Part 4

The subject of slavery, in this view of right and wrong, is seen in the very light of heaven. And you, Mr. Moderator, know that, if the view I have presented be true, I have got you. (Great laughter.)

Dr. R. touched the Moderator on the shoulder, and said, Yes, if--it is a long if; for it is this:--if there is a God, he is not Jupiter, bowing to the Fates, but God, the sovereign over the universe he has created, in which he makes right, by making law to be known and obeyed by angels and men, in their varied conditions.

He gave Adam that command,--sublime in its simplicity, and intended to vindicate the principle I am affirming,--that there is no right and wrong in the nature of things. There was no right or wrong, per se, in eating or willing to eat of that tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

But God made the law,--Thou shall not eat of that tree. As if he had said,--I seek to test the submission of your will, freely, to my will. And, that your test may be perfect, I will let your temptation be nothing more than your natural desire for that fruit. Adam sinned. What was the sin?

Adam said, in heart, MY WILL, not thine, SHALL BE. That was the sin,--the simple transgression of God's law, when there was neither sin nor evil in the thing which God forbade to be done.

Man fell and was cursed. The law of the control of the superior over the inferior is now to begin, and is to go on in the depraved conditions of the fallen and cursed race. And, FIRST, God said to the woman, "Thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." There, in that law, is the beginning of government ordained of God. There is the beginning of the rule of the superior over the inferior, bound to obey. There, in the family of Adam, is the germ of the rule in the tribe,--the state. Adam, in his right, from God, to rule over his wife and his children, had all the authority afterwards expanded in the patriarch and the king. This simple, beautiful fact, there, on the first leaf of the Bible, solves the problem, whence and how has man right to rule over man. In that great fact God gives his denial to the idea that government over man is the result of a social compact, in which each individual man living in a state of natural liberty, yielded some of that liberty to secure the greater good of government. Such a thing never was; such a thing never could have been. Government was ordained and established before the first child was born:--"HE SHALL RULE OVER THEE." Cain and Abel were born in a state as perfect as the empire of Britain or the rule of these United States. All that Blackstone, and Paley, and Hobbs, or anybody else, says about the social compact, is flatly and fully denied and upset by the Bible, history, and common sense. Let any New York lawyer--or even a Philadelphia lawyer--deny this if he dares. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness never were the inalienable right of the individual man.

His self-control, in all these particulars, from the beginning, was subordinate to the good of the family,--the empire. The command to Noah was,--"Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed." (Gen. ix. 6.)

This command to shed blood was, and is, in perfect harmony with the law,--"Thou shalt not kill." There is nothing right or wrong in the taking of life, per se, or in itself considered. It may or it may not be a natural good or evil. As a general fact, the taking of life is a natural evil. Hence, "Thou shalt not kill" is the general rule, to preserve the good there is in life. To take life under the forbidden conditions is sin, simply because God forbids it under those conditions. The sin is not in taking life, but in transgressing God's law.

But sometimes the taking of life will secure a greater good. God, then, commands that life be taken. Not to take life, under the commanded conditions, is sin,--solely because God then commands it.

This power over life, for the good of the one great family of man, God delegated to Noah, and through him to the tribe, the clan, the kingdom, the empire, the democracy, the republic, as they may be governed by chief, king, emperor, parliament, or congress. Had Ham killed Shem, Noah would have commanded Japheth to slay him. So much for the origin of the power over life: now for the power over liberty.

The right to take life included the right over liberty. But God intended the rule of the superior over the inferior, in relations of service, should exemplify human depravity, his curse and his overruling blessing.

The rule and the subordination which is essential to the existence of the family, God made commensurate with mankind; for mankind is only the congeries of families. When Ham, in his antediluvian recklessness, laughed at his father, God took occasion to give to the world the rule of the superior over the inferior. He cursed him. He cursed him because he left him unblessed. The withholding of the father's blessing, in the Bible, was curse. Hence Abraham prayed God, when Isaac was blessed, that Ishmael might not be passed by. Hence Esau prayed his father, when Jacob was blessed, that he might not be left untouched by his holy hands. Ham was cursed to render service, forever, to Shem and Japheth. The special curse on Canaan made the general curse on Ham conspicuous, historic, and explanatory, simply because his descendants were to be brought under the control of God's peculiar people. Shem was blessed to rule over Ham. Japheth was blessed to rule over both. God sent Ham to Africa, Shem to Asia, Japheth to Europe. Mr. Moderator, you have read Guyot's "Earth and Man." That admirable book is a commentary upon this part of Genesis. It is the philosophy of geography. And it is the philosophy of the rule of the higher races over the inferior, written on the very face of the earth. He tells you why the continents are shaped as they are shaped; why the mountains stand where they stand; why the rivers run where they run; why the currents of the sea and the air flow as they flow. And he tells you that the earth south of the Equator makes the inferior man. That the oceanic climate makes the inferior man in the Pacific Islands. That South America makes the inferior man. That the solid, unindented Southern Africa makes the inferior man. That the huge, heavy, massive, magnificent Asia makes the huge, heavy, massive, magnificent man. That Europe, indented by the sea on every side, with its varied scenery, and climate, and Northern influences, makes the varied intellect, the versatile power and life and action, of the master-man of the world. And it is so. Africa, with here and there an exception, has never produced men to compare with the men of Asia. For six thousand years, save the unintelligible stones of Egypt, she has had no history. Asia has had her great men and her name. But Europe has ever shown, and now, her nobler men and higher destiny. Japheth has now come to North America, to give us his past greatness and his transcendent glory. (Applause.) And, sir, I thank God our mountains stand where they stand; and that our rivers run where they run. Thank God they run not across longitudes, but across latitudes, from north to south. If they crossed longitudes, we might fear for the Union. But I hail the Union,--made by God, strong as the strength of our hills, and ever to live and expand,--like the flow and swell of the current of our streams. (Applause.)

These two theories of Right and Wrong,--these two ideas of human liberty,--the right, in the nature of things, or the right as made by God,--the liberty of the individual man, of Atheism, of Red Republicanism, of the devil,--or the liberty of man, in the family, in the State, the liberty from God,--these two theories now make the conflict of the world. This anti-slavery battle is only part of the great struggle: God will be victorious,--and we, in his might.

I now come to particular illustrations of the world-wide law that service shall be rendered by the inferior to the superior. The relations in which such service obtains are very many. Some of them are these:--husband and wife; parent and child; teacher and scholar; commander and soldier,--sailor; master and apprentice; master and hireling; master and slave. Now, sir, all these relations are ordained of God. They are all directly commanded, or they are the irresistible law of his providence, in conditions which must come up in the progress of depraved nature. The relations themselves are all good in certain conditions. And there may be no more of evil in the lowest than in the highest. And there may be in the lowest, as really as in the highest, the fulfilment of the commandment to love thy neighbor as thyself, and of doing unto him whatsoever thou wouldst have him to do unto thee.

Why, sir, the wife everywhere, except where Christianity has given her elevation, is the slave. And, sir, I say, without fear of saying too strongly, that for every sigh, every groan, every tear, every agony of stripe or death, which has gone up to God from the relation of master and slave, there have been more sighs, more groans, more tears, and more agony in the rule of the husband over the wife. Sir, I have admitted, and do again admit, without qualification, that every fact in Uncle Tom's Cabin has occurred in the South. But, in reply, I say deliberately, what one of your first men told me, that he who will make the horrid examination will discover in New York City, in any number of years past, more cruelty from husband to wife, parent to child, than in all the South from master to slave in the same time. I dare the investigation. And you may extend it further, if you choose,--to all the results of honor and purity. I fear nothing on this subject. I stand on rock,--the Bible,--and therefore, just before I bring the Bible, to which all I have said is introductory, I will run a parallel between the relation of master and slave and that of husband and wife. I will say nothing of the grinding oppression of capital upon labor, in the power of the master over the hireling--the crushed peasant--the chain-harnessed coal-pit woman, a thousand feet under ground, working in darkness, her child toiling by her side, and another child not born; I will say nothing of the press-gang which fills the navy of Britain--the conscription which makes the army of France--the terrible floggings--the awful court-martial--the quick sentence--the lightning-shot--the chain, and ball, and every-day lash--the punishment of the soldier, sailor, slave, who had run away. I pass all this by: I will run the parallel between the slave and wife.

Do you say, The slave is held to involuntary service? So is the wife. Her relation to her husband, in the immense majority of cases, is made for her, and not by her. And when she makes it for herself, how often, and how soon, does it become involuntary! How often, and how soon, would she throw off the yoke if she could! O ye wives, I know how superior you are to your husbands in many respects,--not only in personal attraction, (although in that particular, comparison is out of place,) in grace, in refined thought, in passive fortitude, in enduring love, and in a heart to be filled with the spirit of heaven. Oh, I know all this. Nay, I know you may surpass him in his own sphere of boasted prudence and worldly wisdom about dollars and cents. Nevertheless, he has authority, from God, to rule over you. You are under service to him. You are bound to obey him in all things. Your service is very, very, very often involuntary from the first, and, if voluntary at first, becomes hopeless necessity afterwards. I know God has laid upon the husband to love you as Christ loved the church, and in that sublime obligation has placed you in the light and under the shadow of a love infinitely higher, and purer, and holier than all talked about in the romances of chivalry. But the husband may not so love you. He may rule you with the rod of iron. What can you do? Be divorced? God forbids it, save for crime. Will you say that you are free,--that you will go where you please, do as you please? Why, ye dear wives, your husbands may forbid. And listen, you cannot leave New York, nor your palaces, any more than your shanties. No; you cannot leave your parlor, nor your bedchamber, nor your couch, if your husband commands you to stay there! What can you do? Will you run away, with your stick and your bundle? He can advertise you!! What can you do? You can, and I fear some of you do, wish him, from the bottom of your hearts, at the bottom of the Hudson. Or, in your self-will, you will do just as you please. (Great laughter.)

But to proceed:--

Do you say the slave is sold and bought? So is the wife the world over. Everywhere, always, and now as the general fact, however done away or modified by Christianity. The savage buys her. The barbarian buys her. The Turk buys her. The Jew buys her. The Christian buys her,--Greek, Armenian, Nestorian, Roman Catholic, Protestant. The Portuguese, the Spaniard, the Italian, the German, the Russian, the Frenchman, the Englishman, the New England man, the New Yorker,--especially the upper ten,--buy the wife--in many, very many cases. She is seldom bought in the South, and never among the slaves themselves; for they always marry for love. (Continued laughter.) Sir, I say the wife is bought in the highest circles, too often, as really as the slave is bought. Oh, she is not sold and purchased in the public market. But come, sir, with me, and let us take the privilege of spirits out of the body to glide into that gilded saloon, or into that richly comfortable family room, of cabinets, and pictures, and statuary: see the parties, there, to sell and buy that human body and soul, and make her a chattel! See how they sit, and bend towards each other, in earnest colloquy, on sofa of rosewood and satin,--Turkey carpet (how befitting!) under feet, sunlight over head, softened through stained windows: or it is night, and the gas is turned nearly off, and the burners gleam like stars through the shadow from which the whisper is heard, in which that old ugly brute, with gray goatee--how fragrant!--bids one, two, five, ten hundred thousand dollars, and she is knocked off to him,--that beautiful young girl asleep up there, amid flowers, and innocent that she is sold and bought. Sir, that young girl would as soon permit a baboon to embrace her, as that old, ignorant, gross, disgusting wretch to approach her. Ah, has she not been sold and bought for money? But--But what? But, you say, she freely, and without parental authority, accepted him. Then she sold herself for money, and was guilty of that which is nothing better than legal prostitution. I know what I say; you know what I say. Up there in the gallery you know: you nod to one another. Ah! you know the parties. Yes, you say: All true, true, true. (Laughter.)

Now, Mr. Moderator, I will clinch all I have said by nails sure, and fastened from the word of God.

There is King James's English Bible, with its magnificent dedication. I bring the English acknowledged translation. And just one word more to push gently aside--for I am a kind man to those poor, deluded anti-slavery people--their last argument. It is that this English Bible, in those parts which treat of slavery, don't give the ideas which are found in the original Hebrew and Greek. Alas for the common people!--alas for this good old translation! Are its days numbered? No, sir; no, sir. The Unitarian, the Universalist, the Arminian, the Baptist, when pressed by this translation, have tried to find shelter for their false isms by making or asking for a new rendering. And now the anti-slavery men are driving hard at the same thing. (Laughter.) Sir, shall we permit our people everywhere to have their confidence in this noble translation undermined and destroyed by the isms and whims of every or any man in our pulpits? I affirm, whatever be our perfect liberty of examination into God's meaning in all the light of the original languages, that there is a respect due to this received version, and that great caution should be used, lest we teach the people to doubt its true rendering from the original word of God. I protest, sir, against having a Doctor-of-Divinity priest, Hebrew or Greek, to tell the people what God has spoken on the subject of slavery or any other subject. (Laughter.) I would as soon have a Latin priest,--I would as soon have Archbishop Hughes,--I would as soon go to Rome as to Jerusalem or Athens,--I would as soon have the Pope at once in his fallible infallibility,--as ten or twenty, little or big, anti-slavery Doctor-of-Divinity priests, each claiming to give his infallible rendering, however differing from his peer. (Laughter.) I never yet produced this Bible, in its plain unanswerable authority, for the relation of master and slave, but the anti-slavery man ran away into the fog of his Hebrew or Greek, (laughter,) or he jabbered the nonsense that God permitted the sin of slaveholding among the Jews, but that he don't do it now! Sir, God sanctioned slavery then, and sanctions it now. He made it right, they know, then and now. Having thus taken the last puff of wind out of the sails of the anti-slavery phantom ship, turn to the twenty-first chapter of Exodus, vs. 2-5. God, in these verses, gave the Israelites his command how they should buy and hold the Hebrew servant,--how, under certain conditions, he went free,--how, under other circumstances, he might be held to service forever, with his wife and her children. There it is. Don't run into the Hebrew. (Laughter.)

But what have we here?--vs. 7-11:--"And if a man sell his daughter to be a maid-servant, she shall not go out as the men-servants do. If she please not her master, who hath betrothed her to himself, then shall he let her be redeemed: to sell her unto a strange nation he shall have no power, seeing he hath dealt deceitfully with her. And if he hath betrothed her unto his son, he shall deal with her after the manner of daughters. If he take him another wife, her food, her raiment, and her duty of marriage shall he not diminish. And if he do not these three unto her, then shall she go out free without money." Now, sir, the wit of man can't dodge that passage, unless he runs away into the Hebrew. (Great laughter.) For what does God say? Why, this:--that an Israelite might sell his own daughter, not only into servitude, but into polygamy,--that the buyer might, if he pleased, give her to his son for a wife, or take her to himself. If he took her to himself, and she did not please him, he should not sell her unto a strange nation, but should allow her to be redeemed by her family. But, if he took him another wife before he allowed the first one to be redeemed, he should continue to give the first one food, her raiment, and her duty of marriage; that is to say, her right to his bed. If he did not do these three things, she should go out free; i.e. cease to be his slave, without his receiving any money for her. There, sir, God sanctioned the Israelite father in selling his daughter, and the Israelite man to buy her, into slavery and into polygamy. And it was then right, because God made it right. In verses 20 and 21, you have these words:--"And if a man smite his servant or his maid with a rod, and he die under his hand, he shall be surely punished; notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished: for he is his money." What does this passage mean? Surely this:--if the master gave his slave a hasty blow with a rod, and he died under his hand, he should be punished. But, if the slave lived a day or two, it would so extenuate the act of the master he should not be punished, inasmuch as he would be in that case sufficiently punished in losing his money in his slave. Now, sir, I affirm that God was more lenient to the degraded Hebrew master than Southern laws are to the higher Southern master in like cases. But there you have what was the divine will. Find fault with God, ye anti-slavery men, if you dare. In Leviticus, xxv. 44-46, "Both thy bondmen and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids. Moreover, of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they beget in your land: and they shall be your possession. And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession; they shall be your bondmen forever."

Sir, I do not see how God could tell us more plainly that he did command his people to buy slaves from the heathen round about them, and from the stranger, and of their families sojourning among them. The passage has no other meaning. Did God merely permit sin?--did he merely tolerate a dreadful evil? God does not say so anywhere. He gives his people law to buy and hold slaves of the heathen forever, on certain conditions, and to buy and hold Hebrew slaves in variously-modified particulars. Well, how did the heathen, then, get slaves to sell? Did they capture them in war?--did they sell their own children? Wherever they got them, they sold them; and God's law gave his people the right to buy them.

God in the New Testament made no law prohibiting the relation of master and slave. But he made law regulating the relation under Greek and Roman slavery, which was the most oppressive in the world.

God saw that these regulations would ultimately remove the evils in the Greek and Roman systems, and do it away entirely from the fitness of things, as there existing; for Greek and Roman slaves, for the most part, were the equals in all respects of their masters. Æsop was a slave; Terence was a slave. The precepts in Colossians iv. 18, 23, 1 Tim. vi. 1-6, and other places, show, unanswerably, that God as really sanctioned the relation of master and slave as those of husband and wife, and parent and child; and that all the obligations of the moral law, and Christ's law of love, might and must be as truly fulfilled in the one relation as in the other. The fact that he has made the one set of relations permanent, and the other more or less dependent on conditions of mankind, or to pass away in the advancement of human progress, does not touch the question. He sanctioned it under the Old Testament and the New, and ordains it now while he sees it best to continue it, and he now, as heretofore, proclaims the duty of the master and the slave. Dr. Parker's admirable explanation of Colossians, and other New Testament passages, saves me the necessity of saying any thing more on the Scripture argument.

One word on the Detroit resolutions, and I conclude. Those resolutions of the Assembly of 1850 decide that slavery is sin, unless the master holds his slave as a guardian, or under the claims of humanity.

Mr. Moderator, I think we had on this floor, yesterday, proof conclusive that those resolutions mean any thing or nothing; that they are a fine specimen of Northern skill in platform-making; that it put in a plank here, to please this man,--a plank there, to please that man,--a plank for the North, a broad board for the South. It is Jackson's judicious tariff. It is a gum-elastic conscience, stretched now to a charity covering all the multitude of our Southern sins, contracted now, giving us hardly a fig-leaf of righteousness. It is a bowl of punch,--

A little sugar to make it sweet, A little lemon to make it sour, A little water to make it weak, A little brandy to give it power. (Laughter.)

As a Northern argument against us, it is a mass of lead so heavy that it weighed down even the strong shoulders of Judge Jessup. For, sir, when he closed his speech, I asked him a single question I had made ready for him. It was this:--"Do you allow that Mr. Aiken, of South Carolina, may, under the claims of humanity, hold three thousand slaves, or must he emancipate them?" The Judge staggered, and stammered, and said, "No man could rightly hold so many." I then asked, "How many may he hold, in humanity?" The Judge saw his fatal dilemma. He recovered himself handsomely, and fairly said, "Mr. Aiken might hold three thousand slaves, in harmony with the Detroit action." I replied, "Then, sir, you have surrendered the whole question of Southern slavery." And, sir, the Judge looked as if he felt he had surrendered it. And every man in this house, capable of understanding the force of that question, felt it had shivered the whole anti-slavery argument, on those resolutions, to atoms. Why, sir, if a man can hold three slaves, with a right heart and the approbation of God, he may hold thirty, three hundred, three thousand, or thirty thousand. It is a mere question of heart, and capacity to govern. The Emperor of Russia holds sixty millions of slaves: and is there a man in this house so much of a fool as to say that God regards the Emperor of Russia a sinner because he is the master of sixty millions of slaves? Sir, that Emperor has certainly a high and awful responsibility upon him. But, if he is good as he is great, he is a god of benevolence on earth. And so is every Southern master. His obligation is high, and great, and glorious. It is the same obligation, in kind, he is under to his wife and children, and in some respects immensely higher, by reason of the number and the tremendous interests involved for time and eternity in connection with this great country, Africa, and the world. Yes, sir, I know, whether Southern masters fully know it or not, that they hold from God, individually and collectively, the highest and the noblest responsibility ever given by Him to individual private men on all the face of the earth. For God has intrusted to them to train millions of the most degraded in form and intellect, but, at the same time, the most gentle, the most amiable, the most affectionate, the most imitative, the most susceptible of social and religious love, of all the races of mankind,--to train them, and to give them civilization, and the light and the life of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And I thank God he has given this great work to that type of the noble family of Japheth best qualified to do it,--to the Cavalier stock,--the gentleman and the lady of England and France, born to command, and softened and refined under our Southern sky. May they know and feel and fulfil their destiny! Oh, may they "know that they also have a Master in heaven."