The Anti-Slavery Examiner
Chapter 171 : Mr. RICE, of Kentucky in his speech in the Convention that formed the Const.i.tution o

Mr. RICE, of Kentucky in his speech in the Convention that formed the Const.i.tution of that state, in 1790, says:

"He [the slave] is a rational creature, reduced by the power of legislation to the _state of a brute_, and thereby deprived of every privilege of humanity.... The brute may steal or rob, to supply his hunger; but the slave, though in the most starving condition, _dare not do either, on penalty of death, or some severe punishment_."

Rev. HORACE MOULTON, a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church, in Marlborough, Ma.s.s. who lived some years in Georgia, says:

"The southern horses and dogs have enough to eat, and good care is taken of them; but southern negroes--who can describe their misery and their wretchedness, their nakedness and their cruel scourgings! None but G.o.d. Should we _whip our horses_ as they whip their slaves, even for small offences, we should expose ourselves to the penalty of the law."

Rev. PHINEAS SMITH, Centerville, Allegany county, New York, who has resided four years in the midst of southern slavery--

"Avarice and cruelty are twin sisters; and I do not hesitate to declare before the world, as my deliberate opinion, that there is _less compa.s.sion_ for working slaves at the south, than for working oxen at the north."

STEVEN SEWALL, Esq. Winthrop, Maine, a member of the Congregational Church, and late agent of the Winthrop Manufacturing Company, who resided five years in Alabama, says--

"I do not think that brutes, not even horses, are treated with _so much cruelty_ as American slaves."

If the preceding considerations are insufficient to remove incredulity respecting the cruelties suffered by slaves, and if northern objectors still say, 'We might believe such things of savages, but that civilized men, and republicans, in this Christian country, can openly and by system perpetrate such enormities, is impossible';--to such we reply, that this incredulity of the people of the free states, is not only discreditable to their intelligence, but to their consistency.

Who is so ignorant as not to know, or so incredulous as to disbelieve, that the early Baptists of New England were fined, imprisoned, scourged, and finally banished by our puritan forefathers?--and that the Quakers were confined in dungeons, publicly whipped at the cart-tail, had their ears cut off, cleft sticks put upon their tongues, and that five of them, four men and one woman, were hung on Boston Common, for propagating the sentiments of the Society of Friends? Who discredits the fact, that the civil authorities in Ma.s.sachusetts, less than a hundred and fifty years ago, confined in the public jail a little girl of four years old, and publicly hung the Rev. Mr. Burroughs, and eighteen other persons, mostly women, and killed another, (Giles Corey,) by extending him upon his back, and piling weights upon his breast till he was crushed to death [17]--and this for no other reason than that these men and women, and this little child, were accused by others of _bewitching_ them.

[Footnote 17: Judge Sewall, of Ma.s.s. in his diary, describing this horrible scene, says that when the tongue of the poor sufferer had, in the extremity of his dying agony, protruded from his mouth, a person in attendance took his cane and thrust it back into his mouth.]

Even the children in Connecticut, know that the following was once a law of that state:

"No food or lodging shall be allowed to a Quaker. If any person turns Quaker, he shall be banished, and not be suffered to return on pain of death."

These objectors can readily believe the fact, that in the city of New York, less than a hundred years since, thirteen persons were publicly burned to death, over a slow fire: and that the legislature of the same State took under its paternal care the African slave-trade, and declared that "all encouragement should be given to the _direct_ importation of slaves; that all _smuggling_ of slaves should be condemned, as _an eminent discouragement to the fair trader_."

They do not call in question the fact that the African slave-trade was carried on from the ports of the free states till within thirty years; that even members of the Society of Friends were actively engaged in it, shortly before the revolutionary war; [18] that as late as 1807, no less than fifty-nine of the vessels engaged in that trade, were sent out from the little state of Rhode Island, which had then only about seventy thousand inhabitants; that among those most largely engaged in these foul crimes, are the men whom the people of Rhode Island delight to honor: that the man who dipped most deeply in that trade of blood (James De Wolf,) and ama.s.sed a most princely fortune by it, was not long since their senator in Congress; and another, who was captain of one of his vessels, was recently Lieutenant Governor of the state.

[Footnote 18: See Life and Travels of John Woolman, page 92.]

They can believe, too, all the horrors of the middle pa.s.sage, the chains, suffocation, maimings, stranglings, starvation, drownings, and cold blooded murders, atrocities perpetrated on board these slave-s.h.i.+ps by their own citizens, perhaps by their own townsmen and neighbors--possibly by their own _fathers_: but oh! they 'can't believe that the slaveholders can be so hard-hearted towards their slaves as to treat them with great cruelty.' They can believe that his Holiness the Pope, with his cardinals, bishops and priests, have tortured, broken on the wheel, and burned to death thousands of Protestants--that eighty thousand of the Anabaptists were slaughtered in Germany--that hundreds of thousands of the blameless Waldenses, Huguenots and Lollards, were torn in pieces by the most t.i.tled dignitaries of church and state, and that _almost every professedly Christian sect, has, at some period of its history, persecuted unto blood_ those who dissented from their creed. They can believe, also, that in Boston, New York, Utica, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Alton, and in scores of other cities and villages of the free states, 'gentlemen of property and standing,' led on by civil officers, by members of state legislatures, and of Congress, by judges and attorneys-general, by editors of newspapers, and by professed ministers of the gospel, have organized mobs, broken up lawful meetings of peaceable citizens, committed a.s.sault and battery upon their persons, knocked them down with stones, led them about with ropes, dragged them from their beds at midnight, gagged and forced them into vehicles, and driven them into unfrequented places, and there tormented and disfigured them--that they have rifled their houses, made bonfires of their furniture in the streets, burned to the ground, or torn in pieces the halls or churches in which they were a.s.sembled--attacked them with deadly weapons, stabbed some, shot others, and killed one. They can believe all this--and further, that a majority of the citizens in the places where these outrages have been committed, connived at them; and by refusing to indict the perpetrators, or, if they were indicted, by combining to secure their acquittal, and rejoicing in it, have publicly adopted these felonies as their own. All these things they can believe without hesitation, and that they have even been done by their own acquaintances, neighbors, relatives; perhaps those with whom they interchange courtesies, those for whom they _vote_, or to whose _salaries they contribute_--but yet, oh! they can never believe that slaveholders inflict cruelties upon their slaves!

They can give full credence to the kidnapping, imprisonment, and deliberate murder of WILLIAM MORGAN, and that by men of high standing in society; they can believe that this deed was aided and abetted, and the murderers screened from justice, by a large number of influential persons, who were virtually accomplices, either before or after the fact; and that this combination was so effectual, as successfully to defy and triumph over the combined powers of the government;--yet that those who constantly rob men of their time, liberty, and wages, and all their _rights_, should rob them of bits of flesh, and occasionally of a tooth, make their backs bleed, and put fetters on their legs, is too monstrous to be credited! Further these same persons, who 'can't believe' that slaveholders are so iron-hearted as to ill-treat their slaves, believe that the very _elite_ of these slaveholders, those most highly esteemed and honored among them, are continually daring each other to mortal conflict, and in the presence of mutual friends, taking deadly aim at each other's hearts, with settled purpose to _kill_, if possible. That among the most distinguished governors of slave states, among their most celebrated judges, senators, and representatives in Congress, there is hardly _one_, who has not either killed, or tried to kill, or aided and abetted his friends in trying to kill, one or more individuals. That pistols, dirks, bowie knives, or other instruments of death are generally carried throughout the slave states--and that deadly affrays with them, in the streets of their cities and villages, are matters of daily occurrence; that the sons of slaveholders in southern colleges, bully, threaten, and fire upon their teachers, and their teachers upon them; that during the last summer, in the most celebrated seat of science and literature in the south, the University of Virginia, the professors were attacked by more than seventy armed students, and, in the words of a Virginia paper, were obliged 'to conceal themselves from their fury;' also that almost all the riots and violence that occur in northern colleges, are produced by the turbulence and lawless pa.s.sions of southern students. That such are the furious pa.s.sions of slaveholders, no considerations of personal respect, none for the proprieties of life, none for the honor of our national legislature, none for the character of our country abroad, can restrain the slaveholding members of Congress from the most disgraceful personal encounters on the floor of our nation's legislature--smiting their fists in each other's faces, throttling and even _kicking_ and trying to _gouge_ each other--that during the session of the Congress just closed, no less than six slaveholders, taking fire at words spoken in debate, have either rushed at each other's throats, or kicked, or struck, or attempted to knock each other down; and that in all these instances, they would doubtless have killed each other, if their friends had not separated them. Further, they know full well, these were not insignificant, vulgar blackguards, elected because they were the head bullies and bottle-holders in a boxing ring, or because their const.i.tuents went drunk to the ballot box; but they were some of the most conspicuous members of the House--one of them a former speaker.

Our newspapers are full of these and similar daily occurrences among slaveholders, copied verbatim from their own accounts of them in their own papers and all this we fully credit; no man is simpleton enough to cry out 'Oh, I can't believe that slaveholders do such things;'--and yet when we turn to the treatment which these men mete out to their _slaves_, and show that they are in the habitual practice of striking, kicking, knocking down and shooting _them_ as well as each other--the look of blank incredulity that comes over northern dough-faces, is a study for a painter: and then the sentimental outcry, with eyes and hands uplifted, 'Oh, indeed, I can't believe the slaveholders are so cruel to their slaves.' Most amiable and touching charity! Truly, of all Yankee notions and free state products, there is nothing like a '_dough face_'--the great northern staple for the southern market--'made to order,' in any quant.i.ty, and _always on hand_. 'Dough faces!' Thanks to a slaveholder's contempt for the name, with its immortality of truth, infamy and scorn.[19]

[Footnote 19: "_Doe_ face," which owes its paternity to John Randolph, age has mellowed into "_dough_ face"--a cognomen quite as expressive and appropriate, if not as cla.s.sical.]

Though the people of the free states affect to disbelieve the cruelties perpetrated upon the slaves, yet slaveholders believe _each other_ guilty of them, and speak of them with the utmost freedom. If slaveholders disbelieve any statement of cruelty inflicted upon a slave, it is not on account of its _enormity_. The traveler at the south will hear in Delaware, and in all parts of Maryland and Virginia, from the lips of slaveholders, statements of the most horrible cruelties suffered by the slaves _farther_ south, in the Carolinas and Georgia; when he finds himself in those states he will hear similar accounts about the treatment of the slaves in _Florida_ and _Louisiana_; and in Missouri, Kentucky, and Tennessee he will hear of the tragedies enacted on the plantations in Arkansas, Alabama and Mississippi. Since Anti-Slavery Societies have been in operation, and slaveholders have found themselves on trial before the world, and put upon their good behavior, northern slaveholders have grown cautious, and now often subst.i.tute denials and set defences, for the voluntary testimony about cruelty in the far south, which, before that period, was given with entire freedom. Still, however, occasionally the 'truth will out,' as the reader will see by the following testimony of an East Tennessee newspaper, in which, speaking of the droves of slaves taken from the upper country to Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, etc., the editor says, they are 'traveling to a region where their condition through time WILL BE SECOND ONLY TO THAT OF THE WRETCHED CREATURES IN h.e.l.l.' See "Maryville Intelligencer," of Oct, 4, 1835. Distant cruelties and cruelties _long past_, have been till recently, favorite topics with slaveholders. They have not only been ready to acknowledge that their _fathers_ have exercised great cruelty toward their slaves, but have voluntarily, in their official acts, made proclamation of it and entered it on their public records. The Legislature of North Carolina, in 1798, branded the successive legislatures of that state for more than thirty years previous, with the infamy of treatment towards their slaves, which they p.r.o.nounce to be 'disgraceful to humanity, and degrading in the highest degree to the laws and principles of a free, Christian, and enlightened country.' This treatment was the enactment and perpetuation of a most barbarous and cruel law.

But enough. As the objector can and does believe all the preceeding facts, if he still '_can't_ believe' as to the cruelties of slaveholders, it would be barbarous to tantalize his incapacity either with evidence or argument. Let him have the benefit of the act in such case made and provided.

Having shown that the incredulity of the objector respecting the cruelty inflicted upon the slaves, is discreditable to his consistency, we now proceed to show that it is equally so to his _intelligence_.

Whoever disbelieves the foregoing statements of cruelties, on the ground of their enormity, proclaims his own ignorance of the nature and history of man. What! incredulous about the atrocities perpetrated by those who hold human beings as property, to be used for their pleasure, when history herself has done little else in recording human deeds, than to dip her blank chart in the blood shed by arbitrary power, and unfold to human gaze the great red scroll? That cruelty is the natural effect of arbitrary power, has been the result of all experience, and the voice of universal testimony since the world began. Shall human nature's axioms, six thousand years old, go for nothing? Are the combined product of human experience, and the concurrent records of human character, to be set down as 'old wives'

fables?' To disbelieve that arbitrary power naturally and habitually perpetrates cruelties, where it can do it with impunity, is not only ignorance of man, but of _things_. It is to be blind to innumerable proofs which are before every man's eyes; proofs that are stereotyped in the very words and phrases that are on every one's lips. Take for example the words _despot_ and _despotic_. Despot, signifies etymologically, merely one who _possesses_ arbitrary power, and at first, it was used to designate those alone who _possessed_ unlimited power over human beings, entirely irrespective of the way in which they exercised it, whether mercifully or cruelly. But the fact, that those who possessed such power, made their subjects their _victims_, has wrought a total change in the popular meaning of the word. It now signifies, in common parlance, not one who _possesses_ unlimited power over others, but one who exercises the power that he has, whether little or much, _cruelly_. So _despotic_, instead of meaning what it once did, something pertaining to the _possession_ of unlimited power, signifies something pertaining to the _capricious, unmerciful and relentless exercise_ of such power.

The word tyrant, is another example--formerly it implied merely a _possession_ of arbitrary power, but from the invariable abuse of such power by its possessors, the proper and entire meaning of the word is lost, and it now signifies merely one who _exercises power to the injury of others_. The words tyrannical and tyranny follow the same a.n.a.logy. So the word arbitrary; which formerly implied that which pertains to the will of one, independently of others; but from the fact that those who had no restraint upon their wills, were invariably capricious, unreasonable and oppressive, these words convey accurately the present sense of _arbitrary_, when applied to a person.

How can the objector persist in disbelieving that cruelty is the natural effect of arbitrary power, when the very words of every day, rise up on his lips in testimony against him--words which once signified the _mere possession_ of arbitrary power, but have lost their meaning, and now signify merely its cruel _exercise_; because such a use of it has been proved by the experience of the world, to be inseparable from its _possession_--words now frigid with horror, and never used even by the objector without feeling a cold chill run over him.

Arbitrary power is to the mind what alcohol is to the body; it intoxicates. Man loves power. It is perhaps the strongest human pa.s.sion; and the more absolute the power, the stronger the desire for it; and the more it is desired, the more its exercise is enjoyed: this enjoyment is to human nature a fearful temptation,--generally an overmatch for it. Hence it is true, with hardly an exception, that arbitrary power is abused in proportion as it is _desired_. The fact that a person intensely desires power over others, _without restraint_, shows the absolute necessity of restraint. What woman would marry a man who made it a condition that he should have the power to divorce her whenever he pleased? Oh! he might never wish to exercise it, but the _power_ he would have! No woman, not stark mad, would trust her happiness in such hands.

Would a father apprentice his son to a master, who insisted that his power over the lad should be _absolute_? The master might perhaps, never wish to commit a battery upon the boy, but if he should, he insists upon having full swing! He who would leave his son in the, clutches of such a wretch, would be bled and blistered for a lunatic as soon as his friends could get their hands upon him.

The possession of power, even when greatly restrained, is such a fiery stimulant, that its lodgement in human hands is always perilous. Give men the handling of immense sums of money, and all the eyes of Argus and the hands of Briarcus can hardly prevent embezzlement.

The mutual and ceaseless accusations of the two great political parties in this country, show the universal belief that this tendency of human nature to abuse power, is so strong, that even the most powerful legal restraints are insufficient for its safe custody. From congress and state legislatures down to grog-shop caucuses and street wranglings, each party keeps up an incessant din about _abuses of power_. Hardly an officer, either of the general or state governments, from the President down to the ten thousand postmasters, and from governors to the fifty thousand constables, escapes the charge of '_abuse of power_.' 'Oppression,' 'Extortion,' 'Venality,' 'Bribery,'

'Corruption,' 'Perjury,' 'Misrule,' 'Spoils,' 'Defalcation,' stand on every newspaper. Now without any estimate of the lies told in these mutual charges, there is truth enough to make each party ready to believe of the other, and _of their best men too,_ any abuse of power, however monstrous. As is the State, so is the Church. From General Conferences to circuit preachers; and from General a.s.semblies to church sessions, abuses of power spring up as weeds from the dunghill.

All legal restraints are framed upon the presumption, that men will abuse their power if not hemmed in by them. This lies at the bottom of all those checks and balances contrived for keeping governments upon their centres. If there is among human convictions one that is invariable and universal, it is, that when men possess unrestrained power over others, over their time, choice, conscience, persons, votes, or means of subsistence, they are under great temptations to abuse it; and that the intensity with which such power is desired, generally measures the certainty and the degree of its abuse.

That American slaveholders possess a power over their slaves which is virtually absolute, none will deny.[20] That they _desire_ this absolute power, is shown from the fact of their holding and exercising it, and making laws to confirm and enlarge it. That the desire to possess this power, every t.i.ttle of it, is _intense_, is proved by the fact, that slaveholders cling to it with such obstinate tenacity, as well as by all their doings and sayings, their threats, cursings and gnas.h.i.+ngs against all who denounce the exercise of such power as usurpation and outrage, and counsel its immediate abrogation.

[Footnote 20: The following extracts from the laws of slave-states are proofs sufficient.

"The slave is ENTIRELY subject to the WILL of his master."--Louisiana Civil Code, Art. 273.

"Slaves shall be deemed, sold, taken, reputed and adjudged in law to be _chattels personal,_ in the hands of their owner and possessors, and their executors, administrators and a.s.signs, TO ALL INTENTS, CONSTRUCTIONS, AND PURPOSES, WHATSOEVER."--Laws of South Carolina, 2 Brev. Dig. 229; Prince's Digest, 446, &c.]

From the nature of the case--from the laws of mind, such power, so intensely desired, griped with such a death-clutch, and with such fierce spurnings of all curtailment or restraint, _cannot but be abused._ Privations and inflictions must be its natural, habitual products, with ever and anon, terror, torture, and despair let loose to do their worst upon the helpless victims.

Though power over others is in every case liable to be used to their injury, yet, in almost all cases, the subject individual is s.h.i.+elded from great outrages by strong safeguards. If he have talents, or learning, or wealth, or office, or personal respectability, or influential friends, these, with the protection of law and the rights of citizens.h.i.+p, stand round him as a body guard: and even if he lacked all these, yet, had he the same color, features, form, dialect, habits, and a.s.sociations with the privileged caste of society, he would find in _them_ a s.h.i.+eld from many injuries, which would be _invited,_ if in these respects he differed widely from the rest of the community, and was on that account regarded with disgust and aversion. This is the condition of the slave; not only is he deprived of the artificial safeguards of the law, but has none of those _natural_ safeguards enumerated above, which are a protection to others. But not only is the slave dest.i.tute of those peculiarities, habits, tastes, and acquisitions, which by a.s.similating the possessor to the rest of the community, excite their interest in him, and thus, in a measure, secure for him their protection; but he possesses those peculiarities of bodily organization which are looked upon with deep disgust, contempt, prejudice, and aversion. Besides this, constant contact with the ignorance and stupidity of the slaves, their filth, rags, and nakedness; their cowering air, servile employments, repulsive food, and squalid hovels, their purchase and sale, and use as brutes--all these a.s.sociations, constantly mingling and circulating in the minds of slaveholders, and inveterated by the hourly irritations which must a.s.sail all who use human beings as things, produce in them a permanent state of feeling toward the slave, made up of repulsion and settled ill-will. When we add to this the corrosions produced by the petty thefts of slaves, the necessity of constant watching, their reluctant service, and indifference to their master's interests, their ill concealed aversion to him, and spurning of his authority; and finally, that fact, as old as human nature, that men always hate those whom they oppress, and oppress those whom they hate, thus oppression and hatred mutually begetting and perpetuating each other--and we have a raging compound of fiery elements and disturbing forces, so stimulating and inflaming the mind of the slaveholder against the slave, that _it cannot but break forth upon him with desolating fury._

To deny that cruelty is the spontaneous and uniform product of arbitrary power, and that the natural and controlling tendency of such power is to make its possessor cruel, oppressive, and revengeful towards those who are subjected to his control, is, we repeat, to set at nought the combined experience of the human race, to invalidate its testimony, and to reverse its decisions from time immemorial.

A volume might be filled with the testimony of American slaveholders alone, to the truth of the preceding position. We subjoin a few ill.u.s.trations, and first, the memorable declaration of President Jefferson, who lived and died a slaveholder. It has been published a thousand times, and will live forever. In his "Notes on Virginia,"

sixth Philadelphia edition, p. 251, he says,--

"The WHOLE COMMERCE between master and slave, is a PERPETUAL EXERCISE of the most _boisterous pa.s.sions_, the most unremitting DESPOTISM on the one part, and degrading submission on the other..... The parent _storms_, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of _wrath_, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, GIVES LOOSE TO THE WORST OF Pa.s.sIONS; and thus _nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny,_ cannot but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities."

Hon. Lewis Summers, Judge of the General Court of Virginia, and a slaveholder, said in a speech before the Virginia legislature in 1832; (see Richmond Whig of Jan. 26, 1832,)

"A slave population exercises _the most pernicious influence_ upon the manners, habits and character, of those among whom it exists. Lisping infancy learns the vocabulary of abusive epithets, and struts the _embryo tyrant_ of its little domain. The consciousness of superior destiny takes possession of his mind at its earliest dawning, and love of power and rule, 'grows with his growth, and strengthens with his strength.' Unless enabled to rise above the operation of those powerful causes, he enters the world with miserable notions of self-importance, and under the government of an unbridled temper."

The late JUDGE TUCKER of Virginia, a slaveholder, and Professor of Law in the University of William and Mary, in his "Letter to a Member of the Virginia Legislature," 1801, says,--

"I say nothing of the baneful effects of slavery on our _moral character_, because I know you have been long sensible of this point."

The Presbyterian Synod of South Carolina and Georgia, consisting of all the clergy of that denomination in those states, with a lay representation from the churches, most, if not all of whom are slaveholders, published a report on slavery in 1834, from which the following is an extract.