An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans. Lydia Maria Child
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to patronize the system they have considered so abominable, and often become proverbial for their severity. I have not the least doubt of the fact; for slavery contaminates all that comes within its influence. It would be very absurd to imagine that the inhabitants of one State are worse than the inhabitants of another, unless some peculiar circumstances, of universal influence, tend to make them so. Human nature is every where the same; but developed differently, by different incitements and temptations. It is the business of wise legislation to discover what influences are most productive of good, and the least conducive to evil. If we were educated at the South, we should no doubt vindicate slavery, and inherit as a birthright all the evils it engrafts upon the character. If they lived on our rocky soil, and under our inclement skies, their shrewdness would sometimes border upon knavery, and their frugality sometimes degenerate into parsimony. We both have our virtues and our faults, induced by the influences under which we live, and, of course, totally different in their character. Our defects are bad enough; but they cannot, like slavery, affect the destiny and rights of millions.
All this mutual recrimination about horse-jockeys, gamblers, tin-pedlers, and venders of wooden-nutmegs, is quite unworthy of a great nation. Instead of calmly examining this important subject on the plain grounds of justice and humanity, we allow it to degenerate into a mere question of sectional pride and vanity. [Pardon the Americanism, would we had less use for the word!] It is the system, not the men, on which we ought to bestow the full measure of abhorrence. If we were willing to forget ourselves, and could like true republicans, prefer the common good to all other considerations, there would not be a slave in the United States, at the end of half a century.
The arguments in support of slavery are all hollow and deceptive, though frequently very specious. No one thinks of finding a foundation for the system in the principles of truth and justice; and the unavoidable result is, that even in policy it is unsound. The monstrous fabric rests on the mere appearance of present expediency; while, in fact, all its tendencies, individual and national, present and remote, are highly injurious to the true interests of the country. The slave-owner will not believe this. The stronger the evidence against his favorite theories, the more strenuously he defends them. It has been wisely said, "Honesty is the best policy; but policy without honesty never finds that out."
I hope none will be so literal as to suppose I intend to say that no planter can be honest, in the common acceptation of that term. I simply mean that all who ground their arguments in policy, and not in duty and plain truth, are really blind to the highest and best interests of man.
Among other apologies for slavery, it has been asserted that the Bible does not forbid it. Neither does it forbid the counterfeiting of a bank-bill. It is the spirit of the Holy Word, not its particular expressions, which must be a rule for our conduct. How can slavery be reconciled with the maxim, "Do unto others, as ye would that others should do unto you?" Does not the command, "Thou shalt not steal," prohibit kidnapping? And how does whipping men to death agree with the injunction, "Thou shalt do no murder?" Are we not told "to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?" It was a Jewish law that he who stole a man, or sold him, or he in whose hands the stolen man was found, should suffer death; and he in whose house a fugitive slave sought an asylum was forbidden to give him up to his master. Modern slavery is so unlike Hebrew servitude, and its regulations are so diametrically opposed to the rules of the Gospel, which came to bring deliverance to the captive, that it is idle to dwell upon this point. The advocates of this system seek for arguments in the history of every age and nation; but the fact is, negro-slavery is totally different from any other form of bondage that ever existed; and if it were not so, are we to copy the evils of bad governments and benighted ages?
The difficulty of subduing slavery, on account of the great number of interests which become united in it, and the prodigious strength of the selfish passions enlisted in its support, is by no means its least alarming feature. This Hydra has ten thousand heads, every one of which will bite or growl, when the broad daylight of truth lays open the secrets of its hideous den.
I shall perhaps be asked why I have said so much about the slave-trade, since it was long ago abolished in this country? There are several good reasons for it. In the first place, it is a part of the system; for if there were no slaves, there could be no slave-trade; and while there are slaves, the slave-trade will continue. In the next place, the trade is still briskly carried on in Africa, and slaves are smuggled into these States through the Spanish colonies. In the third place, a very extensive internal slave-trade is carried on in this country. The breeding of negro-cattle for the foreign markets, (of Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas, and Missouri,) is a very lucrative branch of business. Whole coffles of them, chained and manacled, are driven through our Capital on their way to auction. Foreigners, particularly those who come here with enthusiastic ideas of American freedom, are amazed and disgusted at the sight.[G] A troop of slaves once passed through Washington on the fourth of July, while drums were beating, and standards flying. One of the captive negroes raised his hand, loaded with irons, and waving it toward the starry flag, sung with a smile of bitter irony, "Hail Columbia! happy land!"
[G] See the second volume of Stuart's "Three years in North America." Instead of being angry at such truths, it would be wise to profit by them.
In the summer of 1822, a coffle of slaves, driven through Kentucky, was met by the Rev. James H. Dickey, just before it entered Paris. He describes it thus: "About forty black men were chained together; each of them was hand-cuffed, and they were arranged rank and file. A chain, perhaps forty feet long, was stretched between the two ranks, to which short chains were joined, connected with the hand-cuffs. Behind them were about thirty women, tied hand to hand. Every countenance wore a solemn sadness; and the dismal silence of despair was only broken by the sound of two violins. Yes—as if to add insult to injury, the foremost couple were furnished with a violin a-piece; the second couple were ornamented with cockades; while near the centre our national standard was carried by hands literally in chains. I may have mistaken some of the punctilios of the arrangement, for my very soul was sick. My landlady was sister to the man who owned the drove; and from her I learned that he had, a few days previous, bought a negro-woman, who refused to go with him. A blow on the side of her head with the butt of his whip, soon brought her to the ground; he then tied her, and carried her off. Besides those I saw, about thirty negroes, destined for the New-Orleans market, were shut up in the Paris jail, for safe-keeping."
But Washington is the great emporium of the internal slave-trade! The United States jail is a perfect storehouse for slave merchants; and some of the taverns may be seen so crowded with negro captives that they have scarcely room to stretch themselves on the floor to sleep. Judge Morrel, in his charge to the grand jury at Washington, in 1816, earnestly called their attention to this subject. He said, "the frequency with which the streets of the city had been crowded with manacled captives, sometimes even on the Sabbath, could not fail to shock the feelings of all humane persons; that it was repugnant to the spirit of our political institutions, and the rights of man; and he believed it was calculated to impair the public morals, by familiarizing scenes of cruelty to the minds of youth."
A free man of color is in constant danger of being seized and carried off by these slave-dealers. Mr. Cooper, a Representative in Congress from Delaware, told Dr. Torrey, of Philadelphia, that he was often afraid to send his servants out in the evening, lest they should be encountered by kidnappers. Wherever these notorious slave-jockeys appear in our Southern States, the free people of color hide themselves, as they are obliged to do on the coast of Africa.
The following is the testimony of Dr. Torrey, of Philadelphia, published in 1817:
"To enumerate all the horrid and aggravating instances of man-stealing, which are known to have occurred in the State of Delaware, within the recollection of many of the citizens of that State, would require a volume. In many cases, whole families of free colored people have been attacked in the night, beaten nearly to death with clubs, gagged and bound, and dragged into distant and hopeless captivity,