The Iron Furnace, or Slavery and Secession Part 10

Sometimes their vote will command cash, and sometimes only whiskey. It is sad to witness the elective franchise, that highest and most glorious badge of a freeman, thus prost.i.tuted.

The proverb holds good--Like people, like priest. Their ministers are ignorant, ranting fanatics. They despise literature, and every Sabbath fulminate censures upon an educated ministry. The following is a specimen of their preaching. Mr. V---- is a Hard-sh.e.l.l Baptist, or, as they term themselves, "Primitive Baptists." Entering the pulpit on a warm morning in July, he will take off his coat and vest, roll up his sleeves, and then begin:

MY BRETHERING AND SISTERN--I air a ignorant man, follered the plough all my life, and never rubbed agin nary college. As I said afore, I'm ignorant, and I thank G.o.d for it. (Brother Jones responds, "Pa.s.son, yer ort to be very thankful, fur yer very ignorant.") Well, I'm agin all high larnt fellers what preaches grammar and Greek fur a thousand dollars a year. They preaches fur the money, and they gits it, and that's all they'll git. They've got so high larnt they contradicts Scripter, what plainly tells us that the sun rises and sets. They seys it don't, but that the yerth whirls round, like clay to the seal. What ud c.u.m of the water in the wells ef it did. Wodent it all spill out, and leave 'em dry, and whar ed we be? I may say to them, as the sarpent said unto David, much learning hath made thee mad.

When I preaches, I never takes a tex till I goes inter the pulpit; then I preaches a plain sarment, what even women can understand. I never premedertates, but what is given to me in that same hour, that I sez. Now I'm a gwine ter open the Bible, and the first verse I sees, I'm a gwine to take it for a tex. (Suiting the action to the word, he opened the Bible, and commenced reading and spelling together.) Man is f-e-a-r-f-u-l-l-y--fearfully--and w-o-n-d-e-r-f-u-l-l-y--wonderfully--m-a-d-e--mad.--"Man is fearfully and wonderfully made." (p.r.o.nounced _mad_.) Well, it's a quar tex, but I said I's a gwine to preach from it, and I'm a gwine to do it. In the fust place, I'll divide my sarment into three heads. Fust and foremost, I show you that a man will git mad. 2d. That sometimes he'll git fearfully mad; and thirdly and lastly, when thar's lots of things to vex and pester him, he'll git fearfully and wonderfully mad. And in the application I'll show you that good men sometimes gits mad, for the Posle David hisself, who rote the tex, got mad, and called all men liars, and cussed his enemies, wishen' 'em to go down quick into h.e.l.l; and Noah, he got t.i.te, and cussed his n.i.g.g.e.r boy Ham, just like some drunken masters now cusses their n.i.g.g.e.rs. But Noah and David repented; and all on us what gits mad must repent, or the devil'll git us.

Thus he ranted, to the great edification of his hearers, who regard him as a perfect Boanerges, to which t.i.tle his stentorian voice would truly ent.i.tle him. This exordium will serve as a specimen of the "sarment," as it continued in the same strain to the end of the peroration.

Where there is no vision, the people perish. Such blind leaders of the blind are liable, with their infatuated followers, to fall into a ditch worse than Bunyan's Slough of Despond. This minister had undoubtedly run when he was not sent, though he "had hearn a call; a audible voice had, while he was a shucken corn, said unto him, Preach." Though G.o.d does not need men's learning, yet he has as little use for their ignorance.

Learning is the handmaid of religion, but must not be subst.i.tuted in its stead.

The causes which induce this "wilderness of mind" are patent to all who make even a cursory examination. There is a tendency in the poor to ape the manners of the rich. Those having slaves to labour in their stead, toil not physically; hence labour falls into disrepute, and the poorer cla.s.ses, having no slaves to work for them, and not choosing to submit to the degradation of labour, incur all the evils resulting from idleness and poverty. Ignorance and vice of every kind soon ensue, and a general apathy prevails, which destroys in a great measure all mental and physical vigour.

The slaveholders buy up all the fertile lands to be cultivated by their slaves; hence the poor are crowded out, and if they remain in the vicinity of the place of their nativity, they must occupy the poor tracts whose sterility does not excite the cupidity of their rich neighbours. The slaveholders' motto is, "Let us buy more negroes to raise more cotton, to buy more negroes, and so on _ad infinitum_." To raise more cotton they must also buy more land. Small farmers are induced to sell out to them, and move further west. For this reason, the white population of the fertile sections of the older slave States is constantly on the decrease, while the slave population is as constantly increasing. Thus the slaveholder often acquires many square miles of land, and hundreds of human chattels. He is, as it were, set alone in the earth. Priding himself upon his wealth, he will not send his princely sons to the same school with the poor white trash; he either sends them to some distant college or seminary, or employs a private teacher exclusively for his children. The poor whites in the neighbourhood, even should they desire to educate their children, have no means to pay for their tuition. Compelled to live on poor or worn-out lands, honest toil considered degrading, and forced to submit to many inconveniences and disabilities (all the offices of honour and profit being monopolized by the slaveholders,) through the workings of the "peculiar inst.i.tution," they find it utterly impossible to educate their offspring, even in the rudiments of their mother tongue. As the power of slavery increases, their condition waxes worse and worse.

The slaveocracy becomes more exacting. Laws are pa.s.sed by the legislature compelling non-slaveholders to patrol the country nightly, to prevent insurrections by the negroes. They denounce the law, but coercion is resorted to, and the poor whites are forced to obey. When their masters call for them, they must leave their labour, by day or by night, patrol the country, follow the bloodhounds, arrest the fugitive slave, and do all other dirty work which their tyrants demand. If they refuse to obey, they are denounced as abolitionists, and are in danger of death at the hands of Judge Lynch, the mildest punishment they can hope for being a coat of tar and feathers.

The house-negroes feel themselves several degrees above the poor whites, as they, from their opportunities for observation amongst the higher cla.s.ses, are possessed of greater information and less rusticity than this less favoured cla.s.s. The poor whites have no love for the inst.i.tution of slavery. They regard it as the instrument of inflicting upon them many wrongs, and depriving them of many rights. They dare not express their sentiments to the slaveholders, who hold them completely under their power. A. G. Brown, United States Senator from Mississippi, to reconcile the poor whites to the peculiar inst.i.tution, used the following arguments in a speech at Iuka Springs, Mississippi. He stated, that if the slaves were liberated, and suffered to remain in the country, the rich would have money to enable them to go to some other clime, and that the poor whites would be compelled to remain amongst the negroes, who would steal their property, and destroy their lives; and if slavery were abolished, and the negroes removed and colonized, the rich would take the poor whites for slaves, in their stead, and reduce them to the condition of the Irish and Dutch in the North, whose condition he represented to be one of cruel bondage. These statements had some effect upon his auditors, who believed, from sad experience, that the rich could oppress the poor as they chose, and might, in the contingency specified, reduce them to slavery. Labour is considered so degrading, that any argument, based upon making labour compulsory on their part, has its weight. Even the beggar despises work. A st.u.r.dy beggar asked alms at a house at which I was lodging. As he appeared to be a man of great physical strength, he was advised to go to work, and thus provide for his wants. "Work!" said he, in disgust; "n.i.g.g.e.rs do the work in this country"--and retired highly insulted.

This people form a distinct cla.s.s, distinguished by as many characteristics from the middle and higher cla.s.ses of Southern society, as the Jews are from the nations amongst whom they sojourn. The causes which brought about their reduction to their present state of semi-barbarism, must be removed, ere they can rise to the condition whence they have fallen. They must rise upon the ruins of slavery. When the peculiar inst.i.tution is abolished, then, and not till then, will their disabilities be removed, and they be in reality what they are nominally--freemen.

Slaveholders and their families form a distinct cla.s.s, characterized by idleness, vanity, licentiousness, profanity, dissipation, and tyranny.

There are glorious exceptions, it is true, but those are the distinguis.h.i.+ng traits of the cla.s.s. The middle cla.s.s is the virtuous cla.s.s of the South. They are industrious, frugal, hospitable, simple in their habits, plain and unostentatious in their manners. Some of this cla.s.s are small slaveholders, but the great majority own none. The gross vices of the higher cla.s.s are not found among them. They labour regardless of the sneers of their aristocratic neighbours. Senator Hammond, of South Carolina, may call them mudsills; they regard it not, but pursue the even tenor of their way. The slow, unmoving finger of scorn may be pointed at them by the sons of pride, yet they refuse to eat the bread of idleness, and labour with their _own hands_, that they may provide things honest in the sight of all men. Equidistant from poverty and riches, they enjoy the golden mean, and immunity from the temptations incident to the extremes of abject poverty and great riches.

In the slave States all those born north of the "n.i.g.g.e.r line," are denominated Yankees. This is applied as a term of reproach. When a southerner is angry with a man of northern nativity, he does not fail to stigmatize him as a Yankee. The slaveholders manifest considerable antipathy against the Yankees, which has been increasing during the last ten years. In 1858, the Legislature of Mississippi pa.s.sed resolutions recommending non-intercourse with the "Abolition States," and requesting the people not to patronize natives of those States residing amongst them, and especially to discountenance Yankee ministers and teachers. In the educational notice of Memphis Synodical College, at La Grange, Tennessee, it is expressly stated that the Faculty are of southern birth and education. The princ.i.p.als of the Female Seminaries at Corinth and Iuka, Mississippi, give notice that no Yankee teachers will be employed in those inst.i.tutions. While on a visit at the house of a Methodist clergyman, quite a number of ministers, returning from Conference, called to tarry for the night. During the evening, one of them, learning that I was "_Yankee born_," thus interrogated me: "Why is it, sir, that all kinds of delusions originate in the North, such as Millerism, Mormonism, Spirit-rappings, and Abolitionism?" To which I replied: "The North originates everything. All the text-books used in southern schools, all the books on law, physic, and divinity, are written and published north of Mason & Dixon's line. The South does not even print Bibles. The magnetic telegraph, the locomotive, Lucifer matches, and even the cotton-gin, are all northern inventions. The South, sir, has not sense enough to invent a decent humbug. These humbugs once originated, the South is always well represented by believers in them. I have known more men to go from this county (Shelby county, Tennessee) to the Mormons, than I have known to go from the whole State of Ohio."

When I had thus spoken, my inquisitor was nonplussed, and the laugh went against him.

When a candidate before the Presbytery of Chickasaw, in Mississippi, for licensure, one of the members of Presbytery, learning that I was a "Yankee," asked me the following questions, and received the following answers:

"Mr. Aughey, when will the day of judgment take place?"

"The Millerites have stated that the 30th of June next will be the judgment-day. As for myself, I have had no revelation on the subject, and expect none."

"Do you believe that any one can call the spirits?"

"I do, sir."

"What! believe that the spirits can be called?"

"I do, sir."

"I will vote, then, against your licensure, if you have fallen into this heresy of the land of your nativity."

Another then said:

"Brother Aughey, please explain yourself. I know you do not believe in spirit-rapping."

"I do not, sir, though I believe, as I stated, that any one may call the spirits; but I do not believe that they will come in answer to the call."

A lady once remarked to me that she did not believe that a northern man would ever become fully reconciled to the inst.i.tution of slavery, and that his influence and sentiments, whatever might be his profession of attachment to the peculiar inst.i.tution, would be against it. The cause of the general opposition to northern men is their opposition to slavery.

Their testimony is against its abominations and barbarities, and hence the wish to impair the credibility of the witnesses.

An ill.u.s.tration of the working of the inst.i.tution may be found in the following letter:

KOSCIUSKO, ATTALA COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI, December 25, 1861.

MR. WILLIAM JACKMAN:

DEAR SIR--Your last kind and truly welcome letter came to hand in due course of mail. I owe you an apology for delaying an answer so long.

My apparent neglect was occasioned by no want of respect for you; but in consequence of the disturbed state of the country, and difficulty of communication with the North, I feared my reply would never reach you. Now, however, by directing "_via_ Norfolk and flag of truce,"

letters are sent across the lines to the North. In your letter you desired me, from this stand-point, to give you my observations of the workings of the peculiar inst.i.tution, and an expression of my views as to its consistency with the eternal principles of rect.i.tude and justice. In reply, I will give you a plain narrative of facts.

On my advent to the South, I was at first struck with the fact that the busy hum of labour had in some measure ceased. What labour I did observe progressing, was done with little skill, and mainly by negroes. I called upon the Rev. Dr. R. J. Breckinridge, to whom I had a letter of introduction, who treated me with the greatest kindness, inviting me to make his house my home when I visited that section of country. On leaving his house, he gave me some directions as to the road I must travel to reach a certain point. "You will pa.s.s," said he, "a blacksmith's shop, where a one-eyed man is at work--my property."

The phrase, "my property," I had never before heard applied to a human being, and though I had never been taught to regard the relation of master and slave as a sinful relation, yet it grated harshly upon my ears to hear a human being, a tradesman, called a chattel; but it grated much more harshly, a week after this, to hear the groans of two such chattels, as they underwent a severe flagellation, while chained to the whipping-post, because they had, by half an hour, overstayed their time with their families on an adjoining plantation.

The next peculiar abomination of the peculiar inst.i.tution which I observed, was the licentiousness engendered by it. Mr. D. T----, of Madison county, Kentucky, had a white family of children, and a black, or rather mulatto family. As his white daughters married, he gave each a mulatto half-sister, as a waiting-girl, or body-servant. Mr.

K.----, of Winchester, Kentucky, had a mulatto daughter, and he was also the father of her child, thus re-enacting Lot's sin. Dr. C----, of Tishomingo county, Mississippi, has a negro concubine, and a white servant to wait on her. Mr. B.----, of Marshall county, Mississippi, lived with his white wife till he had grandchildren, some of whom came to school to me, when he repudiated his white wife, and attached himself to a very homely old African, who superintends his household, and rules his other slaves with rigour. Mr. S----, of Tishomingo county, Mississippi, has a negro concubine, and a large family of mulatto children. He once brought this woman to church in Rienzi, to the great indignation of the white ladies, who removed to a respectable distance from her.

I preached recently to a large congregation of slaves, the third of whom were as white as myself. Some of them had red hair and blue eyes.

If there are any marked characteristics of their masters' families, the mulatto slaves are possessed of these characteristics. I refer to physical peculiarities, such as large mouths, humped shoulders, and peculiar expressions of countenance. I asked a gentleman how it happened that some of his slaves had red hair. He replied that he had a red-headed overseer for several years.

I never knew a pious overseer--never! There may be many, but I never saw one. Overseers, as a cla.s.s, are worse than slaveholders themselves. They are cruel, brutal, licentious, dissipated, and profane. They always carry a loaded whip, a revolver, and a Bowie-knife. These men have the control of women, whom they often whip to death. Mr. P----, who resided near Holly Springs, had a negro woman whipped to death while I was at his house during a session of Presbytery. Mr. C----, of Waterford, Mississippi, had a woman whipped to death by his overseer. But such cruel scourgings are of daily occurrence. Colonel H----, a member of my church, told me yesterday that he ordered a boy, who he supposed was _feigning_ sickness, to the whipping-post, but that he had not advanced ten steps toward it, when he fell dead!--and the servant was free from his master. During our conversation, a girl pa.s.sed. "There is a girl," said he, "who does not look very white in the face, owing to exposure; but when I strip her to whip her, I find that she has a skin as fair as my wife." Mrs.

F---- recently whipped a boy to death within half a mile of my residence. A jury of inquest returned a verdict that he came to his death by cruelty; but nothing more was done. Mrs. M---- and her daughter, of Holly Springs, abused a girl repeatedly. She showed her bruises to some of my acquaintances, and they believed them fatal. She soon after died. Mr. S----, a member of my church, has several maimed negroes from abuse on the part of the overseer.

I am residing on the banks of the Yock-a-nookany, which means "meandering," when translated from the Indian tongue. In this vicinity there are large plantations, cultivated by hundreds of negroes. The white population is spa.r.s.e. Every night the negroes are brought to a judgment-seat. The overseer presides. If they have not laboured to suit him, or if their task is unfulfilled, they are chained to a post, and severely whipped. The victims are invariably stripped; to what extent, is at the option of the overseer. In Louisiana, women, preparatory to whipping, are often stripped to a state of perfect nudity. Old Mr. C----, of Waterford, Mississippi, punished his negroes _by slitting the soles of their feet with his Bowie-knife_! One man he put into a cotton-press, and turned the screw till life was extinct.

He stated that he only intended to alarm the man, but carried the joke too far. I have heard women thus plead, in piteous accents, when chained to the whipping-post, and stripped: "O, my G.o.d, master! don't whip me! I was sick! indeed I was sick! I had a chill, and the fever is on me now! I haven't tasted a morsel to-day! You know I works when I is well! O for G.o.d's sake don't whip a poor sick n.i.g.g.e.r! My poor chile's sick too! Missis thinks it's a dyin'! O master, for the love of G.o.d, don't cut a poor distressed woman wid your whip! I'll try to do better, ef you'll only let me off this once!" These piteous plaints only rouse the ire of their cruel task-masters, who sometimes knock them down in the midst of their pleadings. I have known an instance of a woman giving birth to a child at the whipping-post. The fright and pain brought on premature labour.

One beautiful Sabbath morning I stood on the levee at Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and counted twenty-seven sugar-houses in full blast. I found that the negroes were compelled to labour eighteen hours per day, and were not permitted to rest on the Sabbath during the rolling season. The negroes on most plantations have a truck-patch, which they cultivate on the Sabbath. I have pointed out the sin of thus labouring on the Sabbath, but they plead necessity; their children, they state, must suffer from hunger if they did not cultivate their truck-patch, and their masters would not give them time on any other day.

Negroes, by law, are prohibited from learning to read. This law was not strictly enforced in Tennessee and some other States till within a few years past. I had charge of a Sabbath-school for the instruction of blacks in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1853. This school was put down by the strong arm of the law in a short time after my connection with it ceased. In Mississippi, a man who taught slaves to read or write would be sent to the penitentiary instanter. The popular plea for this wickedness is, that if they were taught to read, they would read abolition doc.u.ments; and if they were taught to write, they would write themselves pa.s.ses, and pa.s.s northward to Canada.

Such advertis.e.m.e.nts as the following often greet the eye.

"_Kansas War._--The undersind taks this method of makkin it noan that he has got a pack of the best n.i.g.g.e.r hounds in the South. My hounds is well trand, and I has had much experience a huntin n.i.g.g.e.rs, having follered it for the last fiften year. I will go anywhar that I'm sent for, and will ketch n.i.g.g.e.rs at the follerin raits.

"My raits fur ketchin runaway n.i.g.g.e.rs $10 per hed, ef they's found in the beat whar thar master lives; $15 if they's found in the county, and $50 if they's tuck out on the county.

"N. B.--Pay is due when the n.i.g.g.e.r is tuck. Planters ort to send fur me as soon as thar n.i.g.g.e.rs runs away, while thar trak is fresh."

Every night the woods resound with the deep-mouthed baying of the bloodhounds. The slaves are said by some to love their masters; but it requires the terrors of bloodhounds and the fugitive slave law to keep them in bondage. You in the North are compelled to act the part of the bloodhounds here, and catch the fugitives for the planters of the South. Free negroes are sold into bondage for the most trivial offences. Slaveholders declare that the presence of free persons of colour exerts a pernicious influence upon their slaves, rendering them discontented with their condition, and inspiring a desire for freedom.

They therefore are very desirous of getting rid of these persons, either by banis.h.i.+ng them from the State or enslaving them. The legislature of Mississippi has pa.s.sed a law for their expulsion, and other States have followed in the wake. The Governor of Missouri has vetoed the law for the expulsion of free persons of colour, pa.s.sed by the legislature of that State because of its unconst.i.tutionality.

Were I to recount all the abominations of the peculiar inst.i.tution, and the wrongs inflicted upon the African race, that have come under my observation, they would fill a large volume. Slavery is guilty of six abominations; yea, seven may justly be charged upon it. It is said that the negro is lazy, and will not work except by compulsion. I have known negroes who have purchased their freedom by the payment of a large sum, and afterward made not only a good living, but a fortune beside. It is said Judge W---- of South Carolina gave his servants the use of his plantation, upon condition that they would support his family; and that in three years he was compelled to take the management himself, as they did not make a comfortable living for themselves and the Judge's family. In reply, it might be said that the negroes had not a fair trial, as no one had any property he could call his own, and they were thrown into a sort of Fourierite society, having all things in common. In this state of things, while some would work, others would be idle. White men do not succeed in such communities, and for this reason it was no fair test of the industrial energies of Judge W----'s slaves.

The question is often asked, is slavery sinful in itself? My observation has been extensive, embracing eight slave States, and I have never yet seen any example of slavery that I did not deem sinful.

If slavery is not sinful in itself, I must have always seen it out of itself. I have observed its workings during eleven years, amongst a professedly Christian people, and cannot do otherwise than p.r.o.nounce it an unmitigated curse. It is a curse to the white man, it is a curse to the black man. That G.o.d will curse it, and blot it out of existence ere long, is my firm conviction. The elements of its abolition exist; G.o.d speed the time when they will be fully developed, and this mother of abominations driven from the land of the free! The development of the eternal principles of justice and rect.i.tude will abolish this h.o.a.ry monster of fraud and oppression. Slavery subverts all the rights of man. It divests him of citizens.h.i.+p, of liberty, of the pursuit of happiness, of his children, of his wife, of his property, of intellectual culture, reserving to him only the rights of the horse and a.s.s, and reducing him to the same chattel condition with them. Not a single right does the State law grant him above that of the mule--no, not one. The chast.i.ty of the slave has no legal protection.

The Methodist Church South is expunging from the discipline everything inimical to the peculiar inst.i.tution, whilst I observe that the Church North is adding to her testimony and deliverances against the sin of slaveholding. The Church South refused to abide by the rules of the Church, and hence the guilt of the schism lies with her, and you are henceforth free from any guilt in conniving at the sin which the founder of your church, the ill.u.s.trious Wesley, regarded as the "sum of all villany."