Does the Bible sanction American slavery?/Section 2
SECTION II.
Having thus seen the relation of the Old Testament to primitive institutions, customs, and ideas generally, we come to the particular case of Slavery.
Slavery is found existing in all barbarous nations, from the Chinese to the ancient Germans. Civilized nations have gradually emerged from it. Russia, the last born of civilization, has just emancipated her serfs. Within the pale of Christendom, the institution now remains only in the Slave-owning communities of America, and in the dependencies of Spain. And in these countries it is found in connection with a certain kind of agriculture, which is supposed to require negro labourers working in large gangs. In the Dutch dependency of Java it exists in a qualified form, and the party of humanity in Holland is now demanding its abolition.
The authors of the Declaration of Independence, on which the American Constitution, for the Slave as well as for the Free States, is founded, say, “We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Supposing the negro to be a man, the Slave-owners who have set their hands to these sentiments have pronounced the doom of their own institution and saved its adversaries further trouble. But it must in fairness to them be owned that they have set their hands to too much. It can scarcely be held that liberty, political or personal, is the inalienable right of every human being. Children possess neither political nor personal liberty, till they arrive at what the law, a law which they had no share in making, pronounces to be years of discretion. Women have no political liberties, and married women have personal liberties only of a very qualified kind. Under despotic governments, the immorality of which can scarcely be held to be in all cases self-evident, no one has political liberty. Even under constitutional governments where the suffrage is limited, as it is to some extent in most of those which are commonly called free countries, the unenfranchised classes are as destitute of political liberty as the subjects of a despotism. The political power which commands their obedience is vested, it is true, in a greater number of hands, and is on that account more controlled by the influence of opinion, and less liable to gross abuse; but it commands their obedience as absolutely and as irrespectively of their own consent, as though it were that of a despotic Prince. The equality between man and man on which this indefeasible claim to political and personal liberty is founded, is in truth rather a metaphysical notion than a fact. Not only children and the weaker sex, but the great mass of men, are so constituted by nature, or so circumstanced, as to be inevitably dependent upon others; and to say that they have an equal right to independence with, those on whom they are necessarily dependent, would be an abuse, or at least a very barren use, of words. That to which every moral being has an indefeasible right, besides life, is the “pursuit of happiness.” In other words, he has a right to have his moral interests considered and respected, and not to be treated as a being having no moral interests of his own,—a mere “living tool,” as the slave is called by Aristotle, or a “chattel personal,” as he is called by the American law. Every moral being has a right, in other words, to be treated by the community as a person, and not as a thing. And in every state of society which is sound, however primitive it may be, and however remote from our advanced ideas of political and personal liberty, these conditions of respecting the moral interests of each member, and of treating each member as a person, not as a thing, are fulfilled. One man may be dependent upon another to any extent, in certain circumstances he may be absolutely dependent, without prejudice to the morality of the relations between them. But morality is at once violated when the interest of one man is sacrificed to that of another, and a state of things then commences noxious to the moral being of both parties, and more noxious to the moral being of him who commits, than to that of him who endures the wrong. Judge Ruffin of North Carolina, in giving judgment on the extent of the master’s dominion over the slave in that country, said, “The question before the Court has indeed been assimilated at the bar to the other domestic relations; and arguments drawn from the well-established principles which confer and restrain the authority of the parent over the child, the tutor over the pupil, the master over the apprentice, have been pressed on us. The Court does not recognise their application. There is no likeness between the cases. They are in opposition to each other, and there is an impassable gulf between them. The difference is that which exists between freedom and slavery, and a greater cannot be imagined. In the one, the end in view is the happiness of the youth, born to equal rights with that governor, on whom the duty devolves of training the young to usefulness in a station which he is afterwards to assume among freemen. To such an end, and with such a subject, moral and intellectual instruction seem the natural means; and for the most part they are found to suffice. Moderate force is superadded, only to make the others effectual. If that fail, it is better to leave the party to his own headstrong passions, and the ultimate correction of the law, than to allow it to be immoderately inflicted by a private person. With slavery it is far otherwise. The end is the profit of the master, his security, and the public safety; the subject, one doomed in his own person and his posterity to live without knowledge, and without the capacity to make anything his own, and to toil that another may reap the fruits. What moral considerations shall be addressed to such a being, to convince him what it is impossible but that the most stupid must feel and know can never be true,—that he is thus to labour upon a principle of natural duty, or for the sake of his own personal happiness. Such services can only be expected from one who has no will of his own, who surrenders his will in implicit obedience to that of another.”
The relation thus judicially described is an immoral relation, because it sacrifices not merely the personal or political liberties, but the moral interests of one party to the other. It is a relation, therefore, which could never exist in any state of society, however rude, which was founded on morality; nor be sanctioned under any dispensation really emanating from the Author of our moral nature. But a relation of the most complete dependence may be perfectly moral. Nothing is more moral than the relation between a mother and her infant child.
Let us observe also that the relation described by the words of Judge Ruffin is perfectly definite and distinct. It is that of a slave, not that of a servant bound for a term of years or for life, or even of a hereditary bondman who retains any personal rights and is not wholly devoted to the profit and pleasure of his master. There can be no pretence for refining it away into a ‘certain condition of the labourer, accidentally denoted by a name derived from the hatred felt by other nations for the Sclavonic race.’ We may be permitted to add, that this definite relation is marked by definite characteristics, in regard to the treatment of women, of fathers and of husbands, which are well known to the whole civilized world.
On approaching the question from the side of the Old Testament, we are met by an assertion which, if it be true, sweeps the field of controversy at once. It is said that we are bound to keep the negro race in bondage for ever in order to fulfil the inspired prophecy of Noah, “Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren…. Blessed be the Lord God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.” So scrupulous is the reverence of the Slave-owners for Scripture, so great is their zeal for God’s honour, that upon a merely conjectural interpretation of a passage in the most obscure and difficult part of the Bible, they feel bound to condemn to hopeless slavery on their plantations a whole race of mankind who, in common with the other races, have been redeemed by Christ.
To all arguments of this kind there is, in the first place, a very simple answer, which has already been given, in effect, to those who thought it their duty as Christians to fulfil inspired prophecy by denying civil rights to the Jews. Man is not charged with the fulfilment of inspired prophecy, which, whatever he may do, will certainly fulfil itself; but he is charged with the performance of his duty to his neighbour. It is not incumbent upon him to preserve Divine Foreknowledge from disappointment, but it is incumbent upon him to preserve his own soul from injustice, cruelty, and lust. If the prophecy had meant that the negroes should always be slaves, it would have been defeated already, for a great part of the negroes in Africa have never become slaves, and those in the English and French colonies, besides a good many in America itself, have ceased to be so.
In the second place, those who found slavery on a doom pronounced against the negro race must say no more about the recognition of their institution by the law of Moses or by the New Testament, for the slavery recognised by the law of Moses and the New Testament was not that of negroes, but of other races.
But the truth is, that the words of Noah, to whomsoever they may apply, are no prophecy, but only a curse, couched in the language of Oriental malediction; and all curses have been taken away by Christ. This curse was taken away even before Christ, when Abraham was told that “in his seed all the nations of the earth should be blessed.”
To come, then, to that which is more to the purpose. The latest researches of historical philosophy seem to lead us back to the simplest and most natural theory of the origin of society, and to shew us that the political systems which now fill the world, with all their grandeur and complexity, once lay enfolded in the Patriarch’s tent. So that in the Patriarchal chief of an Arabian tribe we still see the father of Empires and Republics.[1]
While society was in the Patriarchal state, each family or tribe being independent of the rest, there was of course no general government. The only government was the family despotism, which, as we have already had occasion to observe, was prolonged among the Romans, through hatred of change and love of power, into a much later stage of civilization. The only law for every member of the famity was the father’s will, which, is now merged, for all children who have come to manhood, in the law of the State. His lips pronounced the blessing and the curse, which can now be pronounced without absurdity only by the moral judgment of society at large. Such a despotism was in fact necessary to the existence of each of these primitive communities. Had it been bound together by any looser bond, it would have perished in the perpetual contest with its competitors for the hunting-ground, the pasture, and the springs of water, or have been swallowed up by the wilderness, amidst the terrors and dangers of which these little germs of social existence must have hung between life and death.
It is on this state of society, but at a late period of it, that the history of the Hebrews opens. The original family has broadened into a tribe or clan by taking into it members not of its own blood; the wreck, perhaps, of other families which had perished in the primæval struggle for existence. These new members are servants to the head of the tribe, on whose protection their lives must depend. Nations with regular governments, and distinctions of class, have been formed in the countries on the edge of which Abraham and his tribe wander. In these nations slavery exists. Its first source probably was war; a further supply being obtained, when the value of the slave to the indolent warrior was felt, by piracy and kidnapping. The traffic in men, which is the strongest evidence of the existence of Slavery in the true sense of the term, has commenced. Abraham himself, from his commerce with slave-owning nations, has servants “bought with his money,” as well as servants “born in his house.”
But the bondage of Abraham’s servants, whether born in his house or bought with his money, can scarcely be called slavery. It is domestic, not merely in the modern, but in the patriarchal sense of the term. In the lonely encampment the head of the tribe must live entirely with his servants. He has no other companions or friends. He is not a member of a class of freemen, nor are they members of a class of slaves: no feeling of contempt therefore can arise in his mind, nor of degradation in theirs. He and his children work as they do. Jacob seethes the pottage while Esau seeks food by hunting, and the patriarch feels it no disgrace to serve Laban as a common herdsman.
The son is a bondman as well as the servant. Under the family despotism of the Romans he could obtain his liberty only by thrice going through the form of being sold by his father as a slave; and then he ceased to be, in the fullest sense, a member of the family. The eldest son alone was distinguished above the rest of those “in the father’s hand,” by having the birthright and being the destined head of the tribe in his turn. And if there was no son, a bondman took the inheritance. “And Abram said, Lord God, what wilt Thou give me, seeing I go childless, and the steward of my house is this Eliezer of Damascus? And Abram said, Behold, to me Thou hast given no seed: and, lo, one born in my house is mine heir.”[2]
When the family rite of circumcision, the pledge of religious unity, is performed, all the bondmen, whether born in the house or bought with money, are circumcised. “And Abraham took Ishmael his son, and all that were born in his house, and all that were bought with his money, every male among the men of Abraham’s house; and circumcised the flesh of their foreskin in the selfsame day, as God had said unto him.”[3] “He that is born in thy house, and he that is bought with thy money, must needs be circumcised: and My covenant shall be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant.”
Here is the picture of Patriarchal Bondage: “And Abraham was old, and well stricken in age: and the Lord had blessed Abraham in all things. And Abraham said unto his eldest servant of his house, that ruled over all that he had, Put, I pray thee, thy hand under my thigh: and I will make thee swear by the Lord, the God of heaven, and the God of the earth, that thou shalt not take a wife unto my son of the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I dwell: but thou shalt go unto my country, and to my kindred, and take a wife unto my son Isaac…. And the servant took ten camels of the camels of his master, and departed; for all the goods of his master were in his hand: and he arose, and went to Mesopotamia, unto the city of Nahor. And he made his camels to kneel down without the city by a well of water at the time of the evening, even the time that women go out to draw water. And he said, Lord God of my master Abraham, I pray Thee, send me good speed this day, and shew kindness unto my master Abraham. Behold, I stand here by the well of water; and the daughters of the men of the city come out to draw water: and let it come to pass, that the damsel to whom I shall say, Let down thy pitcher, I pray thee, that I may drink; and she shall say, Drink, and I will give thy camels drink also: let the same be she that Thou hast appointed for Thy servant Isaac; and thereby shall I know that Thou hast shewed kindness unto my master.”[4]
In the picture, on which the evening sun of a long-vanished world here falls, we see, it may safely be said, a relation widely different from that which is painted in the decision of Judge Ruffin. It is a relation of perfect affection and confidence, of complete identity of interest, between the master and the servant. If the analogies of tutor and pupil, master and apprentice, which Judge Ruffin rejects in the case of American Slavery, are not applicable in this case, it is only because the strongest of them is too weak: and assuredly the term “chattel personal” applied to the steward as he stands by the well praying God to be good to his master, would grate strangely on our ears.
This passage illustrates not only the position of the bondman in the family, but the relative position of the son. We see that in the matter of marriage, he was entirely “in his father’s hand.” So in the Roman family, the father could marry any one of his children or of their children, and divorce them, at his pleasure. That the father, in the patriarchal state, as well as at Rome, had the power of life and death over the son, as much as he could have it over the bondman, we see from the story in which Abraham consents to sacrifice Isaac, without any scruple on the ground of moral right, though doubtless with the deepest feelings of paternal sorrow. Ignorance of this fact has led to mistaken judgments, sometimes expressed in very strong language, as to the morality of the story, which, in its issue, is an abrogation of human sacrifices, such as were offered by the neighbouring nations, who made their children pass through the fire to Moloch.
It will also be seen from the same passage that the oath of a bondman was as good as that of a freeman. “Put, I pray thee, thy hand under my thigh: and I will make thee swear by the Lord, the God of heaven, and the God of the earth,” &c. In Greece during the classical times, or at Rome, a bondman’s oath would have been worth little. It would scarcely have been supposed that the Gods stooped to guard the faith or punish the perjury of a Slave.
The servant prays to God and blesses Him as “the God of his master Abraham” because the persons of all the tribe were gathered up as it were into the sacred person of the chief, and came into relation with God and with other tribes through him. So at Rome, the father of the family represented all its members before the Gods and the State.
Laban, the free head of a family, receives Abraham’s servant quite as an equal. “And he said, Come in, thou blessed of the Lord; wherefore standest thou without? for I have prepared the house, and room for the camels.” And on the other hand, Jacob, though he has the birthright, and is to be head of his tribe, binds himself to serve Laban for twice seven years, not exactly as a bondman, but doing the same kind of work as the bondmen did, and surrendering his personal liberty to his master in a way which would not now be permitted (except in the peculiar case of military service) by the laws of any country in which civilized morality prevails.
The identity of interest between the Patriarchal chief and his servant, and the reliance consequently placed by the chief in the servant’s loyalty, which we have noted in the story of Abraham’s steward, appear elsewhere also. “When Abraham heard that his brother (Lot) was taken captive, he armed his trained servants, born in his own house, three hundred and eighteen, and pursued them unto Dan.” The herdmen of Abraham and Lot (Gen. xiii.) and the herdmen of Isaac and Gerar (Gen. xxvi.) strive of their own accord for the pastures and the wells of springing water, evidently regarding the interest of their master as their own.
So much respecting the nature of bondage in the patriarchal state. It seems to bear little resemblance to the condition of the gangs of negro chattels who are driven out under the lash of an overseer to plant cotton in America, and who are slaves to the tyrannical cruelty and lust of the white members of their owner’s family, as well as to the avarice of their owner. When we find a negro standing in the same relation to his master, and to his master’s son, in which Eliezer stood to Abraham and Isaac, and when we find in negro slavery the other characteristics of bondage as it existed in the tents of Abraham and his descendants, we may begin to think that the term “Patriarchal” is true as applied to the Slavery of Virginia and Carolina.