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CIj^ Pnral Sigmfitatia 
 
 CONTRASTS BETWEEN SLAVERY AND FREEDOM: 
 
 DISCOURSE 
 
 PREACHED IN THE FIRST CHURCH, DORCHESTER, 
 
 May 10, 1864. 
 
 By NATHANIEL HALL. 
 
 ^rinUb ^u gtqutst. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 WALKER, WISE, AND COMPANY, 
 
 245, Washington Street; 
 EBESNEIZER C Tj A. F J^, 
 
 308, Washington Street. 
 
 1864. 
 
 ;r 
 
^Ijc Saral Si^nificitnte 
 
 CONTRASTS BETWEEN SLAVERY AND FREEDOM: 
 
 DISCOURSE 
 
 PREACHED IN THE FIRST CHURCH, DORCHESTER, 
 
 May 10, 1864. 
 
 By NATHANIEL HALL. 
 
 ^rintcb \\x ^uquest. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 WALKER, WISE, AND COMPANY, 
 
 245, Washington Street; 
 308, Washington Street. 
 
 1864. 
 
■fjiu 
 
 west. lies. Hl6t.Soc. 
 
 This Discourse, following, iu connection with others, upon a 
 recent personal experience on the part of the preacher, is yielded 
 for publication at the request of several of his parishioners. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 PltlNTED BY JOHN WILSON AND SON, 
 
 5, Water Street. 
 
J^ 
 
 DISCOURSE. 
 
 Ps. Iviii. 11 : " Verily there is a God vrao judgeth in the earth." 
 
 I PROPOSE to speak this morning on another point 
 comprised in the revelations and snggestions of that 
 absence preceding the long disablement from which 
 I have just returned to you. I would speak of the 
 contrasts between slavery and freedom, as presented 
 to the passing observer on their respective soils. It 
 is necessary to a due appreciation of either condition 
 to have seen both. " Seeing," most emphatically here, 
 " is believing ; " surely with a vividness of conviction 
 else ungained. 
 
 It was among the compensations of an otherwise 
 most irksome detention of a week and more in the 
 capital of Tennessee, that I was brought into daily 
 companionship with a circle of intelligent slavehold- 
 ers, driven from their distant homes by the persecu- 
 tions to which they were subjected for their Union 
 sentiments ; men to whom I was drawn, not alone for 
 their uncowering and self-devoting loyalty, but also 
 for general qualities of character, of which this was 
 
a specific, as it was a most attractive, emanation. 
 Among them was one with whom circumstances 
 threw me into an especial intimacy ; a man of fine 
 intellectual powers and culture, of high moral quali- 
 ties also, and a religious faith, — a Christian man : I 
 do not hesitate to say it, (shame to me if I did!) 
 slaveholder though he was. He had fled, for personal 
 safety, from his extensive plantation in the interior of 
 the State ; leaving behind him a wife and daughters, 
 and a remnant (some thirty) of his slaves. His only 
 son, pride and joy of his heart, had been killed in 
 the rebel ranks, — affliction doubly grievous to him. 
 To his slaves he had said, on leaving them, " Stay 
 or go, as you choose; you are free to do either; I 
 claim no right to you : " and they, in a magnanimous 
 kindness, characteristic of the race, — as he himself 
 asserted, speaking from a life's contact with it, — had 
 chosen to stay, that they might be, as they were, sup- 
 port and protection to his else helpless family. He 
 had been all his life a cotton-planter in Tennessee 
 and Alabama ; had never, until the last summer, 
 taken a step out of slavedom. He visited then the 
 Middle States and New England ; and he told me, 
 with manly frankness, his impressions. He described 
 the wonder with which he saw, wherever he went, 
 the signs of a prosperity, a thrift, a comfort, compe- 
 tency, intelligence, refinement, which, in the measure 
 of it, and the extent of its difl"usion, he had formed 
 
no conception of as ours ; the wonder with which he 
 saw what industry and enterprise, unforced, unbribed, 
 had wrought, what natural obstacles they had over- 
 come. " Why, Massachusetts," said he, " has less 
 naturally good land in it, I verily beheve, than my 
 eight hundred acres at home, and yet so covered and 
 crowned with fertility and plenty ! and there, as else- 
 where m all the North I saw, such noble cities, such 
 flourishing villages, such intelhgent populations, 
 churches, schools, lyceums, libraries!" 
 
 And he saw all as the boon of Freedom. The 
 grand underlying secret of this condition of things, 
 in such striking contrast with what only he had 
 known, it was written to him all over it as in sun- 
 beams, — Freedom. These all were her clustering 
 growths ; their root, stimulus, sustainment, — free- 
 dom. He saw, as no statement could have convinced 
 him, no mere showing in words, no axioms of poli- 
 tical economy, no argument drawn from natural 
 causes and efi'ects, — he saw what freedom is and 
 does for a people, what slavery is and fails to do. 
 He Avas impressed more deeply than he could tell. 
 The facts witnessed were uppermost in his thoughts 
 wherever he went ; ruled, possessed him. 
 
 His way homeward was by Niagara, — object he 
 had longed for a lifetime to see ; whose glories he had 
 the taste to appreciate, and a heart to feel : but so 
 entirely was he taken possession of by what he had 
 
6 
 
 seen, so domineered over by Freedom's exhibitings 
 and the thoughts they started, that he was in no mood 
 to yield himself to, or feel, even those sublime attrac- 
 tions ; and long before the time he had previously 
 given himself — all too little, as he had then deemed 
 — to linger there, had elapsed, he found himself 
 pacing the platform of the station-house, lost in 
 thought, oblivious to surrounding things. " I had 
 seen something greater than Niagara," were his 
 words to me. " And I returned," he said, " with my 
 soul stirred and indignant at the thought of what 
 slavery had deprived us of as a people ; of the woful 
 curse it is, viewing it only on its negative side and 
 its more external aspects. I returned fired with the 
 purpose to devote myself to securing emancipation, 
 unqualified, uncompensated, for my State, as the only 
 true policy, while it is the only righteous aim." And 
 this I left him earnestly and efficiently doing, and, as 
 a specific means thereto, laboring for the enlistment 
 of the blacks. " We have given ourselves," he said, 
 speaking for himself and his patriot associates, — 
 whose patriotism had cost them something, had as- 
 serted itself against the pleadings of self-interest, 
 against educated prejudices and sectional dislikes, — 
 "we have given ourselves, heart and hand, to the 
 arming of the negro. It was not of our origination ; 
 but we accept it as the policy of the Government, 
 and as a legitimate mode of crushing the Rebellion, 
 
and moreover as securing more surely and speedily 
 the freedom of the slave. We are not disposed," he 
 continued, " to discuss the merits of the antislavery 
 movement, or the subject in general of slavery ; but, 
 if asked the question, we are free to answer, that, 
 with our present light, we regard slavery as a crime, 
 and this war and its terrible visitations as a' provi- 
 dential retribution upon us for cherishing it." 
 
 The circumstances of this individual, reversely, 
 were my own. Our conclusions were the same, ap- 
 proached from opposite quarters. We had been 
 alike impressed by the contrasts between slavery and 
 freedom; he coming from slavery's side to 'witness it, 
 I from freedom's. 
 
 I saw a considerable portion of Kentucky, a larger 
 one of Tennessee ; passing through the latter State 
 to where it touches Georgia, and spending nearly 
 three weeks in almost constant movement and change 
 of place within it, and with some especial opportuni- 
 ties, in the mode of movement, for observing the coun- 
 try and communicating with its population. Very 
 limited still, I am aware, — amusingly so, perhaps, 
 as an assumed basis for general conclusions, — were 
 my opportunities ; though I suppose Tennessee is no 
 unfair representative of that unfortunate sisterhood 
 of States which have made slavery their peculiar and 
 pet institution. At any rate, I testify but to what I 
 have seen of slavedom, in testifying to a condition of 
 
8 
 
 things within it in striking and most suggestive con- 
 trast to that presented anywhere within the Republic 
 where slavery is not ; a condition of things not called 
 into existence by the war, but existing previous to 
 and independently of it. The remark is applicable 
 to every department and sphere of life and living. 
 Everywhere is an absence of more or less, but in 
 every case much, of what has come with us to be 
 regarded as among the indispensable attendants of the 
 civilization of the century ; a lack, I cannot say uni- 
 versally, but out of the principal cities and in general, 
 of refinements, comforts, conveniences, which are a 
 part of the daily enjoyment of all but the poorest 
 among oitrselves ; a style of living below that of any 
 class, as a class, in New England ; an absence, not 
 only of tasteful ornamentation and beautifying care, 
 alike within dwelling and enclosure, but of that 
 neatness, trimness, order, which mark humblest cot- 
 tages on the soil of freedom. Unthrift — is the fact 
 to which things inanimate testify of their human 
 tenantry. Wretched — is the term which alone 
 expresses the condition of the poorer whites, as also 
 that of many a land-owner ; while the owners of 
 hundreds of acres are strangely without those ap- 
 pointments and furnishings of domestic life which 
 are reckoned elsewhere as simply decent. It seems 
 indeed to the Northern stranger that he has ftillen 
 back generations from the civilization he has left. 
 
9 
 
 Nature is beautiful ; and the autumnal sun was 
 shining brightly and genially over valley and mount- 
 ain, woodland and field, upon a soil eminently rich in 
 the elements of a natural fertility, as attested by its 
 spontaneous growths of gigantic measurement where 
 cultivation had been suspended, and by the rich crops 
 ripened beneath a tillage slovenly and imperfect, — 
 crops which war, in its imperious necessities, regard- 
 less of all claim of ownership, was wastefuUy for- 
 aging ; and yet, over all the landscape, there seemed 
 to hang a shadow, as of a brooding curse, which no 
 brightness from overarching skies could wholly lift. 
 Nor was it a mere fancy, a shadow projected from 
 within, in a knowledge of that actually existing curse 
 which slavery is. You look in vain for objects which 
 give its peculiar picturesqueness to Northern land- 
 scapes ; which light up as with rays of intelligence 
 their comparatively sorry and unluxuriant aspects, — 
 objects which bespeak connections with science and 
 art and taste and skill ; which suggest a care, if not a 
 supremacy of regard, for other than material things ; 
 the thriving village, nestling among the hills, or 
 spreading over the plain, or rising along the stream, 
 whose aid it seeks to waken its ponderous mechanism 
 to all but intelligent life and productiveness ; villages 
 all and each with their painted dwellings, their neatly 
 fenced enclosures, their gardens and shrubbery, their 
 spire - topped churches, their commodious school- 
 
10 
 
 houses, and a thousand fair and blessed thmgs mdige- 
 nous to freedom's soil ; and, in a closer and more 
 interior view, you miss the presence of books, pamph- 
 lets, newspapers, intellectual aid and resource of every 
 sort, — that which finds its way into the humblest 
 homes of our obscurest towns. It is not a mere diff'er- 
 ence of manners, habits, pursuits, speech, you notice, 
 but of ideas as well, — ideas respecting life and living, 
 society, government, truth, right ; a difierence in the 
 degree of mental hopefulness and activity, in breadth 
 of mental outlook and appreciation, in moral interest 
 and earnestness. You seem to yourself to have come 
 among a different nation, upon a different age ; among 
 those who have been slumbering, while the rest of the 
 world has moved on. 
 
 The contrasts between slavery and freedom is a 
 theme which may be unfolded into innumerable par- 
 ticulars. I have touched upon those simply which are 
 most obvious to the transient wayfarer. I have done 
 it, not as a matter of mere cursory interest, still less 
 for the encouragement of sectional pride and boastful- 
 ness, but for its moral bearings and significance. The 
 Almighty has not confined to a Book the disclosures 
 of his will. His statutes are recorded on a broader 
 page. He etches them pictorially upon the walls of 
 Nature. He inweaves them, by the restless shuttle 
 of events, into the very fabric and texture of society ; 
 and they who run may read them. God's providence 
 
11 
 
 is moral in its issues. His laws are all retributive in 
 their operations. In a sense deeper and subtler than 
 we think, " he rules the world in righteousness." 
 Wrong-doing insures its own defeat — always, and m 
 the long-run. A selfish disallowance of others' rights 
 is the costliest of indulgences. It doesn't pay: it 
 never does. The workers of iniquity share with the 
 objects of it its natural evils, while its moral are all 
 their own : — 
 
 " Sorrow tracketh wi-ong, 
 As echo follows song." 
 
 No community can establish a system of wrong and 
 oppression within its borders, without suffering for it 
 in all its departments. There is no interest, public or 
 private, that shall be excepted ; no class or mdividual, 
 however fenced around in fancied isolation. " Heaven 
 condescends to teach us the mere economy of morality." 
 A community cannot afford to institute mjustice for 
 any portion of its people. The Almighty Providence 
 lifts at that hour its retributive scourge, sure to fall, 
 sooner or later, in manifold infliction, mth the sure- 
 ness of fate. So wondi-ously interwoven, by the im- 
 partial Father, are human mterests, that each suffers 
 with all, and all with each. The depression to which 
 a class is subjected, in order to the greater elevation 
 of the rest, is certain to end in the depression of the 
 whole. The slave's tether is fastened to his master. 
 The blows that keep him at his heartless toil rebound 
 
12 
 
 upon those who order them. Coerced and bondaged 
 labor affixes the badge of degradation upon all labor ; 
 confining it to the servile class, making the rest idlers, 
 who consume the fruits of industry, without adding .to 
 them ; addmg nothing comparatively to any of the 
 departments of social and civil wealth. The mental 
 darkness that slavery necessitates for its victims, lest 
 the admitted light should waken them too broadly to a 
 consciousness of manhood, — its worth, capabilities, 
 destmies, — and thus depreciate their value as brute 
 stock, — it necessitates the entailment of ignorance 
 and debasement over a tvider surface. It exists at the 
 terrible cost of a denial of education to the masses 
 generally ; of a repression, if they chance to arise, of 
 all aspuings after its blessed favors. Knowledge 
 comes to be regarded as a foe, inimical to the public 
 interest, peace, safety ; comes to be suspected, hated, 
 hunted doAvn, challenged, expelled. Common schools 
 are accounted a nuisance, and their non-existence a 
 claim for congratulation. 
 
 Such is the moral significance of the contrasts be- 
 tween slavery and freedom. Thus do they yield 
 illustration and proof that God governs the world in 
 righteousness. " Verily there is a God who judgeth 
 in the earth." 
 
 Let not the view presented lead us of the North 
 to a taunting self-complacency at our freedom and the 
 fruits of it, to any vain-glorying on account of it. 
 
13 
 
 Forbid it, Honor, Justice, Truth ! Freedom was our 
 heritage, the lot that fell to us. We did not win, we 
 found it. Purchased indeed it was, at precious cost ; 
 but not by our blood and treasure and sufferings and 
 sacrifices. We have simply kept it, and not so much 
 kept it as been kept hi/ it. What merit m that? 
 What merit in just being what Freedom, under God, 
 has made us "? in merely taking the good wrought out 
 beneath her influences ? the privileges, opportunities, 
 incentives, which are her legitimate attendants ? 
 What have we done for Freedom, in return for what 
 she has done for us ? What are we doing for her 
 now, in this day of her perilous struggle, when she is 
 stretching out her hands to us imploringly, and by 
 the memories of the past, and the hopes of the future, 
 pleads for a self-consecration to her service ? nay, 
 rather, — let rhetorical personification go, for the 
 naked truth, — when the living God is imploring us, 
 for our fidelity at once to freedom and to him. 
 
 For myself, while, as I looked hitherward from 
 that slavery-cursed region. Freedom never seemed so 
 lovely, nor its children so blessed, and my heart glowed 
 with thankfulness for my New-England heritage, yet 
 I felt moved to pity rather than blame those whose 
 misfortune, and not whose fault, it is, that they were 
 born to a heritage in such saddening contrast ; mis- 
 fortune whose deeper depth is indicated in the fact, 
 that, save by here and there one, it is not felt as such. 
 
14 
 
 Pity, — I could not justify myself in cherishing a se- 
 verer feeling ; not then^ certainly, when I saw them 
 partaking, in the war and its ravages, of the bitter 
 fruits, and mo&t legitimate, of theh wicked institution. 
 Pity, at least for the many ; and for the rest, — for the 
 rest, too, pity, tempering the indignation which cannot 
 be repressed, as we are human, as we are divine, m 
 view of a malicious baseness in cruelty and wrong 
 (a part of the curse their institution has wrought upon 
 them) ; and admhation, admhation, for those (not a 
 few), who, having come to see the truth, are so heroic- 
 ally faithful to it; who, ahke in the depth of their 
 antislavery convictions and theh' martyr-hke devotion 
 to them and to the Union, are examples that should 
 put to shame those — alas that there are such even in 
 our New England ! — who see in freedom no appealing 
 worth, that they should arouse themselves in its be- 
 half; who have not yet made the first real willing 
 sacrifice for it ; and who murmur that they are forced 
 to aid at all in this mighty crisis of a nation's fate. 
 Shame, shame on such ! 
 
 The great consolmg thought that came to me, as I 
 looked upon that land, so fair and fertile by nature, 
 and upon its people, so forlornly wretched by slavery 
 and its war, w^as of the beneficent change so soon to 
 come there ; of t^e thronging blessmgs for which war's 
 hon hand was to unbar the door ; of the day when, 
 beneath the risen orb of Liberty, those hills and val- 
 
15 
 
 leys should be clothed mth the prosperities and gifts 
 that spring but at its genial shining ; when labor, no 
 more an accounted degradation, should be universally 
 honored, as it is ever honorable ; when the landscape, 
 no longer dreary with overgrown plantations, should 
 be studded and starred with multitudmous homesteads, 
 in the ownership of their occui)ants, while smiling 
 villages should reach toward each other, in friendly 
 neighborhood and ever-increasing proximity; when 
 intelligence should be a diffused possession, — knowl- 
 edge, no more than land, a monopoly of the few ; 
 when a people, receiving to themselves the peaceful 
 hosts of immigration, foreign and native, whom climate 
 and soil and position and resources shall have drawn 
 thither, bringing with them and fostering into free 
 and vigorous life the noblest growths of civilization 
 and Christianity, should lift up their voices in thanks- 
 giving to Heaven, that, through the agonizing throes 
 of civil war, they had come to a new birth and a 
 glorious transfiguration. 
 
HlOl 75 567 
 
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