fir-t, the tilling up of our va- 
 
 cant territory of population : and second, the completion of 
 such a system of internal improvement in Virginia, a- 
 
476 PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 administer to the multiplied wants of her people, and take off 
 the surplus produce of the interior of the State to the great 
 market of the world — the first dependent on time, and the 
 second on the energy and enterprise of the State. 
 
 1st. It is very evident, that as population advances and 
 overflows our Western territory, all the good lands will be 
 gradually occupied ; a longer and a longer barrier of cultiva- 
 ted and populous region will be interposed between Virginia 
 and cheap Western lands, and with this onward march of 
 population and civilization, emigration from the old States 
 must gradually cease. The whole population of the Union 
 is now 13,000,000 ; in less than fifty years from this time, 
 (a short period in the history of nations,) we shall have fifty 
 millions of souls — our people will then cease to be migratory, 
 and assume that stability every where witnessed in the older 
 countries of the World ; and this result will be greatly accele- 
 rated, if the southern country shall, in the meantime, be 
 relieved from the blighting oppression of federal exactions, 
 As this state of things arrives, the whites in Virginia will be 
 found to increase more rapidly than the blacks ; and thus, 
 that most alarming inference drawn from disproportionate in- 
 crease of the two castes, for the last forty years, will be shown, 
 in the lapse of time, to be a false vision, engendered by fear, 
 and unsupported by 'philosophy and fact. We already per- 
 ceive that the whites, in the ratio of their increase, have been, 
 for the last twenty years, gradually gaining on the blacks ; 
 thus, in 1790, east of the Blue Ridge, the whites were 314,- 
 523, and the slaves 277,449 — in 1830, the proportions were, 
 in the same district, whites, 375,935 ; slaves, 418,529 ; gain 
 of the blacks on the whites, 77,398. "But when did this 
 gain take place ?" Between 1800 and 1810, the rate of in- 
 crease of the whites was only seven-tenths of one per cent, 
 while that of the slaves was eleven per cent. From 1810 to 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 477 
 
 1820, the ratio of the increase of whites was three per cent., 
 and that of slaves was six per cent. From 1820 to 1830, the 
 ratio of increase of the whites was near eight per cent., and 
 that of the slaves not quite nine percent. ; and when we take 
 into consideration the whole population of our State, east and 
 west of the Blue Ridge, we find that the whites have been 
 gaining at the rate of fifteen per cent, for the last ten years, 
 while the slaves have been increasing at the rate of ten per 
 cent, only — and thus is it we find that those very statistics 
 which are adduced by the abolitionists, to alarm the timid, 
 and operate on the imagination of the unreflecting, turn out, 
 upon closer scrutiny, to be of the most cheering and consola- 
 tory character, clearly demonstrating, upon the very principle 
 of calculation assumed by the abolitionists themselves, that 
 the condition of the whites is rapidly altering for the better, 
 with the lapse of time. 
 
 AVe will now proceed to point out the operation of the se- 
 cond cause, above mentioned — a judicious system of internal 
 improvement in checking emigration to the West. It is well 
 known, that in proportion to the facilities which are offered 
 to commerce, and the ease and cheapness with which the pro- 
 ducts of land may be conveyed to market, so do the profits of 
 agriculture rise, and with them, a general prosperity is dif- 
 fused over the whole country — new products are raised upon 
 the soil — new occupations springing up — old ones are enlarg 
 ed and rendered more productive — a wider field is opened for 
 the display of the energies of both mind and body, and the 
 rising generation are bound down to the scenes of their infan- 
 cy, and the homes of their fathers ; not by the tie of affection 
 and association alone, but by the still stronger ligament of 
 interest. Sons who have spent in their education all the pro- 
 fits which a kind father has earned by hard industry on the 
 soil, will not now be disposed to wring from his kindness the 
 
478 PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 small patrimony which he may possess, and move off with the 
 proceeds to the West ; but general prosperity will induce 
 them to remain in the land which gave them birth, to add to 
 the wealth and the population of the State, and to be a com- 
 fort and a solace to their aged parents in the decline of their 
 days. We do, indeed, consider internal improvement in Vir- 
 ginia, the great panacea by which most of the ills which now 
 weigh down the State may be removed, and health and activ- 
 ity communicated to every department of industry. 
 
 We are happy to see that the Legislature of Virginia, dur- 
 ing the last session, incorporated a company to complete the 
 James River and Kanawha improvements, and that the city 
 of Richmond has so liberally contributed by her subscriptions, 
 as to render the project almost certain of success. It is this 
 great improvement which is destined to revolutionize the finan- 
 cial condition of the Old Dominion, and speed her on more 
 rapidly in wealth and numbers, than she has ever advanced 
 before ; the snail pace at which she has hitherto been crawl- 
 ing, is destined to be converted into the giant's stride, and 
 this very circumstance, of itself, will defeat all the gloomy 
 predictions about the blacks. The first effect of the improve- 
 ment will be to raise up larger towns in the eastern portion 
 of the State.* Besides other manifold advantages which 
 
 * Dr. Cooper, of Columbia, whose capacious mind has explored 
 every department of knowledge, and whose ample experience through 
 a long life, has furnished him with the most luminous illustrations 
 and facts, has most admirably pointed out in the 25th chapter of his 
 Political Economy, the great advantages of large towns, and we have 
 no doubt but that the absence of large towns in Virginia, has been one 
 cause of the inferiority of Virginia to some of the Northern States, in 
 energy and industry. We are sorry that our limits will not allow us 
 to insert a portion of the chapter on the advantages of large towns, 
 just referred to, and that we must content ourselves with a warm 
 recommendation of its perusal. 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 479 
 
 these towns will diffuse, they will have a tendency to draw 
 into them the capital and free laborers of the No*rth, and in 
 this way to destroy the proportion of the blacks. Baltimore 
 is now an exemplification of the fact, which, by its mighty 
 agency, is fast making Maryland a non-slaveholding State. 
 Again, the rise of cities in the lower part of Virginia, and in- 
 creased density of population, will render the division of labor 
 more complete, break down the large farms into small ones, 
 and substitute, in a great measure, the garden for the planta- 
 tion cultivation ; consequently, less slave, and more free labor 
 will be requisite, and in due time the abolitionists will find 
 this most lucrative system working to their heart's content, 
 increasing the prosperity of Virginia, and diminishing the 
 evils of slavery, without those impoverishing effects which all 
 other schemes must necessarily have. 
 
 Upon the West, particularhj , the beneficial effects of a ju- 
 dicious system of improvement, will be almost incalculable, 
 At this moment, the emigration from the western and middle 
 counties of Virginia, is almost as great as from the eastern. 
 The western portion of Virginia, in consequence of its great 
 distance from market, and the wretched condition of the va- 
 rious communications leading through the State, is necessarily 
 a grazing country. A grazing country requires but a very 
 sparse population, and consequently, but small additions to 
 our western population renders it redurdant, and there is an 
 immediate tendency in the supernumeraries to emigration. 
 A gentleman from the West lately informed us, that in his 
 immediate neighborhood he knew of seventy persons who 
 had moved off, and many others were exceedingly anxious to 
 go, but were detained because they could not dispose of their 
 lands. The remedy for all this is as glaring as the light of 
 the mid-day sun. Give to this portion of the State the com- 
 munications which they require. Let our great central im- 
 
480 PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 provement be completed, and immediately the grazing system 
 will be converted into the grain growing, and the very first 
 effect of sticking the plough into the soil, which has hitherto 
 grown grass alone, will be an increased demand for labor, 
 which will at once check the tide of emigration, so rapidly 
 flowing on to the distant West — and agricultural profits will 
 rise at once 50 or 100 per cent. One of the most closely 
 observant citizens of the West has informed us, that he can 
 most conclusively show, that if flour would command $3 a 
 barrel, on the farms in his neighborhood, the profits of raising 
 grain would be double those of the grazing system. Here, 
 then, is the true ground for unity of action, between the east- 
 ern and western portion of Virginia ; let them steadily unite 
 in pushing forward a vigorous system of internal improve- 
 ment. Under what a miserably short-sighted and suicidal 
 policy must the West act, then, if it seriously urges the eman- 
 cipation of our slaves. The very first effect of it will be, to 
 stop forever the great central improvement. Where is the 
 State to get the money from, to cut canals and railroads 
 through her territory, and send out thousands besides to Af- 
 rica ? The very agitation of this most romantic and imprac- 
 ticable scheme is calculated to nip in the bud our whole sys- 
 tem of internal improvements ; and we can but hope that the 
 1 ntelligence of the West will soon discover how very hostile 
 this whole abolition scheme is to all its true interests, and will 
 curb in their wild career, by the right of instruction, those 
 who would uproot the very foundations of society, if their 
 schemes should ever be carried out to their full extent. We 
 venture to predict, that, if these abolition schemes shall ever 
 be seriously studied in Virginia, that there will be but one 
 voice — but one opinion concerning them, throughout the 
 State — that they are at war with the true interests of Virgi- 
 nia, in every quarter — in the West as well as the East. We 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVER Y. 481 
 
 Lope then, most sincerely, that those gentlemen who Lave 
 been so perseveringly engaged in urging forward this great 
 scheme of improvement, will not falter until the work is ac- 
 complished. We are well convinced that they are the true 
 benefactors of the State — and they deserve well of the repub- 
 lic — and at some day, not very distant, they will have the 
 consolation of seeing that the moral effects of this system will 
 be no less salutary than the physical. We hope, then, we 
 have shown, upon principles which cannot be controverted, 
 that the experience of the last forty years in Virginia, need 
 not fill us with apprehensions for the future. Time and inter- 
 nal improvement will cure all our ills, and speed on the Old 
 Dominiou more rapidly in wealth and prosperity. 
 
 Many are most willing to allow the force of the preceding 
 i-easoning, and to admit that there is no real danger to be 
 apprehended either now, or in future, from our blacks ; and 
 yet, they say there is a feeling of insecurity throughout the 
 slaveholding country, and this sense of insecnrity destroys our 
 happiness. Now, we are most willing to admit that, after 
 such an insurrection as that in Southampton, the public mind 
 will be disturbed, and alarm and apprehension will pervade 
 the community. But the fact proves, that all this is of short, 
 vertj short duration. We believe that there was not a single 
 citizen in Virginia, who felt any alarm from the negroes, pre- 
 vious to the Southampton tragedy, and we believe at this mo- 
 ment there are very few who feel the slightest apprehension. 
 We have no doubt, paradoxical as it may seem to some, but 
 that the population of our slaveholding country enjoys as 
 much or more conscious security, than any other people on the 
 face of the globe ! You will find throughout the whole slave- 
 holuiug portion of Virginia, and we believe it is the same in 
 the southern States, generally, that the houses are scarcely 
 ever fastened at night, so as to be completely inaccessible to 
 41 
 
482 PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 those without, except in towns. This simple fact is demon- 
 stration complete of the conscious security of our citizens, ana 
 their great confidence in the fidelity of the blacks. There is 
 no has peuple, no lower class, on the globe, among whom the 
 life of a man is so secure as among the slaves of America, for 
 they rarely murder, as we have already seen, for the sake <>' 
 money. A negro will rob your hen-roost or your stye, but it is 
 rare indeed, that he can ever be induced to murder you. Upon 
 this subject we speak from experience. We have sojourned 
 in some of the best regulated countries of Europe, and we 
 know that every where the man of property dares not close 
 his eyes before every window and door are barred against in- 
 truders from without. And, we believe, even in our northern. 
 States, these precautions are adopted to a much greater extent 
 than with us ; and, consequently, mark a much greater sense 
 of insecurity than exists among us. 
 
 Sthly, and lastly. Slave labor is unproductive, and the 
 distressed condition of Virginia and the whole South is owing 
 to this cause. Our limits will not allow us to investigate fully 
 this assertion, but a very partial analysis will enable us to 
 show that the truth of the general proposition upon which the 
 conclusion is based, depends on circumstances, and that those 
 circumstances do not apply to our southern country. The 
 ground assumed by Smith and Storch, who are the most able 
 supporters of the doctrine of the superior productiveness of 
 free labor, is that each one is actuated by a desire to accumu - 
 late when free, and this desire produces much more efficient 
 and constant exertions than can possibly be expected from the 
 feeble operation of fear upon the slave. We are, in the main, 
 converts to this doctrine, but must be permitted to limit it by 
 some considerations. It is very evident, when Ave look to the 
 various countries in which there is free labor alone, that a vast 
 difference in its productiveness is manifested. The English 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 483 
 
 operative Ave are disposed to consider the most productive 
 laborer in the world, and the Irish laborer, in his immediate 
 neighborhood, is not more than equal to the southern slave — 
 the Spanish and even Italian laborers are inferior. Now, how 
 are we to account for this great difference 2 It will be found 
 mainly to depend upon the operation of two great principles, 
 and secondarily upon attendant circumstances. These two 
 principles are the desire to accumulate and better our condi- 
 tion, and a desire to indulge in idleness and inactivity. 
 
 We have already seen that the principle of idleness triumph- 
 ed over the desire for accumulation among the savag 
 North and South America, among the African nations, amono- 
 the blacks of St. Domingo, &c, and nothing but the strong- 
 arm of authority could overcome its operation. In southern 
 countries idleness is very apt to predominate, even under the 
 most favorable circumstances, over the desire to accumulate, 
 and slave labor, consequently, in such countries, is most pro- 
 ductive. Again, staple growing States are cceteris paribus, 
 more favorable to slave labor than manufacturing States. 
 Slaves in such countries may be worked by bodies under the 
 eye of a superintendent, and made to perform more labor 
 than freemen. There is no instance of the successful cultiva- 
 tion of the sugar cane by free labor. St. Domingo, once the 
 greatest sugar growing island in the world, makes now scarce- 
 ly enough for her own supply. We very much doubt even 
 whether slave labor be not best for all southern agricultural 
 countries. Humboldt, in his New Spain, says he doubts 
 whether there be a plant on the globe so productive as the 
 banana, and yet these banana districts, strange to tell, are the 
 poorest and most miserable in all South America, bi 
 the people only labor a little to support themselves, and spend 
 the rest of their time in idleness. There is no doubt but 
 slave labor would be, the most productive kind in these dis- 
 
484 PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 tricts. We doubt whether the extreme south of the United 
 States, and the West India Islands, would ever have been cul- 
 tivated to the same degree of perfection as now, by any other 
 than slave labor. The history of colonization furnishes no ex- 
 ample whatever, of the transplantation of whites to very warm 
 or tropical latitudes without signal deterioration of character, 
 attended with an unconquerable aversion to labor. And it 
 would seem, that nothing but slavery can remedy this other- 
 wise inevitable tendency. The fact, that to the North, negro 
 slavery has every where disappeared, whilst to the South it 
 has maintained its ground triumphantly against five labor, is 
 of itself conclusive of the superior productiveness of slave labor 
 in southern latitudes. We believe that Virginia and Mary- 
 land are too far North for slave labor, but all the States to the 
 South of these are, perhaps, better adapted to slave labor than 
 free. 
 
 But it is said, with the increasing density of population, 
 free labor becomes cheaper than slave, and finally extinguish- 
 es it, as has actually happened in the west of Europe ; this, 
 we are ready to admit, but think it was owing to a change in 
 the tillage, and rise of manufactures and commerce, to which 
 free labor alone is adapted. As a proof of this, we can cite 
 the populous empire of China, and the Eastern nations, gene- 
 rally, where slave labor has stood its ground against free labor, 
 although the population is denser, and the proportional means 
 of subsistence more scanty than any where else on the face of 
 the globe. How is this to be accounted for, let us ask? Does 
 it not prove, that under some circumstances, slave labor is as 
 productive as free? We would as soon look to China to test 
 this principle, as any other nation on earth. The slave dis- 
 tricts in China, according to the report of travellers, are deter- 
 mined by latitude and agricultural products. The wheat 
 growing districts have no slaves, but the rice, cotton, and sugar- 
 
PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 485 
 
 growing districts, situated in warm climates, have all of them 
 slaves, affording a perfect exemplification of the remarks above 
 made. Again, looking to the nations of antiquity, if the 
 Scriptural accounts are to be relied on, the number of inhabi- 
 tants of Palestine must have been more than 6,000,000 ; at 
 which rate, Palestine was at least, when taking into conside- 
 ration her limited territory, five times as populous as England.* 
 Now, we know the tribes of Judah and Israel both used slave 
 labor, and it must have been exceedingly productive ; for, we 
 find the two Kings of Judah and Israel bringing into the field 
 no less than 1,200,000 chosen men ;f and Jehosaphat, the son 
 of Asa, had an army consisting of 1,160,000 tf and what a 
 prodigious force must he have commanded, had he been sov- 
 ereign of all the tribes. Nothing but the most productive 
 labor could ever have supported the immense armies which 
 were then led into the field. _ ^ — ^w*- 
 
 Wallace thinks that ancien«^figypfiiiii..L h\UL buen thrice 
 as populous as England ; and yet so valuable was slave labor, 
 that ten of the most dreadful plagues that ever affected man- 
 kind, could not dispose the selfish heart of Pharoah to part 
 with' his Israelitish slaves; and when he lost them, Egypt 
 sunk, never to rise to her pristine grandeur again. Ancient 
 Italy, too, not to mention Greece, was exceedingly populous, 
 and perhaps Rome was alarger city than any of modern times ; 
 and yet slave labor supported these dense populations, and 
 even rooted out free labor. All these examples prove suffi- 
 ciently, that under certain circumstances, slave is as produc- 
 tive, and even more productive, than free labor. 
 
 But the Southern States, and particularly Virginia, have 
 been compared with the non-slaveholding States, and pronounc- 
 
 * See Wallace on the Numbers of Mankind, p. 52, Edin. editioa 
 
 \ 2d. CI imn. xiii. 3. 
 
 \ 2d. Chron. xvii. 
 41* 
 
486 PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 ed far behind them in the general increase of wealth and pop- 
 ulation ; and this, it is said, is a decisive proof of the inferior- 
 ity of slave labor in this country. We are sorry that we 
 have not space for a thorough investigation of this assertion, 
 but we have no doubt of its fallacy. Look to the progress of 
 the colonies before the establishment of the Federal Govern- 
 ment, and you find that the slaveholding were the most pros- 
 perous and the most wealthy. The North dreaded the form- 
 ation of the confederated government,, precisely because of its 
 poverty. This is an historical fact. It stood to the South, as 
 Scotland did to England at the period of the Union ; and 
 feared lest the South, by its superior wealth, supported by this 
 very slave labor, all of a sudden, has become so unproductive, 
 should abstract the little wealth which it possessed. Again, 
 look to the exports at the present time of the whole confede- 
 racy, and what do we see ? Why, that one-third of the 
 States, and those slaveholding too, furnish two-thirds of the 
 whole exports ! But although this is now the case, we are 
 still not prosperous. Let us ask, then, two simple questions : 
 1st. How came the South, for two hundred years, to prosper 
 with her slave labor, if so very unproductive and ruinous ? 
 And 2dly. How does it happen, that her exports are so 
 great, even now, and that her prosperity is, nevertheless, on 
 the decline ? Painful as the accusation may be to the heart 
 of the true patriot, we are forced to assert, that the unequal 
 operation of the Federal Government has principally achieved 
 it. The North has found that it could not compete with the 
 South in agriculture, and has had recourse to the system on 
 duties, for the purpose of raising up the business of manufac- 
 tures. This is a business in which the slave labor cannot com- 
 pete with northern, and in order to carry this system through, 
 a coalition has been formed with the West, by which a largo 
 portion of the Federal funds are to be spent in that quarter 
 
PROFESSOR DEW OST SLAVERY. 487 
 
 for internal improvements. These duties act as a discourage- 
 ment to southern industry, which furnishes the exports by 
 which the imports are purchased, and a bounty to northern 
 labor, and the partial disbursements of the funds, increase the 
 pressure on the South to a still greater degree. It is not slave 
 labor, then, which has produced our depression, but it is the 
 action of the Federal Government which is ruining slave labor. 
 There is, at this moment, an exemplification of the destruc- 
 tive influence of government agency in the West Indies. The 
 British West India Islands are now in a more depressed con- 
 dition than any others, and both the Edinburgh and London 
 Quarterly Reviews charge their depression upon the regula- 
 tions, taxing sugar, coffee, <fec, and preventing them, at the 
 same time, from purchasing bread stuffs, &c, from the United 
 States, which can be furnished by them cheaper than from 
 any other quarter. Some of the philanthropists of Great 
 Britain cry out it is slavery which has done it, and the slaves 
 must be liberated ; but they are at once refuted by the fact, 
 that never has an island flourished more rapidly than Cuba, in 
 their immediate neighborhood. xVnd Cuba flourishes because 
 she enjoys free trade, and has procured, of late, plenty of 
 slaves. It is curious that the population of this island has, 
 for the last thirty years, kept pace with that of Pennsylvania, 
 one of the most flourishing of the States of the confederacy, 
 and her wealth has increased in a still greater ratio.* Look 
 again to Brazil, perhaps at this moment the most prosperous 
 state of South America, and we find her slaves three times 
 more numerous than the freemen. Mr. Brougham, in his 
 Colonial Policy, says that Cayenne never flourished as long as 
 she was scantily supplied with slaves, but her prosperity com- 
 menced the moment she was supplied with an abundance of 
 
 * See some interesting statistics concerning this island in Mr. Poin- 
 sett's Notes on Mexico. 
 
488 PROFESSOR DEW OX SLAVERY. 
 
 this unproductive labor. Now we must earnestly ask an ex- 
 planation of these phenomena, upon the principle that slave 
 labor is unproductive. 
 
 There are other causes, too, which have operated in concert 
 with the Federal Government, to depress the South. The cli- 
 mate is unhealthy, and upon average, perhaps one- tenth of 
 the labor is suspended during the sickly months. There is a 
 great deal of travelling, too, from this cause to the North, which 
 abstracts the capital from the South, and spreads it over the 
 North. The emigration from the South to the West, as we have 
 before seen, is very great and very injurious; and added to all 
 this, the standard of comfort is much higher in the slaveholding 
 than the non-slaveholding States/'- All these circumstances 
 together, are sufficient to account for the depressed condition 
 of the South, without asserting that slave labor is valueless. 
 
 * In the Virginia debate, it was said that the slow progress of the 
 Virginia population was a most unerring symptom of her want of pros- 
 perity, and the inefficacy of shive labor. Now we protest against this 
 criterion, unless wry cautiously applied. Ireland suffers more from 
 want and famine than any other country in Europe, and yet her popu- 
 lation advances almost as rapidly as ours, and it is this very increase 
 which curses the country with the plague or famine. In the High- 
 lands of Scotland, thev have a very sparse population, scarcely increas- 
 ing at all ; and yet they are much better fed, clothed, Ac, than in 
 Ireland. Malthns has proved, that there are two species of checks 
 which repress redundant populations — positive and preventive. It is 
 the latter which keeps down the Scotch population ; while the former, 
 always accompanied with misery, keeps down the Irish. We believe, 
 at this time, the preventive cheeks are in full operation in Virginia. 
 The people of this .State live much better than the same classes to 
 the North, aud they will not get married unless there is a prospect of 
 maintaining their families in the same style they have been accustomed 
 to live in. We believe the preventive checks may commence their 
 operation too soon for the wealth of a State, but they always mark a 
 high degree of civilization — so that the slow progress of population in 
 Virginia turns ottt be her highest eulogy. 
 
PROFESSOR DEW OX SLAVERY. 
 
 489 
 
 But we believe all other causes as " dust in the balance," 
 when compared with the operation of the Federal Govern- 
 ment. 
 
 How does it happen that Louisiana, with a greater propor- 
 tional numbers of slaves than any other State in the Union, 
 with the most insalubrious climate, with one-fourth of her 
 white population spread over the more northern States in the 
 sickly season, and with a higher standard of comfort than 
 perhaps any other State in the Union, is nevertheless one of 
 the most rapidly nourishing in the whole southern country ? 
 The true answer is, she has been so fortunately situated as to 
 be able to reap the fruits of Federal protection. " Midas's 
 wand" has touched her, and she has reaped the golden har- 
 vest. There is no complaint there of the unproductiveness of 
 slave labor. 
 
 But it is time to bring this long article to a close ; it is upon 
 a subject which we have most reluctantly discussed ; but, as 
 we have already said, the example was set from a higher 
 quarter ; the seal has been broken, and we therefore deter- 
 mined to enter fully into the discussion. If our positions be 
 true, and it does seem to us they may be sustained by reason- 
 ing almost as conclusive as the demonstrations of the mathe- 
 matician, it follows, that the time for emancipation has not 
 yet arrived, and perhaps it never will. We hope, sincerely, 
 that the intelligent sons of Virginia will ponder before they 
 move — before they enter into a scheme which will destroy 
 more than half Virginia's wealth, and drag her down from 
 her proud and elevated station among the mean things of the 
 earth, — and when, Sampson-like, she shall, by this ruinous 
 scheme, be shorn of all her power and all her glory, the p 
 Mi-anger may at some future day exclaim, 
 
 The Niobe of nations — there she staiuls, 
 "{Friendless and helpless in her voiceless woe." 
 
/ 
 
 .-/ 
 
 4:»0 PROFESSOR DEW ON SLAVERY. 
 
 Once more, then, do we call upon our statesmen to pause, 
 ore they engage in this ruinous scheme. The power of man 
 has limits, and he should never attempt impossibilities. We 
 do believe it is beyond the power of man to separate the ele- 
 ments of our population, even if it were desirable. The deep 
 and solid foundations of society cannot be broken up by the 
 vain fiat of the legislator. We must recollect that the laws 
 
 Lveurgus were promulgated, the sublime eloquence of De- 
 
 .>sthenes and Cicero was heard, and the glorious achieve- 
 of Epaminondas and Scipio were witnessed, in coun- 
 tries where slavery existed — without for one moment loosening 
 the tic between master and slave. We must recollect, too, 
 that Poland has been desolated ; that Kosciusko, Sobieski, 
 eki, have fought and bled for the cause of liberty in that 
 
 atry ; that one of her monarchs annulled, in words, the tie 
 en master and slave, and yet the order of nature has, 
 in the end, vindicated itself, and the dependence between 
 r and slave has scarcely for a moment ceased. We 
 must recollect, in fine, that our own country has waded 
 through two dangerous wars — that the thrilling eloquence of 
 the Demosthenes of our land has been heard with rapture, 
 exhorting to death, rather than slavery, — that the most libe- 
 ral principles have ever been promulgated and sustained, in 
 cur deliberate bodies, and before our judicial tribunals — and 
 the whole has passed by without breaking or tearing asunder 
 the elements of our social fabric. Let us reflect on these 
 things, and learn wisdom from experience ; and know thai 
 aerated by the lapse of ages, cannot 
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