■^ 
 
LETTER 
 
 PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
L E T T E E 
 
 PEOPLE OF THE rXTTEI) STATE; 
 
 MATTEE or SLATEKY. 
 
 THEOIKAE FAJLKEB. 
 
 BOSTOX: 
 
 TCZ-: : - " 
 
£"4 
 
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 boston: 
 
 printed by freeman and bolles, 
 
 DEVONSHIRE STREET. 
 
LETTER. 
 
 Fellow-Citizens of the United States : 
 
 It may seem strange and presumptuous that an 
 obscure man, known even by name to but very few 
 in the land, should write you a pubhc letter on a 
 theme so important as this of Slavery. You may 
 call it foohsh and rash. Say that if you will ; per- 
 haps you are right. I have no name, no office, no 
 rank amongst men, which entitle my thoughts to 
 your consideration. I am but one of the undistin- 
 guished millions, who live unnoticed, and die re- 
 membered only by their family and friends ; humble 
 and obscure. If any of the famous men accus- 
 tomed to s'vvay the opinions of the political parties 
 and the theological sects, had suitably treated this 
 matter, showing you the facts and giving manly 
 counsel, I should not have presumed to open my 
 mouth. It is their silence which prompts me to 
 speak. I am no aspirant for office or for fame ; 
 have nothing to gain by your favor ; fear nothing 
 from your frown. In writing this Letter I obey no 
 idle caprice, but speak from a sense of Duty, in 
 1* 
 
O LETTER ON SLAVERY. 
 
 submission to the voice of Conscience. I love my 
 Country, and my Kind ; it is Patriotism and Human- 
 ity which bid me speak. I ask you to read and 
 consider, not to read without your prejudices, but 
 with them, with them all ; then to consider, to de- 
 cide, to act, as you may or must. I address myself 
 to no party, to no sect, but speak to you, as Amer- 
 icans and as Men, addressing my thoughts to all 
 the Citizens of the Slave States and the Free. 
 
 I am to speak of a great evil, long established, 
 wide spread, deeply rooted in the laws, the usages 
 and the ideas of the people. It affects directly the 
 welfare of three millions of men, one sixth part of 
 the nation : they are Slaves. It affects directly 
 half the States : they are Slave-holders. It has 
 a powerful influence on the other half, though more 
 subtle and unseen. It affects the industry, laws, 
 morals, and entire prosperity of the whole nation 
 to a degree exceeding the belief of men not famil- 
 iar with its history and its facts. The evil increases 
 Avith a rapid growth ; with advancing flood it gains 
 new territory, swells with larger volume ; its deadly 
 spray and miasma gradually invade all our institu- 
 tions. The whole nation is now legally pledged to 
 its support ; the public legislation for the last sixty 
 years has made Slavery a federal institution. Your 
 revenue boats and your navy are bound to support 
 it ; your army acts for its defence. You have 
 fought wars, spending money and shedding blood, 
 
LETTER ON SLAVERY. 7 
 
 to gain new soil wherein to plant the tree of Slavery. f 
 
 You have established it in your districts and your 
 
 territories. You have recently annexed to your 
 
 realm a new territory as large as the Kingdom of 
 
 France, and extended Slavery over that soil whence i 
 
 a semi-barbarous people had expelled it with igno- f 
 
 miny. You are now fighting a war in behalf of 
 
 Slavery, a war carried on at great cost of money 
 
 and of men. The national capital is a great slave 
 
 market ; in her^shambles your Brothers are daily 
 
 offered for sale. Your flag floats over the most 
 
 wicked commerce on earth — the traffic in men 
 
 and women. Citizens of the United States breed 
 
 youths and maidens for sale in the market, as the 
 
 grazier oxen and swine. 
 
 The Bey of Tunis has abolished Slavery as a dis- 
 grace to Africa and the jNlahometan religion. Your 
 Constitution of the United States supports this insti- 
 tution, and binds it upon the free States ; the South 
 fondly clings to it ; the free men of the North bend 
 suppliant necks to this yoke. With a few exceptions, 
 your Representatives and Senators in Congress give 
 it their countenance and their vote ; their hand and 
 tlieir heart. Your great and famous men are 
 pledged to this, or their silence practically pur- 
 chased. Seven Presidents of your Christian De- 
 mocracy have been holders of slaves ; three only 
 free from that taint. You will soon be called on 
 to elect another Slave-holder to sit in the presi- 
 
b LETTER OX SLAVERY. 
 
 dential chair, and rule over a republic contain- 
 ing twenty millions of men. 
 
 In all the Union there is no legal asylum for the 
 fugitive slave ; no soil emancipates his hurrying 
 feet. The States which allow no Slavery within 
 their limits legally defend the Slave-holder : catch 
 and retain the man fleeing for his manhood and his 
 life. 
 
 I cannot call upon the political leaders of the 
 nation. You know what they look for, and how 
 they would treat a letter exposing a national evil, 
 and talking of Truth and Justice. I do not address 
 you as members of the political parties ; they have 
 their great or petty matters to deal with, differing 
 in regard to free trade or protection, but are 
 united in one policy as it respects Slavery. Dema- 
 gogues of both parties will play their little game, 
 and on your shoulders ride into fame, and ease, 
 and wealth, and power, and noise. The sects also 
 have their special work, and need not be addressed 
 on the subject of Slavery — of human wrong. 
 
 I speak to the People, not as Sectarians, Pro- 
 testant or Catholic — not as Democrats or Whiss, 
 but as Americans and as Men. I solemnly believe 
 if you all knew the facts of American Slavery and 
 its effects, as I know them, that you would end the 
 evil before a twelvemonth had passed by. I take 
 it for granted that you love Justice and Truth, I 
 write to you, having confidence in your integrity 
 
LETTER ON SLAVERY. 
 
 and love of men, having confidence also in the 
 
 dem 
 
 rest. 
 
 democratic ideas on which a government should 
 
 In what I write you will doubtless find mis- 
 takes — errors of fact or of reasoning. I do not 
 ask to be screened from censure even for what no 
 diligence could wholly escape, only that you will 
 not reject nor refuse to consider the truth of fact 
 and of reasoning which is presented to you. A 
 few mistakes in figures or in reasoning will not 
 affect the general argument of this Letter. Read 
 with what prejudice you may, but decide and act 
 according to Reason and Conscience. 
 
I. 
 
 STATISTICS AND HISTORY OF SLAVERY. 
 
 I WILL first call your attention to the Statistics 
 and History of Slavery. In 1790 there were but 
 697,897 Slaves in the Union ; in 1840, 2,487,355. 
 At the present day their number probably is not 
 far from 3,000,000. In 1790, Mr. Gerry estimated 
 their value at $10,000,000 ; in 1840 Mr. Clay fixed 
 it at $1,200,000,000. They are owned by a pop- 
 ulation of perhaps about 300,000 persons, and repre- 
 sented by about 100,000 voters. 
 
 At the time of the Declaration of Independence 
 Slavery existed in all the States ; it gradually re- 
 ceded from the North. In the religious Colonies 
 of New England it was always unpopular and 
 odious. It was there seen and felt to be utterly 
 inconsistent with the ideas and spirit of their in- 
 stitutions, their Churches and their State itself. 
 After the Revolution therefore it speedily disap- 
 peared — here perishing by default, there abolished 
 by statute. Thus it successively disappeared from 
 Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, 
 
LETTER ON SLAVERY. 11 
 
 New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. By 
 the celebrated Ordinance of 1787, involuntary ser- 
 vitude, except as a punishment after legal convic- 
 tion of crime, was forever prohibited in the North 
 West Territory. Thus the new States, formed in 
 the Western parallels, were, by the action of the 
 federal government, at once cut off from that insti- 
 tution. Besides, they were mainly settled by men 
 from the Eastern States, who had neither habits 
 nor principles which favored Slavery. Thus Ohio, 
 Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa, 
 have been without any legal slaves from the be- 
 ginning. 
 
 In the South the character of the people was 
 different ; their manners, their social and political 
 ideas were unlike those of the North. The South- 
 ern States were mainly colonies of adventurers, 
 rather than establishments of men who for con- 
 science' sake fled to the wilderness. Less pains 
 Avere taken Avith the education — intellectual, moral, 
 and religious — of the people. Religion never held 
 so prominent a place in the consciousness of the 
 mass as in the sterner and more austere colonies of 
 the North. In the Southern States — New Jersey, 
 Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, the Carohnas, and 
 Georgia, — Slavery easily found a footing at an 
 early day. It was not at all repulsive to the ideas, 
 the institutions and habits of Georgia and South 
 Carolina. The other Southern States protested 
 against it ; — they never. 
 
12 LETTER ON SLAVERY. 
 
 Consequences follow causes ; it is not easy to 
 avoid the results of a first principle. The Northern 
 States, in all their constitutions and social structure, 
 consistently and continually tend to Democracy — 
 the government of all, for all, and by all ; — to equal- 
 ity before the State and its Laws ; to moral and po- 
 litical ideas of universal application. In the mean- 
 time the Southern States, in their constitutions and 
 social structure, as consistendy tend to Oligarchy — 
 the government over all, by a few, and for the 
 sake of that few ; — to privilege, favoritism, and 
 class-legislation ; to conventional limitations ; to the 
 rule of force, and inequality before the law. In 
 such a state of things when Slavery comes, it is 
 welcome. In 1737, South Carolina and Georgia 
 refused to accept the federal Constitution unless the 
 right of importing Slaves was guaranteed to them 
 for twenty years. The new States formed in the 
 Southern parallels — Kentucky, Tennessee, Alaba- 
 ma, Mississippi — retaining the ideas and habits of 
 their parents, kept also the institution of Slavery. 
 
 At the time of forming the Federal Constitution 
 some of the southern statesmen were hostile to 
 Slavery, and would gladly have got rid of it. Eco- 
 nomical considerations prevailed in part, but politi- 
 cal and moral objections to it extended yet more 
 widely. The Ordinance of 1787, the Avork mainly 
 of the same man who drafted the Declaration of 
 
LETTER OX SLANT:Ry. 13 
 
 Independence, passed with little opposition. The 
 proviso for surrendering fugitive slaves came from 
 a northern hand. Subsequently opposition to Slav- 
 ery, in the north and the south, became less. The 
 cuhure of cotton, the wars in Europe creating a 
 demand for the productions of American agricul- 
 ture, had rendered slave labor more valuable. The 
 day of our own oppression was more distant and 
 forgotten. So in 1S02, when Congress purchased 
 from Georgia the western part of her territory, it 
 was easy for the South to extend Slavery over that 
 virgin soil. In 1S03, Louisiana was purchased 
 from France ; then, or in 1S04, when it was or- 
 ganized into two territories, it would have been 
 easy to apply the Ordinance of 17S7. and prevent 
 Slavery from extending beyond the original thirteen 
 States. But though some provisions restricting 
 Slavery were made, the ideas of that Ordinance 
 were forgotten. Since that time five new States 
 have been formed out of territory acquired since 
 the revolution : — Louisiana, Missouri. Arkansas, 
 Florida, Texas, all Slave States, — the last two with 
 constitutions aimmg to make Slavery perpetual. The 
 last of these was added to the Union on the 226. 
 of December, 1S4-5. two hundred and twenty-five 
 years after the day when the Forefathers first set 
 foot on Plymouth Rock ; while the sons of the 
 Pilgrims were eating and drinking and making 
 merry, the deed of Annexation was completed, and 
 3 
 
14 LETTER ON SLAVERY. 
 
 Slavery extended over nearly 400,000 square miles 
 of new territory, whence the semi-barbarous Mexi- 
 cans had driven it out. 
 
 Slavery might easily have been jjbolished at the 
 time of the Declaration of Independence. Indeed 
 in 1774 the Continental Congress, in their celebrated 
 " non-importation Agreement," resolved never to 
 import or purchase any slaves after the last of De- 
 cember in that year. In 1775, they declare in a 
 "Report" that it is not possible "for men who 
 exercise their reason to believe that the divine 
 Author of our existence intended a part of the hu- 
 man race to hold an absolute property in and un- 
 bounded power over others." Indeed the Declara- 
 tion itself is a denial of the national right to allow 
 the existence ol'Slavery : " We hold these truths to 
 be self-evident, that all men are created equal ; that 
 they are endowed by their Creator with certain un- 
 alienable rights, that among these are [the right to] 
 life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness ; — that to 
 secure these rights governments are instituted 
 among men deriving their just powers from the 
 consent of the governed." 
 
 But the original draft of this paper contained a 
 condemnation yet more explicit : " He [the king of 
 England] has waged cruel war against human nature 
 itself; violating its most sacred rights of life and 
 iberty in the persons of a distant people who never 
 
LETTER ON SLAVERY, 15 
 
 offended him ; captivating and carrying them into 
 slavery. ...Determined to keep open a market where 
 men should be bought and sold, he has prostitu- 
 ted his negative for suppressing every legislative 
 attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable 
 commerce." This clause, says its author him- 
 self, " was struck out in compliance to South 
 Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted 
 to restrain the importation of slaves, and who, on 
 the contrary, still wished to continue it. Our 
 northern brethren also, I believe, felt a little tender 
 under these censures ; for though their people have 
 very few slaves themselves, yet they had been 
 pretty considerable carriers of them to others." 
 
 These were not the sentiments of a single enthu- 
 siastic young Republican. Dr. Rush, in the Conti- 
 nental Congress, wished " the Colonies to discourage 
 Slavery and encourage the increase of the free inhab- 
 itants." Another member of the American con- 
 gress declared, in 1779, " Men are by nature free;" 
 " the right to be free can never be alienated." In 
 1776, Dr. Hopkins, the head of the New England 
 divines, declared that " Slavery is, in every in- 
 stance, Avrong, unrighteous and oppressive ; a very 
 great and crying sin." 
 
 In the articles of Confederation, adopted in 1778, 
 no provision is made for the support of Slavery ; 
 none for the delivery of fugitives. Slavery is not 
 
16 I-ETTER ON SLAVERY. 
 
 once referred to in that document. The General 
 Government had nothing to do with it. " If any 
 slave elopes to those states where slaves are free," 
 said Mr. Madison in 1787, " he becomes emanci- 
 pated by their laws." 
 
 In the Convention of 1787, which drafted the pre- 
 sent Constitution of the United States, this matter 
 of Slavery was abundantly discussed ; it was the 
 great obstacle in the way of forming the Union, as 
 now of keeping it. But for the efforts of South 
 Carolina, it is probable Slavery would have been 
 abolished by the Constitution. The South claimed 
 the right of sending Representatives to Congress on 
 account of their Slaves. Mr. Patterson, of New 
 Jersey, contended that as the slaves had no repre- 
 sentative or vote at home, their masters could not 
 claim additional votes in Congress on account of the 
 slaves. Nearly all the speakers in that Convention, 
 except the members from South Carolina and Geor- 
 gia, referred to the slave-trade with horror. Mr. 
 Gerry, of JMassachusetts, declared in the Conven- 
 tion, that it was " as humiliating to enter into com- 
 pact with the slaves of the Southern States, as with 
 the horses and mules of the North." It was con- 
 tended, that if slaves Avere men, then they should be 
 taxed as men, and have their vote as men ; if mere 
 property, they should not entitle their owners to a 
 vote, more than other property. It might be proper 
 to tax slaves, " because it had a tendency to dis- 
 
LETTER ON SLAVERY. 17 
 
 courage Slavery, but to take them into account in 
 giving representatives tended to encourage the 
 slave trade, and to make it the interest of the States 
 to continue that infamous traffic." It was said, 
 that " we had just assumed a place among inde- 
 pendent nations, in consequence of our opposition 
 to the attempts of Great Britain to enslave us ; that 
 this opposition was grounded upon the preservation 
 of those rights to which God and Nature had enti- 
 tled us, not in particular, but in common with all 
 the rest of mankind. That we had appealed to the 
 Supreme Being for his assistance, as the God of 
 heaven, who could not but approve our efforts 
 to preserve the rights which he had imparted 
 to his creatures ; that now, when we had scarcely 
 risen from our knees from supplicating his aid and 
 protection in forming our government over a free 
 people, — a government formed pretendedly on the 
 principles of liberty, and for its preservation, — in 
 that government to have a provision, not only putting 
 it out of its power to restrain or prevent the slave 
 trade, even encouraging that most infamous traffic, 
 and giving States power and influence in the Union 
 in proportion as they cruelly and wantonly sport 
 with the rights of their fellow creatures, — ought to 
 be considered as a solemn mockery of, and insult 
 to, that God, whose protection we had then im- 
 plored, and could not fail to hold us up in detesta- 
 2# 
 
18 LETTER ON SLAVERY. 
 
 tion, and render us contemptible to every true 
 friend of liberty in the world." 
 
 Luther Martin, the attorney-general of Maryland, 
 thought it " inconsistent with the principles of the 
 Revolution, and dishonorable to the American 
 character," to have the importation of slaves allow- 
 ed by the Constitution. 
 
 The Northern States, and some of the Southern, 
 wished to abolish the slave trade at once. Mr. 
 Pinckney, of South Carolina, thought that State 
 " would never accede to the Constitution, if it 
 prohibits the slave trade ;" she '' would not stop 
 her importation of slaves in any short time." Said 
 Mr. Rutledge, of South Carolina, " the people of 
 the Carolinas and Georgia, will never be such fools 
 as to give up so important an interest." " Religion 
 and humanity have nothing to do with this question. 
 Interest alone is the governing principle with na- 
 tions." In apportioning taxes, he thought three 
 slaves ought to be counted as but one free man ; 
 while in apportioning representatives, his colleagues, 
 — Messrs. Butler and Pinckney, — declared, " the 
 Blacks ought to stand on an equality with the 
 Whites." Mr. Pinckney would " make Blacks 
 equal to Whites in the ratio of representation ;" he 
 went further, — he would have "some security 
 against an emancipation of slaves ;" and, says Mr. 
 Madison, " seemed to wish some provision should 
 be included [in the Constitution] in favor of pro-. 
 
LETTER ON SLAVERY. 19 
 
 perty in slaves." " South Carolina and Georgia" 
 said Mr. Pinckney, " cannot do without slaves ;" 
 " The importation of slaves would be for the inter- 
 est of the whole Union ; the more slaves, the more 
 produce to employ the carrying trade, the more 
 consumption also." 
 
 On the other hand, Mr. Bedford of Delaware, 
 thought " South Carolina was puffed up with her 
 wealth and her negroes." Mr. Madison, cool and 
 far-sighted, always referring to first principles, was 
 unwilling to allow the importation of slaves till 
 ISOS : — " So long a term will be more dishonorable 
 to the American character than to say nothing 
 about it in the constitution." 
 
 Mr. Williamson of North Carolina, in 1783, 
 thought " slaves an incumbrance to society," and 
 was " both in opinion and practice against Slavery." 
 Col. Mann, of Virginia, in the Convention, called 
 the slave trade an " infernal traffic," and said that 
 *' Slavery discourages arts and manufactures ; the 
 poor despise labor when performed by slaves." 
 " They produce the most pernicious effect on man- 
 ners. Every inaster of slaves is born a petty 
 tyrant. They bring the judgment of Heaven on a 
 country." Mr. Dickinson, of Delaware, thought it 
 " inadmissible on every principle of honor and 
 safety that the importation of slaves should be 
 authorized." Gouverneur JNIorris, of Pennsylvania 
 " never would concur in upholding domestic 
 
20 LETTER ON SLAVERY. 
 
 Slavery." It was a •' nefarious institution ;" " the 
 curse of Heaven was on the States where it pre- 
 vailed ! " Are the slaves men ? " then make them 
 citizens, and let them vote. Are they property ? 
 Why then is no other property included [in the 
 ratio of representation] ? The houses in this city 
 [Philadelphia] are worth more than all the wretched 
 slaves who cover the rice-swamps of South Car- 
 olina." ^Ir. Gerry declared Ave " ought to be care- 
 ful not to give any sanction to it." 
 
 All the North was at first opposed to Slavery 
 and the slave trade. Both parties seemed obstinate ; 
 the question of " Taxes on exports " and of " Nav- 
 igation laws " remained to be decided. Gouverneur 
 jMorris recommended that the whole subject of 
 Slavery might be referred to a committee " includ- 
 ing the clauses relating to the taxes on exports, 
 and to the navigation laws. These things may 
 form a bargain among the Northern and Southern 
 States." Says Luther Martin, " I found the East- 
 ern States, notwithstanding their aversion to Slavery, 
 were very willing to indulge the Southern States, 
 at least with a temporary liberty to prosecute the 
 slave trade, provided the Southern Slates would in 
 their turn gratify them by laying no restriction on 
 navigation acts." The North began to understand 
 if the contemplated navigation laws should be 
 enacted, that as Mr. Grayson afterwards said, " all 
 the produce of the Southern States will be carried 
 
LETTER ON" 3LAVERY. 21 
 
 by the Northern States on their own terms, which 
 must be high.'' Mr. Clymer, of Pennsylvania, 
 declared, " The Western and Middle States will be 
 ruined, if not enabled to defend themselves against 
 foreign regulations ; " will be ruined if they do not 
 have some navigation laws giving Americans an ad- 
 vantage over foreign vessels. Mr. Gorham, of 
 Massachusetts, said " The Eastern States had no 
 motives to union but a commercial one." The 
 proffered compromise would favor their commercial 
 interests. It was for the commercial interest of 
 the South said Mr. Pinckney, to have no restric- 
 tions upon commerce, but " considering the loss 
 brought on the Eastern States by the Revolution, 
 and their liberal conduct towards the views of South 
 Carolina, [in consenting to allow Slavery and the 
 importation of slaves,] he thought that no fetters 
 should be imposed on the power of making com- 
 mercial regulations, and his constituents would be 
 reconciled to the liberality.*' So the North took 
 the boon, and winked at the '' infernal traffic." 
 When the question was put, there were in favor of 
 the importation of slaves, Georgia, the two Caro- 
 linas and Maryland, with New Hampshire, Mas- 
 sachusetts and Connecticut. Opposed to it were 
 Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and Virginia I 
 Subsequently Mr. Ames, in the Massachusetts Con- 
 vention for the adoption of the Constitution, said 
 the Northern States '• have srreat advantages bv ii. 
 
22 LETTER OX SLAVERY. 
 
 in respect of navigation;" in the Virginia Conven- 
 tion Patrick Henry said, " Tobacco will always 
 make our peace with them," for at that time Cotton 
 was imported from India, not having become a 
 staple of the South. When the article which binds 
 the free States to dehver np the fugitive slaves, came 
 to be voted on, it Avas a new feature in American 
 legislation ; not hinted at in the " articles of con- 
 federation ; " hostile to the well known principles 
 of the common law of England — which always fa- 
 vors hberty — and the usages and principles of mod- 
 ern civilized nations. Yet new as it was and hostile, 
 it seems not a word was said against it in the Con- 
 vention. It " was agreed to, nem. con.'''' Yet 
 " The Northern delegates," says Mr. Madison, 
 " owing to their particular scruples on the subject 
 of Slavery, did not choose the word slave to be men- 
 tioned." In the conventions of the several States 
 it seems no remonstrance was made to this article. 
 Luther Martin returning home, said to the House 
 of Delegates in Maryland, " At this time we do 
 not generally hold this commerce in so great abhor- 
 rence as we have done ; when our liberties were at 
 Slake, we warmly felt for the common rights of 
 men ; the danger being thought to be past, we are 
 daily growing more insensible to their rights." 
 
 When the several States came to adopt the Con- 
 stitution, some hesitancy was shown at tolerating 
 
LETTER ON SLAVERY. 23 
 
 the slave trade or even Slavery itself. In the Mas- 
 sachusetts convention, Mr. Neal would not *' favor 
 the making merchandise of the bodies of men." 
 Gen. Thompson exclaimed, "shall it be said, that 
 after we have established our own independence and 
 freedom Ave make slaves of others ?" Washington 
 has immortalized himself, '* but he holds those in 
 slaverv Avho have as good a risiht to be free as he 
 has." All parties deprecated the slave trade in 
 most pointed terms. " Slavery was generally de- 
 tested." It was thought that the neAv States could 
 not claim the sad privilege of their parents, that the 
 South itself would soon hate and abolish it. " Slav- 
 ery is not smitten by an apoplexy," said IMr. Dawes, 
 " yet it has received a mortal womid and will die 
 of consumption." This reflection, with the " To- 
 bacco " and "Navigation laws " turned the scale. 
 Patrick Henry was no son of New England, but 
 knew well on what hinges her political morality 
 might turn, by what means and Avhich way. 
 
 In the New York Convention, ]Mr. Smith could 
 "not see any rule by which slaves were to be in- 
 cluded in the ratio of representation, the very 
 operation of it was to give certain privileges to 
 men who were so wicked as to keep slaves ;" to 
 which ISh. Hamilton replied, that " without this 
 indulgence no union could possibly have been 
 formed. But . . considering those peculiar advan- 
 tages which we derived from them, [the Southern 
 
24 LETTER ON SLAVERY. 
 
 States,] it is entirely just that they should be grati- 
 fied. The Southern States possess certain staples, 
 tobacco, rice, indigo, &c. which must be capital ob- 
 jects in treaties of commerce with foreign nations ; 
 and the advantage . . . will be felt in all the States." 
 
 In the Pennsylvania Convention, Mr. Wilson con- 
 sidered that the constitution laid the foundation for 
 abolishing Slavery out of this country," though the 
 period was more distant than he could wish. Yet 
 "the New States . . . will be under the control of Con- 
 gress in this particular, and slavery will never be 
 introduced amongst them ;" " yet the lapse of a 
 few years, and congress will have power to exter- 
 minate slavery from within our borders." 
 
 In the Virginia convention Gov.Randolph regard- 
 ed the slave trade as " infamous" and " detestable." 
 Slavery was one of our vulnerable points. " Are 
 we not weakened by the population of those whom 
 Ave hold in slavery"? he asked. Col. IMason thought 
 the trade " diabolical in itself and disgraceful to 
 mankind." He would not admit the Southern 
 States [Georgia and the Carolinas] into the Union 
 unless they agreed to the discontinuance of this 
 disgraceful trade." Mr. Tyler thought " nothing 
 could justify it." Patrick Henry, who contended 
 for Slavery, confessed " Slavery is detested, — we 
 feel its fatal effects, — we deplore it with all the 
 pity of humanity." " It would rejoice my very 
 soul that every one of my fellow-beings was eman- 
 
LETTER ON SLAVERY. 4,^) 
 
 cipated." Said Mr. Johnson, " Slavery has been 
 the foundation of that impiety and dissipation which 
 have been so much disseminated among our coun- 
 trymen. If it were totally abolished it would do 
 rjiuch good." 
 
 In the North Carohna Convention it was found 
 necessary to apologize for the pro-slavery character 
 of the Constitution. j\Ir. Iredell in defence said, 
 the matter of Slavery " was regulated with great 
 difficulty and by a spirit of concession which it 
 would not be prudent to disturb for a good many 
 years." " It is probable that all the members rep- 
 robated this inhuman tralFic [in slaves], but those 
 of South Carolina and Georgia would not consent 
 to an immediate prohibition of it." " Were it 
 practicable to put an end to the importation of 
 slaves immediately, it would give him the greatest 
 pleasure." " When the entire abolition of Slavery 
 takes place it will be an event which must be pleas- 
 ing to every generous mind and every friend of 
 human nature." Mr. JMcDowall looked upon the 
 slave trade " as a very objectionable part of the 
 system." Mr. Goudy did not wish " to be repre- 
 sented with negroes." 
 
 In the South Carolina Convention Gen. Pinckney 
 admitted that the Carolinas and Georgia were so 
 weak that they " could not form a union strong 
 enough for the purpose of effectually protecting 
 each other ; " it was their policy therefore " to 
 
26 LETTER ON SLAVERY. 
 
 form a close union with the Eastern States who are 
 strong ;" the Eastern States had been the greatest 
 sufferers in the Revolution, they had " lost every- 
 thing but their country and their freedom ;" " we," 
 the CaroHnas and Georgia, " should let them, in 
 some measure, partake of our prosperity." But 
 the union could come only from a compromise ; 
 " Ave have secured an unhmited importation of 
 negroes for twenty years." " We have obtained 
 a right to recover our slaves in Avhatever part of 
 America they shall take refuge, which is a right we 
 had not before." " We have made the best terras 
 for the security of this species of property it was in 
 our power to make ; Ave would have made better if 
 we could, but on the whole I do not think them 
 bad." No one in South Carolina, it seems, thought 
 Slavery an Evil. 
 
 Thus the Constitution Avas assented to as " the re- 
 sult of accommodation," though containing clauses 
 confessedly " founded on unjust principles." The 
 North had been false to its avoAved convictions, and 
 in return " higher tonnage duties were imposed on 
 foreign than on American bottoms," and goods im- 
 ported in American vessels " paid ten per cent, less 
 duty than the same goods brought in those owned 
 by foreigners." The " Navigation laAvs " and the 
 " Tobacco " wrought after their kind ; South Caro- 
 lina and Georgia had their Avay. The North, said 
 
LETTER ON SLAVERY. 27 
 
 Gouverneur Morris, in the national Convention, for 
 the " sacrifice of every principle of right, of every 
 impulse of humanity," had this compensation, " to 
 bind themselves to march their militia for the de- 
 fence of the Southern States, for their defence 
 against those very slaves of whom they complain. 
 They must supply vessels and seamen in case of 
 foreign attack. The legislature will have indefinite 
 power to tax them by excises and duties on im- 
 ports." 
 
 Still, with many there lingered a vague belief 
 that Slavery would soon perish. In the first Con- 
 gress Mr. Jackson, of Georgia, admitted that "it 
 was an evil habit." Mr. Gerry and JNIr. Madison 
 both thought that Congress had " the right to regu- 
 late this business," and " if they see proper, to 
 make a proposal to purchase all the slaves." But 
 the most obvious time for ending the institution 
 had passed by ; the feeling of hostility to it grew 
 weaker and weaker as the nation became united, 
 powerful and rich ; its " mortal Avound " was fast 
 getting healed. 
 
II. 
 
 COKTDITION AND TREATMENT OF SLAVES. 
 
 I WILL next consider the General Condition and 
 Treatment of the Slaves themselves. The slave 
 is not, theoretically, considered as a Person ; he is 
 only a Thing, as much so as an axe or a spade ; 
 accordingly he is wholly subject to his master, and 
 has no Rights — which are an attribute of Persons 
 only, not of Things. All that he enjoys therefore 
 is but a Privilege. He may be damaged but not 
 wronged. However ill treated he cannot of him- 
 self, in his own name and right, bring a formal 
 action in any court ; no more than an axe or a 
 spade, though his master may bring an action for 
 damages. The slave cannot appear as a witness 
 when a freeman is on trial. His master can beat, 
 maim, mutilate, or mangle him, and the slave has, 
 theoretically, no complete and legal redress, practi- 
 cally, no redress at all. The master may force 
 him to marry or forbid his marriage ; can sell him 
 away from wife and children. He can force the 
 lover to beat his beloved ; the husband his wife, 
 the child his parent. " A slave is one who is in 
 
LETTER ON SLAVERY. 29 
 
 the power of his master, to Avhom he belongs. The 
 master may sell him, dispose of his person, his in- 
 dustry and his labor ; he can do nothing, possess 
 nothing, nor acquire anything but what must be- 
 long to his master." No contract between master 
 and slave, however solemnly made and attested, 
 is binding on tlie master. Is the freeborn child of 
 the free man likewise theoretically subject to his 
 father ? — natural and instinctive affection prevent 
 the abuse of that power. The connection between 
 father and child is one of guardianship and recipro- 
 cal love, a mutual gain ; that of master and slave 
 is founded only on the interest of the owner ; the 
 gain is only on the master's side. 
 
 The relation of master and slave begins in vio- 
 lence ; it must be sustained by violence — the 
 systematic violence of general laws, or the irregu- 
 lar violence of individual caprice^ There is no other 
 mode of conquering and subjugating a man. Re- 
 garding the slave as a thing, " an instrument of 
 husbandry," the master gives him the least, and 
 takes the most that is possible. He takes all the 
 result of the slave's toil, leaving only enough to keep 
 him in a profitable working condition. His work 
 is the most he can be made to do ; his food, cloth- 
 ing, shelter, amusement, the least he can do with. 
 " A southern Planter," in his " Notes on Political 
 Economy as applicable to the United States," says 
 
30 LETTER ON SLAVERY. 
 
 to his fellow slave-holders: " You own this labor, 
 can regulate it, work it many or few hours in the 
 day, accelerate it, stimulate it, control it, avoid turn- 
 outs and combinations, and pay no wages. You 
 can dress it plainly, feed it coarsely and cheap, lodge 
 it, on simple forms, as the plantations do, house 
 it in cabins costing little." " The slaves live with- 
 out beds or houses worth so caUing, or family cares, 
 or luxuries, or parade or show ; have no relaxa- 
 tions, or whims, or frolics or dissipations ; instead 
 of sun to sun, in their hours are worked from day- 
 light till nine o'clock at night. Where the free 
 man or laborer would require a hundred dollars a 
 year for food and clothing alone, the slave can be 
 supported for twenty dollars a year, and often is." 
 " Let us bestow upon them the worst, the most un- 
 healthy and degrading sort of duties and labor." 
 Said Mr. Jefferson, " the whole commerce between 
 master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the 
 most boisterous passions, the most unremitting des- 
 potism on the one part, and degrading submission 
 on the other." 
 
 The Idea of Slavery is to use a man as a thing, 
 against his nature and in opposition to his interests. 
 The consequences of such a principle it is impossi- 
 ble to escape ; the results of this idea meet us at 
 every step. Man is certainly not cruel by nature; 
 even in the barbarous state. In our present civiliza^ 
 
LETTER ON SLAVERY. 31 
 
 tion man is far from being brntal. There are many- 
 kind and considerate slave-holders whose aim is to 
 make their slaves as comfortable and happy as it is 
 possible while they are slaves ; men who feel and 
 know that Slavery is wrong, and would gladly be 
 rid of it ; who arc not consistent with the idea of 
 Slavery. Let us suppose, in this argument, there are 
 ten thousand such who are heads of families in the 
 United States, and ninety thousand of a different 
 stamp, men who have at least the average of hu- 
 man selfishness.* 
 
 Now under the mildest and most humane of 
 masters, Slavery commonly brings intensity of suffer- 
 ing. The slave feels that he is a Man, a Person, 
 his own Person, born with all a man's unalienable 
 rights ; born with the right to life, to liberty, and 
 the pursuit of happiness. He sees himself cut off 
 from these rights, and that too amid the wealth, 
 the refinement, and culture of this country and 
 this age. He feels his degradation, born a man 
 to be treated as a thing, bought and sold, beaten 
 as a beast. Here and there is one with a feeble 
 nature, with affections disproportionately strong, 
 attached to an owner who never claimed all the 
 legal authority of master, and this man may not 
 desire his freedom. Some hear of the actual 
 sufferings of the free blacks, or exaggerated re- 
 ports thereof, and fear that by becoming free in 
 America they might exchange a well-known evil 
 
82 LETTER ON SLAVERY. 
 
 for a greater or a worse. Others have become so 
 debased by their condition that the man is mainly 
 silenced in their consciousness, the animal alone 
 surviving, contented if well fed and not over- 
 worked, and they do not wish to be free. Suppose 
 that these three classes, the feeble-minded, the timid, 
 and the men overwhelmed and crushed by their 
 condition, are as numerous as the humane portion 
 of the masters, are one-tenth of the whole, or 
 800,000. The rest are conscious of the qualities of a 
 man. They desire their freedom, and are kept in 
 Slavery only by external force — the systematic force 
 of public law, the irregular force of private will. 
 The number of this class will be about 2,700,000, 
 a greater number than the whole population of the 
 colonies in 1776. 
 
 The condition of the majority of the slaves is in- 
 deed terrible. They have no Rights, and are to be 
 treated not as Men, but only as Things ; this first 
 principle involves continual violence and oppression, 
 with all the subordinate particulars of their condi- 
 tion, which shall now be touched on as briefly as 
 possible. A famous man said in public, that his 
 " slaves were sleek and fat ; " the best thing he 
 could say in defence of his keeping men in bond- 
 age. But even this is not always true. Take the 
 mass of slaves together, and an abundance of testi- 
 mony compels the conviction, that they are misera- 
 
LETTER ON SLAVERY. 33 
 
 bly clad, and suffer bitterly from hunger. So far as 
 food, clothing and shelter are concerned, the physi- 
 cal condition of the mass of field-slaves, is far worse 
 than that of condemned criminals, in the worst 
 prison of the United States. House-slaves and me- 
 chanics in large towns fare better ; they are under 
 the eye of the public. Farm-slaves feel most the 
 poignant smart. The plantations are large, the 
 dwellings distant, the ear of the public hears not the 
 oppressor's violence. " The horse fattens on his 
 master's eye," says the proverb ; but the farm- 
 slaves are committed mainly to overseers, the Swiss 
 of Slavery, whom INIr. Wirt calls " the most abject, 
 degraded and unprincipled race." 
 
 Let us pass over the matter of food, clothing, shel- 
 ter and toil, to consider other features of their condi- 
 tion. They are treated with great cruelty ; often 
 branded with a red hot iron on the breast, or the 
 shoulder, the arm, the forehead or the cheek, 
 though the Roman law forbid it fifteen centuries 
 ago. They are disfigured and mutilated, now by 
 the madness of anger, then by the jealous malice of 
 revenge, their backs and sides scored with the lash, 
 or bruised with the " paddle," bear marks of the 
 violence needful to subdue manhood still smoul- 
 dering in the ashes of the negro slave. Drive Na- 
 ture out with whips and brands — she will come 
 back. These abuses can be proved from descrip- 
 tions of run-aways in the newspapers of the South. 
 
34 LETTER ON SLAVERY. 
 
 The slaveholder's temptation to cruelty is too 
 much for common men. His poAver is irresponsi- 
 ble. 'T is easy to find a stick if you would beat a 
 dog. The lash is always at hand ; if a slave diso- 
 beys, — the whip ; if he is idle, — the whip ; . does 
 he murmur, — the whip ; • is he sullen and silent, 
 — the whip ; is the female coy and reluctant, — ■ 
 the whip. Chains and dungeons also are at hand. 
 The Slave is a Thing ; judge and jury no friends 
 to him. The condition of the Weak is bad enough 
 everyAvhere, in Old England, and in New England. 
 But when the Strong owns the very Bodies of the 
 Weak, making and executing the laws as he will — 
 it is not hard to see to what excess their wrongs will 
 amount, wrongs which cannot be told. 
 
 It is often said that the evils of Slavery are ex- 
 aggerated. This is said by the masters. But the 
 story of the victim when told by his oppressor — it 
 is well known what that is. The few slaves who 
 can tell the story of their wrongs, show that Slavery 
 cannot easily be represented as worse than it is. 
 Imagination halts behind the fact. The lives of 
 Moses Roper, of Lunsford Lane, of Moses Grundy, 
 Frederic Douglas, and W. W. Brown, are before 
 the public, and prove what could easily be learned 
 from the advertisements of Southern newspapers, 
 conjectured from the laws of the Southern States, or 
 foretold outright from a knowledge of human na- 
 ture itself: — that the sufferin2:s of three millions 
 
LETTER ON SLAVERY. 35 
 
 of slaves form a mass of misery which the imagina- 
 tion can never reahze, till the eye is familiar Avith 
 its terrible details. Governor Giles, of Virginia, 
 calls Slavery " a punishment of the highest order." 
 And Mr. Preston says, " Happiness is incompatible 
 with Slavery." 
 
 In the most important of all relations, that of 
 man and wife, neither law nor custom gives protec- 
 tion to the slave. Their connection may at any 
 moment be dissolved by the master's command, the 
 parties be torn asunder, separated forever, husband 
 and wife, child and mother ; the infant may be 
 taken from its mother's breast, and sold away out 
 of her sight and power. The wife torn from her 
 husband's arms, forced to the lust of another, for 
 the slave is no Person but a Thing. For the chas- 
 tity of the female there is no defence ; no more 
 than for the chastity of sheep and swine. Many 
 are ravished in tender years. So is the last insult, 
 and outrage the most debasing, added to this race 
 of Americans. By the laws of Louisiana, all child- 
 ren born of slaves are reckoned as "natural and 
 illegitimate." Marriage is "prostitution" ; sacred 
 and permanent neither in the eyes of the churches 
 nor the law. The female slave is Avholly in her 
 master's power. Mulattoes are more valuable than 
 blacks. So in the Slave States Lust now leagues 
 with Cupidity, and now acts with singleness of aim. 
 
36 LETTER ON SLAVERY. 
 
 The South is full of mulattoes ; its " best blood flows 
 in the veius of the slaves" — masters owning child- 
 ren white as themselves. Girls, the children of 
 mulattoes, are sold at great price, as food for pri- 
 vate licentiousness, or public furniture in houses of 
 ill-fame. Under the worst of the Roman emperors 
 this outrage was forbidden, and the Prefect of the 
 city gave such slaves fheir freedom. But republi- 
 can parents not rarely sell their own children for 
 that abuse. 
 
 After the formal and legal abolition of the African 
 slave trade, it became more profitable to breed 
 slaves for sale in the Northern Slave-holding States. 
 Their labor was of comparatively little value to the 
 declining agriculture of Delaware, Maryland, Vir- 
 ginia, and North Carolina. From Planting they 
 have become, to a great degree. Slave-breeding 
 States. The reputed sons of the " Cavaliers" have 
 found a new calling, and the " chivalry of the Old 
 Dominion" betakes itself, not to manufactures, 
 commerce, or agriculture, — but to the breeding of 
 slaves for the Southern market. Kentucky and 
 Tennessee have embarked largely in the same ad- 
 venture. It would be curious to ascertain the exact 
 annual amount of money brought into those States 
 from the sale of their children, but the facts are not 
 officially laid before the public, and a random con- 
 jecture, or even a shrewd estimate is not now to 
 the purpose. 
 
LETTER ON SLAVERY. 37 
 
 In the latter half of the last century, Virghiia dis- 
 played such an array of talent and statesmanship, 
 of eloquence, of intelligent and majily life, in L 
 noble form as few States with the same population 
 could ever equal ; certainly none in America. There 
 were Randolph and JMason, Wythe, Henry, Mad- 
 ison, Jefferson, Marshall, Washington ; her very 
 " tobacco " could purchase the peace of New Eng- 
 land and New York. Now Virginia is eminent as a 
 nursery of slaves, bred and begotten for the South- 
 ern market. Ohio sends abroad the produce of her 
 soil — flour, oxen, and swine; lAIassachusetts the 
 produce of her mills and manual craft — cottons 
 and woollens, hardware and shoes ; while Virginia 
 chivalrous Virginia, the " Old Dominion," sells in 
 the world's market the produce of her own loins^— 
 men-servants and maidens; her choicest exports are 
 her sons and daughters. She has borne for the na- 
 tion five Presidents, three of them conspicuous men, 
 famous all over the world ; and God knows how 
 many slaves to till the soil of the devouring South 
 In 1832, It was shown in her legislature that slaves 
 were " all the productive capacity," and " consti- 
 tute the entire available wealth of Eastern Vir- 
 ginia." The President of Wilham and Mary's 
 College says, - Virginia is a negro-raising State for 
 other States." Thomas Jefferson Randolph pro- 
 nounced It - one grand menagerie where men are 
 raised for the market like oxen for the shambles." 
 
 4 
 
38 LETTER ON SLAVERY. 
 
 In 1831, it was maintained in her legislature by 
 Mr. Gholson, that " the owner of land had a rea- 
 sonable right to its annual profits ; the owner of 
 orchards to their annual fruits ; the owner of brood- 
 mares to their products ; and the owner of female 
 slaves to their increase." 
 
 Is any man born a slave ? The Declaration of 
 Independence says, All men are born " equal ;" 
 their natural rights " unahenable." It is absurd 
 to say, a man was born free in Africa, and his 
 son born a slave in Virginia. The child born in 
 Africa is made a slave by actual theft and per- 
 sonal violence ; by what other process can he be 
 made a slave in America ? The fact that his father 
 was stolen before him makes no difference. By 
 the law of the United States it is piracy to enslave 
 a man born in Africa ; by the law of Justice, is it 
 less piracy to enslave him when born in Baltimore ? 
 
 The domestic slave trade is carried on continu- 
 ally in all the great cities of the South ; the capital 
 of the Union, called after " the Father of his coun- 
 try," is a great slave mart. Droves of slaves, 
 chained together, may often be seen in the streets 
 of Washington ; the advertisements of the dealers 
 are in the journals of that city. There the great 
 demagogues and the great drovers of slaves meet 
 together, and one city is common to them all. If 
 there be degrees in such wrong-doing, it seems 
 worse to steal a baby in America than a man in 
 
LETTER ON SLAVERY. 39 
 
 Guinea ; worse to keep a gang of women in Vir- 
 ginia breeding children as swine for market, than 
 to steal grown men in Guinea ; it is cowardly no 
 less than inhuman. But so long ago as 1829, it 
 was said in the Baltimore Reporter, " Dealing in 
 slaves has become a large business, establishments 
 are made in several places in Maryland, at which 
 they are sold like cattle ; these places of deposit 
 are strongly built, and well supplied Avith iron 
 thumb-screws and gags, and ornamented with cow- 
 skins and other whips, often bloody." 
 
 The African slave trader perhaps even now, is 
 not unknown at Baltimore or New Orleans, but 
 he is a pirate ; he shuffles and hides, goes sneak- 
 ing and cringes to get along amongst men, while 
 the American slave-trader goes openly to work, 
 advertises " the increase of his female slaves," erects 
 his jail, and when that is insufficient, has those 
 of the nation thrown open for his use, and all the 
 States solemnly pledged to deliver up the fugi- 
 tives who escape from his hands. He marches his 
 eoffles where he will. The laws are on his side, 
 " public sentiment " and the " majesty of the Con- 
 stitution." He looks in at the door of the Capitol 
 and is not ashamed. 
 
 There are mean men engaged in that traffic who 
 " are generally despised even in the slave-holding 
 States," but men of property and standing are also 
 concerned in this trade. JMr. Erwin, the son-in- 
 
40 LETTER ON SLAVERY. 
 
 law of Mr. Clay, it is said, laid the foundation of a 
 large fortune by dealing in slaves ; General Jack- 
 son was a dealer in slaves and so late as 1811, 
 bought a coffle and drove them to Louisiana for sale. 
 
 In this transfer of slaves the most cruel separa- 
 tion of families takes place. In the slave-breeding 
 States it is a common thing to sell a boy or a gui 
 while the mother is kept as a " Breeder." Does 
 she complain of the robbery ? — There is the 
 scourge, there are chains and collars. Will the 
 husband and father resent the wrong? — There 
 are handcuffs and jails ; the law of the United 
 States, the Constitution, the Army and Navy ; all 
 the able-bodied men of the free States are legally 
 bound to come, if need be, and put down the in- 
 surrection. Yet, more than fifteen hundred years 
 ago, a Roman Emperor forbid the separation of 
 families of slaves, and ordered all which had been 
 separated to be reunited. " Who can bear," said 
 the Emperor to his heathen subjects, " who can 
 bear that children should be separated from then- 
 parents, sisters from their brothers, wives from 
 their husbands ? " 
 
 In 1836, the Presbyterian Synod of Kentucky 
 said to the world : " Brothers and sisters, parents 
 and children, husbands and wives, are torn asunder 
 and permitted to see each other no more. These 
 acts are daily occurring in the midst of us. There 
 
LETTER ON SLAVERY. 41 
 
 is not a neighborhood where these heart-rending 
 scenes are not displayed. There is not a village 
 or road which does not behold the sad procession 
 of manacled outcasts, whose chains and mournful 
 countenances tell that they are exiled by force from 
 all that their hearts held dear." The affections 
 are proportionally stronger in the Negro than the 
 American ; his family his all. The terror of be- 
 ing sold and thus separated from the companions 
 of his sad misfortune, hangs over the slave for ever, 
 at least till too old for service in that way. The 
 most able-minded are of course the most turbulent, 
 the most difficult to manage, and therefore the most 
 commonly sold. But the angel of Death — to them 
 the only angel of Mercy — benignantly visits these 
 poor Ishmaels in the hot swamps of Georgia and 
 Alabama. Thou-God-seest-me, were fitting in- 
 scription over the spot Avhere the servant thus be- 
 comes free from his master and the weary is at rest, 
 
 4<» 
 
III. 
 
 EFFECTS OF SLAVERY ON INDUSTRY. 
 
 Let us examine the Effects of Slavery on Indus- 
 try in all its forms. In the South manual labor is 
 considered menial and degrading ; it is the busi- 
 ness of slaves. In the free States the majority 
 work with their hands, counting it the natural busi- 
 ness of a man, not a reproach, but a duty and a 
 dignity. Thus in Boston — the richest city of its 
 population in America, and perhaps in the world — 
 out of 19,037 private families in 1845, there were 
 15,744 who kept no servant, and only 1,069 who 
 had more than one assistant to perform their house- 
 hold labor. In the South the free man shuns labor ; 
 " in a slave country every freeman is an aristocrat," 
 and of course labor is avoided by such. Where 
 work is disgraceful, men of spirit will not submit to 
 it. So the high-minded but independent free men 
 are continually getting worse off, or else emigrating 
 out of the slave States into the new free States, — 
 not as the enterprising adventurer goes from New 
 England, because he wants more room, but because 
 his condition is a reproach. 
 
 Most of the productive work of the South is done 
 
LETTER ON SLAVERY. 43 
 
 by slaves. But the slave has no stimulus ; the 
 natural instinct of production is materially checked. 
 The master has the mouth which consumes, the 
 slave only the hand which earns. He labors not 
 for himself, but for another ; for another who 
 continually wrongs him. His aim, therefore, is 
 to do the least he can get along with. He will 
 practise no economy ; no thrift ; he breaks his 
 tools. He will not think for his master ; it is all 
 hand-work, for he only gives what the master can 
 force from him, and he cannot conceal ; there is 
 no head-work. There is no invention in the 
 slave ; little among the masters, for their business 
 is to act on men, not directly on things. This cir- 
 cumstance may fit the slave-holder for Politics — 
 of a certain character ; it imfits him for the great 
 operations of productive industry. They and all 
 labor-saving contrivances come from the North. 
 In 1846 there were seventy-six patents granted by 
 the national oflice for inventions made in fourteen 
 slave States, with a population of 7,334,431, or one 
 for each 96,505 persons ; at the same time there 
 were 564 granted to the free States with a popula- 
 tion of 9,728,922, or one for each 17,249 persons. 
 Maryland, by her position, partakes more of the 
 character of the free States than most of her sisters, 
 and accordingly made twenty-one inventions — 
 more than a fourth part of all made in the South. 
 But Massachusetts had made sixty-two ; and 
 
44 LETTER ON SLAVERY. 
 
 New York, with a population of only 2,428,921, 
 had received two hundred and forty-seven pa- 
 tent-rights — more than three times as many as 
 the whole South. Works which require intelli- 
 gence and skill require also the hand of the free 
 man. The South can grow timber, it is the North 
 which builds the ships. The South can rear cot- 
 ton, the free intelligence of the North must weave 
 it into cloth. 
 
 In the North the free man acts directly upon 
 things by his own will ; in the South, only through 
 the medium of men reduced to the rank of things, 
 and they act on material objects against their will. 
 Half the moral and intellectual effect of labor is 
 thereby lost ; half the productive power of the labor 
 itself. All the great movements of industry de- 
 cline where the aristocracy own the bodies of the 
 laboring class. No fertility of soil or loveliness of 
 climate can ever make up for the want of industry, 
 invention and thrift, in the laboring population 
 itself. Agriculture will not thrive as under the 
 free man's hand. Slave labor can only be profita- 
 bly employed in the coarse operations of field work. 
 It was so in Italy 2000 years ago ; the rich gardens 
 of Latiura, Alba, Tuscany, were the work of free 
 men. When their owners were reduced to Slavery 
 by the Roman conqueror, those gardens became 
 only pastures for buffaloes and swine. Only coarse 
 staples, sugar, cotton, rice, corn, tobacco, can be 
 
LETTER ON SLAVERY. 45 
 
 successfully raised by the slave of America. His 
 rude tillage impoverishes the soil ; the process of 
 tilth " consists in killing the land." They who will 
 keep Slavery as a " patriarchal institution," must 
 adopt the barbarism of the patriarchs, become no- 
 madic, and wander from the land they have ex- 
 hausted, to some virgin soil. The free man's fer- 
 tilizing hand enriches the land the longer he labors. 
 In Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas, the 
 soil is getting exhausted ; the old land less valuable 
 than the new. In 1787 said Gouverneur Morris, 
 in the national Convention, " Compare the free re- 
 gions of the Middle States, where a rich and noble 
 cultivation marks the prosperity and happiness of 
 the people, with the misery and poverty which 
 overspread the barren wastes of Virginia, Mary- 
 land, and the other States having slaves. Travel 
 through the whole Continent, and you behold the 
 prospect continually varying with the appearance 
 and disappearance of Slavery. The moment you 
 leave the Eastern States and enter New York, the 
 effects of the institution become visible. Passing 
 through the Jerseys and entering Pennsylvania, 
 every criterion of superior improvement witnesses 
 the change. Proceed southwardly, and every step 
 you take through the great regions of slaves, pre- 
 sents a desert increasing with the increasing pro- 
 portion of these wretched beings." At this day, 
 sixty years later, the contrast is yet more striking, 
 
46 
 
 s« "s^ . - -r _ :. Slavery has wronght 
 
 afier its way. Ev^: y :^^ : i.rs ils own frtdt. 
 
 ^ r c"=-coorages :i:e .ziziigration of able bnt 
 the free States. They go elsewhere 
 
 ::: .- "" rn Slates afford 
 
 r rXorlh will not 
 
 :?try on a level 
 
 -ee 
 
 ■^ . --.res 
 
 — : labor, 
 
 2 i. — tJMS wim labor, ibat with 
 
 : degradati(Mi, bat lecip- 
 ;• _ '3 the men *^b" c*. first 
 
 5- : . ^ - : ^ : . ves bee 'S, 
 
 imoimt 
 
 Diai to wor. 
 -'■''-■: to weei 
 

 
 
 finii -i*f^*?mr- ^H^ T"*nir: m iiuti wie£. , £ ms^ 
 
 mnr ^ 
 
 vnrr _- ^ : 
 
 :jHif — -s^nt^j"* ■- - ^- , -_ ; .J -- 
 
50 LETTER ON SLAVERY. 
 
 no means so profitable as the work of the free man. 
 Mr. Kutledge was not far from right in 1787, when 
 he contended that, in direct taxation, a slave should 
 pay but one third as much as a freeman, his labor 
 being only of one third the value of a freeman's. 
 
 In the Northern States, the freeman comes di- 
 rectly in contact with the material things Avhich he 
 wishes to convert to his purpose. To shorten his 
 labor he makes his head save his hands. He in- 
 vents machines. The productive capacity of the 
 free States is extended by their use of Wind, Wa- 
 ter and Steam for the purposes of human labor. 
 That is a solid gain to mankind. Wind-mills, wa- 
 ter-mills, steam-engines, are the servants of the 
 North ; Homebred Slaves born in their house, the 
 increase of fertile heads. These are an important 
 element in the power and wealth of a nation. 
 While South Carolina has taken men from Africa, 
 and made slaves. New England has taken possession 
 of the Winds, of the Waters ; she has kidnapped 
 the JNIerrimack, the Connecticut, the Androscoggin, 
 the Kennebeck, the Penobscot, and a hundred 
 smaller streams. She has caught the lakes of New 
 Hampshire, and holds them in thrall. She has 
 siezed Fire and Water, joined them with an iron 
 yoke, and made an army of slaves, powerful, but 
 pliant. Consider the machinery moved by such 
 agents in New England, New York, Pennsylvania ; 
 
LETTER ON SLA-V-ERY. 51 
 
 compare ihat with the haroan machines of the 
 South, and which is the better drudge ? The 
 " Patriarchal Institution of Slavery," and the econ- 
 omic institution of Machinery stand side by side. — 
 this representing the nineteenth century before 
 Christ, and that the nineteenth century after Christ. 
 They run for the same goal, though Slavery start- 
 ed first and had the smoother road. It is safe to 
 say, that the machinery of the free States has 
 greater productive ability than the 3,000.000 bond- 
 men of the South. While Slavery continues, the 
 machinery will not appear. Steam-engines and 
 slaves come of a different stock. 
 
 The foreign trade of the South consists mainly in 
 the export of the productions of the Farm and the 
 Forest : the domestic trade in collecting those sta- 
 ples and distributing the articles to be consumed at 
 home. Much of the domestic trade is in the hands 
 of Northern men — though mainly " with Southern 
 principles." The foreign trade is almost wholly in 
 the hands of foreigners, or men from the North, 
 and is conducted by their ships. In the South, little 
 is demanded for home consumption : so the great 
 staples of Southern production find their market 
 chiefly in the North, or in foreign ports. The ship- 
 ping is mainly owned by the North. Of the Atlantic 
 States seven have no slaves : !Maine, New Hamp- 
 shire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, 
 
50 LETTER ON SLAVERY. 
 
 no means so profitable as the work of the free man. 
 Mr. Rutledge was not far from right in 1787, when 
 he contended that, in direct taxation, a slave should 
 pay but one third as much as a freeman, his labor 
 being only of one third the value of a freeman's. 
 
 In the Northern States, the freeman comes di- 
 rectly iu contact with the material things which he 
 Avishes to convert to his purpose. To shorten his 
 labor he makes his head save his hands. He in- 
 vents machines. The productiv^e capacity of the 
 free States is extended by their use of Wind, Wa- 
 ter and Steam for the purposes of human labor. 
 That is a solid gain to mankind. Wind-mills, wa- 
 ter-mills, steam-engines, are the servants of the 
 North ; Homebred Slaves born in their house, the 
 increase of fertile heads. These are an important 
 element in the power and wealth of a nation. 
 While South Carolina has taken men from Africa, 
 and made slaves. New England has taken possession 
 of the Winds, of the Waters ; she has kidnapped 
 the Merrimack, the Connecticut, the Androscoggin, 
 the Kennebeck, the Penobscot, and a hundred 
 smaller streams. She has caught the lakes of New 
 Hampshire, and holds them in thrall. She has 
 siezed Fire and Water, joined them with an iron 
 yoke, and made an army of slaves, powerful, but 
 pliant. Consider the machinery moved by such 
 agents in New England, New York, Pennsylvania ; 
 
LETTER ON SLAVERY. 51 
 
 compare that with the human machines of the 
 South, and which is the better drudge ? The 
 " Patriarchal Institution of Slavery," and the econ- 
 omic institution of Machinery stand side by side, — 
 this representing the nineteenth century before 
 Christ, and that the nineteenth century after Christ. 
 They run for the same goal, though Slavery start- 
 ed first and had the smoother road. It is safe to 
 say, that the machinery of the free States has 
 greater productive ability than the 3,000,000 bond- 
 men of the South. While Slavery continues, the 
 machinery wull not appear. Steam-engines and 
 slaves come of a different stock. 
 
 The foreign trade of the South consists mainly in 
 the export of the productions of the Farm and the 
 Forest ; the domestic trade in collecting those sta- 
 ples and distributing the articles to be consumed at 
 home. Much of the domestic trade is in the hands 
 of Northern men — though mainly " with Southern 
 principles." The foreign trade is almost wholly in 
 the hands of foreigners, or men from the North, 
 and is conducted by their ships. In the South, little 
 is demanded for home consumption ; so the great 
 staples of Southern production find their market 
 chiefly in the North, or in foreign ports. The ship- 
 ping is maiuly owned by the North. Of the Atlantic 
 States seven have no slaves : Maine, New Hamp- 
 shire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, 
 
62 LETTER ON SLAVERY. 
 
 New York, and New Jersey ; in 1846, they, with 
 Pennsylvania, had 2,160,501 tons of shipping. 
 In all the slave States which lie on the seaboard, 
 there are owned but 401,oS3 tons of shipping. In 
 1S46, the young State of Ohio, two thousand miles 
 from the sea, had 39,917 tons ; the State of South 
 Carolina, 32,588. Even Virginia, full of bays and 
 harbors, had but 53,441 tons. The single district 
 of the city of New York had 572,522 tons, or 
 70,939 more than all the Southern States united. 
 
 The difference in the internal improvements of 
 the two sections is quite as remarkable. In general, 
 the public highways in the slave-holding Slates are 
 far inferior to those of the North, both in extent 
 and character. If the estimates made are correct, 
 in 1846 there Avere, omitting the fractions, 5,663 
 miles of railroad actually in operation in the United 
 States. In all the slave States together there were 
 2,090 miles. Taking the cost of such as are de- 
 scribed in trustworthy sources, and estimating the 
 value of those not so described by the general cost 
 per mile of railroads in the same state, then the slave 
 States have invested $43,910,183 in this property. 
 In the free States there were 3,573 miles of railroad, 
 which had cost $112,914,465. Thus the free States 
 have 1,483 miles of railroad more than the South, 
 the value of which is $69,004,282 above the value 
 of all the railroads of the slave States. The rail- 
 
LETTER ON SLAVERY. 53 
 
 roads in Pennsylvania iiave cost 843,426,38-5 ; within 
 less than half a million of the value of all the 
 railroads in all the slave States. Maryland, from 
 her position, resembles the free States in many re- 
 spects. Besides those of this State, all the railroads 
 of the South are worth only 827,717,83o, while those 
 of Massachusetts alone have cost .^30,341,444, and 
 are now, on the average, five or six per cent, above 
 par. The Slate of South Carolina has only paid 
 ^5,671,452 for her railroad stock. I will not un- 
 dertake to estimate its present value. Nor need I 
 stop to inquire how many miles of the Southern 
 roads have been planned by Northern skill, paid 
 for by the capital of the free Stales, and are owned 
 by their citizens I 
 
 Let us next consider the increase of the value of 
 the landed property in the Free and the Slave 
 States. In 1798, the value of all the houses and 
 lands in the eight Slave States, that is, Delaware, 
 Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, 
 Georgia, Kentucky and Tennessee, was estimated 
 at $197,742,'>57 ; that of the houses and lands in 
 the eight free States — New Hampshire, Vermont, 
 jMassachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New 
 Jersey, New York and Peimsylvania — was 
 $422,235,780. It is not easy to ascertain exactly 
 the value of real property in all these States at this 
 moment. But in 1834-6, the government of New 
 
54 
 
 LETTER ON SLAVERY. 
 
 York, and in 1839, that of Virginia, made a new 
 valuation of all the real property in their respective 
 States. In 1798, all the real estate in Virginia, was 
 worth $71,225,127; in 1839, $211,930,538. In 
 1798, all the real property in the State of New York, 
 was worth $100,380,707; in 1835, $430,751,273. 
 In Virginia, there had been an increase of 197.5 per 
 cent, in forty-one years ; in New York, an increase 
 of 329.9 per cent, in thirty-seven years. 
 
 For convenience sake, let us suppose each of the 
 eight Southern States has gained as rapidly as 
 Virginia, and each of those eight Northern, in the 
 same ratio with New York — and what follows ? In 
 1798, the real estate in South Carolina was valued at 
 $17,465,013 ; that of Rhode Island, at $11,066,358. 
 By the above ratios, the real estate in South Caro- 
 lina was worth ^51,958,393 in 1839 ; and in 1835, 
 that of Rhode Island was worth $47,574,288. 
 Thus the real property in the leading slave State of 
 the Union, with a population of 594,398, Avas worth 
 but $4,384,105, more than the real property of 
 Rhode Island, Avith a population of only 108,830. 
 In 1840, the aggregate real property in the city of 
 Boston was valued at $60,424,200, and in 1847, 
 at $97,764,500,— $45,271,120 more than the com- 
 puted value of all the real estate in South Carolina. 
 In 1798, the value of the aggregate real property of 
 the eight slave States was $'197,742,557; of the 
 eight free, $422,235,780 ; in 1839, by the above 
 
 
LETTER ON SLAVERY. 55 
 
 ratios, the real estate of the Southern States would be 
 worth $588,289,107, and that of the Northern, 
 $1,715,201,618. Thus the real property of these 
 eight free States would be almost three times more 
 valuable than the eight slave States, yet the free 
 contain but 170,150 square miles, while the slave 
 States contain 212,920. But this, in part, is a mat- 
 ter of calculation only, and liable to some uncer- 
 tainty as the ratio of Virginia and New York may 
 not represent the increase of any either South or 
 North. Let us come to public and notorious facts. 
 
 In 1839, the value of all the annual agricultural 
 products of the South, as valued by the last census, 
 was $312,380,151 ; that of the free States $342,- 
 007,446. Yet in the South there were 1,984,866 
 persons engaged in agriculture, and in the North 
 only 1,735,086, and the South has the advantage of 
 raising tropical productions, which cannot be grown 
 in Europe. The agricultural products of the South 
 which find their w^ay to foreign lands, are mainly 
 cotton, sugar, rice and tobacco. The entire value of 
 these articles raised in the fifteen slave States in that 
 year, was $74,866,310 ; while the agricultural pro- 
 ductions of the single State of New York amount- 
 ed in that year to $108,275,281. 
 
 The value of articles manufactured in the South, 
 was $42,178,184 ; in the free States $197,658,040. 
 In the slave States there were, in various manufac- 
 
56 LETTER 0\ SLAVERY. 
 
 Tories, 246,601 spindles ; in Rhode Island, the 
 smallest of the free States, 51S,S17, The aggre- 
 gate annual earnings of all the slave States, was 
 8403,429,718 ; of the free, §658,705,108. The 
 annual earnings of six slave States — North Caro- 
 lina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Missis- 
 sippi, and Louisiana, amount to $189,321,719 ; 
 those of the State of New York to $193,806,433, 
 more than $4,000,000 above the income of six fa- 
 mous States. The annual earnings of INIassachu- 
 setts alone are more than $9,000,000 greater than 
 the united earning of three slave States, — South 
 Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. The earnings of 
 South Carolina, with her population of 594,398, 
 about equals that of the county of Essex, in jMas- 
 sachusetts, with less than 95,000. 
 
 In 1839, in the South there were built houses to 
 the value of $14,421,441 ; and in the North, to the 
 value of $27,496,560. The ships built by the South 
 that year, were valued at $704,289 ; by the North, 
 at $6,301,805. 
 
 In 1846, the absolute debt of all the free States, 
 was $109,176,527. The actual productive State- 
 property of those States, including the school fund, 
 was $98,680,285, — leaving the actual indebtedness 
 above their State-properly only $10,546,242. The 
 absolute debt of the slave States was .$55,948,373 ; 
 their productive State-property, including their 
 school funds, $30,294,428 — leaving their actual in- 
 
LETTER ON SLaVEEY. 
 
 57 
 
 debtedness above their State-property $25,6o3,94o, 
 more than twice the corresponding indebtedness 
 of the North. 
 
 Besides this, it must be remembered that in the 
 free States there are 4o,569 men engaged in the 
 learned professions, "svhile in the slave States there 
 are but 20,292. In addition to that, in all the free 
 States there are many employed in teaching common 
 schools. Thus, in 1S47, in ^lassachusetts, there 
 were 7,5S2 engaged in the common schools. In 
 the slave States this class is much smaller. Still 
 more, in all the free States there are many, not 
 ranked in the learned professions, who devote them- 
 selves to Science, Literature, and the Fine Arts ; 
 in the South but few. In the South, the female 
 slaves are occupied in hard field-labor, which is 
 almost unheard-of in the free States. Thus the 
 difference in the earnings of the two, great as it 
 is, is not an adequate emblem of the actual differ- 
 ence or productive capacity, or even of the pro- 
 duction, in the two sections of the country. 
 
IV 
 
 EFFECTS OF SLAVERY ON POPULATION. 
 
 Let us next consider the Effects of Slavery 
 on the Increase of Numbers, as shown by the great 
 movements of the population in the North and 
 South. 
 
 In 1790, the present free States — New En- 
 gland, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania 
 — contained 1,968,455 persons ; the slave States 
 1,961,372. In 1840 the same slave States, Delaware, 
 Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Caro- 
 lina, Georgia, Kentucky — contained 5,479,S60 ; 
 the same free States, 6,767,082. In 50 years those 
 slave States had increased 179 per cent. ; those free 
 States 243 per cent., or with 64 per cent, greater 
 rapidity. 
 
 In 1790 the entire population of all the slave 
 States Avas 1,961,372; in 1810, including the new 
 slave Slates, 7,334,431 ; while the population of 
 the free States — including the new ones — Avas 
 9,728,922. The slave States had increased 279 
 per cent. ; the free, 394, the latter increasing 
 
LETTER ON SLAVERY. 59 
 
 with a rapidity 115 per cent, greater than the 
 former. 
 
 In ISIO the new slave States, — Louisiana, Missis- 
 sippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Teiuiessee, Missouri, and 
 Kentucky — contained 805,991 persons; the new 
 free States — Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan — 
 contained but 272,324. But in 1840 those new 
 slave States, with the addition of Florida, contained 
 3,409,132, while the population of the new free 
 States — with the addition of Wisconsin and Iowa 
 — contained 2,967,840. In 50 years the new 
 slave States had increased 323 per cent., and the 
 new free States 1,090 per cent. 
 
 In 1790, the whole free population of the present 
 free States was 1,930,125 ; the free population of the 
 present slave Slates and territories was 1,394,847. 
 The difference in the number of free persons in 
 the North and South was only 535,278. But in 
 1840 the free population of the free States and Ter- 
 ritories was 9,727,893 ; the free population of the 
 slave States and territories only 4,848,105 ; the dif- 
 ference between the two was 4,879,788. In 50 
 years the free persons in the slave States had in- 
 creased 247 per cent. ; the free persons of the free 
 States 404 per cent. It is true something has been 
 added to the North by imrnigrations from abroad, 
 but the accessions which the South has received by 
 the purchase of Louisiana and Florida, by the 
 immigration of enterprising men from the North, and 
 
60 LETTER ON SLAVERY. 
 
 by the importation of slaves, is perhaps more thau 
 adequate to balance the northern increase by foreign 
 immigration. 
 
 The Southern States have great advantages over 
 the Northern, in soil, climate, and situation ; they 
 have a monopoly of the tropical productions so 
 greatly sought by all northern nations ; they have 
 superior facilities for the acquisition of wealth, and 
 through that for the rapid increase of population. 
 In some countries the advance of both is retarded 
 by oppressive legislation. Of this the South can- 
 not complain, as it will by and by appear. The 
 new land lay nearer to the old Southern States 
 than the old free States, and that not " infested with 
 Indians" to the same extent with the soil since 
 conquered and colonized by the emigrants from the 
 Northern States. The difference of the increase 
 of the two in wealth and numbers, is to be ascribed, 
 therefore, to the different institutions of the two 
 sections of the land. 
 
V. 
 
 EFFECTS OF SLAVERY OX EDUCATION. 
 
 Let 113 now look at the Effects of Slavery on 
 the intellectual, moral and religious Development 
 of the People. The effect on the intellectual, moral 
 and religious condition of the slave is easily under- 
 stood. He is only continued in Slavery by restraining 
 him from the civilization of mankind in this age. 
 His mind, conscience, soul — all his nobler pow- 
 ers — must be kept in a state of inferior develop- 
 ment, otherwise he will not be a slave in the 
 nineteenth century, and in the United States. In 
 comparison with the intellectual culture of their 
 masters the slaves are a mass of Barbarians, still 
 more emphatically, when compared with the free 
 institutions of the Xorth ; they are Savages. This 
 is not a mere matter of inference, the fact is sub- 
 stantiated by the notorious testimony of slave-hold- 
 ers themselves. In 1S34 the Synod of South Caro- 
 hna and Georgia reported that the slaves " may 
 justly be considered the Heathen of this coontry, 
 and will bear comparison with the Heathen of any 
 
62 LETTER ON SLAVERY. 
 
 part of the world." " They are destitute of the 
 privileges of the Gospel, and ever will be under the 
 present state of things;" In all the slave Sates, 
 says the Synod, there are "not twelve men exclu- 
 sively devoted to the religious instruction of the 
 Negroes." Of the regular ministers " but a very 
 small portion pay any attention to them." " We 
 know of but five churches in the slave-holding States 
 built exclusively for their use," and " there is no 
 sufficient room for them in the white churches for 
 their accommodation." " They are unable to read, 
 as custom, or law, and generally both, prohibit 
 their instruction. They have no Bible — no fam- 
 ily altars ; and Avhen in affliction, sickness, or death, 
 they have no minister to address to them the con- 
 solations of the Gospel, nor to bury them with 
 solemn and appropriate services." They may 
 sometimes be petted and caressed as children and 
 toys, they are never treated as men. 
 
 " Heathenism," says another Southern authority, 
 "is as real in the slave States as in the South Sea 
 Islands." " Chastity is no virtue among them [the 
 slaves] ; its violation neither injures female charac- 
 ter in their own estimation nor that of their mis- 
 tress." Where there is no marriage recognized by 
 the State or Church as legal and permanent between 
 slaves ; wdiere the female slave is wholly in her 
 master's power — how can it be otherwise ? Said 
 the Roman proverb, " Nothing is unlawful for the 
 
LETTER ON SLAVERY. 
 
 63 
 
 master to his slave." When men are counted as 
 things, instruments of husbandry, separable limbs 
 of the master, and retained in subjugation by ex- 
 ternal force and the prohibition of all manly cul- 
 ture, the effect of Slavery on its victim is so obvi- 
 ous that no more need be said thereof. . 
 
 The effect of Slavery on the intellectual, moral, 
 and religious condition of the free population of 
 the South, is not so obvious perhaps at first sight. 
 But a comparison with the free States will render 
 that also plain. 
 
 All attempts at the improvement of the humbler 
 and more exposed portions of society, the perish- 
 ing and dangerous classes thereof, originate in the 
 free States. It is there that men originate societies 
 for the Reform of Prisons, the Prevention of Crime, 
 Pauperism, Intemperance, Licentiousness and Ig- 
 norance. There spring up Education-Societies, 
 Bible - Societies, Peace - Societies, Societies for 
 teaching Christianity in foreign and barbarous 
 lands. There too are the learned and philosophi- 
 cal societies, for the study of Science, Letters, and 
 Art. Whence come the men of superior educa- 
 tion who occupy the Pulpits, exercise the profes- 
 sions of Law and Medicine, or fill the chairs of the 
 Professors in the Colleges of the Union ? Almost 
 all from the North, from the free States. There is 
 preaching every Avhere. But search the whole 
 
64 LETTER ON SLAVERY. 
 
 Southern Slates for the last seven-and-forty years, 
 and it were hard to show a single preacher of any 
 eminence in any pulpit of a slave-holding State ; a 
 single clergyman remarkable for ability in his calling, 
 for great ideas, for eloquence, elsewhere so cheap 
 — or even for learning ! Even Expositions and 
 Commentaries on the Bible, the most common cler- 
 ical productions, are the work of the North alone. 
 
 Whence come the distinguished authors of Amer- 
 ica ? the Poets — Bryant, Longfellow, Whittier ; 
 Historians — Sparks, Prescott, Bancroft ; Jurists — 
 Parsons, Wheaton, Story, Kent ! Whence Irving, 
 Channing, Emerson ; — w' hence all the scientific 
 men, the men of thought, who represent the Na- 
 tion's loftier consciousness ? All from the free 
 States ; north of Mason and Dixon's line ! 
 
 Few works of any literary or scientific value 
 have been written in this country in any of the 
 slave States ; few even get reprinted there. Com- 
 pare the works which issue from the press of New 
 Orleans, Savannah, Charleston, Norfolk, Baltimore, 
 with such as come from Philadelphia, NewYork, 
 and Boston — even from Lowell and Cincinnati ; 
 compare but the Booksellers' stock in those several 
 cities, and the difference between the cultivation of 
 the more educated classes of the South and North 
 is apparent at a glance. 
 
 But leaving general considerations of this sort, let 
 
LLTTKR O:-' SLAVERY. 66 
 
 US look at fads. In 1671, Sir William Berkely, Gov- 
 ernor of Virginia, said, " J thank God that there 
 are no frea schools nor printing presses, [in Virginia] 
 and I hope we shall not have them these hundred 
 years." In 1840, in the fifteen slave Slates and 
 territories, there were at the various primary schools 
 201,08-0 scholars ; at the various primary schools of 
 the free Stales 1,626,028. The Stale of Ohio alone, 
 had 218,601i scholars at her primary schools, 17,o24 
 more than all the fifteen slave States. South Car- 
 olina hod 12,o20 such scholars, and Rhode Island 
 17,3.>0. New York alone had 'S02,.367. 
 
 In the higher schools there were in the South, 
 3-j,93'V " scholars at the public charge," as they are 
 called in the censas ; in the North, 432,3^SS similar 
 scholars. Virginia, the largest of the slave Slates 
 had 9,791 such scholars ; Rhode Island, the small- 
 est of the free States 10,719. Massachusetts alone 
 had 1'jS,3o1, more than four times as many as all 
 the slave States. 
 
 In the slave Stales, at academies and grammar 
 schools, there v.ere o2,906 scholars ; in the free 
 Slates, 97,174. But the difference in numbers here 
 does not represent the difference of fact, for most 
 of the academies and grammar schools of the South 
 are inferior to the " schools at public charge " of 
 the North ; far inferior to the better portion of the 
 Northern " District Schools." 
 
 In IS 10 there wpre at the various Colleges in the 
 6* 
 
66 LETTER OX SLAVERY. 
 
 South, 7,106 pupils, and in the free States, 8,927. 
 Here too, the figures fail to indicate the actual dif- 
 ference in the numbers of such as receive a superior 
 education ; for the greater part of the eighty-seven 
 '• Universities and Colleges •' of the South are much 
 inferior to the better Academies and High Schools 
 of the North. 
 
 In the libraries of all the Universities and Col- 
 leges of the South there are 223,416 volumes ; in 
 those of the North, 593, S97. The hbraries of the 
 Theological schools of the South contain 22,S00 
 volumes ; those of the North, 102,080. The dif- 
 ference in the character and value of these volumes 
 does not appear in the returns. 
 
 In the slave States there are 1.368,325 free white 
 children between the ages of five and twenty ; in the 
 free States, 3,536,689 such children. In the slave 
 States, at schools and colleges, there are 301,172 
 pupils ; in the free States, 2.-212.444 pupils, at 
 schools or colleges. Thus, in the slave States, out 
 of twenty-five free white children between live and 
 twenty, there are not quite five at any school or 
 college ; while out of twenty-five such children in the 
 free States, there are more than fifteen at school or 
 college. 
 
 In the slave States, of the free white population 
 that is over twenty years of age, there is almost 
 one tenth part that are unable to read and write ; 
 while in the free States there is not quite one in 
 
LETTER OX SLAVEBT. 67 
 
 one hundred and fifty-six who is deficient to that 
 degree. 
 
 In New England there are but few born therein 
 and more than twenty years of age. who are unable 
 to read and write : but many foreigners arrive there 
 with no education, and thus swell the number of the 
 illiterate, and diminish the apparent effect of her 
 free institutions. The South has few such emi- 
 grants ; the ignorance of the Southern States there- 
 fore is to be ascribed to other causes. The North- 
 ern men who settle in the slave-holdiog States, 
 have perhaps about the average culture of the 
 North, and more than that of the South. The 
 South therefore gains educationally from immigra- 
 tion as the North loses. 
 
 Among the Northern States Connecticut^ and 
 among the Southern States, South Carolina, are to 
 a great degree free fi-om disturbing influences of 
 this character. A comparison between the two will 
 show the relative effects of the respective institutions 
 of the North and South. In Connecticut, there 
 are 163. S43 free persons over twenty years of age ; 
 in South Carolina but 111.663. In Connecticut, 
 there are but 526 persons over twenty who are un- 
 able to read and ^^Tite, while in South Carolina 
 there are 20.615 free white persons over twenty 
 years of age unable to read and write. In South 
 Carohna, out of each 626 free whites more than 
 twenty years of age, there are more than 5S wholly 
 
68 LETTER ON SLAVERY. 
 
 unable to read or write ; out of that number of such 
 persons in Connecticut, not quite two ! More than 
 the sixth part of the adult freemen of South Caro- 
 lina are unable to read the vote which will be de- 
 posited at the next election. It is but fair to infer 
 that at least one third of the adults of South Caro- 
 lina, if not of much of the South, are unable to read 
 and understand even a newspaper. Indeed, in one 
 of the slave States, this is not a matter of mere in- 
 ference, for in 1837 Gov. Clarke, of Kentucky, de- 
 clared, in his message to the legislature, that " one 
 third of the adult population were imable to write 
 their names ;" yet Kentucky has a " school-fund," 
 valued at $1,221,819, while South Carolina has 
 none. 
 
 One sign of this want of ability even to read, in 
 the slave States, is too striking to be passed by. 
 The staple reading of the least cultivated Ameri- 
 cans is the newspapers, one of the lowest forms of 
 literature, though one of the most powerful, read 
 even by men who read nothing else. In the slave 
 States there are published but 377 newspapers, and 
 in the free 1,135. These numbers do not express 
 the entire difference in the case, for as a general 
 rule the circulation of the Southern newspapers is 
 50 to 75 per cent, less than that of the North. 
 Suppose, however, that each Southern newspaper 
 has two thirds the circulation of a Northern jour- 
 nal, we have then but 225 newspapers for the slave 
 
LETTER ON SLAVERY. 69 
 
 States I The more valuable joTunals — the month- 
 lies aud quarterlies — are published almost eutirelv 
 in the free Slates. 
 
 The number of Churches, the number and char- 
 acter of the clergy who labor for these churches, 
 are other measures of the intellectual and moral 
 condition of the people. The scientific character 
 of the Southern clergy has been already touched 
 on. Let us compare the more external facts. 
 
 In 1S30. South Carolina had a population of 
 oSl.lSo souls ; Connecticut 297.675. In 1S36, 
 South Carolina had 364 ministers : Connecticut 49S. 
 
 In 1S34. there were in the slave States but S2.o32 
 scholars in the Sunday schools ; in the free States 
 o04,S3o ; in the single State of New York, 161,768. 
 
 A cause which keeps 3,000.000 men in bondage in 
 America and the nineteenth century, has more sub- 
 tle influences than those just now considered. It 
 not only prevents the extension of education among 
 the people, but affects the doctrines taught them, 
 even the doctrines taught in the name of God. 
 Christianity is nominally the public ReHgion of 
 America : not of the Government, which extends 
 protection alike to all modes of worship, of the 
 Indian, the Mormon, and the Jew, but of the 
 people. I will not touch the doctrines of the sects, 
 in which Christian differs from Christian, but come 
 
70 LETTER ON SLAVERY, 
 
 to what is general among Christians — a part of the 
 universal Rehgion imphed also in Human Nature 
 itself. All sects, as such, theoretically agree that the 
 most important practical doctrine of Christianity is 
 LOVE TO MEN ; to all men, of all ages, races, and con- 
 ditions. As the Christian idea of God rises far above 
 the Heathen or Hebrew conception thereof, so the 
 Christian idea of man's relation to man far trans- 
 cends the popular notions of human duty which 
 formerly had prevailed. God is " our Father," 
 the God of Love ; Man our Brother, whom Ave 
 are bound to love as ourselves, and treat as we 
 would be treated. Christian Piety, or Love of God, 
 involves Christian Morality, or Love of Man. 
 
 I lay aside the peculiar theoretical doctrines of 
 the sects, that are preached everywhere, and ask : 
 Can the Christian relations of human Brotherhood, 
 the Christian duty of Love to Men, be practically 
 preached in the Slave States ? I only publish an 
 open secret in saying it is impossible. The forms 
 of Christianity may be preached, not its piety, not 
 its morality, not even its philosophy, or its history. 
 If a man holds slaves in practice and justifies the 
 deed in theory, how can he address an audience of 
 slaveholders and teach them the duty of loving 
 others as themselves ? He Cannot consistently 
 teach that doctrine, nor they consistently hear. 
 
 The doctrines of the public religion are always 
 modified by national habits, history, institutions» 
 
LETTER ON SLAVERY. 71 
 
 and ideas. Christianity, as taught in New England, 
 has modifications unknown in Old England. The 
 great national and peculiar ideas of America — of 
 which I shall soon speak — are among the truths of 
 Christianity. We began our national career by de- 
 claring all men born wath equal rights. In such a 
 people we might look for a better and more uni- 
 versal development of Christianity, than in a na- 
 tion which knows no unalienable rights, or equality 
 of all men, but robs the many of their rights, to 
 squander privileges on the few. 
 
 In some lands Monarchy, Aristocracy, Prelacy, 
 appear in the public teaching as parts of Christian- 
 ity. In America it is not so. But it is taught that 
 Slavery is an ordinance of God, — justified by 
 Christianity. Thus as the public Religion is else- 
 where made to subserve the private purposes of 
 Kings, Nobles, Priests — so here is it made to 
 prove the justice of holding men in bondage. 
 There are no chains like those wrought in the 
 name of God, and welded upon their victim by the 
 teachers of Religion. 
 
 Most of the churches in the United Stales exer- 
 cise the power of excluding a man from their com- 
 munion for such offences as they see fit; for any 
 unpopular breach of the moral law ; — for murder, 
 robbery, theft, public drunkenness, seduction, licen- 
 tiousness, for heresy. Even dancing is an offence 
 
72 LETTER ON SLAVERY. 
 
 for which the churches sometimes deal with their 
 children. But, with the exception of the Quakers 
 and the United Brethren, no rehgious bodies in the 
 United States now regard slave-holding or slave- 
 dealing as an ecclesiastical offence. Church-mem- 
 bers and clergymen are owners of slaves. Even 
 churches themselves in some instances have, in 
 their corporate capacity, been owners of men. In 
 Turkey, when a man becomes a Mahometan, he 
 ceases to be a slave. But in America a clergyman 
 may own a member of his own church, beat him, 
 sell him, and grow rich on " the increase of his 
 female slaves." 
 
 Few productions of the Southern clergy find 
 their way to the North. Conspicuous among those 
 few are sermons in defence of Slavery ; attempts 
 to show that if Christ were now on earth he might 
 consistently hold property in men ! 
 
 The teachings of the Southern pulpit become more 
 and more favorable to Slavery. Oppressed, Ameri- 
 ca promulgated the Theory of Freedom ; — free, 
 she established the practice of Oppression. In 1780 
 the Methodist Episcopal Church declared " Slavery 
 is contrary to the laws of God," and "hurtful to 
 society ;" in 1784 it refused to admit slave-holders 
 to its communion — passing a vote to exclude all 
 such. But in 1836 the General Conference voted 
 " not to interfere in the civil and political relations 
 between master and slave," and exhorted its minis- 
 
LETTER ON SLAVERY. 73 
 
 ters 'Uo abstain from all abolition movements." 
 The General Conference has since declared that 
 American Slavery " is not a moral evil." The 
 Conference of South Carolina has made a similar 
 declaration. 
 
 In 1794 the Presbyterian Church added a note 
 to the eighth commandment, bringing Slavery un- 
 der that prohibition, declaring it manstealing and a 
 sin. Yet, though often entreated, it did not excom- 
 municate for that offence. In 1818, by a public de- 
 cree, the note was erased. Numerous Presbyteries 
 and Synods have passed resolutions like these : 
 " Slavery is not opposed to the will of God ;" 
 " It is compatible with the m.ost fraternal regard to 
 the best good of those servants whom God may 
 have committed to our charge." Even the Catho- 
 lic Church in the United States forms no exception 
 to the general rule. The late lamented Dr. En- 
 gland, the Catholic Bishop of Charleston, South 
 Carolina, undertook in public to prove that the 
 Catholic Church had always been the uncompro- 
 mising friend of slaveholding, not defending the 
 slaves' Right, but the usurped Privilege of the mas- 
 ters. What a difference between the present Chris- 
 tian Pope of Rome, and the Bishop of a democratic 
 State in a Christian Republic ! 
 
 It has been currently taught in the most popular 
 churches of the land, that Slavery is a " Christian 
 institution,' sustained by the Apostles, and sane- 
 
74 LETTER ON SLAVERY. 
 
 tioned by Christ himself. None of the theological 
 parties has been so little connected with Slavery 
 as tlie Unitarians — perhaps from the smallness 
 of the sect itself, and its northern latitude — but, 
 for years, one of its vice-presidents was a slave- 
 holder. 
 
 "While the Southern churches teach that Slavery 
 is Christian, the Northern join in the belief. Here 
 and there a few voices in the North have been 
 lifted up against it ; seldom an eminent voice in an 
 eminent place, then to be met with obloquy and 
 shame. Almost all the churches in the land seem 
 joined in opposing such as draw public attention to 
 the fact that a Christian Republic holds millions of 
 men in bondage. Not long since a clergyman of 
 the South, who boasted that he owned thirty slaves, 
 and " would wade knee-deep in blood " to defend 
 his right to them, was received by the Northern 
 churches, and as himself has said, " invited on 
 every hand to pulpits," with no rebuke, but only 
 welcome from the large and powerful denomina- 
 tion to Avhich he belonged. He returned, as he 
 says, "leaving the hot-beds of abolitionism, without 
 having been once foiled. God be praised for sus- 
 taining me. I give Him all the glory, for without 
 Him I am nothing." Even in Boston there is a 
 church of the same denomination, in which no 
 colored man is allowed to purchase a seat. Colored 
 men at the North are excluded from colleges and 
 
LETTER ON SLAVERY. 70 
 
 high schools, from theological seminaries and from 
 respectal)le churches — even from the Town Hall 
 and the Ballot. Doctrines and outward deeds are 
 but signs of Sentiments and Ideas which rule the 
 hfe. 
 
 The sons of the North, when they settle in the 
 South, as merchants, ministers, lawyers, plant- 
 ers, when they stand in the congress of the nation ; 
 "when they fill important offices in the federal gov- 
 ernment — what testimony do they bear to the 
 declaration that " all men are created equal ? " I 
 should blush to refresh your memories Avith North- 
 ern Shame. 
 
 If the clergy find Slavery " ordained " in the 
 Bible, and established amongst the " Christian in- 
 stitutions," did not the laymen first find it in the 
 Bible of Rousseau ? Important men at the South 
 have taught that Slavery is " a moral and humane 
 institution, productive of the greatest political and 
 social advantages ;" '' the corner stone of our re- 
 publican edifice :" " It is the most sure and stable 
 edifice for free institutions in the world." The 
 doctrine that " all men are created equal " in Rights 
 is declared " ridiculously absurd." Democratic Mr. 
 Calhoun declares that where " common labor is per- 
 formed by niembers of the political community a 
 dangerous element is obviously introduced into the 
 body politic." A Pagan had taught it two thou- 
 sand years before. 
 
76 LETTER ON SLAVERY. 
 
 Thus powerful is the influence of Slavery in its 
 action on the intellectual, moral and religious de- 
 velopment of the people at the South ; thus subtly 
 does it steal upon the North. As one of your most 
 illustrious citizens, old but not idle, has said, the 
 Spirit of Slavery " has crept into the philosophical 
 chairs of the Schools. Its cloven foot has ascended 
 the pulpits of the churches. Professors of colleges 
 teach it as a lesson of morals ; ministers of the gos- 
 pel seek and profess to find sanctions for it in the 
 Word of God." 
 
 The effect of Slavery on the industrial, numerical, 
 intellectual and moral developments of the people 
 may be best shown by a comparison of the con- 
 dition and history of the two largest States, one 
 Slave, the other Free. Virginia contains more than 
 64,000 square miles, or 13,370 more than England. 
 The climate is delightful. The State is intersected 
 by " the finest bay in the world ; " Avatered by long 
 and abundant rivers, this inviting navigation, and 
 allowing numerous and easy communications with 
 the interior ; that waiting to turn the wheels of the 
 manufacturer, to weave and spin. The soil is rich 
 in minerals. Irog, Lead and Limestone are abun- 
 dant. Nitre is found in her caverns. Salt abounds 
 on the Great Kenawha and the Holston. Fields 
 of coal, anthracite and bituminous, are numerous, 
 rich, and of easy access. The soil is fertile, the 
 
LETTER ON SLAVERY. 77 
 
 sky genial, the air salubrious. She is the oldest 
 State in the Union ; long the most important in 
 wealth, population and political power. The noble 
 array of talent and virtue found there in the last 
 century has already been mentioned. Abundantly 
 blessed with bays, harbors, rivers, mines, no State 
 in the Union had such natural advantages as Vir- 
 ginia in 1790. New York has 49,000 square miles, 
 and was settled somewhat later than Virginia, and 
 under circumstances less propitious. Numerous 
 causes retarded her growth before the Kevolution. 
 Though favored with an excellent harbor, she has 
 but one natural channel of communication with the 
 interior. In 1790 Virginia contained 74S,34S in- 
 habitants ; New York but 340,120. In 1S40 Vir- 
 ginia had 1,239,797 ; New York 2,42S,921, and in 
 1S45, 2,604,495. In fifty years Virginia had not 
 doubled her population, while New York had in- 
 creased more than fourfold. In 1790, Virginia 
 had more than eleven inhabitants to each square 
 mile, and New York not quite eight ; but in 1S40, 
 Virginia had only nineteen, and New York fifty- 
 three persons to the square mile. In 179S, the 
 houses and lands of Virginia were valued at 
 $71,225,127, those of New York at 8100,380,707 ; 
 in 1839 the real estate in Virginia was worth but 
 8211,930,538, Avhile that of New York had in- 
 creased to 8430,751,273. In 1840 the annual 
 earnings of Virginia were 876,769,032 ; of New 
 7* 
 
78 LETTER ON SLAVERY. 
 
 York $193,806,433. The population of New York 
 is not quite double that of Virginia, But her annual 
 earnings nearly three times as great. In 1840, at 
 her various colleges and schools, Virginia had 
 57,302 scholars, and also 58,787 adult free whites 
 unable to read and write — 1,484 more than the 
 entire number of her children at school or college. 
 New York had 44,452 illiterate adults, and 565,442 
 children at school or college. Besides that, in Vir- 
 ginia there Avere 448,987 slaves, with no literary 
 culture at all, shut out from communication with 
 the inteUigence of the age. In 1844, in New York, 
 709,156 children, between four and sixteen, attend- 
 ed the common public schools of the State, and the 
 common school libraries contained over a million 
 of volumes ; while in Virginia there were over 
 100,000 free white children between four and six- 
 teen, who attended no school at all, perpetual va- 
 grants from learning, year out and year in. Shall 
 it always be so ? The effect follows the cause. A 
 man loses half his manhood, by Slavery, said 
 Homer, and it is as true of a State as a man. 
 
VI. 
 
 EFFECT OF SLAVERY ON LAW AND POLITICS. 
 
 I NOW call your attention to the Influence of 
 Slavery on Law and Politics, its local effect on the 
 Slave States in special, its general effect on the 
 Politics of the Union. 
 
 In the settlement of America only the People 
 came over. Nobility and Royalty did not migrate. 
 The People, the Third Estate, of course brought 
 the Institutions and Laws of their native land — 
 these are the National Habits, so to say. But they 
 brought also political Sentiments and Ideas not 
 represented by the Institutions or Laws ; Sentiments 
 and Ideas hostile thereto, and which could not be 
 made real in England, but were destined — as are 
 all such ^ Ideas — to form Institutions and make 
 Laws in their own image. There are three such 
 political Ideas Avhich have already found a theo- 
 retical expression, and have more or less been made 
 Facts and become incarnate in Institutions and 
 Laws. These are, first, the Idea, that in virtue of 
 
80 LETTER ON SLAVERY. 
 
 his manhood, each man has unalienable Rights, 
 not derived from men or revocable thereby, but 
 derived only from God ; second, that in respect to 
 these Rights all men are created equal ; third, 
 that the sole design of political government is 
 to place every man in the entire possession of 
 
 ALL his unalienable RiGHTS. 
 
 The Priesthood, Nobility, Royalty, did not share 
 these Ideas — nor the Sentiments which led to 
 them. These Ideas were of the people ; they must 
 form a Democracy, the goverx.aient of all, for 
 ALL and by all — a Commonwealth Avith no privi- 
 leged class — a State Avithout Nobles or Kings, a 
 Church without Prelate or Priest. 
 
 These Ideas, in becoming facts and founding 
 political Institutions to represent themselves, modi- 
 fied also the ancient and Common Law. " The 
 Laws of England," said Sir John Fortescue, in the 
 fifteenth century, " the Laws of England favor 
 Liberty in every case ;" " let him who favors not 
 liberty be judged impious and cruel." After the 
 national and solemn expression of the above Demo- 
 cratic Ideas, the laws must favor liberty yet more, 
 and new Institutions likewise come into being. 
 Accordingly, in the free States of the North, where 
 these Ideas have always had the fullest practical 
 exposition, ever since the Revolution there has 
 been a continual advance in legislation — laws 
 becoming more humane, universal principles get- 
 
LETTER ON SLAVERY. 81 
 
 ting established, and traditional exceptions becoming 
 annulled. In Law — the theory of these Ideas — 
 so far as expressed in Institutions and habits — and 
 in Society — the practice thereof, so far as they 
 have passed into actual life, there is a constant 
 levelling upward ; the low are raised — the Slave, 
 the Servant, the Non-Freeholder ; the lofty not 
 degraded. In the constitutions of nearly all the 
 free States it is distinctly stated that all men 
 ARE CREATED EQUAL IN RIGHTS, and in all it is 
 implied. They all are advancing towards a reali- 
 zation of that Idea — slowly, but constantly. They 
 have lost none of the Justice embodied in the Com- 
 mon Law of their ancestors — but gained new 
 Justice, and embodied it in their own forms. 
 
 This Idea of the natural equality of all men in 
 Rights, is inconsistent with Slavery ; accordingly it is 
 expressed in the constitution of but one slave State 
 — Virginia. It is consistently rejected by the poli- 
 ticians of the South. This difference of Ideas must 
 appear in all the Institutions of the North and. 
 South, and produce continual and conflicting modi- 
 tications of the Common Law of England, which 
 they both inherit ; if the one Idea adds Justice 
 thereto, the other takes it away. 
 
 Now among the institutions inherited from 
 England were the Trial by a Jury of twelve men in 
 all matters affecting liberty and life ; the Presump- 
 
82 LETTER ON SLAVERY. 
 
 tion in favor of life, liberty and innocence ; the 
 Right of every man under restraint to have a legal 
 reason publicly shown for his confinement, by a 
 writ of Habeas Corpus. The form of the latter 
 is indeed modern, but its substance old, and of un- 
 certain date. These three have long been regard- 
 ed as the great Safeguards of public justice, and in 
 the les;islation of the free States remain undisturbed 
 in their beneficent action, extending to every per- 
 son therein. In the slave States the whole class of 
 Bondmen is in fact mainly deprived of them all. 
 
 By the customs of England and her Law, while 
 Villanage obtained there, the rule was that the child 
 followed the condition of its Father : Filius sequitur 
 Pati'em. Hence the issue of a freeman, though 
 born of a servile mother, was always free. In vir- 
 tue of this maxim, and the legal Presumption in 
 favor of Liberty, a presumption extending to all 
 classes of men, the child of a female slave, which 
 was born out of wedlock, was of course free. It 
 was possible the father was a free man. The child 
 gained nothing but existence from his unknown 
 father, and the Law would not make that a curse. 
 The child of a slave father, but born before the father 
 was proved a slave, retained his freedom forever. 
 
 If a freeman married a female slave, she became 
 free during the life of her husband, and the child- 
 ren of course were free. 
 
 The slave, under certain circumstances, could 
 
LETTER ON SLAVERY. 83 
 
 possess property, acquired by devise, by gift, or 
 other means. It was so as a general rule through 
 all the North of Europe ; the more cruel maxims 
 of the Roman slave-code never prevailed with the 
 Teutonic race. 
 
 The slave could make a contract with his lord, 
 binding as that between peer and peer. He could 
 in his own name bring an action against any one ; 
 in some cases even against his master. He could, 
 in all cases and in his own name, demand a Trial by 
 Jury in a court of record, to determine if he were 
 born a slave, or free. To determine against him, 
 it was necessary not only to show in general that 
 he was a slave, but that he was the slave of some 
 one person in special. If it was simply shown that 
 the man was a slave, but was not shown to the 
 Jury's satisfaction that he Avas the slave of the 
 particular man who claimed him, the slave receiv- 
 ed his freedom at once, as one derelict by his mas- 
 ter, and if legally claimed by nobody, he naturally 
 belonged to himself. 
 
 He could be a witness in any court even when 
 his master was an adverse party ; though not pos- 
 sessed of all the privileges of a citizen — legalis 
 Homo — not admitted to hold office or serve on a 
 jury, yet he could testify on oath even in criminal 
 cases, as any other man. 
 
 If a slave ran away, and the master for one year 
 neglected to pursue him with public outcry and 
 
84 LETTER ON SLAVERY. 
 
 prosecution of his claim, the slave was free by ad- 
 verse possession of himself. While he was in 
 flight, and in actual possession of freedom, the 
 master could not seize on his children or on his 
 possessions. He must legally possess the Princi- 
 pal, the Substance, before he could touch the Sub- 
 ordinate and Accident thereof. Did the slave flee 
 to another borough or shire, a jury of that place, — 
 except in certain cases, when the trial must take 
 place in another county, — must not only convict him 
 as a slave before the master could recover his body, 
 but must convict him of being the slave of that spe- 
 cial claimant. 
 
 If a slave took orders in the Church, or became 
 a monk, he was free from his master, though this 
 was an exception to the law in most Catholic coun- 
 tries. If violence were offered to a female slave 
 by her master, she had redress as a free Avoman. 
 Slaves had all the personal rights of freemen ex- 
 cept in regard to their own respective masters, and 
 in some cases even then. There was no hindrance 
 to manumission. 
 
 In America the laws relating to Slavery are in 
 many respects more severe than the English laws, 
 since the Norman conquest, respecting villains — 
 regardant or in gross. The child's condition fol- 
 lows that of the mother. This American departure 
 from the Common Law was early made by statute, 
 
LETTER ON SLAVERY. 'OO 
 
 and the opposite maxim, the rule of the Civil Law, 
 extended over the slave States ; — Partus seqidtur 
 Ventrem. Illegitimate children of female slaves 
 ■were of course slaves forever, though the father 
 was free. But for this alteration, many thousands 
 of men now slaves would have been free. 
 
 Contrary to the old Common Law of England, 
 but in obedience to the Roman code, the American 
 slave, in law is regarded merely as a thing ; "doom- 
 ed," as Judge Ruffin, of North Carolina, sorroAv- 
 fully declares, " to live without knowledge and 
 without the capacity to make anything his own, and 
 to toil that another may reap the fruits." In some 
 of the slave States Trial by Jury is allowed to him 
 in all capital cases ; sometimes Avith the concur- 
 rence of a grand jury, sometimes without. Some- 
 times he is allowed to challenge the jurors " for 
 cause," though not peremptorily. But in South 
 Carolina, Virginia, and Louisiana, the slave is not 
 allowed a jury trial, even when his life is in peril. 
 In some others he has the protection of a jury when 
 arraigned for inferior offences. But in every slave 
 State he may be beaten to the extent of " thirty- 
 nine lashes well laid on," without the verdict of a 
 jury, but by the decision of a body of justices of the 
 peace, varying in number from two to five. In all 
 cases he is tried by men v/ho regard him only as a 
 thing, never by a jury of his peers — not even by 
 
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90 LETTER OX SLA^■ERY. 
 
 it perpetual. " Neither bond nor free may be 
 separated from the sacraments of the church," said 
 the Decretal of Gregory, " the marriages among 
 slaves must not be hindered, and though contracted 
 against their master's will, ought not, on that ac- 
 count, to be dissolved." But in the American 
 law, the slave cannot contract marriage. In North 
 Carolina, no marriage is legal between whites and 
 persons of color, including in the latter term all 
 descended from a negro to the fourth generation. 
 
 In some States it is a penal offence to teach 
 slaves the elements of common learning. By the 
 recent code of Virginia, any one who undertakes 
 to teach reading or Avriting to slaves, or even free 
 colored persons, may be fined from 810 to 8100. 
 The same is forbidden in Georgia. In Alabama, 
 the punishment is a fine from 8250 to 8-300 ; in 
 Mississippi, imprisonment for one year. Lousiana 
 forbids the teaching of slaves to read or write, 
 and prohibits any one from using language in 
 public discourse or private conversation, having a 
 tendency to produce discontent among the free 
 colored population. The latter offence is punish- 
 able " with imprisonment or death at the discretion 
 of the court." This antipathy to the education 
 of the colored race, extends even to the free States. 
 It is not unknown in New England. The State 
 of Ohio, established schools in 1829 for " the 
 
LETTER ON SLAVERY. 91 
 
 white youth of every class ami grade 'vviihoiu 
 distinction.*' 
 
 According to the alleged precept of ^laliomet, 
 slaves are supposed to be bound by feebler, social 
 and civil obligations than free men, and thus com- 
 mon oUences receive but half the punishment of 
 the free. Such it is said is the Common Law of 
 Mahometans in Turkey, and the East. In Vir- 
 ginia there are six capital oll'ences for a freeman, 
 seventy-one for a slave. In Mississippi there arc 
 thirty-eight otVences for which a slave must be 
 punished with death, — not one of which is a 
 capital crime in a free white man. In some States 
 the law is milder, but in none does the Christian 
 Kepublican of Anglo Saxon descent imitate the 
 humanity of the Mussulman, and legally favor the 
 weaker part — correcting slaves as the children of 
 the State. 
 
 Man"y oll'ences for which a slave is severely 
 punished, are not wrongs by Natin*e, sins against 
 the Universal and Divine Law, but only crimes 
 by Statute. Thus in Mississipjii, if a slave bo 
 found ''lire-hunting" he is punishable '' with thirty- 
 nine lashes, well laid on his bare back." lu the 
 same State, if a slave be found out of the limits 
 of the town, or oil' the plantation where he usually 
 works, " any one may apprehi-nd and punisii him 
 with wliipjiing on the bare back, not cx(MH>ilitig 
 
92 LETTER ON SLAVERY. 
 
 twenty lashes." If he refuses to submit to the 
 examination of any white person, "such white 
 person may apprehend and moderately correct 
 him, and if he shall assault and strike such white 
 person, he may be lawfully killed." Louisiana has 
 a similar law, and also punishes any slave or free 
 colored person exercising the functions of a minister 
 of the Gospel, with thirty-nine lashes. In Virginia 
 a slave or free colored person may be beaten with' 
 tAventy lashes for being found at any school for 
 teaching reading and writing. In South Carolina 
 he is forbidden to wear any but the coarsest 
 garments. 
 
 The Roman code allowed emancipation ; the 
 Customs of England and Germany favored it. The 
 Christian church often favored and recommended it. 
 In the Roman Empire, the advance of humanity 
 continually rendered it easy and common. A slave 
 sick, and derelict of his master, recovering, claimed 
 legally his freedom for salvage of himself. But 
 in America the laws constantly throw obstacles 
 in its way. In South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, 
 and Mississippi no man can emancipate any slave, 
 except by authority of the Legislature, granted by 
 a special enactment conveying the power. In 
 Georgia, a Will, setting free a slave, is so far null 
 and void, and any person attempting to execute 
 it, shall be fined ^1000. In Kentucky, Missouri, 
 
LETTER ON SLAVERY. 93 
 
 Virginia, INIarylancl, it is less difficult ; but even 
 there no man is allowed to emancipate a slave to 
 the prejudice of his creditors; — or in Virginia, 
 INIississippi and Kentucky, to the lessening of his 
 ■widow's dower, the Common Law, favors three 
 things — Life, Liberty and Dower; — the law of 
 these three States sacrifices the Liberty of Slaves 
 to the Dower of a widow. Emancipation must 
 be made with most formal and technical minute- 
 ness, or the act is void. Does the master solemnly 
 covenant with his slave to emancipate him ? the 
 contract can be revoked at the master's will. No 
 extraordinary service of the slave, except in 
 North Carolina, Avould be held " a good consid- 
 eration" and sufficient to bind the bargain. Li 
 some States, as Maryland, and Virginia, in fact — no 
 person under thirty nor over five-and-forty can be 
 emancipated. 
 
 Take all the slave-laws of the United States 
 together, consider the Race that has made them, 
 their Religion, the Political Ideas of their govern- 
 ment, that it is in the nineteenth century after Christ, 
 and they form the most revolting work of legisla- 
 tion to be found in the annals of any pacific people. 
 The codes of the Barbarians who sat on the ruins 
 of the Roman Empire — the Burgundians, Bava- 
 rians, the AUemanni, with the Visigoths and their 
 northern kin — have left enactments certainly 
 
94 LETTER ON SLA^*ERY. 
 
 more terrible in themselves. But the darkness of 
 that period shrouds all those barbarian legislations 
 in a general and homogeneous gloom ; and here, it 
 is " the freest and most enlightened nation of the 
 world," who keeps, extends, and intensifies the 
 dreadful statutes which make men only things, 
 binds and sells them as brute cattle. In 1102, the 
 Council of London decreed that " hereafter no one 
 shall presume to carry on the nefarious business in 
 which hitherto, men in England are wont to be 
 sold as brute beasts." The churches of America 
 have no voice of rebuke — no word of entreaty 
 when Christian Clergymen sell their brothers in 
 the market. The flag of America and the majesty 
 of the law defend that " business," which the 
 Anglo Saxon Bishops, seven hundred and forty-five 
 years ago, looked on as " nefarious," Nefarium Ne- 
 goiium. M. de Tocqueville regarded the American 
 slave-code as " Legislation stained by unparalleled 
 atrocities ; a despotism directed against the human 
 mind ; Legislation which forbids the slaves to be 
 taught to read and write, and -which aims to sink 
 them as nearly as possible to the level of the 
 brutes." 
 
 The effect of Slavery appears in the general 
 legislation of the South. In Wisdom and Human- 
 ity it is far behind the North. It is there that laws 
 are most bloody ; punishments most barbarous and 
 
LETTER ON SLA^•ERV. 95 
 
 vindictive ; that irregular violence takes most often 
 the place of legal procedure; that equity is least 
 sure even for the free whites themselves. One 
 end of the slave's chain is round the master's neck. 
 *' Justice," says a proverb, '• has feet of wool 
 but iron hands." The slave-driver's whip, and the 
 bowie-knife of the American have a near re- 
 lation. 
 
 Some of the Southern States have enacted re- 
 markable laws to this effect : That when anv firee 
 negro or person of color arrives in any vessel at a 
 Southern port, he shall be shut up in prison until 
 the departure of the vessel, the owner of the vessel 
 paying the costs. By this law the free citizens of 
 the free States are continually imprisoned in South 
 Carolina and Louisiana. This is not only a viola- 
 tion of the constitution of the United States, but 
 it is contrary to the common customs of Christian 
 nations ; a law without a parallel in their codes ; a 
 result which Gouverneur Morris did not anticipate 
 in 17S7, when he made his satirical calculation 
 of the value of the Union to the North. 
 
 The iniquity of the code of the Slave States has 
 passed into some enactments of the general govern- 
 ment of the Union. In 1793, a law was made by 
 Congress to this effect : A fugitive slave escaping 
 into a free State — and consequently any man claim- 
 ed to be such — mav be seized bv the master or his 
 
1)0 LETTER OX SLAVERY. 
 
 agent, and carried back to Slavery without the 
 intervention of a Trial by Jury to determine •whether 
 the man is a slave — simply by a trial before 
 '' any Judge of the circuit or district courts of the 
 TL'nited States residing or being ■within the State, 
 or before any magistrate of the county, city, or 
 town corporate where such seizure or arrest shall 
 be made." The proof required that the man is a 
 slave is by " oral testimony or affida\-it " of the 
 parties interested in the man's capture. This is a 
 departure firom the Customs of your Fathers ; — a 
 dep^arture which the Common Law of England 
 would not justify at anytime since the Norman con- 
 quest. The Trial by Jury has been regarded the 
 great Safeguard of personal Freedom ; even in the 
 dark ages of English law it was the Right of every 
 man. of every fugitive slave, when his person was 
 in peril. Had a slave escaped, with his children, 
 and remained some time a freeman — statu liber : 
 did the master find the children and not the father, 
 he could not hold them till he caught the father, and 
 by a jury-tTEd proved his claim. In the United 
 States the laws do not favor lit-erty in case of men 
 bom with African blood in their veins. 
 
 The power of the general government has been 
 continiKLlly exercised against this class of Ameri- 
 cans. It pursues them after they have taken refuge 
 with the Indians ; it has sullied the American name 
 by Tainly asking the monarch of England to deliver 
 
^sx. ys «^ 
 
 ae aff it :oe 3c 
 
 HV SH. liK SK9QS 
 
 :ije 
 
98 LETTER ON SLAVERY. 
 
 territory. Have the slaves no arms ? There are 
 FIREBRANDS OH evcry hearth. During the Revolu- 
 tion many thousands escaped from South Carolina 
 alone. At the conclusion of the last war with 
 England she offered to pay $1,204,000 as tl^e 
 value of the slaves who, in a brief period, had taken 
 shelter beneath her flag. What if England had 
 armed them as soldiers — to ravage the country 
 and burn the towns ? Will a future enemy be so 
 reluctant ? The feeling of the civiKzed world re- 
 volts at our inhumanity. The Enghsh, for reasons 
 no longer existing, took little pains to avail them- 
 selves of the weapon thus thrust into their hands. 
 In the time of our troubles with France, when war 
 was expected, General Washington had serious 
 apprehensions from this source. Even in 1756, 
 during the French war, Governor Dinwiddle of 
 Virginia did not " dare venture to part with any of 
 our white men any distance, as we must have a 
 watchful eye over our negro slaves." 
 
 The Revolutionary war showed the respective 
 military abilities of North and South, and their re- 
 spective devotion to their country's cause. It is 
 not easy, perhaps not possible to ascertain the sums 
 of money furnished by the particular States, for the 
 purposes of that war ; the number of men it is easy 
 to learn. Taking the census of 1790 as the stand- 
 ard, the six slave States had a free population of 
 
LETTER OX SLAVERY. 99 
 
 l,So2,504, or, including Kentucky and Tennessee, 
 1,961,372. Let us suppose, that during the Revo- 
 lution, from 1775 to 1783, the number was but two 
 thirds as great, or 1,307,549. In those States there 
 were 657,527 slaves, all the other States had like- 
 wise slaves ; but in New England there Avere but 
 3,886, their influence quite inconsiderable in mili- 
 tary affairs. Let us therefore compare the number 
 of men furnished for the war by New England and 
 the six slave States. In 1790 the population of 
 New England was 1,009,823. But let us suppose, 
 as before, that from 1775 to 1783, it Avas, on an 
 average, but two thirds as large, or 673,215. Dur- 
 ing the nine years of the Revolutionary war, New 
 England furnished for the continental army 119,305 
 men ; while the slave States, with a free population of 
 1,307,549, furnished but 59,336 men for the conti- 
 nental army. Besides that, the slave States fur- 
 nished 10,123 militia men, and New England 
 29,324. 
 
 Let us compare a slave State, and a free one, of 
 about equal population. In 1790, South Carolina 
 contained 249,073 persons ; Connecticut 238,141. 
 Supposing the population, during the Avar, only tAvo 
 thirds as great as in 1790, then South Carolina con- 
 tained 166,018, and Connecticut 158,760 persons. 
 During the nine years of the Avar, South Carolina 
 sent 6,417 soldiers to the continental army, and 
 Connecticut 32,039. In 1790, Massachusetts con- 
 
100 LETTER ON SLA\-ERY. 
 
 tained 47o,Clo7 soiils ; during the Revolution, ac- 
 cording to the above ratio, 316,S3S. While the 
 six slave State*, with their free population of 
 I.o07,o49, furnished but o9,oo0 soldiers for the 
 coniiiieutal army, and 10,1*23 militia men, Massa- 
 chusetts alone sent GS,007 soldiers to the conti- 
 nental army and lo.loo militia. Thus shoulder to 
 shoulder Massachusetts and South Carolina went 
 through the Revolution, and felt the great arm of 
 "Washington lean on them both for support. 
 
 By the Constitution of the United States, in the 
 apportionment of representatives to Congress, live 
 slaves count the same as three freemen. This is a 
 provision imknown in former national codes, rest- 
 ing on a principle uu-deraocratic, detrimental to lib- 
 erty, and liitherto unheard of: the principle of 
 allowing parts of a nation poUtical power in pro- 
 portion to the number of men which they hold in 
 bondage. It would have astonished the Heathen 
 Democracy of Athens long centuries ago. By this 
 arrangement, from 17S9 to 179r2, the South gained 
 seven representatives in the first Congress ; from 
 1795 to 1S13 — foiurteen ; from 1S13 to lS2o — 
 nineteen ; from 1S23 to 1833 — twent>-two ; from 
 1S33 to 1S43 — twenty-five. By the last appor- 
 tionment bill, one representative is allowed for 
 70.6S0 free men, or a proportionate number of 
 slaves. Bv this airan£rement, in a House of onlv 
 
LF.TTnn ON KLAV'ERY. 101 
 
 22'j members, the South gains twenty representa- 
 tives on account of her slaves — more than one 
 twelfth part of the whole. 
 
 At present the North has 13S representatives for 
 9,728,922 souls ; or 9,727,S93 free rnen ; one re- 
 presentative for each 70,492 free men. The South 
 has 87 repre5*entatives. There are within the slave 
 Stales 4,848,105 free men ; they have one repre- 
 sentative for each oo,72'j free persorLS. 
 
 In the next Presidential election the North will 
 have IGG electoral votes ; the South 117. The 
 North has an electoral vote for each o2,'j76 free 
 men ; the South one for each 41,436. Part of this 
 difference is due to the fact that in the South there 
 are several small States. But twenty electoral 
 votes are given by the South, on account of her 
 property in slaves. But if slaves are merely pro- 
 perty, there is no reason why Southern Negroes 
 should be represented in Congress more than the 
 Spindles of the North. 
 
 But the South pays direct taxes for her slaves 
 in the same proportion. A direct tax has been re- 
 sorted to only four times since 17';9 by the General 
 Government, viz. in 1798, 1813, 1814, and 1816. 
 The whole amount assessed is .$14,000,000. Of 
 this about $12,7'j0,000 was actually paid into the 
 treasury of the United States, though part in a de- 
 preciated currency. Of that the South paid for 
 
 9* 
 
102 LETTER ON gLAVERY. 
 
 her slaves, if the computation be correct, only 
 $1,256,553. 
 
 In 1837 the surplus revenue of the Union, amount- 
 ing to $37,468,859 97, was distributed among the 
 several States in proportion to their electoral votes. 
 By the census of 1830, the North had 7,008,451 
 free persons, and the South but 3,823,289. The 
 free States received $21,410,777 12, and the slave 
 States $16,058,082 85. Each free man of the 
 North received but $3 05, while each free man of 
 the South received $4 20 in that division. 
 
 At that time the South had one hundred and 
 twenty-six electoral votes, of which twenty-five 
 were on account of her slave-representation. She 
 therefore received by that arrangement $3,186,127 
 50 on account of the representation of her slaves. 
 From that if we deduct the $1,256,553 paid by 
 her as direct taxes on her slaves, there is left 
 $1,929,574 50, as the bonus which the South has 
 received from the treasury of the Nation on ac- 
 count of the representation of slaves — Southern 
 property represented in Congress. To this we 
 must add $57,556, which the South received in 
 1842 from the sale of public land on account of 
 her slaves, the sum is $1,987,130 50. Mr. Pinck- 
 ney was right when he said the terms were not bad 
 for the South. 
 
 Slavery diverts the freeman from Industry, from 
 Science, from Letters and the Elegant Arts. It 
 
LETTER ON SLAVERY. 103 
 
 has been said to qualify him for Politics. As po- 
 litical matters have been managed in the United 
 States in this century, the remark seems justified 
 by the facts. Elections are not accidents. Of the 
 eight Presidents elected in the nineteenth century, 
 six were born in the South — children of the slave 
 States. No northern man has ever twice been 
 elected to the highest otEce of the Nation. A 
 similar result appears in the appointment of impor- 
 tant officers by the President himself. From 1789 
 to 184-j, one hundred and seventy appointments 
 were made of ministers and charges to foreign 
 powers ; of these, seventy-eight were filled from 
 the North, ninety-two from the South. Of the 
 seventy-four ministers plenipotentiary sent to Eu- 
 rope before 1S46, forty-three were from the slave 
 States. There have been fifteen judges of the 
 Supreme Court from the North ; eighteen from the 
 South. The office of Attorney General has been 
 four times filled by Northern men, fourteen times 
 by men from the slave States. Out of thirty Con- 
 gresses, eleven only have had a Speaker from the 
 North. These are significant facts, and plainly 
 show the aptitude of Southern men to manage the 
 political affairs of America. There are Pilots for 
 fair weather ; Pilots also only trusted in a Storm. 
 
VII. 
 
 SLAVERY CONSIDERED AS A WRONG. 
 
 I AM now to speak of Slavery considered as a 
 Wrong, an Offence against the natural and eternal 
 Laws of God. You all know it is Wrong — a 
 Crime against Humanity, a Sin before Almighty 
 God. The great men who call Slavery — right and 
 just ; — do they not know better ? The little and 
 humble men who listen to their speech — do not we 
 all know better ? Yes, we all know that Slavery 
 is a Sin before God ; — is the union of many sins. 
 On this theme I wall say but a word. 
 
 The Roman code declares liberty the natural 
 estate of man, but calls Slavery an institution of 
 positive Law, by which one man is made subject 
 to another, contrary to nature. By the Hebrew 
 Law it was a capital offence to steal a man and sell 
 him, or hold him as a Slave. 
 
 Now if that doctrine be true which the American 
 people once solemnly declared self-evident — that 
 all men are created with equal Rights — then every 
 slave in the United States is stolen. Then Slavery 
 
LETTER ON SLAVERY. 105 
 
 is a continual and aggravated tlieft. It matters not 
 that the slave's mother Avas stolen before. To 
 take the child of a slave must be theft as much as 
 to take the child of a freeman ; it is stealing man- 
 kind. He that murders a child has no defence in 
 the fact that he first nuu'dered the sire. 
 
 When we hear that the Emperor^ of Russia or 
 Austria, for some political opinion, shuts a man in 
 the Spielberg, or sends him to Siberia, for life — we 
 pity the victim of such despotic power, thinking 
 his natural rights debarred. But the defence is 
 that the man had shown himself dangerous to the 
 welfare of the State, and so had justly forfeited his 
 rights. When we reduce a man to a slave, making 
 him a Thing — we can plead no extenuation of the 
 offence. The slave is only " guilty of a skin not 
 colored like our own," — guilty of the misfortune 
 to be weak and unprotected. For this he is de- 
 prived of his hberty ; he and his children. 
 
 Slavery is against nature. It has no foundation 
 in the permanent nature of man, in the nature of 
 things, none in the eternal Law of God, as Rea- 
 son and Conscience declare that Law. Its foun- 
 dation is the selfishness, the tyranny of strong men. 
 We all know it is so — the little and the great. 
 Better say it at once, and with Mr. Rutledge de- 
 clare that Religion and Humanity have nothing to 
 do v/ith the matter, than make the miserable 
 pretence that it is consistent with Reason and 
 
106 LETTER OX SLAVERY. 
 
 accordant with Chtistianity ; even the Boys know 
 better. 
 
 In the last century your fathers cried out to God 
 against the oppressions laid on them by England, 
 justly cried out. Yet those oppressions were 
 but little things — a tax on sugar, parchment, paper, 
 tea ; nothing but a tax, allowing no voice in the 
 granting thereof or its spending. They went to war 
 for an abstraction — the great doctrine of Human 
 Rights. They declared themselves free, free by 
 right of birth, free because born Men and child- 
 ren of God. For the justice of their cause they 
 made solemn appeal to God Most High. What 
 was the oppression the fathers suffered, to this their 
 sons commit ? It is no longer a question about Taxes 
 and Representatives, a duty on sugar, parchment, 
 paper, tea, but the liberty, the persons, the lives of 
 three millions of INIen are in question. You have 
 taken their libeily, their persons, and render their 
 lives bitter by oppression. Was it right in your 
 fathers to draw the sword and slay the oppressor, who 
 taxed them for his own purpose, taking but their 
 money, nor much of that ? Were your fathers noble 
 men for their resistance ? when they fell in battle did 
 they fall " in the sacred cause of God and their 
 country ? " Do you build monuments to their mem- 
 ory and write thereon, " Sacred to Liberty and 
 the Rights of Mankind " ? Do you speak of Lex- 
 ington and Bunker-Hill as spots most dear in the 
 
LETTEK ON SLAViiKY. 107 
 
 soil of the New World, the Zioa of Freedom, the 
 Thermopylae of universal Right ? Do you honor 
 the name of "Washington far beyond all political 
 names of Conqueror or King ? How then can you 
 j ustify your oppression ? how refuse to admit that the 
 bondmen of the United States have the same right, 
 and a far stronger inducement to draw the sword 
 and smile at your very life ? Surely you cannot do 
 ^rO, not in America ; never till Lexington and 
 Bunker-Hill are wiped out of the earth ; never till 
 the history of your own Revolution is forgot ; never 
 till the names of the Adamses, of Jefferson, of 
 Washington, is expunged from the memory of men. 
 
 When the rude African who rules over Dahomey 
 or the Gaboon country burns a village and plunders 
 the shrieking children of his fellow barbarians to 
 sell them away into bondage forever, far from 
 their humble but happy homes and their luxuriant 
 soil, their bread-fruit and their palms, fiar from 
 father and mother, from child and lover, from all 
 the human heart clings to with tenderest longing — 
 vou are filled with horror at the deed. " What I 
 steal a man," say you ; •* Great God,"' you ask, " is 
 the Gaboon chieftain a man, or but a taller beast, 
 with mind more cunning and far reaching claws ? " 
 That chieftain is a barbarian. He knows not your 
 letters, your laws, the tenets of your religion. The 
 nobler nature of the man sleeps in his savage 
 
108 LETTER ON SLAVERY. 
 
 breast. His only plea is — his degradation. His 
 defence before the world and before God is this : 
 He is a savage, he knows no law but force, no 
 right but only might alone. For that plea and 
 defence the civilized man must excuse him, per- 
 haps God holds him guiltless. 
 
 But Avhen a civilized nation comes, with all the 
 art and science which mankind has learned in the 
 whole lifetime of the race, and steals the children 
 of the defenceless, stimulating the savage to plun- 
 der his brothers and make them slaves, the offence 
 has no such excuse ; it is a conscious crime ; a 
 "Wrong before the judgment of the nations; a Sin 
 before God. 
 
 In your case it is worse still ; the Autocrat of all 
 the Russias may have no theory of man's unalien- 
 able rights adverse to the Slavery he aims to abolish 
 on his broad estates and wide-spread realm ; the 
 Bey of Tunis deals not in abstractions, in universal 
 laws, knows nothing of unalienable rights and the 
 inborn equality of man. But you, the people of the 
 United States ; you, a nation of free men, Avho 
 owe allegiance to none ; you, a Republic, one of 
 the foremost nations of the Earth ; you with your 
 theories of human, universal justice ; you who earliest 
 made national proclamation to mankind of human 
 right, and those three political ideas whereon the 
 great American commonwealth now stands and 
 rests ; you who profess to form a government not 
 
LETTER ON SLAVERY. 109 
 
 on force, bat law, not on national traditioiii?, but 
 abstract justice — the Nation's constant and perpet- 
 ual Will to give to every one his constant and per- 
 petual Right ; you who would found a State not on 
 cannon balls — but Universal Laws, Thoughts of 
 God, — what j)lea can you put forth in your defence ? 
 
 You call yourselves Christians. It is your boast. 
 "Christianity," say ihe courts, " is the Common Law 
 of the land." You have a Religion which tells that 
 God is the Father, equal, just and loving, to all 
 manldnd, — the Redman, whom you murdered, 
 and the Black man, whom you have laid in iron, 
 hurting his feet with fetters. It tells you, all are 
 brothers, African, American, Red-man, and Black 
 and White. It tells you, as yom* highest duty, to 
 love God with all your Heart ; to love his Justice, 
 love his Mercy, love his Love ; to love that brother 
 as yourself — the more he needs, to love him still 
 the more ; that Avilhout such love for men there is 
 no love for God. The Sacred Books of the na- 
 tion — read in all pulpits, sworn over in all courts 
 of Justice, borne even in your war-ships, and 
 sheltered by the battle-flag of your armies — the 
 sacred books of the nation, tell, that Jesus, the 
 highest, dearest revelation of God to men, who loved 
 them all, that He laid down his life for them, for 
 all ; and bade you follow him ! What is a natural 
 action in the Savage, a mere mistake in the des- 
 10 
 
110 LETTER ON SLAVERY. 
 
 pot of Turkey or of Russia, with you becomes a 
 conscious and fearful wrong. For you to hold 
 your Brothers in bondage, to keep them from all 
 chance of culture, growth in mind, or heart, or 
 soul ; for you to breed them as swine, and beat 
 as oxen ; to treat them as mere TmNGS, without 
 soul, or Rights, — why, what Avas a mistake in 
 political economy, a Avrong before your ideas of 
 Government, becomes a Sin foul and heinous be- 
 fore your ideas of Man, and Christ, and God. 
 
 When you remember the intelligence of this age, 
 its accumulated stores of Knowledge, Science, Art, 
 and Wealth of Matter and of ]\Iind, its Knowledge 
 of Justice and eternal Right ; when you consider 
 that in political Ideas you stand the first people 
 in the vanguard of mankind, now moving towards 
 new and peaceful conquests for the human race ; 
 when you reflect on the great doctrines of Univer- 
 sal Right set forth in so many forms amongst you 
 by the senator and the school-boy ; when you bring 
 home to your bosoms the Religion whose sacred 
 words are taught in that Bible, laid up in your 
 churches, reverently kept in your courts of justice, 
 carried under the folds of your flag over land and 
 sea — that Bible, by millions multiplied and spread 
 throughout the peopled Avorld in every barbarous 
 and stammering tongue, — and then remember that 
 Slavery is here ; that three million men are now 
 by Christian Republican America held in bondage 
 
LETTER ON SLAVERY. Ill 
 
 worse than Egyptian, hopeless as hell, — you must 
 take this matter to heart, and confess that Ameri- 
 can Slavery is the greatest, foulest Wrong which 
 man ever did to man ; the most hideous and de- 
 tested Sin a nation has ever committed before the 
 just, all-bounteous God — a Wrong and a Sin 
 wholly without excuse. 
 
CONCLUSION. 
 
 Fellow-Citizens of America, 
 
 Yoa see some of the effects of Slavery in your 
 land. It costs you millions of dollars each year. 
 If there had been no slaves in America for forty 
 years, it is within bounds to say, your annual earn- 
 ings would be three hundred million dollars more 
 than now. It has cost you also millions of men. But 
 for this curse, Virginia had been as populous as 
 New York, as rich in wealth and intelligence ; 
 without this the free men of the South mn.-t have 
 increased as rapidly as in the North, and at this 
 day, perhaps five-and-twenty million men would 
 rejoice at their welfare in the United States. 
 Slavery retards Industry in all its forms ; lie Edu- 
 cation of the people in all its forms, intellectual, 
 moral and religious. It hinders the application of 
 those great political Ideas of America ; hinders the 
 Development of mankind, the Organization of the 
 Rights of INIan in a worthy State, Society, or 
 
LETTER ON SLAVERY. 113 
 
 Church. Such effects are the Divine Sentence 
 against the Cause thereof. 
 
 It is not for me to point out the Remedy for the 
 evil, and show how it can be ajDphed ; that is work 
 for those men you dignify Avith place and power. 
 I pretend not to give counsel here, only to tell the 
 warning truth. Will you say, that in the free 
 States also there is Oppression, Ignorance, and 
 Want and Crime ? 'Tis true. But an excuse, 
 specious and popular, for its continuance, is this : 
 that the evils of Slavery are so much worse, men 
 will not meddle with the less till the greater is re- 
 moved. I\Ien are so wonted to this monstrous 
 wrong, they cannot see the little wrongs with 
 which modern society is full ; evils, which are little 
 only when compared to that. When this shame of 
 the nation is wiped off, it \vill be easy, seeing more 
 clearly, to redress the minor ills of Ignorance and 
 Want and Crime. But there is one bright thing 
 connected with this Wrong. I mean the Heroism 
 Avhicli wars against it with pure hands ; historic 
 times have seen no chivalry so heroic. 
 
 Not long ago Europe and the whole Christian 
 Avorld rung with indignation at the outrage said to be 
 offered, by the Russian government, to some Polish 
 nuns who were torn from their home, driven from 
 place to place, brutally beaten, and vexed with 
 continual torments. Be the story false or true, the 
 10* 
 
114 LETTER ON SLAVERY. 
 
 ears of men tingled at the tale. But not one of the 
 nuns Avas sold. Those wrongs committed against 
 a few defenceless women are doubled, trebled in 
 America, and here continually applied to thou- 
 sands of American women. This is no fiction ; a 
 plain fact, and notorious ; but whose ears tingle ? 
 Is it worse to abuse a few white Avomen in Russia, 
 than a nation of black women in America ? Is 
 that worse for a European than this for the demo- 
 cratic Republicans of America ? The truth must 
 be spoken ; the voice of the Bondman's blood cries 
 out to God against us; His justice shall make 
 reply. How can America ask mercy, Avho has 
 never shown it there ? 
 
 Civilization extends everywhere : the Russian 
 and the Hottentot feel its influence. Christian men 
 send the Bible to every island in the Pacific sea. 
 Plenty becomes general ; famine but rare. The 
 Arts advance, the useful, the beautiful, with rapid 
 steps. Machines begin to dispense with human 
 drudgery. Comfort gets distributed through their 
 influence, more widely than ancient benefactors 
 dared to dream. What were luxuries to our 
 fathers, attainable only by the rich, now find their 
 way to the humble home. War — the old Demon 
 which once possessed each strong nation, making 
 it deaf and blind, but yet exceeding fierce, so that 
 no feebler one could pass near and be safe — War 
 
LETTER ON SLAVERY. 115 
 
 is losing his hold of the Human Race, the Devil 
 getting cast out by the finger of God. The Day of 
 Peace begins to dawn upon mankind, wandering so 
 long in darkness, and watching for that happy Star. 
 Science, Letters, Religion, break down the barriers 
 betwixt man and man, 'iwixt class and class. The 
 obstacles which severed nations once now join 
 them. Trade mediates between land and land — 
 the gold entering wiiere steel could never force its 
 way. New powers arc developed to hasten the 
 humanizing work ; they post o'er land and ocean 
 without rest, or serve our bidding while they stand 
 and wait. The very lightning comes down, is 
 caught, and made the errand-boy of the nations. 
 Steamships are shooting across the ocean, weaving 
 East and West in one united web. The soldier 
 yields to the merchant. The man-child of the old 
 world, young but strong, carries bread to his Father 
 in the hour of need. The ambassadors of Science, 
 Letters and the Arts, come from the old world to 
 reside near the court of the New, telHng truth 
 for the common welfare of all. The Genius of 
 America sends also its first fruits and a Scion of its 
 own green tree, a token of future blessings, to the 
 parent land. These things help the great synthesis 
 of the Human Race, the Reign of Peace on Earth, 
 of Good-will amongst all men. 
 
 Everywhere in the old world the Poor, the Igno- 
 rant and the Oppressed, get looked after as never 
 
116 LETTER ON >r.\VESY. 
 
 before. The Hero of Force is falling behind the 
 times : the Hero of Thought, of Love, is felt to deserve 
 the homage of Mankind. The Pope of Rome himself 
 essays the Eef-— — -■" " of Italy ; the King of Den- 
 mark sets free - 5 in his dominions, East and 
 "West ; the Eussian Emperor liberates his serfs 
 from the milder bondage of the Sclavonian race : 
 his brother monarch of Tctrkey will have no slave- 
 market in the Mahometan metropolis, no shambles 
 there for human desh : the Bey of Tnnis cazmc: 
 bear a slave ; it grieves his Islamitish heart, swanby 
 Afric-an though he be. 
 
 Yet am-id aU this continual advance, America, 
 the first of the forem'Ost nations to proclaim Eqcal- 
 ity, and Homau Rights inborn with all; the first 
 confessedly to form a State on Nature's Law — 
 America restores Barbarism. ; will still hold slaves. 
 More despotic than Rossia. more bar barons than 
 the chieftain of Barbary. she estabUshies Ferocity 
 by federal Law. There is suffering enough amongst 
 the "Weak and Poor in the cities of the free labo- 
 rioos North. England has her misery patent to 
 the eye, and Ireland her looped and windowed rag- 
 redness, her lean and brutal want. So it b every- 
 where ; there is sadness amid all the splendors of 
 modem science and civflizatioo, thoogh lar less 
 tiian ever before. But amidst the Els of C" -"^ - ■ 
 dom, the oddest and most giiastly spec* :, _ 
 earth is American Slavery. The mbery of me ci 
 
" ' grows less and less : the Mosster-ri-i-e oi 
 
 .:.ca, To make itself more awful yet, most dzzs 
 
 our cannon to invade new lands. 
 
 I hare addressed voa as cit iz en *. Members of tiie 
 
 ^tate. I cannot forget that yoa are men: are 
 v.emters of ibe great Brotherhood of yian, tii^A- 
 :fn of the one and blessed God. w^fafoee eqoal 
 Love has onlj made to tiess ik all. who wiH 
 not snffer Wrong to pass trithoot its doe. Think o£ 
 the nation's deed, done eootinnaI!v and afresfc. 
 God shall hear the voice of votrr Broiher's bl-3od. 
 Ic«ig crying from the groand : His Jostice asks too 
 even now : A>tE3iCA. -w-Exaz s tht Bsctthes ? 
 This is the answer which America most ^ive : •• I». 
 he is there in tbe Rice-swamps of the Socth. in her 
 fiel is teeming with Cotton and the lanniant Caae. 
 He was weak and I seized him : naked and I 
 bonnd him : ignorant, poor and savage, and I over- 
 inastered him. I laid on his feefaler shoolders mv 
 grievous yoke. I have chained him with my fet- 
 ters : beat him with my whip. Other tyrants bad 
 dcr.iinicn over him. but my finger was thicker than 
 their loins. I have branded the nsark of my power. 
 with red-hot iron upon his human desh. I am fed 
 with his toil : fet, v^i^uptnocs ca his sweat, and 
 :-: - ~ - ■ ' blood. I stole the Father, siole :'- " - - - 
 ^ - ' set them to toil : his "Wife and D; _ 
 are a pleasant spoil to me. Behead the ciii-dren 
 
lis LETTER ON SLAVEKY. 
 
 also of thy servant and his Handmaidens — sons 
 swarthier than their sire. Askest Thou for tlie 
 African ? I found him a Barbarian. I have made 
 him a Beast. Lo, there thou hast what is thine." 
 
 That Voice shall speak again : "America, why 
 dost thou use him thus — thine equal, born Avith 
 Rights the same as thine ? " 
 
 America, m.ay answer : " Lord, I knew not the 
 negro had a Right to freedom. I rejoiced to eat' 
 the labors of the slave ; my great men. North and 
 South, they told me Slavery was no wrong ; I knew 
 no better, but believed their word, for they are 
 great, O Lord, and excellent." 
 
 That same Voice may answer yet again, quoting 
 the nation's earliest and most patriotic words : 
 " 'All men are created equal, and endowed by their 
 Creator with unalienable Rights — the Right to 
 Life, to Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.' 
 America, what further falsehood wilt thou speak" ? 
 
 The Nation may reply again : " True Lord, aU 
 that is written in the nation's creed, writ by my 
 greatest spirits in their greatest hour. But since 
 then, why, holy men have come and told me in thy 
 name that Slavery was good ; was right ; that Thou 
 thyself didst once establish it on earth, and He who 
 spoke thy words, spoke nought against this thing. 
 I have believed these men, for they are holy men 
 O Lord, and excellent." 
 
 Then may that Judge of all the Earth take down 
 
LETTER OX SLAVERY. 119 
 
 the Gospel from the pulpit's desk, and read these few 
 plain words : ** Thoa shalt love the Lord thy God 
 with all thy heart ; and thou shall love thy neighbor 
 as thyself. Whatsoever ye would that others should 
 do to you, do also even so to them." 
 
 Further might He speak and say : '' W 
 poor Mussulman, whom thou calls't Pag;... ....^ 
 
 shuts'! out from Heaven — sets free all men, how 
 much more art thou thyself condemned ; yea, by the 
 Bible which thou sendest to the outcasts of the 
 world ? " 
 
 Across tlie Stage of Time the nations pass in the 
 solemn pomp of their historical procession ; what 
 kingly forms sweep by, leading the nations of the 
 past, the present age I Let them pass — their 
 mingled good and ill. A great People now comes 
 forth, the newest born of nations, the latest Hope 
 of Mankind, the Heir of sixty centuries — the 
 Bridegroom of the virgin West. First come those 
 PiLGRLMs. few and far between, who knelt on the 
 sands of a "wilderness, whose depth they knew not, 
 nor yet its prophecy, who meekly trusting in their 
 God, in want and war, but wanting not in Faith, 
 laid with their prayers the deep foundations of the 
 State and Church. Then follow more majestic 
 men, bringing great Truths for all Mankind, seized 
 from the heaven of thought, or caught, ground- 
 lightning, rushing from the earth : and on their ban- 
 
i/ V/ */; 
 
 ion \(£>V^''i 
 
 120 LETTER OX SLAVERY. * 
 
 nevs have they writ these words : Equality and 
 LNBORN Rights. Then comes the one with ven- 
 erable face, who ruled alike the Senate and the 
 Camp, and at whose feet the attendant years spread 
 garlands, laurel-wreaths, calliug him First in War, 
 and First in Peace, and First in his Country's Heart, 
 as it in his. Then follow men bearing the first 
 fruits of our toil, the wealth of sea and land, the 
 labors of the loom, the stores of commerce and the 
 arts. A happy People comes, some with shut Bibles 
 ill their hands, some with the nation's Laws, some 
 uttering those mighty Truths Avhich God has writ 
 on Man, and men have copied into golden Avords. 
 Then comes, to close this long historic pomp, — the 
 panorama of the w^orld — the Negro Slave, bought, 
 branded, beat. 
 
 I remain your fellow-citizen and friend, 
 
 Theodore Parker. 
 
 Boston, December 22, 1817. 
 
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