Address to the Non-Slaveholders of the South Part 2

"No Southern man can journey (as he had lately done) through the Northern States, and witness the prosperity, the industry, the public spirit which they exhibit--the sedulous cultivation of all those arts by which life is rendered comfortable and respectable--without feelings of deep sadness and shame as he remembers _his own neglected and desolate home_. There, no dwelling is to be seen abandoned--not a farm uncultivated. Every person and every thing performs a part towards the grand result; and the whole land is covered with fertile fields, with manufactories, and ca.n.a.ls, and rail-roads, and edifices, and towns, and cities. We of the South are mistaken in the character of these people, when we think of them only as pedlars in horn flints and bark nutmegs. Their energy and enterprise are directed to all objects great and small within their reach. The number of rail-roads and other modes of expeditious intercommunication knit the whole country into a closely compacted ma.s.s, through which the productions of commerce and of the press, the comforts of life, and the means of knowledge, are universally diffused; while the close intercourse of travel and of business makes all neighbors, and promotes a common interest and a common sympathy. How different the condition of these things in the South! _Here_ the face of the country wears the aspect of premature old age and decay. NO IMPROVEMENT IS SEEN GOING ON, nothing is done for posterity. No man thinks of anything beyond the present moment."

Yet this same Mr. Preston, thus sensitively alive to the superior happiness and prosperity of the free States, declared in the United States Senate, "Let an abolitionist come within the borders of South Carolina, if we can catch him we will try him, and notwithstanding all the interference of all the governments of the earth, including the Federal Government, we will HANG him."[7] In other words, the slaveholders, rather than part with their slaves, are ready to murder, with all the formalities of law, the very men who are laboring to confer on them the envied blessings of the North.

[7] We are well aware that Mr. Preston has denied, what no one a.s.serted, that he had said an abolitionist, if he came into South Carolina, would be executed by Lynch law. He used the words we have quoted. (See "New York Journal of Commerce,"

Jan. 6th, 1838).

IV. FEELINGS OF THE SLAVEHOLDERS TOWARDS THE LABORING CLa.s.sES.

Whenever the great ma.s.s of the laboring population of a country are reduced to beasts of burden, and toil under the lash, "bodily labor," as Chancellor Harper expresses it, must be disreputable, from the mere influence of a.s.sociation. Hence you know _white_ laborers at the South are styled "mean whites." At the North, on the contrary, labor is regarded as the proper and commendable means of acquiring wealth; and our most influential men would in no degree suffer in public estimation, for holding the plough, or even repairing the highways. Hence no poor man is deterred from seeking a livelihood by honest labor from a dread of personal degradation. The different light in which labor is viewed at the North and the South is one cause of the depression of industry in the latter.

Another cause is the ever-wakeful jealousy of your aristocracy. They fear the PEOPLE; they are alarmed at the very idea of power and influence being possessed by any portion of the community not directly interested in slave property. Visions of emanc.i.p.ation, of agrarianism, and of popular resistance to their authority, are ever floating in their distempered and excited imaginations. They know their own weakness, and are afraid you should know it also. Hence it is their policy to keep down the "mean whites." Hence their philippics against the lower cla.s.ses. Hence their constant comparison of the laborers of the North, with their own slaves; and hence, in no small degree, the absence among you of those inst.i.tutions which confer upon the poor that knowledge which is _power_. Do you deem these a.s.sertions uncharitable? Listen to their own declarations:

"We believe the servitude which prevails in the South far preferable to that of the _North_, or in Europe. Slavery will exist in all communities. There is a cla.s.s which may be nominally free, but they will be virtually _Slaves_."--_Mississippian, July 6th, 1838._

"Those who depend on their daily labor for their daily subsistence can never enter into political affairs: they never do, never will, never can."--_B. W. Leigh in Virginia Convention, 1829._

"All society settles down into a cla.s.sification of capitalists and laborers. The former will _own_ the latter, either collectively through the government, or individually in a state of domestic servitude, as exists in the Southern States of this confederacy. If LABORERS ever obtain the political power of a country, it is in fact in a state of REVOLUTION. The capitalists north of Mason and Dixon's line, have precisely the same interest in the labor of the country, that the capitalists of England have in their labor. Hence it is that they must have a strong federal government (!) _to control_ the labor of the nation. But it is precisely the reverse with us. We have already not only a right to the proceeds of our laborers, but we OWN a _cla.s.s of laborers_ themselves. But let me say to gentlemen who represent the great cla.s.s of capitalists in the North--beware that you do not drive us into a separate system; for if you do, as certain as the decrees of heaven, you will be compelled to _appeal to the sword to maintain yourselves at home_. It may not come in your day; but your children's children will be covered with the blood of domestic factions, and will see _a plundering mob contending for power and conquest_."--_Mr. Pickens, of South Carolina, in Congress, 21st Jan., 1836._

So the way to prevent _plundering_ mobs, is to enslave the poor! We shall see presently, how far this expedient has been successful in preventing _murdering_ mobs.

"In the very nature of things there must be cla.s.ses of persons to discharge all the different offices of society, from the highest to the lowest. Some of these offices are regarded as _degrading_, although they must and will be performed. Hence those manifest forms of dependent servitude which produce a sense of superiority in the masters or employers, and of inferiority on the part of the servants. Where these offices are performed by _members of the political community_, a DANGEROUS ELEMENT is obviously introduced into the body politic. Hence the alarming tendency to violate the rights of property by agrarian legislation, which is beginning to be manifest in the older States, where UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE _prevails without_ DOMESTIC SLAVERY.

"In a word, the inst.i.tution of domestic slavery supersedes the _necessity_ of AN ORDER OF n.o.bILITY, AND ALL THE OTHER APPENDAGES OF A HEREDITARY SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT."--_Governor M'Duffie's Message to the South Carolina Legislature, 1836._

"We regard SLAVERY _as the most safe and stable basis for free inst.i.tutions in the world_. It is impossible with us, that the conflict can take place between labor and capital, which makes it so difficult to establish and maintain free inst.i.tutions in all wealthy and highly civilized nations where such inst.i.tutions do not exist. Every plantation is a little community with the master at its head, who concentrates in himself the united interests of capital and labor, _of which he is the common representative_."--(Mr. Calhoun, of South Carolina, in the U. S.

Senate, Jan. 10th, 1840.)

"We of the South have cause now, and shall soon have greater, to congratulate ourselves on the existence of a population among us, which excludes the POPULACE which in effect rules some of our Northern neighbors, and is rapidly gaining strength wherever slavery does not exist--a populace made up of the dregs of Europe, and the most worthless portion of the native population."--(_Richmond Whig_, 1837.)

"Would you do a benefit to the horse or the ox by giving him a cultivated understanding, a fine feeling? So far as the MERE LABORER has the pride, the knowledge, or the aspiration of a freeman, he is unfitted for his situation. If there are sordid, servile, _laborious_ offices to be performed, is it not better that there should be sordid, servile, laborious beings to perform them?

"Odium has been cast upon our legislation, on account of its forbidding the elements of education being communicated to slaves. But in truth what injury is done them by this? _He who works during the day with his hands_, does not read in the intervals of leisure for his amus.e.m.e.nt, or the improvement of his mind, or the exception is so very rare as scarcely to need the being provided for."--(Chancellor Harper of South Carolina.--_Southern Literary Messenger_.)

This same gentleman delivered an oration on the 4th of July, 1840, reviewing the principles of the two great political parties, and although he supported Mr. Van Buren's administration, in consideration of its devotion to the slave interest, he frankly inquires:--

"Is there anything in the principles and opinions of the great DEMOCRATIC RABBLE, as it has been justly called, which should induce _us_ to identify ourselves with that? Here you may find every possible grade and hue of opinion which has ever existed in the country. Here you may find loafer, and loco foco, and agrarian, and all the rabble of the city of New York, the most corrupt and depraved of rabbles, and which controls, in a great degree, the city itself, and through that, as being the commercial metropolis, exercises much influence over the State at large.

"What are the essential principles of democracy as distinguished from republicanism? The first consists in the dogma, so portentous to us, of the natural equality and unalienable right to liberty of every human being. Our allies (!) no doubt, are willing at _present_ to modify the doctrine in _our favor_. But the spirit of democracy at large makes no such exceptions, nor will these (our allies, the Northern democrats) continue to make it, longer than necessity or _interest_ may require. The second consists in the doctrine of the divine right of majorities; a doctrine not less false, and slavish, and absurd, than the ancient doctrine of the divine right of kings."

Mr. Robert Wickliffe, of Kentucky, in a speech published in the _Louisville Advertiser_, in opposition to those who were adverse to the importation of slaves from the States, thus discourseth:

"Gentlemen wanted to drive out the black population, that they may obtain WHITE NEGROES in their place. WHITE NEGROES have this advantage over black negroes, they can be converted into voters; and the men who live upon the sweat of their brow, and pay them but a dependent and scanty subsistence, can, if able to keep ten thousand of them in employment, come up to the polls and change the destiny of the country.

"How improved will be our condition when we have such white negroes as perform the servile labors of Europe, of Old England, and he would add now of _New England_; when our body servants and our cart drivers and our street sweepers are _white negroes_ instead of black. Where will be the independence, the proud spirit, and the chivalry of Kentuckians then?"

Had the gentleman looked across the river, he might have found an answer to his question, in the wealth, power, intelligence and happiness of Ohio.

In reading the foregoing extracts, it is amusing to observe how adroitly the slaveholders avoid all recognition of any other cla.s.ses among them than masters and slaves. Who would suspect from their language, that they were themselves a small minority of the white inhabitants, and that their own "white negroes" could, if united and so disposed, outvote them at the polls? It is worthy of remark that in their denunciations of the _populace_, the _rabble_, _those who work with their hands_, they refer not to complexion, but to condition; not to slaves, but to the poor and laborious of their own color. It is these haughty aristocrats who find in Northern democrats "allies," who in Congress and out of it are zealous in obeying their mandates, and who may justly be termed their "white negroes."

Slavery, although considered by Mr. Calhoun "the most stable basis of free inst.i.tutions in the world," has, as we shall presently show you, in fact, led to grosser outrages in the social compact, to more alarming violations of const.i.tutional liberty, to more bold and reckless a.s.saults upon "free inst.i.tutions," than have ever been even attempted by the much-dreaded agrarianism of the North.

V. STATE OF RELIGION.

The deplorable ignorance and want of industry at the South, together with the disrepute in which honest industry is held, cannot but exercise, in connection with other causes, a most unhappy influence on the morals of the inhabitants. You have among you between two and three millions of slaves, who are kept by law in brutal ignorance, and who, with few exceptions, are virtually heathens.[8]

[8] "From long continued and close observation, we believe that their (the slaves') moral and religious condition is such that they may justly be considered the HEATHEN of this Christian country, and will bear comparison with heathen in any country in the world. The negroes are dest.i.tute of the Gospel, and ever will be under the present state of things."--_Report published by the Synod of South Carolina and Georgia, Dec. 3, 1833._

You have also among you more than 200,000 free negroes, thus described by Mr. Clay:--"Contaminated themselves, they extend their vices to all around them."[9]

[9] _Speech before the American Colonization Society._

If evil communications corrupt good manners, the intimate intercourse of the whites with these people must be depraving: nor can the exercise of despotic power by the masters, their wives and children be otherwise than unfavorable to the benevolent affections.

It is with pain we are compelled to add, that the conduct and avowed sentiments of the Southern clergy in relation to Slavery, necessarily exert an unhappy influence. Most of the clergy are themselves slaveholders, and are thus personally interested in the system, and are consequently bold and active in justifying it from Scripture, representing it as an inst.i.tution enjoying the divine sanction. An English author, in reference to these efforts of your clergy, forcibly remarks: "Whatever may have been the unutterable wickedness of slavery in the West Indies, _there_ it never was baptized in the Redeemer's hallowed name, and its corruptions were not concealed in the garb of religion. That acme of piratical turpitude was reserved for the professed disciples of Jesus in America." And well has John Quincy Adams said, "The spirit of slavery has acquired not only an overruling ascendency, but it has become at once intolerant, proscriptive, and sophistical. It has crept into the philosophical chairs of the schools.

Its cloven hoof has ascended the pulpits of the churches--professors of colleges teach it as a lesson of morals--ministers of the Gospel seek and profess to find sanctions for it in the Word of G.o.d."

Your ministers live in the midst of slavery, and they _know_ that the system on which they bestow their benedictions, is, in the language of Wilberforce, "a system of the grossest injustice, of the most heathenish irreligion and immorality; of the most unprecedented degradation and unrelenting cruelty." Surely, we have reason to fear that the denunciation of Scripture against false prophets of old, will be accomplished against the Southern clergy, "Because they ministered unto them before their idols, and caused the House of Israel to fall into iniquity, therefore have I lifted up mine hand against them, saith the Lord G.o.d, and they shall bear their iniquity."--_Ezek_. 44: 12.

Under such ministrations it cannot be expected that Christian zeal and benevolence will take deep root and bear very abundant fruit. This is a subject on which few statistics can be obtained. We have no means of ascertaining the number of churches and ministers throughout the United States of the various denominations. Some opinion, however, may be formed of the religious character of a people, by their efforts for the moral improvement of the community. In the United States there are numerous voluntary a.s.sociations for religious and benevolent purposes, receiving large contributions and exercising a wide moral influence.

Now, of all the large benevolent societies professing to promote the welfare of the whole country, and asking and receiving contributions from all parts of it, we recollect but one that had its origin in the slave region, and the business of which is transacted in it, and that is the AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY. Of the real object and practical tendency of this Society it is unnecessary to speak--you understand them.

In the 10th Report of the American Sunday School Union [p. 50] is a table showing the number of Sunday School scholars in each State for the year 1834. From this table we learn that

There were in the free States 504,835 scholars.

" " slave " 82,532 "

The single State of New York had 161,768 "

about twice as many as in the thirteen slave States!

And is it possible that the literary and religious dest.i.tution you are suffering, together with the vicious habits of your colored population, should have no effect on the moral character of the whites?

We entreat your patient and dispa.s.sionate attention to the remarks and facts we are about to submit to you on the next subject of inquiry.

VI. STATE OF MORALS.

Christianity, by controlling the malignant pa.s.sions of our nature, and exciting its benevolent affections, gives a sacredness to the rights of others, and especially does it guard human life. But where her blessed influence is withdrawn, or greatly impaired, the pa.s.sions resume their sway, and violence and cruelty become the characteristics of every community in which the civil authority is too feeble to afford protection.