SENTIMENT ABOUT SLAVERY BEFORE THE WAR.

3

we make from the character of events already transacted; and to be of any real service, now is the time for the history of those events to be written.

It was the sentiment of a large majority at the North, before the war began, that slavery, in itself considered, was neither right nor wrong. It was a question of policy and of law, not of morals. Probably, most would neither have desired to hold, nor to see any human being held in bondage, if freedom were consistent with his welfare. As it respected the negroes in this country, the whole question at the North. turned upon that point; but practically, it was one with which the people of the free States conceived they had nothing whatever to do. In parts of the country not peculiarly fitted for the beneficial use of negroes in that relation, their gradual liberation and removal to their native land was thought desirable. In other sections, better adapted to the laborious employment of black men than of white, and from which the North and the South alike derived advantage, it was held that the well-being of the colored race, equally with the common good, required the subjection of that race and its enforced labor. In no case, except where their numbers were so comparatively insignificant as to make it a matter of no real consequence, was it thought advisable that negroes should be admitted to any of the civil privileges of the white man. A different policy would seem useless, if not mischievous, to them as well as to their superiors, and degrading to the latter without being of any moral advantage to the former. The instance cannot be shown in the country of equal social station accorded to the blacks with the whites. It is a condition against which Nature itself rebels, and, being the strongest, conquers. In those States which have manifested the most earnest enthusiasm for liberating the slaves of their fellow-citizens, no disposition has been heretofore shown to place the black man upon any terms of actual equality with the white.

This anomaly is especially marked in Massachusetts, at last the most forward of all the States in promoting the

cause of anti-slavery, although equality of civil and social rights logically follows from the acquisition of freedom. Yet, notwithstanding the absence of any statute forbidding it, no negro in that State has been a member of its Legislature,' has served upon the jury, or in the militia, or has been appointed to any office beyond one of a menial grade. Hence, his social relations may be readily inferred. To prohibit a whole race from the ordinary privileges of freedom, in a free country, is not to make them really free. In what is the condition of a pariah better than that of a slave? To talk of the boon of liberty to a captive, freed from his shackles but turned out into a desert to perish, is a profanation of a sacred name. Yet such is and must be the practical operation of freedom to the negro in this country. In this contingency, he is brought into direct collision with the interests, the sentiments, and the instincts of the more numerous and more powerful race, to which he was not at all exposed in his dependent condition. In the North, his kind has constantly dwindled, and, but for occasional accessions by immigration, would soon disappear like the original inhabitants of the soil. In the South, where the race has multiplied to such an extraordinary degree, while in the condition of slavery, the freedom conferred by the advance of our armies has brought them only misery and death. The same natural law which has prevailed at the North will exert similar force at the South, should a system of competition between the white man and the black take effect. The weaker will fade away before the stronger species.

It is difficult to understand what consolation any honest and intelligent philanthropy can find in such a melancholy reflection. Doubtless, there are those who will consider that a system of slavery, which in this country, after all, was, in general, a condition of mutual dependence between master and servant, borne with cheerfulness by the inferior, and ex-hibiting that surest sign of comfort, the vast increase of the

1 A negro was elected to a Town Committee in a place near Cape Cod within a few years

CONDITION OF THE NEGROES.

5

species, is poorly compensated by a scheme of cold and speculative humanity, which can only end in the final destruction of a whole subordinate people.

Indeed, philosophy would seem to teach us that, since the state of human affairs at best is by no means perfect, and since questions of political and social import are, and always have been, points of dispute, so serious a matter as the sudden and enforced reorganization of a race could hardly be warrantable, except upon the clearest and most unquestionable grounds of equitable claim. A mere experiment to this end could be hardly justified; especially if all former experience in a similar direction tends to discountenance it. To impose upon an inferior and degraded race a new series of rights and attendant obligations, for the proper exercise of which it may be doubted if a steady course of training renders those long in the enjoyment of education and freedom any too well qualified, might look on the face of the project likely to prove only prejudicial to both parties. The right to institute such a change ought to result, at least, from the distinct complaint and demand of those chiefly interested. It need scarcely be said that here was nothing of the sort. The negroes were perfectly contented with their lot. In general, they were not only happy in their condition, but proud of it. Their hardships were such as are inherent in the state of those who labor at the will of others for their daily bread. On the other hand, they were nursed in sickness, and cared for in old age. If any individual among them displayed superior abilities or qualities, he could easily obtain his freedom if he desired it. There were many free negroes in each of the slave States, and not a few who were prosperous in business, had acquired no inconsiderable possessions, and held persons of their own race as slaves. To the whole South, at least, the tender mercies which would disturb this state of things seemed cruel; but their people chiefly resented any such interference, because it was unjust to them, as being in violation of the laws of the land.

The anti-slavery movement at the North was based upon

a denial of the obligation of those laws. It was alleged by the advocates of the movement, that man could not rightfully hold property in man. Hence, they aimed from the first at the abrogation of the Constitution; or, in the alternative of failure in that object, at the dissolution of the Union. There was no concealment of either of those purposes. The right which they denied was one of very ancient standing in practice. It never seems to have occurred to them, or, if it did, they soon learned to disregard the obligation, that this right is expressly recognized in the Moral Law. The injunction: "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's man-servant, nor his maid-servant," can no more cease to be binding, so long as that relation exists under the law of the land, than either of the other commandments of the Decalogue. A civil community may lawfully authorize a condition of bondage for a portion of its population which is unsuited for the exercise of civil rights, if the apparent well-being of the whole requires it. Under ordinary circumstances, and in a state of advanced civilization, it is obvious that the public welfare demands no such condition to be maintained. Wherever such a system of bondage exists, however, although no citizen is under any obligation to hold either man-servant or maid-servant, according to the unquestionable Scriptural sense of those terms; yet so long as one jot or one tittle of the Moral Law remains to be fulfilled, his neighbor cannot interfere with his legal rights without sin. And he who destroys his neighbor's property, or deprives him of it in any unlawful manner, though not appropriated to his own use, nevertheless covets it. He who burns another's dwelling, without intending theft, is equally guilty of arson with him who sets it on fire for the express purpose of plunder.

The Abolitionists, indeed, declared that human slavery, so far as it had received Scriptural sanction, had only been permitted to former ages, for inscrutable reasons, just as po

lygamy was then allowed. The Republican Convention,

which nominated candidates for the support of its party in 1856, denounced slavery and polygamy together, as "twin

OBJECTIONS TO THE SLAVE TRADE.

relics of barbarism." Omitting all inquiry into the fundamental distinction between a social institution, which may have been beneficial and even unavoidable in certain stages of society, and a practice of merely individual import, it may be remarked that polygamy can make no claim to divine warrant. On the contrary, the original sanction to the marriage of our first parents was: "And they twain shall be one flesh." That same series of holy commandments, also, which forbids us to covet any thing that is our neighbor's, restricts our relation to the opposite sex within the singular number, namely: "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife." No distinction could be broader, therefore, than that drawn by Scripture between the condition of bondage which it allows, and under fitting circumstances protects, by the solemn injunction of the Divine Law, and a practice which it explicitly prohibited, from the period of the very origin of our species.

Until the American Revolution of 1775, the attention of the world had scarcely been drawn to slavery or the slave trade. The reduction of Christians to a state of servile and cruel bondage by the Barbary powers was suffered to continue until more than thirty years after the war of the Revolution was ended. The traffic in negroes was profitable to European and American traders, and conscience slept. Slavery, in fact, had been an indiscriminate custom of the world, wherever convenient and remunerative, for nearly six thousand years. At a very early date, measures had been taken in certain of the Southern provinces of America, of which South Carolina, in 1760, was conspicuous, to prevent the introduction of negro slaves into those colonies. But their remonstrances were unheeded by the mother country. At the period of the war of the Revolution, slavery existed, nominally, in every one of the American colonies. So lately as 1759, the legal representatives of no less eminent a divine and moral philosopher than Jonathan Edwards, of Connecticut, transferred the title to two negroes, denominated “the