Notes on the State of Virginia (1853)/Query 18
QUERY XVIII.
THE PARTICULAR CUSTOMS AND MANNERS THAT MAY HAPPEN TO BE RECEIVED IN THAT STATE?
It is difficult to determine on the standard by which the
manners of a nation may be tried, whether catholic or
particular. It is more difficult for a native to bring to that standard
the manners of his own nation, familiarized to him by
habit. There must, doubtless, be an unhappy influence on
the manners of our people, produced by the existence of slavery among us. The whole commerce between master and
slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions,
the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading
submissions on the other. Our children see this, and
learn to imitate it; for man is an imitative animal. This
quality is the germ of all education in him. From his cradle
to his grave he is learning to do what he sees others do. If a
parent could find no motive either in his philanthropy or his
self-love for restraining the intemperance of passion towards
his slave, it should always be a sufficient one that his child is
present. But generally it is not sufficient. The parent
storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath,
puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a
loose to his worst of passions, and thus nursed, educated, and
daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with
odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy who can
retain his manners and morals undepraved by such
circumstances. And with what execration should the statesman be
loaded, who permitting one-half the citizens thus to trample
on the rights of the other, transforms those into despots, and
these into enemies, destroys the morals of the one part, and
the amor patriæ of the other. For if a slave can have a
country in this world, it must be any other in preference to
that in which he is born to live and labor for another; in
which he must lock up the faculties of his nature, contribute
as far as depends on his individual endeavors to the evanishment
of the human race, or entail his own miserable condition
on the endless generations proceeding from him. With the
morals of the people their industry also is destroyed. For in
a warm climate no man will labor for himself who can make
another labor for him. This is so true, that of the proprietors
of slaves a very small proportion indeed are ever seen to
labor. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure
when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in
the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of
God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath?
Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever; that considering
numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the
wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation is among possible
events; that it may become probable by supernatural
interference. The Almighty has no attribute which can take side
with us in such a contest. But it is impossible to be
temperate, and to pursue this subject through the various
considerations of policy, of morals, of history, natural and civil.
We must be contented to hope they will force their way into
every one's mind. I think a change already perceptible, since
the origin of the present revolution. The spirit of the master
is abating, that of the slave rising from the dust, his
condition mollifying, the way I hope preparing, under the
auspices of heaven, for a total emancipation, and that this is
disposed, in the order of events, to be with the consent of the
masters, rather than by their extirpation.