The Right of American Slavery Part 3

What are these dreams of sophists, these vagaries of imagination, this rage of pa.s.sion, this perversion of reason, and high-sounding declamation, confounding right with wrong, civilization with barbarism, but the paraphernalia of despotism arrayed against the liberties of mankind? Emanc.i.p.ation is all a delusion, a foible, a fantasy, an idle dream! The soul and intellect of man is heaven-derived, and knows its order and beauty, and will hold in abeyance these elements of chaos. The barbarian is indeed dark of skin, and the radiance of a million constellations in a thousand ages will not change him, nor the light of civilization fade to moral brightness his gloomy mind!

EMANc.i.p.aTION OF THE WHITE RACES.

It will be observed that my argument on the subject of slavery is new, and is drawn from the actual nature of the case. I offer no antique authority to sustain the RIGHT of slavery. The history of the African race for four thousand years is sufficient, which is, that in no country nor condition has that race shown the capacity for or enjoyed self-government. And, indeed, self-government with the superior white races is still deemed but an experiment. The great ma.s.s of the white races ever have been, and still are, governed by the strong hand of despotism, or by the more plausible, but ofttimes not less diabolical power of const.i.tutional sovereignties, or hereditary or revolutionary oligarchies. It is not, then, so great a disparagement to the African that he is unfit for freedom, when nine-tenths of the foremost of the white races, show not the capacity to enjoy it. Certainly, the African is not their superior. Why, then, demand for him more than is allowed to the superior white races? If emanc.i.p.ation is to be thought of, would it not be well to emanc.i.p.ate the white races first?

THE ARGUMENT INVULNERABLE.

I have rested my argument on no antique authority to show the right of slavery. I have appealed to no religious dogmas to show this right. I have not even availed myself of the whole tenor of sacred history to justify it, which has been done heretofore by others, and done in vain. I have not labored to produce a voluminous collation of other men's opinions to swell my pages. Sacred history is in the hands of all, and its teachings need not my endors.e.m.e.nt, recommendation, nor reiteration. Indeed, if the right of slavery here a.s.serted is not based upon truth, and if it does not commend itself to the unbiased judgment of my countrymen, then I demand that they discard it. I ask if the argument here advanced, has been or can be refuted? If it can be, let it be done fairly, openly, and without circ.u.mvention. Let it be shown that barbarism ought not to subserve civilization. Let it be shown that civilization is wrong, because it does not conduce to the well-being and happiness of mankind; let it be shown that barbarism is right because it does this. Let the apologists and advocates of barbarism show its equality with civilization. Let it be denied, and the denial proved, that the laws of universal right and justice hold true and heaven-derived supremacy over wrong. Let it be shown that the slave-owner has no legal right of property in his slaves. Or, if it be admitted that he has such right, let any possible process of emanc.i.p.ation be pointed out. Will the violent denunciations of fanaticism induce him to free his slaves? Does the divided sentiment and feeling evinced in even the division of the churches north and south, indicate the willingness of the owners to free their slaves? If not, then by what means are they to be set free? Is it to be by purchase? and if so, is it proposed to pay the value of the slaves?

and how? Let it be shown that the purchase and transportation of 4,000,000 of Negroes to Africa will cost less than $2,400,000,000; or to Central America less than $2,200,000,000. Let it be shown to be expedient, practicable, or possible to do this; and even if done, let it be shown to be a benefit to the slave or the master; a benefit either to civilization or barbarism.

If none of these things can be shown, and I aver they cannot, then how about the last startling alternative of robbing the slave-owner of his property? of the freeing of the Negroes by servile insurrection and civil war? What would be the cost in blood and treasure to effect this? and the probable result of _such_ an effort at emanc.i.p.ation, on the freedom and civilization of the world?

WHY ENGLAND ABOLISHED THE SLAVE TRADE,--HER DREAD OF OUR GREATNESS AND POWER.

The truth is, the slave trade was abolished by British and Tory influence, at about the time of the American Revolution, when slavery, as an adjunct of colonial va.s.salage, could no longer subserve the interests of British commerce. This was their first success in circ.u.mventing us. Her complicity in the Cooley trade is an evidence of this. She is willing to morally d.a.m.n herself for purposes of monarchical intrigue, in order to supplant us. Our agriculture and commerce, and rapidly acc.u.mulating wealth and power, and republican glory, are too much for her. Our example of success in freedom tempts the loyalty of the most enlightened subjects of the British crown. The fascinations of freedom beguile the ardent and n.o.ble aspirations of the English democracy, and Britannia, with her antiquated and wrinkled visage, shrinks abashed from the majestic presence of Freedom's immortal and fadeless bloom!

This is the true cause of the present British Negro philanthropy, and the occasion of her _a.s.sumed_ moral turpitude in elevating the heathen barbarian of Africa to the primary plane of civilization, to the protection of its laws, and the meliorations of its moral, political, social, and religious inst.i.tutions. It is because monarchy was beginning to be odious in the eyes of the European democracy, when contrasted with our antagonistical system of the divine right of the people. It is her policy and her purpose to render our inst.i.tutions unstable by means of a suborned and venal press, and a band of mercenary, hireling, political and religious monarchical conspirators, parasites and traitors. These her gold can furnish. Her arms having repeatedly failed to subjugate the American democracy, she now has recourse to her diplomacy, her intrigues, and her gold. Twenty millions of money expended in this way in the last twenty years, has had its effect, and to her emissaries, and hireling presses and scribblers, we are indebted for a dastardly generation of traitors, who would barter the liberties of their country for the applause of faction, and the complacency of kings.

ENGLAND'S SELF-IMPOSED ODIUM.

It is a monstrous absurdity, nay it is an act of egregious hypocrisy, for England now to _a.s.sume_ for herself an _hypothetical guilt_,--after bringing the African to her American Colonies for purposes of _gain_, and after exercising an intolerable tyranny over the white race in those colonies, and even invoking the aid of the tomahawk and scalping knife of the American savage in their attempted subjugation,--for the purpose now, when her arms and diplomacy have repeatedly failed, of seeking to overthrow the freedom of a Republic, which has risen, in despite of her, to such colossal proportions, as, in its very existence, to menace the combined monarchies of the world.

But we hold these 4,000,000 of barbarians subject to the laws of civilization; and let England remember that we, even now, have the magnanimity to relieve her from the self-imposed odium of doing right!

We now tell her monarchists, degenerate sons of ill.u.s.trious sires, that in their maritime decadence they have also morally retrograded, for they now seek to restore these Africans to barbarism!

SLAVERY IS AN INCIDENT OF CIVILIZATION.

Let it not be claimed, even as a sophistical subterfuge, that the _motive_ which brought the African here was mercenary, and that, therefore, his coming here was not justifiable. Commerce is the handmaid of civilization, and if his coming was only incidentally right, yet that incident belongs to civilization, which is amenable to the moral code, and is also to be commended, with all its incidental, as well as more matured blessings. The inst.i.tutions of civilization rescued these 4,000,000 of barbarians from the dangers, degradation, and miseries of barbarism, and by causing them to subserve civilization, compelled them to do right. The English and American false philanthropists, monarchical emissaries, ecclesiastical parasites, and pseudo-republican traitors now demand that these Africans shall be restored to barbarism, not because it is practicable or possible, or right, but because the proposition involves the equality of these States, and consequently the existence of the American Union. The success of these conspirators depends upon an adequate numerical proportion of knaves and monomaniacs, the well-adjusted mechanism of monarchy for the overthrow of this Republic. Their success would forever settle the long mooted question of the capacity of Anglo-Saxon race for self government. Hence the lavish employment of British gold to suborn the American press, and seduce the American mind from the safe precepts of Washington, whose name is, and ever has been, a terror to the British oligarchy.

SOLUTION OF THE SUBJECT.

The only tribunal at which to try human actions, is the tribunal of justice. That which is right can stand the test of this tribunal; that which is wrong will shrink in terror from it. At this tribunal American Negro slavery has nothing to fear, because it is founded in moral right. Its advocacy is the advocacy of right, and right alone; unless, forsooth, we are to confound right with wrong, and declare barbarism equal with civilization. Of course, our argument is based upon the hypothesis that civilization is one thing, and barbarism another. To the mind which is so mentally and morally obtuse as not to discover the difference between these two conditions, this appeal must be in vain. But to the right-minded man, who is open to conviction of truth, who has the mental freedom to act and think independent of his prepossessions and prejudices, who is guided by his intellect, and reason, and not by pa.s.sion nor prejudice, this solution of the slavery question, though new, must and will be satisfactory, because it is the logical result of a trial of the question at the tribunal of justice and of rights, because slavery rescues the African from wrong, and subjects him to the rule of right; because it rescues him from the wrongs and miseries of barbarism, and raises him to the _primary_ elevation of a progressive and enn.o.bling civilization.

EQUALITY OF THE STATES AND CITIZENS.

The equality of the sovereign States which compose the American Republic, and the equality of the citizens, both in the States and the Territories, const.i.tute the true and only bond of union for the American people. This equality is the foundation stone upon which our whole social and political superstructure rests. To call this in question is to menace the very existence of the Union which is founded upon it. The sovereignty of the Union, extending over the Territories, where no other sovereignty exists, is the panoply of protection to all the inhabitants of the Territories. There they are all equal in person and property. There they are not sovereign, but subjects under the sovereignty of the united confederacy of States, which have no individual superiority and right in the Territories, neither for themselves, nor their citizens. For the inhabitants of such Territories to _a.s.sume_ a sovereignty therein, not in accordance with the Const.i.tution of the United States, not in conformity to law, and in violation of the equality of the people of the States there congregated, is USURPATION. Nor can the democracy of numbers, nor the will of the majority of inhabitants congregated in such Territories be invoked to decide the rights of the people of the several States congregated in such Territories, either as to persons or property; because the sovereignty of the Union holds, until superseded by the sovereignty of a State const.i.tutionally organized, deriving its sovereignty from the supreme authority of the confederated States, by whose a.s.sent alone the primordial sovereignty of the Union is so far abandoned as to admit the exercise of State sovereignty in such Territories. There would be no propriety nor justice in allowing an _hypothetical sovereignty_ to a few thousands of individuals congregated in a large Territory, not one fiftieth part of which they occupied; allowing them to establish a rule of exclusion of the persons or property of the people of a portion of the States coming to settle in the Territories. Such persons have neither the right to decide for the present, nor the future; because at present they are not sovereign, and certainly they should not be allowed to exercise a _usurped_ authority over the millions who shall occupy those Territories in the future. It is a morbid desire to forestall the future, in its judgment of barbarism, and of its fitness to subserve civilization, that creates the present animosity between the citizens of the different sections of the Union, going into the Territories.

This is all wrong. The sovereignty of the Union is the present, and the sovereignty of States the future arbiter of the rights of the people in the Territories; all other power is a.s.sumed, arbitrary, gratuitous, and in violation of legitimate, delegated const.i.tutional power.

The wisdom of the sages who founded the American Union left nothing for experiment to their successors, so far as the absolute equality of American citizens is concerned; and there is no safety but in the recognition of that perfect equality which the spirit of our race demands, and which the power of the civilized world will be invoked to maintain.

THE NECESSITY OF OUR ONWARD PROGRESS AS A NATION.

The intimate commercial relations existing between this Republic and the princ.i.p.al maritime and warlike nations of the globe, mainly by means of the products of slave labor, const.i.tute a necessity for our onward, uninterrupted progress, as the great agricultural and commercial almoner of civilization, and cannot be disturbed, except at the peril of that civilization which they have been so instrumental and conspicuous to promote. The proposed annihilation of the hand of labor whose products amount to $250,000,000 per annum, and those products const.i.tuting the articles of prime necessity to civilization, is a matter which involves other interests than our own; and however willing monarchists and their minions may be to disrupt our political system, and destroy this temple of freedom, they will find the genius of commerce and the genius of liberty will continue to go hand in hand to uphold the principles of right and justice, which demand that barbarism shall subserve civilization.

AMERICAN COTTON.

American cotton, the product of slave labor, clothes, to a large extent, one-fourth part of the human race; without it the glory of civilization would vanish. It embellishes the denizen of the city, and hides the nakedness of barbarism. It is the tablet on which is inscribed the history of the present, and rescues from oblivion the mouldering records of the past. It is the talisman of thought, and the vehicle of those electric currents that blaze athwart the sky of mind, with which intellect binds together, with silver thread, the mind's great empire, where kings do homage at the shrine of genius, and bow in awe, and humble reverence before the majesty of mind. It is the medium through which the internal and external domains of thought are blended, and truth made universal, and obvious to the apprehension of a world!

WASHINGTON NOT OPPOSED TO SLAVERY AS WRONG.

It has been urged, that because Washington regretted the impossibility of devising some feasible means of emanc.i.p.ation, that, therefore, he was opposed to slavery, as wrong. The precise opposite was the case.

He was too wise to oppose that which he could not overcome. His whole career was success in overcoming opposition. He might, with us, regret the barbarism of the African and the impracticability of his release from servitude, on account of his unfitness for freedom; but he never could logically or reasonably oppose, as wrong, that which made the African better and happier, and which protects him from the dangers and miseries of barbarism, though it placed him in the position to learn only the rudiments of civilization. To a.s.sert that Washington deemed slavery a wrong to the slave, is to accuse him of knowingly doing wrong, for he held slaves to the day of his death; and if he emanc.i.p.ated them then, it was more with the hope than the reasonable expectation, that even HIS slaves, with all the force of his example during his whole life, had become fitted for freedom, or that they would be benefited by the experiment of their own attempted self-control. Washington could not, therefore, consistently oppose slavery as a wrong to the slave, nor conscientiously believe it to be wrong; because he would not oppose that which he could not overcome, and because his whole life was occupied in doing right. It is against the prophetic character of Washington's mission, ever crowned with success; against his wisdom, which was most profound; and against his judgment, which was unerring,--to presume his hostility to slavery as wrong, or his opposition to it in a moral point of view, when he knew, as we know, the emanc.i.p.ation of the slaves to be wrong in itself, and impossible, even if right or desirable. It is plain, then, that if Washington had any real aversion to Negro slavery, it was not because it was wrong so far as any natural right of the slave was involved, but because of his ability to do without slaves; and notwithstanding his fortune was ample, he _held_ his slaves during the whole course of his life; whereas, if he had deemed slavery a wrong to the slaves, he would undoubtedly have granted them their liberty. What right would he have had, as a just man, to bestow his generosity upon the public, by refusing the emoluments of office, justly due him, and unjustly appropriating the proceeds or avails of the labor of his slaves, if he knew, or believed they were justly ent.i.tled to their freedom. If our moral view of slavery is clear, he was _just_, as well as _generous_, and wise as well as successful.

WASHINGTON REPROACHES THE EMANc.i.p.aTIONISTS.

It is well known how powerful the secret influence of the British and Tory abolitionists was in this country immediately after the American Revolution, as well as before and since that time; and that at about that time, or soon after, the question was seriously entertained of abolishing slavery in Virginia by legislation, as was done in other States of the Union; and it was on account of the annoying importunities of these _disinterested philanthropists_ (_?_), and the apparent inclination of the people of the State of Virginia to experiment in their theories, that Washington expressed his willingness to see slavery abolished by legislative enactment. But in what characteristic terms of manly reproach did he address the Emanc.i.p.ation Society on the subject when he found their principles and practices to be that "_the end justifies the means_." He says:

"_But when slaves, who are happy and contented with their present masters, are tampered with and seduced to leave them; when masters are taken unawares by these practices; when a conduct of this kind begets discontent on one side, and resentment on the other; and when it happens to fall on a man whose purse will not measure with that of the Society, and he loses his property for want of means to defend it,--it is oppression in such a case, *AND NOT HUMANITY IN ANY*, because it introduces more evils than it can cure._"[6]

OUR FATHERS ON THE RIGHT OF SLAVERY.

It is not to be concealed, however, that some of the sages who framed this Republic, in their zeal for freedom, overlooked the fact of African barbarism, or failed to be explicit in their unpremeditated enunciations of human freedom. Perhaps, however, they had more astuteness than has been supposed by some. Perchance they considered barbarity not humanity, but its opposite, and would have deemed it a work of supererogation to explain that which natural history, the history of the African ram for four thousand years, and common sense, and common observation, had established as a self-evident proposition; to wit, that equality was a _political_, and not a social, nor moral, nor even physical condition; and that, especially, neither equality nor freedom were to be construed to be the prerogatives nor the right of barbarism. And the Const.i.tution of the United States, the work of their own hands, sanctions this supposition, by recognizing the existence, and providing for the right of Negro slavery, and rescues the Fathers of the Republic from the absurd and opprobrious imputation of advocating Negro equality.

Whatever opinions they may have expressed under the varying aspects of our Revolutionary epoch, the Const.i.tution of these United States was the finality of their arduous toils, heroic achievements, and sublime wisdom; and that Const.i.tution, the very sublimation and quintessence of a hundred civilizations, exhibiting the onward progress of the human race, recognizes the Right of Slavery, founded upon the immutable principles of justice.

MONARCHICAL SCHEMES TO DESTROY THIS REPUBLIC.

Is it strange, however, that since this Republic is the mighty antagonism of monarchy, and since it is invincible in arms, is it strange, that civil dissension, and the appropriate means to produce it, should be employed by despotism to subvert this government? What else should they do; What is the interest of monarchy in relation to the existence and onward progress of this Empire of Freedom? What, but its subversion, its disseverment, by its own internal antagonism? And what other means could monarchy and its parasites employ to accomplish this, but precisely the means and agency which have been employed, at vast expense, especially for the last twenty-five years, first to divide, and finally to destroy that which no external force, nor combination of external forces could subdue? Is it not already the boast of the minions of despotism that they have rendered our government insecure? With what jubilation did they catch the tidings of our recent rebellion, as the harbinger of their own redemption from the fate of political decadence and downfall, which our all-absorbing greatness was beginning to make so manifest to the willing apprehension of mankind? Their ears were charmed, even at the supposed triumphant voice of barbarism over a civilization as stable as the sun, which is immortal in its every individual microcosm, and to which they are conscious their own unequal systems of government never can attain.

OUR VINDICATION.

Need we inquire further what is the interest of monarchy? Can we any longer be blind to our own interest? Are we not arraigned at the tribunal of civilization, by the helots of despotism? Are we not accused of wrong? Are not we, and our sainted and G.o.dlike ancestors, held as amenable to moral law for a violation of Right? And shall we submit in silence to all this clamor: this false and slanderous accusation, when all history, all knowledge, all experience, all reason, and all nature, are voluble in our defense, and p.r.o.nounce our just and triumphant vindication!

Let us, then, henceforth cultivate and encourage friendship and cordial co-operation between the different sections of the Union, and a patriotic emulation for its continuance; not upon any such visionary and deceptive hypothesis as the superiority and predominance of sectional partiality, but upon the equable and fundamental principles of justice, and of the absolute equality of these sovereign States, and the equality of the citizens of a well-compacted and glorious confederacy.

THE PHILOSOPHICAL POSTULATES OF AMERICAN SLAVERY.

1. Right holds a just and heaven-derived supremacy over wrong.

2. Barbarism is wrong. It conduces to the misery and degradation of mankind. Africa is barbarous. The African race is a race of barbarians.

3. Civilization is right. It conduces to the elevation and happiness of mankind.

4. Civilization carries with it the right of supremacy over barbarism.