Slavery Ordained of God Part 7

Rev. Albert Barnes:--

Dear Sir:--In my first letter, I merely touched some points in your tract, intending to notice them more fully in subsequent communications. I have, in my second paper, sufficiently examined the imaginary maxims of created equality and unalienable rights.

In this, I will test your views by Scripture more directly. "To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them." (Isaiah viii. 20).

The abolitionist charges the slave-holder with being a _man-stealer_. He makes this allegation in two affirmations. First, that the slave-holder is thus guilty, because, the negro having been kidnapped in Africa, therefore those who now hold him, or his children, in bondage, lie under the guilt of that first act. Secondly, that the slave-holder, by the very fact that he is such, is guilty of stealing from the negro his unalienable right to freedom.

This is the charge. It covers the whole subject. I will meet it in all its parts.

_The Difference between Man-Stealing and Slave-Holding, as set forth in the Bible_.

The Bible reads thus: (Exodus xxi. 16:)--"He that stealeth a man and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death."

What, then, is it to kidnap or steal a man? Webster informs us--To kidnap is "to steal a human being, a man, woman, or child; or to seize and forcibly carry away any person whatever, from his own country or state into another." The idea of "_seizing and forcibly carrying away"_ enters into the meaning of the word in all the definitions of law.

The crime, then, set forth in the Bible was not _selling_ a man: but selling a _stolen_ man. The crime was not having a man _in his hand as a slave_; but......in _his_ hand, as a slave, a _stolen_ man. And hence, the penalty of _death_ was affixed, not to selling, buying, or holding man, as a slave, but to the specific offence of _stealing and selling, or holding_ a man _thus stolen, contrary to this law_. Yea, it was _this law_, and this law _only_, which made it _wrong_. For, under some circ.u.mstances, G.o.d sanctioned the seizing and forcibly carrying away a man, woman, or child from country or state, into slavery or other condition. He sanctioned the utter destruction of every male and every married woman, and child, of Jabez-Gilead, and the seizure, and forcibly carrying away, four hundred virgins, unto the camp to Shiloh, and there, being given as wives to the remnant of the slaughtered tribe of Benjamin, in the rock Rimmon. Sir, how did that destruction of Jabez-Gilead, and the kidnapping of those young women, differ from the razing of an African village, and forcibly seizing, and carrying away, those not put to the sword? The difference is in this:--G.o.d commanded the Israelites to seize and bear off those young women. But he forbids the slaver to kidnap the African. Therefore, the Israelites did right; therefore, the trader does wrong. The Israelites, it seems, gave wives, in that way, to the spared Benjamites, because they had sworn not to give their daughters. But there were six hundred of these Benjamites. Two hundred were therefore still without wives. What was done for them? Why, G.o.d authorized the elders of the congregation to tell the two hundred Benjamites to catch every man his wife, of the daughters of Shiloh, when they came out to dance, in the feast of the Lord, on the north side of Bethel. And the children of Benjamin did so, and took them wives, "whom they caught:" (Judges xxi.) G.o.d made it right for those Benjamites to catch every man his wife, of the daughters of Shiloh. But he makes it wrong for the trader to catch his slaves of the sons or daughters of Africa. Lest you should try to deny that G.o.d authorized this act of the children of Israel, although I believe he did order it, let me remind you of another such case, the authority for which you will not question.

Moses, by direct command from G.o.d, destroyed the Midianites. He slew all the males, and carried away all the women and children. He then had all the married women and male children killed; but all the virgins, thirty-two thousand, were divided as spoil among the people. And _thirty-two_ of these virgins, _the Lord's tribute_, were given unto Eleazar, the priest, "as the Lord commanded Moses." (Numbers x.x.xi.)

Sir, Thomas Paine rejected the Bible on this fact among his other objections. Yea, _his_ reason, _his_ sensibilities, _his_ great law of humanity, _his_ intuitional and eternal sense of right, made it impossible for him to honor such a G.o.d. And, sir, on your now avowed principles of interpretation, which are those of Paine, you sustain him in his rejection of the books of Moses and all the word of G.o.d.

G.o.d's command _made it right_ for Moses to destroy the Midianites and make slaves of their daughters; and I have dwelt upon these facts, to reiterate what I hold to be THE FIRST TRUTH IN MORALS:--that a thing is right, not because it is ever so _per se_, but because G.o.d _makes it right_; and, of course, a thing is wrong, not because it is so in the nature of things, but because G.o.d makes it wrong. I distinctly have taken, and do take, that ground in its widest sense, and am prepared to maintain it against all comers. He made it right for the sons of Adam to marry their sisters. He made it right for Abraham to marry his half-sister. He made it right for the patriarchs, and David and Solomon, to have more wives than one. He made it right when he gave command to kill whole nations, sparing none. He made it right when he ordered that nations, or such part as he pleased, should be spared and enslaved. He made it right that the patriarchs and the Israelites should hold slaves in harmony with the system of servile labor which had long been in the world. He merely modified that system to suit his views of good among his people. So, then, when he saw fit, they might capture men. So, then, when he forbade the individual Israelite to steal a man, he made it crime, and the penalty death. So, then, that crime was not the mere _stealing_ a man, nor the _selling_ a man, nor the _holding_ a man,--but the _stealing and selling_, or _holding_, a man _under circ.u.mstances thus forbidden of G.o.d_.

_Was the Israelite Master a Man-Stealer?_

I now ask, Did G.o.d intend to make man-stealing and slave-holding the same thing? Let us see. In that very chapter of Exodus (xxi.) which contains the law against man-stealing, and only four verses further on, G.o.d says, "If a man smite his servant or his maid with a rod, and he die under his hand, he shall be surely punished: notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two he shall not be punished; for he is his money." (Verses 20, 21.)

Sir, that man was not a hired servant. He was bought with money. He was regarded by G.o.d _as the money_ of his master. He was his slave, in the full meaning of a slave, then, and now, bought with money. G.o.d, then, did not intend the Israelites to understand, and not one of them ever understood, from that day to this, that Jehovah in his law to Moses regarded the slave-holder as a man-stealer. Man-stealing was a specific offence, with its specific penalty. Slave-holding was one form of G.o.d's righteous government over men,--a government he ordained, with various modifications, among the Hebrews themselves, and with sterner features in its relation to heathen slaves.

In Exodus xxi. and Leviticus xxv., various gradations of servitude were enacted, with a careful particularity which need not be misunderstood.

Among these, a Hebrew man might be a slave for six years, and then go free with his wife, if he were married when he came into the relation; but if his master had given him a wife, and she had borne him sons or daughters, the wife and her children should be her master's, and he should go out by himself. That is, the man by the law became free, while his wife and children remained slaves. If the servant, however, plainly said, "I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free: then his master brought him unto the judges, also unto the doorpost, and his master bored his ear through with an awl, and he served him forever." (Ex. xxi.

1-6.) Sir, you have urged discussion:--give us then your views of that pa.s.sage. Tell us how that man was separated from his wife and children according to _the eternal right_. Tell us what was the condition of the woman in case the man chose to "go out" without her? Tell us if the Hebrew who thus had his ear bored by his master with an awl was not a slave for life? Tell us, lastly, whether those children were not slaves? And, while on that chapter, tell us whether in the next verses, 7-11, G.o.d did not allow the Israelite father to sell his own daughter into bondage and into polygamy by the same act of sale?

I will not dwell longer on these milder forms of slavery, but read to you the clear and unmistakable command of the Lord in Leviticus xxv. 44, 46:--"Both thy bondmen and thy bondmaids which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids. 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 beget in your land: and they shall be your possession: and ye shall take them for an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession; and they shall be your bondmen forever."

Sir, the sun will grow dim with age before that Scripture can be tortured to mean any thing else than just what it says; that G.o.d commanded the Israelites to be slave-holders in the strict and true sense over the heathen, in manner and form therein set forth. Do you tell the world that this cannot be the sense of the Bible, because it is "a violation of the first principles of the American Declaration of Independence;" because it grates upon your "instinct of liberty;" because it reveals G.o.d in opposition to the "spirit of the age;" because, if it be the sense of the pa.s.sage, then "the Bible neither ought to be, nor can be, received by mankind as a divine revelation"? _That_ is what you say: _that_ is what Albert Barnes affirms in his philosophy. But what if G.o.d in his word says, "Both thy bondmen and thy bondmaids which thou shalt have shall be of the heathen that are round about you"? What if we may then choose between Albert Barnes's philosophy and G.o.d's truth?

Or will you say, G.o.d, under the circ.u.mstances, _permitted_ the Israelites _to sin_ in the matter of slave-holding, just as he permitted them _to sin_ by living in polygamy. _Permitted_ them _to sin!_ No, sir; G.o.d _commanded_ them to be slave-holders. He _made it_ the law of their social state. He _made it_ one form of his ordained government among them.

Moreover, you take it for granted all too soon, that the Israelites committed sin in their polygamy. G.o.d sanctioned their polygamy. It was therefore not sin in them. It was right. But G.o.d now forbids polygamy, under the gospel; and now it is sin.

Or will you tell us the iniquity of the Canaanites was then full, and G.o.d's time to punish them had come? True; but the same question comes up:--Did G.o.d punish the Canaanites by placing them in the relation of slaves to his people, by express command, which compelled them to sin?

That's the point. I will not permit you to evade it. In plainer words:--Did G.o.d command the Hebrews to make slaves of their fellow-men, to buy them and sell them, to regard them as their money? He did. Then, did the Hebrews sin when they obeyed G.o.d's command? No. Then they did what was right, and it was right because G.o.d made it so. Then _the Hebrew slave-holder was not a man-stealer_. But, you say, the Southern slave-holder is. Well, we shall see presently.

Just here, the abolitionist who professes to respect the Scriptures is wont to tell us that the whole subject of bondage among the Israelites was so peculiar to G.o.d's ancient dispensation, that no a.n.a.logy between that bondage and Southern slavery can be brought up. Thus he attempts to raise a dust out of the Jewish inst.i.tutions, to prevent people from seeing that slaveholding then was the same thing that it is now. But, to sustain my interpretation of the plain Scriptures given, I will go back five hundred years before the existence of the Hebrew nation.

I read at that time, (Gen. xiv. 14:)--"And when Abraham heard that his brother was taken captive, he armed his trained servants, born in his own house, three hundred and eighteen, and pursued them even unto Damascus,"

&c. (Gen. xvii. 27:)--"And all the men of his house, born, in the house, and bought with the money of the stranger, were circ.u.mcised." (Gen. xx.

14:)--"And Abimelech took sheep and oxen, and men-servants and women-servants, and gave them unto Abraham." (Gen. xxiv. 34, 35:)--"And he said, I am Abraham's servant; and the Lord hath blessed my master greatly, and he is become great; and he hath given him flocks and herds, and silver and gold, and men-servants and maid-servants, and camels and a.s.ses."

_Was Abraham a Man-Stealer?_

Sir, what is the common sense of these Scriptures? Why, that the slave-trade existed in Abraham's day, as it had long before, and has ever since, in all the regions of Syria, Palestine, Arabia, and Egypt, in which criminals and prisoners of war were sold,--in which parents sold their children. Abraham, then, it is plain, bought, of the sellers in this traffic, men-servants and maid-servants; he had them born in his house; he received them as presents.

Do you tell me that Abraham, by divine authority, made these servants part of his family, social and religious? Very good. But still he regarded them as his slaves. He took Hagar as a wife, but he treated her as his slave,--yea, as Sarah's slave; and as such he gave her to be chastised, for misconduct, by her mistress. Yea, he never placed Ishmael, the son of the bondwoman, on a level with Isaac, the son of the freewoman. If, then, he so regarded Hagar and Ishmael, of course he never considered his other slaves on an equality with himself. True, had he been childless, he would have given his estate to Eliezer: but he would have given it to his slave.

True, had Isaac not been born, he would have given his wealth to Ishmael; but he would nave given it to the son of his bondwoman. Sir, every Southern planter is not more truly a slave-holder than Abraham. And the Southern master, by divine authority, may, to-day, consider his slaves part of his social and religious family, just as Abraham did. His relation is just that of Abraham. He has slaves of an inferior type of mankind from Abraham's bondmen; and he therefore, for that reason, as well as from the fact that they are his slaves, holds them lower than himself. But, nevertheless, he is a slave-holder in no other sense than was Abraham. Did Abraham have his slave-household circ.u.mcised? Every Southern planter may have his slave-household baptized. I baptized, not long since, a slave-child,--the master and mistress offering it to G.o.d. What was done in the parlor might be done with divine approbation on every plantation.

So, then, Abraham lived in the midst of a system of slave-holding exactly the same in nature with that in the South,--a system ordained of G.o.d as really as the other forms of government round about him. He, then, with the divine blessing, made himself the master of slaves, men, women, and children, by buying them,--by receiving them in gifts,--by having them born in his house; and he controlled them as property, just as really as the Southern master in the present day. I ask now, _was Abraham a man-stealer?_ Oh, no, you reiterate: but the Southern master is. Why?

_Is the Southern Master a Man-Stealer_?

Do you, sir, or anybody, contend that the Southern master seized his slave in Africa, and forcibly brought him away to America, contrary to law?

That, and that alone, was and is kidnapping in divine and human statute.

No. What then? Why, the abolitionist responds, The African man-stealer sold his victim to the slave-holder; he, to the planter; and the negro has been ever since in bondage: therefore _the guilt_ of the man-stealer has cleaved to sellers, buyers, and inheritors, to this time, and will through all generations to come. That is the charge.

And it brings up the question so often and triumphantly asked by the abolitionist; _i.e._ "You," he says to the slave-holder,--"you admit it was wrong to steal the negro in Africa. Can the slave-holder, then, throw off wrong so long as he holds the slave at any time or anywhere thereafter?" I answer, yes; and my reply shall be short, yet conclusive. It is this:--_Guilt_, or criminality, is that state of a moral agent which results from _his_ actual commission of a crime or offence knowing it to be crime or violation of law. _That_ is the received definition of _guilt_, and _you_, I know, do accept it. The _guilt_, then, of kidnapping _terminated_ with the man-stealer, the seller, the buyer, and holders, who, knowingly and intentionally, carried on the traffic contrary to the divine law. THAT GUILT attaches in no sense whatever, as a personal, moral responsibility, to the present slave-holder. Observe, I am here discussing, _not the question of mere slave-holding,_ but whether the master, who has had nothing to do with the slave-trade, can _now_ hold the slave without the moral guilt of the man-stealer? I have said that _that_ guilt, in no sense whatever, rests upon him; for he neither stole the man, nor bought him from the kidnapper, nor had any _complicity_ in the traffic. Here, I know, the abolitionist insists that the master _is_ guilty of this _complicity_, unless he will at once emanc.i.p.ate the slave; because, so long as he holds him, he thereby, personally and _voluntarily, a.s.sumes the same relation which the original kidnapper or buyer held to the African_.

This is Dr. Cheever's argument in a recent popular sermon. He thinks it unanswerable; but it has no weight whatever. It is met perfectly by adding _one_ word to his proposition. Thus:--_The master does_ NOT _a.s.sume the same relation which the original man-stealer or buyer held to the African_. The master's _relation_ to G.o.d and to his slave is now _wholly changed_ from that of the man-stealer, and those engaged in the trade; and his obligation is wholly different. What is his relation? and what is his obligation? They are as follows:----

The master finds himself, with no taint of personal concern in the African trade, in a Christian community of white Anglo-Americans, holding control over his black fellow-man, who is so unlike himself in complexion, in form, in other peculiarities, and so unequal to himself in attributes of body and mind, that it is _impossible, in every sense_, to place him on a level with himself in the community. _This is his relation to the negro_.

What, then, does G.o.d command him to do? Does G.o.d require him to send the negro back to his heathen home from whence he was stolen? That home no longer exists. But, if it did remain, does G.o.d command the master to send his Christianized slave into the horrors of his former African heathenism?

No. G.o.d has placed the master under law entirely different from his command to the slave-trader. G.o.d said to the trader, _Let the negro alone_. But he says to the present master, _Do unto the negro all the good you can; make him a civilized man; make him a Christian man; lift him up and give him all he has a right to claim in the good of the whole community_. This the master can do; this he must do, and then leave the result with the Almighty.

We reach the same conclusion by asking, What does G.o.d say to the negro-slave?

Does he tell him to ask to be sent back to heathen Africa? No. Does he give him authority to claim a created equality and unalienable right to be on a level with the white man in civil and social relations? No. To ask the first would be to ask a great evil; to claim the second is to demand a natural and moral impossibility. No. G.o.d tells him to seek none of these things. But he commands him to know the facts in his case as they are in the Bible, and have ever been, and ever will be in Providence:--that he is not the white man's equal,--that he can never have his level--that he must not claim it; but that he can have, and ought to have, and must have, all of good, in his condition as a slave, until G.o.d may reveal a higher happiness for him in some other relation than that _he must ever_ have to the Anglo-American. The present slave-holder, then, by declining to emanc.i.p.ate his bondman, does not place himself in _the guilt_ of the man-stealer or of those who had complicity with him; but he stands _exactly_ in that NICK _of time and place_, in the course of Providence, where _wrong_, in the transmission of African slavery, _ends_, and _right begins_.

I have, sir, fairly stated this, your strongest argument, and fully met it. _The Southern master is not a man-stealer._ The abolitionist--repulsed in his charge that the slave-owner is a kidnapper, either in fact or by voluntarily a.s.suming any of the relations of the traffic--then makes his impeachment on his second affirmation, mentioned at the opening of this letter. That the slave-holder is, nevertheless, thus _guilty_, because, in the simple fact of being a master, he _steals_ from the negro his unalienable right to freedom.

This, sir, looks like a new view of the subject. The crime forbidden in the Bible was stealing and selling a man; _i.e._ seizing and forcibly carrying away, from country or State, a human being--man, woman, or child--contrary to law, and selling or holding the same. But the abolitionist gives us to understand this crime rests on the slave-holder in another sense:--namely, that he steals from the negro a metaphysical attribute,--his unalienable right to liberty!

This is a new sort of kidnapping. This is, I suppose, _stealing the man from himself_, as it is sometimes elegantly expressed,--_robbing him of his body and his soul_. Sir, I admit this is a strong figure of speech, a beautiful personification, a sonorous rhetorical flourish, which must make a deep impression on Dr. Cheever's people, Broadway, New York, and on your congregation, Washington Square, Philadelphia; but it is certainly not the Bible crime of man-stealing. And whether the Southern master is _guilty_ of this sublimated thing will be understood by us when you prove that the negro, or anybody else, has such metaphysical right to be stolen,--such transcendental liberty not in subordination to the good of the whole people. In a word, sir, this refined expression is, after all, just the old averment that the slave-holder is guilty of _sin per se!_ That's it.

I have given you, in reply, the Old Testament. In my next, I propose to inquire what the New Testament says in the light of the _Golden Rule_.

F.A. Ross.