Cotton is King, and Pro-Slavery Arguments Part 49

The love of liberty is a n.o.ble pa.s.sion--to have the free, uncontrolled disposition of ourselves, our words and actions. But alas! it is one in which we know that a large portion of the human race can never be gratified. It is mockery, to say that the laborer any where has such disposition of himself--though there may be an approach to it in some peculiar, and those, perhaps, not the most desirable, states of society.

But unless he be properly disciplined and prepared for its enjoyment, it is the most fatal boon that could be conferred--fatal to himself and others. If slaves have less freedom of action than other laborers, which I by no means admit, they are saved in a great degree from the responsibility of self-government, and the evils springing from their own perverse wills. Those who have looked most closely into life, and know how great a portion of human misery is derived from these sources--the undecided and wavering purpose--producing ineffectual exertion, or indolence with its thousand attendant evils--the wayward conduct--intemperance or profligacy--will most appreciate this benefit.

The line of a slave's duty is marked out with precision, and he has no choice but to follow it. He is saved the double difficulty, first of determining the proper course for himself, and then of summoning up the energy which will sustain him in pursuing it.

If some superior power should impose on the laborious poor of any other country--this as their unalterable condition--you shall be saved from the torturing anxiety concerning your own future support, and that of your children, which now pursues you through life, and haunts you in death--you shall be under the necessity of regular and healthful, though not excessive labor--in return, you shall have the ample supply of your natural wants--you may follow the instinct of nature in becoming parents, without apprehending that this supply will fail yourselves or your children--you shall be supported and relieved in sickness, and in old age, wear out the remains of existence among familiar scenes and accustomed a.s.sociates, without being driven to beg, or to resort to the hard and miserable charity of a work-house--you shall of necessity be temperate, and shall have neither the temptation nor opportunity to commit great crimes, or practice the more destructive vices--how inappreciable would the boon be thought! And is not this a very near approach to the condition of our slaves? The evils of their situation they but lightly feel, and would hardly feel at all, if they were not seduously instructed into sensibility. Certain it is, that if their fate were at the absolute disposal of a council of the most enlightened philanthropists in Christendom, with unlimited resources, they could place them in no situation so favorable to themselves, as that which they at present occupy. But whatever good there may be, or whatever mitigation of evil, it is worse than valueless, because it is the result of _slavery_.

I am aware, that however often answered, it is likely to be repeated again and again--how can that inst.i.tution be tolerable, by which a large cla.s.s of society is cut off from the hope of improvement in knowledge; to whom blows are not degrading; theft no more than a fault; falsehood and the want of chast.i.ty almost venial, and in which a husband or parent looks with comparative indifference, on that which, to a freeman, would be the dishonor of a wife or child?

But why not, if it produces the greatest aggregate of good? Sin and ignorance are only evils, because they lead to misery. It is not our inst.i.tution, but the inst.i.tution of nature, that in the progress of society a portion of it should be exposed to want, and the misery which it brings, and therefore involved in ignorance, vice, and depravity. In antic.i.p.ating some of the good, we also antic.i.p.ate a portion of the evil of civilization. But we have it in a mitigated form. The want and the misery are unknown; the ignorance is less a misfortune, because the being is not the guardian of himself, and partly on account of that involuntary ignorance, the vice is less vice--less hurtful to man, and less displeasing to G.o.d.

There is something in this word _slavery_ which seems to partake of the qualities of the insane root, and distempers the minds of men. That which would be true in relation to one predicament, they misapply to another, to which it has no application at all. Some of the virtues of a freeman would be the vices of slaves. To submit to a blow, would be degrading to a freeman, because he is the protector of himself. It is not degrading to a slave--neither is it to a priest or woman. And is it a misfortune that it should be so? The freeman of other countries is compelled to submit to indignities hardly more endurable than blows--indignities to make the sensitive feelings shrink, and the proud heart swell; and this very name of freeman gives them double rancor. If when a man is born in Europe, it were certainly foreseen that he was destined to a life of painful labor--to obscurity, contempt, and privation--would it not be mercy that he should be reared in ignorance and apathy, and trained to the endurance of the evils he must encounter?

It is not certainly foreseen as to any individual, but it is foreseen as to the great ma.s.s of those born of the laboring poor; and it is for the ma.s.s, not for the exception, that the inst.i.tutions of society are to provide. Is it not better that the character and intellect of the individual should be suited to the station which he is to occupy? Would you do a benefit to the horse or the ox, by giving him a cultivated understanding or fine feelings? So far as the mere laborer has the pride, the knowledge, or the aspirations of a freeman, he is unfitted for his situation, and must doubly feel its infelicity. If there are sordid, servile, and laborious offices to be performed, is it not better that there should be sordid, servile, and laborious beings to perform them? If there were infallible marks by which individuals of inferior intellect, and inferior character, could be selected at their birth--would not the interests of society be served, and would not some sort of fitness seem to require, that they should be selected for the inferior and servile offices? And if this race be generally marked by such inferiority, is it not fit that they should fill them?

I am well aware that those whose aspirations are after a state of society from which evil shall be banished, and who look in life for that which life will never afford, contemplate that all the offices of life may be performed without contempt or degradation--all be regarded as equally liberal, or equally respected.[238] But theorists cannot control nature and bend her to their views, and the inequality of which I have before spoken is deeply founded in nature. The offices which employ knowledge and intellect, will always be regarded as more liberal than those which require the labor of the hands. When there is compet.i.tion for employment, he who gives it bestows a favor, and it will be so received. He will a.s.sume superiority from the power of dismissing his laborers, and from fear of this, the latter will practice deference, often amounting to servility. Such in time will become the established relation between the employer and the employed, the rich and the poor.

If want be accompanied with sordidness and squalor, though it be pitied, the pity will be mixed with some degree of contempt. If it lead to misery, and misery to vice, there will be disgust and aversion.

What is the essential character of _slavery_, and in what does it differ from the _servitude_ of other countries? If I should venture on a definition, I should say that where a man is compelled to labor at the will of another, and to give him much the greater portion of the product of his labor, there _slavery_ exists; and it is immaterial by what sort of compulsion the will of the laborer is subdued. It is what no human being would do without some sort of compulsion. He can not be compelled to labor by blows.[239] No--but what difference does it make, if you can inflict any other sort of torture which will be equally effectual in subduing the will? if you can starve him, or alarm him for the subsistence of himself or his family?[240] And is it not under this compulsion that the _freeman_ labors? I do not mean in every particular case, but in the general. Will any one be hardy enough to say that he is at his own disposal, or has the government of himself? True, he may change his employer if he is dissatisfied with his conduct toward him; but this is a privilege he would in the majority of cases gladly abandon, and render the connection between them indissoluble. There is far less of the interest and attachment in his relation to his employer, which so often exists between the master and the slave, and mitigates the condition of the latter. An intelligent English traveler has characterized as the most miserable and degraded of all beings, "a masterless slave." And is not the condition of the laboring poor of other countries too often that of masterless slaves! Take the following description of a _free_ laborer, no doubt highly colored, quoted by the author to whom I have before referred.

"What is that defective being, with calfless legs and stooping shoulders, weak in body and mind, inert, pusillanimous and stupid, whose premature wrinkles and furtive glance, tell of misery and degradation?

That is an English peasant or pauper, for the words are synonymous. His sire was a pauper, and his mother's milk wanted nourishment. From infancy his food has been bad, as well as insufficient; and he now feels the pains of unsatisfied hunger nearly whenever he is awake. But half clothed, and never supplied with more warmth than suffices to cook his scanty meals, cold and wet come to him, and stay by him with the weather. He is married, of course; for to this he would have been driven by the poor laws, even if he had been, as he never was, sufficiently comfortable and prudent to dread the burden of a family. But though instinct and the overseer have given him a wife, he has not tasted the highest joys of husband and father. His partner and his little ones being like himself, often hungry, seldom warm, sometimes sick without aid, and always sorrowful without hope, are greedy, selfish, and vexing; so, to use his own expression, he hates the sight of them, and resorts to his hovel, only because a hedge affords less shelter from the wind and rain. Compelled by parish law to support his family, which means to join them in consuming an allowance from the parish, he frequently conspires with his wife to get that allowance increased, or prevent its being diminished. This brings beggary, trickery, and quarrelling, and ends in settled craft. Though he have the inclination, he wants the courage to become, like more energetic men of his cla.s.s, a poacher or smuggler on a large scale, but he pilfers occasionally, and teaches his children to lie and steal. His subdued and slavish manner toward his great neighbors, shows that they treat him with suspicion and harshness.

Consequently, he at once dreads and hates them; but he will never harm them by violent means. Too degraded to be desperate, he is only thoroughly depraved. His miserable career will be short; rheumatism and asthma are conducting him to the work-house; where he will breathe his last without one pleasant recollection, and so make room for another wretch, who may live and die in the same way." And this description, or some other not much less revolting, is applied to "the bulk of the people, the great body of the people." Take the following description of the condition of childhood, which has justly been called eloquent.[241]

"The children of the very poor have no young times; it makes the very heart bleed, to overhear the casual street talk between a poor woman and her little girl, a woman of the better sort of poor, in a condition rather above the squalid beings we have been contemplating. It is not of toys, of nursery books, of summer holidays, (fitting that age,) of the promised sight or play; of praised sufficiency at school. It is of mangling and clear starching; of price of coals, or of potatoes. The questions of the child, that should be the very outpourings of curiosity in idleness, are marked with forecast and melancholy providence. It has come to be a woman, before it was a child. It has learnt to go to market; it chaffers, it haggles, it envies, it murmurs; it is knowing, acute, sharpened; it never prattles." Imagine such a description applied to the children of negro slaves, the most vacant of human beings, whose life is a holiday.

And this people, to whom these horrors are familiar, are those who fill the world with clamor, concerning the injustice and cruelty of slavery.

I speak in no invidious spirit. Neither the laws nor the government of England are to be reproached with the evils which are inseparable from the state of their society--as little, undoubtedly, are we to be reproached with the existence of our slavery. Including the whole of the United States--and for reasons already given, the whole ought to be included, as receiving in no unequal degree the benefit--may we not say justly that we have less slavery, and more mitigated slavery, than any other country in the civilized world?

That they are called free, undoubtedly aggravates the sufferings of the slaves of other regions. They see the enormous inequality which exists, and feel their own misery, and can hardly conceive otherwise, than that there is some injustice in the inst.i.tutions of society to occasion these. They regard the apparently more fortunate cla.s.s as oppressors, and it adds bitterness that they should be of the same name and race.

They feel indignity more acutely, and more of discontent and evil pa.s.sion is excited; they feel that it is mockery that calls them free.

Men do not so much hate and envy those who are separated from them by a wide distance, and some apparently impa.s.sable barrier, as those who approach nearer to their own condition, and with whom they habitually bring themselves into comparison. The slave with us is not tantalized with the name of freedom, to which his whole condition gives the lie, and would do so if he were emanc.i.p.ated to-morrow. The African slave sees that nature herself has marked him as a separate--and if left to himself, I have no doubt he would feel it to be an inferior--race, and interposed a barrier almost insuperable to his becoming a member of the same society, standing on the same footing of right and privilege with his master.

That the African negro is an inferior variety of the human race, is, I think, now generally admitted, and his distinguis.h.i.+ng characteristics are such as peculiarly mark him out for the situation which he occupies among us. And these are no less marked in their original country, than as we have daily occasion to observe them. The most remarkable is their indifference to personal liberty. In this they have followed their instincts since we have any knowledge of their continent, by enslaving each other; but contrary to the experience of every race, the possession of slaves has no material effect in raising the character, and promoting the civilization of the master. Another trait is the want of domestic affections, and insensibility to the ties of kindred. In the travels of the Landers, after speaking of a single exception, in the person of a woman who betrayed some transient emotion in pa.s.sing by the country from which she had been torn as a slave, the authors add: "that Africans, generally speaking, betray the most perfect indifference on losing their liberty, and being deprived of their relatives, while love of country is equally a stranger to their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, as social tenderness or domestic affection." "Marriage is celebrated by the natives as unconcernedly as possible; a man thinks as little of taking a wife, as of cutting an ear of corn--affection is altogether out of the question." They are, however, very submissive to authority, and seem to entertain great reverence for chiefs, priests, and masters. No greater indignity can be offered an individual, than to throw opprobrium on his parents. On this point of their character I think I have remarked, that, contrary to the instinct of nature in other races, they entertain less regard for children than for parents, to whose authority they have been accustomed to submit. Their character is thus summed up by the travellers quoted: "The few opportunities we have had of studying their characters, induce us to believe that they are a simple, honest, inoffensive, but weak, timid, and cowardly race. They seem to have no social tenderness, very few of those amiable private virtues which could win our affections, and none of those public qualities that claim respect or command admiration.

The love of country is not strong enough in their bosoms to incite them to defend it against a despicable foe; and of the active energy, n.o.ble sentiments, and contempt of danger which distinguishes the North American tribes and other savages, no traces are to be found among this slothful people. Regardless of the past, as reckless of the future, the present alone influences their actions. In this respect, they approach nearer to the nature of the brute creation, than perhaps any other people on the face of the globe." Let me ask if this people do not furnish the very material out of which slaves ought to be made, and whether it be not an improving of their condition to make them the slaves of civilized masters? There is a variety in the character of the tribes. Some are brutally and savagely ferocious and b.l.o.o.d.y, whom it would be mercy to enslave. From the travelers' account, it seems not unlikely that the negro race is tending to extermination, being daily encroached on and overrun by the superior Arab race. It may be, that when they shall have been lost from their native seats, they may be found numerous, and in no unhappy condition, on the continent to which they have been transplanted.

The opinion which connects form and features with character and intellectual power, is one so deeply impressed on the human mind, that perhaps there is scarcely any man who does not almost daily act upon it, and in some measure verify its truth. Yet in spite of this intimation of nature, and though the anatomist and physiologist may tell them that the races differ in every bone and muscle, and in the proportion of brain and nerves, yet there are some who, with a most bigoted and fanatical determination to free themselves from what they have prejudged to be prejudice, will still maintain that this physiognomy, evidently tending to that of the brute, when compared to that of the Caucasian race, may be enlightened by as much thought, and animated by as lofty sentiment.

We who have the best opportunity of judging, are p.r.o.nounced to be incompetent to do so, and to be blinded by our interest and prejudices--often by those who have no opportunity at all--and we are to be taught to distrust or disbelieve that which we daily observe, and familiarly know, on such authority. Our prejudices are spoken of. But the truth is, that, until very lately, since circ.u.mstances have compelled us to think for ourselves, we took our opinions on this subject, as on every other, ready formed from the country of our origin.

And so deeply rooted were they, that we adhered to them, as most men will do to deeply rooted opinions, even against the evidence of our own observation, and our own senses. If the inferiority exists, it is attributed to the apathy and degradation produced by slavery. Though of the hundreds of thousand scattered over other countries, where the laws impose no disability upon them, none has given evidence of an approach to even mediocrity of intellectual excellence; this, too, is attributed to the slavery of a portion of their race. They are regarded as a servile caste, and degraded by opinion, and thus every generous effort is repressed. Yet though this should be the general effect, this very estimation is calculated to produce the contrary effect in particular instances. It is observed by Bacon, with respect to deformed persons and eunuchs, that though in general there is something of perversity in the character, the disadvantage often leads to extraordinary displays of virtue and excellence. "Whoever hath any thing fixed in his person that doth induce contempt, hath also a perpetual spur in himself, to rescue and deliver himself from scorn." So it would be with them, if they were capable of European aspirations--genius, if they possessed it, would be doubly fired with n.o.ble rage to rescue itself from this scorn. Of course, I do not mean to say that there may not be found among them some of superior capacity to many white persons; but that great intellectual powers are, perhaps, never found among them, and that in general their capacity is very limited, and their feelings animal and coa.r.s.e--fitting them peculiarly to discharge the lower, and merely mechanical offices of society.

And why should it not be so? We have among domestic animals infinite varieties, distinguished by various degrees of sagacity, courage, strength, swiftness, and other qualities. And it may be observed, that this is no objection to their being derived from a common origin, which we suppose them to have had. Yet these accidental qualities, as they may be termed, however acquired in the first instance, we know that they transmit unimpaired to their posterity for an indefinite succession of generations. It is most important that these varieties should be preserved, and that each should be applied to the purposes for which it is best adapted. No philo-zoost, I believe, has suggested it as desirable that these varieties should be melted down into one equal, undistinguished race of curs or road horses.

Slavery, as it is said in an eloquent article published in a Southern periodical work,[242] to which I am indebted for other ideas, "has done more to elevate a degraded race in the scale of humanity; to tame the savage; to civilize the barbarous; to soften the ferocious; to enlighten the ignorant, and to spread the blessings of Christianity among the heathen, than all the missionaries that philanthropy and religion have ever sent forth."[243] Yet unquestionable as this is, and though human ingenuity and thought may be tasked in vain to devise any other means by which these blessings could have been conferred, yet a sort of sensibility which would be only mawkish and contemptible, if it were not mischievous, affects still to weep over the wrongs of "injured Africa."

Can there be a doubt of the immense benefit which has been conferred on the race, by transplanting them from their native, dark, and barbarous regions, to the American continent and islands? There, three-fourths of the race are in a state of the most deplorable personal slavery. And those who are not, are in a scarcely less deplorable condition of political slavery, to barbarous chiefs--who value neither life nor any other human right, or enthralled by priests to the most abject and atrocious superst.i.tions. Take the following testimony of one of the few disinterested observers, who has had an opportunity of observing them in both situations.[244] "The wild savage is the child of pa.s.sion, unaided by one ray of religion or morality to direct his course, in consequence of which his existence is stained with every crime that can debase human nature to a level with the brute creation. Who can say that the slaves in our colonies are such? Are they not, by comparison with their still savage brethren, enlightened beings? Is not the West Indian negro, therefore, greatly indebted to his master for making him what he is--for having raised him from the state of debas.e.m.e.nt in which he was born, and placed him in a scale of civilized society? How can he repay him? He is possessed of nothing--the only return in his power is his servitude. The man who has seen the wild African, roaming in his native woods, and the well fed, happy looking negro of the West Indies, may, perhaps, be able to judge of their comparative happiness; the former, I strongly suspect, would be glad to change his state of boasted freedom, starvation, and disease, to become the slave of sinners, and the commiseration of saints."[245] It was a useful and beneficent work, approaching the heroic, to tame the wild horse, and subdue him to the use of man; how much more to tame the n.o.bler animal that is capable of reason, and subdue him to usefulness?

We believe that the tendency of slavery is to elevate the character of the master. No doubt the character--especially of youth--has sometimes received a taint and premature knowledge of vice, from the contact and a.s.sociation with ignorant and servile beings of gross manners and morals. Yet still we believe that the entire tendency is to inspire disgust and aversion toward their peculiar vices. It was not without a knowledge of nature, that the Spartans exhibited the vices of slaves by way of negative example to their children. We flatter ourselves that the view of this degradation, mitigated as it is, has the effect of making probity more strict, the pride of character more high, the sense of honor more strong, than is commonly found where this inst.i.tution does not exist. Whatever may be the prevailing faults or vices of the masters of slaves, they have not commonly been understood to be those of dishonesty, cowardice, meanness, or falsehood. And so most unquestionably it ought to be. Our inst.i.tutions would indeed be intolerable in the sight of G.o.d and man, if, condemning one portion of society to hopeless ignorance and comparative degradation, they should make no atonement by elevating the other cla.s.s by higher virtues, and more liberal attainments--if, besides degraded slaves, there should be ignorant, ign.o.ble, and degraded freemen. There is a broad and well marked line, beyond which no slavish vice should be regarded with the least toleration or allowance. One cla.s.s is cut off from all interest in the State--that abstraction so potent to the feelings of a generous nature. The other must make compensation by increased a.s.siduity and devotion to its honor and welfare. The love of wealth--so laudable when kept within proper limits, so base and mischievous when it exceeds them--so infectious in its example--an infection to which I fear we have been too much exposed--should be pursued by no arts in any degree equivocal, or at any risk of injustice to others. So surely as there is a just and wise governor of the universe, who punishes the sins of nations and communities, as well as of individuals, so surely shall we suffer punishment, if we are indifferent to that moral and intellectual cultivation of which the means are furnished to us, and to which we are called and incited by our situation.

I would to heaven I could express, as I feel, the conviction how necessary this cultivation is, not only to our prosperity and consideration, but to our safety and very existence. We, the slaveholding States, are in a hopeless minority in our own confederated Republic--to say nothing of the great confederacy of civilized States.

It is admitted, I believe, not only by slaveholders, but by others, that we have sent to our common councils more than our due share of talent, high character and eloquence.[246] Yet in spite of all these most strenuously exerted, measures have been sometimes adopted which we believed to be dangerous and injurious to us, and threatening to be fatal. What would be our situation, if, instead of these, we were only represented by ignorant and groveling men, incapable of raising their views beyond a job or petty office, and incapable of commanding bearing or consideration? May I be permitted to advert--by no means invidiously--to the late contest carried on by South Carolina against Federal authority, and so happily terminated by the moderation which prevailed in our public counsels. I have often reflected, what one circ.u.mstance, more than any other, contributed to the successful issue of a contest, apparently so hopeless, in which one weak and divided State was arrayed against the whole force of the confederacy--unsustained, and uncountenanced, even by those who had a common interest with her. It seemed to me to be, that we had for leaders an unusual number of men of great intellectual power, co-operating cordially and in good faith, and commanding respect and confidence at home and abroad, by elevated and honorable character. It was from these that we--the followers at home--caught hope and confidence in the gloomiest aspect of our affairs.

These, by their eloquence and the largeness of their views, at least shook the faith of the dominant majority in the wisdom and justice of their measures--or the practicability of carrying them into successful effect; and by their bearing and well known character, satisfied them that South Carolina would do all that she had pledged herself to do.

Without these, how different might have been the result? And who shall say what at this day would have been the aspect of the now flouris.h.i.+ng fields and cities of South Carolina? Or rather, without these, it is probable the contest would never have been begun; but that, without even the animation of a struggle, we should have sunk silently into a hopeless and degrading subjection. While I have memory--in the extremity of age--in sickness--under all the reverses and calamities of life--I shall have one source of pride and consolation--that of having been a.s.sociated--according to my humbler position--with the n.o.ble spirits who stood prepared to devote themselves for Liberty--the Const.i.tution--the Union. May such character and such talent never be wanting to South Carolina.

I am sure that it is unnecessary to say to an a.s.sembly like this, that the conduct of the master to his slave should be distinguished by the utmost humanity. That we should indeed regard them as wards and dependents on our kindness, for whose well-being in every way we are deeply responsible. This is no less the dictate of wisdom and just policy, than of right feeling. It is wise with respect to the services to be expected from them. I have never heard of an owner whose conduct in their management was distinguished by undue severity, whose slaves were not in a great degree worthless to him. A cheerful and kindly demeanor, with the expression of interest in themselves and their affairs, is, perhaps, calculated to have a better effect on them, than what might be esteemed more substantial favors and indulgences.

Throughout nature, attachment is the reward of attachment. It is wise, too, in relation to the civilized world around us, to avoid giving occasion to the odium which is so industriously excited against ourselves and our inst.i.tutions. For this reason, public opinion should, if possible, bear even more strongly and indignantly than it does at present, on masters who practice any wanton cruelty on their slaves. The miscreant who is guilty of this, not only violates the law of G.o.d and of humanity, but as far as in him lies, by bringing odium upon, endangers the inst.i.tutions of his country, and the safety of his countrymen. He casts a shade upon the character of every individual of his fellow-citizens, and does every one of them a personal injury. So of him who indulges in any odious excess of intemperate or licentious pa.s.sion.

It is detached instances of this sort, of which the existence is, perhaps, hardly known among ourselves, that, collected with pertinacious and malevolent industry, affords the most formidable weapons to the mischievous zealots, who array them as being characteristic of our general manners and state of society.

I would by no means be understood to intimate, that a vigorous, as well as just government, should not be exercised over slaves. This is part of our duty toward them, no less obligatory than any other duty, and no less necessary toward their well-being than to ours. I believe that at least as much injury has been done and suffering inflicted by weak and injudicious indulgence, as by inordinate severity. He whose business is to labor, should be made to labor, and that with due diligence, and should be vigorously restrained from excess or vice. This is no less necessary to his happiness than to his usefulness. The master who neglects this, not only makes his slaves unprofitable to himself, but discontented and wretched--a nuisance to his neighbors and to society.

I have said that the tendency of our inst.i.tution is to elevate the female character, as well as that of the other s.e.x, and for similar reasons. In other states of society, there is no well-defined limit to separate virtue and vice. There are degrees of vice, from the most flagrant and odious, to that which scarcely incurs the censure of society. Many individuals occupy an unequivocal position and as society becomes accustomed to this, there will be a less peremptory requirement of purity in female manners and conduct, and often the whole of the society will be in a tainted and uncertain condition with respect to female virtue. Here, there is that certain and marked line, above which there is no toleration or allowance for any approach to license of manners or conduct, and she who falls below it, will fall far below even the slave. How many will incur this penalty?

And permit me to say, that this elevation of the female character is no less important and essential to us, than the moral and intellectual cultivation of the other s.e.x. It would indeed be intolerable, if, when one cla.s.s of the society is necessarily degraded in this respect, no compensation were made by the superior elevation and purity of the other. Not only essential purity of conduct, but the utmost purity of manners, and I will add, though it may incur the formidable charge of affectation or prudery,--a greater severity of decorum than is required elsewhere, is necessary among us. Always should be strenuously resisted the attempts which have been sometimes made to introduce among us the freedom of foreign European, and especially of continental manners. This freedom, the remotest in the world from that which sometimes springs from simplicity of manners, is calculated and commonly intended to confound the outward distinctions of virtue and vice. It is to prepare the way for licentiousness--to produce this effect--that if those who are clothed with the outward color and garb of vice, may be well received by society, those who are actually guilty may hope to be so too. It may be said, that there is often perfect purity where there is very great freedom of manners. And, I have no doubt, this may be true in particular instances, but it is never true of any _society_ in which this is the general state of manners. What guards can there be to purity, when every thing that _may possibly_ be done innocently, is habitually practiced; when there can be no impropriety which is not vice. And what must be the depth of the depravity when there is a departure from that which they admit as principle. Besides, things which may perhaps be practiced innocently where they are familiar, produce a moral dilaceration in the course of their being introduced where they are new. Let us say, we will not have the manners of South Carolina changed.

I have before said that free labor is cheaper than the labor of slaves, and so far as it is so the condition of the free laborer is worse. But I think President Dew has sufficiently shown that this is only true of Northern countries. It is matter of familiar remark that the tendency of warm climates is to relax the human const.i.tution and indispose to labor.

The earth yields abundantly--in some regions almost spontaneously--under the influence of the sun, and the means of supporting life are obtained with but slight exertion; and men will use no greater exertion than is necessary to the purpose. This very luxuriance of vegetation, where no other cause concurs, renders the air less salubrious, and even when positive malady does not exist, the health is habitually impaired.

Indolence renders the const.i.tution more liable to these effects of the atmosphere, and these again aggravate the indolence. Nothing but the coercion of slavery can overcome the repugnance to labor under these circ.u.mstances, and by subduing the soil, improve and render wholesome the climate.

It is worthy of remark, that there does not now exist on the face of the earth, a people in a tropical climate, or one approaching to it, where slavery does not exist, that is in a state of high civilization, or exhibits the energies which mark the progress toward it. Mexico and the South American Republics,[247] starting on their new career of independence, and having gone through a farce of abolis.h.i.+ng slavery, are rapidly degenerating, even from semi-barbarism. The only portion of the South American continent which seems to be making any favorable progress, in spite of a weak and arbitrary civil government, is Brazil, in which slavery has been retained. Cuba, of the same race with the continental republics, is daily and rapidly advancing in industry and civilization; and this is owing exclusively to her slaves. St. Domingo is struck out of the map of civilized existence, and the British West Indies will shortly be so. On the other continent, Spain and Portugal are degenerate, and their rapid progress is downward. Their southern coast is infested by disease, arising from causes which industry might readily overcome, but that industry they will never exert. Greece is still barbarous, and scantily peopled. The work of an English physician, distinguished by strong sense and power of observation,[248] gives a most affecting picture of the condition of Italy,--especially south of the Appenines. With the decay of industry, the climate has degenerated toward the condition from which it was first rescued by the labor of slaves. There is poison in every man's veins, affecting the very springs of life, dulling or extinguis.h.i.+ng, with the energies of the body, all energy of mind, and often exhibiting itself in the most appalling forms of disease. From year to year the pestilential atmosphere creeps forward, narrowing the circles within which it is possible to sustain human life. With disease and misery, industry still more rapidly decays, and if the process goes on, it seems that Italy too will soon be ready for another experiment in colonization.

Yet once it was not so, when Italy was possessed by the masters of slaves; when Rome contained her millions, and Italy was a garden; when their iron energies of body corresponded with the energies of mind which made them conquerors in every climate and on every soil; rolled the tide of conquest, not as in later times, from the South to the North; extended their laws and their civilization, and created them lords of the earth.

"What conflux issuing forth or entering in; Praetors, pro-consuls to their provinces, Hasting, or on return in robes of state.

Lictors and rods, the ensigns of their power, Legions and cohorts, turms of horse and wings: Or emba.s.sies from regions far remote, In various habits, on the Appian road, Or on th' Emilian; some from furthest South, Syene, and where the shadow both way falls, Meroe, Nilotic isle, and more to West, The realms of Bocchus to the Blackmoor sea; From th' Asian kings, and Parthian among these; From India and the golden Chersonese, And utmost India's isle, Taprobona, Dusk faces, with white silken turbans wreathed; From Gallia, Gades, and the British West; Germans, and Scythians, and Sarmatians, North Beyond Danubius to the Tauric Pool!

All nations now to Rome obedience pay."

Such was, and such is, the picture of Italy. Greece presents a contrast not less striking. What is the cause of the great change? Many causes, no doubt, have occurred; but though

"War, famine, pestilence, and flood and fire, Have dealt upon the seven-hilled city's pride,"

I will venture to say that nothing has dealt upon it more heavily than the loss of domestic slavery. Is not this evident? If they had slaves, with an energetic civil government, would the deadly miasma be permitted to overspread the Campagna, and invade Rome herself? Would not the soil be cultivated, and the wastes reclaimed? A late traveller[249] mentions a ca.n.a.l, cut for miles through rock and mountain, for the purpose of carrying off the waters of the lake of Celano, on which thirty thousand Roman slaves were employed for eleven years, and which remains almost perfect to the present day. This, the government of Naples was ten years in repairing with an hundred workmen. The imperishable works of Rome which remain to the present day were, for the most part, executed by slaves. How different would be the condition of Naples, if for her wretched lazzaroni were subst.i.tuted negro slaves, employed in rendering productive the plains whose fertility now serves only to infect the air!

To us, on whom this inst.i.tution is fastened, and who could not shake it off, even if we desired to do so, the great republics of antiquity offer instruction of inestimable value. They teach us that slavery is compatible with the freedom, stability, and long duration of civil government, with denseness of population, great power, and the highest civilization. And in what respect does this modern Europe, which claims to give opinions to the world, so far excel them--notwithstanding the immense advantages of the Christian religion and the discovery of the art of printing? They are not more free, nor have performed more glorious actions, nor displayed more exalted virtue. In the higher departments of intellect--in all that relates to taste and imagination--they will hardly venture to claim equality. Where they have gone beyond them in the results of mechanical philosophy, or discoveries which contribute to the wants and enjoyments of physical life, they have done so by the help of means with which they were furnished by the Grecian mind--the mother of civilization--and only pursued a little further the tract which that had always pointed out. In the development of intellectual power, they will hardly bear comparison. Those n.o.ble republics in the pride of their strength and greatness, may have antic.i.p.ated for themselves--as some of their poets did for them--an everlasting duration and predominance. But they could not have antic.i.p.ated, that when they had fallen under barbarous arms, that when arts and civilization were lost, and the whole earth in darkness--the first light should break from their tombs--that in a renewed world, unconnected with them by ties of locality, language or descent, they should still be held the models of all that is profound in science, or elegant in literature, or all that is great in character, or elevated in imagination. And perhaps when England herself, who now leads the war with which we are on all sides threatened, shall have fulfilled her mission, and like the other glorious things of the earth, shall have pa.s.sed away; when she shall have diffused her n.o.ble race and n.o.ble language, her laws, her literature, and her civilization, over all quarters of the earth, and shall perhaps be overrun by some Northern horde--sunk into an ign.o.ble and anarchical democracy,[250] or subdued to the dominion of some Caesar,--demagogue and despot,--then, in Southern regions, there may be found many republics, triumphing in Grecian arts and civilization, and worthy of British descent and Roman inst.i.tutions.

If, after a time, when the mind and almost the memory of the republic were lost, Romans degenerated, they furnish conclusive evidence that this was owing not to their domestic, but to their political slavery.

The same thing is observed over all the Eastern monarchies; and so it must be, wherever property is insecure, and it is dangerous for a man to rise himself to such eminence by intellectual or moral excellence, as would give him influence over his society. So it is in Egypt; and the other regions bordering the Mediterranean, which once comprehended the civilization of the world, where Carthage, Tyre, and Phnicia flourished. In short, the uncontradicted experience of the world is, that in the Southern States where good government and predial and domestic slavery are found, there are prosperity and greatness; where either of these conditions is wanting, degeneracy and barbarism. The former, however, is equally essential in all climates and under all inst.i.tutions. And can we suppose it to be the design of the Creator, that these regions, const.i.tuting half of the earth's surface, and the more fertile half, and more capable of sustaining life, should be abandoned forever to depopulation and barbarism? Certain it is that they will never be reclaimed by the labor of freemen. In our own country, look at the lower valley of the Mississippi, which is capable of being made a far greater Egypt. In our own State, there are extensive tracts of the most fertile soil, which are capable of being made to swarm with life. These are at present pestilential swamps, and valueless, because there is abundance of other fertile soil in more favorable situations, which demand all and more than all the labor which our country can supply. Are these regions of fertility to be abandoned at once and forever to the alligator and tortoise--with here and there perhaps a miserable, s.h.i.+vering, crouching _free_ black savage? Does not the finger of heaven itself seem to point to a race of men--not to be enslaved by us, but already enslaved, and who will be in every way benefited by the change of masters--to whom such climate is not uncongenial, who, though disposed to indolence, are yet patient and capable of labor, on whose whole features, mind and character, nature has indelibly written--slave;--and indicate that we should avail ourselves of these in fulfilling the first great command to subdue and replenish the earth.

It is true that this labor will be dearer than that of Northern countries, where, under the name of freedom, they obtain cheaper and perhaps better slaves. Yet it is the best we can have, and this too has its compensation. We see it compensated at present by the superior value of our agricultural products. And this superior value they must probably always have. The Southern climate admits of a greater variety of productions. Whatever is produced in Northern climates, the same thing, or something equivalent, may be produced in the Southern. But the Northern have no equivalent for the products of Southern climates. The consequence will be, that the products of Southern regions will be demanded all over the civilized world. The agricultural products of Northern regions are chiefly for their own consumption. They must therefore apply themselves to the manufacturing of articles of luxury, elegance, convenience, or necessity,--which requires cheap labor--for the purpose of exchanging them with their Southern neighbors. Thus nature herself indicates that agriculture should be the predominating employment in Southern countries, and manufactures in Northern. Commerce is necessary to both--but less indispensable to the Southern, which produce within themselves a greater variety of things desirable to life.

They will therefore have somewhat less of the commercial spirit. We must avail ourselves of such labor as we can command. The slave must labor, and is inured to it; while the necessity of energy in his government, of watchfulness, and of preparation and power to suppress insurrection, added to the moral force derived from the habit of command, may help to prevent the degeneracy of the master.

The task of keeping down insurrection is commonly supposed by those who are strangers to our inst.i.tutions, to be a very formidable one. Even among ourselves, accustomed as we have been to take our opinions on this as on every other subject, ready formed from those whom we regarded as instructors, in the teeth of our own observation and experience, fears have been entertained which are absolutely ludicrous. We have been supposed to be nightly reposing over a mine, which may at any instant explode to our destruction. The first thought of a foreigner sojourning in one of our cities, who is awaked by any nightly alarm, is of servile insurrection and ma.s.sacre. Yet if any thing is certain in human affairs, it is certain and from the most obvious considerations, that we are more secure in this respect than any civilived and fully peopled society upon the face of the earth. In every such society, there is a much larger proportion than with us, of persons who have more to gain than to lose by the overthrow of government, and the embroiling of social order. It is in such a state of things that those who were before at the bottom of society, rise to the surface. From causes already considered, they are peculiarly apt to consider their sufferings the result of injustice and misgovernment, and to be rancorous and embittered accordingly. They have every excitement, therefore, of resentful pa.s.sion, and every temptation which the hope of increased opulence, or power or consideration can hold out, to urge them to innovation and revolt. Supposing the same disposition to exist in equal degree among our slaves, what are their comparative means or prospect of gratifying it? The poor of other countries are called free. They have, at least, no one interested to exercise a daily and nightly superintendence and control over their conduct and actions. Emissaries of their cla.s.s may traverse, unchecked, every portion of the country, for the purpose of organizing insurrection. From their greater intelligence, they have greater means of communicating with each other. They may procure and secrete arms. It is not alone the ignorant, or those who are commonly called the poor, that will be tempted to revolution. There will be many disappointed men, and men of desperate fortune--men perhaps of talent and daring--to combine them and direct their energies. Even those in the higher ranks of society who contemplate no such result, will contribute to it, by declaiming on their hards.h.i.+ps and rights.

With us, it is almost physically impossible that there should be any very extensive combination among the slaves. It is absolutely impossible that they should procure and conceal efficient arms. Their emissaries traversing the country, would carry their commissions on their foreheads. If we suppose among them an individual of sufficient talent and energy to qualify him for a revolutionary leader, he could not be so extensively known as to command the confidence, which would be necessary to enable him to combine and direct them. Of the cla.s.s of freemen, there would be no individual so poor or degraded (with the exception perhaps of here and there a reckless and desperate outlaw and felon) who would not have much to lose by the success of such an attempt; every one, therefore, would be vigilant and active to detect and suppress it. Of all impossible things, one of the most impossible would be a successful insurrecction of our slaves, originating with themselves.

Attempts at insurrection have indeed been made--excited, as we believe, by the agitation of the abolitionists and declaimers on slavery; but these have been in every instance promptly suppressed. We fear not to compare the riots, disorder, revolt and bloodshed, which have been committed in our own, with those of any other civilized communities, during the same lapse of time. And let it be observed under what extraordinary circ.u.mstances our peace has been preserved. For the last half century, one half of our population has been admonished in terms the most calculated to madden and excite, that they are the victims of the most grinding and cruel injustice and oppression. We know that these exhortations continually reach them, through a thousand channels which we cannot detect, as if carried by the birds of the air--and what human being, especially when unfavorably distinguished by outward circ.u.mstances, is not ready to give credit when he is told that he is the victim of injustice and oppression? In effect, if not in terms, they have been continually exhorted to insurrection. The master has been painted as a criminal, tyrant and robber, justly obnoxious to the vengeance of G.o.d and man, and they have been a.s.sured of the countenance and sympathy, if not of the active a.s.sistance, of all the rest of the world. We ourselves have in some measure pleaded guilty to the impeachment. It is not long since a great majority of our free population, servile to the opinions of those whose opinions they had been accustomed to follow, would have admitted slavery to be a great evil, unjust and indefensible in principle, and only to be vindicated by the stern necessity which was imposed upon us. Thus stimulated by every motive and pa.s.sion which ordinarily actuate human beings--not as to a criminal enterprise, but as to something generous and heroic--what has been the result? A few imbecile and uncombined plots--in every instance detected before they broke out into action, and which perhaps if undetected would never have broken into action. One or two sudden, unpremeditated attempts, frantic in their character, if not prompted by actual insanity, and these instantly crushed. As it is, we are not less a.s.sured of safety, order, and internal peace, than any other people; and but for the pertinacious and fanatical agitations of the subject, would be much more so.

This experience of security, however, should admonish us of the folly and wickedness of those who have sometimes taken upon themselves to supersede the regular course of law, and by rash and violent acts to punish supposed disturbers of the peace of society. This can admit of no justification or palliation whatever. Burke, I think, somewhere remarked something to this effect,--that when society is in the last stage of depravity--when all parties are alike corrupt, and alike wicked and unjustifiable in their measures and objects, a good man may content himself with standing neuter, a sad and disheartened spectator of the conflict between the rival vices. But are we in this wretched condition?

It is fearful to see with what avidity the worst and most dangerous characters of society seize on the occasion of obtaining the countenance of better men, for the purpose of throwing off the restraints of law. It is always these who are most zealous and forward in const.i.tuting themselves the protectors of the public peace. To such men--men without reputation, or principle, or stake in society--disorder is the natural element. In that, desperate fortunes and the want of all moral principle and moral feeling const.i.tute power. They are eager to avenge themselves upon society. Anarchy is not so much the absence of government, as the government of the worst--not aristocracy, but kakistocracy--a state of things, which to the honor of our nature, has seldom obtained among men, and which perhaps was only fully exemplified during the worst times of the French Revolution, when that horrid h.e.l.l burnt with its most lurid flame. In such a state of things, to be accused is to be condemned--to protect the innocent is to be guilty; and what perhaps is the worst effect, even men of better nature, to whom their own deeds are abhorrent, are goaded by terror to be forward and emulous in deeds of guilt and violence. The scenes of lawless violence which have been acted in some portions of our country, rare and restricted as they have been, have done more to tarnish its reputation than a thousand libels. They have done more to discredit, and if any thing could, to endanger, not only our domestic, but our republican inst.i.tutions, than the abolitionists themselves. Men can never be permanently and effectually disgraced but by themselves, and rarely endangered but by their own injudicious conduct, giving advantage to the enemy. Better, far better, would it be to encounter the dangers with which we are supposed to be threatened, than to employ such means for averting them. But the truth is, that in relation to this matter, so far as respects actual insurrection, when alarm is once excited, danger is absolutely at an end. Society can then employ legitimate and more effectual measures for its own protection. The very commission of such deeds is proof that they are unnecessary. Let those who attempt them, then, or make any demonstration toward them, understand that they will meet only the discountenance and abhorrence of all good men, and the just punishment of the laws they have dared to outrage.

It has commonly been supposed, that this inst.i.tution will prove a source of weakness in relation to military defense against a foreign country. I will venture to say that in a slaveholding community, a larger military force may be maintained permanently in the field, than in any State where there are not slaves. It is plain that almost the whole of the able bodied free male population, making half of the entire able bodied male population, may be maintained in the field, and this without taking in any material degree from the labor and resources of the country. In general, the labor of our country is performed by slaves. In other countries, it is their laborers that form the material of their armies.

What proportion of these can be taken away without fatally crippling their industry and resources? In the war of the Revolution, though the strength of our State was wasted and paralyzed by the unfortunate divisions which existed among ourselves, yet it may be said with general truth, that every citizen was in the field, and acquired much of the qualities of the soldier.