Chapter VII: The Ethical Argument (1)

§ 1. The flimsy character of the arguments based by the abolitionists on the Scriptures, betrays another than a biblical origin for their doctrines. They come primarily not from God's word, but from "philosophy falsely so called;" the abolitionists, having determined on them in advance, are only concerned with the sacred records, to thrust them aside by quibbles and evasions. But the only sure and perfect rule of right is the Bible. This, we have seen, condemns domestic slavery neither expressly nor by implication. It shows us the institution in the family of the "Father of the faithful," the "friend of God," and there recognized by God himself in the solemn sacrament of the Old Testament circumcision: We have found it expressly authorized to God's chosen people, Israel, and defended in the Decalogue itself: We see it existing throughout the ages of that dispensation, while inspired men, so far from condemning, practised it: We see that it is not removed by the fuller light of the New Testament; but on the contrary, its duties are defined, and slaveholders admitted to all the privileges of the Church: We learn, in a word, that domestic slavery existed throughout the ages of revelation, was practised continually by multitudes of God's own people, was never once rebuked, but often recognized and authorized. We assert then, that, according to that infallible standard, it is lawful.

Yet, it is condemned in unmeasured terms by most of the people of Christendom, is said to be abhorrent to the political ethicks of the age, and has been reprobated by some of the fathers of our own commonwealth. What then? In the emphatic language of the book whose protection we claim: "Let God be true, but every man a liar." Nor are we much concerned to explain away this collision between human speculation and God's word. When we consider the weakness of human reason, and the mortifying history of its vagaries; when we remember how many dogmas once held for axioms are now exploded, and what monstrous crimes and follies have been upheld by the unanimous consent of philosophers, we are not afraid to adopt the teachings of the All-Wise, in preference to the deductions of blundering and purblind mortals. When the political experience of the world shall have matured and corrected the opinions of men, we have no fear but that all the truly wise, and good, and philosophical, will justify us, and will acknowledge that this simple, this decried, this abhorred expedient of inspired law-givers was, after all, best conformed to the true wants and welfare of those to whom it was applied, and wiser than any of the conceited _nostrums_ of political quackery; that, in short, "the foolishness of God was wiser than men." Here, then, we place our feet; and our answer to reviling abolitionists and a frowning world is: Your reproach is not against us, but God. Go and convict the All-Wise of folly, the Infinite Holiness of injustice. Amidst the cruel sufferings of the war which was thrust upon us for this institution, and of the violent and disastrous overthrow of our liberties; amidst the floods of obloquy which our interested persecutors have belched forth upon us, and the contemptuous neglect of the nations, our confidence is in God's countenance. He permits us to be sorely chastened for our sins; but he will not finally suffer his own honour to be reproached. He will surely rebuke in the end, the folly and impiety of our slanderers, and "bring forth our righteousness as the noonday."

The Socinian and skeptical type of all the evasions of our Scriptural argument has been already intimated. If the most profane and reckless wresting of God's word will not serve their turn, to make it speak abolitionism, then they not seldom repudiate its authority. One of their leaders, long a professed minister of the Gospel, declares, at the close of a train of tortuous sophisms, that if he were compelled to believe the Bible countenances slavery, he should be compelled to give up the Bible: thereby virtually confessing that he had never been convinced of the infallibility of that which, for thirty years, he had been pretending to preach to men as infallible. Others, more blatant and blasphemous, when compelled to admit that both the Bible and the American constitution recognized slavery, exclaimed: "Give me, then, an anti-slavery constitution, an anti-slavery Bible, and an anti-slavery God!"

Orthodox Christians have always held it as a rule perfectly settled, that a revelation which was made to yield to any and every supposed deduction of reason, would be no authoritative rule of faith at all. It is only when the express word of Scripture clearly contradicts a proposition which appears to be a primary intuition of the reason, that it constitutes any difficulty in the reception of God's word. But can this prejudice against slavery claim to be such? The tests of such truths are, that they shall be seen in their own light to be true; that they shall be necessary; and that all sane human beings shall inevitably believe them, if they comprehend the terms of the statements. Obviously, abolitionism can claim none of these traits. Instead of being self-evident, we shall show that it is a mere deduction from a deceitful and baseless theory. To the mind of all former ages, it has failed to commend itself as true. All ancient nations, and most moderns, have believed the contrary. All ancient philosophers, and all Bible saints, the latter at least as conscientious and clear-headed as modern fanatics, believed slavery to be lawful. The great philosophers of the middle ages, surpassed by none in acumen, and guided by the uninspired lights of a Plato, Aristotle and Cicero, thought and wrote without suspecting the sinfulness of slavery. Thousands of Christians in the Southern States, of as enlightened and honest consciences as any in the world, lived and died masters, with no other self-reproach than that they did not more faithfully fulfil the master's duties. Since it is not a self-evident, not a necessary, not a universally received truth, that slavery is sinful, we therefore claim the authority of the Scriptures as conclusive, and boldly repudiate all logical obligation to reconcile them with the vain conclusions of human speculation. "He that reproveth God, let him answer it."

Yet we acknowledge the obligation of those who undertake to expound God's word, "to commend it to every man's conscience in the sight of God," so far as the self-confidence and petulance of the depraved reason will permit. To show, therefore, that we have no fear of any legitimate human speculation, and to do what in us lies "to justify the ways of God to men," we propose in this chapter to examine the ethical argument against slavery with some care.

§ 2. _Misrepresentations Cleared._

But abolitionists, by their audacious assumptions, endeavour to throw the question out of the pale of discussion: they exclaim that it needs no wire-drawn inference, it is self-evident, that a system which dehumanizes a human being, and makes his very person like a brute's body, the property of another creature; which necessitates the entailing of ignorance and vice; which ignores the marital and parental rights; which subjects the chastity of the female to the brute will of her master, and which fills Southern homes with the constant outcry of oppression, is an iniquity: and that he who attempts to cite the testimony of reason and Scripture in defence of such wrongs, offers an insult to their minds and consciences which self-respect requires them to repel at once. The malignant industry of our enemies in propagating these monstrous slanders, compels us, therefore, to pause at the outset of the discussion, to rebut them, and disabuse the minds of readers. And it is here asserted, once for all, that the popular apprehension of the slave's condition and treatment, spread throughout Europe and the North, _is utterly false_: that it is the result of nothing less than persistent, wilful, and almost incredible lying on the part of interested accusers; and that this is recognized by every intelligent European and Northern man who has resided among us long enough truly to know the institution of slavery. The character disclosed by the Yankees in the war lately closed, has effectually taught the rest of the world to recognize the probability of our charge.

The reader is first, then, requested to recall the definition of American slavery admitted by us in the beginning of the fifth chapter. It is not an ownership of the servant's moral personality, soul, religious destinies, or conscience; but a property in his involuntary labour. And this right to his labour implies just so much controul over his person as enables his master to possess his labour. Our doctrine "hath this extent, no more." This we established beyond cavil by a reference to our laws and usages. Now, the abolitionist argues that the master's claim over the servant, if just, must imply a right to employ any means necessary to perpetuate it, such as to keep the mind of his slaves stupid and dark, because this is necessary to prevent his aspiring to his liberty. We reply that such means are not necessary in the nature of the case. To assert their necessity audaciously begs the question. If the master's claim were so essentially unrighteous, that any intelligent reflection in the slave would justify his indignation and resistance, then it might be more convenient for the master to make him an unreflecting animal. But the very subject in debate is, whether the claim is unrighteous. Suppose that the relation can be demonstrated to be right, reasonable, and beneficent for the servant, (which is what we assert,) then the only effect of intelligent reflection and of knowledge and virtue combined in the slave's character, will be to render him better satisfied with his condition. So that to degrade his soul is not a necessary means for perpetuating the master's authority, and not a part of the rights of masters. And now, it is emphatically asserted that Southern masters, as a class, did not seek or desire to repress either the mental or religious culture of their servants' souls; but the contrary. It is our solemn and truthful testimony, that the nearly universal temper of masters was to promote and not to hinder it; and the intellectual and religious culture of our slaves met no other general obstacle, save that which operates among the labouring poor of all countries, their own indifference to it, and the necessities of nearly constant manual labour. If there was any exception, it was caused by the mischievous meddling of abolitionists themselves, obtruding on the servants that false doctrine so sternly condemned by St. Paul. Southern masters desired the intelligence and morality of their servants. As a class, masters and their families performed a large amount of gratuitous labour for that end; and universally met all judicious efforts for it from others with cordial approval. An intelligent Christian servant was universally recognized as being, in a pecuniary view, a better servant. Is it asserted that there is still much degrading ignorance among Southern negroes? True: but it exists not because of our system, but in spite of it. There is more besotted ignorance in the peasantry of all other countries. It is the dispassionate conviction of intelligent Southerners, that our male slaves presented a better average of virtue and intelligence than the rank and file of the Federal armies by which we were overrun: and even the negro troops of our conquerors, although mostly recruited from the more idle and vicious slaves, were better than the white! The Africans of these States, three generations ago, were the most debased among pagan savages. A nation is not educated in a day. How long have the British people been in reaching their present civilization under God's providential tutelage? The South has advanced the Africans, as a whole, more rapidly than any other low savage race has ever been educated. Hence we boldly claim, that our system, instead of necessitating the ignorance and vice of its subjects, deserves the credit of a most beneficent culture.

We may here refer to the charge, that Virginian slavery condemned the Africans to mental and religious darkness, by forbidding them all access to letters; because the laws of the commonwealth forbade the teaching of them to read. Will not even the intelligent reader, after the currency of this charge, be surprised to learn that _there has never been such a law upon the statute books of Virginia_? To assert that there has been such a law, is an unmitigated falsehood. The only enactment which touches the subject is the following sentence, in the statute defining what were "unlawful assemblages" of negroes. "And every assemblage of negroes for the purpose of instruction in reading and writing, or in the night time for any purpose, shall be an unlawful assembly." Stat. 1830-31, p. 107. The previous section, commencing the definition of these unlawful assemblies, expressly states that they are unlawful if held _without the master's consent_. Our courts and lawyers uniformly held that, without this feature, no assemblage of negroes, to do any thing not criminal _per se_, can be unlawful; because the whole spirit of Virginian laws recognized the master's authority. His slaves were subject to his government. His authorization legalized everything not intrinsically criminal. Accordingly, the uniform interpretation given to the above words was, that it was the assembling of slaves for instruction in letters by others than their master or his authorized agents, which constituted the unlawful assembly. The whole extent of the law was, to arm masters with the power to prevent the impertinent interference of others with his servants, under the pretext of literary instruction; a power which the meddlesomeness of abolitionists pointed out as most wholesome and necessary. There was no more law to prevent the master from teaching his slaves than his children; either by himself, or his authorized agent; and thousands of slaves in Virginia were taught to read by their masters, or their children and teachers. As many Virginian slaves were able to read their Bibles, and had Bibles to read, as could probably be found among the labouring poor of boasted Britain. Here let another unmitigated falsehood be exposed. Since the ill-starred overthrow of our system, the most noted religious newspaper of the North, mentioning an appropriation of Bibles by the American Bible Society for gifts to negroes of the South, applauded the measure, because, as it asserted, "the Southern States had hitherto forbidden the circulation of the Scriptures among their slaves." It would be mere puling in us, to affect the belief that this amazing statement was made in ignorance; when the officials of the Society whose organ this slanderer professed to be, well know that, ever since the institution of the Bible Society, they were scarcely more familiar with any species of applications, than those of Christian masters and mistresses, and of Southern ministers, for Scriptures suitable for their servants. There has never been a law in Virginia preventing the gratuitous circulation of the Bible among slaves, or the possession or reading of it by slaves: and it is confidently believed that there has never been a single man in Virginia who desired such a law, or who would have executed it, had it defiled our statute book; unless, perchance, it was some infidel of that French school which invented abolitionism.

It is charged again, that slavery impiously and inhumanly sacrificed the immortal soul of the slave, to secure the master's pecuniary interest in him. This slander is already in part answered. We farther declare that neither our laws, nor the current temper and usage of masters, interfered with the slave's religious rights. On the contrary, they all protected and established them. The law protected the legal right of the slave to his Sabbath, forbidding the master to employ him on that day in secular labours, other than those of necessity and mercy. Instances in which slaves were prevented by their masters from attending the publick worship of God, were fully as rare among us, and as much reprobated, as similar abuses are in any other Christian country. On the contrary, the masters were almost universally more anxious that their servants should attend publick worship, than the servants were to avail themselves of the privilege. There was scarcely a Christian church in the South, which had not its black communicants sitting amicably at the table beside their masters; and the whole number of these adult communicants was reported by the statistics of the churches, as not less than a half million. We can emphatically declare, that we never saw or heard of a house of worship in the South, where sittings were not provided for the blacks at the expense of the whites: and it is believed that if there was such a case, it was in a neighbourhood containing no negro population. And in nearly every case, these sittings were more ample than the blacks could be induced to fill. Nor was there any expenditure of money on ecclesiastical objects, which was more cheerfully and liberally made, than that for the religious culture of the slaves. Further, with a few exceptions they enjoyed the fullest religious liberty in the selection of their religious communions and places of worship. Masters refused them liberty to join the churches of their choice more rarely than parents in New England and Old England perpetrated that act of spiritual tyranny upon their wives and daughters. So punctilious was this respect for the spiritual liberty of the servants, that masters universally yielded to it their own denominational preferences and animosities, allowing their servants to join the sects most repugnant to their own, even in cases as extreme as that of the Protestant and Romanist. The white people of the South may consider themselves truly fortunate, if they preserve, under the despotism which now rules them, as much religious liberty as our negroes received at our hands.

Our system is represented as oppressive and cruel, appointing different penalties for crimes to the black man and the white man; depriving the slave of the privilege of testifying against a white in a court of justice; subjecting him to frequent and inhuman corporal punishments, and making it a crime for him to exercise the natural right of self-defence, when violently assailed by a white man. The reply is, that the penal code of Virginia was properly made different in the case of the whites and the blacks, because of the lower moral tone of the latter. Many things, which are severe penalties to the white man, would be no punishment to the negro. And the penal code for the latter was greatly milder, both in its provisions, and in the temper of its administration, than that which obtained in England over her white citizens, far into this century. The slave was not permitted to testify against a white man, and this was a restriction made proper by his low grade of truthfulness, his difference of race, and the fact that he was to so great a degree subject to the will of another. But the seeming severity of this restriction was almost wholly removed, among us, by the fact that he always had, in his master, an interested and zealous patron and guardian, in all collisions with other white men. From oppression by his own master he found his sufficient protection, usually, in affection and self-interest. But in most of the abolition States, the wretched free black was equally disqualified to testify against his white oppressor; and the vast difference against him was, that he had no white master, the legal equal of his assailant, eagerly engaged by self-interest, affection, and honourable pride, to protect him. The black "citizen" was the helpless victim of the white swindler or bully. And such was usually the hypocrisy of abolitionism.

It is true again, that our law gave the master the power of corporal punishment, and required the slave to submit. So does the law of England give it to parents over children, to masters over apprentices, and to husbands over wives. Now, while we freely admit that there were in the South, instances of criminal barbarity in corporal punishments, they were very infrequent, and were sternly reprobated by publick opinion. So far were Southern plantations from being "lash-resounding dens," the whipping of adult men and women had become the rare exception. It was far less frequent and severe than the whipping of white men was, a few years ago, in the British army and navy, not probably more frequent than the whipping of wives is in the Northern States of America, and not nearly so frequent as the whipping of white young ladies now is in their State schools. The girls and boys of the plantations received the lash from masters and agents more frequently than the adults, as was necessary and right for the heedless children of mothers semi-civilized and neglectful; but universally, this punishment by their owners was far less frequent and severe than the black parents themselves inflicted. We may be permitted to state our own experience as a fair specimen of the average. The writer was for eighteen years a householder and master of slaves, having the government of a number of different slaves; and in that time he found it necessary to administer the lash to adults in four cases; and two of these were for a flagrant adultery--(resulting in the permanent reform of at least one of the delinquents.) His government was regarded by his slaveholding neighbours as by no means relaxed. Indeed, Europeans and Yankees are always surprised at the leniency and tolerance of Southern masters. But to the vain modern notion, that corporal punishments are in any case barbarous and degrading, we give place not for an instant. God enjoined them, in appropriate cases, on Hebrew citizens. Solomon inculcates the rod as the most wholesome correction for children. The degradation is in the offence, and not in the punishment. This pretended exclusion of whipping is a part of that Godless humanitarianism, born of conceit and pride, which always shows itself as full of real ferocity as of affected mildness.

It is also an outrageous misrepresentation to say that our laws imposed no check upon the master's brutality in punishing, and took away the slave's natural right of self-defence. The slave whose life was assailed might exercise the natural right of self-defence, even against his own master. He did it, of course, under the same responsibility to the law, and the same risque of guilt, if it should appear that he had shed blood gratuitously in a moment of ill-justified passion, under which the white man acts. Cases actually adjudicated have clearly ascertained this principle. In the county of----,[79] a slave, in the year 1861, turned upon his master during harvest, and with his scythe inflicted a mortal wound. He was arrested by his own fellow-slaves, and when questioned, replied to one, "I intended to kill him;" and to another, "I tried to cut him in two." It was proved by the defence, at his trial, (through the exclusive testimony of blacks,) that his master had, on previous days, and also on the morning of the same day, two hours previously, harassed him with barbarous and unusual punishments, by which, although none of them even in appearance assailed life, a just sense of outrage and high indignation must have been produced. The grave defect of this defence was, that the assaults of the master, although barbarous, never had implicated life, and that two or more hours had intervened, for the cooling of passion. The only immediate provocation at the time of killing was the repetition of some words of rebuke, with a comparatively slight chastisement. Such was the case. The court decided that, on the one hand, a verdict of justifiable homicide could not be given in the slave's favour, because the lawful present provocation was absent; but on the other, that it was not murder, because the barbarities which had preceded the act justified resentment. The crime was therefore ascertained as a mitigated homicide, with a milder punishment.

[Footnote 79: Names and places are suppressed in this publick statement, for obvious reasons of regard for meritorious survivors. But the official records are at hand, and will be furnished any gainsayer.]

The laws of Virginia protected not only the life, but the limb of the slave against white persons, and even his own master. The statute against wounding, stabbing and maiming is in the following words:[80] "If any free person maliciously shoot, stab, cut or wound _any person_, or by any means cause him bodily injury with intent to maim, disfigure, disable or kill, he shall, except where it is otherwise provided, be punished by confinement in the penitentiary not less than one, nor more than ten years. If such act be done unlawfully, but not maliciously, with the intent aforesaid, the offender shall, at the discretion of the jury if the accused be white, or of the court if he be a negro, either be confined in the penitentiary not less than one nor more than five years, or be confined in jail not exceeding twelve months, and fined not exceeding five hundred dollars." And in the chapter on trials it is added: [81] "And on any indictment for maliciously shooting, stabbing, cutting or wounding a person, or by any means causing him bodily injury with intent to kill him, the jury may find the accused not guilty of the offence charged, but guilty of maliciously doing such act with intent to maim, disfigure or disable, or of unlawfully doing it, with intent to maim, disfigure, disable or kill, such person." These are but digests of repeated older statutes of Virginia, of date 1803, 1815, and 1819. Now the General Court, the highest tribunal of appeal in criminal cases, [82]decided that the "_any person_," protected by these laws, included the slave; and that an indictment for the malicious stabbing of a slave could be supported under these acts. Thus, while the slave was required to accept the chastisement of his master, his life and limb were as fully protected as those of the white man.

[Footnote 80: Code of 1849, Ch. 191, § 9. Edit. 1860, p. 784.]

[Footnote 81: Code of 1849, Ch. 208, § 30.]

[Footnote 82: Chapple's case, I. Virginia cases, 184. Carver's case, 5th Randolph's Rep., 660.]

The General Court,[83] in 1851, decided the appeal of Simeon Souther, convicted in the County of Hanover of murder in the second degree, because his slave Sam had, according to evidence, died under an excessive and barbarous whipping, with other punishments, the whole evidently not intended to kill. Souther's counsel appealed from this sentence to the General Court, asking that the grade of the offence be reduced to manslaughter only, because it appeared in evidence that the punishments were not inflicted with intent to kill. The court, after reprobating Souther's conduct as a "case of atrocious and wicked cruelty," instead of reducing the grade of the sentence already ascertained, decided that it was already too low; and that it should have been declared murder in the first degree. This tribunal granted that it is lawful for the master to chastise his slave; and that the law, as expounded by the same authority, (5th Randolph, 678,) did not sustain an indictment of the master on the mere allegation of excess in chastisement, where it was not charged that any unlawful maiming or other injury ensued. Because "it is the policy of the law in respect to the relation of master and slave, and for the sake of securing proper subordination and obedience on the part of the slave, to protect the master from prosecution in all such cases." ... "But in so inflicting punishment for the sake of punishment, the owner of the slave acts at his peril; and if death ensues in consequence of such punishment, the relation of master and slave affords no ground of excuse or palliation. The principles of the common law in relation to homicide apply to his case, without qualification or exception; and according to those principles, the act of the prisoner, in the case under consideration, amounted to murder. Upon this point we are unanimous." And Souther, although a man of property, and supported by the most active and able counsel, was committed to the penitentiary, (in pursuance of the original sentence, of murder in the second degree,) where he died. Such was the law and its administration in Virginia.

[Footnote 83: 7th Grattan, 673, etc.]

It may further be asserted that the laws were at least as well administered among us, against the murderers and oppressors of slaves, as against those who killed their equals. Our people had unfortunately imbibed, to some degree, the infidel and fanatical notions prevalent at the North against capital punishments; so that crimes of bloodshed met with more tolerance from publick sentiment than was proper. But when a master took the life of his servant, especially if it were done by cruel punishments, the publick scorn for his meanness and tyranny, and the general feeling of kindliness for our dependent fellow-creatures, were apt to secure a far more faithful execution of the law against him, than if he had slain his white peer for any insult or wrong.

The laws of Virginia were equally just and careful in protecting the liberty of every person not justly held to bondage. The stealing or kidnapping of any human being with the purpose of selling him into slavery, is a felony, punishable by imprisonment in the penitentiary not less than three, nor more than ten years.[84]

[Footnote 84: Code of Va., 1849, Chap. 191, § 17. The same may be found at its appropriate place in the Code of 1860, which is little more than a reprint of the Code of 1849.]

Any coloured person whatsoever, conceiving himself to be unlawfully detained in bondage, may apply to any justice of the peace, or county or circuit superior court, to enter a suit for his freedom. There is not, within the lids of the Virginian code, another statute, so generous, so careful, so tender, so watchful, in protecting every possible right of a plaintiff, as this law enabling the slave, unjustly detained, to sue out his freedom. First, it compels every magistrate, of every grade, and every court, of every grade, to hearken to the cry of the supposed oppressed man, and to take effectual steps to secure him release, if just. Next, it instantly takes the claimant out of the hand of his nominal master, and assigns him protection and maintenance, during the pendency of his claim. Next, it provides counsel, and all costs of suit for the oppressed man, at publick expense. Next, it orders that his case shall have precedence of all other cases, before whatever court he may select, at its first sessions, irrespective of its place on the docket. And last, if the claim to freedom be found just, the court is empowered to give him damages for his detention pending the suit.[85]

[Footnote 85: Code of Va., 1849, Chap. 106.]

Another charge against us is, that our laws abrogated the rights of marriage among slaves, authorized their capricious separation by masters, and thus consigned them to promiscuous concubinage, like that of beasts. Now, first, admitting defect in our legislation here, let us ask, how much of the blame of the continuance of this defect is chargeable upon the frantic attacks of abolitionists upon us? Every sensible man can understand, that a people so fiercely assailed in their vital rights should be occupied solely by righteous defence, and should feel the time unsuited for the discussion of innovations, however needful. And next, let it be understood what the South has really done, and has not done, herein, and it will appear that an amazing misrepresentation is made of the whole case. The form of the charge usually is, that our laws deprived the slaves of all marital rights. This is, first, a monstrous perversion of the facts, in that the Africans never had any marital rights or domestic institutions to be deprived of. Have men forgotten, that in their native country there was no marriage, and no marriage law, but the negroes either lived in vagrant concubinage, or held their plurality of wives as slaves, to be either sold or slain at will? They have, at least, lost nothing, then; and the utmost that could be charged upon our legislation is, that it did not undertake to innovate upon their own native usages; that it did not force upon them marital restraints, and penalties for their breach, which the Africans were disqualified either to understand or value, which they would have regarded as a more cruel burden than their bondage. Next, our laws did not, as many seem to represent, prohibit, or delegalize the marriage of slaves; but were simply silent about them. The meaning of this silence was, to leave the whole matter to the controul of the master. It appears almost impossible for anti-slavery men to be made to apprehend the nature of the institution, as described in the words, '_domestic_ slavery.' Their minds, perverted with vain dreams of the powers and perfectibility of the State, cannot be made to apprehend that God has made other parties than the commonwealth and the civil magistrate, depositories of ruling power; and that this arrangement is right and benevolent. Now, it is the genius of slavery, to make the family the slave's commonwealth. The family is his State. The master is his magistrate and legislator, in all save certain of the graver criminal relations, in which the commonwealth deals directly and personally with him. He is a member of municipal society only through his master, who represents him. The commonwealth knows him as only a life-long minor under the master's tutelage. The integers of which the commonwealth aggregate is made up, are not single human beings, but single families, authoritatively represented in the father and master. And this is the fundamental difference between the theory of the Bible, and that of radical democracy. The silence of our laws, then, concerning the marriage of slaves, means precisely this: that the whole subject is remitted to the master, the chief magistrate of the little integral commonwealth, the family. Obviously, therefore, the question whether our laws were defective therein, is in no sense a question between the living of the slaves in marriage or in beastly license; it is only a question whether, in the distribution of ruling functions, those of the master were not made too large and responsible, herein. And if error be admitted in this respect, it cannot be one which makes the relation of servitude sinful; for then the same crime must be fixed on all the patriarchs, notwithstanding their care in rightly ordering and preserving, as family heads, the marital relations of their children and slaves, because, forsooth, there happened to be no commonwealth law above them, as patriarchs, regulative of these marriages. This is nonsense. Where the modern patriarch, the Southern master, rightly ordered and protected the marriage relations of his slaves, the silence of the commonwealth no more made their connexions concubinage, than were those of Isaac, and of Abraham's steward, Eliezer of Damascus. What magistrate or legislature, other than Abraham, issued their marriage license? Who else enforced their marriage law or defined its rights? What civic agent solemnized the ceremonial for them? And this leads to another remark: that that ceremonial is wholly unessential to the validity of marriage. Of course, where the laws enjoin it for any class, every good citizen will observe it. But the absence of such ordained ceremonial does not make lawful marriage impossible. In this sense, _consensus facit nuptias_. It was thus that the holiest wedlock ever seen on earth was instituted, that of Adam and Eve; thus Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, were united. The fact that our laws pronounce the unions of Quakers and of Jews, legitimate marriage, although announced with different forms, and indeed almost without form, evinces this truth.

Now, then, for the facts. These facts are, that marriage in its substance was as much recognized among our servants as among any other peasantry; that the union was uniformly instituted upon a formal written license of the two masters; that it was almost always sanctioned by a religious ceremonial conducted by a minister; that the regularity of the connexion was uniformly recognized by the master's assigning the husband and wife their own dwelling; that the moral opinion of both whites and blacks made precisely the same distinction between this connexion and the illicit ones, and between the fruits of it as legitimate, and the fruits of concubinage as illegitimate, which publick opinion establishes for white persons: and that even the criminal law recognized it as a regular connexion, by extending to the black man who slew the violator of his bed in heat of blood, the same forbearance which it extends to the outraged husband. How can it be said, in the face of these facts, that marriage did not exist among them?

But, it is asked, did not the master possess power to separate this union at his will; and was not this power often exercised? They did. The power, relatively, was not often exercised; and when the separation was not justified by the crimes of the parties, it met the steady and increasing reprobation of publick opinion. The instances of tyrannical separation were, at most, far fewer than the harsh tyranny of destitution imposes on poor whites in all other countries; and the pretended philanthropy of the Yankees has, in five years, torn asunder more families than all the slave dealers of the South did in a hundred. But the power of separating was sometimes abused by masters; and the room for this abuse was just the defect in our laws, which nearly all Southern Christians deplored, and which they desired to repair. Justice requires the testimony, on the other hand, that the relaxed morals which prevailed among the Africans was not the result of their marital relations, as arranged among us, but the heritage of their paganism; that under our system the evil was decreasing; and that since their emancipation and nominal subjection to the marriage law of the whites, a flood of licentiousness, vagrant concubinage, and infanticide, has broken out again among them. Clear proof this, that our abused system was better adapted to their character than the present.

Anti-slavery men often talk as though the right of slave parents to the controul and education of their children, were so indefeasible and native, that it is a natural wrong to permit the authority of the master over them to override that of the parents. This we utterly deny. We have the authority of Locke himself for saying that the parental authority is correlative to the parental obligation to preserve and train the child; that it is, therefore, not indefeasible; that if the father is clearly incompetent to or unwilling for his duty, his authority often is, and of right ought to be, transferred by society to another. When, therefore, the civilized master uses his authority against and over that of the semi-civilized, or savage parent, to train the slave child to habits of decency, industry, intelligence, and virtue, which his degraded natural guardians are unable or unwilling to inculcate, he does no crime against nature, but an act just and beneficent.

The most odious part of this charge is, that slavery made the chastity of the female slave the property of her master. We meet this with an emphatic denial. It is false. The laws of Virginia protect the virtue of the female slave by the very same statute which shields that of the white lady, even against her own master. The law of rape, until 1849, used these words:[86] "If any man do ravish _a woman_," &c. The act of 1849 used the words:[87] "If any white person do carnally know _a female_ of the age of twelve years or more, against her will, by force, or carnally know _a female child_, under that age," &c. (If the ravisher were a negro the penalty was different.) The question is, whether the words "_a woman_," and "_a female_," were intended to include coloured persons and slaves. The answer uniformly given by Virginian lawyers to this question is affirmative. They say that the terms are the most general in our statutory vocabulary. The law of 1849, just quoted, clearly implies that the terms "a female," in § 15, are inclusive of coloured females, by expressly introducing the word "white," "a white female," in § 16, when its purpose was to enact a special penalty for the forcible abduction of that class. The General Court has held that _female_ is synonymous with _woman_,[88] and may be substituted for it even in an indictment. Is it asked, why the appeal is not made to judicial decisions, as conclusive authority of the true intent of the statute? We have caused a thorough search to be made by the most competent authority in Richmond; and while many indictments are found against black men for rape of white women, none exist, in the history of our jurisprudence, against white men for rape of black women. And this, not because there would have been any difficulty in making the indictment lie: _but because_, as the most experienced lawyers testify, _the crime is unheard of on the part of white men amongst us_.

[Footnote 86: Code, 1819, p. 585, Ch. 158.]

[Footnote 87: Code, 1849, p. 725, Ch. 191, § 15.]

[Footnote 88: Burnett's case, 2 Va. cases, 235. And this was an indictment for rape.]

It is undoubtedly true, that the moral sense of the Africans on this subject is low: that many voluntary breaches of chastity occur among themselves, and some between them and whites. But the latter are far less frequent than similar sins in Philadelphia, in Boston, in London. Notwithstanding the sad inheritance of vice drawn by the Africans from their pagan ancestors, Southern slavery had elevated them so far, that illegitimate births among them had become far fewer than among the boasted white peasantry of Protestant Scotland, with all its Bibles and churches, and parochial schools. This fact can be proved by Scotch statistics. The odious and filthy charge which the abolitionists make against the Southern people and against slavery, as a system of lust, also receives a terrible reply from the returns of the American census. When illicit cohabitation takes place between the whites and the blacks, nature tells the secret with infallible accuracy, in the yellow skin of the offspring. The census of 1850 distinguished the full blacks from the mulattoes, both among the slave and free. Of the slaves, one in twelve was mulatto, taking the whole United States together. Of the slaves in Virginia the ratio of mulattoes to blacks was about the same. In South Carolina there was only one mulatto to thirty-one black slaves! The explanation is, that the latter State, being less commercial and manufacturing than Virginia, and having a system of more perfect agricultural slavery, exposed her slaves less to intercourse with immigrant and transient whites. But taking the United States as a whole, the free mulattoes were more than half as numerous as the free blacks! In several of the slave States they are more numerous; and in Ohio, the stronghold of Black Republicanism, there were fourteen thousand mulattoes to eleven thousand blacks. Since the regular marriage of free blacks to the whites was as unknown at the North as at the South, these figures tell a tale as to the comparative prevalence of this infamous and unnatural form of uncleanness among the Yankees, which should forever seal their lips from reproaches of us. They also show that at the South the state of slavery has been far more favourable to chastity among the coloured people than that of freedom.

The reader probably feels by this time, that if we speak truth, then was slavery a very different thing practically from its usual picture abroad. He will perhaps feel with a shade of skepticism, that it is strange the world should have been so much mistaken. The chief explanation we offer of so strange a fact, is that trait of abolitionists, our interested and unscrupulous accusers, predicted by St. Paul: ("men of corrupt minds and destitute of the truth.") The world will find them out in due time: the statements made of the events of the late war have done much to unmask them. Still another cause is that Europeans, and even Yankees, are so ignorant of Southern society. Still another explanation is, that slavery in the British colonies, from which the people of that Empire have chiefly derived their conceptions, actually was far more harsh and barbarous than in this country. The reader is emphatically cautioned that he must not judge slavery in Virginia by slavery in Jamaica or Guiana. Whether the charge of the great Paley is correct, who accounts for this difference by the greater harshness of British character,[89] politeness may forbid us to decide. But the comparative fates of the Africans in the British colonies, and those in our States, tell the contrast between the humanity of our system, and the barbarity of theirs, in terms of indisputable clearness. If political science has ascertained any law, it is that the well or ill-being of a people powerfully affects their increase or decrease of numbers. The climate of the British Indies is salubrious for blacks. Yet, of the one million seven hundred thousand Africans imported into the British colonies, and their increase, only six hundred and sixty thousand remained to be emancipated in 1832. The three hundred and seventy-five thousand (the total) imported into the Southern States, had multiplied to four millions. Such is the contrast! How grinding and ruthless must have been that oppression which in the one case reduced this prolific race, in the most fertile and genial spots of earth, in the ratio of five to two! And how generous and beneficent that government which, in the Southern States, nursed them to a more than ten-fold increase, in a less hospitable and fruitful clime! Well may we demur to have the world take its conceptions of our slavery from the British.

[Footnote 89: Moral Philosophy, Bk. 3, p. 2, Ch. 3: "The inordinate authority which the plantation laws confer upon the slaveholder, is exercised by the _English_ slaveholder, especially, with rigour and brutality."]

We trust that we shall proceed, then, to the remaining discussion of the moral character of slavery, with a just understanding of what is to be defended. It is simply that system which makes the involuntary labour of the servant the property of the master, and gives the latter such controul over the former's person, as will secure his possession of the labour. We conclude this section with a few words touching the admitted abuses of the system. That such existed among us, both legislative and individual, is fully admitted. There were cruel masters. Slaves were sometimes refused that which the apostle enjoined masters to give them, as "just and equal." Some cruel punishments were inflicted. A few slaves have been tortured to death. Some wives and children were wickedly torn from their husbands and parents. And our laws in some points failed to secure to the slaves that to which their humanity entitled them. But we repeat, these things prove only the sinfulness of the individual agent, and not of the system of which they are incidents. Fathers have been known to maltreat, scourge, maim and murder their children; and husbands their wives; but no one dreams that these things evince the unrighteousness of the family relations. Wife-murder is doubtless more frequent in the State of New York, than slave-murder was in Virginia. The laws of the State of Indiana concerning divorce are, in some particulars, glaring violations of God's laws. Yet no one dreams of arguing thence, that to have a wife in those States is a sin. Unless the abuse can be shown to be an essential part of the system, it proves nothing against the lawfulness of the system itself. But that none of these crimes against slaves are essential parts of slavery, is proved by the fact, which we fearlessly declare, that the vast majority of slaves in our country never experienced any of them. The unfairness of this mode of arguing cannot be better stated than in the words of Dr. Van Dyke, of New York:

"Their mode of arguing the question of slaveholding, by a pretended appeal to facts, is a tissue of misrepresentation from beginning to end. Let me illustrate my meaning by a parallel case. Suppose I undertake to prove the wickedness of marriage, as it exists in the city of New York. In this discussion suppose the Bible is excluded, or, at least, that it is not recognized as having exclusive jurisdiction in the decision of the question. My first appeal is to the statute law of the State.

"I show there enactments which nullify the law of God, and make divorce a marketable and cheap commodity. I collect the advertisements of your daily papers, in which lawyers offer to procure the legal separation of man and wife for a stipulated price, to say nothing, in this sacred place, of other advertisements which decency forbids me to quote. Then I turn to the records of our criminal courts, and find that every day some cruel husband beats his wife, or some unnatural parent murders his child, or some discontented wife or husband seeks the dissolution of the marriage bond. In the next place, I turn to the orphan asylums and hospitals, and show there the miserable wrecks of domestic tyranny in wives deserted and children maimed by drunken parents. In the last place, I go through our streets, and into our tenement houses, and count the thousands of ragged children, who, amid ignorance and filth, are training for the prison and gallows.

"Summing all these facts together, I put them forth as the fruits of marriage in the city of New York, and a proof that the relation itself is sinful. If I were a novelist, and had written a book to illustrate this same doctrine, I would call this array of facts a 'Key.' In this key I say nothing about the sweet charities and affections that flourish in ten thousand homes, not a word about the multitude of loving-kindnesses that characterize the daily life of honest people, about the instruction and discipline that are training children at ten thousand firesides for usefulness here and glory hereafter;--all this I ignore, and quote only the statute book, the newspapers, the records of criminal courts, and the miseries of the abodes of poverty. Now, what have I done? I have not misstated or exaggerated a single fact. And yet am I not a falsifier and a slanderer of the deepest dye? Is there a virtuous woman or an honest man in this city whose cheeks would not burn with indignation at my one-sided and injurious statements? But this is just what abolitionism has done in regard to slaveholding. It has undertaken to illustrate its cardinal doctrine in works of fiction; and then, to sustain the creation of its fancy, has attempted to underpin it with an accumulation of facts. These facts are collected in precisely the way I have described. The statute books of slaveholding States are searched, and every wrong enactment collated, newspaper reports of cruelty and crime on the part of wicked masters are treasured up and classified, all the outrages that have been perpetrated 'by lewd fellows of the baser sort'--of whom there are plenty, both North and South--are eagerly seized and recorded; and this mass of vileness and filth, collected from the kennels and sewers of society, is put forth as a faithful exhibition of slaveholding. Senators in the forum, and ministers in the pulpit, distil this raw material into the more reined slander 'that Southern society is essentially barbarous, and that slaveholding had its origin in hell.'"

Such are the words of one who is himself no advocate of slavery, but who is moved to utter them solely by his regard for truth. His reprobation is just. To take the exceptional abuses of any institution, and exhibit them as giving the ordinary state of society under it, is the very essence of slander.