Cotton is King, and Pro-Slavery Arguments Part 53

I am well aware that a notable scheme has been set on foot to achieve abolition by making what is by courtesy called "free" labor so much cheaper than slave labor as to force the abandonment of the latter.

Though we are beginning to _manufacture with slaves_, I do not think you will attempt to pinch your operatives closer in Great Britain. You cannot curtail the rags with which they vainly attempt to cover their nakedness, nor reduce the porridge which barely, and not always, keeps those who have employment from perishing of famine. When you can do this, we will consider whether our slaves may not dispense with a pound or two of bacon per week, or a few garments annually. Your aim, however, is to cheapen labor in the tropics. The idea of doing this by exporting your "bold yeomanry" is, I presume, given up. Cromwell tried it when he _sold_ the captured followers of Charles into _West Indian slavery_, where they speedily found graves. Nor have your recent experiments on British and even Dutch const.i.tutions succeeded better. Have you still faith in carrying thither your coolies from Hindostan? Doubtless that once wild robber race, whose highest eulogium was that they did not murder merely for the love of blood, have been tamed down, and are perhaps "keen for immigration," for since your civilization has reached it, plunder has grown scarce in Guzerat. But what is the result of the experiment thus far? Have the coolies, ceasing to handle arms, learned to handle spades, and proved hardy and profitable laborers? On the contrary, broken in spirit and stricken with disease at home, the wretched victims whom you have hitherto kidnapped for a bounty, confined in depots, put under hatches and carried across the ocean--forced into "voluntary immigration," have done little but lie down and die on the _pseudo_ soil of freedom. At the end of five years two-thirds, in some colonies a larger proportion, are no more! Humane and pious contrivance!

To alleviate the fancied sufferings of the accursed posterity of Ham, you sacrifice by a cruel death two-thirds of the children of the blessed Shem--and demand the applause of Christians--the blessing of heaven! If this "experiment" is to go on, in G.o.d's name try your hand upon the Thugs. That other species of "immigration" to which you are resorting I will consider presently.

But what do you calculate will be the result of emanc.i.p.ation, by whatever means accomplished? You will probably point me, by way of answer, to the West Indies--doubtless to Antigua, the great boast of abolition. Admitting that it has succeeded there--which I will do for the sake of the argument--do you know the reason of it? The true and only causes of whatever success has attended it in Antigua are, that the population was before crowded, and all or nearly all the arable land in cultivation. The emanc.i.p.ated negroes could not, many of them, get away if they desired; and knew not where to go, in case they did. They had, practically, no alternative but to remain on the spot; and remaining, they must work on the terms of the proprietors, or perish--the strong arm of the mother country forbidding all hope of seizing the land for themselves. The proprietors, well knowing that they could thus command labor for the merest necessities of life, which was much cheaper than maintaining the non-effective as well as effective slaves in a style which decency and interest, if not humanity, required, willingly accepted half their value, and at once realized far more than the interest on the other half in the diminution of their expenses, and the reduced comforts of the _freemen_. One of your most ill.u.s.trious judges, who was also a profound and philosophical historian, has said "that villeinage was not abolished, but went into decay in England." This was the process. This has been the process wherever (the name of) villeinage or slavery has been successfully abandoned. Slavery, in fact, "went into decay" in Antigua. I have admitted that, under similar circ.u.mstances, it might profitably cease here--that is, profitably to the individual proprietors. Give me half the value of my slaves, and compel them to remain and labor on my plantation, at ten to eleven cents a day, as they do in Antigua, supporting themselves and families, and you shall have them to-morrow, and if you like dub them "free." Not to stickle, I would surrender them without price. No--I recall my words: My humanity revolts at the idea. I am attached to my slaves, and would not have act or part in reducing them to such a condition. I deny, however, that Antigua, as a community, is, or ever will be, as _prosperous_ under present circ.u.mstances, as she was before abolition, though fully ripe for it.

The fact is well known. The reason is that the African, if not a distinct, is an inferior race, and never will effect, as it never has effected, as much in any other condition as in that of slavery.

I know of no _slaveholder_ who has visited the West Indies since slavery was abolished, and published _his_ views of it. All our facts and opinions come through the friends of the experiment, or at least those not opposed to it. Taking these, even without allowance, to be true as stated, I do not see where the abolitionists find cause for exultation.

The tables of exports, which are the best evidences of the condition of a people, exhibit a woful falling off--excused, it is true, by unprecedented droughts and hurricanes, to which their free labor seems unaccountably more subject than slave labor used to be. I will not go into detail. It is well known that a large proportion of British legislation and expenditure, and that proportion still constantly increasing, is most anxiously devoted to repairing the monstrous error of emanc.i.p.ation. You are actually galvanizing your expiring colonies.

The truth, deduced from all the facts, was thus pithily stated by the _London Quarterly Review_, as long ago as 1840: "None of the benefits antic.i.p.ated by mistaken good intentions have been realized, while every evil wished for by knaves and foreesen by the wise has been painfully verified. The wild rashness of fanaticism has made the emanc.i.p.ation of the slaves equivalent to the loss of one-half of the West Indies, and yet put back the chance of negro civilization."--Art. Ld. Dudley's Letters. Such are the _real fruits_ of your never-to-be-too-much-glorified abolition, and the valuable dividend of your twenty millions of pounds sterling invested therein.

If any further proof was wanted of the utter and well-known, though not yet openly avowed, failure of West Indian emanc.i.p.ation, it would be furnished by the startling fact, that THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE HAS BEEN ACTUALLY REVIVED UNDER THE AUSPICES AND PROTECTION OF THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT. Under the specious guise of "immigration," they are replenishing those Islands with slaves from the coast of Africa. Your colony of Sierra Leone, founded on that coast to prevent the slave trade, and peopled, by the bye, in the first instance, by negroes stolen from these States during the Revolutionary War, is the depot to which captives taken from slavers by your armed vessels are transported. I might say returned, since nearly half the Africans carried across the Atlantic are understood to be embarked in this vicinity. The wretched survivors, who are there set at liberty, are immediately seduced to "immigrate" to the West Indies. The business is systematically carried on by black "delegates," sent expressly from the West Indies, where, on arrival, the "immigrants" are _sold into slavery_ for twenty-one years, under conditions ridiculously trivial and wickedly void, since few or none will ever be able to derive any advantage from them. The whole prime of life thus pa.s.sed in bondage, it is contemplated, and doubtless it will be carried into effect, to turn them out in their old age to shift for themselves, and to supply their places with fresh and vigorous "immigrants." Was ever a system of slavery so barbarous devised before?

Can you think of comparing it with ours? Even your own religious missionaries at Sierra Leone denounce it "as worse than the slave state in Africa." And your black delegates, fearful of the influence of these missionaries, as well as on account of the inadequate supply of captives, are now preparing to procure the able-bodied and comparatively industrious Kroomen of the interior, by _purchasing from their headmen_ the privilege of inveigling them to the West India market! So ends the magnificent farce--perhaps I should say tragedy, of West India abolition! I will not harrow your feelings by asking you to review the labors of your life and tell me what you and your brother enthusiasts have accomplished for "injured Africa," but while agreeing with Lord Stowell, that "villeinage decayed," and admitting that slavery might do so also, I think I am fully justified by pa.s.sed and pa.s.sing events in saying, as Mr. Grosvenor said of the slave trade, that its _abolition_ is "impossible."

Yon are greatly mistaken, however, if you think that the consequences of emanc.i.p.ation here would be similar and no more injurious than those which followed from it in your little sea-girt West India Islands, where nearly all were blacks. The system of slavery is not in "decay" with us.

It flourishes in full and growing vigor. Our country is boundless in extent. Dotted here and there with villages and fields, it is, for the most part, covered with immense forests and swamps of almost unknown size. In such a country, with a people so restless as ours, communicating of course some of that spirit to their domestics, can you conceive that any thing short of the power of the master over the slave, could confine the African race, notoriously idle and improvident, to labor on our plantations? Break this bond, but for a day, and these plantations will be solitudes. The negro loves change, novelty, and sensual excitements of all kinds, _when awake_. "Reason and order," of which Mr. Wilberforce said "liberty was the child," do not characterize him. Released from his present obligations, his first impulse would be to go somewhere. And here no natural boundaries would restrain him. At first they would all seek the towns, and rapidly acc.u.mulate in squalid groups upon their outskirts. Driven thence by the "armed police," which would immediately spring into existence, they would scatter in all directions. Some bodies of them might wander toward the "free" States, or to the Western wilderness, marking their tracks by their depredations and their corpses. Many would roam wild in our "big woods." Many more would seek the recesses of our swamps for secure covert. Few, very few of them, could be prevailed on to do a stroke of work, none to labor continuously, while a head of cattle, sheep or swine could be found in our ranges, or an ear of corn nodded in our abandoned fields. These exhausted, our folds and poultry yards, barns and store-houses, would become their prey. Finally, our scattered dwellings would be plundered, perhaps fired, and the inmates murdered. How long do you suppose that we could bear these things? How long would it be before we should sleep with rifles at our bedsides, and never move without one in our hands?

This work once begun, let the story of our British ancestors and the aborigines of this country tell the sequel. Far more rapid, however, would be the catastrophe. "Ere many moons went by," the African race would be exterminated, or reduced again to slavery, their ranks recruited, after your example, by fresh "emigrants" from their fatherland.

Is timely preparation and gradual emanc.i.p.ation suggested to avert these horrible consequences? I thought your experience in the West Indies had, at least, done so much as to explode that idea. If it failed there, much more would it fail here, where the two races, approximating to equality in numbers, are daily and hourly in the closest contact. Give room for but a single spark of real jealousy to be kindled between them, and the explosion would be instantaneous and universal. It is the most fatal of all fallacies, to suppose that these two races can exist together, after any length of time, or any process of preparation, on terms at all approaching to equality. Of this, both of them are finally and fixedly convinced. They differ essentially, in all the leading traits which characterize the varieties of the human species, and color draws an indelible and insuperable line of separation between them. Every scheme founded upon the idea that they can remain together on the same soil, beyond the briefest period, in any other relation than precisely that which now subsists between them, is not only preposterous, but fraught with deepest danger. If there was no alternative but to try the "experiment" here, reason and humility dictate that the sufferings of "gradualism" should be saved, and the catastrophe of "immediate abolition" enacted as rapidly as possible. Are you impatient for the performance to commence? Do you long to gloat over the scenes I have suggested, but could not hold the pen to portray? In your long life many such have pa.s.sed under your review. You know that _they_ are not "_impossible_." Can they be to your taste? Do you believe that in laboring to bring them about, the abolitionists are doing the will of G.o.d? No! G.o.d is not there. It is the work of Satan. The arch-fiend, under specious guises, has found his way into their souls, and with false appeals to philanthropy, and foul insinuations to ambition, instigates them to rush headlong to the accomplishment of his diabolical designs.

We live in a wonderful age. The events of the last three quarters of a century appear to have revolutionized the human mind. Enterprise and ambition are only limited in their purposes by the horizon of the imagination. It is the transcendental era. In philosophy, religion, government, science, arts, commerce, nothing that has been is to be allowed to be. Conservatism, in any form, is scoffed at. The slightest taint of it is fatal. Where will all this end? If you can tolerate one ancient maxim, let it be that the best criterion of the future is the past. That, if any thing, will give a clue. And, looking back only through your time, what was the earliest feat of this same transcendentalism? The rays of the new moral Drummond Light were first concentrated to a focus at Paris, to illuminate the universe. In a twinkling it consumed the political, religious and social systems of France. It could not be extinguished there until literally drowned in blood. And then, from its ashes arose that supernatural man, who, for twenty years, kept affrighted Europe in convulsions. Since that time, its scattered beams, refracted by broader surfaces, have, nevertheless, continued to scathe wherever they have fallen. What political structure, what religious creed, but has felt the galvanic shock, and even now trembles to its foundations? Mankind, still horror-stricken by the catastrophe of France, have shrunk from rash experiments upon social systems. But they have been practicing in the East, around the Mediterranean, and through the West India Islands. And growing confident, a portion of them seem desperately bent on kindling the all-devouring flame in the bosom of our land. Let it once again blaze up to heaven, and another cycle of blood and devastation will dawn upon the world. For our own sake, and for the sake of those infatuated men who are madly driving on the conflagration; for the sake of human nature, we are called on to strain every nerve to arrest it. And be a.s.sured our efforts will be bounded only with our being. Nor do I doubt that five millions of people, brave, intelligent, united, and prepared to hazard every thing, will, in such a cause, with the blessing of G.o.d, sustain themselves. At all events, come what may, it is ours to meet it.

We are well aware of the light estimation in which the abolitionists, and those who are taught by them, profess to hold us. We have seen the attempt of a portion of the Free Church of Scotland to reject our alms on the ground that we are "slave-drivers," after sending missionaries to solicit them. And we have seen Mr. O'Connell, the "irresponsible master" of millions of ragged serfs, from whom, poverty stricken as they are, he contrives to wring a splendid privy purse, throw back with contumely, the "tribute" of his own countrymen from this land of "miscreants." These people may exhaust their slang, and make blackguards of themselves, but they cannot defile us. And as for the suggestion to exclude slaveholders from your London clubs, we scout it. Many of us, indeed, do go to London, and we have seen your breed of gawky lords, both there and here, but it never entered into our conceptions to look on them as better than ourselves. The American slaveholders, collectively or individually, ask no favors of any man or race who tread the earth. In none of the attributes of men, mental or physical, do they acknowledge or fear superiority elsewhere. They stand in the broadest light of the knowledge, civilization and improvement of the age, as much favored of heaven as any of the sons of Adam. Exacting nothing undue, they yield nothing but justice and courtesy, even to royal blood. They cannot be flattered, duped, nor bullied out of their rights or their propriety. They smile with contempt at scurrility and vaporing beyond the seas, and they turn their backs upon it where it is "irresponsible;"

but insolence that ventures to look them in the face, will never fail to be chastised.

I think I may trust you will not regard this letter as intrusive. I should never have entertained an idea of writing it, had you not opened the correspondence. If you think any thing in it harsh, review your own--which I regret that I lost soon after it was received--and you will probably find that you have taken your revenge beforehand. If you have not, transfer an equitable share of what you deem severe, to the account of the abolitionists at large. They have acc.u.mulated against the slaveholders a balance of invective, which, with all our efforts, we shall not be able to liquidate much short of the era in which your national debt will be paid. At all events, I have no desire to offend you personally, and, with the best wishes for your continued health, I have the honor to be,

Your obedient servant, J. H. HAMMOND.

THOS. CLARKSON, Esq.

FOOTNOTE:

[255] On this subject, J. Q. Adams, in his letter to the citizens of Bangor, Maine, July 4th, 1843, said: "It is only as _immortal_ beings that all mankind can in any sense be said to be born equal; and when the Declaration of Independence affirms as a self-evident truth that all men are born equal, it is precisely the same as if the affirmation had been that all men are born with immortal souls."--Life of J. Q. Adams, page 395.--_Editor._

LETTER II.

Ignorance of Abolitionists--Arguments of Abolitionists refuted--Abolitionism leads to Infidelity--Law of Force a law of Love--Wages of Slaves and of hired labor--Results of emanc.i.p.ation to the world--Falsehoods of Abolitionists--English estimate of our Northern citizens--British interference in the politics of our country--Sensitiveness of the Southern People--Rise and progress of Fanaticism.

SILVER BLUFF, S. C., March 24, 1845.

SIR--In my letter to you of the 28th January--which I trust you have received ere this--I mentioned that I had lost your circular letter soon after it had come to hand. It was, I am glad to say, only mislaid, and has within a few days been recovered. A second perusal of it induces me to resume my pen. Unwilling to trust my recollections from a single reading, I did not, in my last communication, attempt to follow the course of your argument, and meet directly the points made and the terms used. I thought it better to take a general view of the subject, which could not fail to traverse your most material charges. I am well aware, however, that for fear of being tedious, I omitted many interesting topics altogether, and abstained from a complete discussion of some of those introduced. I do not propose now to _exhaust_ the subject; which it would require volumes to do; but without waiting to learn--which I may never do--your opinion of what I have already said, I sit down to supply some of the deficiencies of my letter of January, and, with your circular before me, to reply to such parts of it as have not been fully answered.

It is, I perceive, addressed, among others, to "such as have never visited the Southern States" of this confederacy, and professes to enlighten their ignorance of the actual "condition of the poor slave in their own country." I can not help thinking you would have displayed prudence in confining the circulation of your letter altogether to such persons. You might then have indulged with impunity in giving, as you have done, a picture of slavery, drawn from your own excited imagination, or from those impure fountains, the Martineaus, Marryatts, Trollopes, and d.i.c.kenses, who have profited by catering, at our expense, to the jealous sensibilities and debauched tastes of your countrymen.

Admitting that you are familiar with the history of slavery, and the past discussions of it, as I did, I now think rather broadly, in my former letter, what can _you know_ of the true _condition_ of the "poor slave" here? I am not aware that you have ever visited this country, or even the West Indies. Can you suppose, that because you have devoted your life to the investigation of the subject--commencing it under the influence of an enthusiasm, so melancholy at first, and so volcanic afterwards, as to be nothing short of hallucination--pursuing it as men of _one idea_ do every thing, with the single purpose of establishing your own view of it--gathering your information from discharged seamen, disappointed speculators, factious politicians, visionary reformers and scurrilous tourists--opening your ears to every species of complaint, exaggeration and falsehood, that interested ingenuity could invent, and never for a moment questioning the truth of any thing that could make for your cause--can you suppose that all this has qualified you, living the while in England, to form or approximate toward the formation of a correct opinion of the condition of slaves among us? I know the power of self-delusion. I have not the least doubt, that you think yourself the very best informed man alive on this subject, and that many think so likewise. So far as facts go, even after deducting from your list a great deal that is not fact, I will not deny that, probably, your collection is the most extensive in existence. But as to the _truth_ in regard to slavery, there is not an adult in this region but knows more of it than you do. _Truth_ and _fact_ are, you are aware, by no means synonymous terms. Ninety-nine facts may const.i.tute a falsehood: the hundredth, added or alone, gives the truth. With all your knowledge of facts, I undertake to say that you are entirely and grossly ignorant of the real condition of our slaves. And from all that I can see, you are equally ignorant of the essential principles of human a.s.sociation revealed in history, both sacred and profane, on which slavery rests, and which will perpetuate it forever in some form or other. However you may declaim against it; however powerfully you may array atrocious incidents; whatever appeals you may make to the heated imaginations and tender sensibilities of mankind, believe me, your total blindness to the _whole truth_, which alone const.i.tutes _the truth_, incapacitates you from ever making an impression on the sober reason and sound common sense of the world. You may seduce thousands--you can convince no one.

Whenever and wherever you or the advocates of your cause can arouse the pa.s.sions of the weak-minded and the ignorant, and bringing to bear with them the interests of the vicious and unprincipled, overwhelm common sense and reason--as G.o.d sometimes permits to be done--you may triumph.

Such a triumph we have witnessed in Great Britain. But I trust it is far distant here; nor can it, from its nature, be extensive or enduring.

Other cla.s.ses of reformers, animated by the same spirit as the abolitionists, attack the inst.i.tution of marriage, and even the established relations of parent and child. And they collect instances of barbarous cruelty and shocking degradation, which rival, if they do not throw into the shade, your slavery statistics. But the rights of marriage and parental authority rests upon truths as obvious as they are unchangeable--coming home to every human being,--self-impressed forever on the individual mind, and can not be shaken until the whole man is corrupted, nor subverted until civilized society becomes a putrid ma.s.s.

Domestic slavery is not so universally understood, nor can it make such a direct appeal to individuals or society beyond its pale. Here, prejudice and pa.s.sion have room to sport at the expense of others. They may be excited and urged to dangerous action, remote from the victims they mark out. They may, as they have done, effect great mischief, but they can not be made to maintain, in the long run, dominion over reason and common sense, nor ultimately put down what G.o.d has ordained.

You deny, however, that slavery is sanctioned by G.o.d, and your chief argument is, that when he gave to Adam dominion over the fruits of the earth and the animal creation, he stopped there. "He never gave him any further right over his fellow-men." You restrict the descendants of Adam to a very short list of rights and powers, duties and responsibities, if you limit them solely to those conferred and enjoined in the first chapter of Genesis. It is very obvious that in this narrative of the Creation, Moses did not have it in view to record any part of the law intended for the government of man in his social or political state. Eve was not yet created; the expulsion had not yet taken place; Cain was unborn; and no allusion whatever is made to the manifold decrees of G.o.d to which these events gave rise. The only serious answer this argument deserves, is to say, what is so manifestly true, that G.o.d's not expressly giving to Adam "any right over his fellow-men" by no means excluded him from conferring that right on his descendants; which he in fact did. We know that Abraham, the chosen one of G.o.d, exercised it and held property in his fellow-man, even anterior to the period when property in land was acknowledged. We might infer that G.o.d had authorized it. But we are not reduced to inference or conjecture. At the hazard of fatiguing you by repet.i.tion, I will again refer you to the ordinances of the Scriptures. Innumerable instances might be quoted where G.o.d has given and commanded men to a.s.sume dominion over their fellow-men. But one will suffice. In the twenty-fifth chapter of Leviticus, you will find _domestic slavery--precisely such as is maintained at this day in these States--ordained and established by G.o.d, in language which I defy you to pervert so as to leave a doubt on any honest mind that this inst.i.tution was founded by him, and decreed to be perpetual_. I quote the words:

Leviticus xxv. 44-46: "Both thy bond-men and thy bond-maids which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen [Africans] that are round about you: of _them ye shall buy bond-men and bond-maids_.

"Moreover, of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, _and of their families that are with you which they begat in your land_ [descendants of Africans?] and they shall be your possession.

"_And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession._ THEY SHALL BE YOUR BOND-MEN FOREVER."

What human legislature could make a decree more full and explicit than this? What court of law or chancery could defeat a t.i.tle to a slave couched in terms so clear and complete as these? And this is the _law of G.o.d_, whom you pretend to worship, while you denounce and traduce us for respecting it.

It seems scarcely credible, but the fact is so, that you deny this law so plainly written, and in the face of it have the hardihood to declare that "though slavery is not _specifically_, yet it is _virtually_, _forbidden_ in the Scriptures, because all the crimes which necessarily arises out of slavery, and which can arise from no other source, are reprobated there and threatened with divine vengeance." Such an unworthy subterfuge is scarcely ent.i.tled to consideration. But its gross absurdity may be exposed in few words. I do not know what crimes you particularly allude to as arising from slavery. But you will perhaps admit--not because they are denounced in the decalogue, which the abolitionists respect only so far as they choose, but because it is the _immediate interest_ of most men to admit--that disobedience to parents, adultery, and stealing, are crimes. Yet these crimes "necessarily arise from" the relations of parent and child, marriage, and the possession of private property; at least they "can arise from no other sources." Then, according to your argument, it is "virtually forbidden" to marry, to beget children, and to hold private property! Nay, it is forbidden to live, since murder can only be perpetrated on living subjects. You add that "in the same way the gladiatorial shows of old, and other barbarous customs, were not specifically forbidden in the New Testament, and yet Christianity was the sole means of their suppression." This is very true. But these shows and barbarous customs thus suppressed were not _authorised by G.o.d_. They were not ordained and commanded by G.o.d for the benefit of his chosen people and mankind, as the purchase and holding of bond-men and bond-maids were. Had they been they would never have been "suppressed by Christianity" any more than slavery can be by your party.

Although Christ came "not to destroy but fulfill the law," he nevertheless did formally abrogate some of the ordinances promulgated by Moses, and all such as were at war with his mission of "peace and good-will on earth." He "specifically" annuls, for instance, one "barbarous custom" sanctioned by those ordinances, where he says, "ye have heard that it hath been said, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth; but I say unto you that ye resist not evil, but whosoever shall smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also." Now, in the time of Christ, it was usual for masters to put their slaves to death on the slightest provocation. They even killed and cut them up to feed their fishes. He was undoubtedly aware of these things, as well as of the law and commandment I have quoted. He could only have been restrained from denouncing them, as he did the "_lex talionis_," because he knew that in despite of these barbarities the inst.i.tution of slavery was at the bottom a sound and wholesome, as well as lawful one. Certain it is, that in his wisdom and purity he did not see proper to interfere with it. In your wisdom, however, you make the sacrilegious attempt to overthrow it.

You quote the denunciation of Tyre and Sidon, and say that "the chief reason given by the prophet Joel for their destruction, was, that they were notorious beyond all others for carrying on the slave trade." I am afraid you think we have no Bibles in the slave States, or that we are unable to read them. I can not otherwise account for your making this reference, unless indeed your own reading is confined to an expurgated edition, prepared for the use of abolitionists, in which every thing relating to slavery that militates against their view of it is left out.

The prophet Joel denounces the Tyrians and Sidonians, because "the children also of Judah and the children of Jerusalem have ye sold unto the Grecians." And what is the divine vengeance for this "notorious slave trading?" Hear it. "And I will sell your sons and daughters into the hands of the children of Judah, and they shall sell them to the Sabeans, to a people far off; for the Lord hath spoken it." Do you call this a condemnation of slave trading? The prophet makes G.o.d himself a partic.i.p.ator in the crime, if that be one. "The Lord hath spoken it," he says, that the Tyrians and Sidonians shall be _sold into slavery to strangers_. Their real offense was, in enslaving the chosen people; and their sentence was a repet.i.tion of the old command, to make slaves of the heathen round about.

I have dwelt upon your scriptural argument, because you profess to believe the Bible; because a large proportion of the abolitionists profess to do the same, and to act under its sanction; because your circular is addressed in part to "professing Christians;" and because it is from that cla.s.s mainly that you expect to seduce converts to your anti-christian, I may say, infidel doctrines. It would be wholly unnecessary to answer you, to any one who reads the Scriptures for himself, and construes them according to any other formula than that which the abolitionists are wickedly endeavoring to impose upon the world. The scriptural sanction of slavery is in fact so palpable, and so strong, that both wings of your party are beginning to acknowledge it.

The more sensible and moderate admit, as the organ of the Free Church of Scotland, the _North British Review_, has lately done, that they "_are precluded by the statements and conduct of the Apostles from regarding mere slaveholding as essentially sinful_," while the desperate and reckless, who are bent on keeping up the agitation at every hazard, declare, as has been done in the _Anti-Slavery Record_, "If our inquiry turns out in favor of slavery, IT IS THE BIBLE THAT MUST FALL, AND NOT THE RIGHTS OF HUMAN NATURE." You can not, I am satisfied, much longer maintain before the world the Christian platform from which to wage war upon our inst.i.tutions. Driven from it, you must abandon the contest, or, repudiating REVELATION, rush into the horrors of NATURAL RELIGION.

You next complain that our slaves are kept in bondage by the "law of force." In what country or condition of mankind do you see human affairs regulated merely by the law of love? Unless I am greatly mistaken, you will, if you look over the world, find nearly all certain and permanent rights, civil, social, and I may even add religious, resting on and ultimately secured by the "law of force." The power of majorities--of aristocracies--of kings--nay of priests, for the most part, and of property, resolves itself at last into "force," and could not otherwise be long maintained. Thus, in every turn of your argument against our system of slavery, you advance, whether conscious of it or not, radical and revolutionary doctrines calculated to change the whole face of the world, to overthrow all government, disorganize society, and reduce man to a state of nature--red with blood, and shrouded once more in barbaric ignorance. But you greatly err, if you suppose, because we rely on force in the last resort to maintain our supremacy over our slaves, that ours is a stern and unfeeling domination, at all to be compared in hard-hearted severity to that exercised, not over the mere laborer only, but by the higher over each lower order, wherever the British sway is acknowledged. You say, that if those you address were "to spend one day in the South, they would return home with impressions against slavery never to be erased." But the fact is universally the reverse. I have known numerous instances, and I never knew a single one, where there was no other cause of offense, and no object to promote by falsehood, that individuals from the non-slaveholding States did not, after residing among us long enough to understand the subject, "return home" _to defend our slavery_. It is matter of regret that you have never tried the experiment yourself. I do not doubt you would have been converted, for I give you credit for an honest though perverted mind. You would have seen how weak and futile is all abstract reasoning about this matter, and that, as a building may not be less elegant in its proportions, or tasteful in its ornaments, or virtuous in its uses, for being based upon granite, so a system of human government, though founded on force, may develope and cultivate the tenderest and purest sentiments of the human heart. And our patriarchal scheme of domestic servitude is indeed well calculated to awaken the higher and finer feelings of our nature. It is not wanting in its enthusiasm and its poetry. The relations of the most beloved and honored chief, and the most faithful and admiring subjects, which, from the time of Homer, have been the theme of song, are frigid and unfelt compared with those existing between the master and his slaves--who served his father, and rocked his cradle, or have been born in his household, and look forward to serve his children--who have been through life the props of his fortune, and the objects of his care--who have partaken of his griefs, and looked to him for comfort in their own--whose sickness he has so frequently watched over and relieved--whose holidays he has so often made joyous by his bounties and his presence; for whose welfare, when absent, his anxious solicitude never ceases, and whose hearty and affectionate greetings never fail to welcome him home. In this cold, calculating, ambitious world of ours, there are few ties more heartfelt, or of more benignant influence, than those which mutually bind the master and the slave, under our ancient system, handed down from the father of Israel. The unholy purpose of the abolitionists is, to destroy by defiling it; to infuse into it the gall and bitterness which rankle in their own envenomed bosoms; to poison the minds of the master and the servant; turn love to hatred, array _"force"

against force_, and hurl all

"With hideous rain and combustion, down To bottomless perdition."

You think it a great "crime" that we do not pay our slaves "wages," and on this account p.r.o.nounce us "robbers." In my former letter, I showed that the labor of our slaves was not without great cost to us, and that in fact they themselves receive more in return for it than your hirelings do for theirs. For what purpose do men labor, but to support themselves and their families in what comfort they are able? The efforts of mere physical labor seldom suffice to provide more than a livelihood.

And it is a well known and shocking fact, that while few operatives in Great Britain succeed in securing a comfortable living, the greater part drag out a miserable existence, and sink at last under absolute want.

Of what avail is it that you go through the form of paying them a pittance of what you call "wages," when you do not, in return for their services, allow them what alone they ask--and have a just right to demand--enough to feed, clothe and lodge them, in health and sickness, with reasonable comfort. Though we do not give "wages" _in money_, we do this for _our slaves_, and they are therefore better rewarded than _yours_. It is the prevailing vice and error of the age, and one from which the abolitionists, with all their saintly pretensions, are far from being free, to bring every thing to the standard of money. You make gold and silver the great test of happiness. The American slave must be wretched indeed, because he is not compensated for his services _in cash_. It is altogether praiseworthy to pay the laborer a shilling a day, and let him starve on it. To supply all his wants abundantly, and at all times, yet withhold from him _money_, is among "the most reprobated crimes." The fact can not be denied, that the mere laborer is now, and always has been, everywhere that barbarism has ceased, enslaved. Among the innovations of modern times, following "the decay of villeinage," has been the creation of a new system of slavery. The primitive and patriarchal, which may also be called the sacred and natural system, in which the laborer is under the personal control of a fellow-being endowed with the sentiments and sympathies of humanity, exists among us. It has been almost everywhere else superseded by the modern _artificial money power system_, in which man--his thews and sinews, his hopes and affections, his very being, are all subjected to the dominion of _capital_--a monster without a heart--cold, stern, arithmetical--sticking to the bond--taking ever "the pound of flesh"--working up human life with engines, and retailing it out by weight and measure. His name of old was "Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell from heaven." And it is to extend his empire that you and your deluded coadjutors dedicate your lives. You are stirring up mankind to overthrow our heaven-ordained system of servitude, surrounded by innumerable checks, designed and planted deep in the human heart by G.o.d and nature, to subst.i.tute the absolute rule of this "spirit reprobate," whose proper place was h.e.l.l.

You charge us with looking on our slaves "as chattels or brutes," and enter into a somewhat elaborate argument to prove that they have "human forms," "talk," and even "think." Now the fact is, that however you may indulge in this strain for effect, it is the abolitionists, and not the slaveholders, who, practically, and in the most important point of view, regard our slaves as "chattels or brutes." In your calculations of the consequences of emanc.i.p.ation, you pa.s.s over entirely those which must prove most serious, and which arise from the fact of their being _persons_.

You appear to think that we might abstain from the use of them as readily as if they were machines to be laid aside, or cattle that might be turned out to find pasturage for themselves. I have heretofore glanced at some of the results that would follow from breaking the bonds of so many _human beings_, now peacefully and happily linked into our social system. The tragic horrors, the decay and ruin that would for years, perhaps for ages, brood over our land, if it could be accomplished, I will not attempt to portray. But do you fancy the blight would, in such an event, come to us alone? The diminution of the sugar crop of the West Indies affected Great Britain only, and there chiefly the poor. It was a matter of no moment to capital, that labor should have one comfort less. Yet it has forced a reduction of the British duty on sugar. Who can estimate the consequences that must follow the annihilation of the cotton crop of the slaveholding States? I do not undervalue the importance of other articles of commerce, but no calamity could befall the world at all comparable to the sudden loss of two millions of bales of cotton annually. From the deserts of Africa to the Siberian wilds--from Greenland to the Chinese wall,--there is not a spot of earth but would feel the sensation. The factories of Europe would fall with a concussion that would shake down castles, palaces, and even thrones; while the "purse-proud, elbowing insolence" of our Northern monopolist would soon disappear forever under the smooth speech of the pedlar, scourging our frontiers for a livelihood, or the bluff vulgarity of the South Sea whaler, following the harpoon amid storms and shoals.

Doubtless the abolitionists think we could grow cotton without slaves, or that at worst the reduction of the crop would be moderate and temporary. Such gross delusions show how profoundly ignorant they are of our condition here.

You declare that "the character of the people of the South has long been that of _hardened infidels_, who fear not G.o.d, and have no regard for religion." I will not repeat what I said in my former letter on this point. I only notice it to ask you how you could possibly reconcile it to your profession of a Christian spirit, to make such a malicious charge--to defile your soul with such a calumny against an unoffending people?

"You are old; Nature in you stands on the very verge Of her confine. You should be ruled and led By some discretion."

May G.o.d forgive you.

Akin to this, is the wanton and furious a.s.sault made on us by Mr.

Macaulay, in his late speech on the sugar duties, in the House of Commons, which has just reached me. His denunciations are wholly without measure, and, among other things, he a.s.serts "that slavery in the United States wears its worst form; that, boasting of our civilization and freedom, and frequenting Christian churches, we breed up slaves, nay, beget children for slaves, and sell them at so much a-head." Mr.

Macaulay is a reviewer, and he knows that he is "nothing if not critical." The practice of his trade has given him the command of all the slashing and vituperative phrases of our language, and the turn of his mind leads him to the habitual use of them. He is an author, and as no copy-right law secures for him from this country a consideration for his writings, he is not only independent of us, but naturally hates every thing American. He is the representative of Edinburgh; it is his cue to decry our slavery, and in doing so he may safely indulge the malignity of his temper, his indignation against us, and his capacity for railing. He has suffered once, for being in advance of his time in favor of abolition, and he does not intend that it shall be forgotten, or his claim pa.s.sed over, to any crumb which may now be thrown to the vociferators in the cause. If he does not know that the statements he has made respecting the slaveholders of this country are vile and atrocious falsehoods, it is because he does not think it worth his while to be sure he speaks the truth, so that he speaks to his own purpose.

"Hic niger est, hunc tu, Romane caveto."

Such exhibitions as he has made, may draw the applause of a British House of Commons, but among the sound and high-minded thinkers of the world they can only excite contempt and disgust.