Chapter IX: Front Matter (9)

What a running there would be from the slave States to the free!--from one slave State to another!--from one plantation to another! Now, such a law--a solemn commandment of God--many writers on slavery are of the opinion, perhaps too confident opinion, was in force in the Jewish nation (Deut. xxiii, 15); and yet the system of servitude on which it bore, and which you cite as the pattern and authority for your own, lived in spite of it. How could it? Manifestly, because its genius was wholly unlike that of Southern slavery; and because its rigors and wrongs, if rigors and wrongs there were in it, bear no comparison to those which characterize Southern slavery; and which would impel nine-tenths of its adult subjects to fly from their homes, did they but know that they would not be obliged to return to them. When Southern slaveholders shall cease to scour the land for fugitive servants, and to hunt them with guns and dogs, and to imprison, and scourge, and kill them;--when, in a word, they shall subject to the bearing of such a law as that referred to their system of servitude, then we shall begin to think that they are sincere in likening it to the systems which existed among the Jews. The law, enacted in Virginia in 1705, authorizing any two justices of the peace "by proclamation to _outlaw_ runaways, who might thereafter be killed and destroyed by any person whatsoever, by such ways and means as he might think fit, without accusation or impeachment of any crime for so doing," besides that it justifies what I have just said about hunting fugitive servants, shows, 1st. That the American Anti-Slavery Society is of too recent an origin to be the occasion, as slaveholders and their apologists would have us believe, of all the cruel laws enacted at the South. 2d. That Southern slaveholders would be very unwilling to have their system come under the operation of such a law as that which allowed the Jewish servant to change his master. 3d. That they are monsters, indeed, into which men may be turned by their possession of absolute power.

You, perhaps, suppose, (and I frankly admit to you, that there is some room for the supposition,) that the servants referred to in the 15th and 16th verses of the 23d chapter of Deuteronomy, were such as had escaped from foreign countries to the country of the Jews. But, would this view of the matter help you? By taking it, would you not expose yourself to be most pertinently and embarrassingly asked, for what purpose these servants fled to a strange and most odious people?--and would not your candid reply necessarily be, that it was to escape from the galling chains of slavery, to a far-famed milder type of servitude?--from Gentile oppression, to a land in which human rights were protected by Divine laws? But, as I have previously intimated, I have not the strongest confidence in the anti-slavery argument, so frequently drawn from this passage of the Bible. I am not sure that a Jewish servant is referred to: nor that on the supposition of his being a foreigner, the servant came under any form of servitude when entering the land of the Jews. Before leaving the topic, however, let me remark, that the passage, under any construction of it, makes against Southern slavery. Admit that the fugitive servant was a foreigner, and that he was not reduced to servitude on coming among the Jews, let me ask you whether the law in question, under this view of it, would be tolerated by the spirit of Southern slavery?--and whether, before obedience would be rendered to it, you would not need to have a different type of servitude, in the place of slavery? You would--I know you would--for you have been put to the trial. When, by a happy providence, a vessel was driven, the last year, to a West India island, and the chains of the poor slaves with which it was filled fell from around them, under freedom's magic power, the exasperated South was ready to go to war with Great Britain. _Then_, the law against delivering up foreign servants to their masters was not relished by you. The given case comes most strikingly within the supposed policy of this law. The Gentile was to be permitted to remain in the land to which he had fled, and where he would have advantages for becoming acquainted with the God of the Bible. Such advantages are they enjoying who escaped from the confessed heathenism of Southern slavery to the island in question. They are now taught to read that "Book of life," which before, they were forbidden to read. But again, suppose a slave were to escape from a West India island into the Southern States--would you, with your "domestic institutions," of which you are so jealous, render obedience to this Divine law? No; you would subject him _for ever_ to a servitude more severe than that, from which he had escaped. Indeed, if a _freeman_ come within a certain portion of our Southern country, and be so unhappy as to bear a physical resemblance to the slave, he will be punished for that resemblance, by imprisonment, and even by a reduction to slavery.

2d. Southern slaveholders, who, by their laws, own men as absolutely as they own cattle, would have it believed, that Jewish masters thus owned their fellow-men. If they did, why was there so wide a difference between the commandment respecting the stray man, and that respecting the stray ox or ass? The man was not, but the beasts were, to be returned; and that too, even though their owner was the enemy of him who met them. (Ex. 23. 4.) I repeat the question;--why this difference? The only answer is, because God made the brute to be the _property_ of man; but He never gave us our noble nature for such degradation. Man's title deed, in the eighth Psalm, extends his right of property to the inanimate and brute creation only--not to the flesh and bones and spirit of his fellow-man.

3d. The very different penalties annexed to the crime of stealing a man, and to that of stealing a thing, shows the eternal and infinite difference which God has established between a man and property. The stealing of a man was _surely_ to be punished with death; whilst mere property was allowed to atone for the offence of stealing property.

4th. Who, if not the slave, can be said to be vexed and oppressed! But God's command to his people was, that they should neither "vex a stranger, nor oppress him."

5th. Such is the nature of American slavery, that not even its warmest friends would claim that it could recover itself after such a "year of jubilee" as God appointed. One such general delivery of its victims would be for ever fatal to it. I am aware that you deny that all the servants of the Jews shared in the blessings of the "year of jubilee." But let me ask you, whether if one third or one half of your servants were discharged from servitude every fiftieth year--and still more, whether if a considerable proportion of them were thus discharged every sixth year--the remainder would not be fearfully discontented? Southern masters believe, that their only safety consists in keeping down the discontent of their servants. Hence their anxious care to withhold from them the knowledge of human rights. Hence the abolitionist who is caught in a slave state, must be whipped or put to death. If there were a class of servants amongst the Jews, who could bear to see all their fellow servants go free, whilst they themselves were retained in bondage, then that bondage was of a kind very different from what you suppose it to have been. Had its subjects worn the galling chains of American slavery, they would have struggled with bloody desperation for the deliverance which they saw accorded to others.

I scarcely need say, that the Hebrew words rendered "bondmen" and "bondmaids," do not, in themselves considered, and independently of the connexion in which they are used, any more than the Greek words _doulos_ and _doule_, denote a particular kind of servant. If the servant was a slave, because he was called by the Hebrew word rendered "bondman," then was Jacob a slave also:--and even still greater absurdities could be deduced from the position.

I promised, in a former part of this communication, to give you my reasons for denying that you are at liberty to plead in behalf of slavery, the example of any compulsory servitude in which Jews may have held foreigners. My promise is now fulfilled, and I trust that the reasons are such as not to admit of an answer.

Driven, as you now are, from every other conceivable defence of slaveholding it may be (though I must hope better things of you), that you will fly to the ground taken by the wicked multitude--that there is authority in the laws of man for being a slaveholder. But, not only is the sin of your holding slaves undiminished by the consideration, that they are held under human laws; but, your claiming to hold them under such laws, makes you guilty of an additional sin, which, if measured by its pernicious consequences to others, is by no means inconsiderable. The truth of these two positions is apparent from the following considerations.

1st. There is no valid excuse to be found, either in man's laws or any where else, for transgressing God's laws. Whatever may be thought, or said to the contrary, it still remains, and for ever will remain true, that under all circumstances, "sin is the transgression of the (Divine) law."

2d. In every instance in which a commandment of God is transgressed, under the cover and plea of a human law, purporting to permit what that commandment forbids, there is, in proportion to the authority and influence of the transgressor, a fresh sanction imparted to that law; and consequently, in the same proportion the public habit of setting up a false standard of right and wrong is promoted. It is this habit--this habit of graduating our morality by the laws of the land in which we live--that makes the "mischief framed by a law" so much more pernicious than that which has no law to countenance it, and to commend it to the conscience. Who is unaware, that nothing tends so powerfully to keep the traffic in strong drink from becoming universally odious, as the fact, that this body and soul destroying business finds a sanction in human laws? Who has not seen the man, authorized by these laws to distribute the poison amongst his tippling neighbors, proof against all the shafts of truth, under the self-pleasing and self-satisfying consideration, that his is a lawful business.

This habit of setting up man's law, instead of God's law, as the standard of conduct, is strikingly manifested in the fact, that on the ground, that the Federal Constitution binds the citizens of the United States to perpetuate slavery, or at least, not to meddle with it, we are, both at the North and the South, called on to forbear from all efforts to abolish it. The exertions made to discover in that instrument, authority for slavery, and authority against endeavors to abolish it, are as great, anxious, and unwearied, as if they who made them, thought that the fortunate discovery would settle for ever the great question which agitates our country--would nullify all the laws of God against slavery--and make the oppression of our colored brethren, as long as time shall last, justifiable and praiseworthy. But this discovery will never be made; for the Constitution is not on the side of the slaveholder. If it were, however, it would clothe him with no moral right to act in opposition to the paramount law of God. It is not at all necessary to the support of my views, in this communication, to show that the Constitution was not designed to favor slavery; and yet, a few words to this end may not be out of place.

A treaty between Great Britain and Turkey, by the terms of which the latter should be prohibited from allowing slaves to be brought within her dominions, after twenty years from its date, would, all will admit, redound greatly to the credit of Great Britain. To be sure, she would not have done as much for the cause of humanity, as if she had succeeded in bringing the further indulgence of the sin within the limits of a briefer period, and incomparably less than if she had succeeded in reconciling the Sublime Porte to her glorious and emphatically English doctrines of immediate emancipation. But still she would deserve some praise--much more than if she had done nothing in this respect. Now, for my present purpose, and many of our statesmen say, for nearly all purposes, the Federal Constitution is to be regarded as a treaty between sovereign States. But how much more does this treaty do for the abolition of slavery, than that on which we were, a moment since, bestowing our praise! It imposes a prohibition similar to that in the supposed treaty between Great Britain and Turkey, so that no slaves have been allowed to be introduced into the United States since the year 1808. It goes further, and makes ample provision for the abolition and prevention of slavery in every part of the nation, save these States; so that the District of Columbia and the national territories can be cleared forever of slavery, whenever a majority of the parties, bound by the treaty, shall desire it. And it goes still farther, and clothes this majority with the power of regulating commerce between the States, and consequently, of prohibiting their mutual traffic in "the bodies and souls of men." Had this treaty gone but one step farther, and made an exception, as it should have done, in behalf of slaves, in the clause making necessary provision for the return of fugitives held to service in the States from which they flee, none but those who think it is fairly held responsible for the twenty years indulgence of the unholy traffic, would have claimed any thing more from it in relation to slavery. Now, this instrument, which contains nothing more, bearing on the subject of slavery, than what I have referred to, and whose pages are not once polluted with the words "slave" and "slavery," is abundantly and triumphantly cited, as conclusive authority in favor of slavery, and against endeavors to abolish it. Whilst we regret, that the true-hearted sons of freedom in the Convention which formed it, could obtain no more concessions from the advocates of slavery, let us honor their sacred memory, and thank God for those they did obtain.

I have supposed it possible, that you might number yourself with those, who defend slavery on the ground of its alleged conformity with human laws. It occurs to me, that you may, also, take hope, that slavery is defensible in the supposed fact, that a considerable share of the professing Christians, in the free States, are in favor of it. "Let God be true, but every man a liar." If all professing Christians were for slavery, yet, if God is against it, that is reason enough why you also should be against it. It is not true, however, that a considerable share of our professing Christians are on the side of slavery. Indeed, until I read Professor Hodge's article, I had not supposed that any of them denied its sinfulness. It is true, that a large proportion of them refuse to take a stand against it. Let them justify to their consciences, and to their God, as they can, the equivocal silence and still more equivocal action on this subject, by which they have left their Southern brethren to infer, that Northern piety sanctions slavery. It is the doctrine of expediency, so prevalent and corrupting in the American Church, which has deceived you into the belief, that a large share of the professing Christians in the free States, think slavery to be sinless. This share, which you have in your eye, is, as well as the remainder, convinced that slavery is sinful--_only they think it inexpedient to say so_. In relation to other sins, they are satisfied with God's way of immediate abandonment. But, in relation to slavery, they flatter themselves that they have discovered "a more excellent way"--that of leaving the sin untouched, and simply hoping for its cessation, at some indefinite period in the distant future. I say hoping, instead of praying, as prayer for an object is found to be accompanied by corresponding efforts. But for this vile doctrine of expediency, which gives to our ecclesiastical bodies, whenever the subject of such a giant and popular sin as slavery is broached in them, the complexion of a political caucus steeped in unprincipled policy, rather than that of a company of the Saviour's disciples, inquiring "in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom," the way of the Lord;--but for this doctrine, I say, you would, long ago, have heard the testimony of Northern Christians against Southern slavery;--and not only so, but you would long ago have seen this Dagon fall before the power of that testimony. I trust, however, that this testimony will not long be withheld; and that Northern Christians will soon perceive, that, in relation to slavery, as well as every other sin, it is the safest and wisest, as well as the holiest course, to drop all carnal policy--to "trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not unto thine own understanding."

Not only are Northern Christians, with very rare exceptions, convinced of the sin of slavery; but even your slaveholders were formerly accustomed, with nearly as great unanimity, to admit, that they themselves thought it to be sinful. It is only recently, and since they have found that their system must be tested by the Bible, thoroughly and in earnest--not merely for the purpose, as formerly, of determining without any practical consequences of the determination, what is the moral character of slavery--but, for the purpose of settling the point, whether the institution shall stand or fall,--it is only, I say, since the civilized world has been fast coming to claim that it shall be decided by the Bible, and by no lower standard, whether slavery shall or shall not exist--that your slaveholders have found it expedient to take the ground, that slavery is not sin.

It probably has not occurred to you, how fairly and fully you might have been stopped, upon the very threshold of your defence of slavery. The only witness you have called to the stand to sustain your sinking cause, is the Bible. But this is a witness, which slavery has itself impeached, and of which, therefore, it is not entitled to avail itself. It is a good rule in our civil courts, that a party is not permitted to impeach his own witness; and it is but an inconsiderable variation of the letter of this rule, and obviously no violation of its spirit and policy to say, that no party is permitted to attempt to benefit his cause by a witness whom he has himself impeached. Now, the slaveholder palpably violates this rule, when he presumes to offer the Bible as a witness for his cause:--for he has previously impeached it, by declaring, in his slave system, that it is not to be believed--that its requirements are not to be obeyed--that they are not even to be read (though the Bible expressly directs that they shall be)--that concubinage shall be substituted for the marriage it enjoins--and that its other provisions for the happiness, and even the existence, of the social relations, shall be trampled under foot. The scene, in which a lawyer should ask the jury to believe what his witness is saying at one moment, and to reject what he is saying at another, would be ludicrous enough. But what more absurdity is there in it than that which the pro-slavery party are guilty of, when they would have us deaf, whilst their witness is testifying in favor of marriage and searching the Scriptures; and, all ears, whilst that same witness is testifying, as they construe it, in favor of slavery! No--before it will be competent for the American slaveholder to appeal to the Bible for justification of his system, that system must be so modified, as no longer to make open, shameless war upon the Bible. I would recommend to slaveholders, that, rather than make so unhallowed a use of the Bible as to attempt to bolster up their hard beset cause with it, they should take the ground, which a very distinguished slaveholding gentleman of the city of Washington took, in a conversation with myself on the subject of slavery. Feeling himself uncomfortably plied by quotations from the word of God, he said with much emphasis, "Stop, Sir, with that, if you please--SLAVERY IS A SUBJECT, WHICH HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE BIBLE."

This practice of attempting to put the boldest and most flagrant sins under the wing and sanction of the Bible, is chargeable on others as well as on the advocates of slavery. Not to speak of other instances of it--it is sought to justify by this blessed book the most despotic forms of civil government, and the drinking of intoxicating liquors. There are two evils so great, which arise from this perversion of the word of God, that I cannot forbear to notice them. One is, that the consciences of men are quieted, when they imagine that they have found a justification in the Bible for the sins of which they are guilty. The other is, that infidels are multiplied by this perversion. A respectable gentleman, who edits a newspaper in this neighborhood, and who, unhappily, is not established in the Christian faith, was asked, a few months since, to attend a meeting of a Bible Society. "I am not willing," said he, in reply, "to favor the circulation of a volume, which many of its friends claim to be on the side of slavery." Rely on it, Sir, that wherever your book produces the conviction that the Bible justifies slavery, it there weakens whatever of respect for that blessed volume previously existed. Whoever is brought to associate slavery with the Bible, may, it is true, think better of slavery; but he will surely think worse of the Bible. I hope, therefore, in mercy to yourself and the world, that the success of your undertaking will be small.

But oftentimes the same providence has a bright, as well as a gloomy, aspect. It is so in the case before us. The common attempt, in our day, to intrench great sins in the authority of the Bible, is a consoling and cheering evidence, that this volume is recognised as the public standard of right and wrong; and that, whatever may be their private opinions of it who are guilty of these sins, they cannot hope to justify themselves before the world, unless their lives are, apparently, at least, conformed, in some good degree, to this standard. We may add, too, that, as surely as the Bible is against slavery, every pro-slavery writer, who like yourself appeals to it as the infallible and only admissible standard of right and wrong, will contribute to the overthrow of the iniquitous system. His writings may not, uniformly, tend to this happy result. In some instances, he may strengthen confidence in the system of slavery by producing conviction, that the Bible sanctions it;--and then his success will be, as before remarked, at the expense of the claims and authority of the Bible:--but these instances of the pernicious effects of his writings will be very rare, quite too rare we may hope, to counterbalance the more generally useful tendency of writings on the subject of slavery, which recognise the paramount authority of God's law.

Having completed the examination of your book, I wish to hold up to you, in a single view, the substance of what you have done. You have come forth, the unblushing advocate of American slavery;--a system which, whether we study its nature in the deliberate and horrid enactments of its code, or in the heathenism and pollution and sweat and tears and blood, which prove, but too well, the agreement of its practical character with its theory--is, beyond all doubt, more oppressive and wicked than any other, which the avaricious, sensual, cruel heart of man ever devised. You have come forth, the unblushing advocate of a system under which parents are daily selling their children; brothers and sisters, their brothers and sisters; members of the Church of Christ, their fellow-members--under which, in a word, immortal man, made "in the image of God," is more unfeelingly and cruelly dealt with, than the brute. I know that you intimate that this system would work well, were it in the hands of none but good men. But with equal propriety might you say, that the gaming-house or the brothel would work well in such hands. You have attempted to sustain this system by the testimony of the Bible. The system, a part only of the crimes of which, most of the nations of Christendom have declared to be piracy;--against which, the common sense, the philosophy, the humanity, the conscience of the world, are arrayed;--this system, so execrable and infamous, you have had the presumption to attempt to vindicate by that blessed book, whose Author "is of purer eyes than to behold evil, and (who) cannot look upon iniquity"--and who "has magnified his word above all his name."

And now, Sir, let me solemnly inquire of you, whether it is right to do what you have done?--whether it is befitting a man, a Christian, and a minister of the gospel?--and let me, further, ask you, whether you have any cheering testimony in your heart that it is God's work you have been doing? That you and I may, in every future work of our hands, have the happiness to know, that the approbation of our employer comes from the upper, and not from the under world, is the sincere desire of

Your friend,

GERRIT SMITH.

No. 4

THE

ANTI-SLAVERY EXAMINER.

THE

BIBLE AGAINST SLAVERY.

AN INQUIRY

INTO THE

PATRIARCHAL AND MOSAIC SYSTEMS

ON THE SUBJECT OF HUMAN RIGHTS.

NEW-YORK:

PUBLISHED BY THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY,

NO. 143 NASSAU STREET.

1837.

POSTAGE--This periodical contains five and a half sheets. Postage under 100 miles, 8-1/2 cts over 100 miles, 14 cents.

_Please read and circulate._

PIERCY & REED. PRINTERS,

7 Theatre Alley.

CONTENTS.

Definition of Slavery

Man-stealing--Examination of Ex. xxi. 16

Import of "Bought with money," etc.

Rights and privileges of servants

No involuntary servitude under the Mosaic system

Servants were paid wages

Masters, not owners

Servants distinguished from property

Social equality of servants with their masters

Condition of the Gibeonites, as subjects of the Hebrew
Commonwealth

Egyptian bondage analyzed

OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED.

"Cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants shall he be," etc. Gen.
ix. 25

"For he is his money," Examination of, Ex. xxi. 20, 21

"Bondmen and bondmaids" bought of the heathen. Lev. xxv. 44-46

"They shall be your bondmen forever." Lev. xxv. 46

"Ye shall take them as an inheritance," etc. Lev. xxv. 46

The Israelite to serve as a hired servant. Lev. xxv. 39, 40

Difference between bought and hired servants

Bought servants the most privileged class

Summary of the different classes of servants

Disabilities of the servants from the heathen

Examination of Exodus xxi. 2-6

The Canaanites not sentenced to unconditional extermination

INQUIRY, &c.

* * * * *

The spirit of slavery never takes refuge in the Bible _of its own accord._ The horns of the altar are its last resort. It seizes them, if at all, only in desperation--rushing from the terror of the avenger's arm. Like other unclean spirits, it "hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest its deeds should be reproved." Goaded to phrenzy in its conflicts with conscience and common sense, denied all quarter, and hunted from every covert, it breaks at last into the sacred enclosure, and courses up and down the Bible, "seeking rest, and finding none." THE LAW OF LOVE, streaming from every page, flashes around it an omnipresent anguish and despair. It shrinks from the hated light, and howls under the consuming touch, as demons recoiled from the Son of God, and shrieked, "Torment us not." At last, it slinks away among the shadows of the Mosaic system, and thinks to burrow out of sight among its types and shadows. Vain hope! Its asylum is its sepulchre; its city of refuge, the city of destruction. It rushes from light into the sun; from heat, into devouring fire; and from the voice of God into the thickest of His thunders.

DEFINITION OF SLAVERY.

If we would know whether the Bible is the charter of slavery, we must first determine _just what slavery is_. The thing itself must be separated from its appendages. A constituent element is one thing; a relation another; an appendage another. Relations and appendages presuppose _other_ things, of which there are relations and appendages. To regard them as _the things_ to which they pertain, or as constituent parts of them, leads to endless fallacies. A great variety of conditions, relations, and tenures, indispensable to the social state, are confounded with slavery; and thus slaveholding is deemed quite harmless, if not virtuous. We will specify some of the things which are often confounded with slavery.

1. _Privation of the right of suffrage_. Then _minors_ are slaves.

2. _Ineligibility to office_. Then _females_ are slaves.

3. _Taxation without representation_. Then three-fourths of the people of Rhode Island are slaves, and _all_ in the District of Columbia.

4. _Privation of one's oath in law_. Then the _free_ colored people of Ohio are slaves. So are disbelievers in a future retribution, generally.

5. _Privation of trial by jury_. Then all in France and Germany are slaves.

6. _Being required to support a particular religion_. Then the people of England are slaves. [To the preceding may be added all other disabilities, merely political.]

7. _Cruelty and oppression_. Wives are often cruelly treated; hired domestics are often oppressed; but these forms of oppression are not slavery.

8. _Apprenticeship_. The rights and duties of master and apprentice are correlative and reciprocal. The _claim_ of each upon the other results from the _obligation_ of each to the other. Apprenticeship is based on the principle of equivalent for value received. The rights of the apprentice are secured, and his interests are promoted equally with those of the master. Indeed, while the law of apprenticeship is _just_ to the master, it is _benevolent_ to the apprentice. Its main design is rather to benefit the apprentice than the master. It _promotes_ the interests of the former, while it guards from injury those of the latter in doing it. It secures to the master a mere legal compensation, while it secures to the apprentice both a legal compensation, and a virtual gratuity in addition, the apprentice being of the two decidedly the greatest gainer. The law not only recognizes the _right_ of the apprentice to a reward for his labor, but appoints the wages, and enforces the payment. The master's claim covers only the _services_ of the apprentice. The apprentice's claim covers _equally_ the services of the master. The master cannot hold the apprentice as property, nor the apprentice the master; but each holds property in the services of the other, and BOTH EQUALLY. Is this slavery?

9. _Filial subordination and parental claims_. Both are nature's dictates, and indispensable to the existence of the social state; their _design_ the promotion of mutual welfare; and the _means_, those natural affections created by the relation of parent and child, and blending them in one by irrepressible affinities; and thus, while exciting each to discharge those offices incidental to the relation, they constitute a shield for mutual protection. The parent's legal claim to the services of his children, while minors, is a slight boon for the care and toil of their rearing, to say nothing of outlays for support and education. This provision for the good of the _whole_, is, with the greater part of mankind, indispensable to the preservation of the family state. The child, in helping his parents, helps himself--increases a common stock, in which he has a share; while his most faithful services do but acknowledge a debt that money cannot cancel.

10. _Bondage for crime, or governmental claims on criminals._ Must innocence be punished because guilt suffers penalties? True, the criminal works for the government without pay; and well he may. He owes the government. A century's work would not pay its drafts on him. He is a public defaulter, and will die so. Because laws make men pay their debts, shall those be forced to pay who _owe nothing?_ Besides, the law makes no criminal, PROPERTY. It restrains his liberty; it makes him pay something, a mere penny in the pound, of his debt to the government; but it does not make him a _chattel_. Test it. To own property is to own its product. Are children born of convicts government property? Besides, can _property_ be _guilty_? Are _chattels_ punished?

11. _Restrictions upon freedom._ Children are restrained by parents, wards by guardians, pupils by teachers, patients by physicians and nurses, corporations by charters, and legislators by constitutions. Embargoes, tariffs, quarantine, and all other laws, keep men from doing as they please. Restraints are the web of civilized society, warp and woof. Are they slavery? then civilized society is a mammoth slave--a government of LAW, _the climax of slavery_, and its executive a king among slaveholders.

12. _Involuntary or compulsory service_. A juryman is empannelled _against his will_, and sit he _must_. A sheriff orders his posse; bystanders _must_ turn in. Men are _compelled_ to remove nuisances, pay fines and taxes, support their families, and "turn to the right as the law directs," however much _against their wills_. Are they therefore slaves? To confound slavery with involuntary service is absurd. Slavery is a _condition_. The slave's _feelings_ toward it, are one thing; the condition itself, the object of these feelings, is _another_ thing; his feelings cannot alter the nature of that condition. Whether he _desire_ or _detest_ it, the _condition_ remains the same. The slave's _willingness_ to be a slave is no palliation of his master's guilt in holding him. Suppose the slave verily thinks himself a chattel, and consents that others may so regard him, does that _make_ him a chattel, or make those guiltless who _hold_ him as such? I may be sick of life, and I tell the assassin so that stabs me; is he any the less a murderer because I _consent_ to be made a corpse? Does my partnership in his guilt blot out his part of it? If the slave were willing to be a slave, his _voluntariness_, so far from _lessening_ the guilt of the "owner," _aggravates_ it. If slavery has so palsied his mind and he looks upon himself as a chattel, and consents to be one, actually _to hold him as such_, falls in with his delusion, and confirms the impious falsehood. _These very feelings and convictions of the slave_, (if such were possible) increase a hundred fold the guilt of the master in holding him as property, and call upon him in thunder, immediately to recognize him as a MAN, and thus break the sorcery that binds his soul, cheating it of its birth-right, and the consciousness of its worth and destiny.

Many of the foregoing conditions and relations are _appendages_ of slavery, and some of them inseparable from it. But no one, nor all of them together, constitute its _intrinsic unchanging element_.

We proceed to state affirmatively that,

ENSLAVING MEN IS REDUCING THEM TO ARTICLES OF PROPERTY, making free agents chattels, converting _persons_ into _things_, sinking intelligence, accountability, immortality, into _merchandise_. A _slave_ is one held in this condition. He is a mere tool for another's use and benefit. In law "he owns nothing, and can acquire nothing." _His right to himself is abrogated._ He is another's property. If he say _my_ hands, _my_ feet, _my_ body, _my_ mind, MY_self_; they are figures of speech. To _use himself_ for his own good is a CRIME. To keep what he _earns_ is stealing. To take his body into his own keeping is _insurrection_. In a word, the> _profit_ of his master is the END of his being, and he, a _mere means_ to that end, a _mere means_ to an end into which his interests do not enter, of which they constitute no portion[A]. MAN sunk to a _thing_! the intrinsic element, the _principle_ of slavery; MEN sold, bartered, leased, mortgaged, bequeathed, invoiced, shipped in cargoes, stored as goods, taken on executions, and knocked off at public outcry! Their _rights_ another's conveniences, their interests, wares on sale, their happiness, a household utensil; their personal inalienable ownership, a serviceable article, or plaything, as best suits the humor of the hour; their deathless nature, conscience, social affections, sympathies, hopes, marketable commodities! We repeat it, _the reduction of persons to things_; not robbing a man of privileges, but of _himself_; not loading with burdens, but making him a _beast of burden_; not _restraining_ liberty, but subverting it; not curtailing rights, but abolishing them; not inflicting personal cruelty, but annihilating _personality_; not exacting involuntary labor, but sinking him into an _implement_ of labor; not abridging his human comforts, but abrogating his _human nature_; not depriving an animal of immunities, but _despoiling a rational being of attributes_, uncreating a MAN to make room for a _thing_!

[Footnote A: Whatever system sinks man from an END to a _means_, or in other words, whatever transforms him from an object of instrumentality into a mere instrumentality _to_ an object, just so far makes him a _slave_. Hence West India apprenticeship retains in _one_ particular the cardinal principle of slavery. The apprentice, during three-fourths of his time, is still forced to labor, and robbed of his earnings; just so far forth he is a _mere means_, a _slave_. True, in all other respects slavery is abolished in the British West Indies. Its bloodiest features are blotted out--but the meanest and most despicable of all--forcing the poor to work for the rich without pay three-fourths of their time, with a legal officer to flog them if they demur at the outrage, is one of the provisions of the "Emancipation Act!" For the glories of that luminary, abolitionists thank God, while they mourn that it rose behind clouds, and shines through an eclipse.]

That this is American slavery, is shown by the laws of slave states. Judge Stroud, in his "Sketch of the Laws relating to Slavery," says, "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 states," (the slave states.) The law of South Carolina thus lays down the principle, "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." Brevard's Digest, 229. In 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 any thing, but what must belong to his master." Civil Code of Louisiana, Art. 35.

This is American slavery. The eternal distinction between a person and a thing, trampled under foot--the crowning distinction of all others--their centre and circumference--the source, the test, and the measure of their value--the rational, immortal principle, embalmed by God in everlasting remembrance, consecrated to universal homage in a baptism of glory and honor, by the gift of His Son, His Spirit, His Word, His presence, providence, and power; His protecting shield, upholding staff, and sheltering wing; His opening heavens, and angels ministering, and chariots of fire, and songs of morning stars, and a great voice in heaven, proclaiming eternal sanctions, and confirming the word with signs following.

Having stated the _principle_ of American slavery, we ask, DOES THE BIBLE SANCTION SUCH A PRINCIPLE?[A][A]? To the _law_ and the _testimony_. First, the moral law, or the ten commandments. Just after the Israelites were emancipated from their bondage in Egypt, while they stood before Sinai to receive the law, as the trumpet waxed louder, and the mount quaked and blazed, God spake the ten commandments from the midst of clouds and thunderings. _Two_ of those commandments deal death to slavery. Look at the eighth, "_Thou shall not steal_," or, thou shalt not take from another what belongs to him. All man's powers of body and mind are God's gift to _him_. That they are _his own_, and that he has a right to them, is proved from the fact that God has given them to _him alone_, that each of them is a part of _himself_, and all of them together _constitute_ himself. All _else_ that belongs to man is acquired by the _use_ of these powers. The _interest_ belongs to him, because the _principal_ does--the product is his, because he is the _producer_. Ownership of any thing is ownership of its _use_. The right to use according to will, is _itself_ ownership. The eighth commandment _presupposes and assumes the right of every man to his powers, and their product._ Slavery robs of both. A man's right to himself is the only right absolutely original and intrinsic--his right to whatever else that belongs to him is merely _relative_ to his right to himself--is derived from it, and held only by virtue of it. SELF-RIGHT is the _foundation right_--the _post in the middle_, to which all other rights are fastened. Slaveholders, the world over, when talking about their RIGHT to their slaves, always assume _their own right to themselves_. What slaveholder ever undertook to prove his own right to himself? He knows it to be a self-evident proposition, that _a man belongs to himself_--that the right is intrinsic and absolute. The slaveholder, in making out his own title to himself, makes out the title of every human being to _himself_. As the fact of being _a man_ is itself the title, the whole human family have one common title deed. If _one_ man's title is valid, _all_ are valid. If one is worthless, all are. To deny the validity of the _slave's_ title is to deny the validity of _his own_; and yet in the act of making him a slave, the slaveholder _asserts_ the validity of his own title, while he seizes _him_ as his property who has the _same_ title. Further, in making him a slave, he does not merely unhumanize _one_ individual, but UNIVERSAL MAN. He destroys the foundations. He annihilates _all rights_. He attacks not only the human race, but _universal being_, and rushes upon JEHOVAH.--For rights are _rights_; God's are no more--man's are no less.

[Footnote A: The Bible record of actions is no comment on their moral character. It vouches for them as _facts_, not as _virtues_. It records without rebuke, Noah's drunkenness, Lot's incest, and the lies of Jacob and his mother--not only single acts, but _usages_, such as polygamy and concubinage, are entered on the record without censure. Is that _silent entry_ God's _endorsement_? Because the Bible, in its catalogue of human actions, does not stamp on every crime its name and number, and write against it, _this is a crime_--does that wash out its guilt, and bleach it into a virtue?]

The eighth commandment forbids the taking of _any_ part of that which belongs to another. Slavery takes the _whole_. Does the same Bible which forbids the taking of _any_ thing belonging to him, sanction the taking of _every_ thing? Is it such a medley of absurdities as to thunder wrath against him who robs his neighbor of a _cent_, while it bids God speed to him who robs his neighbor of _himself_? Slavery is the highest possible violation of the eighth commandment. To take from a man his earnings, is theft. But to take the _earner_, is compound, superlative, perpetual theft. It is to be a thief by profession. It is a trade, a life of robbery, that vaults through all the gradations of the climax at a leap--the dread, terrific, giant robbery, that towers among other robberies, a solitary horror, monarch of the realm. The eighth commandment forbids the taking away, and the _tenth_ adds, "_Thou shalt not COVET any thing that is thy neighbor's_;" thus guarding every man's right to himself and his property, by making not only the actual taking away a sin, but even that state of mind which would _tempt_ to it. Who ever made human beings slaves, or held them as slaves without _coveting_ them? Why do they take from them their time, their labor, their liberty, their right of self-preservation and improvement, their right to acquire property, to worship according to conscience, to search the Scriptures, to live with their families, and their right to their own bodies? Why do they _take_ them, if they do not _desire_ them? They COVET them for purposes of gain, convenience, lust of dominion, of sensual gratification, of pride and ostentation. _They break the tenth commandment_, and pluck down upon their heads the plagues that are written in the book. _Ten_ commandments constitute the brief compend of human duty. _Two_ of these brand slavery as sin.

The giving of the law at Sinai, immediately preceded the promulgation of that body of laws and institutions, called the "Mosaic system." Over the gateway of that system, fearful words were written by the finger of God--"HE THAT STEALETH A MAN AND SELLETH HIM, OR IF HE BE FOUND IN HIS HAND, HE SHALL SURELY BE PUT TO DEATH." See Exodus, xxi. 16.

The oppression of the Israelites in Egypt, and the wonders wrought for their deliverance, proclaim the reason for _such_ a law at _such_ a time--when the body politic became a theocracy, and reverently waited for the will of God. They had just been emancipated. The tragedies of their house of bondage were the realities of yesterday, and peopled their memories with thronging horrors. They had just witnessed God's testimony against oppression in the plagues of Egypt--the burning blains on man and beast--the dust quickened into loathsome life, and cleaving in swarms to every living thing--the streets, the palaces, the temples, and every house heaped up with the carcasses of things abhorred--even the kneading troughs and ovens, the secret chambers and the couches, reeking and dissolving with the putrid death--the pestilence walking in darkness at noonday, the devouring locusts and hail mingled with fire, the first-born death-struck, and the waters blood, and, last of all, that dread high hand and stretched out arm, that whelmed the monarch and his hosts, and strewed their corpses in the sea. All this their eyes had looked upon,--earth's proudest city, wasted and thunder-scarred, lying in desolation, and the doom of oppressors traced on her ruins in the hand writing of God, glaring in letters of fire mingled with blood--a blackened monument of wrath to the uttermost against the stealers of men.

No wonder that God, in a code of laws prepared for such a people at such a time, should light up on its threshold a blazing beacon to flash terror on slaveholders. "_He that stealeth a man and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall be surely put to death_." Ex. xxii. 16. God's cherubim and flaming sword guarding the entrance to the Mosaic system! See also Deut. xxiv. 7[A].

[Footnote A: Jarchi, the most eminent of the Jewish writers, (if we except perhaps the Egyptian Maimonides,) who wrote seven hundred years ago, in his comment on this stealing and making merchandize of men, gives the meaning thus:--"Using a man against his will, as a servant lawfully purchased; yea though he should use his services ever so little, only to the value of a farthing, or use but his arm to lean on to support him, _if he be forced so to act as a servant_, the person compelling him but once to do so shall die as a thief, whether he has sold him or not."]

The Hebrew word, _Gaunab_, here rendered _stealeth_, means the taking from another what _belongs_ to him, whether it be by violence or fraud; the same word is used in the eighth commandment, and prohibits both _robbery_ and theft.

The crime specified is that of _depriving_ SOMEBODY _of the ownership of a man_. Is this somebody a master? and is the crime that of depriving a _master_ of his _servant_? Then it would have been "he that stealeth" a _servant, not_ "he that stealeth a _man_." If the crime had been the taking of an individual from _another_, then the _term_ used would have been _expressive of that relation_, and _most especially_ if it was the relation of property and _proprietor_!

The crime, as stated in the passage, is three-fold--man _stealing_, _selling_ and _holding_. All are put on a level, and whelmed under one penalty--DEATH. This _somebody_ deprived of the ownership of man, is the _man himself_, robbed of personal ownership. Joseph said to the servants of Pharoah, "Indeed I was _stolen_ away out of the land of the Hebrews." Gen. xl. 15. How _stolen_? His brethren took him and sold him as an _article of merchandize_. Contrast this penalty for _man_-stealing with that for _property_-stealing. Exod. xxii. If a man stole an _ox_ and killed or sold it, he was to restore five oxen; if he had neither sold nor killed it, the penalty was two oxen. The selling or the killing being virtually a deliberate repetition of the crime, the penalty was more than doubled.

But in the case of stealing a _man_, the first act drew down the utmost power of punishment; however often repeated, or however aggravated the crime, human penalty could do no more. The fact that the penalty for _man_-stealing was death, and the penalty for _property_-stealing, the mere _restoration of double_, shows that the two cases were adjudicated on totally different principles. The man stolen might be past labor, and his support a _burden_, yet death was the penalty, though not a cent's worth of _property value_ was taken. The penalty for stealing _property_ was a mere _property penalty_. However large the amount stolen, the payment of _double_ wiped out the score. It might have a greater _money_ value than a _thousand_ men, yet _death_ was never the penalty, nor maiming, nor branding, nor even _stripes_. Whatever the kind, or the amount stolen, the unvarying penalty was double of _the same kind_. Why was not the rule uniform? When a _man_ was stolen why not require the thief to restore _double of the same kind--two men_, or if he had sold him, _five_ men? Do you say that the man-thief might not _have_ them? So the _ox_-thief might not have two _oxen_, or if he had killed it, _five_. But if God permitted men to hold _men_ as property, equally with _oxen_, the _man_-thief could get _men_ with whom to pay the penalty, as well as the _ox_-thief, _oxen_.

Further, when _property_ was stolen, the whole of the legal penalty was a compensation to the person injured. But when a _man_ was stolen, no property compensation was offered. To tender _money_ as an equivalent, would have been to repeat the outrage with the intolerable aggravations of supreme insult and impiety. Compute the value of a MAN in _money!_ Throw dust into the scale against immortality! The law recoiled from such outrage and blasphemy. To have permitted the man-thief to expiate his crime by restoring double, would have been making the repetition of crime its atonement. But the infliction of death for _man-stealing_ exacted from the guilty wretch the utmost possibility of reparation. It wrung from him, as he gave up the ghost, a testimony in blood, and death groans, to the infinite dignity and worth of man,--a proclamation to the universe, voiced in mortal agony, that MAN IS INVIOLABLE,--a confession shrieked in phrenzy at the grave's mouth--"I die accursed, and God is just."

If God permitted man to hold _man_ as property, why did He punish for stealing _that_ kind of property infinitely more than for stealing any _other_ kind of property? Why did he punish with _death_ for stealing a very little, perhaps not a sixpence worth, of _that_ sort of property, and make a mere _fine_, the penalty for stealing a thousand times as much, of any other sort of property--especially if God did by his own act annihilate the difference between man and _property_, by putting him _on a level with it_?