Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

YEAS,--Messrs. Bayard, Bragg, Chesnut, Clay, Clingman,
Crittenden, Davis, Fitch, Fitzpatrick, Gwin, Hemphill, Hunter,
Iverson, Johnson of Arkansas, Johnson of Tennessee, Kennedy,
Lane, Latham, Mason, Nicholson, Polk, Rice, Sebastian,
Slidell, and Thomson,--25.

NAYS,--Messrs. Bingham, Cameron, Chandler, Clark, Collamer,
Dixon, Doolittle, Fessenden, Foot, Foster, Hale, Hamlin, King,
Seward, Sumner, Trumbull, Wade, Wilkinson, and Wilson,--19.

So the petitions were ordered to lie on the table. The
Democrats all voted yea; the Republicans all voted nay.

SAFETY OF PASSENGERS IN STEAMSHIPS FOR CALIFORNIA.

RESOLUTION AND REMARKS IN THE SENATE, MAY 21, 1860.

May 21, 1860, Mr. Sumner introduced the following resolution.

“_Resolved_, That the Committee on Commerce be instructed to
consider the expediency of further action, in order to secure
proper accommodations and proper safety for passengers on
board the steamers between New York and San Francisco, and to
increase the efficacy of the existing passenger laws of the
United States in their application to California passengers;
with liberty to report by bill or otherwise.”

The Senate, by unanimous consent, proceeded to consider the
resolution.

MR. PRESIDENT,--I see the Senator from California [Mr. LATHAM] in his place, and I very gladly take the opportunity of calling his attention particularly to the resolution which I now have the honor to offer. By a communication in the newspapers, from a distinguished source,--a clergyman, who, during the last two months, sailed from Boston to San Francisco,[24]--it appears that the steamers are overloaded with passengers, and without adequate accommodations of other kinds for safety. His statement on the subject is explicit, and has been made in the newspapers, as also in private letters to his friends. I do not know that the evil can be reached by any additional legislation; perhaps no additional legislation is needed; but it is an evil which should be remedied in some way, or else we shall be startled some morning by the news of a great calamity,--the loss of one of these steamers, with, it may be, a thousand passengers.

CANDIDATES WHO ARE A PLATFORM.

LETTER TO A RATIFICATION MEETING AT BUFFALO, NEW YORK, MAY 30, 1860.

This was addressed to a meeting at Buffalo for the ratification
of the nomination of Abraham Lincoln as President and Hannibal
Hamlin as Vice-President.

SENATE CHAMBER, May 30, 1860.

DEAR SIR,--My duties here will not allow me to be with you at
Buffalo; but I shall unite with you in every generous word
uttered for Freedom, and in every pledge of enthusiastic support
to the Republican candidates.

We have a Platform of noble principles, and candidates, each
of whom, through his well-known principles and integrity of
character, is a Platform in himself.

Accept my thanks for the honor of your invitation, and believe
me, dear Sir,

Faithfully yours,

CHARLES SUMNER.

A. W. HARVEY, ESQ.

THE BARBARISM OF SLAVERY.

SPEECH IN THE SENATE, ON THE BILL FOR THE ADMISSION OF KANSAS AS A FREE STATE, JUNE 4, 1860.

Thou art a slave, whom Fortune’s tender arm
With favor never clasped, but bred a dog.
SHAKESPEARE, _Timon of Athens_, Act IV. Sc. 3.

A universe of death, which God by curse
Created evil, for evil only good,
Where all life dies, death lives, and Nature breeds,
Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things.
MILTON, _Paradise Lost_, Book II. 622-625.

Onward! onward!
With the night-wind,
Over field and farm and forest,
Lonely homestead, darksome hamlet,
Blighting all we breathe upon!
LONGFELLOW, _Golden Legend_.

Instrumenti genus vocale, et semivocale, et mutum: _vocale, in
quo sunt servi_; semivocale, in quo sunt boves; mutum, in quo
sunt plaustra.--VARRO, _De Re Rustica_, Lib. I. cap. xvii. § 1.

Nil metuunt jurare, nihil promittere parcunt;
Dicta nihil metuere, nihil perjuria curant.
CATULLUS, _Carm._ LXIV. 146, 148.

Pone crucem servo.--Meruit quo crimine servus
Supplicium? quis testis adest? quis detulit? Audi;
Nulla unquam de morte hominis cunctatio longa est.--
O demens, ita servus homo est? Nil fecerit, esto:
Hoc volo, sic jubeo, sit pro ratione voluntas.
JUVENAL. _Sat._ VI. 219-223.

There is a tradition of the Prophet having said, that the
greatest mortification at the Day of Judgment will be when
the pious slave is carried to Paradise and the wicked master
condemned to Hell.--SAADI, _The Gulistan_, tr. Gladwin, p. 242.

“And the Black Oppressor am I called. And for this reason I
am called the Black Oppressor, that there is not a single man
around me whom I have not oppressed, and justice have I done
unto none.” … “Since thou hast, indeed, been an oppressor so
long,” said Peredur, “I will cause that thou continue so no
longer.” So he slew him.--_The Mabinogion_, tr. Lady Charlotte
Guest, Vol. I. pp. 341, 342.

After we had secured these people, I called the linguists, and
ordered them to bid the men-negroes between decks be quiet (for
there was a great noise amongst them). On their being silent, I
asked, What had induced them to mutiny? They answered, _I was
a great rogue to buy them_ in order to carry them away from
their own country, and that they were resolved to regain their
liberty, if possible.--SNELGRAVE, _New Account of some Parts of
Guinea and the Slave-Trade_, p. 170.

A system of concubinage was practised among them worse than the
loose polygamy of the savages: the savage had as many women as
consented to become his wives; the colonist as many as he could
enslave. There is an ineffaceable stigma upon the Europeans in
their intercourse with those whom they treat as inferior races;
there is a perpetual contradiction between their lust and
their avarice. The planter will one day take a slave for his
harlot, and sell her the next as a being of some lower species,
a beast of labor. If she be indeed an inferior animal, what
shall be said of the one action? If she be equally with himself
a human being and an immortal soul, what shall be said of the
other? Either way there is a crime committed against human
nature.--SOUTHEY, _History of Brazil_, Chap. VIII., Vol. I. p.
258.

Negro slavery exists in no part of the world without
producing indolence, licentiousness, and inhumanity in
the whites; and these vices draw after them their earthly
punishment,--to look no farther into their fearful, but assured
consequences.--IBID., Chap. XLIV., Vol. III. p. 816.

I had observed much, and heard more, of the cruelty of masters
towards their negroes; but now I received an authentic account
of some horrid instances thereof. The giving a child a slave of
its own age to tyrannize over, to beat and abuse out of sport,
was, I myself saw, a common practice. Nor is it strange, being
thus trained up in cruelty, they should afterwards arrive at
so great perfection in it; that Mr. Star, a gentleman I often
met at Mr. Lasserre’s, should, as he himself informed L., first
nail up a negro by the ears, then order him to be whipped in
the severest manner, and then to have scalding water thrown
over him, so that the poor creature could not stir for four
months after. Another much applauded punishment is drawing
their slaves’ teeth. One Colonel LYNCH is universally known to
have cut off a poor negro’s legs, and to kill several of them
every year by his barbarities.--REV. CHARLES WESLEY, _Journal_,
Charleston, S. C., August 2, 1736.

You are to have no regard to the health, strength, comfort,
natural affections, or moral feelings, or intellectual
endowments of my negroes. You are only to consider what
subsistence to allow them and what labor to exact of them
will subserve my interest. According to the most accurate
calculation I can make, the proportion of subsistence and
labor which will work them up in six years upon an average
is the most profitable to the planter. And this allowance,
surely, is very humane; for we estimate here the lives of our
coal-heavers, upon an average, at only two years, … and our
soldiers and seamen no matter what.--_A West-India Planter’s
Instructions for his Overseers_: JOHN ADAMS, _Works_, Vol. X.
pp. 339, 340.

The unfortunate man would have been tried upon five other
indictments, some of them still more atrocious than the one
upon which he was found guilty; and his general character for
barbarity was so notorious that no room was left for me even to
deliberate. His victims have been numerous; some of them were
even buried in their chains, and there have been found upon
the bones taken from the grave chains and iron rings of near
forty pounds’ weight.… He had been three times married, has
left several children; he had been in the Army, had a liberal
education, and lived in what is called the great world. His
manners and address were those of a gentleman. Cruelty appears
in him to have been the effect of violence of temper, _and
habit had made him regardless of the death and suffering of
a slave_.--RIGHT HON. HUGH ELLIOT, Governor of the Leeward
Islands: _Memoir_, by the COUNTESS OF MINTO, pp. 409, 410.

Is slavery less slavery in a Christian than in a Mahometan
country? I entreat your attention, while I plead the general
cause of humanity. In such a cause it is right to appeal to
your sensibility as well as your reason. It is now no longer
time to flatter petty tyrants by acknowledging that color
constitutes a legitimate title for holding men in abject and
perpetual bondage. In support of this usurpation what can be
urged but the law of the strongest?--COL. DAVID HUMPHREYS,
_Valedictory Discourse before the Cincinnati of Connecticut_,
July 4, 1804, p. 29.

Christianity suppressed slavery, but the Christians of the
sixteenth century reëstablished it,--as an exception, indeed,
to their social system, and restricted to one of the races of
mankind; but the wound thus inflicted upon humanity, though
less extensive, was far more difficult of cure.--TOCQUEVILLE,
_Democracy in America_, ed. Bowen, Chap. XVIII. sec. 2, Vol. I.
p. 457.

The Kentuckian delights in violent bodily exertion; he is
familiar with the use of arms, and is accustomed from a very
early age to expose his life in single combat.… Were I inclined
to continue this parallel, I could easily prove that almost all
the differences which may be remarked between the characters of
the Americans in the Southern and in the Northern States have
originated in Slavery.--IBID., pp. 467, 468.

I visited our State Penitentiary a short time since, and
from my own personal observation I am led to the inevitable
conclusion that the plan of sending our slaves to the
Penitentiary, as a _punishment_ for crime, is exactly the
reverse: it is rather a reward than punishment. “Let sober
reason judge.”

We punish offenders to prevent crime. I would ask any
reasonable man, Is the sending a slave of any of our farms
to the Penitentiary a punishment? The white man is punished
by being deprived of his liberty for that length of time:
what liberty is the slave deprived of? He has as much, and
oftentimes _more_, liberty within the walls of the Penitentiary
than on any of those large sugar or cotton plantations. Then
where is the punishment? We send white men there, and the dread
of going is a _stain_ on his character: what character has
the negro to lose? Hence we must come to the conclusion that
sending negro slaves to the Penitentiary is not a punishment.

A moment’s reflection will convince any man who has ever had
the management of negroes on a plantation, that the well-being
and safety of societies demand that any offence committed by
a negro, for which the _lash_ is not a sufficient punishment,
_death_ should be the penalty.

Taking these things into consideration, would it not be just
and laudable to sell all negroes now in the Penitentiary to
the highest bidder, on or about the first of November next,
by the Sheriff of the Parish of East Baton Rouge, on the same
terms and conditions that negroes are sold at present, under
an ordinary _fi. fa._, and, as near as can be, two thirds of
the net proceeds of each negro be paid to the former owners or
their legal representatives, the balance be and remain in the
State Treasury for ordinary purposes?--_Weekly Advocate_, Baton
Rouge, La., Jan. 17, 1858.

A very large edition of this speech was printed at Washington,
immediately after its delivery. Another appeared at Boston,
with a portrait; and another at San Francisco, with the
Republican Platform. While the Rebellion was still warring on
the National Government, an edition was brought out in New York
by the “Young Men’s Republican Union,” to which Mr. Sumner
prefixed a Dedication to the Young Men of the United States,
which will be found in its proper place, according to date, in
this collection.

* * * * *

A letter from that devoted friend of the Slave, the late George
L. Stearns, of Boston, under date of March 1st, 1860, shows
something of the outside prompting under which Mr. Sumner spoke.

“I have just read ----’s speech. He stands up to the mark
_well_, for a politician; but we want one who believes a
Man is greater than a President, and who would not lift
his finger to obtain the best office in the gift of our
nation, to raise this question above the political slough
into its true position. Charles O’Conor, in his late speech
in New York, affirmed, that, ‘if Slavery were not a wise
and beneficent institution for the black as well as the
white, it could not be defended.’ We want you to take up
the gauntlet that he has thrown down so defiantly.”

A letter from William H. Brooks, of Cambridgeport,
unconsciously harmonized with Mr. Stearns.

“Feeling that our nation is now in the very throes of her
deliverance, and I trust her prompt deliverance, from
bondage to her, not Thirty, but Three Hundred Thousand
Tyrants, may I frankly say, that, if not inconsistent with
your health and safety, which are on no consideration to
be perilled, you could aid more than any single person,
or score of them, in effectually accomplishing the
great triumph.… The unseen forces of public opinion are
gathering and forming for the great November conflict. Your
long, enforced, and martyr silence will give a depth of
impression and moving power and ten thousand echoes to your
words beyond their accustomed might.”

Something about the menace of violence after this speech, with
illustrations of its reception at the time, is postponed to an
Appendix.

* * * * *

Kansas was not admitted as a State into the Union until January
29, 1861, after the slaveholding Senators had withdrawn to
organize the Rebellion, when the bill on which the present
speech was made became a law.

SPEECH.

MR. PRESIDENT,--Undertaking now, after a silence of more than four years, to address the Senate on this important subject, I should suppress the emotions natural to such an occasion, if I did not declare on the threshold my gratitude to that Supreme Being through whose benign care I am enabled, after much suffering and many changes, once again to resume my duties here, and to speak for the cause so near my heart. To the honored Commonwealth whose representative I am, and also to my immediate associates in this body, with whom I enjoy the fellowship which is found _in thinking alike concerning the Republic_,[25] I owe thanks which I seize the moment to express for indulgence extended to me throughout the protracted seclusion enjoined by medical skill; and I trust that it will not be thought unbecoming in me to put on record here, as an apology for leaving my seat so long vacant, without making way, by resignation, for a successor, that I acted under the illusion of an invalid, whose hopes for restoration to natural health continued against oft-recurring disappointment.

When last I entered into this debate, it became my duty to expose the Crime against Kansas, and to insist upon the immediate admission of that Territory as a State of this Union, with a Constitution forbidding Slavery. Time has passed, but the question remains. Resuming the discussion precisely where I left it, I am happy to avow that rule of moderation which, it is said, may venture to fix the boundaries of wisdom itself. I have no personal griefs to utter: only a vulgar egotism could intrude such into this Chamber. I have no personal wrongs to avenge: only a brutish nature could attempt to wield that vengeance which belongs to the Lord. The years that have intervened and the tombs that have opened[26] since I spoke have their voices, too, which I cannot fail to hear. Besides, what am I, what is any man among the living or among the dead, compared with the question before us? It is this alone which I shall discuss, and I begin the argument with that easy victory which is found in charity.

* * * * *

The Crime against Kansas stands forth in painful light. Search history, and you cannot find its parallel. The slave-trade is bad; but even this enormity is petty, compared with that elaborate contrivance by which, in a Christian age and within the limits of a Republic, all forms of constitutional liberty were perverted, all the rights of human nature violated, and the whole country held trembling on the edge of civil war,--while all this large exuberance of wickedness, detestable in itself, becomes tenfold more detestable, when its origin is traced to the madness for Slavery. The fatal partition between Freedom and Slavery, known as the Missouri Compromise,--the subsequent overthrow of this partition, and the seizure of all by Slavery,--the violation of plighted faith,--the conspiracy to force Slavery at all hazards into Kansas,--the successive invasions by which all security there was destroyed, and the electoral franchise itself was trodden down,--the sacrilegious seizure of the very polls, and, through pretended forms of law, the imposition of a foreign legislature upon this Territory,--the acts of this legislature, fortifying the Usurpation, and, among other things, establishing test-oaths, calculated to disfranchise actual settlers friendly to Freedom, and securing the privileges of the citizen to actual strangers friendly to Slavery,--the whole crowned by a statute, “the be-all and the end-all” of the whole Usurpation, through which Slavery was not only recognized on this beautiful soil, but made to bristle with a Code of Death such as the world has rarely seen,--all these I fully exposed on a former occasion. And yet the most important part of the argument was at that time left untouched: I mean that found in the Character of Slavery. This natural sequel, with the permission of the Senate, I now propose to supply.

Motive is to Crime as soul to body; and it is only when we comprehend the motive that we can truly comprehend the Crime. Here the motive is found in Slavery and the rage for its extension. Therefore, by logical necessity, must Slavery be discussed,--not indirectly, timidly, and sparingly, but directly, openly, and thoroughly. It must be exhibited as it is, alike in its influence and its animating character, so that not only outside, but inside, may be seen.

This is no time for soft words or excuses. All such are out of place. They may turn away wrath; but what is the wrath of man? This is no time to abandon any advantage in the argument. Senators sometimes announce that they resist Slavery on political grounds only, and remind us that they say nothing of the moral question. This is wrong. Slavery must be resisted not only on political grounds, but on all other grounds, whether social, economical, or moral. Ours is no holiday contest; nor is it any strife of rival factions, of White and Red Roses, of theatric Neri and Bianchi; but it is a solemn battle between Right and Wrong, between Good and Evil. Such a battle cannot be fought with rosewater. There is austere work to be done, and Freedom cannot consent to fling away any of her weapons.

* * * * *

If I were disposed to shrink from this discussion, the boundless assumptions made by Senators on the other side would not allow me. The whole character of Slavery, as a pretended form of Civilization, is put directly in issue, with a pertinacity and a hardihood which banish all reserve on this side. In these assumptions Senators from South Carolina naturally take the lead. Following Mr. Calhoun, who pronounced Slavery “the most solid and durable foundation on which to rear free and stable political institutions,”[27] and Mr. McDuffie, who did not shrink from calling it “the corner-stone of our republican edifice,”[28] the Senator from South Carolina [Mr. HAMMOND] insists that its “frame of society is the best in the world”[29]; and his colleague [Mr. CHESNUT] takes up the strain. One Senator from Mississippi [Mr. JEFFERSON DAVIS], adds, that Slavery “is but a form of civil government for those who by their nature are not fit to govern themselves”;[30] and his colleague [Mr. BROWN] openly vaunts that it “is a great moral, social, and political blessing,--a blessing to the slave, and a blessing to the master.”[31] One Senator from Virginia [Mr. HUNTER], in a studied vindication of what he is pleased to call “the social system of the South,” exalts Slavery as “the normal condition of human society,” “beneficial to the non-slave-owner as it is to the slave-owner,” “best for the happiness of both races,”--and, in enthusiastic advocacy, declares, “that the very keystone of the mighty arch, which, by its concentrated strength, and by the mutual support of its parts, is able to sustain our social superstructure, consists in the black marble block of African Slavery: knock that out, and the mighty fabric, with all that it upholds, topples and tumbles to its fall.”[32] These are his very words, uttered in debate here. And his colleague [Mr. MASON], who never hesitates where Slavery is in question, proclaims that it is “_ennobling_ to both races, the white and the black,”--a word which, so far as the slave is concerned, he changes, on a subsequent day, to “elevating,” assuming still that it is “ennobling” to the whites,[33]--which is simply a new version of the old assumption, by Mr. McDuffie, of South Carolina, that “the institution of Domestic Slavery supersedes the necessity of an order of nobility.”[34]

Thus, by various voices, is Slavery defiantly proclaimed a form of Civilization,--not seeing that its existence is plainly inconsistent with the first principles of anything that can be called Civilization, except by that figure of speech in classical literature where a thing takes its name from something which it has not, as the dreadful Fates were called merciful because they were without mercy. Pardon the allusion, if I add, that, listening to these sounding words for Slavery, I am reminded of the kindred extravagance related by that remarkable traveller in China, the late Abbé Huc, where a gloomy hole in which he was lodged, infested by mosquitoes and exhaling noisome vapors, with light and air entering by a single narrow aperture only, was styled by Chinese pride “The Hotel of the Beatitudes.” According to a Hindoo proverb, the snail sees nothing but its own shell, and thinks it the grandest palace in the universe. This is another illustration of the delusion which we are called to witness.

It is natural that Senators thus insensible to the true character of Slavery should evince an equal insensibility to the true character of the Constitution. This is shown in the claim now made, and pressed with unprecedented energy, degrading the work of our fathers, that by virtue of the Constitution the pretended property in man is placed beyond the reach of Congressional prohibition even within Congressional jurisdiction, so that the slave-master may at all times enter the broad outlying territories of the Union with the victims of his oppression, and there continue to hold them by lash and chain.

Such are two assumptions, the first of fact, and the second of Constitutional Law, now vaunted without apology or hesitation. I meet them both. To the first I oppose the essential Barbarism of Slavery, in all its influences, whether high or low,--as Satan is Satan still, whether towering in the sky or squatting in the toad. To the second I oppose the unanswerable, irresistible truth, that the Constitution of the United States nowhere recognizes property in man. These two assumptions naturally go together. They are “twins” suckled by the same wolf. They are the “couple” in the present slave-hunt. And the latter cannot be answered without exposing the former. It is only when Slavery is exhibited in its truly hateful character that we fully appreciate the absurdity of the assumption, which, in defiance of express letter in the Constitution, and without a single sentence, phrase, or word upholding human bondage, yet foists into this blameless text the barbarous idea that man can hold property in man.

On former occasions I have discussed Slavery only incidentally: as, in unfolding the principle that Slavery is Sectional and Freedom National; in exposing the unconstitutionality of the Fugitive Slave Bill; in vindicating the Prohibition of Slavery in the Missouri Territory; in exhibiting the imbecility, throughout the Revolution, of the Slave States, and especially of South Carolina; and, lastly, in unmasking the Crime against Kansas. On all these occasions, where I spoke at length, I said too little of the character of Slavery,--partly because other topics were presented, and partly from a prevailing disinclination to press the argument against those whom I knew to have all the sensitiveness of a sick man. But, God be praised, this time has passed, and the debate is now lifted from details to principles. Grander debate has not occurred in our history,--rarely in any history; nor can it close or subside, except with the triumph of Freedom.

FIRST ASSUMPTION.

Of course I begin with the assumption of fact, which must be treated at length.

It was the often-quoted remark of John Wesley, who knew well how to use words, as also how to touch hearts, that Slavery is “the sum of all villanies.” The phrase is pungent; but it were rash in any of us to criticise the testimony of that illustrious founder of Methodism, whose ample experience of Slavery in Georgia and the Carolinas seems to have been all condensed in this sententious judgment. Language is feeble to express all the enormity of an institution which is now exalted as in itself a form of civilization, “ennobling” at least to the master, if not to the slave. Look at it as you will, and it is always the scab, the canker, the “barebones,” and the shame of the country,--wrong, not merely in the abstract, as is often admitted by its apologist, but wrong in the concrete also, and possessing no single element of right. Look at it in the light of principle, and it is nothing less than a huge insurrection against the eternal law of God, involving in its pretensions the denial of all human rights, and also the denial of that Divine Law in which God himself is manifest, thus being practically the grossest lie and the grossest atheism. Founded in violence, sustained only by violence, such a wrong must by sure law of compensation blast master as well as slave,--blast the lands on which they live, blast the community of which they are part, blast the government which does not forbid the outrage; and the longer it exists and the more completely it prevails, must its vengeful influences penetrate the whole social system. Barbarous in origin, barbarous in law, barbarous in all its pretensions, barbarous in the instruments it employs, barbarous in consequences, barbarous in spirit, barbarous wherever it shows itself, Slavery must breed Barbarians, while it develops everywhere, alike in the individual and the society to which he belongs, the essential elements of Barbarism. In this character it is conspicuous before the world.

Undertaking now to expose the BARBARISM OF SLAVERY, the whole broad field is open before me. There is nothing in its character, its manifold wrong, its wretched results, and especially in its influence on the class claiming to be “ennobled” by it, that will not fall naturally under consideration.

I know well the difficulty of this discussion, involved in the humiliating truth with which I begin. Senators, on former occasions, revealing their sensitiveness, have even protested against comparison between what were called “two civilizations,”--meaning the two social systems produced respectively by Freedom and Slavery. The sensibility and the protest are not unnatural, though mistaken. “Two civilizations!” Sir, in this nineteenth century of Christian light there can be but one Civilization, and this is where Freedom prevails. Between Slavery and Civilization there is essential incompatibility. If you are for the one, you cannot be for the other; and just in proportion to the embrace of Slavery is the divorce from Civilization. As cold is but the absence of heat, and darkness but the absence of light, so is Slavery but the absence of justice and humanity, without which Civilization is impossible. That slave-masters should be disturbed, when this is exposed, might be expected. But the assumptions so boastfully made, while they may not prevent the sensibility, yet surely exclude all ground of protest, when these assumptions are exposed.

Nor is this the only difficulty. Slavery is a bloody Touch-Me-Not, and everywhere in sight now blooms the bloody flower. It is on the wayside as we approach the National Capitol; it is on the marble steps which we mount; it flaunts on this floor. I stand now in the house of its friends. About me, while I speak, are its most jealous guardians, who have shown in the past how much they are ready to do or not to do, where Slavery is in question. Menaces to deter me have not been spared. But I should ill deserve the high post of duty here, with which I am honored by a generous and enlightened people, if I could hesitate. Idolatry has been exposed in the presence of idolaters, and hypocrisy chastised in the presence of Scribes and Pharisees. Such examples may impart encouragement to a Senator undertaking in this presence to expose Slavery; nor can any language, directly responsive to Senatorial assumptions made for this Barbarism, be open to question. Slavery can be painted only in sternest colors; nor can I forget that Nature’s sternest painter has been called the best.

* * * * *

THE BARBARISM OF SLAVERY appears, _first_, in the _character of Slavery_, and, _secondly_, in the _character of Slave-Masters_.

Under the first head we shall properly consider (1) the Law of Slavery with its Origin, and (2) the practical results of Slavery, as shown in comparison between the Free States and the Slave States.

Under the _second_ head we shall naturally consider (1) Slave-Masters as shown in the Law of Slavery; (2) Slave-Masters in their relations with slaves, here glancing at their three brutal instruments; (3) Slave-Masters in their relations with each other, with society, and with Government; and (4) Slave-Masters in their unconsciousness.

The way will then be prepared for the consideration of the assumption of Constitutional Law.

I.

In presenting the CHARACTER OF SLAVERY, there is little for me, except to make Slavery paint itself. When this is done, the picture will need no explanatory words.

(1.) I begin with the _Law of Slavery and its Origin_; and here this Barbarism sketches itself in its own chosen definition. It is simply this: Man, created in the image of God, is divested of the human character, and declared to be a “chattel,”--that is, a beast, a thing, or article of property. That this statement may not seem made without precise authority, I quote the statutes of three different States, beginning with South Carolina, whose voice for Slavery has always unerring distinctiveness. According to the definition supplied by this State, slaves

“shall be deemed, held, taken, reputed, and adjudged in law
to be _chattels personal_ in the hands of their owners and
possessors, and their executors, administrators, and assigns,
to all intents, constructions, and purposes whatsoever.”[35]

And here is the definition supplied by the Civil Code of Louisiana:--

“A slave is one who is in the power of a master to whom he
belongs. The master may sell him, dispose of his person, his
industry, and his labor. He can do nothing, possess nothing,
nor acquire anything, but what must belong to his master.”[36]

In similar spirit the law of Maryland thus indirectly defines a slave as an _article_:--

“In case the personal property of a ward shall consist of
specific _articles, such as slaves_, working beasts, animals of
any kind, … the court, if it shall deem it advantageous for the
ward, may at any time pass an order for the sale thereof.”[37]

Not to occupy time unnecessarily, I present a summary of the pretended law defining Slavery in all the Slave States, as made by a careful writer, Judge Stroud, in a work of juridical as well as philanthropic merit:--

“The cardinal principle of Slavery--that the slave is not to
be ranked among _sentient_ beings, but among _things_, is an
article of property, a chattel personal--obtains as undoubted
law in all of these [Slave] States.”[38]

Out of this definition, as from a solitary germ, which in its pettiness might be crushed by the hand, towers our Upas Tree and all its gigantic poison. Study it, and you will comprehend the whole monstrous growth.

Sir, look at its plain import, and see the relation which it establishes. The slave is held simply _for the use of his master_, to whose behests his life, liberty, and happiness are devoted, and by whom he may be bartered, leased, mortgaged, bequeathed, invoiced, shipped as cargo, stored as goods, sold on execution, knocked off at public auction, and even staked at the gaming-table on the hazard of a card or a die,--all according to law. Nor is there anything, within the limit of life, inflicted on a beast, which may not be inflicted on the slave. He may be marked like a hog, branded like a mule, yoked like an ox, hobbled like a horse, driven like an ass, sheared like a sheep, maimed like a cur, and constantly beaten like a brute,--all according to law. And should life itself be taken, what is the remedy? The Law of Slavery, imitating that rule of evidence which in barbarous days and barbarous countries prevented the Christian from testifying against the Mahometan, openly pronounces the incompetency of the whole African race, whether bond or free, to testify against a white man in any case, and thus, after surrendering the slave to all possible outrage, crowns its tyranny by excluding the very testimony through which the bloody cruelty of the Slave-Master might be exposed.

Thus in its Law does Slavery paint itself; but it is only when we look at details, and detect its essential elements, _five in number_, all inspired by _a single motive_, that its character becomes completely manifest.

_Foremost_, of course, in these elements, is the impossible pretension, where Barbarism is lost in impiety, by which man claims _property in man_. Against such blasphemy the argument is brief. According to the Law of Nature, written by the same hand that placed the planets in their orbits, and, like them, constituting part of the eternal system of the Universe, every human being has complete title to himself direct from the Almighty. Naked he is born; but this birthright is inseparable from the human form. A man may be poor in this world’s goods; but he owns himself. No war or robbery, ancient or recent,--no capture--no middle passage,--no change of clime,--no purchase-money,--no transmission from hand to hand, no matter how many times, and no matter at what price, can defeat this indefeasible, God-given franchise. And a divine mandate, strong as that which guards Life, guards Liberty also. Even at the very morning of Creation, when God said, “Let there be Light,”--earlier than the malediction against murder,--he set the everlasting difference between man and chattel, giving to man “dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”

“That right we hold
By his donation; but man over men
He made not lord: such title to himself
Reserving, human left from human free.”[39]

Slavery tyrannically assumes power which Heaven denied,--while, under its barbarous necromancy, borrowed from the Source of Evil, a man is changed into a chattel, a person is withered into a thing, a soul is shrunk into merchandise. Say, Sir, in lofty madness, that you own the sun, the stars, the moon; but do not say that you own a man, endowed with soul to live immortal, when sun and moon and stars have passed away.

_Secondly._ Slavery paints itself again in its complete _abrogation of marriage_, recognized as a sacrament by the Church, and as a contract by the civil power, wherever civilization prevails. Under the Law of Slavery no such sacrament is respected, and no such contract can exist. The ties formed between slaves are all subject to the selfish interests or more selfish lust of the master, whose license knows no check. Natural affections which have come together are rudely torn asunder: nor is this all. Stripped of every defence, the chastity of a whole race is exposed to violence, while the result is recorded in tell-tale faces of children, glowing with a master’s blood, but doomed for their mother’s skin to Slavery through descending generations. The Senator from Mississippi [Mr. BROWN], galled by the comparison between Slavery and Polygamy, winces. I hail this sensibility as the sign of virtue. Let him reflect, and he will confess that there are many disgusting elements in Slavery, not present in Polygamy, while the single disgusting element of Polygamy is more than present in Slavery. By license of Polygamy, one man may have many wives, all bound to him by marriage-tie, and in other respects protected by law. By license of Slavery, a whole race is delivered over to prostitution and concubinage, without the protection of any law. Surely, Sir, is not Slavery barbarous?

_Thirdly._ Slavery paints itself again in its complete _abrogation of the parental relation_, provided by God in his benevolence for the nurture and education of the human family, and constituting an essential part of Civilization itself. And yet by the Law of Slavery--happily beginning to be modified in some places--this relation is set at nought, and in its place is substituted the arbitrary control of the master, at whose mere command little children, such as the Saviour called unto him, though clasped by a mother’s arms, are swept under the hammer of the auctioneer. I do not dwell on this exhibition. Sir, is not Slavery barbarous?

_Fourthly._ Slavery paints itself again _in closing the gates of knowledge_, which are also the shining gates of Civilization. Under its plain, unequivocal law, the bondman, at the unrestrained will of his master, is shut out from all instruction; while in many places--incredible to relate--the law itself, by cumulative provisions, positively forbids that he shall be taught to read! Of course the slave cannot be allowed to read: for his soul would then expand in larger air, while he saw the glory of the North Star, and also the helping truth, that God, who made iron, never made a slave; for he would then become familiar with the Scriptures, with the Decalogue still speaking in the thunders of Sinai,--with that ancient text, “He that stealeth a man and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death”[40]--with that other text, “Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal,”[41]--with that great story of Redemption, when the Lord raised the slave-born Moses to deliver his chosen people from the house of bondage,--and with that sublimer story, where the Saviour died a cruel death, that all men, without distinction of race, might be saved, leaving to mankind a commandment which, even without his example, makes Slavery impossible. Thus, in order to fasten your manacles upon the slave, you fasten other manacles upon his soul. The ancients maintained Slavery by chains and death: you maintain it by that infinite despotism and monopoly through which human nature itself is degraded. Sir, is not Slavery barbarous?

_Fifthly._ Slavery paints itself again _in the appropriation of all the toil_ of its victims, excluding them from that property in their own earnings which the Law of Nature allows and Civilization secures. The painful injustice of this pretension is lost in its meanness. It is robbery and petty larceny under garb of law. And even the meanness is lost in the absurdity of its associate pretension, that the African, thus despoiled of all earnings, is saved from poverty, and that for his own good he must work for his master, and not for himself. Alas, by such fallacy is a whole race pauperized! And yet this transaction is not without illustrative example. A sombre poet, whose verse has found wide favor, pictures a creature who

“with one hand put
A penny in the urn of poverty,
And with the other took a shilling out.”[42]

And a celebrated traveller through Russia, more than a generation ago, describes a kindred spirit, who, while devoutly crossing himself at church with his right hand, with the left deliberately picked the pocket of a fellow-sinner by his side.[43] Not admiring these instances, I cannot cease to deplore a system which has much of both, while, under affectation of charity, it sordidly takes from the slave all the fruits of his bitter sweat, and thus takes from him the main spring to exertion. Tell me, Sir, is not Slavery barbarous?

Such is Slavery in its five special elements of Barbarism, as recognized by law: first, assuming that man can hold property in man; secondly, abrogating the relation of husband and wife; thirdly, abrogating the parental tie; fourthly, closing the gates of knowledge; and, fifthly, appropriating the unpaid labor of another. Take away these elements, sometimes called “abuses,” and Slavery will cease to exist; for it is these very “abuses” which constitute Slavery. Take away any one of them, and the abolition of Slavery begins. And when I present Slavery for judgment, I mean no slight evil, with regard to which there may be reasonable difference of opinion, but I mean this fivefold embodiment of “abuse,” this ghastly quincunx of Barbarism, each particular of which, if considered separately, must be denounced at once with all the ardor of an honest soul, while the whole fivefold combination must awake a fivefold denunciation. The historic pirates, once the plague of the Gulf whose waters they plundered, have been praised for the equity with which they adjusted the ratable shares of spoil, and also for generous benefactions to the poor, and even to churches, so that Sir Walter Scott could say,--

“Do thou revere
The statutes of the Buccaneer.”[44]

In our Law of Slavery what is there to revere? what is there at which the soul does not rise in abhorrence?

But this fivefold combination becomes yet more hateful when its _single motive_ is considered; and here Slavery paints itself finally. The Senator from Mississippi [Mr. JEFFERSON DAVIS] says that it is “but a form of civil government for those who by their nature are not fit to govern themselves.” The Senator is mistaken. It is an outrage, where five different pretensions all concur in one single object, looking only to the profit of the master, and constituting its ever-present motive power, which is simply _to compel the labor of fellow-men without wages_. If I pronounce this object not only barbarous, but brutal, I follow the judgment of Luther’s Bible, in the book “Jesus Sirach,” known in our translation as Ecclesiasticus, where it is said: “He that giveth not his wages to the laborer, _he is a bloodhound_.”[45]

Slavery is often exposed as degrading Humanity. On this fruitful theme nobody has expressed himself with the force and beautiful eloquence of our own Channing. His generous soul glowed with indignation at the thought of man, supremest creature of earth, and first of God’s works, despoiled of manhood and changed to a thing. But earlier than Channing was Jean Jacques Rousseau, who, with similar eloquence and the same glowing indignation, vindicated Humanity. How grandly he insists that nobody can consent to be a slave, or can be born a slave! Believing Liberty the most noble of human attributes, this wonderful writer will not stop to consider if descent to the condition of beasts be not to degrade human nature, if renunciation of the most precious of all God’s gifts be not to offend the Author of our being; but he demands only by what right those who degrade themselves to this depth can subject their posterity to this same ignominy, renouncing for them goods which do not depend upon any ancestors, and without which life itself is to all worthy of it a burden; and he justly concludes, that, as, to establish Slavery, it is necessary to violate Nature, so, to perpetuate this claim, it is necessary to change Nature. His final judgment, being the practical conclusion of this outburst, holds up jurisconsults, gravely pronouncing that the child of a slave is born a slave, as deciding, in other terms, that a man is not born a man,[46]--thus exposing the peculiar absurdity of that pretension by which Slavery is transmitted from the mother to her offspring, as expressed in the Latin scrap on which the Senator from Virginia [Mr. MASON] relies: _Partus sequitur ventrem_.

If the offence of Slavery were less extended, if it were confined to some narrow region, if it had less of grandeur in its proportions, if its victims were counted by tens and hundreds instead of millions, the five-headed enormity would find little indulgence; all would rise against it, while Religion and Civilization would lavish choicest efforts in the general warfare. But what is wrong when done to one man cannot be right when done to many. If it is wrong thus to degrade a single soul, if it is wrong thus to degrade you, Mr. President, it cannot be right to degrade a whole race. And yet this is denied by the barbarous logic of Slavery, which, taking advantage of its own wrong, claims immunity because its usurpation has assumed a front of audacity that cannot be safely attacked. Unhappily, there is Barbarism elsewhere in the world; but American Slavery, as defined by existing law, stands forth as the greatest organized Barbarism on which the sun now looks. It is without a single peer. Its author, after making it, broke the die.

If curiosity carries us to the origin of this law,--and here I approach a topic often considered in this Chamber,--we shall again confess its Barbarism. It is not derived from the Common Law, that fountain of Liberty; for this law, while unhappily recognizing a system of servitude known as villeinage, secured to the bondman privileges unknown to the American slave,--guarded his person against mayhem,--protected his wife against rape,--gave to his marriage equal validity with the marriage of his master,--and surrounded his offspring with generous presumptions of Freedom, unlike that rule of yours by which the servitude of the mother is necessarily stamped upon the child. It is not derived from the Roman Law, that fountain of Tyranny, for two reasons: first, because this law, in its better days, when its early rigors were spent, like the Common Law itself, secured to the bondman privileges unknown to the American slave,--in certain cases of cruelty rescued him from his master, prevented separation of parents and children, also of brothers and sisters, and even protected him in the marriage relation; and, secondly, because the Thirteen Colonies were not derived from any of those countries which recognized the Roman Law, while this law, even before the discovery of this continent, had lost all living efficacy. It is not derived from the Mohammedan Law; for, under the mild injunctions of the Koran, a benignant servitude, unlike yours, has prevailed,--where the lash is not allowed to lacerate the back of a female,--where no knife or branding-iron is employed upon any human being, to mark him as the property of his fellow-man,--where the master is expressly enjoined to favor the desires of his slave for emancipation,--and where the blood of the master, mingling with that of his bondwoman, takes from her the transferable character of chattel, and confers complete freedom upon their offspring. It is not derived from the Spanish Law; for this law contains humane elements unknown to your system, borrowed, perhaps, from Mohammedan Moors who so long occupied Spain; and, besides, our Thirteen Colonies had no umbilical connection with Spain. Nor is it derived from English statutes or American statutes; for we have the positive and repeated averment of the Senator from Virginia [Mr. MASON], and also of other Senators, that in not a single State of the Union can any such statutes establishing Slavery be found. From none of these does it come.

No, Sir, not from any land of Civilization is this Barbarism derived. It comes from Africa, ancient nurse of monsters,--from Guinea, Dahomey, and Congo. There is its origin and fountain. This benighted region, we are told by Chief-Justice Marshall in a memorable judgment,[47] still asserts a right, discarded by Christendom, to enslave captives taken in war; and this African Barbarism is the beginning of American Slavery. The Supreme Court of Georgia, a Slave State, has not shrunk from this conclusion. “Licensed to hold slave property,” says the Court, “the Georgia planter held the slave as a chattel, either directly from the slave-trader or from those who held under him, and he from the slave-captor in Africa. The property of the planter in the slave became thus the property of the original captor.”[48] It is natural that a right thus derived in defiance of Christendom, and openly founded on the most vulgar Paganism, should be exercised without mitigating influence from Christianity,--that the master’s authority over the person of his slave, over his conjugal relations, over his parental relations, over the employment of his time, over all his acquisitions, should be recognized, while no generous presumption inclines to Freedom, and the womb of the bondwoman can deliver only a slave.

From its home in Africa, where it is sustained by immemorial usage, this Barbarism, thus derived and thus developed, traversed the ocean to American soil. It entered on board that fatal slave-ship,

“Built in the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark,”

which in 1620 landed its cruel cargo at Jamestown, in Virginia; and it has boldly taken its place in every succeeding slave-ship, from that early day till now,--helping to pack the human freight, regardless of human agony,--surviving the torments of the middle passage,--surviving its countless victims plunged beneath the waves; and it has left the slave-ship only to travel inseparable from the slave in his various doom, sanctioning by its barbarous code every outrage, whether of mayhem or robbery, lash or lust, and fastening itself upon his offspring to the remotest generation. Thus are barbarous prerogatives of barbarous half-naked African chiefs perpetuated in American Slave-Masters, while the Senator from Virginia [Mr. MASON], perhaps unconscious of their origin, perhaps desirous to secure for them the appearance of a less barbarous pedigree, tricks them out with a phrase of the Roman Law, discarded by the Common Law, which simply renders into ancient Latin an existing rule of African Barbarism, recognized as an existing rule of American Slavery.

Such is the plain juridical origin of the American slave code, now vaunted as a badge of Civilization. But all law, whatever its juridical origin, whether Christian or Mohammedan, Roman or African, may be traced to other and ampler influences in Nature, sometimes of Right and sometimes of Wrong. Surely the law which stamped the slave-trade as piracy punishable with death had a different inspiration from that other law which secured immunity for the slave-trade throughout an immense territory, and invested its supporters with political power. As there is a nobler law above, so there is a meaner law below, and each is felt in human affairs.

* * * * *

Thus far we have seen Slavery only in pretended law, and in the origin of that law. Here I might stop, without proceeding in the argument; for on the letter of the law alone must Slavery be condemned. But the tree is known by its fruits, which I shall now exhibit: and this brings me to the second stage of the argument.

* * * * *

(2.) In considering _the practical results of Slavery_, the materials are so obvious and diversified that my chief care will be to abridge and reject: and here I put the Slave States and Free States face to face, showing at each point the blasting influence of Slavery.