The Liberator
— is published —
Every Friday Morning,
— at the —
Anti-Slavery Office, 21 Cornhill.
Robert F. Wallcut, General Agent.
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- ☞The following gentlemen constitute the Financial Committee, but are not responsible for any of the debts of the paper, viz:—Francis Jackson, Ellis Gray Loring, Edmund Quincy, Samuel Philbrick, and Wendell Phillips.
No Union With Slaveholders.
The United States Constitution is ‘a covenant with death, and an agreement with hell.’
☞‘The free States are the guardians and essential supports of slavery. We are the jailers and constables of the institution…. There is some excuse for communities, when, under a generous impulse, they espouse the cause of the oppressed in other States, and by force restore their rights; but they are without excuse in aiding other States in binding on men an unrighteous yoke. On this subject, our fathers, in framing the Constitution, swerved from the right. We their children, at the end of half a century, see the path of duty more clearly than they, and must walk in it. To this point the public mind has long been tending, and the time has come for looking at it fully, dispassionately, and with manly and Christian resolution…. No blessing of this Union can be a compensation for taking part in the enslaving of our fellow-creatures; nor ought this bond to be perpetuated, if experience shall demonstrate that it can only continue through our participation in wrong doing. To this conviction the free States are tending.’—William Ellery Channing.
Refuge of Oppression.
With the exception of a few journals indissolubly wedded to the ultraist parties North and South, the public press of the country has responded to Mr. Buchanan’s letter to Professor Silliman and his friends in a manner which must be in the highest degree gratifying to the supporters of the administration. Even among those who profess but a lukewarm sympathy with the democracy, the calm and practical suggestions, the cogent logic, and the manly candor of the President’s letter have extorted universal approbation. Throughout the country, it has been a remarkable success—a palpable hit.
Of course, Professor Silliman and his colleagues do not look to us for advice as to their conduct either in public or private life. But they may perhaps be induced, as men of some sense, to bestow a little reflection on the judgment which the bulk of the American public are forming on the step which has brought them so prominently into public view.—Some of them are men of considerable repute in their particular walk in life—whether that walk be science, religion, or abstract philosophy. Professor Silliman himself has filled a large place in American scientific records, and may be properly regarded as the patriarch of at least one branch of science.—Hitherto, his name has been mentioned with invariable respect. During his long life he has, up to this time, done no act that has tarnished his reputation. It was reserved for him now, it seems, at the close of a most respectable career, to step out of his usual path in order to become the tool of designing politicians, and to tarnish by folly the fame he had built up by long years of strenuous and honest toil. Whether the act must be ascribed to the growing feebleness of age, or to the inexperience in politics for which scientific men are remarkable, it is undeniable that it has damaged the Professor’s reputation for judgment and common sense: and no one who respects science can help regretting it.
As to the rank and file of the clergy who subscribed their names to the silly memorial which elicited the President’s reply, they need not be treated with so much consideration. They are old offenders. Deeply imbued with the theocratic spirit of their predecessors, they have never forgiven the politicians for stripping them of their despotic control over the secular as well as the religious concerns of the people; and on every possible opportunity they seek to revenge themselves for the injury by maligning our statesmen, and organizing an opposition to them from the pulpit. We do not believe the country contains a more foolish or more mischievous body of men than the New England clergy. Without dwelling on their morals—of which recent events have led many to form no very high opinion—it may be said roundly that, as a general rule, they are almost invariably wrong whenever they attempt independent thought or action. Their stand-point in life is bad; their standards are false; their logic is incorrect; their aims are puerile or mean; their instruments unworthy. We defy their best friend to find us a single instance in all our history when the New England clergy took an independent course that was not a wrong one. There seems to be a fatality about it.
However, the great law of retribution which regulates all sublunary affairs, is sure to come into play here, and as the calm reasoning of President Buchanan’s letter will satisfy every one that there is no ground whatever for the shrieking that has gone on about ‘bleeding Kansas,’ so the folly of the ministers who stepped out of their pulpits to send him impertinent advice on matters far removed from their knowledge, will only have the effect of putting the people of New England on their guard against the teachings of their clergy, and raising up another barrier against the encroachments of the New England theocracy. These parsons will be punished where they have sinned. And when the time comes that the Protestant clergy of New England have no more influence over their flocks than the Catholic priests of Spain and Mexico have over theirs, they will then remember how they began the work of suicide by indiscreet interference in party politics during the old slavery controversy.
As to the Kansas question, it is obvious that the country had been soothed and calmed by Mr. Buchanan’s letter. It has reassured the public mind, and restored peace and order in the breasts of all who were still within reach of reason. It has satisfied every one that, whatever the Southern fire-eaters may rant, or the Northern abolitionists shriek, the laws of the nation will be carried out, and the right thing be done, at whatever cost. Kansas free, or Kansas slave, all that the bulk of the people care about is that the thing should be done fairly, without fraud, trickery or violence; and Mr. Buchanan’s letter is the best guarantee of that which we have yet had.—New York Herald.
Slavery in Illinois.
Some of the Democrats of Illinois have already commenced advocating the introduction of slavery into that State. The Mattoon Gazette, published in Southern Illinois, urges arguments for the measure as follows:—
‘We are one of those that utterly discredit the idea that the presence of slaves works an injury to the whites, or that the presence of free negroes, enjoying political and social privileges, is at all beneficial. We candidly and firmly believe to-day, that if Illinois were a slave State, the best men of Kentucky, Virginia, Tennessee, and even States further South, would be here as soon as they could remove their families, and the prairies of Illinois would be made to smile as a lovely garden. We have seen the best class of men come to our State, admire it with enthusiasm, but return to their homes because they could not bring their whole families with them.
‘The question comes up squarely to every business man in Illinois: Which would you rather do, make slaves of your family, or provide a comfortable home for some of the enslaved African race? It is a clear case, that when Illinois voted slave labor out of her limits, she voluntarily voted upon the white females of Illinois a life of unmitigated drudgery, unsuited to the tastes and physical capacity of a large majority of them, and drove from our midst a people peculiarly adapted to such services, without benefitting them in the slightest degree. When will the day of practical benevolence arrive, when we shall have done with this eternal empty profession of mock philanthropy, when it will not be called emancipation to offer inducements to the slave-traders of the South to buy the negroes of Missouri and send them South in chain gangs!’
Satanic Democracy.
The following resolution was adopted by the Democratic State Convention of Wisconsin, met at Madison on the 27th ultimo:—
Resolved, That we are unalterably opposed to the extension of the right of suffrage to the negro race, and will never consent that the odious doctrine of negro equality shall find a place upon the statute book of Wisconsin.
Selections.
From the Christian Examiner for September.
Bishop Hopkins on Slavery.
The book, the title of which we have given above, contains thirty-three chapters and a great variety of topics. In this it resembles the work of another Bishop, who wrote a book beginning with the virtues of tar-water, and ending with the Trinity, the omne scibile filling up the interspace. Bishop Hopkins has nothing to say about tar-water, but, with that exception, he discusses nearly as many subjects as Bishop Berkeley. He begins with the Federal Constitution, which he thinks excludes infidels from office, though it declares that ‘no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.’ But he thinks this means that all Christian sects have a right to be tolerated in their worship under the Constitution; but not Hindoos, Chinese, Turks, Mormons, nor even Roman Catholics. ‘I am compelled to conclude,’ says he, ‘that, under the Constitution, no Romanist can have a right to the free enjoyment of his religion, without a serious inconsistency.’ Having thus disposed of infidels, Mormons, and Roman Catholics, he turns aside to indulge in some classical reminiscences, and gives us in Chapter V. an abstract of ‘Cicero de Officiis.—Why this is introduced (unless in order to make use of some of his former labors during his sixteen years of educational occupation) does not distinctly appear. He says that Cicero agrees with the Bible, and therefore is good authority. But then why not take the Bible itself—since most of his readers would be more ready to admit the authority of the Bible than that of Cicero?
Having finished his classical prelections, the Bishop plunges into the question of slavery, and discusses it through six chapters. Slavery he thinks to be perfectly right and lawful, but not at all expedient; excellent for the slaves, but bad for the masters; an institution which ought to be defended against the wicked assaults of Abolitionism, but which also ought to be abolished by an ingenious process discovered by the Bishop himself.
Having thus arranged the question of slavery, he turns to ‘business’; talks about farmers, lawyers, merchants, physicians, editors, and ministers;—praises homoeopathy and defends hydropathy; tells us how to choose a wife; falls foul of strong-minded women, and the Woman’s Rights Party; favors gymnastics and calisthenics; justly opposes saleratus in bread; approves of young ladies learning to read and write, and obtaining a fair knowledge of geography; thinks a school-girl might properly read a book like ‘Goldsmith’s Animated Nature,’ and study botany, and even draw and paint in water-colors. ‘But I should disapprove, decidedly, of her learning oil-painting,’ says he; and thinks she ought not to study Latin and Greek, algebra, geometry, physiology, chemistry, or metaphysics, since these do not ‘qualify the woman to be the companion and helpmate of the man,’—which he regards as her chief mission. The Bishop then gives rules for the wife of an American citizen in the matter of making calls; advises her to keep a visiting-book, ‘arranged either alphabetically, or according to the places of their residence,’ not to stay too long, not to tell any conventional lies, and to get home in time for her husband’s dinner, so as not ‘to run the risk of wasting his time and putting him out of humor, by finding his house out of sorts, and his meals delayed.’ The Bishop then proceeds to prattle about dinner-parties and evening-parties, which he seems to like; but he does not like tableaux vivans, balls, or dances. In this respect he is not singular; for it is a curious fact that those clergymen who defend slavery are always sure to condemn dancing—probably on the old theological principle of tithing mint and forgetting justice, of straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel.
The very miscellaneous character of the book will appear from this hasty description. But our chief business with the Bishop regards his doctrine of slavery. The book, on the whole, we might recommend, as a good-humored and garrulous collection of commonplaces. But his views on slavery deserve a closer examination. They are indeed superficial enough, and belong to that class of heresies which refute themselves. But proceeding from a Bishop of the Episcopal Church, in one of the freest of the Free States, they carry a certain derived weight of authority with them, which makes it proper to devote to them a few pages of criticism. It has recently been our hard duty to follow Dr. Nehemiah Adams on his South-Side excursion, and to wonder at the style of his arguments in defence of slavery. We have also criticised Dr. Lord of Dartmouth in his more elaborate and logical argument on the same side. That even-handed justice which we have meted out to the man of sentimental piety and to the Orthodox dogmatist, we must not deny to the Episcopal Bishop. Since Sentimental Religion, Dogmatic Religion, and Ceremonial Religion have made haste to show themselves inhuman, to take side with the oppressor against the oppressed, to rivet every yoke, and to lay a new weight on the shoulders of Christ’s poor, it becomes us constantly to expose their unchristian mind and heart, and to let in on their speculations a little of the light of the Gospel. A ‘Christian Examiner’ which should not do this duty, what would it be good for in the world?
The Bishop’s opinions and statements concerning slavery may conveniently be arranged under the three heads of Errors, Sophisms, and Inhumanities. His statements are erroneous, his arguments sophistical, and his plans and projects inhuman. Of course, we do not mean to accuse him of deliberate inhumanity or sophistry. He is probably a well-meaning gentleman personally; but his opinions are false, weak, and cruel, as we shall proceed to prove. We war not with him, but with his opinions.
Errors of Statement.
Error 1. The Bishop gives an erroneous definition of slavery. He says (page 125):—‘What is this relation? Simply a perpetual obligation which binds the slave to serve the master for life, and binds the master to govern the slave with justice and with reason; to provide for him in sickness as in health; to instruct him in what is necessary to his moral and spiritual welfare, according to his condition and capacity; to maintain his family in comfort, and to bury him decently when life is ended.’
If this were slavery, our opposition to it would be very much less than now. But this is not that Ameaican slavery which the Bishop is defending.—That is a legal relation defined by the laws, and maintained by the whole power of the State. This may be slavery as it ought to be, according to a Christian view of it; but it is not the actual relation existing in every Southern State. The slave is not merely bound to serve the master for life, but is his property, to be bought and sold, who may therefore be sold at his master’s pleasure from his home, from his wife and children, and sent into a lonely exile. He who merely owes perpetual labor for a fixed recompense is not a slave, but a serf. Nor is the master bound by law, as the Bishop asserts, to govern him with justice, to provide for him, or to instruct him. In many States he is forbidden by law to instruct him. In none is he compelled by law, under any penalty, to provide for him or to teach him. If the slave refuses to labor, the master may kill him; if the master refuses to provide proper food or clothing for the slave, there is no legal help or remedy. What mockery, then, is such a definition of slavery as this!
Error 2. The Bishop asserts (page 131), and the assertion is common, that ‘the free negro, other things being equal, is in a worse condition than the slave, physically and morally—less happy, less healthy, less contented, less secure, less religious.’
This is an easy assertion to make, but a hard one to prove. He says that ‘many who have escaped have returned to their masters, glad to escape from the wretchedness of their freedom.’ So, a few years since, a convict who had escaped from the penitentiary at Jeffersonville, Ia., returned and gave himself up, saying he was happier there than outside. Does this prove imprisonment, ‘other things being equal,’ better than freedom? How many of the fugitives have returned to slavery? Even Bishop Hopkins will not maintain that the majority have returned; and if not, the argument is the other way.
The physical wretchedness of the free negroes is constantly and systematically exaggerated. The writer of this article, having taken some pains to examine into their condition in Boston, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and other places, is satisfied that they are considerably better off as a class than the poorest class of whites. Many of them, in these cities, have accumulated large amounts of property. The colored people in Cincinnati held in 1850, in real estate, property to the amount of $600,000.—Out of 3500 colored people, 200 paid taxes on real estate. In Philadelphia, the free blacks owned, some years since, property to the value of $800,000.—The colored people in New York city and vicinity owned, some years since, about $2,000,000.
But suppose that they should have no property. The slave has none. Suppose their physical comforts inferior to those of the slave, which is not true. Is it nothing to be free? nothing to have a right to one’s self? nothing to be under the protection of the law? nothing to be able to go or stay, to be able to keep your wife and children with you? nothing to be a man, and not a chattel?
Error 3. The Bishop asserts (page 132) that in many respects the slave is better off than the white free laborer at the North. Because, says he, among other reasons, ‘their work is light and regular, as a general rule.’
The majority of the negroes are on the plantations, and the work of these is neither light nor regular. The Northern hired laborer works ten hours a day, from seven to twelve, and from one to six.—The negro often works from sunrise to sunset in summer, with but half an hour for dinner in the field. But even if he worked less than the free laborer, his work would not be light. ‘For what is it,’ says Dr. Channing, ‘which lightens toil? Hope lightens toil, and of hope the slave has none.’ His work is light who works in the hope of bettering his condition.
When a man thus argues that slavery is better than freedom, it is difficult to reply to him, because the only suitable reply would be to give him an opportunity of trying it. We should put Dr. Nehemiah Adams, President Lord, and Bishop Hopkins on a cotton plantation in Mississippi, under an overseer of the usual sort. Let them each have his three pounds of bacon and peck of corn a week, for working before the lash from morning twilight to dewy eve, without hope of anything better to the end of their days. Then, after a few months of this experience, we would replace them in their snug easy-chairs and their quiet libraries, and ask them their candid opinion of the relative satisfactions of slavery and freedom. We think they would hardly continue to prefer the condition of the slave to that of the free laborer, who returns after his day’s work to his own home, his own wife and children, who deposits his equal ballot by the side of the millionaire, whose children go to the best schools, provided by the public, who is protected by equal laws, is an equal member of lyceums, clubs, and literary societies, and at church is one of Christ’s people equal with any other.
The Bishop asserts as an unquestionable fact, that the slaves are the happiest class of laborers in the world, and the most perfectly contented with their condition. ‘The fact,’ says he, ‘remains undeniable, that the slaves at the South are, on the whole, the happiest class of laborers in the world, and the most perfectly contented with their own condition.’ We quote this statement to show the quality of the Bishop’s information. There is no doubt that he believes what he says; and he believes it because he obtains this information from slaveholders or their friends. Only thus could he have been led to call this statement ‘an undeniable one.’ He has never taken the pains to read any other testimony, or if he has seen it, it has been only to deny and disbelieve it. The fact that a fugitive slave law is necessary to keep these contented and happy slaves from running away, that bloodhounds are advertised in the Southern newspapers for the purpose of pursuing fugitives, that from time to time bloody rebellions and insurrections take place among them, that the South lives in such dread of these insurrections that even in Maryland a free negro has lately been sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment in the penitentiary for having in his possession a copy of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin,’ that a bookseller has been driven from Mobile for having on his shelves a copy of the ‘Life of Douglas,’ that men have been repeatedly driven from the Southern States for expressing anti-slavery opinions, that Mr. Underwood was last year expelled from Virginia for supporting Fremont—such notorious facts as these have never suggested to the mind of the Bishop any doubt as to the entire happiness and contentment of the slave population. But suppose it were necessary to have a fugitive law, enforced by the whole power of the United States, to prevent free laborers in Massachusetts from escaping from their work; suppose that packs of hounds were kept in every New England neighborhood with which to pursue fugitive apprentices and journeymen; suppose we were in the habit of lynching any man who spoke or wrote against our system of hired labor, and accusing him of inciting our hired men to cut our throats—would such a state of things argue perfect content and happiness among our laboring population?
And why should slaves be happy? How can slaves be happy? Does it make a man happy to work all his life, from childhood to old age, for a peck of corn and three pounds of pork a week, with the privilege of raising vegetables by working on Sunday—to be exposed to be sold at any moment, and separated from his family and friends—and to have his wife and children taken from him whenever it suits the convenience of his owner? Does human happiness consist, according to our Bishop, in being kept in ignorance, being deprived of all the means of progress and improvement, and having every hope and aspiration of the soul trampled down under the strong hand of power? Was it extreme contentment and happiness which induced Brown to be nailed up in a box in order to escape from slavery, the slave of Mr. Gaines to kill her child rather than to have it carried back to slavery, Ellen Crafts to disguise herself in man’s clothes in order to reach a land of freedom, and the thousands who escape by the Underground Railroad to encounter all the risks of whip and rifle in order to get away from the Bishop’s paradise of content and joy? Are such facts as these the ground of the Bishop’s assertion, that it is ‘undeniable’ that the slaves are the happiest class of laborers in the world, and the most perfectly contented with their condition?
Error 4. Bishop Hopkins maintains that slavery has been abolished by worldly causes, and without any suspicion that the institution in itself involved any violation of religion or morality. ‘It was not until the latter part of the eighteenth century that a doubt was expressed, on either side of the Atlantic, in relation to the perfect consistency of such slavery with the precepts of the Gospel.’
The following extracts from Church Fathers and historians will show whether this statement is correct or erroneous.
‘Christianity,’ says Neander (Torrey’s Transl., vol. 1, page 268,) ‘brought about that change in the consciousness of humanity, from which a dissolution, of this whole relation, though it could not be immediately effected, yet, by virtue of the consequences resulting from that change, must eventually take place.’
The principles which produced this change were identical with those ‘glittering generalities’ announced in the Declaration of Independence. Thus Tertullian says: ‘We recognize that the world is one great republic; we are children of one mother.’
Minucius Felix: ‘All men are born equal, and virtue is the only distinction.’
Clemens Alex.: ‘Take off your ornaments, and what difference between you and your slaves, except that they are stronger and more healthy?’
Ambrose: ‘Nature is our common mother; we are all brothers.’
St. Jerome: ‘Rich and poor, bond and free, are all equal.’ And in another place he says: ‘When God says to Noah, “Your fear shall be on all animals,” he excepts man, who is not subjected to this law of terror.’
These broad principles being thus laid down, it followed that all the Christian Fathers recommended and praised the affranchisement of slaves. Thus Gregory the Great says (Decret. Grat., p. 11): ‘It is a good and salutary thing, when those who by nature were created free, and whom the laws of men have reduced to slavery, are, by the benefaction of manumission, restored to that liberty in which they were born.’
The early Christian writers commemorate the case of Hermas, prefect of the city at Rome, who on Good Friday freed twelve hundred and fifty slaves; and of Melania, a young lady, who freed eight thousand. ‘No Christian perfection,’ they teach, ‘can be attained by those who own slaves.’
St. John Chrysostom preached three sermons on the Epistle to Philemon; not, as is now done, to justify slavery out of it, but to urge masters, by the example of Paul’s request to Onesimus, that they too should free their slaves.
From these extracts, it may be seen that the Bishop errs in asserting that the change in public opinion which causes slavery to be regarded as inconsistent with Christianity, only began at the end of the last century, and was not brought about by the influence of the Bible or of the Church.
(To be concluded.)
From the Providence Journal.
Dr. Wayland Annihilated.
Dr. Wayland is a used-up man. The Mississippi College has resolved upon him. Out of tenderness to our distinguished fellow-citizen—perhaps, under the circumstances, we ought to say our late distinguished fellow-citizen—we have suppressed this fact as long as we could; but it is in all the papers, and it would be only affectation in us to try to keep it from the knowledge of our readers. The following is the sentence of condemnation:
Resolved, That the Trustees of Mississippi College do hereby condemn the teachings of Dr. Wayland in his ‘Moral Science,’ on the subject of African slavery, and that the Faculty of the College be requested to discontinue the use of Wayland’s Moral Science as a text-book.’
Had this terrible resolution been passed at Andover, or Newton, or at the Theological Seminary, it would not have been quite as overwhelming; had Harvard or Yale, Amherst or Brown, rejected him, he might have recovered; but when Mississippi repudiates, there is an end of the matter. The doors of the treasury are not guarded with more jealous fidelity against the holders of State securities, than are the youth of Mississippi College protected from the contaminating influence of the doctrine, that you should do unto others even as you would that others should do unto you.
This measure on the part of an institution of such high reputation as Mississippi College—we are sure that all of our readers have heard of it, and can readily call to mind the illustrious men which it has sent forth in all the departments of life—a College which unites so much sound learning with so much vital piety, and which consecrates both to that patriarchal institution which is defended in the Old Testament almost as much as polygamy or aggressive war, is of the highest importance. It is a step in the right direction. It must be followed up. No man who has at heart the true interests of the South, can have failed to observe that the same objections that have so justly brought upon our unfortunate friend the condemnation of Mississippi, apply with equal force to all the prevailing systems of ethics. The same unsound views, the same insinuations against slavery—not open assaults, but concealed under the specious garb of general propositions upon morality—run through the whole of them. You might almost as safely place before the rising generation of Mississippi, the Declaration of Independence or the Sermon on the Mount, as these pestilent, transcendental theories of moral philosophy, which hardly concede to a man the right to flog his own nigger. It is a lamentable fact, that not a single work upon the subject takes the Mississippi view of public faith, or the Southern view of the relations of the races. Nothing could be more opposed to the policy of Mississippi than the audacious attempts that have been made by these writers—not one of whom, probably, ever owned a nigger—to instil into the youthful minds of that State not only false ideas upon slavery, but equally false ideas upon squaring accounts with a set of English abolitionists and aristocrats. Happily, as yet no bad effect has been produced—not a nigger has been emancipated, not a dollar of principal or interest has been paid—but no one can tell what might have been accomplished if the Trustees of Mississippi College had not interposed the broad shield of their authority against such disorganizing doctrines.
The South will never be really independent of Northern fanaticism till it grows its own philosophers. Mr. Mann, whose eminently practical plans made such an impression upon the Southern Convention, ought to turn his attention to this great want. He is now engaged in getting up a line of steamships, half a dozen or so, of the size of the Great Eastern, to run between Norfolk and Milford Haven, both of which belong to that class of ports ‘that might contain the navies of the whole world,’ but which seldom get within their waters more than half a dozen schooners. Mr. Mann has raised $8,000 in subscriptions, principally of $1.00 each, under an indefinite amount in ‘the smiles of the ladies,’ as he explained in his speech in the Convention. This leaves only $11,992,000 to be subscribed, and as soon as that trifling amount is reached, the ships will be put under contract in some of the chief ship-building ports of the South, and the engines and machinery will be made in the Southern work-shops, for this is to be a Southern enterprise, entirely.—The ships will always take the Southern route across the Atlantic, and no Northern passengers or freight will, on any pretence, be received. This reasonable and practicable scheme being thus far on the way, the enterprising projector should next turn his attention to the formation of an exclusively Southern line of teachers and ministers. We have often thought that the preparation of a complete system of ‘Moral Science, South,’ might be entrusted to that eminent man of God, the Rev. Dr. Ross. There are a good many texts of scripture, especially in the New Testament, that need explanation, and no man could explain them, so as to bring them within the true doctrines of slavery, better than he.
Those passages about doing as you would be done by, loving your neighbor as yourself, praying for your enemies, are probably interpolations or mistranslations; at any rate, they are mere glittering generalities, and do not apply to niggers. Indeed, the whole of the New Testament is somewhat radical, and since the attention of our Southern brethren has been directed to the importance of maintaining the laws, it is regarded as an evident innovation upon the good old system that had come down from the prophets and the patriarchs. Sound conservative men in the South will prefer to fall back upon the elder revelation; it answered well enough for four thousand years; and there are passages in it, especially in the divine command to the Israelites to enslave the heathen, and in the lives of David and Solomon, that are full of beautiful instruction, such as you will find no where in the gospels. We understand that Dr. Ross is about to write a defence of the Supreme Court of Judea, which has for nearly two thousand years been assailed by Black Republicans and other fanatics, and that he will show that the opinion of Chief Justice Pilate was in strict accordance with the Roman Constitution and the Jewish law; and the objection to it can only be sustained by reference to a ‘higher law,’ which is, of course, fatal to all order and society. When this is done, we shall have a text book that can safely be put into the hands of the young men of the South; and till then, it will be quite as well to omit the study of moral philosophy in the Southern colleges.
Rev. John Angel James’s Opinion of the Dred Scott Decision.
The Independent of the 11th publishes the following letter from the well-known English preacher and author, Rev. John Angel James, dated Birmingham, May 9th, 1857, to his friend, the Rev. W. Patton, D.D., of New York:
‘The decision of your Supreme Court fills us with astonishment, horror and indignation. It is, indeed, the most terrible outrage upon humanity that has been perpetrated for ages, and will do more to lower the moral character of your country than even the present system of slavery. All Europe and the whole civilized world will blush for you. It is the first time, that I know of, when a whole race was put without the pale of social life on account of the color of their skin. Will your country submit to it? Can it be conceived that the descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers will bow to so horrible a rebellion against the precepts of Christianity and the dictates of reason?
‘My dear brother, what are the Eastern States about, that they do not rise en masse against this dictum of a few men upon the bench? However, there is one hope. It is so bad, and shows so clearly the advance of the slaveocracy in your country, that it must help on, eventually, the cause of abolition. The American Union of the states appears to me to be becoming an idol, before which your people are willing to make the most costly sacrifices of moral principles. Anything so that the Union be preserved. If it is attempted to be preserved in this way, God, with one of the thunder-bolts of His vengeance, will by-and-by shiver it to pieces.
‘I read with admiration Cheever’s eloquent papers in the Independent. Oh, he is a noble champion, not only for the rights of the negro, but for the honor of your country!’
Giddings on Compensated Emancipation.
Joshua R. Giddings, in the Ashtabula (O.) Sentinel, thus expresses his sentiments in relation to the project for abolishing slavery by compensating the slaveholders for their chattels:—
We have felt no disposition to throw obstacles in the way of any class of men seeking to do good. The formation of this Society is now a matter of history, and its success or failure will soon become a fact, and we are willing to leave the result for time to disclose. But as political journalists, we may state some of the difficulties which we apprehend will never be surmounted:
We do not believe the Constitution of the United States will be so amended as to authorize Congress to appropriate money for this extensive purchase of slaves.
Secondly, The slaveholders and slave States will never sell their slaves until constrained to do so by actual necessity.
Thirdly, The people of the free States, in our opinion, will never acknowledge the right of any class of men to hold God’s image in degrading servitude, or to sell or buy immortal beings. Nor will they willingly consent to pay their money to men who deserve the halter far more than a pecuniary compensation for their crimes. Nor have the corruption and tyranny of the Slave Power in Kansas, or in Congress, or in the Executive or Judicial departments of Government, tended to conciliate the people of the free States.
This redemption of captives from slavery was practised in the darker ages; but all civilized nations abandoned it as barbarous and heathenish as early as the sixteenth century. The Turks, being a semi-barbarous people, continued to seize and enslave Christians, under pretence of doing so in order to convert them to Mahometanism; but would consent to their ransom precisely as our slaveholders now do, by the payment of money. The Barbary States, from their local position, had great advantages for seizing and enslaving Christians.
In 1270, Philip the Bold, with a combined force of English and French, attacked Tunis with fire and sword, and released all the slaves. This was right and just. They refused to pay $325 per slave for their redemption, as it is now proposed to pay our slaveholders, who are far more worthy of the sword and bayonet than the slaveholders of Tunis were.
In the latter part of the last century, the Algerines seized and enslaved the citizens of the United States. Many friends were desirous of redeeming their relations held in Algerine slavery. Old men will recollect the time when they were called on for donations to redeem native-born Americans from servitude in Algiers, precisely as Mr. Burritt now calls on the free States to contribute for the redemption of Southern slaves from a slavery worse than that of Algiers.
But the American Government denied that the Algerines had any right whatever to those slaves. We proclaimed them pirates. The civilized world pronounced them pirates, enemies of mankind, and worthy of death. Before God and our country, we declare them to have been less guilty than the slaveholders of the United States now are, inasmuch as they were more ignorant. Our Government sent a navy to Algiers, and the slaveholders of that Government were put to the sword; they were butchered for their insolent piracies, and the slaves were released. This was just and right. It was manly—becoming an enlightened people. Have the sons of freedom in the Northern States now become so degenerate, so destitute of manly courage and self-respect, as to consent to be made tributaries to the petty despots of the South?
We have ourselves paid money to redeem Southern slaves until we have become disgusted with the practice, and prefer that our future donations shall be made in powder and ball, delivered to the slaves, to be used as they may deem proper. G.
From the Anti-Slavery Standard.
Gerrit Smith Among His New Friends.
It is instructive to observe the altered tone in which, since the ‘Compensated Emancipation’ Convention at Cleveland, a certain class of journals are accustomed to speak of Gerrit Smith. While they regarded him as an uncompromising Abolitionist, they could scarcely mention his name without coupling it with some epithet of disparagement. That he was a good man, they pretended not to doubt; but they thought him singularly deficient in the high qualities of statesmanship—in short, little better than a downright fanatic and reckless agitator. Since his appearance at Cleveland as a champion of the Compensation scheme, they have suddenly discovered that he is as profoundly wise as he is confessedly eloquent—in short, as different from the unreasoning, impracticable and fanatical Abolitionists as gold is from tin. Their delight in praising him is matched only by the pleasure they evidently feel in denouncing some of his old friends, who cannot follow him in the support of the Compensation plan. The Ravenna (O.) Democrat, whose editor, though a Republican, is an inveterate hater of genuine Abolitionism, distributes its praise and its censure in a manner which we must regard as peculiarly edifying:—
‘By what we see reported in the Cleveland Herald, and by what we hear from private sources, we conclude the Hon. Gerrit Smith embraced the opportunity offered him in the ‘Compensated Emancipation’ Convention at Cleveland to shake off from him the ultra and damaging leeches which have so long hung upon him.
‘He was assailed in the Convention by those whom his bounty has fed, his assailants speaking with much bitterness and coarseness against their kind patron, who has so long generously pensioned them upon his vast wealth. One of them, it is said, ‘made a long speech denunciatory of the principles of the Convention, and taxing Gerrit Smith with inconsistency,’ &c., &c.
‘Mr. Smith bore all this with his accustomed magnanimity and forbearance, but took occasion to indicate that henceforth his line of action lay in a different direction, and that he should cease to be complicated with the movements of men of such a spirit.
‘For instance, in alluding to his assailants on the floor of the Convention (a black man, Watkins, and a white man, Pryne), he said he knew not why he was selected to answer them, unless it was because he formerly acted with them no longer—thus significantly intimating that he acted with them no longer.
‘And again, he said: ‘The speakers [his assailants] had been associates with him in anti-slavery movements up to this point, where, unfortunately, their paths diverged.’ A pretty distinct shaking off of the noisy and clamorous pretenders who have gained all the consequence they enjoy under the guise of reflecting his views. But great injustice and injury, we are satisfied, has been done to Mr. Smith by supposing that such irresponsible declaimers reflected his true sentiments; and Mr. Smith very properly, and very much to the gratification of his old admirers, has taken the first convenient opportunity to disabuse the public mind, and to place himself right in regard to those who have been falsely sailing under his flag, thus gaining a consideration which their own merits never would have given them.’
The Cleveland Herald, another Republican paper of the compromising sort, while complimenting Mr. Smith, thus heaps abuse upon the men who had the courage to oppose his doctrine of compensation:
‘As we expected, the entire afternoon was consumed in frothy, incoherent harangues by a couple of demagogues, in which not a single reason was adduced why the system of ‘Compensated Emancipation’ was wrong. The first speaker—a colored brother (Watkins)—was fearful the ears had left him in consequence of his long speech, and the Convention heartily shared in the fear. The second speaker—a white man (Pryne)—inflicted a tedious, inflammatory and abusive speech on the Convention, of which the only tangible idea we could discover was, that the time for ‘retribution’ had come, and that, instead of money, the slaveholder should be presented with a musket-ball and the bowie-knife. The selfish character of the abolition speakers was shown in the fact that, although it was well known the large audience assembled were drawn together with the expectation of hearing Gerrit Smith, yet they persisted in forcing their nauseating harangues on their unwilling hearers. The colored speaker (Monroe) who followed, repudiated with scorn and contempt the abolition professions of friendship for the slave, and exposed their selfishness and duplicity. The Convention did well in promptly repudiating the principles of the ultra abolition speakers, and would have done still better had it refused them the chance of wasting so much precious time.’
The abuse of these journals is far more endurable than their praise. Mr. Smith has certainly got the worst end of the load. If he had gone to Cleveland as the champion of uncompromising Abolitionism, he would have been in no danger of winning panegyric from such sources. It is the step downward that commands the admiration of political compromisers and tricksters.
☞The citizens of Guyandotte, Yirginia, have held a meeting, and, ‘full of sound and fury,’ have resolved that Eli Thayer’s scheme of colonizing Virginia with enterprising white laborers is inimical to the ‘honor and rights of Virginia,’ and nothing but an abolition concern in disguise. The rampant and chivalric Guyandotians resolved that they would lynch the whole enterprise and all concerned, at the first opportunity. Having thus delivered their sentiments, they resumed their accustomed repose and indolence.
