The Liberator (newspaper)/September 18, 1857/Dr. Wayland Annihilated

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.