Slavery and the Constitution Part 19

[L] Our friend Francis Jackson procured us this book.

[M] Mr. Jones thinks ("Rel. Inst." p. 135), that "the crime of infanticide" among the slaves is "restrained in good measure ... by the moral degradation of the people, that takes away the disgrace of b.a.s.t.a.r.dy." We remember hearing from Prof. Greenleaf the account of a successful defence, on this ground, of a female slave in this State, who was tried for committing this offence. A female slave, it was argued, _could_ not feel shame at the birth of an illegitimate child, and therefore her affection as a mother would prevent her from committing the crime. But experience has demonstrated, that a slave-mother may be led to take her child's life from very love itself.

[N] "The General a.s.sembly of the Presbyterian Church recently expelled a minister from both the ministry and the church, for marrying a sister of his deceased wife."--_The Church as it is_, p. 76.

[O] Colored persons are not competent witnesses on the trial of a white man. Any white man, therefore, can, with perfect impunity, commit any excess whatever upon any slaves, so long as they or their companions alone are witnesses. So carefully does the law guard the honor of the female slave!

[P] The original of this advertis.e.m.e.nt may be seen at the Anti-Slavery office, Boston, 21, Cornhill, pasted on one side of a copy of the newspaper called "Spirit of Liberty"! How appropriate a heading!

[Q] For this and other advertis.e.m.e.nts from Boston papers, I am indebted to my friend Wendell Phillips.

[R] We cut this advertis.e.m.e.nt from the "Boston Daily Republican" of Aug.

30, 1849. It previously appeared in the "Providence Journal."

[S] A writer in the "New Orleans Argus," Sept. 1830, in an article on the culture of the sugar-cane, says,--"The loss by death in bringing slaves from a northern climate, which our planters are under the necessity of doing, is not less than twenty-five per cent"! Our tables prove the same thing. Of the 40,000 slaves annually carried south, only 29,101 are found to survive;--a greater sacrifice of life than that caused by the middle pa.s.sage!

[T] The Act of 1741, of which this law is in part a revision, reads thus, sec. 45: "Which proclamation shall be published on a _sabbath-day at the door of every church or chapel, or, for want of such, at the place where divine service shall be performed in the said county, by the parish clerk or reader, immediately after divine service_; and, if any slave or slaves, against whom proclamation hath been thus issued, stay out and do not immediately return home, it shall be lawful for any person or persons whatsoever to kill and destroy such slave or slaves by such ways or means as he or she shall think fit, without accusation or impeachment of any crime for the same."--In those happy days, Father Taylor would not have been called on to thank G.o.d, that the man who was on the point of strangling his brother according to law was not troubled by any feeling of _sentimentalism_!

[U] The Rev. Dr. Furman, of North Carolina, another Baptist clergyman, like Dr. Fuller wrote a defence of slavery. After his death, his legal representative advertised for sale at auction his real estate, and "a library of a miscellaneous character, _chiefly theological_; twenty-seven negroes, _some of them very prime_," &c. ("The Church as it is," p. 73.)

[V] This point, and the legality of Colonial and State Slavery, are more elaborated in an article called "The Const.i.tutionality of Slavery,"

printed in the "Ma.s.sachusetts Quarterly Review;" a purely legal, uninteresting examination, which needs not to be repeated here.

For a more extended proof of the const.i.tutionality of slavery, we refer to Wendell Phillips's very able Review of Lysander Spooner's Essay.

[W] 5 Hen. Stat. 547.

[X] 6 Ibid. 356.