THE ENOEMITY 



OF 



THE SLAYE-TEADE ; 

AND 

THE DUTY OF SEEKING 



THE 



MORAL AND SPIRITUAL ELEVATION 



OF 



THE COLORED RACE. 



SPEECHES OF WILBERFOKCE, AND OTHER DOCU- 
MENTS AND RECORDS. 



"It being among my first -wishea to see some plan adopted by which slavery in 
this country may be abolished by law." 

Gkorge Wabhinqton, September 9, 1786. 



PUBLISHED BY THE 
AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY, 

150 NASSAU-STREET, NEW YORK. 



V. 



CONTENTS. 



Mr. Wilberforce's Speech* 1789, on his motion in Par- 
liament for the Abolition of the Slave-trade 5 

Mr. Wilberforce's Speech, 1791 20 

Mr. Fox's Speech, 1791 36 

Mr. Clarkson's Summary View 50 

The Bill passed, abolishing the Trade 65 

Unanimous action of the General Assembly of the Pres- 
byterian Church in the United States, 1818 67 

The Substance of the Plan of a Committee of the Synod 
of Kentucky for the Instruction and Emancipation 

of their Slaves, 1835 74 

Rev. Dr. Young's Duties of Masters. A Sermon preach- 
ed in Danville, Kentucky, in 1846 110 



4 



THE SLAYE-TRADE; 

AND 

THE ELEVATION OF THE COLORED RACE. 



MR. WILBERFORCE'S SPEECH,* 

1789. 

ON HIS MOTION IN PARLIAMENT FOR THE 
ABOLITION OF THE SLAVE-TRADE. 

[fbom hazuttt's eloqi:i:nce of the beitish senate.] 

Mr. Wilberforce began with observing that he 
did not mean to appeal to, the passions of the 
House, but to their cool and impartial reason. 

^ The Life of the Hon. William Wilberforce by his sons 
shows that he was elected to Parliament in 1780, and was 
early interested for the abolition of the slave-trade ; but it 
was not till the conversion of his heart to Christ that he 
devoted himself to it from religious principle, and felt that 

God Almighty had set before him this great object" of his 
life. His influence in enlisting Mr. Pitt, Lord Grenville, 



6 SLAVE-TRADE — COLORED RACE. 



He did not mean to accuse any one, but to take 
shame to himself, in common indeed with the 
whole Parliament of Great Britain, for having 
suffered so odious a trade to be carried on under 
their authority. He deprecated every kind of 
reflection against the various descriptions of per- 
sons who were most immediately involved in this 

Mr. Fox, Mr. Burke, and other eminent men in this service 
was great ; and he labored perseveringly in connection with 
Gran^'ille Sharpe, Thomas Clarkson, Bishop Porteus, and 
others in obtaining light and awakening public interest in 
the subject. In May, 1788, one hundred petitions had 
been presented in the House of Commons for their action ; 
and Mr. Wilberforce being prostrated in health, Mr. Pitt, 
Chancellor of the Exchequer, offered and secured the pas- 
sage of a resolution binding the House to consider the sub- 
ject at the next session. On May 12, 1789, Mr. Wilberforce 
made the speech here briefly reported by Hazlitt. It was 
over three hours in the deliver}', and so effective that Mr. 
Burke declared that "the House, the nation, and Europe 
were under gi-eat and serious obligations to the honorable 
gentleman for having brought forward the subject in a 
manner the most masterly, impressive, and eloquent. The 
principles," he said, "were so well laid down, and support- 
ed with so much force and order, that it equalled any thing 
he had heard in modern times, and was not perhaps to be 
surpassed in the remains of Grecian eloquence." Mr. Pitt 
and Mr. Fox were no less loud in their eulogies, and Bishop 
Porteus, who was in the House from five to eleven, wrote 
to a friend that it was * ' one of the ablest and most eloquent 
speeches ever heard," showing that "the slave-trade was 
the disgrace and opprobrium of the country, and that noth- 
ing but entire abolition could cure so monstrous an evil." 



WILBERFORCE'S SPEECH. 



7 



wretched transaction. It was necessary for liini 
to state in the outset, that he did not conceive the 
witnesses who were examined, and particularly 
interested witnesses, to be judges of the argu- 
ment. In the matters of fact that were related 
by them, he admitted their competency ; but con- 
fident assertions, not of facts, but of supposed 
consequences of facts, went for nothing in his 
estimation. 

Mr. Wilberforce divided his subject into three 
parts : the nature of the trade as it affected 
Africa itself ; the appearance it assumed in the 
transportation of the slaves ; and the considera- 
tions that were suggested by their actual state in 
the West Indies. 

With respect to the first, it was found by expe- 
rience to be just such as every man who used his 
reason would infallibly have concluded it to be. 
What must be the natural consequence of a slave- 
trade with Africa, with a country vast in its 
extent, not utterly barbarous, but civilized in a 
very small degree ? Was it not plain that she 
must suffer from it ; that her savage manners 
must be rendered still more ferocious, and that a 
slave-trade carried on round her coasts must 
extend violence and desolation to her very cen- 
tre ? Such were precisely the circumstances 
proved by the evidence before the Privy Council, 



8 SLATE-TRADE— COLORED RACE. 



particolmify by tfaoee who had been most ochitcf- 
sant with the subject^ Mr. Wadstram, Captain 
Hill, and Doctor ^parman. From them it appear- 
ed that the khigs of Afirica were never induced to 
engage in war by public pruKaples, by national 
giory, and least (rf* all by the love of th»r peo- 
jJe. They had conversed with these {Minces, and 
had learned finan their own months that to pro- 
core slaves was the object of their li08tiiitie& 
Indeed, there was scarcely a single person exam- 
ined before the Privy Council who did not prove 
that the slave-trade was the source of the trage- 
dies oontinnally acted upon that extensive conti- 
nent. Some have endeavored to palliate this 
circumstance ; but there was not one that did 
not more or less admit it to be true. By one it 
was called the ooncorrent cause ; by the nuymty 
it was adnowledged to be the principal motive 
the African wars. 

Mr. Wilberforce proceeded to describe the mode 
in which the sLaves were trlnspcxied finom Afirica 
to the West Indies. This, he confessed, was the 
most wretched part of the whole subject So 
much misery condensed in so little i|fom, was 
more than the human imagiqatkm had ever before 
conceived. He,woald not accuse the livapool 
traders ; be verily believed that if the wretched- 
ness of anyone of the many hundred negroes 



WILBERFORCE'S SPEECH. 



9 



stowed in each ship coulJ be brought before the 
view, and remain in the sight of the African mer- 
chants, there was not one among them whose 
heart would be strong enough to bear it. He 
called upon his hearers to imagine six or seven 
hundred of these victims, chained two and two, 
surrounded with every object that was nauseous 
and disgusting, diseased, and struggling with all 
the varieties of wretchedness. How could they 
bear to think of such a scene as this ? Mean- 
while he would beg leave to quote the evidence 
of Mr. Norris, delivered in a manner that fully 
demonstrated that interest could draw a film over 
the eyes so thick thcut total blindness could do no 
more. "Their apartments," said this evidence, 
''are fitted up as much for their advantage as 
circumstances will admit. They have several 
meals a day, some of their own countr}^ provis- 
ions, with the best sauces of African cookery, 
and by way of variety, another meal of pulse, 
etc., according to European taste. After break- 
fast they had water to wash themselves, while 
their apartments are perfumed with frankincense 
and lime-juice. Before dinner they are amused 
after the manner of their country ; the song and 
the dance are promoted, and games of chance are 
furnished. The men play and sing, while the 
women and girls make fanciful ornaments with 



10 



SLAVE-TRADE 



—COLORED RACE. 



beads, with which they are plentifully supplied." 
Such was the sort of strain in which the Liver- 
pool delegates gare their evidence before the 
Privy Council. What would the House think, 
when by the concurring testimony of other wit- 
nesses the true history was laid open ? The 
slaves, who were sometimes described as rejoic- 
ing in their captivity, were so wrung with misery 
at leaving their country, that it was the constant 
practice to set sail in the night, lest they should 
be sensible of their departure. Their accommo- 
dations, it seemed, were convenient. The right 
ankle of one indeed was connected with the left 
ankle of another by a small iron fetter, and if 
they were turbulent, by another on the wrists. 
The pulse which Mr. Xorris mentioned were horse- 
beans ; and the legislature of J amaica had stated 
the scantiness both of water and provision as a 
subject that called for the interference of Parlia- 
ment. Mr. Xorris talked of frankincense and 
lime-juice, while the surgeons desci'ibed the slaves 
as so closely stowed, that there was not room to 
tread among them ; and while it was proved in 
evidence by Sir George Yonge that, even in a 
ship that wanted two hundred of her complement, 
the stench was intolerable. The song apd the 
dance, said Mr. Xorris, are promoted. It would 
have been more fair perhaps if he had explained 



WILBERFORCE'S SPEECH. 11 



the word promoted. The truth was, that for tlie 
sake of exercise, these miserable wretches, loaded 
with chains and oppressed with disease, were 
forced to dance by the terror of the lash, and 
sometimes by the actual use of it. I," said one 
of the evidences, ^'was employed to -dance the 
men, while another person danced the women." 
Such was the meaning of the word promoted ; and 
it might also be observed with respect to food, 
that instruments were sometimes carried out in 
order to force them to eat, which was the same 
sort of proof how much they enjoyed themselves 
in this instance also. With respect to their sing- 
ing, it consisted of songs of lamentation on their 
departure, which while they sung they were 
always in tears ; so that one of the captains, 
more humane probably than the rest, threatened 
a woman with a flogging, because the mournful- 
ness of her song was too painful for his feelings. 
That he might not trust, however, too much to 
any sort of description, Mr. Wilberforce called 
the attention of the House to one species of evi- 
dence which was infallible. Death was a witness 
that could not deceive them, and the proportion of 
deaths would not only confirm, but if possible 
even aggravate our suspicion of the misery of the 
transit. It would be found, upon an average of 
all the ships upon which evidence had been given, 



12 SLAVE-TRADE — COLORED RACE. 

that, exclusively of such as perished before they 
sailed, not less than twelve and a half per cent, 
died on the passage. Besides these, the Jamaica 
report stated that four and a half per cent, expir- 
ed upon shore before the day of sale, which was 
only a week or two from the time of their land- 
ing ; one-third more died in the seasoning, and 
this in a climate exactly similar to their own, and 
where, as some of the witnesses pretended, they 
were healthy and happy. The diseases, however, 
that they contracted on shipboard, the astrin- 
gents and washes that were employed to hide 
their wounds and make them up for sale, were a 
principal cause of this mortality. The negroes, 
it should be remembered, were not purchased at 
first except in perfect health, and the sum of the 
different casualties taken together, produced a 
mortality of about fift}^ per cent. 

Mr. Wilberforce added, that as soon as he had 
advanced thus far in his investigation, he felt the 
wickedness of the slave-trade to be so enormous, 
so dreadful, and so irremediable, that he could 
stop at no alternative short of its abolition. A 
trade founded in iniquity, and carried on with 
such circumstances of horror, must be abolished, 
let the policy be what it might ; and he had from 
this time determined, whatever were the conse- 
quences, that he would never rest till he had 



WILBERFORCE'S SPEECH. 13 



effected that abolition. His mind had indeed 
been harrassed with the objections of the West 
Indian planters, who had asserted that the ruin of 
their property mnst be the consequence of this 
regulation. He could not, however, help distrust- 
ing their arguments. He could not believe that 
the Almighty Being, who forbade the practice of 
rapine and bloodshed, had made rapine and blood- 
shed necessary to any part of his universe. He 
felt a confidence in this persuasion, and took the 
resolution to act upon it. Light indeed soon broke 
in upon him ; the suspicion of his mind was every 
day confirmed by increasing information, and the 
evidence he had now to offer upon this point was 
decisive and complete. The principle upon which 
he founded the necessity of the abolition was not 
policy, but justice ; but though justice were the 
principle of the measure, yet he trusted he should 
distinctly prove it to be reconcilable with our 
truest political interest. 

In the first place, he asserted that the number 
of negroes in the West Indies might be kept up 
without the introduction of recruits from Africa ; 
and to prove this, he enumerated the various 
sources of the present mortality. The first was 
the disproportion of the sexes ; an evil which, 
when the slave-trade was abolished, must in the 
course of nature cure itself. The second was the 



14 SLAVE-TRADE — COLORED RACE. 

disorders contracted in the transportation, and 
the consequences of the washes and mercurial 
ointments by which they were made up for sale. 
A third was excessive labor, joined with improper 
food ; and a fourth, the extreme dissoluteness of 
their manners. These would be counteracted by 
the impossibility of procuring farther supplies. 
It was the interest, they were told, of the mas- 
ters, to treat their slaves with kindness and hu- 
manity ; but it was immediate and present, not 
future and distant interest, that was the great 
spring of action in the affairs of mankind. Why 
did we make laws to punish men ? It was their 
interest to be upright and virtuous. But there 
was a present impulse continually breaking in 
upon their better judgment — an impulse which 
was known to be contrary to their permanent 
advantage. It was ridiculous to say that men 
would be bound by their interest, when present 
gain or ardent passion urged them. It might 
as well be asserted that a stone could not be 
thrown into the air, or a body move from place 
to place, because the principle of gravitation 
bound them to the surface of the earth. If a 
planter in the West Indies found himself reduced 
in his profits, he did not usually dispose of any 
part of his slaves, and his own gratifications were 
never given up so long as there was a possibility 



WILBERFORCE'S SPEECH. 



15 



of any retrenchment in the allowance of his ne- 
groes. Mr. Wilberforce entered into a calcula- 
tion in order to prove that in many of the islands, 
and particularly in Jamaica, there was an increase 
of population among the slaves actually begun ; 
and he deduced from the whole that the births in 
that island at this moment exceeded the deaths 
by one thousand or eleven hundred per annum. 
Allowing, however, the number of negroes to 
decrease, there were other obvious sources that 
would insure the welfare of the West Indian 
islands ; the waste of labor which at present 
prevailed ; the introduction of the plough and 
other machinery ; the division of work, which in 
free and civilized countries was the grand source 
of wealth ; and the reduction of the number of 
domestic servants, of whom not less than from 
twenty to forty were kept in ordinary families. 
But, granting that all these suppositions were 
unfounded, that every one of these succedanea 
should fail, the -planters would still be secured, 
and out of all question indemnify themselves, as 
was the case in every transaction of commerce, 
by the increased price of their produce in the 
English market. The West Indians therefore 
who contended against the abolition, were non- 
suited in every part of the argument. Did they 
say that fresh importation was necessary ? He 



16 SLAVE-TRADE— COLORED RACE. 

had shown that the number of slaves might be 
kept up by procreation. Was this denied ? He 
asserted that the plough, horses, machinery, 
domestic slaves, and all the other inevitable 
improvements, would supply the deficiency. Was 
it persisted in that the deficiency could be no 
way supplied, and that the quantity of produce 
would diminish ? He then reverted to the unan- 
swerable argument, that the increase of price 
would make up their loss, and secure them against 
every possible miscarriage. 

Mr. Wilberforce proceeded to answer incidental 
objections. In the first place, he asserted that 
the African trade, instead of being the nursery of 
our sailors, had been found to be their grave. A 
comparison had with great industry been formed 
between the muster-rolls of the slave-ships and 
those of the other branches of our commerce ; 
and it had been found that more sailors had died 
in one year in the slave-trade, than in two years 
in all our other trades put together. Three thou- 
sand one hundred and seventy seamen had sailed 
from Liverpool in ItSt, and of these only four- 
teen hundred and twenty-eight had returned. 
Information upon the subject had lately been 
received from the governor of Barbadoes, who 
stated in the course of his narrative, that "the 
African traders at home were obliged to send out 



WILBERPORCE'S SPEECH. H 



their ships very strongly manned, as well from 
the unhealthiness of the climate, as the necessity 
of guarding the slaves ; and as they soon felt the 
burden of the consequent expense, the masters 
quarrelled immediately upon their arrival in the 
islands with their seamen, upon the most frivo- 
lous pretences, and turned them on shore, while 
many of these valuable subjects, sometimes from 
sickness, and sometimes from the necessity of 
entering into foreign emplo^^ment for subsistence, 
were totally lost to their country." A farther 
objection that had been urged was, that if we 
abandoned the slave-trade, it would only be taken 
up by the French ; we should become the suffer- 
ers, and the evil would remain in its utmost 
extent. This was indeed a very weak and sophis- 
tical argument ; and if it would defend the slave- 
trade, might equally be urged in favor of robbery, 
murder, and every species of wickedness, which, 
if we did not practice, others would probably 
commit. The objection, however, he believed, 
had no foundation in fact. Mr. Necker, the pres- 
ent minister of France, was a man of ability and 
religion, and in his work upon the administration 
of the finances, had actually recorded his abhor- 
rence of the slave-trade ; and the king of France 
having lately been requested to dissolve a soci- 
ety formed for the express purpose of the aboli- 

Slave-trade. 2 



18 SLAVE-TRADE — COLORED RACE. 

tion, had answered that he could not comply with 
what was desired, and that he on the contrary 
rejoiced in the existence of such a society. 

Mr. Wilberforce proceeded in his arguments to 
show that no measure could in the present case 
be effectual short of the entire abolition. The 
Jamaica report had recommended that no persons 
should be kidnapped, or permitted to be made 
slaves contrary to the customs of Africa. Might 
they not be reduced to this state unjustly, and 
yet by no means contrary to the customs of 
Africa ? Besides, how could we distinguish be- 
tween the slaves justly and unjustly reduced to 
that condition ? Could we discover them by their 
physiognomy ? If we could, was it believed that 
the British captains would by any regulations in 
this country be prevailed upon to refuse all those 
that had not been fairly, honestly, and uprightly 
enslaved? Those who were offered to us for 
sale were brought, some of them, three or fo'ur 
thousand miles, and exchanged like cattle from 
one hand to another, till they reached the coast. 
What compensation then could be made to the 
rejected slaves for their sufferings? The argu- 
ment was equally valid as to their transporta- 
tion. The profit of the merchant depended upon 
the number that could be crowded together and 
the shortness of the allowance. As to their ulti- 



WILBERFORCE'S SPEECH. 19 



mate situation, it would also remain. Slavery 
was the source of all sorts of degradation, and 
the condition of slavery could not even be melio- 
rated without putting an end to the hope of far- 
ther reinforcements. 

In fine, Mr. Wilberforce called upon his hearers 
to make all the amends in their power for the 
mischief they had done to the continent of Africa. 
He called upon them to recollect what Europe 
had been three centuries ago. In the reign of 
king Henry the Seventh, the inhabitants of Bris- 
tol had actually sold their children as an article 
of merchandise. The people of Ireland had done 
the same. Let then the same opportunity of civ- 
ilization be extended to Africa, which had done 
so much for our own islands. It might hitherto 
have been alleged in our excuse, that we were 
not acquainted with the enormity of the wicked- 
ness we suffered ; but we could no longer plead 
ignorance, it was directly brought before our 
eyes ; and that House must decide, and must jus- 
tify to the world and their consciences the facts 
and principles upon which their decision was 
formed. 



20 



SLAVE-TRADE— COLOKED RACE. 



MR. WILBERFORCE'S SPEECH, 

1791. 

[from THOMAS CLARKSON's HISTORY OF THE ABOLITION OF THE 
SLAVE-TRADE.] 

Mr. Wilberforce began by soliciting the atten- 
tion of those interested in the West Indies to 
what he was going to deliver to the House. 
However others might have censured them indis- 
criminately, he had always himself made a dis- 
tinction between them and their system. It was 
the latter only which he reprobated. If aristoc- 
racy had been thought a worse form of govern- 
ment than monarchy, because the people had 
many tyrants instead of one, how objectionable 
must be that form of it which existed in our colo- 
nies. Arbitrary power could be bought there by 
any one who could buy a slave. The fierceness 
of it was doubtless restrained by an elevation of 
mind in many, as arising from a consciousness of 
superior rank and consequence ; but alas, it was 
too often exercised there by the base and vulgar. 
The more liberal too of the planters were not 
resident upon their estates. Hence a promiscu- 



WILBERFORCE'S SPEECH. 21 



ous censure of theai would be unjust, though 
their system would undoubtedly be odious. 

As for the cure of this monstrous evil, he had 
shown last year that internal regulations would 
not produce it. These could have no effect, while 
the evidence of slaves was inadmissible. What 
would be the situation of the bulk of the people of 
this country, if only gentlemen of five hundred a 
year were admitted as evidences in our courts of 
law ? Neither was the cure of it in the emancipa- 
tion of the slaves. He did not deny that he wished 
them this latter blessing. But alas, in their pres- 
ent degraded state they were unfit for it. Lib- 
erty was the child of reason and order. It was 
indeed a plant of celestial growth, but the soil 
must be prepared for its reception. He who 
would see it flourish and bring forth its proper 
fruit, must not think it sufficient to let it shoot in 
unrestrained licentiousness. But if this inestima- 
ble blessing was ever to be imparted to them, the 
cause must be removed which obstructed its intro- 
duction. In short, no effectual remedy could be 
found but in the abolition of the slave-trade. 

He then took a copious view of the advantages 
which would arise both to the master and to the 
slave, if this traffic were done away ; and having 
recapitulated and answered the different objec- 
tions to such a measure, he went to that part of 



22 SLAVE-TBADE — COLORED RACE. 

the subject in which he described himself to be 
most interested. 

He had shown, he said, last year, that Africa 
was exposed to all the horrors of war, and that 
most of these wars had their origin in the slave- 
trade. It was then said, in reply, that the natu* 
ral barbarity of the natives was alone sufficient 
to render their country a scene of carnage. This 
was triumphantly instanced in the king of Daho- 
mey. But his honorable friend Lord Muncaster, 
then in the House, had proved in his interesting 
publication, which had appeared since, called 
Historical Sketches of the Slave-trade and of its 
Effects in Africa, addressed to the people of Great 
Britain, that the very cruelties of this king, on 
which so much stress had been laid, were com- 
mitted by him in a war which had been under- 
taken expressly to punish an adjacent people for 
having stolen some of his subjects and sold them 
for slaves. 

He had shown also last year, that kings were 
induced to seize and sell their subjects, and indi- 
viduals each other, in consequence of the exist- 
ence of the slave-trade. 

He had shown also that the administration of 
justice was perverted, so as to become a fertile 
source of supply to this inhuman traffic, that 
every crime was punished by slavery, that false 



WILBERFORCE'S SPEECH. 23 



accusations were made to procure convicts, and 
that even the judges had a profit on the convic- 
tions. 

He had shown again, that many acts of vio- 
lence were perpetrated by the Europeans them- 
selves. But he would now relate others which 
had happened since. The captain of an English 
vessel lying in the river Cameroons, sent his boat 
with three sailors and a slave to get water. A 
black trader seized the latter and took him away. 
He alleged in his defence that the captain owed 
him goods to a greater amount than the value of 
the slave, and that he would not pay him. 

This being told on board, the captain and a 
part of his crew, who were compelled to blacken 
their naked bodies that they might appear like 
the natives, went on shore at midnight armed 
with muskets and cutlasses. They fired on the 
trader's dwelling, and killed three of his children 
on the spot. The trader, being badly wounded, 
died while they were dragging him to the boat ; 
and his wife, being wounded also, died in half an 
hour after she was on board the ship. Resistance 
having been made to these violent proceedings, 
some of the sailors were wounded, and one was 
killed. Some weeks after this affray, a chieftain 
of the name of Quarmo went on board the same 
vessel to borrow some cutlasses and muskets. 



24 SLAVE-TRADE— COLORED RACE. 

He was going, he said, into the country to make 
war, and the captain should have half of his booty. 
So well understood were the practices of the 
trade, that his request was granted. Quarmo, 
however, and his associates, finding things favor- 
able to their design, suddenly seized the captain, 
threw him overboard, hauled him into their canoe, 
and dragged him to the shore, where another 
party of the natives, lying in ambush, seized 
such of the crew as were absent from the ship. 
But how did these savages behave when they 
had these different persons in their power ? Did 
they not instantly retaliate by murdering them 
all ? No ; they only obliged the captain to give 
an order on the vessel to pay his debts. This fact 
came out only two months ago in a trial in the 
court of Common Pleas ; not in a trial for piracy 
and murder, but in the trial of a civil suit, insti- 
tuted by some of the poor sailors, to whom the 
owners refused their wages because the natives, 
on account of the villainous conduct of their cap- 
tain, had kept them from their vessel by detain- 
ing them as prisoners on shore. This instance, 
he said, proved the dreadful nature of the slave- 
trade, its cruelty, its perfidy, and its effect on the 
Africans as well as on the Europeans who carried 
it on. The cool manner in which the transaction 
was conducted on both sides, showed that these 



WILBERFORCE'S SPEECH. 



25 



practices were not novel. It showed also the 
manner of doing business in the trade. It must 
be remembered too that these transactions were 
carrying on at the very time when the inquiry 
concerning this trade was going forward in Par- 
liament, and while the witnesses of his opponents 
were strenuously denying not only the actual, but 
the possible existence of any such depredations. 

But another instance happened only in August 
last. Six British ships, the Thomas, Captain 
Phillips ; the Wasp, Captain Hutchinson ; the Re- 
covery, Captain Kimber, of Bristol ; and the Mar- 
tha, Captain Houston ; the Betsey, Captain Doyle ; 
and the Amachree, he believed. Captain Lee, of 
Liverpool, were anchored off the town of Cala- 
bar. This place was the scene of a dreadful 
massacre about twenty years before. The cap- 
tains of these vessels, thinking that the natives 
asked too much for their slaves, held a consulta- 
tion how they should proceed, and agreed to fire 
upon the town unless their own terms were com- 
plied with. On a certain evening they notified 
their determination to the traders, and told them 
that if they continued obstinate they would put 
it into execution the next morning. In this they 
kept their word. They brought sixty-six guns to 
bear upon the town, and fired on it for three 
hours. Not a shot was returned. A canoe then 



26 SLAVE-TRADE — COLORED RACE. 

went off to offer terms of accommodation. The 
parties, however, not agreeing, the firing recom- 
menced, more damage was done, and the natives 
were forced into submission. There were no cer- 
tain accounts of their loss. Keport said that fifty- 
were killed ; but some were seen lying badly 
wounded, and others in the agonies of death, by 
those who went afterwards on shore. 

He would now say a few words relative to the 
middle passage, principally to show that regula- 
tion could not effect a cure of the evil there. Mr. 
Isaac Wilson had stated in his evidence that the 
ship in which he sailed only three years ago, was 
of three hundred and seventy tons, and that she 
carried six hundred and two slaves. Of these she 
lost one hundred and fifty-five. There were three 
or four other vessels in company with her, and 
which belonged to the same owners. One of 
these carried four hundred and fifty, and buried 
two hundred; another carried four hundred and 
sixty-six, and buried seventy-three ; another five 
hundred and forty-six, and buried one hundred 
and fifty-eight ; and from the four together, after 
the landing of their cargoes, two hundred and 
twenty died. He fell in with another vessel, which 
had lost three hundred and sixty-two ; but the 
number which had been bought was not specified. 
Now if to these actual deaths during and imme- 



WILBERFORCE'S SPEECH. 



27 



diatelj after the voyage, we were to add the sub- 
sequent loss in the seasoning, and to consider 
that this would be greater than ordinary in car- 
goes which were landed in such a sickly state, we 
should find a mortality which, if it were only gen- 
eral for a few months, would entirely depopulate 
the globe. 

But he would advert to what Mr. Wilson said, 
when examined as a surgeon, as to the causes of 
these losses, and particularly on board his own 
ship, where he had the means of ascertaining 
them. The substance of his reply was this : that 
most of the slaves labored under a fixed melan- 
choly, which now and then broke out into lamen- 
tations and plaintive songs expressive of the 
loss of their relations, friends, and country. So 
powerfully did this sorrow operate, that many of 
them attempted in various ways to destroy them- 
selves, and three actually effected it. Others 
obstinately refused to take sustenance ; and when 
the whip and other violent means were used to 
compel them to eat, they looked up in the face of 
the officer who unwillingly executed this painful 
task, and said with a smile, in their own lan- 
guage, "Presently we shall be no more." This 
their unhappy state of mind produced a general 
languor and debility, which were increased in 
many instances by an unconquerable aversion to 



28 SLAVE-TRADE — COLOPwED RACE. 

food, arising partly from sickness, and partly, to 
—use the language of the slave-captains, from sulk- 
iness. These causes naturally produced the flux. 
The contagion spread, several were carried off 
daily, and the disorder, aided by so many power- 
ful auxiliaries, resisted the power of medicine. 
And it was worth while to remark that these 
grievous sufferings were not owing either to want 
of care on the part of the owners, or to any neg- 
ligence or harshness of the captain, for Mr. Wil- 
son declared that his ship was as well fitted out, 
and the crew and slaves as well treated, as any 
body could reasonably expect. 

He would now go to another ship. That in 
which Mr. Claxton sailed as a surgeon afforded a 
repetition of all the horrid circumstances which 
had been described. Suicide was attempted and 
effected, aud the same barbarous expedients were 
adopted to compel the slaves to continue an ex- 
istence, which they considered as too painful to 
be endured. The mortality also was as great. 
And yet here again the captain was "in no wise 
to blame." But this vessel had sailed since the 
regulating act. Nay, even in the last year the 
deaths on shipboard would be found to have been 
between ten and eleven per cent, on the whole 
number exported. In truth, the House could not 
reach the cause of this mortality by all their 



WILBERFORCE'S SPEECH. 



29 



regulations. Until they could cure a broken 
heart — until they could legislate for the affections, 
and bind by their statutes the passions and feel- 
ings of the mind, their labor would be in vain. 

Such were the evils of the passage. But evils 
were conspicuous everywhere, in this trade. 
Never was there indeed a system so replete with 
wickedness and cruelty. To whatever part of it 
we turned our eyes, whether to Africa, the middle 
passage, or the West Indies, we could find no com- 
fort, no satisfaction, no relief It was the gracious 
ordinance of Providence, both in the natural and 
moral world, that good should often arise out of 
evil. Hurricanes cleared the air, and the propa- 
gation of truth was promoted by persecution. 
Pride, vanity, and piofusion contributed often, in 
their remoter consequences, to the happiness of 
mankind. In common, what was in itself evil 
and vicious was permitted to carry along with it 
some circumstances of palliation. The Arab was 
hospitable, the robber brave. We did not neces- 
sarily find cruelty associated with fraud, or mean- 
ness with injustice. But here the case was far 
otherwise. It was the prerogative of this detest- 
ed traffic to separate from evil its concomitant 
good, and to reconcile discordant mischiefs. It 
robbed war of its generosity ; it deprived peace 
of its security. We saw in it the vices of pol- 



30 SLAVE-TRADE — COLORED RACE. 

ished society without its knowledge or its com- 
forts, and the evils of barbarism without its sim- 
plicity. No age, no sex, no rank, no condition 
was exempt from the fatal influence of this wide- 
wasting calamity. Thus it attained to the fullest 
measure of pure, unmixed, unsophisticated wicked- 
ness ; and scorning all competition and compar- 
ison, it stood without a rival in the secure, undis- 
puted possession of its detestable preeminence. 

But after all this, wonderful to relate, this exe- 
crable traffic had been defended on the ground of 
benevolence ! It had been said that the slaves 
were captives and convicts, who, if we were not 
to carry them away, would be sacrificed, and 
many of them at the funerals of people of rank, 
according to the savage custom of Africa. He 
had shown, however, that our supplies of slaves 
were obtained from other quarters than these. 
But he would wave this consideration for the 
present. Had it not been acknowledged by his 
opponents that the custom of ransoming slaves 
prevailed in Africa? With respect to human 
sacrifices, he did not deny that there might have 
been some instances of these ; but they had not 
been proved to be more frequent than among 
other barbarous nations ; and where they existed, 
being acts of religion, they would not be dis- 
pensed with for the sake of commercial gain. 



WILBERFORCE'S SPEECH. 



31 



In fact, they had nothing to do with the slave- 
trade, only perhaps, if it were abolished, they 
might, by means of the civilization which would 
follow, be done away. 

But exclusively of these sacrifices, it had been 
asserted that it was kindness to the inhabitants 
to take them away from their own country. But 
what said the historians of Africa long* before the 
question of the abolition was started? ''x\xim,'' 
says Bosman, ''is cultivated, and abounds with 
numerous large and beautiful villages ; its inhab- 
itants are industriously employed in trade, fish- 
ing, or agriculture.^' ''The inhabitants of Adorn 
always expose large quantities of corn to sale 
besides what they want for their own use.'' " The 
people of Acron husband their grounds and time 
so well, that every year produces a plentiful har- 
vest." Speaking of the Fetu country, he says, 
"Frequently, when walking through it, I have 
seen it abound with fine well-built and populous 
towns, agreeably enriched with vast quantities of 
corn and cattle, palm wine, and oil. The inhabit- 
ants all apply themselves without distinction to 
agriculture ; some sow corn, others press oil and 
draw wine from the palm-tree." 

Smith, who was sent out by the Royal African 
Company in 1726, assures us that "the discern- 
ing natives account it their greatest unhappiness 



32 SLAVE-TRADE — COLORED RACE. 

that they were ever visited by the Europeans. 
They say that we Christians introduced the traflBc 
of slaves, and that before our coming they lived 
in peace. But, say they, it is observable, wher- 
ever Christianity comes, there come swords and 
guns and powder and ball with it." 

"The Europeans," says Bruce, "are far from 
desiring to act as peacemakers among them. It 
would be too contrary to their interests, for the 
only object of their wars is to carry off slaves ; 
and as these form the principal part of their traffic, 
they would be apprehensive of drying up the 
source of it, were they to encourage the people to 
live well together." 

" The neighborhood of the Darnel and Tin keep 
them perpetually at war, the benefit of which 
accrues to the Company, who buy all the prison- 
ers made on either side ; and the more there are 
to sell, the greater is their profit, for the only end 
of their armaments is to make captives, to sell 
them to the white traders." 

Artus of Dantzic says that in his time "those 
liable to pay fines were banished till the fine was 
paid, when they returned to their possessions." 

Bosman affirms that " formerly all crimes in 
Africa were compensated by fine or restitution, 
and where restitution was impracticable, by cor- 
poreal punishment." 



WILBERFORCE'S SPEECH. 



33 



Moore says, Since this trade has been used, 
all punishKpents have been changed into slavery. 
There being an advantage in such condemnation, 
they strain the crimes very hard in order to get 
the benefit of selling the criminal. Not only 
murder, theft, and adultery are punished by sell- 
ing the criminal for a slave, but every trifling 
crime is punished in the same manner." 

Loyer affirms that ''the king of Sain, on the least 
pretence, sells his subjects for European goods. 
He is so tyrannically severe, that he makes a whole 
village responsible for the fault of one inhabitant, 
and on the least offence sells them all for slaves." 

Such, he said, were the testimonies, not of per- 
sons whom he had summoned, not of friends of 
the abolition, but of men who were themselves, 
many of them, engaged in the slave-trade. Other 
testimonies might be added ; but these were suf- 
ficient to refute the assertions of his opponents, 
and to show the kind services we had done to 
Africa by the introduction of this trade ! 

He would just touch upon the argument, so 
often repeated, that other nations would carry on 
the slave-trade if we abandoned it. But how 
did we know this ? Had not Denmark given a 
noble example to the contrary? She had con- 
sented to abolish the trade in ten years ; and had 
she not done this, even though we, after an inves- 
3 



34 SLAVE-TRADE— COLORED RACE. 

tigation for nearly five years, had ourselves hung 
back? But what mig-ht not be expected if we 
were to take up the cause in earnest — ^if we were 
to proclaim to all nations the injustice of the 
trade, and to solicit their concurrence in the abo- 
lition of it. He hoped the representatives of the 
nation would not be less just than the people. 
The latter had stepped forward, and expressed 
their sense more g'enerally by petitions than in 
any instance in which they had ever before inter- 
fered. To see this great cause thus triumphing 
over distinctions and prejudices was a noble spec- 
tacle. Whatever mig'ht be said of our political 
divisions, such a sight had taught us that there 
were subjects still beyond the reach of party — 
that there was a point of elevation where we 
ascended above the jarring' of the discordant ele- 
ments which ruffled and agitated the vale below. 
In our ordinary atmosphere, clouds and vapors 
obscured the air, and we were the sport of a 
thousand conflicting winds and adverse currents ; 
but here we moved in a higher region, where all 
was pure and clear, and free from perturbation 
and discomposure. 

As some tall cliff, that lifts its awful form, 
Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm ; 
Though round its hreast the rolling clouds are spread, 
Eternal sunshine settles on its head." 



WILBERFORCE'S SPEECH. 



35 



Here then, on this august eminence, he hoped 
we should build the temple of benevolence ; that 
we should lay its foundation deep in truth and 
justice ; and that we should inscribe upon its 
gates, ''Peace and good-will to men." Here we 
should offer the first-fruits of our benevolence, and 
endeavor to compensate, if possible, for the inju- 
ries we had brought upon our fellow-men. 

He would only now observe that his conviction 
of the indispensable necessity of immediately 
abolishing this trade remained as strong as ever. 
Let those who talked of allowing three or four 
years to the continuance of it, reflect on the dis- 
graceful scenes which had passed last year. As 
for himself, he would wash his hands of the blood 
which would be spilled in this horrid interval. 
He could not, however, but believe that the hour 
was come when we should put a final period to 
the existence of this cruel traffic. Should he un- 
happily be mistaken, he would never desert the 
cause, but to the last moment of his life he would 
exert his utmost powers in its support. He would 
now move, 

" That it is the opinion of this Committee, that 
the trade carried on by British subjects for the 
purpose of obtaining slaves on the coast of Africa 
ought to be abolished." 



36 



SLAVE-TPtADE— COLORED RAGE. 



SPEECH 

OF 

CHARLES JAMES FOX, 1791. 

Mr. Fox at length rose. He observed that some 
expressions which he had used on the preceding 
day had been complained of as too harsh and 
severe. He had since considered them ; but he 
could not prevail upon himself to retract them, 
because if any gentleman, after reading the evi- 
dence on the table, and attending to the debate, 
could avow himself an abettor of this shameful 
traffic in human flesh, it could only be either from 
some hardness of heart, or some difficulty of un- 
derstanding, which he really knew not how to 
account for. 

Some had considered this question as a ques- 
tion of political, whereas it was a question of 
personal freedom. Political freedom was un- 
doubtedly a great blessing ; but when it came to 
be compared with personal, it sunk to nothing. 
To confound the two served therefore to render 
all arguments on either perplexing and unintelli- 
ble. Personal freedom was the first right of 



SPEECH OF MR. FOX. 



3t 



every human being". It was a right, of which he 
who deprived a fellow-creature was absolutely 
criminal in so depriving him, and which he who 
withheld was no less criminal in withholding-. He 
could not therefore retract his words with respect 
to any who, whatever respect he might otherwise 
have for them, should by their vote of that night 
deprive their fellow-creatures of so great a bless- 
ing. Nay, he would go further. He would say 
that if the House, knowing what the trade was 
by the evidence, did not by their vote mark to all 
mankind their abhorrence of a practice so savage, 
so enormous, so repugnant to all laws, human and 
divine, they would consign their character to eter- 
nal infamy. 

That the pretence of danger to our West In- 
dian islands from the abolition of the slave-trade 
was totally unfounded, Mr. Wilberforce had abun- 
dantly proved ; but if there were any who had 
not been satisfied with that proof, was it possible 
to resist the arguments of Mr. Pitt on the same 
subject ? It had been shown, on a comparison of 
the births and deaths in Jamaica, that there was 
not now any decrease of the slaves. But if there 
had been, it would have made no difference to him 
in his vote ; for, had the mortality been ever so 
great there, he should have ascribed it to the 
system of importing negroes, instead of that of 



38 SLAVE-TRADE — COLORED RACE. 

encouraging their natural increase. Was it not 
evident that the planters thought it more con- 
venient to buy them fit for work, than to breed 
them ? Why then was this horrid trade to be 
kept up ? To give the planters truly the liberty 
of misusing their slaves, so as to check popula- 
tion ; for it was from ill-usage only that, in a 
climate so natural to them, their numbers could 
diminish. The very ground therefore on which 
the planters rested the necessity of fresh impor- 
tations, namely, the destruction of lives in the 
West Indies, was itself the strongest argument 
that could be given, and furnished the most impe- 
rious call upon Parliament for the abolition of 
the trade. 

Against this trade innumerable were the 
charges. An honorable member, Mr. Smith, had 
done well to introduce those tragical stories, 
which had made such an impression upon the 
House. No one of these had been yet contro- 
verted. It had indeed been said that the cruelty 
of the African captain to the child was too bad to 
be true ; and we had been desired to look at the 
cross-examination of the witness, as if we should 
find traces of the falsehood of his testimony there. 
But his cross-examination was peculiarly honora- 
ble to his character ; for after he had been press- 
ed in the closest manner by some able members 



SPEECH OF MR. FOX. 39 

of the House, the only inconsistency they could 
fix upon him was, whether the fact had happened 
on the same day of the same month of the year 
1764 or the year 1765. 

But it was idle to talk of the incredibility of 
such instances. It was not denied that absolute 
power was exercised by the slave captains ; and 
if this was granted, all the cruelties charged upon 
them would naturally follow. Never did he hear 
of charges so black and horrible as those con- 
tained in the evidence on the table. They unfold- 
ed such a scene of cruelty, that if the House, 
with all their present knowledge of the circum- 
stances, should dare to vote for its continuance, 
they must have nerves of which he had no con- 
ception. We might find instances indeed in his- 
tory of men violating the feelings of nature on 
extraordinary occasions. Fathers had sacrificed 
their sons and daughters, and husbands their 
wives ; but to imitate their characters we ought 
to have not only nerves as strong as the two Bru- 
tuses, but to take care that we had a cause as 
good ; or that we had motives for such a derelic- 
tion of our feelings as patriotic as those which 
historians had annexed to these when they hand- 
ed them to the notice of the world. 

But what was our motive in the case before us ? 
To continue a trade which was a wholesale sacri- 



40 SLAVE-TRADE-COLORED RACE. 

fice of a whole order and race of our fellow-crea- 
lures ; which carried them away by force from 
their native country, in order to subject them to 
the mere will and caprice, the tyranny and op- 
pression of other human beings, for their whole 
natural lives, them and their posterity for ever. 
most monstrous wickedness ! unparalleled 
barbarity ! And what was more aggravating, 
this most complicated scene of robbery and mur- 
der which mankind had ever witnessed had been 
honored by the name of trade 1 

That a number of human beings should be at 
all times ready to be furnished as fair articles of 
commerce, just as our occasions might require, 
was absurd. The argument of Mr. Pitt on this 
head was unanswerable. Our demand was fluc- 
tuating ; it entirely ceased at some times ; at 
others it was great and pressing. How was it 
possible, on every sudden call, to furnish a suffi- 
cient return in slaves, without resorting to those 
execrable means of obtaining them which were 
stated in the evidence? These were of three 
sorts, and he would now examine them. 

Captives in war, it was urged, were consigned 
either to death or slavery. This, however, he 
believed to be false in point of fact. But sup- 
pose it were true, did it not become us, with 
whom it was a custom founded in the wisest pol- 



SPEECH OF MR. FOX. 



41 



icy to pay the captives a peculiar respect and 
civility, to inculcate the same principles in Afri- 
ca ? But we were so far from doing this, that we 
encouraged wars for the sake of taking, not 
men's goods and possessions, but men themselves ; 
and it was not the war which was the .cause of 
the slave-trade, but the slave-trade which was the 
cause of the war. It was the practice of the 
slave-merchants to try to intoxicate the African 
kings in order to turn them to their purpose. A 
particular instance occurred in the evidence of a 
prince who, when sober, resisted their wishes ; 
but in the moment of inebriety he gave the word 
for war, attacked the next village, and sold the 
inhabitants to the merchants. 

The second mode was kidnapping. He referred 
the House to various instances of this in the evi- 
dence ; but there was one in particular from 
which we might immediately infer the frequency 
of the practice. A black trader had kidnapped a 
girl and sold her ; but he was presently after- 
wards kidnapped and sold himself; and when he 
asked the captain who bought him, ''What, do 
you buy me, who am a great trader the only 
answer was, ''Yes, I buy you, or her, or any body 
else, provided any one will sell you and accord- 
ingly both the trader and the girl were carried 
to the West Indies and sold for slaves. 



42 SLAVE-TRADE — COLORED RACE. 

The third mode of obtaining slaves was by 
crimes committed or imputed. One of these was 
adultery. But was Africa the place where Eng- 
lishmen, above all others, were to go to find out 
and punish adulterers ? Did it become us to cast 
the first stone ? It was a most extraordinary 
pilgrimage for a most extraordinary purpose. 
And yet upon this plea we justified our right of 
carrying off its inhabitants. The offence alleged 
next was witchcraft. TThat a reproach it was to 
lend ourselves to this superstition. Yes, we stood 
by : we heard the trial ; we knew the crime to be 
impossible, and that the accused must be inno- 
cent ; but we waited in patient silence for his 
condemnation, and then we lent our friendly aid 
to the police of the countiy, by buying the wretch- 
ed convict with all his family, whom, for the ben- 
efit of Africa, we carried away also into perpetual 
slavery. 

With respect to the situation of the slaves in 
their transportation, he knew not how to give the 
House a more correct idea of the horrors of it, 
than by referring them to the printed section of 
the slave-ship, where the eye might see what the 
tongue must fall short in describing. On this 
dismal part of the subject he would not dwell. 
He would only observe that the acts of barbarity 
related of the slave-captains in these voyages 



SPEECH OF MR. FOX. 



43 



were so extravagant, that they had been attrib- 
uted in some instances to insanity. But was not 
this the insanity of arbitrary power ? Whoever 
read the facts recorded of Nero without suspect- 
ing he was mad? Who would not be apt to 
impute insanity to Caligula, or Domitian, or Car- 
acalla, or Commodus, or Heliogabalus ? Here 
were six Roman emperors, not connected in blood, 
nor by descent, who, each of them possessing 
arbitrary power, had been so distinguished for 
cruelty, that nothing short of insanity could be 
imputed to them. Was not the insanity of the 
masters of slave-ships to be accounted for on the 
same principles ? 

Of the slaves in the West Indies, it had been 
said that they were taken from a worse state to 
a better. An honorable member, Mr. W. Smith, 
had quoted some instances out of the evidence to 
the contrary. He also would quote one or two 
others. A slave under hard usage had run 
away. To prevent a repetition of the offence, his 
owner sent for his surgeon, and desired him to 
cut off the man's leg. The surgeon refused. The 
owner, to render it a matter of duty in the sur- 
geon, broke it. ^"Now," says he, ''you must cut 
it off, or the man will die.'' We might console 
ourselves perhaps that this happened in a French 
island ; but he would select another instance, 



44 SLAVE-TRADE— COLORED RACE. 

which had happened in one of our own. Mr. Ross 
heard the shrieks of a female issuing from an 
outhouse, and so piercing, that he determined to 
see what was going on. On looking in, he per- 
ceived a young female tied up to a beam by her 
wrists, entirely narked, and in the act of involun- 
tary writhing and swinging, while the author of 
her torture was standing below her with a lighted 
torch in his hand, which he applied to all the 
parts of her body as it approached him. What 
crime this miserable woman had perpetrated he 
knew not ; but the human mind could not con- 
ceive a crime warranting such a punishment. 

He was glad to see that these tales affected the 
House. Would they then sanction enormities, 
the bare recital of which made them shudder? 
Let them remember that humanity did not consist 
in a squeamish ear. It did not consist in shrink- 
ing and starting at such tales as these ; but in a 
disposition of the heart to remedy the evils they 
unfolded. Humanity belonged rather to the mind 
than to the nerves. But if so, it should prompt 
men to charitable exertion. Such exertion was 
necessary in the present case. It was necessary 
for the credit of our jurisprudence at home and 
our character abroad. For what would any man 
think of our justice who should see another 
hanged for a crime which would be innocence 



SPEECH OF MR. FOX. 



45 



itself, if compared with those enormities which 
were allowed in Africa and the West Indies under 
the sanction of the British Parliament ? 

It had been said, however, in justification of 
the trade, that the Africans were less happy at 
home than in the islands. But what right had 
we to be judges of their condition ? They would 
tell us a very different tale if they were asked. 
But it was ridiculous to say that we bettered 
their condition, when we dragged them from 
every thing dear in life to the most abject state 
of slavery. 

One argument had been used which, for a sub- 
ject so grave, was the most ridiculous he had ever 
heard. Mr. Alderman Watson had declared the 
slave-trade to be necessary on account of its con- 
nection with our fisheries. But what was this 
but an acknowledgment of the manner in which 
these miserable beings were treated ? The trade 
was to be kept up, with all its enormities, in 
order that there might be persons to consume the 
refuse fish from Newfoundland, which were too 
bad for any body else to eat. 

It had been said that England ought not to 
abolish the slave-trade unless other nations would 
also give it up. But what kind of morality was 
this? The trade was defensible upon no other 
principle than that of a highwayman. Great 



46 SLAVE-TRADE — COLORED RACE. 

Britain could not keep it upon these terms. Mere 
gain was not a motive for a great country to 
rest on as a justification of any measure. Honor 
was its superior, and justice was superior to 
honor. 

With regard to the emancipation of those in 
slavery, he coincided with Mr. Wilberforce and 
Mr. Pitt, and upon this principle : that it might 
be as dangerous to give freedom at once to a man 
used to slavery, as, in the case of a nian who had 
never seen daylight, to expose him all at once to 
the full glare of a meridian sun. 

With respect to the intellect and sensibility of 
the Africans, it was pride only which suggested 
a difference between them and ourselves. There 
was a remarkable instance to the point in the 
evidence, and which he would quote. In one of 
the slave-ships was a person of consequence — a 
man once high in a military station, and with a 
mind not insensible to the eminence of his rank. 
He had been taken captive and sold, and was then 
in the hold, confined promiscuously with the rest. 
Happening in the night to fall asleep, he dreamed 
that he was in his own country, high in honor 
and command, caressed by his family and friends, 
waited on by his domestics, and surrounded with 
all his former comforts in life. But awaking sud- 
denly, and finding where he was, he was heard to 



SPEECH OF MR. FOX. 4T 

burst into the loudest groans and lamentations on 
the miserable contrast of his present state, mixed 
with the meanest of his subjects, and subjected to 
the insolence of wretches a thousand times lower 
than himself in every kind of endowment. He 
appealed to the House whether this was not as 
moving a picture of the miserable effects of the 
slave-trade as could be well imagined. There 
was one way by which they might judge of it. 
Let them make the case their own. This was the 
Christian rule of judging ; and having mentioned 
Christianity, he was sorry to find that any should 
suppose that it had given countenance to such a 
system of oppression. So far was this from being 
the case, that he thought it one of the most splen- 
did triumphs of this religion, that it had caused 
slavery to be so generally abolished on its appear* 
ance in the world. It had done this by teaching 
us, among other beautiful precepts, that, in the 
sight of their Maker, all mankind were equal. 
Its influence appeared to have been more power- 
ful in this respect than that of all the ancient sys^ 
tems of philosophy, though even in these, in point 
of theory, we might trace great liberality and 
consideration for human rights. Where could be 
found finer sentiments of liberty than in Demos- 
thenes and Cicero ; where bolder assertions of the 
rights of mankind than in Tacitus and Thucydi- 



48 SLAVE-TRADE — COLORED RACE. 



des ? But alas, these were the holders of slaves. 
It was not so with those who had been converted 
to Christianity. He knew, however, that what he 
had been ascribing to Christianity had been im- 
puted by others to the advances which philosophy 
had made. Each of the two parties took the 
merit to itself. The philosopher gave it to philos- 
ophy, and the divine to religion. He should not 
then dispute with either of them ; but as both 
coveted the praise, why should they not emulate 
each other by promoting this improvement in the 
condition of the human race ? 

He would now conclude by declaring that the 
whole country, indeed the whole civilized world, 
must rejoice that such a bill as the present had 
been moved for, not merely as a matter of human- 
ity, but as an act of justice ; for he would put 
humanity out of the case. Could it be called 
humanity to forbear from committing murder? 
Exactly upon this ground did the present motion 
stand, being strictly a question of national jus- 
tice. He thanked Mr. Wilberforce for having 
pledged himself so strongly to pursue his object 
till it was accomplished ; and as for himself, he 
declared that, in whatever situation he might ever 
be, he would use his warmest efforts for the pro- 
motion of this righteous cause. 



REMARKS OF MR. BURKE. 



49 



Mr. Burke said he would use but few words. 
He declared that he had for a long time had his 
mind drawn towards this great subject. He had 
even prepared a bill for the regulation of the 
trade, conceiving at that time that the immediate 
abolition of it was a thing hardly to be hoped 
for ; but when he found that Mr. Wilberforce had 
seriously undertaken the work, and that his mo- 
tion was for the abolition, which he approved 
much more than his own, he had burnt his papers, 
and made an offering of them in honor of his 
nobler proposition, much in the same manner as 
we read that the curious books were offered up 
and burnt at the approach of the gospel. 



Slave-trade. 



4 



50 



SLAVE-TRADE— COLORED RACE. 



MR. CLARKSOis'S 
SUmARY VIEW. 

A GLANCE only into such a subject as this will 
be sufficient to affect the heart, to arouse our in- 
dignation and our pity, and to teach us the im- 
portance of the victory obtained. 

The first subject for consideration, towards 
enabling us to make the estimate in question, 
will be that of the nature of the evil belonging 
to the slave-trade. This may be seen by examin- 
ing it in three points of view : first, as it has been 
proved to arise on the continent of Africa in the 
course of reducing the inhabitants of it to slavery; 
secondly, in the course of conveying them from 
thence to the lands or colonies of other nations ; 
and thirdly, in continuing them there as slaves. 

To see it as it has been shown to arise in the 
first case, let us suppose ourselves on the conti- 
nent just mentioned. Well then, we are landed ; 
we are already upon our travels ; we have just 
passed through one forest ; we are now come to 
a more open place, which indicates an approach 
to habitation. And what object is that which 
first obtrudes itself upon our sight ? Who is that 



CLARKSON'S SUMMARY VIEW. 51 



wretched woman whom we discover under that 
noble tree, wringing her hands and beating her 
breast as if in the agonies of despair? Three 
days has she been there at intervals to look and 
to watch, and this is the fourth morning, and no 
tidings of her children yet. Beneath its spread- 
ing boughs they were accustomed to play. But 
alas, the savage man-stealer interrupted their 
playful mirth, and has taken them for ever from 
her sight. 

But let us leave the cries of this unfortunate 
woman, and hasten into another district. And 
what do we first see here ? Who is he that just 
now started across the narrow pathway, as if 
afraid of a human face ? What is that sudden 
rustling among the leaves ? Why are those per- 
sons flying from our approach, and hiding them- 
selves in yon darkest thicket ? Behold, as we get 
into the plain, a deserted village. The rice-field 
has been just trodden down around it. An aged 
man, venerable by his silver beard, lies wounded 
and dying near the threshold of his hut. War, 
suddenly instigated by avarice, has just visited 
the dwellings which we see. The old have been 
butchered, because unfit for slavery, and the 
young have been carried off, except such as have 
fallen in the conflict, or have escaped among the 
woods behind us. 



52 SLAVE-TRADE— COLORED RACE. 

But let lis hasten from this cruel scene, which 
gives rise to so many melancholy reflections. 
Let us cross yon distant river, and enter into 
some new domain. But are we relieved even 
here from afflicting spectacles ? Look at that im- 
mense crowd, which appears to be gathered in a 
ring. See the accused innocent in the middle. 
The ordeal of poisonous water has been adminis- 
tered to him, as a test of his innocence or his 
guilt. He begins to be sick and pale. Alas, yon 
mournful shriek of his relatives confirms that the 
loss of his freedom is now sealed. 

And whither shall we go now ? The night is 
approaching fast. Let us find some friendly hut, 
where sleep may make us forget for a while the 
sorrows of the day. Behold a hospitable native 
ready to receive us at his door. Let us avail our- 
selves of his kindness. And now let us give our- 
selves to repose. But why, when our eyelids are 
but just closed, do we find ourselves thus sud- 
denly awakened ? What is the meaning of the 
noise around us ; of the trampling of people's feet ; 
of the rustling of the bow, the quiver, and the 
lance ? Let us rise up and inquire. Behold, the 
inhabitants are all alarmed. A wakeful woman 
has shown them yon distant column of smoke and 
blaze. The neighboring village is on fire. The 
prince, unfaithful to the sacred duty of the pro- 
tection of his subjects, has surrounded them. He 



CLARKSON'S SUMMARY VIEW. 53 

is now burning their habitations, and seizing, as 
saleable booty, the fugitives from the flames. 

Such, then, are some of the scenes that have 
been passing in Africa in consequence of the ex- 
istence of the slave-trade, or such is the nature 
of the evil as it has shown itself in the first of the 
cases we have noticed. Let us now estimate it 
as it has been proved to exist in the second ; or 
let us examine the state of the unhappy Africans, 
reduced to slavery in this manner, while on board 
the vessels which are to convey them across the 
ocean to other lands. And here I must observe 
at once, that as far as this part of the evil is con- 
cerned, I am at a loss to describe it. Where shall 
I find words to express properly their sorrow, as 
arising from the reflection of being parted for ever 
from their friends, their relatives, and their coun- 
try ? Where shall I find language to paint in 
appropriate colors the horror of mind brought on 
by thoughts of their future unknown destination, 
of which they can augur nothing but misery from 
all that they have yet seen ? How shall I make 
known their situation while laboring under pain- 
ful disease, or while struggling in the suffocating 
holds of their prisons, like animals inclosed in an 
exhausted receiver ? How shall I describe their 
feelings as exposed to all the personal indignities 
which lawless appetite or brutal passion may sug- 



fj^ SLAVE-TRADE-COLOEED RACE. 

gest? How shall I exhibit their sufferings as 
determining to refuse sustenance and die, or as 
resolving to break their chains and disdaining to 
live as slaves, to punish their oppressors ? How 
shall I give an idea of their agony when under 
various punishments and tortures for their reput- 
ed crimes ? Indeed, every part of this subject 
defies my powers, and I must therefore satisfy 
myself and the reader with a general representa- 
tion, or in the words of a celebrated member of 
Parliament, that never was so much suffering 
condensed in so small a space/' 

I come now to the evil as it has been proved to 
arise in the third case, or to consider the situa- 
tion of the unhappy victims of the trade when 
their painful voyages are over, or after they have 
been landed upon their destined shores. And 
here we are to view them first under the degrad- 
ing light of cattle. We are to see them exam- 
ined, handled, selected, separated, and sold. Alas, 
relatives are separated from relatives, as if, like 
cattle, they had no rational intellect, no power of 
feeling the nearness of relationship, nor sense of 
the duties belonging to the ties of life. We are 
next to see them laboring, and this for the bene- 
fit of those whom they are under no obligation, 
by any law, either natural or divine, to obey. 
We are to see them, if refusing the commands of 
their purchasers, however weary or feeble or in- 



CLARKSON'S SUMMARY VIEW. 



55 



disposed, subject to corporeal punishments, and 
if forcibly resisting them, to death. We are to 
see them in a state of general degradation and 
misery. The knowledge which their oppressors 
have of their own crime in having violated the 
rights of nature, and of the disposition. of the in- 
jured to seek all opportunities of revenge, pro- 
duces a fear which dictates to them the necessity 
of a system of treatment by which they shall keep 
up a wide distinction between the two, and by 
which the noble feelings of the latter shall be kept 
down, and their spirits broken. We are to see 
them again subject to individual persecution, as 
anger or malice or any bad passion may suggest. 
Hence the whip, the chain, the iron collar. Hence 
the various modes of private torture, of which so 
many accounts have been truly given. Nor can 
such horrible cruelties be discovered so as to be 
made punishable, while the testimony of any num- 
ber of the oppressed is invalid against the oppres- 
sors, however they may be offences against the 
laws. And lastly, we are to see their innocent 
offspring, against whose personal liberty the 
shadow of an argument cannot be advanced, in- 
heriting all the miseries of their parents' lot. 

The evil, then, as far as it has been hitherto 
viewed, presents to us in its three several de- 
partments a measure of human suffering not to 



56 SLAVE-TRADE— COLORED RACE. 

])e equalled, not to be calculated, not to be de- 
scribed. 

But would that we could consider this part of 
the subject as dismissed. Would that in each of 
the departments now examined there was no coun- 
terpart left us to contemplate. But this cannot 
be. For if there be persons who suffer unjustly, 
there must be others who oppress. And if there 
be those who oppress, there must be to the suffer- 
ing which has been occasioned a corresponding 
portion of immorality or guilt. 

We are obliged then to view the counterpart 
of the evil in question, before we can make a 
proper estimate of the nature of it. And in ex- 
amining this part of it, we shall find that we have 
a no less frightful picture to behold than in the 
former cases ; or that, while the miseries endured 
by the unfortunate Africans excite our pity on 
the one hand, the vices which are connected with 
them provoke our indignation and abhorrence on 
the other. The slave-trade, in this point of view, 
must strike us as an immense mass of evil on 
account of the criminality attached to it, as dis- 
played in the various branches of it which have 
ah'eady been examined. For, to take the coun- 
terpart of the evil in the first of these, can we say 
that no moral turpitude is to be placed to the 
account of those who, living on the continent of 



CLARKSON'S SUMMARY VIEW. 5T 

Africa, give birth to the enormities which take 
place in consequence of the prosecution of this 
trade ? Is not that man made morally worse who 
is induced to become a tiger to his species, or 
who, instigated by avarice, lies in wait in the 
thicket to get possession of his fellow-man? Is 
no injustice manifest in the land where the prince, 
unfaithful to his duty, seizes his innocent subjects 
and sells them for slaves ? Are no moral evils 
produced among those communities which make 
war upon other communities for the sake of plun- 
der, and without any previous provocation or of- 
fence ? Does no crime attach to those who accuse 
others falsely, or who multiply and divide crimes 
for the sake of the profit of the punishment, and 
who for the same reason continue the use of bar- 
barous and absurd ordeals as a test of innocence 
or guilt ? 

In the second of these branches the counter- 
part of the evil is to be seen in the conduct of 
those who purchase the miserable natives in their 
own country, and convey them to distant lands. 
And here questions similar to the former may be 
asked. Do they experience no corruption of their 
nature, or become chargeable with no violation of 
right, who, when they go with their ships to this 
continent, know the enormities which their visits 
there will occasion ; who buy their fellow-crea- 



58 SLAVE-TRADE — COLORED RACE. 

ture man, and this, knowing the way in which he 
comes into their hands, and who chain and im- 
prison and scourge him ? Do the moral feelings 
of those persons escape without injury whose 
hearts are hardened? And can the hearts of 
those be otherwise than hardened who are famil- 
iar with the tears and groans of innocent stran- 
gers forcibly torn away from every thing that is 
dear to them in life ; who are accustomed to see 
them on board their vessels in a state of suffoca- 
tion and in the agonies of despair ; and who are 
themselves in the habit of the cruel use of arbi- 
trary power ? 

The counterpart of the evil in its third branch 
is to be seen in the conduct of those who, when 
these miserable people have been landed, pur- 
chase and carry them to their respective homes. 
And let us see whether a mass of wickedness is 
not generated also in the present case. Can 
those have nothing to answer for who separate 
the faithful ties which nature and religion have 
created? Can their feelings be otherwise than 
corrupted who consider their fellow-creatures as 
brutes, or treat those as cattle who may become 
the temples of the Holy Spirit, and in whom the 
Divinity disdains not himself to dwell ? Is there 
no injustice in forcing men to labor without wa- 
ges ? Is there no breach of duty when we are 



CLARKSON'S SUMMARY VIEW. 



59 



commanded to clothe the naked, and feed the 
hungiy, and visit the sick and imprisoned, in ex- 
posing them to want, in torturing them by cruel 
punishment, and in grinding them down by hard 
labor, so as to shorten their days ? Is there no 
crime in adopting a system which keeps, down all 
the noble faculties of their souls, and which posi- 
tively debases and corrupts their nature ? Is 
there no crime in perpetuating these evils among 
their innocent offspring ? And finally, besides all 
these crimes, is there not naturally in the familiar 
sight of the exercise, but more especially in the 
exercise itself of uncontrolled power, that which 
vitiates the internal man ? In seeing misery stalk 
daily over the land, do not all become insensibly 
hardened ? By giving birth to that misery them- 
selves, do they not become abandoned ? In what 
state of society are the corrupt appetites so eas- 
ily, so quickly, and so frequently indulged? and 
where else, by means of frequent indulgence, do 
these experience such .a monstrous growth? 
Where else is the temper subject to such fre- 
quent irritation, or passion to such little control ? 
Yes ; if the unhappy slave is in an unfortunate 
situation, so is the tyrant who holds him. Action 
and reaction are equal to each other, as well in 
the moral as in the natural world. You cannot 
exercise an improper dominion over a fellow-crea- 



60 SLAVE-TRADE — COLORED RACE/ 

ture, but by a wise ordering of Providence you 
must necessarily injure yourself. 

Having now considered the nature of the evil 
of the slave-trade in its three separate depart- 
ments of suffering, and in its corresponding coun- 
terparts of guilt, I shall make a few observations 
on the extent of it. 

On this subject it must strike us that the mis- 
ery and the crimes included in the evil, as it has 
been found in Africa, were not like common mal- 
adies, which make a short or periodical visit and 
then are gone, but that they were continued daily. 
Xor were they like diseases which from local 
causes attack a village or a town, and by the 
skill of the physician, under the blessing of Prov- 
idence, are removed ; but they affected a whole 
continent. The trade with all its horrors began 
at the river Senegal, and continued winding with 
the coast through its several geographical divis- 
ions to Cape Negro, a distance of more than three 
thousand miles. In various lines or paths formed 
at right angles from the shore, and passing into 
the heart of the country, slaves were procured 
and brought down. The distance which many of 
them travelled was immense. Those who have 
been in Africa have assured us that they came as 
far as from the sources of their largest rivers, 
which we know to be many hundred miles in- 



CLARKSON'S SUMMARY VIEW. 61 



land ; and the natives have told us, in their way 
of computation, that they came a journey of many 
moons. 

It must strike us, again, that the misery and the 
crimes included in the evil, as it has been shown 
in the transportation, had no ordinary bounds. 
They were not to be seen in the crossing of a 
river, but of an ocean. They did not begin in the 
morning and end at night, but were continued 
for many weeks, and sometimes by casualties for 
a quarter of the year. They were not limited to 
the precincts of a solitary ship, but were spread 
among many vessels ; and these were so con- 
stantly passing, that the ocean never ceased to be 
a witness of their existence. 

And it must strike us, finally, that the misery 
and crimes included in the evil as it has been 
found in foreign lands, were not confined within 
the shores of a little island. Most of the islands 
of a continent, and many of these of considerable 
population and extent, were filled with them. 
And the continent itself, to which these geo- 
graphically belong, was widely polluted by their 
domain. Hence, if we were to take the vast ex- 
tent of space occupied by these crimes and suffer- 
ings, from the heart of Africa to its shores, and 
that which they filled on the continent of America 
and the islands adjacent, and were to join the 



62 SLAVE-TRADE— Colored race. 

crimes and sufferings in one to those in the other 
by the crimes and sufferings which took place in 
the track of the vessels successively crossing the 
Atlantic, we should behold a vast belt, as it were, 
of physical and moral evil, reaching through land 
and ocean to the length of nearl}^ half the circle 
of the globe. 

The next view which I shall take of this evil, 
will be as it relates to the difficulty of subdu- 
ing it. 

This difficulty may be supposed to have been 
more than ordinarily great. Many evils of a pub- 
lic nature, which existed in former times, were 
the offspring of ignorance and superstition, and 
they were subdued of course by the progress of 
light and knowledge. But the evil in question 
began in avarice. It was nursed also by worldly 
interest. It did not therefore so easily yield to 
the usual correctives of disorders in the world. 
We may observe also that the interest by which 
it was thus supported was not that of a few indi- 
viduals, nor of one body, but of many bodies of 
men. It was interwoven, again, into the system 
of the commerce and of the revenue of nations. 
Hence the merchant, the planter, the mortgagee, 
the manufacturer, the politician, the legislator, 
the cabinet-minister, lifted up their voices against 
the annihilation of it. For these reasons the slave- 



CLARKSON'S SUMMARY VIEW. 63 



trade may be considered, like the fabulous hydra, 
to have had a hundred heads, every one of which 
it was necessary to cut off before it could be sub- 
dued. And as none but Hercules was fitted to 
conquer the one, so nothing less than extraordi- 
nary prudence, courage, labor, and patience, 
could overcome the other. To protection in this 
manner by his hundred interests, it was owing 
that the monster stalked in security for so long 
a time. He stalked too in the open day, commit- 
ting his mighty depredations. And when good 
men, whose duty it was to mark him as the ob- 
ject of their destruction, began to assail him, he 
did not fly, but gnashed his teeth at them, growl- 
ing savagely at the same time, and putting him- 
self into a posture of defiance. 

We see then, in whatever light we consider 
the slave-trade, whether we examine into the na- 
ture of it, or whether we look into the extent of 
it, or whether we estimate the difficulty of subdu- 
ing it, we must conclude that no evil more mon- 
strous has ever existed upon earth. But if so, 
then we have proved the truth of the position, 
that the abolition of it ought to be accounted by 
us as one of the greatest blessings, and that it 
ought to be one of the most copious sources of 
our joy. Indeed, I do not know how we can suf- 
ficiently express what we ought to feel upon this 



64 SLAVE-TRADE-COLORED RACE. 

occasion. It becomes us as individuals to re- 
joice. It becomes us as a nation to rejoice. It 
becomes us even to perpetuate our joy to our pos- 
terity. I do not mean, however, by anniversaries 
which are to be celebrated by the ringing of bells 
and convivial meetings, but by handing down 
this great event so impressively to our children, 
as to raise in them, if not continual, yet frequently 
renewed thanksgivings to the great Creator of 
the universe, for the manifestation of this his 
favor in having disposed our legislators to take 
away such a portion of suffering from our feUow- 
creatures, and such a load of guilt from our na- 
tive land. 



THE TRADE ABOLISHED. 



65 



THE BILL PASSED 
ABOLISHING THE TRADE. 

Though the bill had now passed both the Com- 
mons and the House of Lords, Mr. Clarkson says, 
There was an awful fear throughout the kingdom 
lest it should not receive the Royal assent before 
the ministry was dissolved. This event took place 
the next day ; for on Wednesday the 25th, (March, 
180 1,) at half-past eleven in the morning, his Maj- 
esty^s message was delivered to the different mem- 
bers of it, that they were then to wait upon him 
to deliver up the seals of their offices. It then 
appeared that a commission for the royal assent 
to this bill among others had been obtained. This 
commission was instantly opened by the Lord 
Chancellor Erskine, who was accompanied by 
the Lords Holland and Auckland ; and as the 
clock struck twelve, just when the sun was in its 
meridian splendor to witness this august act, this 
establishment of a Magna Charta for Africa in 
Britain, and to sanction it by its most vivid and 
glorious beams, it was completed. The ceremony 
being over, the seals of the respective offices 

Slave-trade. 



66 



SLAVE-TRADE — COLORED RACE. 



were delivered up ; so that the execution of this 
commission was the last act of the administration 
of Lord Gfenville— an administration which, on 
account of its virtuous exertions in behalf of the 
oppressed African race, will pass to posterity, 
living through successive generations in the love 
and gratitude of the most virtuous of mankind. 

Thus ended one of the most glorious contests, 
after a continuance for twenty years, of any ever 
carried on in any age or country — a contest, not 
of brutal violence, but of reason — a contest be- 
tween those who felt deeply for the happiness and 
the honor of their fellow-creatures, and those 
who, through vicious custom and the impulse of 
avarice, had trampled under foot the sacred rights 
of their nature, and had even attempted to elface 
all title to the divine image from their minds. 



Twenty-six years later, the bill for the abolition 
of slavery throughout the British dominions, by 
the efforts of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton and 
others, was passed, and received the Royal assent 
August 28, 1833. 



- THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY. 



67 



UNANIMOUS ACTION 

OF 

THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY 

OF THE 

PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN THE UNITED 
STATES, 1818. 

The General Assembly of the Presbyterian 
church, having taken into consideration the sub- 
ject of slavery, think proper to make known their 
sentiments upon it to the churches and people 
under their care. 

We consider the voluntary enslaving of one 
portion of the human race by another, as a 
gross violation of the most precious and sacred 
rights of human nature ; as utterly inconsistent 
with the law of God, which requires us to love 
our neighbor as ourselves ; and as totally irrecon- 
cilable with the spirit and principles of the gospel 
of Christ, which enjoin that " all things whatso- 
ever ye would that men should do to you, do ye 
even so to them." Slavery creates a paradox in the 
moral system ; it exhibits rational, accountable, 



68 SLAVE-TRADE — COLORED RACE. 

and immortal beings in such circumstances as 
scarcely to leave them the power of moral action. 
It exhibits them as dependent on the will of others, 
whether they shall receive religious instruction ; 
whether they shall know and worship the true 
God ; whether they shall enjoy the ordinances of 
the gospel ; whether they shall perform the duties 
and cherish the endearments of husbands and 
wives, parents and children, neighbors and friends ; 
whether they shall preserve their chastity and 
purity, or regard the dictates of justice and hu- 
manity. Such are some of the consequences of 
slavery — consequences not imaginary, but which 
connect themselves with its very existence. The 
evils to which the slave is always exposed often 
take place in fact, and in their very worst degree 
and form ; and where all of them do not take 
place — as we rejoice to say in many instances 
through the influence of the principles of human- 
ity and religion on the minds of masters, they do 
not — still the slave is deprived of his natural right, 
degraded as a human being, and exposed to the 
danger of passing into the hands of a master who 
may inflict upon him all the hardships and inju- 
ries which inhumanity and avarice may suggest. 

From this view of the consequences resulting 
from the practice into which Christian people have 
most inconsistently fallen, of enslaving a portion 



THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY. 



69 



of their brethren of mankind — for " God hath made 
of one blood all nations of men to dwell on the 
face of the earth " — it is manifestly the duty of all 
Christians who enjoy the light of the present day, 
when the inconsistency of slavery both with the 
dictates of humanity and religion has been de- 
monstrated, and is generally seen and acknow- 
ledged, to use their honest, earnest, and unwearied 
endeavors to correct the errors of former times, 
and as speedily as possible to efface this blot on 
our holy religion, and to obtain the complete abo- 
lition of slavery throughout Christendom, and if 
possible throughout the world. 

We rejoice that the church to which we belong 
commenced as early as any other in this country 
the good work of endeavoring to put an end to 
slavery, and that in the same work many of its 
members have ever since been, and now are, among 
the most active, vigorous, and efficient laborers. 
We do indeed tenderly sympathize with those 
portions of our church and our country where the 
evil of slavery has been entailed upon them ; 
where a great, and the most virtuous part of the 
community abhor slavery, and wish its extermi- 
nation as sincerely as any others ; but where the 
number of slaves, their ignorance, and their vicious 
habits generally, render an immediate and univer- 
sal emancipation inconsistent alike with the safety 



70 SLAVE-TRADE— COLORED RACE. 

and happiness of the master and the slave. With 
those who are thus circumstanced, we repeat that 
we tenderly sympathize. At the same time, we 
earnestly exhort them to continue, and, if possi- 
ble, to increase their exertions to effect a total 
abolition of slavery. VTe exhort them to suffer 
no greater delay to take place in this most inter- 
esting concern, than a regard to the public welfare 
truly and indispensably demands. 

As our country has inflicted a most gTievous 
injury upon the unhappy Africans, by bringing 
them into slavery, we cannot indeed urge that we 
should add a second injury to the first, by emanci- 
pating them in such manner as that they will be 
likely to destroy themselves or others. But we 
do think that our country ought to be governed in 
this matter by no other consideration than an 
honest and impartial regard to the happiness of 
the injured party, uninfluenced by the expense or 
inconvenience which such a regard may involve. 
We therefore warn all who belong to our denomi- 
nation of Christians, against unduly extending 
this plea of necessity — against making it a cover 
for the love and practice of slavery, or a pretence 
for not using efforts that are lawful and practica- 
ble to extinguish this evil. And we at the same 
time exhort others to forbear harsh censures and 
uncharitable reflections on their brethren who un- 



THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY. 71 



happily live among slaves, whom they cannot im- 
mediately set free ; but who at the same time are 
really using all their influence and all their en- 
deavors to bring them into a state of freedom, as 
soon as a door for it can be safely opened. 

Having thus expressed our views of slavery, 
and of the duty indispensably incumbent on all 
Christians to labor for its complete extinction, we 
proceed to recommend, and we do it with all the 
earnestness and solemnity which this momentous 
subject demands, a particular attention to the fol- 
lowing points. 

We recommend to all our people to patronize 
and encourage the society lately formed for colo- 
nizing in Africa, the land of their ancestors, the 
free people of color in our country. We hope that 
much good may result from the plans and efforts 
of this society. And while we exceedingly rejoice 
to have witnessed its origin and organization 
among the holders of slaves, as giving an une- 
quivocal pledge of their desire to deliver them- 
selves and their country from the calamity of 
slavery, we hope that those portions of the Amer- 
ican Union whose inhabitants are by a gracious 
Providence more favorably circumstanced, will 
cordially and liberally and earnestly cooperate 
with their brethren in bringing about the great 
end contemplated. 



12 



SLAVE-TRADE — COLORED RACE. 



We recommend to all the members of our relig- 
ious denomination, not only to permit, but to fa- 
cilitate and encourage the instruction of their 
slaves in the principles and duties of the Chris- 
tian religion, bv granting them liberty to attend 
on the preaching of the gospel when they have 
opportunity ; by favoring the instruction of them 
in Sabbath-schools, wherever those schools can 
be formed ; and by giving them all other proper 
advantages for acquiring the knowledge of their 
duty both to God and man. We are perfectly 
satisfied that as it is incumbent on all Christians 
to communicate religious instruction to those who 
are under their authority, so that the doing of this 
in the case before us, so far from operating, as 
some have apprehended that it might, as an 
excitement to insubordination and insurrection, 
would, on the contrary, operate as the most pow- 
erful means for the prevention of those evils. 

We enjoin it on all church sessions and presby- 
teries under the care of this Assembly, to dis- 
countenance, and as far as possible to prevent all 
cruelty of whatever kind in the treatment of 
slaves, especially the cruelty of separating hus- 
band and wife, parents and children, and that 
which consists in selling slaves to those who will 
either themselves deprive those unhappy people 
of the blessings of the gospel, or who will transport 



THE GEKERAL ASSEMBLY. 



73 



them to places where the gospel is not proclaim- 
ed, or where it is forbidden to slaves to attend 
upon its institutions. And if it shall ever happen 
that a Christian professor in our communion shall 
sell a slave who is also in communion and good 
standing with our church, contrary to his or her 
will and inclination, it ought immediately to claim 
the particular attention of the proper church judi- 
cature ; and unless there be such peculiar circum- 
stances attending the case as can but seldom 
happen, it ought to be followed without delay by 
a suspension of the offender from all the privileges 
of the church, till he repent and make all the rep- 
aration in his power to the injured party. 



li SLAVE-TKADE— COLORED RACE. 



THE SUBSTANCE 

OF THE 

PLAN OF A COMMITTEE 

OF 

THE SYNOD OF KENTUCKY, 

FOR THE 

INSTRUCTION AND EMANCIPATION OF 
THEIR SLAVES, 1835 * 



John Brown, Esq., 
John Green, Esq., 
Thomas P. Smith, Esq., 
J. E. Alexander, Esq., 
Charles Cunningham, Esq. , 



Kev. Wm. L. Breckinridge, 
Kev. James K. Burch, 
Eev. Kobert Stewart, 
Rev. Nathan J. Hall, 
Eev. John C. Young," 



committee. 

Dear Brethren — The will of Synod has made 
it our duty to lay before you a plan for the 

^ * * An Address to the Presbyterians of Kentucky, propos- 
ing a Plan for the Instruction and Emancipation of their 
Slaves, by a Committee of the Synod of Kentucky." 

" For the purpose of promoting harmony and concert of 
action on this important subject, the Synod do 

* * Resolve, That a committee of ten be appointed, to consist 



SYNOD OF KENTUCKY. 



75 



moral and religious instruction/' as well as for 
*'the future emancipation" of the slaves under 
your care. We feel the responsibility and diffi- 
culty of the duty to which the church has called 
us, yet the character of those whom we address 
strongly encourages us to hope that our labor 
will not be in vain. You profess to be governed 
by the principles and precepts of a holy religion ; 
you recognize the fact that you have yourselves 
been made free " by the blood of the Son of God, 
and you believe that you have been imbued with 
a portion of the same spirit which was in Him 
who, though he was rich, yet for our sakes became 
poor." When we point out to such persons their 
duty, and call upon them to fulfil it, our appeal 
cannot be altogether fruitless. But we have a 
still stronger ground of encouragement in our 
firm conviction that the cause which we advocate 
is the cause of God, and that his assistance will 
make- it finally prevail. May He who hears the 
cry of the poor and needy," and who has com- 
manded to let the ''oppressed go free," give to 

of an equal number of ministers and elders, whose business 
it shall be to digest and prepare a plan for the moral and 
religious instruction of our slaves, and for their future 
emancipation, and to report such plan to the several pres- 
byteries \vithin our bounds for their consideration and ap- 
proval." 



^6 SLAVE-TRADE-COLORED RACE. 

each one of us wisdom to know our duty and 
strength to fulfil it. 

We earnestly entreat you, brethren, to receive 
our communication in the same spirit of kindness 
in which it is made, and permit neither prejudice 
nor interest to close your minds against the recep- 
tion of truth, or steel your hearts against the con- 
victions of conscience. Very soon it will be a 
matter of no moment whether we have had large 
or small possessions on the earth ; but it will be 
of infinite importance whether or not we have 
conscientiously sought out the will of God and 
done it. 

We all admit that the system of slavery which 
exists among us is not right. Why then do we 
assist in perpetuating it ? Why do we make no 
serious efforts to terminate it ? Is it not because 
our perception of its sinfulness is very feeble and 
indistinct, while our perception of the difficulties 
of instructing and emancipating our slaves is 
strong and 'clear? As long as we believe that 
slavery, as it exists among us, is a light evil in 
the sight of God, so long will we feel inclined to 
pronounce every plan that can be devised for its 
termination inexpedient or impracticable. Be- 
fore then we unfold our plan, we wish to examine 
the system and try it by the principles which re- 
ligion teaches. If it shall not be thus proved to 



SYNOD OF KENTUCKY. 



be an abomination in the sight of a just and holy 
God, we shall not solicit your concurrence in any 
plan for its abolition. But if, when fairly exam- 
ined, it shall be seen to be a thing which God 
abhors, we may surely expect that no trifling 
amount of trouble or loss will deter you from 
lending your efforts to its extermination. 

Slavery is not the same all the world over. 
And to ascertain its character in any particular 
state or country, we must examine the constitu- 
ents and effects of the kind of slavery which there 
exists. The system, as it exists among us and is 
constituted by our laws, consists of three distinct 
parts : a deprivation of the right of property, a depri- 
vation of personal liberty, and a deprivation of per- 
sonal security. In all its parts it is manifestly a 
violation of the laws of God, as revealed by the 
light of nature as well as by the light of revela- 
tion. 

1. A part of our system of slavery consists in 
depriving human beings of the right to acquire and hold 
property. Does it need any proof to show that 
God has given to all human beings a right to the 
proceeds of their own labor? The heathen ac- 
knowledge it ; every man feels it. The Bible is 
full of denunciations against those who withhold 
from others the fruits of their exertions. ''Woe 
unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteous- 



78 SLAVE-TRADE—COLORED RACE. 



ness, and his chambers by wrong ; that useth his 
neighbor's service without wages, and giveth him 
not for his work." Jer. 22 : 13. See also James 
6:4; Lev. 19 : 13 ; Deut. 24 : 14, 15. Does an 
act which is wrong when done once and towards 
one individual, become right because it is prac- 
tised daily and hourly and towards thousands ? 
Does the just and holy One frown the less upon 
injustice because it is systematically practised, 
and is sanctioned by the laws of the land ? If the 
chicanery of law should enable us to escape the 
payment of our debts, or if a human legislature 
should discharge us from our obligations to our 
creditors, could we, without deep guilt, withhold 
from our neighbors that which is their due ? No ; 
we all recognize the principle that the laws of 
the God of nature can never be repealed by any 
legislature under heaven. These laws will en- 
dure when the statutes of earth shall have crum- 
bled with the parchments on which they are en- 
rolled ; and by these laws we know that we must 
be judged in the day in which the destinies of our 
souls shall be determined. 

2. The deprivation of ^personal liberty forms another 
part of our system of slavery. Not only has the 
slave no right to his wife and children, he has no 
right even to himself. His very body, his mus- 
cles, his bones, his flesh, are all the property of 



SYNOD OF KENTUCKY. 



^9 



another. The movements of his limbs are regu- 
lated by the will of a master. He may be sold 
like a beast of the field ; he may be transported 
in chains like a felon. Was the blood of our Rev- 
olution shed to establish a false principle, when 
it was poured out in defence of the assertion that 
"all men are created equal;" that "they are en- 
dowed by their Creator with certain inalienable 
rights ; that among* these are life, liberty, and the 
pursuit of happiness If it be a violation of the 
rights of nature to deprive men of their ^political 
freedom, the injustice is surely much more flagrant 
when we rob them o^ 'personal liberty. The condition 
of a subject is enviable compared with the condition 
of a slave. We are shocked at the despotism ex- 
ercised over the Poles. But theirs is a political 
yoke, and is light compared with the heavy per- 
sonal yoke that bows down the two millions of 
our colored countrymen. Does European injus- 
tice lose its foul character when practised with 
aggravations in America ? 

Still further, the deprivation of personal liberty 
is so complete, that it destroys the rights of con- 
science. Our system, as established by law, arms 
the master with power to prevent his slave even 
from worshipping God according to the dictates 
of his own conscience. The owner of human be- 
ings among us may legally restrain them from 



80 SLAVE-TRADE — COLORED RACE. 

assembling to hear the instructions of divine 
truth, or even from ever uniting their hearts and 
voices in social prayer and praise to Him v^ho 
created them. God alone is Lord over the con- 
science. Yet our system, defrauding alike our 
Creator and our slaves, confers upon men this 
prerogative of Deity. Argument is unnecessary 
to show the guilt and madness of such a system. 
And do we not participate in its criminality if we 
uphold it ? 

3. The deprivation of persoTial security is the re- 
maining constituent of our system of slavery. 
The time was, in our own as well as in other 
countries, when even the life of the slave was 
absolutely in the hands of the master. It is not 
so now among us. The life of a bondman cannot 
be taken with impunity. But the law extends its 
protection no further. Cruelty may be carried to 
any extent, provided life be spared. Mangling, 
imprisonment, starvation, every species of torture 
may be inflicted upon him, and he has no redress. 
But not content with thus laying the body of 
the slave defenceless at the foot of the master, 
our system proceeds still further, and strips him 
in a great measure of all protection against the 
inhumanity of any other white man who may 
choose to maltreat him. The laws prohibit the 
evidence of a slave against a white man from be- 



SYNOD OF KENTUCKY. 



81 



ing received in a court of justice. So that wan- 
tonness and cruelty may be exercised by any 
man with impunity upon these unfortunate peo- 
ple, provided none witness it but those of their 
own color. In describing such a condition, we 
may well adopt the language of sacrjed writ : 
"Judgment is turned away backward, and jus- 
tice standeth afar off ; for truth is fallen in the 
street, and equity cannot enter. And the Lord 
saw it, and it displeased him that there was no 
judgment." 

Such is the essential character of our slaver}^ 
Without any crime on the part of its unfortunate 
subjects, they are deprived for life, and their pos- 
terity after them, of the right to property, of the 
right to liberty, and of the right to personal se- 
curity. These odious features are not the excres- 
cences upon the system, they are the system itself; 
they are its essential constituent parts. And can 
any man believe that such a thing as this is not 
sinful ; that it is not hated by God, and ought not 
to be abhorred and abolished by man ? 

But there are certain effects, springing natu- 
rally and necessarily out of such a system, which 
must also be considered in forming a proper esti- 
mate of its character. 

1. Its most striking effect is to deprave and de- 
grade its subjects by removing from them the strongest 

Slave-trade. Q 



82 SLAVE-TRADE — COLORED RACE. 



natural checks to human corruption. As there are 
certain laws impressed upon the elements, by 
which God works to preserve the beauty and 
order of the material creation, so there are cer- 
tain principles of human nature by which he 
works to save the moral world from ruin. These 
principles operate on every man in his natural 
condition of freedom — ^restraining his vicious pro- 
pensities and regulating his deportment. The 
fires of innate depravity, which, if permitted to 
burst forth, would destroy the individual and des- 
olate society, are thus measurably repressed, and 
the decencies and enjoyments of life are preserv- 
ed. The wisdom and goodness of God are thug 
seen in implanting in man a sense of character, 
a desire for property, a love for distinction, a 
thirst for power, and a zeal for family advance- 
ment. All these feelings working in the mind of 
individuals, though not unmixed with evil, com- 
bine to promote their own happiness and the wel- 
fare of communities ; and they are inferior, in the 
good which they produce, only to those high re- 
ligious principles which constitute the image of 
God in the soul of man. The presence of these 
principles only can compensate for the absence of 
those natural feelings. Whenever then these nat- 
ural feelings are crushed or eradicated in any hu- 
man being, he is stripped of the nobler attributes 



SYNOD OF KENTUCKY 



83 



of humanity, and is degraded into a creature of 
mere appetite and passion. His sensuality is the 
only cord by which you can draw him. His hopes 
and fears all concentrate upon the objects of his 
appetites. He sinks far down towards a level 
with the beast of the field, and can be moved to 
action only by such appeals as influence the luna- 
tic and the brute. This is the condition to which 
slavery reduces the great mass of those who wear 
its brutalizing yoke. Its effects upon their souls 
are far worse than its effects upon their bodies. 
Character, property, distinction, power, and fam- 
ily respectability, are all withdrawn from the 
reach of the slave. No object is presented to 
excite and cultivate those higher feelings whose 
exercise would repress his passions and regulate 
his appetites. Thus slavery deranges and ruins 
the moral machinery of man ; it cuts the sinews 
of the soul ; it extracts from human nature the 
salt that purifies and preserves it, and leaves it a 
corrupting mass of appetite and passion. 

2. It dooms thousands of human beings to hopeless 
ignorance. The acquisition of knowledge requires 
exertion ; and the man who is to continue through 
life in bondage has no strong motive of interest 
to induce such exertion ; for knowledge is not val- 
uable to him as to one who eats the fruits of his 
own labors. The acquisition of knowledge re- 



81 SLAVE-TRADE — COLORED RACE. 

quires also facilities of books, teachers, and time, 
which can be only adequately furnished by mas- 
ters ; and those who desire to perpetuate slavery 
will never furnish these facilities. If slaves are 
educated, it must involve some outlay on the part 
of the master. And what reliance for such a sac- 
rifice can be placed on the generosity and virtue 
of one who looks on them as his property, and 
who has been trained to consider every dollar 
expended on them as lost, unless it contributes to 
increase their capacity for yielding him valuable 
service ? He will have them taught to work, and 
will ordinarily feed and clothe them so as to en- 
able them to perform their work to advantage. 
But more than this it is inconsistent with our 
knowledge of human nature to expect that he 
will do for them. The present state of instruc- 
tion among this race answers exactly to what we 
might thus naturally anticipate. Throughout our 
whole land, so far as we can learn, there is but 
one school in which, during the week, slaves can 
be taught. The light of three or four Sabbath- 
schools is seen glimmejing through the darkness 
that covers the black population of a whole state. 
Here and there a family is found where humanity 
and religion impel the master, mistress, or chil- 
dren, to the laborious task of private instruction. 
Great honor is due to those engaged in this phi- 



SYNOD OF KENTUCKY. 



85 



lanthropic and self-denying course, and their re- 
ward shall be received in the day when even a 
cup of cold water, given from Christian motives, 
shall secure a recompense. But after all, what is 
the utmost amount of instruction given to slaves ? 
Those who enjoy the most of it, are fed. with but 
the crumbs of knowledge which fall from their 
master^s table — they are clothed with the mere 
shreds and tatters of learning. 

Nor is it to be expected that this state of things 
will become better, unless it is determined that slav- 
ery shall cease. The impression is almost universal 
that intellectual elevation unfits men for servi- 
tude, and renders it impossible to retain them in 
this condition. This impression is unquestiona- 
bly correct. The weakness and ignorance of their 
victims is the only safe foundation on which in- 
justice and oppression can rest. And the effort 
to keep in bondage men to whom knowledge has 
imparted power, would be like the insane attempt 
of the Persian tyrant to chain the waves of the 
sea, and whip its boisterous waters into submis- 
sion. We may as soon expect to fetter the winds, 
seal up the clouds, or extinguish the fires of the 
volcano, as to prevent enlightened minds from 
recovering their natural condition of freedom. 
Hence, in some of our states laws have been 
enacted prohibiting, under severe penalties, the 



86 SLAVE-TRADE — COLORED RACE. 

instruction of the blacks ; and even where such 
laws do not exist, there are formidable numbers 
who oppose with deep hostility every effort to en- 
lighten the mind of the negro. These men are 
determined that slavery shall be perpetuated, 
and they know that their universal education 
must be followed by their universal emancipa- 
tion. They are then acting wisely, according to 
the wisdom of this world, when they deny educa- 
tion to slaves ; they are adopting a measure nec- 
essary to secure their determined purpose. It is, 
however, policy akin to that which once induced 
the ruffian violators of female chastity to cut out 
the tongue, and cut off the hands of their victim, 
to disable her from uttering or writing their 
names. She had to be maimed, or they would be 
brought to justice. It is such policy as the rob- 
ber exhibits, who silences in death the voices that 
might accuse him, and buries in the grave the 
witnesses of his crimes. He is determined to 
pursue his occupation, and his safety in it re- 
quires that he should not indulge in the weakness 
of keeping a conscience. How horrible must be 
that system which, in the opinion of even its 
strongest advocates, demands, as the necessary 
condition of its existence, that knowledge should 
be shut out from the minds of those who live un- 
der it ; that they should be reduced as nearly as 



SYNOD OF KENTUCKY. 



8t 



possible to the level of brutes or living machines ; 
that the powers of their souls should be crushed. 
Let each one of us ask, can such a system be 
aided or even tolerated without deep criminality ? 

3. It deprives its subjects in a great measure of the 
privileges of the gospel. You may be startled at 
this statement, and- feel disposed to exclaim, Our 
slaves are always permitted and even encouraged 
to attend upon the ordinances of worship." But 
a candid and close examination will show the cor- 
rectness of our charge. The privileges of the 
gospel, as enjoyed by the white population in this 
land, consist in free access to the Scriptures, a 
regular gospel ministry, and domestic means of 
grace. Neither of these is, to any extent worth 
naming, enjoyed by slaves, as a moment's consid- 
eration will satisfactorily show. The law, as it 
is here, does not prevent free access to the Scrip- 
tures ; but ignorance, the natural result of their 
condition, does. The Bible is before them, but it is 
to them a sealed book. The light shine th in the 
darkness, but the darkness comprehendeth it not." 
Like the paralytic who lay for years by the pool 
of Bethesda, the waters of healing are near them, 
but no kind hand enables them to try their effica- 
cy. Very few enjoy the advantages of a regular 
gospel ministry. They are, it is true, permitted 
generally, and often encouraged to attend upon 



88 SLAVE-TRADE— COLORED RACE. 

the ministrations specially designed for their mas- 
ters. But the instructions communicated on such 
occasions are above the level of their capacities. 
They listen as to prophesyings in an unknown 
tongue. The preachers of their own color are 
still farther from ministering to their spiritual 
wants, as these impart to them, not of their know- 
ledge, but their ignorance ; they heat their ani- 
mal feelings, but do not kindle a flame of intelli- 
gent devotion. It has been proposed by some 
zealous and devoted friends of the colored race, 
to supply the deficiency of gospel ministrations 
among them by the employment of suitable mis- 
sionaries, who may labor exclusively among them. 
We need not here speculate on the probable re- 
sults of such a scheme if carried into effect in a 
community where there is no intention to eman- 
cipate ; for before there is found among us benev- 
olence enough to adopt and execute it on a scale 
large enough to effect any highly valuable purpose, 
the community will be already ripe for measures of 
emancipation. Such a spirit of kindness towards 
this unfortunate race as this scheme presupposes^ 
can never coexist with a determination to keep 
them in hopeless bondage. Further, there are no 
houses of worship exclusively devoted to the col- 
ored population. The galleries of our own church- 
es, which are set apart to their use, would not 



SYNOD OP KENTUCKY. 



89 



hold the tenth part of their numbers ; and even 
these few seats are in general thinly occupied. 
So that, as a body, it is evident that our slaves 
do not enjoy the public ordinances of religion. 
Domestic means of grace are still more rare among 
them. Here and there a family is found whose 
servants are taught to bow with their masters 
around the fireside altar. But their peculiarly 
adverse circumstances, combined with the natural 
alienation of their hearts from God, render abor- 
tive the slight efforts of most masters to induce 
their attendance on the domestic services of re- 
ligion. And if we visit the cottages of those 
slaves who live apart from their masters, where 
do we find them reading their Bibles and kneel- 
ing together before a throne of mercy ? Family 
ordinances of religion are almost unknown among 
the blacks. We do not wish to exaggerate the 
description of this deplorable religious condition 
of our colored population. We know that in- 
stances of true piety are frequently found among 
them ; but these instances we all know to be aw- 
fully disproportionate to their numbers, and to the 
extent of those means of grace which exist around 
them. When the missionaries of the cross enter 
a heathen land, their hope of fully Christianizing 
it rests upon the fact that they can array and 
bring to bear upon the minds of these children of 



90 SLAVE-TRADE— COLORED RACE. 

ignorance and sin all those varied means which 
God has appointed for the reformation of man. 
But while the system of slavery continues among* 
us, these means can never be efficiently and fully 
employed for the conversion of the degraded sons 
of Africa. Yet '^God hath made them of one 
blood" with ourselves ; hath provided for them 
the same redemption ; hath in his providence cast 
souls upon our care, and hath clearly intimated 
to us the doom of him who "seeth his brother 
have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compas- 
sion from him." If by our example, our silence, 
or our sloth, we perpetuate a system which para- 
lyzes our hands when we attempt to convey to 
them the bread of life, and which inevitably con- 
signs the great mass of them to unending perdi- 
tion, can we be guiltless in the sight of Him who 
bath made us stewards of his grace ? 

4. This system licenses and produces great cruelty. 
The law places the whip in the hands of the mas- 
ter, and its use, provided he avoid destroying life, 
is limited only by his own pleasure. Considering 
the absolute power with which our people are 
armed, it must be acknowledged that the treat- 
ment of their dependents is, in general, singularly 
humane. Many circumstances operate here to 
mitigate the rigors of perpetual servitude ; and 
it is probably the fact that no body of slaves 



SYNOD OF KENTUCKY. 



91 



have been ever better fed, better clothed, and 
less abused, than the slaves of Kentucky. Still 
they have no security for their comfort but the 
humanity and generosity of men who have been 
trained to regard them not as brethren, but as 
property. Humanity and generosity are at best 
poor guarantees for the protection of those who 
cannot assert their rights, and over whom law 
throws no protection. Our own condition we 
would feel to be wretched indeed if no law se- 
cured us from the insults and maltreatment even 
of our equals. But superiority naturally begets 
contempt, and contempt generates maltreatment, 
for checking which we can rely not on virtue, but 
only on law. There are in our land hundreds of 
thousands clothed with arbitrary powers over 
those whom they are educated to regard as their 
property, as the instruments of their will, as crea- 
tures beneath their sympathy, devoid of all the 
feelings which dignify humanity, and but one 
remove above cattle. Is it not certain that many 
of these hundreds of thousands will inflict out- 
rages on their despised dependents ? There are 
now in our whole land two millions of human 
beings exposed defenceless to every insult and 
every injury short of maiming or death which 
their fellow-men may choose to inflict. They suf- 
fer all that can be inflicted by wanton caprice, by 



92 SLAVE-TRADE-COLORED RACE. 

grasping avarice, by brutal lust, by malignant 
spite, and by insane anger. Their happiness is 
the sport of every whim and the prey of every 
passion that may occasionally or habitually in- 
fest the master^s bosom. If we could calculate 
the amount of woe endured by ill-treated slaves, 
it would overwhelm every compassionate heart — 
it would move even the obdurate to sympathy. 
There is also a vast sum of suffering inflicted 
upon the slave by humane masters as a punish- 
ment for that idleness and misconduct which slav- 
ery naturally produces. The ordinary motives to 
exertion in men are withdrawn from the slave. 
Some unnatural stimulus must then be substi- 
tuted, and the whip presents itself as the readiest 
and most efficient. But the application of the 
whip to produce industry, is like the application 
of the galvanic fluid to produce muscular exer- 
tion. The effect is powerful indeed, but momen- 
tary ; and if often applied, it is exhaustive and 
destructive to the system. It can never be used 
as a substitute for the healthful and agreeable 
nervous stimulus with which nature has supplied 
us. Equally vain is the attempt to supply by the 
whip the deficiency of natural motives to exer- 
tion ; it produces misery and degradation. Yet 
inadequate as is this substitute, it is the best 
that can be had ; it must be used while the sys- 



SYNOD OF KENTUCKY. 



93 



tern lasts : the condition of the slave is unnatu- 
ral, and his treatment must correspond to his con- 
dition. We are shocked to hear of epicures who 
cause the animals on which they feast to be whip- 
ped to death, that their flesh may be more delicate 
and delicious to the taste. We feel it to be dis- 
gusting and intolerable cruelty thus to inflict 
pain even upon a beast, merely to satisfy the 
cravings of luxury ; and shall we excuse our- 
selves if a desire for ease or wealth leads us to 
sanction, sustain, and assist in perpetuating a 
system which, as long as it lasts, must lacerate 
the bodies and grind down the feelings of mill- 
ions of rational and immortal beings ? 

Brutal stripes, and all the varied kinds of per- 
sonal indignities, are not the only species of cru- 
elty which slavery licences. The law does not 
recognize the family relations of a slave, and 
extends to him no protection in the enjoyment of 
domestic endearments. The members of a slave 
family may be forcibly separated, so that they 
shall never more meet until the final judgment. 
And cupidity often induces the masters to prac- 
tise what the law allows. 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. The shrieks and the agony often 



94 SLAVE-TRADE — COLORED RACE. 



witnessed on sucli occasions proclaim with a trum- 
pet-tongue the iniquity and cruelty of our sys- 
tem. The cry of these sufferers goes up to the 
ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. There is not a 
neighborhood where these heart-rending scenes 
are not displayed. There is not a village or road 
that does not behold the sad procession of man- 
acled outcasts, whose chains and mournful coun- 
tenances tell that they are exiled by force from 
all that their hearts held dear. Our church years 
ago raised its voice of solemn warning against 
this flagrant violation of every principle of mer- 
cy, justice, and humanity. Yet we blush to an- 
nounce to you and to the world that this warning 
has been often disregarded even by those who 
hold to our communion. Cases have occurred in 
our own denomination where professors of the 
religion of mercy have torn the mother from her 
children, and sent her into a merciless and return- 
less exile. Yet acts of discipline have rarely fol- 
lowed such conduct. Far be it from us to ascribe 
to our people generally a participation in these 
deeds, or a sympathy with them ; they abhor and 
loathe them. But while the system, of which 
these cruelties are the legitimate offspring, is tol- 
erated among us, it is exceedingly difficult to in- 
flict punishment upon their perpetrators. If we 
commence discipline for any acts which the laws 



SYNOD OF KENTUCKY. 



95 



of slavery sanction, where shall we stop ? What 
principle is there which will justify iis in cutting 
off a twig or branch of this poison tree that will 
not, if carried fairly out, force us to proceed and 
hew down its trunk and dig up its roots ? These 
cruelties are only the loathsome ulcers which 
show corruption in the blood and rottenness in 
the bones of this sj^stem. They may be bound up 
and mollified with ointment ; they may be hidden 
from the sight ; but they cannot be entirely re- 
moved until there is a thorough renovation within. 
Our churches cannot be entirely pure even from 
the grosser pollutions of slavery, until we are 
willing to pledge ourselves to the destruction of 
the whole system. 

The voice of the civilized world has been lifted 
up in execration of the despot who recently drag- 
ged numbers of the unhappy Poles from their 
country, separating husbands and wives, parents 
and children. But they are his property by the 
same tenure by which we hold our slaves ; and 
has he not a right, he may exclaim, to do as he 
pleases with his own? Nay, the security and 
peace of his dominions require this cruelty. He is 
not willing to relinquish the jprojperty which he inher- 
ited; and he may tell us, and tell us truly, that it 
cannot be retained in safety without the adoption 
of these horrid measures. Can we condemn his 



96 SLAVE-TRADE— COLORED RACE. 

conduct, and yet justify our system of slavery? 
or can we condemn both, and yet be guiltless if 
we use no efficient exertions to terminate these 
cruelties among us ? 

5. It produces general licentiousness among the slaves. 
Marriage, as a dvil ordinance^ they cannot enjoy. 
Our laws do not recognize this relation as exist- 
ing among them, and of course do not enforce by 
any sanction the observance of its duties. In- 
deed, until slavery "waxeth old and tendeth to 
decay," there cannot be any legal recognition of 
the marriage rite or the enforcement of the con- 
sequent duties. For all regulations on this sub- 
ject would limit the master^s absolute right of 
property in his slaves. In hi^ disposal of them, 
he would no longer be at liberty to consult merely 
his own interest. He could no longer separate 
the wife and husband to suit the convenience or 
interest of the purchaser, no matter how advan- 
tageous might be the terms offered. And as the 
wife and husband do not always belong to the 
same owner, and are not often wanted by the 
same purchaser, their duties to each other would 
thus, if enforced by law, frequently conflict with 
the interests of the master. Hence all the mar- 
riage that could ever be allowed to them would 
be a mere contract, voidable at the master's pleas- 
ure. Their present quasi marriages are just such 



SYNOD OP KENTUCKY. 



9t 



contracts, and are continually thus voided. They 
are in this way brought to consider the matrimo- 
nial engagement as a thing not binding, and they 
act accordingly. Many of them are united with- 
out even the sham and forceless ceremony which 
is sometimes used. They, to use their own phra- 
seology, " take up with " each other, and live to- 
gether as long as it suits their mutual conven- 
ience or inclination. This wretched system of con- 
cubinage inevitably produces revolting licentious- 
ness. This feature in the slave character is so 
striking, as to induce in many minds the idea 
that the negro is naturally repugnant to the re- 
straints of matrimony. From the ample and 
repeated testimonies, however, of such travellers 
as Park and Lander, who have visited this race 
in their native land, we learn that their character 
in this respect is in Africa the reverse of what it 
is here ; that they regard the marriage rite with 
remarkable sacredness, and scrupulously fulfil its 
duties. We are then assured by the most unques- 
tionable testimony that their licentiousness is the 
necessary result of our system, which, destroying 
the force of the marriage rite, and thus in a meas- 
ure degrading all the connection between the 
sexes into mere concubinage, solicits wandering 
desire, and leads to extensive profligacy. Our 
familiarity with this consequence of slavery pre- 

Slave-trade. ^ 



98 SLAVE-TRADE— COLORED RACE. 

vents us from regarding it with that horror which 
it would under other circumstances inspire. The 
sacredness of the marriage rite is the bulwark of 
morality, the corner-stone of domestic happiness. 
It is the foundation on which alone the whole 
fabric of an organized and virtuous community 
can be built. On it must rest all those family 
relations which bind together and cement society. 
Without it, we might herd together like brutes, 
but we could no longer live together as human 
beings. There would be no families, no strong 
ties of kindred, no domestic endearments soften- 
ing the manners and curbing the passions. Self- 
ish, sensual, and unrestrained, man would exer- 
cise his reason only to minister to the more grov- 
elling propensities of his nature. Any set of men 
will approximate to this condition just in propor- 
tion to their approximation to the practical abo- 
lition of matrimonial restraints. And certainly, 
never in any civilized country has respect for 
these restraints been more nearly obliterated than 
it has been among our blacks. Thus the working 
of our system of slavery diffuses a moral pesti- 
lence among its subjects, tending to wither and 
blight every thing that is naturally beautiful and 
good in the character of man. Can this system 
be tolerated without sin ? 

6. This system demoralizes the whites as well as the 



SYNOD OF KENTUCKY. 



99 



UacJcs. Masters are in a great degree irresponsi- 
ble for the exercise of their power ; and they gen- 
erally feel that their object in possessing and ex- 
ercising their dominion is their own utility, and not 
the good of those over whom they rule. Now, pow- 
er can never be held or exercised without moral 
injury to its possessor^ unless its exercise be subject 
to responsibility, or unless it be held mainly for 
the good of its subjects, not of its possessor. The 
lives of absolute monarchs furnish us with our 
most disgusting pictures of human depravity. 
Few, even of those who had been previously 
trained to self-control and virtue, have been able 
to withstand the corrupting influence of unre- 
strained power. And the effect is in some meas- 
ure the same where despotic authority is pos- 
sessed and exercised in a smaller sphere. No man, 
acquainted with the frailty of the human heart, 
would desire uncontrolled dominion over his fel- 
low-men. We are sufficiently prone by nature to 
tyranny and a disregard of the rights and interests 
of others, without having these feelings developed, 
cultivated, and matured by a sense of irresponsi- 
bility, and by the habit of regarding ourselves as 
born to command, and others as born to obey. 
Where a consciousness of responsibility, equality, 
and dependence, does not check their growth, 
hard-heartedness, selfishness, and arrogance are 



100 SLAVE-TRADE-COLORED RACE. 

in most men fearfully exhibited. And these odi- 
ous traits of character must be peculiarly marked 
in those who have from childhood been trained in 
the school of despotism. The hand of one of our 
greatest statesmen has strikingly portrayed the 
demoralizing effects of this system on the minds 
and manners of the ruling class. There must 
doubtless," says Mr. Jefferson, ^'be an unhappy 
influence on the manners of our people produced 
by the existence of slavery among us. The whole 
commerce between master and slave is a perpet- 
ual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the 
most unrelenting despotism on the one part, and 
degrading submission on the other. Our chil- 
dren see this, and learn to imitate it ; for man is 
an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of 
all education in him. From his^radle to his grave 
he is learning to do what he sees others do. If a 
parent could find no motive either in his philan- 
thropy or his self-love for restraining the intem- 
perance of passion towards his slave, it should 
always be a sufficient one that his child is pres- 
ent. But generally it is not sufficient. The par- 
ent storms, the child looks on, catches the linea- 
ments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle 
of smaller slaves, gives a loose to the worst of 
passions ; and thus nursed, educated, and daily 
exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by 



SYNOD OF KENTUCKY. 



101 



it with odious peculiarities. The man must be a 
prodigy who can retain his manners and morals 
undepraved by such circumstances."* Such, ac- 
cording to the testimony of one who had marked 
its operation with a philosopher's eye, is the char- 
acter which slavery forms, a character perfectly 
the reverse of that which the gospel requires. 

We forbear to picture before you the conse- 
quences of that indolence and aversion to all man- 
ual occupations which are necessarily engendered 
in youth surrounded by a servile class who are 
engaged in these pursuits. These consequences 
you have all seen and felt and deplored. Such 
are the evil effects to ourselves and our children 
of the system which we support. Thus we are 
made to eat of the bitter food which we prepare 
for others, and drink of the poisoned cup which 
our own hands mingled ; the sword with which 
we unthinkingly destroy others is thus made to 
drink our own blood. These evils, if duly esti- 
mated, are alone suflBcient to arm us with impla- 
cable hostility towards the system from which 
they spring. And in view of these effects, we can 
almost adopt the opinion expressed a few years 
since on the scaffold by one who was executed 
for the murder of a slave : Slavery is a bad sys- 
tem ; it is even worse for the master than it is for 
o Jefferson's Notes on Virginia, p. 319. 



102 SLAVE-TRADE-COLORED RACE. 

the slaves." It is a system which reminds us of 
the dark magic of ancient days, an art as fatal to 
those who exercised it as to those who were their 
victims. 

7. This system draws down upon us the vengeance 
of Heaven. " God is just," and " he will render to 
every one according to his works." Oppression 
can never escape unpunished while He, who hath 
emphatically declared that he is the ''Judge of 
the widow" and '' the Father of the fatherless," is 
on the throne of the universe. If thou forbear to 
deliver them that are drawn unto death, and those 
that are ready to be slain ; if thou sayest, Be- 
hold, we knew it not ; doth not he that pondereth 
the heart consider it? and he that keepeth thy 
soul, doth not he know it ? and shall he not ren- 
der to every man according to his works ?" Not 
a sparrow falls to the ground, we are told, with- 
out the notice of God ; how much more doth he 
mark the abuse and oppression of a creature who 
bears his own peculiar image ? " The very hairs 
of our head are all numbered ;" much more are 
the groanings of the oppressed and the sighings 
of the prisoner recorded b}^ Him who says that his 
name is ''Gracious," and that his "ear is ever 
open to the cry of the poor and needy." The blood 
of Abel did not soak into the ground unheeded ; it 
called down judgment upon the guilty man who 



SYNOD OF KENTUCKY. 



103 



had smitten his brother, and it drove him out a 
wanderer from the land of his birth, a fugitive 
from the presence of the Lord. But the sore cry 
of millions of the down-trodden has gone up to 
heaven from the midst of us ; this cry is still 
swelling upward ; and if there be righteousness 
on the throne of the universe, it must bring down 
vials of wrath upon the heads of all who are en- 
gaged in this guilty work. And when He cometh 
to execute vengeance, '^who may abide the day 
of his coming Who can stand before his indig- 
nation ? Who can stand up in the fierceness of 
his anger? We see the truth of what the prophet 
declares, that " the Lord is slow to anger f but 
we are assured that it is equally true that He is 
great in power, and will not at all acquit the 
wicked : the Lord hath his way in the whirlwind 
and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of 
his feet." 

Brethren, we profess to be Christians ; we rev- 
erence the holy revelation which God has given ; 
we look to its precepts for guidance, and to its 
denunciations for warnings. We know that the 
p'inciples of the divine dealings are the same in 
every age, and that what God said to those of 
old, when we are in similar circumstances, he 
saith unto us. Listen, then, to one of the many 
intimations he has given us of the way in which 



104 SLAVE-TRADE — COLORED RACE. 

he regards slavery, and the way in which he will 
punish it. "The people of the land have used 
oppression, and exercised robbery, and have vex- 
ed the poor and needy ; yea, they have oppressed 
the stranger wrongfully. And I sought for a man 
among them, that should stand in the gap before 
me for the land, that I should not destroy it : but 
I found none. Therefore have I poured out mine 
indignation upon them ; I have consumed them 
with the fire of my wrath ; their own way have I 
recompensed upon their heads, saith the Lord 
God." Ezek. 22 : 29-31. Can we despise the in- 
structions of the Almighty ? Shall we shut our 
eyes and close our ears against the admonitions 
of the great Judge of the earth? Shall we not 
arise and stand in the gap before him for the 
land, that he may not destroy it Though our 
nest maybe built on high," and ''our defence be 
the munitions of rocks," we cannot escape, if God 
rise up against us. He can blast our prosperity ; 
he can drown us in blood ; he can blot out our 
existence and our name from under heaven. 

Let us remember too, that not only as a peo- 
ple, but as individuals God will deal with us. 
The day is soon coming when every man^s works 
which he hath wrought shall be tried as by fire, 
and we must then ''eat of the fruits of our own 
ways." 



SYNOD OF KENTUCKY. 



105 



We have now exhibited, fairly but briefly, the 
nature and effects of slavery. For the truth of 
our facts we refer to your own observations : for 
the correctness of our reasoning we appeal to 
your judgments and consciences. 

[After considering and answering various ob- 
jections, the committee submit the following plan, 
and their closing appeal.] 

The plan which we propose is, for the master 
to retain, during a limited period, and with a re- 
gard to the real welfare of the slave, that author- 
ity which he before held in perpetuity, and solely 
for his own interest. Let the full future liberty 
of the slave be secured against all contingencies 
by a recorded deed of emancipation, to take effect 
at a specified time. In the mean while, let the 
servant be treated with kindness ; let all those 
things which degrade him be removed ; let him 
enjoy means of instruction ; let his moral and re- 
ligious improvement be sought ; let his prospects 
be presented before him, to stimulate him to ac- 
quire those habits of foresight, economy, industry, 
activity, skill, and integrity, which will fit him 
for using well the liberty he is soon to enjoy, 
That master is, in our opinion, doing most for the 
destruction of this system who thus sets in opera- 



106 SLAVE-TRADE — COLORED RACE. 



tion a machinery which, in a given and limited 
period, will not only unbind the body of the slave, 
but will, link by link, and in the only way in 
which it can be effected, twist off the fetters that 
now cramp his soul. If the master retains his 
authority over his servants only for a time, that 
he may enjoy ampler opportunities of employing 
means for their amendment and elevation ; if he 
regards them as a trust committed to him by his 
Master and theirs, for their mutual benefit, and 
no longer as property of which he has the uncon- 
trolled disposal for his own selfish ends ; if he acts 
and feels thus, he is not only free from guilt, but 
he is bringing forth fruits meet for repentance,'' 
he is doing a work of righteousness and human- 
ity. 

Brethren, there are three courses before you, 
one of which you must choose : either to emanci- 
pate immediately and without preparation, or to 
pursue some such plan of gradual emancipation 
as we propose, or to continue to lend your exam- 
ple and influence to perpetuate slavery. It is 
improbable that you will adopt the first course ; 
if then you refuse to concur in the plan of gradual 
emancipation and act upon it, however you may 
lull conscience, you are lending your aid to per- 
petuate a demoralizing and cruel system, which it 



^ SYNOD OF KENTUCKY. 107 

would be an insult to God to imagine that he does 
not abhor ; a system which exhibits power with- 
out responsibility, toil without recompense, life 
without liberty, law without justice, wrongs with- 
out redress, infamy without crime, punishment 
without guilt, and families without marriage — a 
system which will not only make victims of the 
present unhappy generation, inflicting upon them 
the degradation, the contempt, the lassitude, and 
the anguish of hopeless oppression, but which 
even aims at transmitting this heritage of injury 
and woe to their children and their children's chil- 
dren, down to their latest posterity. Can any 
Christian contemplate without trembling his own 
agency in the perpetuation of such a system? 
And what will be the end of these scenes of mis- 
ery and vice ? Shall we wait until worldly poli- 
ticians and legislators may rise up and bid them 
cease ? We shall wait in vain. Already have we 
heard the sentiment proclaimed from high places 
and by the voice of authority, that a race of slaves 
is necessary to the existence of freedom. Is it 
from those who utter such sentiments that we 
expect deliverance to come ? No ; reformation 
must commence where we are divinely taught 
that "judgment must begin — at the house, of GodP 
This work must be done ; and Christians must 
begin it, and beecin it soon, or wrath will come 



108 SLAVE-TRADE— COLORED RACE. 

upon US. The groans of millions do not rise for 
ever unheeded before the throne of the Almighty. 
The hour of doom must soon arrive, the storm 
must soon gather, the bolt of destruction must 
soon be hurled, and the guilty must soon be dash- 
ed in pieces. The voice of past history and the 
voice of inspiration both warn us that the catas- 
trophe must come, unless averted by repentance. 
And let us remember that we are each of us indi- 
vidually responsible. We are individually assist- 
ing to pile up this mountain of guilt. And even 
if temporal judgments do not fall upon our day, 
we are not on that account the more safe from 
punishment. If we "know our Lord's will and 
do it not, we shall be beaten with many stripes." 
The sophistry and false reasoning by which we 
may delude our own souls, will not blind the eyes 
which " are as a flame of fire." A few years at 
most will place us where we would gladly give 
all the slaves of a universe to buy off the punish- 
ment that oppression brings down upon the soul. 
It may be difficult to do our duty, but it will be 
far more difficult to stand in the judgment with- 
out having done it. 

Brethren, we have done. The hour is coming 
in which the slave and his master must stand 
together before the tribunal of God, a God who 
judges righteously. Are you prepared to place 



SYNOD OF KENTUCKY. 



109 



yourselves before him who will decide upon your 
eternal destiny, and say that you have done jus- 
tice to those whom you now hold in bondage ? 
Are you prepared to say, *'As I have done unto 
these, so let it be done unto me ; as I have show- 
ed mercy, so let me receive mercy at the hands of 
my Judge." Anticipate, we beseech you, the feel- 
ings and decision of that great day which is fast 
hastening on ; try yourselves now, as God will 
then try you. ^' What doth the Lord require of 
thee, but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk 
humbly with your God ?" Are you doing justly" 
while you retain your fellow -men in hopeless 
bondage? Are you "loving mercy" while you 
are supporting a s^^stem that degrades and bru- 
talizes beings whom God created in his own im- 
age ? These are solemn questions. Let reason 
answer them, and let conscience decide your fu- 
ture course. 

JOHN BROWN, Chairman. 
John C. Young, Secretary. 



110 SLAVE-TRADE — COLORED RACE. 



DR. YOUNG'S DUTY OF MASTERS.* 



''Masters, give unto your servants that which is just 
and equal ; knowing that ye also have a Master in heaven." 
Col. 4:1. 

Of the ten commandments which God has giv- 
en to us as comprising his moral law, six are in- 
tended to regulate our intercourse with our fellow- 
men ; and with no portion of our fellow-beings, 
except our wives and children, have we so much 
to do as with our servants. Our duties to them 
must, then, be deeply important, embracing as 
they do so large a portion of the duties contained 
in the divine code. Our dealings with our ser- 
vants comprehend a very large part of that con- 
duct for which we are to be responsible at the bar 
of God ; is it not, then, of the utmost consequence 
to ourselves that these dealings should be all 

o < « The Duty of Masters : a Sermon preached in Danville, 
Kentucky, in 1846, and then published at the unanimous 
request of the Church and Congregation. By Rev. John C. 
Young, D. D., President of Centre College, and Pastor of 
the Presbyterian Church, Danville. Revised by the Au- 
thor." 



DUTY OF MASTERS 



111 



reg-iilated by the principles of religion ? The 
Bible lays down precepts for the master and for 
the servant, because each has the happiness and 
well-being of the other greatly in his power. 
There is, however, more need of the authority of 
religion to enforce the duties of the master, espe- 
cially the master who holds the servant in invol- 
untary bondage ; for while he has power to coerce 
the servant to yield him in some good degree 
what is his due, the servant has no reciprocal power 
to coerce the master ; and the natural motives 
which can be applied to stimulate the servant's 
labors for his master, are much more efficacious 
with the mass of men than those which address 
themselves to the master in behalf of the servant's 
interests. 

In examining our text, and comparing it with the 
instructions given to servants in the previous 
verses, we have been struck with the discriminating 
and beautiful adaptation of the several precepts 
and motives to the respective classes to whom 
they are addressed. The peculiar temptation of 
the servant is to indolence and remissness in his 
work, because he lacks that greatest natural 
stimulus to exertion, the knowledge that he will 
himself enjoy the fruit of his labors ; for as our 
personal interest in the results of our efforts is 
diminished, the spirits of all men naturally flag, 



112 SLAVE-TRADE-COLORED RACE. 



and their industry decreases. The main precept 
to the servant meets this evil by enjoining upon 
him faithfulness and energy in all that he does : 
"Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily." And mark 
the peculiarity of the motive by which this pre- 
cept is enforced, and its adaptation to counteract 
the force of their temptation : knowing that of the 
Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheri- 
tance" Here is what is needed by the servant — 
a reward held out to quicken his sluggish spirit. 
He is taught, that while he labors in his lowly 
avocations, he is working not merely for an earth- 
ly, but for a heavenly Master, and that however 
little compensation he may receive from his earth- 
ly master, a heavenly inheritance shall reward his 
faithful exertions. The master, on the other hand, 
is tempted continually to the exercise of injustice 
and oppression. On him, therefore, is enjoined, 
*^ Give unto your servants that which is just and 
equal." And the injunction is enforced by re- 
minding him of the fact, that there is One who 
holds dominion over him, and who will one day 
call him to an account for the exercise of his 
power. Thus the master is checked by the fear 
of retribution, while the servant is stimulated by 
the hope of reward. 

The precept in our text is strikingly wise, too, 
in its comprehensiveness. To see this, reflect for 



DUTY OF MASTERS. 



113 



a moment how long a list of directions must be 
given, in order to specify the particular and mi- 
nute duties of any one master ; reflect then upon 
the very varied circumstances of masters, which 
would more or less modify their duties ; think of 
the very different kinds of servitude which have 
prevailed in different climes and ages, and the 
very different conditions of society in which mas- 
ters and servants are found, all of which circum- 
stances must produce variations in these duties. 
A detailed statement of a master's duty under all 
circumstances was then impossible. Nor was it 
necessary : for here in a condensed form is sum- 
med up the whole of their duties : " Give unto 
your servants that which is just and equal 
give them what conscience, if you consult its dic- 
tates, will teach you that justice and equity, in 
each particular set of circumstances, demand. 
But will not selfishness so blind us as to prevent 
our clearly discerning what is "just and equal 
This danger is removed, and the correct working 
of the rule secured, if we give due heed to the 
motive by which it is followed; ''knowing that 
ye also have a Master in heaven." God calls our 
attention to the fact that he is our Master; as we 
treat our servants, we may expect that our Mas- 
ter will treat us : With what measure ye mete, 
it shall be measured to you again.'' Can we con- 

Slave-trade. 8 



114 SLAVE-TRADE— COLORED RACE. 

ceive of a more efficacious means of securing a 
correct judgment on the rights of our servants 
than is furnished by the thought thus presented 
before us ? Suppose yourself placed in a condi- 
tion of alternate authority and subjection, that 
each day of power was to be followed by a day of 
subjection ; and suppose yourself to be aware of 
the fact, that on each alternate day which you 
spent as a servant you were to be treated exactly 
as you had treated your servants on the day pre- 
ceding ; would it not make you impartial and just 
in your conduct towards them ? Would you not 
honestly seek to ascertain your duties to your ser- 
vants, and most scrupulously fulfil those duties ? 
But if this supposition were realized, your motive to 
diligent inquiry and conscientious conduct on this 
subject would not be as powerful as it is now. It is 
not your condition on alternate days of your earth- 
ly existence, but your condition throughout eterni- 
ty, which is to be affected by your conduct towards 
your servants. After a short mastership here on 
earth, you are to go up to your Master in heaven, 
and there receive according to what you have giv- 
en: the principles on which you have acted here 
must there be applied to yourself ; and how infi- 
nitely more momentous in their consequences 
upon us, for welfare or for woe, will be the appli- 
cation of those principles there. When therefore 



DUTY OF MASTERS. 



115 



we fail to render to our servants the full amount 
of what is *'just and equal," it is evidently no 
gain to us, but a most serious loss. If we are 
wise we will not, in deciding upon what is due to 
our servants, lean to what might be considered 
our own interest by men who look not beyond 
the grave in their calculations of profit and loss ; 
nor will we be content with a slight and hasty 
consideration of the subject, knowing that mis- 
takes arising from inattention or prejudice will 
not excuse our derelictions in duty, nor screen us 
from their punishment. 

Let me entreat you, my beloved brethren, to 
make this motive practical ; dwell upon it until 
its influence habitually affects your conduct. 
Kealize to yourselves the solemn fact that each of 
us has a Master, and that as we deal with our ser- 
vants, so will he deal with us. Do we wish him to 
do for us, his imperfect and unworthy servants, 
more than we feel that we deserve? And shall 
we not do for our servants as we beseech him to 
do for us ? Can we expect him to forgive our 
debt of ten thousand talents, while we exact rig- 
orously the hundred pence which are due from 
our poor fellow-being to ourselves ? Let us re- 
member that it is our Master who hath warned us, 
that " he shall have judgment without mercy who 
hath showed no mercy and let us determine so 



116 SLAVE-TRADE— COLORED RACE. 

to treat our dependents as we ask Him to treat 
us. 

We will now endeavor to show, in some points^ 
what this precept, Give unto your servants that 
which is just and equal," would require under our 
peculiar circumstances. The duties enjoined by 
this general rule must vary, as we hinted above, 
with the peculiar nature of the servitude. The 
master who owns slaves owes them far more than 
is due from the master who hires free laborers to 
those employed to do his work ; for our bondmen 
are in a great measure dependent upon us for 
their happiness in time and eternity. The obli- 
gations must correspond necessarily with the ex- 
tent of their dependence and the absoluteness of 
our power. 

1. It is the duty of every master to form the 
habit of feeling that his servants are partakers of 
the same flesh and blood, and brethren of the same great 
family with himself and the habit of speaking and 
acting towards them as this view of his connec- 
tion with them would require. 

One of the natural and pernicious consequences 
of arbitrary power is, that it begets a feeling in 
its possessor towards his subjects such as could 
only properly exist if he and they belonged to 
different species. If we would discharge our du- 
ties to our servants, we must counteract this feel- 



DUTY OF MASTERS. 



in 



ing ; if we wish to act rightly, we must neither 
think a lie, nor even feel a lie. We must reflect 
upon the facts announced to us in the holy Scrip- 
tures, that " God has made of one blood all nations 
of men to dwell on all the face of the earth," and 
that we are all sprung from Adam as our common 
ancestor. We should observe that they possess 
all the feelings which prove a common nature 
with ourselves : the same susceptibilities of ha- 
tred and love, joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain — 
the same capacities of memory and judgment, 
reason and conscience. Still more are we to im- 
press upon ourselves the fact that they are our 
brethren, when we remember that the same gra- 
cious God whom we esteem it a privilege to call 
our Father, acknowledges them equally with our- 
selves as his children, and exhibits for them the 
same affection ; that the same Saviour who has 
redeemed us by his precious blood, recognizes 
them as a part of his purchased inheritance ; and 
that they are to enjoy throughout eternity, in full 
concert with ourselves, the thrones and the crowns 
and the harps and the mansions which God has 
promised to his redeemed people. "Ye are all 
the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. 
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither 
bond nor free ; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus." 
When, by such views, we free ourselves from 



118 SLAVE-TRADE — COLORED RACE. 

that contemptuous feeling which their servile con- 
dition tends to generate, and form the fixed habit 
of regarding them as our brethren, our language 
in addressing them, and our conduct towards 
them, will naturally conform to our improved sen- 
timents. 

2. It is our duty to suppress and eradicate an- 
other unwarranted and pernicious feeling that 
natui'ally springs up in us, the feeling that our 
servants were made for us. 

Our cattle, our houses, and all our property, we 
regard as designed for our use : the very end and 
aim of the existence of these objects is for our 
service ; for this purpose God created them. 
Xow, when we class a fellow-man as a part of 
our property, we are exceeding apt to regard him 
as we are in the habit of correctly regarding all 
the other portions of our property, and conse- 
quently we are apt to feel that the great end of 
his existence, and the main use for which he was 
designed, is to serve us. But whatever rights 
the laws of the land may give us over our ser- 
vants, and however much they may foster this 
erroneous impression, we are to remember that 
our servant was created for a purpose as elevat- 
ed, and a destiny as glorious as our own — he was 
formed to serve God Abnighty, and to inherit the glo- 
ries of his eternal kingdom. For this end he was 
endowed, equally with ourselves, with an immor- 



DUTY OF MASTERS. 



119 



tal soul, and the revelation of God^s will was di. 
rected to him as well as to us. We cannot de- 
grade our servants into the mere instruments of 
our gratifications, we cannot conceive of them as 
creatures merely existing for our interests, with- 
out miserably failing in our most important du- 
ties towards them. Our servants have higher 
relations than those which they sustain towards 
us ; they have more important duties than those 
which they owe to us ; they have more valuable 
interests than those which we can affect. Their 
first and main duty is, to serve that God who is 
their Master and ours — that God who has not given 
up his rights in them when he has placed them by 
his providence partially under our control and 
protection — that God who will hold them as well 
as us accountable for not yielding him the honor 
and obedience which he claims as his due. Since 
it is their first and great duty to serve their Lord, 
we are to remember that, so far as we have power 
over them, it is our first duty to them to induce 
them to engage in this work, and to aid them in 
its proper and full performance. 

3. It is the duty of a master to see to the relig- 
ious improvement of his sei-vants, not only by fur- 
nishing them with the means of instruction^ but by 
using all diligence in inducing them to avail them- 
selves of those Tneans. We are not to think that our 



120 SLAVE-TrvADE— COLORED RACE. 

work is done on this point when we merely per- 
mit our servants to enjoy the means of grace. 
The moralist and the Christian defend the prac- 
tice of holding human beings in bondage only on 
the ground that they are incompetent to govern 
themselves and manage their own interests suc- 
cessfully. If this principle warrants us in keep- 
ing them under control, it at the same time binds 
us to exercise our power to restrain them from 
evil, and lead them to happiness and heaven. If 
they need our guardianship, and we exercise au- 
thority over them, we are under an obligation of 
the same kind towards them* which we recognize 
ourselves as placed under towards our children. 
Our children are subject to our control because 
their ignorance and immaturity of powers dis- 
qualify them for self-government. If a parent 
should reg-ard his authority simply as a source of 
advantage to himself, and should not use it for 
promoting the best interests of his child, he would 
be reprobated by man, and condemned and pun- 
ished by God. Guilt of the same kind, though 
somewhat less in degree, is incurred by the mas- 
ter who fails to use his power to promote the 
highest interests of his servants. If you use this 
power to secure their services to yourself, and do 
not use it to secure their services to God, you fail 
in your duty to God, who in his providence has 
placed these beings under your guardianship, that 



DUTY OF MASTERS. 



121 



they might be trained up to glorify him. If an 
earthly parent had apprenticed his child to yon, 
that he might be qualified for discharging here- 
after the duties of life with ability and honor, 
would you not expect his displeasure, if he should 
discover that you had worked his son exclusively 
for your own benefit, while you had neglected to 
give him that instruction and train him to those 
habits which alone would fit him for the station 
which his father had designed him to occupy? 
Must we not then expect the displeasure of God, 
if we shall be found neglecting to impart to his 
children, whom he has placed under our control, 
those benefits which he designed them to receive 
from their connection with us ? His design in 
their present condition is not our gain merely, but 
their good, and God's glory. If we are permitted 
by him to use their services, it is as a compensa- 
tion for the pains and trouble which we endure 
in training them for glory, honor, and immortality. 
Thus in neglecting their religious improvement 
we grievously violate our obligations towards the 
great Jehovah, who has placed a portion of his 
immortal children under our guardianship. We 
are guilty too towards these our brethren ; for if 
the interests of their souls are a matter of indif- 
ference to us, or of but slight and transient con- 
cern, we fail to act towards them on the golden 



122 SLAVE-TR^DE— COLORED RACE. 

rule, that we should ''do to others as we would 
that they should do unto us," and they must prob- 
ably perish by our neglect. 

The duty of attending to the religious improve- 
ment of our servants comprises among others two 
important particulars : teaching and encouraging them 
to read God's word, and inducing them to attend his 
worship. Some have assumed the position that we 
ought not to teach our servants to read the Bible. 
Our posterit^^ will doubtless wonder how so 
strange a position could ever have been assumed 
in a Christian land, and how any sensible and 
good man could ever have deluded himself into 
the belief tbat such a notion was consistent with 
the first principles of that gospel which is sent to 
the bond as well as the free, and which requires 
all who receive it to impart a knowledge of it to 
the utmost of their ability to all who have it not. 

To expose the falsity of this view and its per- 
nicious consequences so fully and thoroughly as 
to insure its adequate condemnation, would per- 
haps require more time than the limits of our dis- 
course will allow. But for its refutation in the 
eyes of all intelligent and reflecting men, nothing 
more, as we conceive, is needed, than that their 
attention should be directed to the two false as- 
sumptions on wEich the position rests. The first 
assumption is, that our system of servitude is in- 
consistent with even such a degree of intelligence 



DUTY OF MASTERS. 



123 



on the part of servants as will enable them to 
read the Bible. Why are slaves to be prohibited 
from learning to read ? The answer is, be-cause 
such instruction will unfit them for remaining in 
bondage. Now if this assumption were true, it 
would be the most powerful argument that has 
ever been urged against the system ; for what 
pious or even philanthropic heart could counte- 
nance for a moment the existence pf a sys- 
tem, whose existence depended on excluding 
its subjects for ever from obeying the divine 
command to search the Scriptures," in which 
alone we have eternal life ?" The second 
false assumption on which must be rested the ex- 
clusion of servants from learning to read is, that 
for the sake of perpetuating a system which we 
imagine to be gainful, we have a right to keep a 
whole race of our fellow-men in such a state of 
degradation as to debar them from all direct ac- 
cess to God^s holy word, and thus fearfully multi- 
ply the chances of their eternal perdition. If we 
have no such right, they must be allowed to read. 
But can any Christian imagine that we have such 
a right ? If so, he must believe that for an in- 
crease of gain we might rightfully increase still 
more their chances of perdition, and that to secure 
a very large amount we would be justified in in- 
suring the destruction of their souls. 

But it is not necessary to consume time in prov- 



124 SLAVE-TRADE— COLORED RACE. 



ing that all human beings ought to be permitted to 
read God's word. A prohibition of this privilege 
we should feel bound to regard just as far as we 
would a prohibition to feed the hungry or clothe 
the naked. Is there aught more valuable to any 
one of us as an immortal being than to be able to 
read the divine oracles ? Can you then think — I 
appeal to the conscience of every Christian — that 
you are obeying the precept of our text, that you 
are giving to your servants what is "just and 
equal/' while you are taking no measures to en- 
able them to share in a privilege of such priceless 
value ? If the Christian of old, in the days of 
heathen persecution, would rather suffer martyr- 
dom than deliver up his cop}' of the Bible, can we 
imagine that we possess the Christian spirit, 
when we are unwilling to make exertions that 
those under our care may have the fullest mean?^ 
of acquainting themselves with its life-giving 
truths ? What would you think and how would 
you feel if you were yourself debarred from all 
personal resort to that living fountain of truth 
which God has opened in the Bible for the healing 
and refreshment of the soul — if you were permit- 
ted to drink of the water of life only as others 
might find leisure and inclination to hand you an 
occasional sip? God's word is, next to God's 
Son, and God's Spirit, the most precious gift 
which divine mercy ever bestowed on man ; and 



DUTY OF MASTERS. 



125 



shall we not aid those whom God has placed un- 
der our care, and for whose salvation we are in a 
great measure responsible, to secure to them- 
selves its invaluable influences ? Shall we suffer 
those who dwell in our houses and labor in our 
fields to remain incapable of reading for them- 
selves that truth by which the Saviour prayed 
that the Father would sanctify his people ? • 

Again, a master cannot discharge his duties to 
his servants unless he uses faithful and diligent 
efforts to secure their attendance upon the 'preaching of 
the gospel. The preaching of the gospel is one of 
God^s appointed means of grace, and a means of 
great value. Yet many Christian masters take 
no pains to induce their servants to attend regu- 
larly upon the house of God. Their own children 
are trained up to frequent the sanctuary, but the 
presence of their servants there they do not re- 
quire. Is it not the duty of the bond as well as 
the free to attend the ordinances of God ? And 
is it not the master^s business to see that his do- 
mestics perform all their duties — not merely the 
duties which they owe to him, but those which 
they owe to God ? We are not required to con- 
trol the hearts of our servants, for this is beyond 
our power ; but their attendance upon the means 
of grace, like the attendance of our children, can 
be procured by proper exertion, and we ought to 
secure it. Does it not look strangely inconsistent 



126 SLAVE-TRADE— COLORED RACE. 

that we can easily secure their attendance during 
six days of the week on our work, but find it im- 
possible to secure their attendance upon GotTs 
work on the seventh? They are certainly not 
more averse to hearing a sermon than to digging 
or ploughing ; if then they perform the latter and 
neglect the former, is it not owing to the different 
estnnate we teach them to place on these duties ? 
We manifest displeasure at their neglect of our 
interests, but their neglect of God's service we 
wink at. 

Further, it is the duty of a master to assmhh 
his servants with the rest of the household for family 
worship. Those servants who live apart from the 
master's household should be encouraged to wor- 
ship God daily in their own houses ; the domestic 
servants ought to unite in the family devotions. 
Every man is constituted by God a prophet or 
teacher, as well as king or ruler in his own house- 
hold, is regarded as the superior in wisdom as 
well as authority : this position he holds that he 
may train his children and servants to fear and 
serve God. A man cannot expect the blessing of 
God upon his family, unless he endeavors to make 
it a family that calls daily upon God's name. It 
was the testimony which God gave to Abraham, 
when assigning the reason why he would bless 
him : " I know him, that he will command his 
children and his household after him j and they 



DUTY OF MASTERS. 



127 



shall keep the way of the Lord, and do justice and 
judgment/' Here is an example held out by God 
for the imitation of all masters. Many persons 
justify slavery by pleading the example of Abra- 
ham ; but they fail to remember that it was an 
inestimable privilege to belong to the family of 
Abraham. Do they imitate him in those points of 
conduct which sanctified his mastership, and 
which drew around him a body of faithful servants, 
whom he could arm to repel the assaults of an in- 
vading foe ? 

Our object at present is not to give minute di- 
rections to aid one who is disposed to discharge 
the religious duties of a master, but simply to 
show what those duties are. We cannot then 
turn aside to answer the question, How shall 
wc most surely and easily secure the attention of 
our servants to the Bible, and to the public and 
private exercises of divine worship ?" One thing, 
however, is certain, that no man will succeed in 
any good work who does not direct his mind dili- 
gently to the discovery of the means of success, 
and then use them with patience and persever- 
ance. 

4. Masters should watch over the moral character 
of their servants^ and restrain them from all conduct 
offensive to God. Gross sins against God are tol- 
erated in their servants by many masters, who 
will permit no practices hurtful to their own self. 



128 SLAVE-TRADE — COLORED RACE. 



interest. Yet it is clearly our duty to show dis- 
approbation of conduct which we reprehend or 
punish, in proportion, not to its injurious effects 
upon our personal interests, but to its criminality 
or moral turpitude. And we are certainly not 
discharging the obligations to our servants which 
our position and superior intelligence impose on 
us, when we teach them to regard trivial offences 
against ourselves as of greater magnitude, and 
deserving of severer reprobation, than gross vio- 
lations of God^s most important commandments. 
By acting thus we pervert their views of duty 
and responsibility, and give them, as far as lies 
in our power, a false standard of morality. We 
cannot expect them to be conscientious and up- 
right, unless we train them to regard the divine 
law, and unless we show by our treatment of 
them that we expect and require them to respect 
its precepts. 

To form and preserve correct moral feelings 
and conduct in them, it is not merely requisite 
that we should restrain them from vices, and en- 
courage them to virtue by proper rewards and 
punishments, but we should as far as practicable 
keep them from corrupting associates, and set 
before them a godly example. In vain may we 
exhort them to do right, if they see us do wrong. 
If they see us honest, conscientious, kind, and for- 
bearing, a strong influence will be exerted upon 



DUTY OF MASTERS. 



129 



them to produce virtues resembling those which 
they see in us ; if, on the other hand, the master 
is seen to be grasping and unscrupulous, the ser- 
vant will imitate his selfish example, disregarding, 
as far as he can do so with impunity, his master's 
interest, and seeking only his own ease. 

5. Masters are bound to exercise patience towards 
the faults and infirmities of their servants. Proper 
efforts will do much towards remedying the mani- 
fold imperfections of servants ; but much will re- 
main irremediable. Patience then becomes an 
important duty in our intercourse with them — a 
duty in which we often lamentably fail. Permit 
me to suggest a few considerations, which, duly 
weighed, would satisfy us all that we should ex- 
ercise, in our dealings with them, a degree of pa- 
tience far beyond what we usually exhibit. 1. We 
are ourselves very far from perfection ; and is it 
reasonable to expect our servants to be better 
than ourselves ? We need the forbearance and 
indulgence of our fellow-men towards our own 
weaknesses and frailties ; and should we not grant 
to others what we claim largely for ourselves ? 
And how poorly and despicably do we serve God, 
who has far stronger claims on our services than 
we have on those of our fellow-men. Ought we 
not to exercise towards our servants something 
like that patience which our heavenly Master is 
daily exercising towards us, who fail in our duty 

Slave-trade. 9 



130 SLAVE-TRADE — COLORED RACE. 

with SO much stronger motives inducing us to 
fulfil it? 2. The indulgence of impatience and 
ill-humor effects no useful purpose. All experience 
teaches that those who are fretful, dissatisfied, 
and fault-finding, are not as well served as those 
who are even-tempered, kind, and forbearing. 3. 
The indulgence of these feelings effectually de- 
stroys our own peace. Just so far as we permit 
ourselves to be irritated and vexed, we permit 
ourselves to be made wretched ; and surely it is 
most unwise to indulge in any disposition which 
will place our happiness completely at the mercy 
of our dependents. Many persons thus become 
the victims of the faults of their servants. 4. The 
comfort of all around us is impaired by our yield- 
ing to these feelings. Solomon strongly express- 
es the annoyance produced by an impatient and 
fault-finding temper, when he says, ''It is better 
to dwell in the corner of a house-top than with a 
brawling woman in a wide house." Females are 
more liable to this evil than men, not from any 
peculiar weakness of character or infirmity of 
mind, but from their more constant intercourse 
with their servants, and chiefly from the nature 
of the domestic employments which they super- 
intend, involving as they do a great variety of 
minute and disconnected operations, some of which 
are almost certain to be overlooked or slightingly 
performed by careless servants, while none of 



DUTY OF MASTERS. 



131 



them can be neglected without detriment to the 
household, and consequent dissatisfaction to her 
who is responsible for its welfare. 5. Impatience 
and fretfulness defeat their own object. Frequent 
chidings not only wear away the sensibilities of a 
servant, and render him callous to all rebuke, but 
they excite a spirit of defiance and a disposition 
to annoy. 6. The Scriptures expressly forbid the 
indulgence of impatient, harsh, and fretful feelings 
towards our servants : ^' And ye masters, do the 
same things unto them, forhcariiig threatening; 
knowing that your Master also is in heaven, and 
there is no respect of persons with him." Eph. 
6 : 9. Here while masters are taught to do for 
their servants the same things " which the ser- 
vants had been in the preceding verses enjoined 
to do unto the masters — that is, to do them all 
the good they can, remembering the Lord regards 
it as done to Him — they are expressly prohibited 
from harsh, tyrannical, and irritating language. 
Solomon also advises us not to pry curiously into 
all the misdemeanors of which servants may be 
guilty, but sometimes wisely to pass as if unheed- 
ed what, if noticed, would require animadversion : 
'^Take no heed unto all words that are spoken, 
lest thou hear thy servant curse thee," that is, 
speak ill of thee ; for oftentimes also thine own 
heart knoweth that thou thyself likewise hast 
cursed others." Eccles. 7 :21. 



132 SLAVE-TRADE — COLORED RACE. 



6. But it is not sufficient for us to bear patiently 
with the faults of servants, and refrain from ha- 
bitual harshness ; it is, further, a master^s duty to 
treat his servants with positive kindness. Every 
servant is one of those neighbors" whose proper 
treatment is exemplified by our Saviour^s narra- 
tive of the conduct of the good Samaritan towards 
the wounded Jew — he is one of those neighbors'' 
our treatment of whom must be regulated by that 
comprehensive law of God which enjoins us to 
"love thy neighbor as thyself/' He is, then, a 
being whose interests we are bound to regard, 
whose woes we must seek to alleviate, whose joys 
we must strive to increase. They constitute, too, 
that class of our neighbors who have the most 
strong claim upon our kindness, for their lot is pc- 
culiarly hard. How many are the privileges and 
enjoyments bestowed by God in his providence 
upon us, yet withheld from them. How many 
strong motives do we possess to incite us to good 
and withhold us from evil, which they do not en- 
joy ; and how many and precious means of im- 
provement and usefulness have been granted to 
us, and denied to them. Ought not the consider- 
ation of the difference of our allotments to move 
our sympathies and draw forth our kindness ? 
They are God's unfortunate children, whom he 
has placed under our special care, that by our 
kindness we might mitigate the severities of their 



DUTY OF MASTERS. 



133 



lot and sweeten their existence. The chief motive 
which should influence us to deal kindly with them 
is, "for Christ^s sake." Regard for duty, respect 
for God's command, gratitude to our Saviour who 
interests himself for them as a part of his re- 
deemed people, all these should combine to form 
the great principle which should govern our con- 
duct towards them. But there is an inferior mo- 
tive worth considering, which may alsa operate to 
induce us to treat them kindly — it is to our own in- 
terest to do so. Kindness draws forth such services 
as harshness can never exact. Servants are hu- 
man beings just like ourselves, and we know that 
we serve those most faithfully and heartily who 
treat us best. Persons often complain of ingrati- 
tude ; their kindnesses are not appreciated nor 
repaid, especially by servants. While there is 
some foundation for this complaint, still it is a 
general law of human nature, that kindness pro- 
duces a return of affection and service, and a con- 
tinued course of good treatment will work a bene- 
ficial effect upon almost every disposition. When 
servants feel that their master's conduct towards 
them is simply governed by self-interest, and that 
no real desire for their welfare animates him, they 
naturally see that their interests are opposed to 
his, and seek their own at the expense of his. 
Even his favors they suspect of selfishness, and 
feel that no gratitude is due for them. But let 



134 SLAVE-TRADE — COLORED RACE. 

them be satisfied, from his course, that he really 
desires their happiness, and the happy effect will 
soon be visible in their labors. On this important 
point we might enlarge would time permit, and 
illustrate it by a mass of facts. But we can only 
notice a mistake which often prevents, in a great 
degree, the effect of a master^s benevolent meas- 
ures. There are some who propose all the favors 
which they intend to confer, as compensations for 
services to be rendered. If the servant perform 
this or that piece of work well, he is to receive 
such a reward. To some extent, this plan is 
good ; it affords to the servant a stimulus, and 
secures the quick and faithful discharge of his 
duty. But favors thus received are often regarded 
as compensations bargained for, and fairly and 
fully earned. Servants do not feel that these are 
gratuitous kindnesses; they feel that their master 
has been repaid. It is well, therefore, to bestow 
favors that are unpromised and unexpected ; they 
are thus felt to be gratuitous, and are consequently 
regarded as proofs of good will. Another happy 
effect of sometimes rewarding their services when 
there has been no promise given, is, that they are 
thus made to feel that their conduct is not unno- 
ticed or unappreciated, even when no peculiar mo- 
tives are presented to stimulate their exertions. 
If we would treat our servants aright, we must 



DUTY OF MASTERS. 



135 



not only act kindly, but sjpeak kindly. Some per- 
sons, most unfortunately, contract a tone and man- 
ner which prevent their real kindness from being 
seen and felt. We all recognize the power of an 
affectionate and pleasant voice. Our looks and 
tones are the great channels by which our feel- 
ings are conveyed to the minds of our fellow-men, 
servants as well as equals. Kind words are often 
a cheap means of winning services which no money 
could buy. The silver tones of a kind voice sel- 
dom fail to reach the heart, and if united with 
patience and perseverance, to secure cheerful and 
prompt obedience. 

7. It is a master^s duty to give to his servants 
a reasonable and fair com^pensation for their labor. 
" Give unto your servants that which is just and 
equal." It was a beautiful provision in the law 
of Moses, which forbade the Jew from muzzling 
his ox while it was trampling out the grain. Even 
the dumb beast was not to be tantalized with see- 
ing the fruits of his labor appropriated and carried 
away by others, while he was hungering for his 
share. He was not to go unrewarded, while others 
were fattening on his toils. The man, then, who 
lives by the sweat of his fellow-creature^s brow, 
ought not to grudge him a full share of the pro- 
ducts of his own labor. An<^ we are to remember, 
that what is "just and equal" to a brute, is not 



136 SLAVE-TRADE — COLORED RACE. 

^'just and equal" to a human being. If a master 
furnishes provender, shelter, and litter sufficient 
for a beast, and does not overwork him, he per- 
forms all that duty and humanity require. But 
surely more than these are due to the human being 
who toils for us. He should share with us, not 
merely in the bare necessaries, but the comforts 
of life. 

8. The correction of servants when they do amiss ^ 
is part of the duty of a master. While the in- 
fliction of punishment is always more or less 
painful to every feeling mind, we are taught by 
divine authority, that it is a salutary and often 
necessary means of prev^enting evil deeds, as well 
as of counteracting the effects of such deeds after 
they have been perpetrated. The good effects of 
punishment are, however, often destroyed by an 
impropriety in the mode of its administration. It 
loses a great portion of its beneficial influence, 
unless it is accompanied with the impression on 
the mind of the sufferer, that it is inflicted from a 
sense of duty. Many persons will punish only 
when their anger has risen so high as to overcome 
their natural repugnance to inflicting pain upon a 
fellow-being ; and then their conduct wears to the 
culprit the appearance, not of discharging a duty, 
but of merely gratifying a vindictive feeling. 
While correction of every kind ought to be at- 



DUTY OF MASTERS. 



137 



tended with a clear exhibition of displeasure and 
moral abhorrence proportioned to the nature of 
the offence, it ought never to be administered in 
passion. Admonitions, rebukes, and personal 
chastisement produce a much better effect, both 
on children and servants, when inflicted with 
calmness. Persons often urge that they cannot 
punish coolly and calmly. This is a mistake ; 
they can do it, and it is their duty to do it. It is 
as much the duty of the head of a family to ad- 
minister justice in his household according to the 
laws he has established, as it is the duty of a 
magistrate to execute the laws in a common- 
wealth. And would it not be considered as an 
unpardonable weakness in a magistrate, to plead 
an incapacity for punishing a criminal until he 
had become excited by passion ? We should re- 
member that no one can be successful in making 
others do their duty, who does not first do his own 
duty ; no one can hope to govern others, who can- 
not govern himself. How can we expect that 
God will sanction and bless correction, unless it 
is administered in a spirit that he approves ? Our 
correction of every sort ought to be just, but not 
vindictive — effectual, but not cruel. 

9. Masters should enforce upon their servants 
the duty of respecting the rite of marriage. Its 
neglect is followed by the most pernicious moral 



138 SLAVE-TRADE — COLORED RACE. 

consequences. We should absolutely prohibit 
them from forming those irregular and temporary 
unions, which are alike opposed to the command- 
ments of God and to the decency of civilized life. 
Even the lowest barbarian has some form or cere- 
mony by which he gives a moral sanction to the 
union of the sexes ; how then can we tolerate 
these unsanctioned, unconsecrated connections 
between persons living in Christian families, and 
under the control of Christian guardians ? How 
can we inculcate integrity, faithfulness, and the 
various Christian virtues upon those whom we 
permit to live in the open and shameless violation 
of one of the fundamental laws of Jehovah ? And 
how can we expect to cultivate in them a regard 
for character, when we permit them to live in a 
condition which all decent society views with con- 
tempt and abhorrence ? To convince you of the 
master's duty on this subject, it is surely not nec- 
essary that we should portray the bnitalizing 
effects of a system of licentiousness, and prove 
the necessity of the marriage rite ; it is enough 
for us to direct your attention to the fact that, if 
servants are not prohibited from trampling upon 
the rite which God has instituted as one of the 
great preservatives of human virtue, he will hold 
as responsible, not the ignorant servants merely, 
but the more intelligent masters, who might have 



DUTY OF MASTERS. 



139 



controlled them. By what plea can men defend 
or justify their power over their fellow-men, un- 
less they use it to restrain them from vice ? 

10. The application of the principle, " Give unto 
your servants that which is just and equal," will 
teach every master his duty in relation to the sale 
of servants held in involuntary bondage. The law 
of Mohammed, more just and humane, in this 
respect, than the codes of many of our states, 
punishes a crime committed by a slave with half 
the penalty inflicted on a freeman for the same 
offence, because the slave's inferiority in know- 
ledge and motives to restrain him from crime les- 
sens his responsibility. But our laws often pun- 
ish the crimes of slaves with a severity altogether 
disproportionate to their enormity, and our moral sense 
revolts at the idea of permitting their enforcement. 
In such a case, the sale of a slave with a view to 
his transportation from the state, that he may thus 
escape sentence of death, may be a duty oT hu- 
manity, as he is thus saved from unjust suffering. 
There are other cases in which the perversity and 
misconduct of a servant defy our faithful efforts 
for his reformation, and make it evident that his 
continuance under our care will be deleterious in 
its influence upon his fellow- servants, detrimental 
to our own comfort, and productive of no good to 
himself. But it is clearly a violation of the prin- 



140 SLAVE-TRADE — COLORED RACE. 



ciple which God lays down for the government of 
our conduct towards our servants, when we sell 
them for the purpose of gain, without regard to 
their welfare. Can we imagine that then we are 

giving them that which is just and equal that 
we are doing to them as we would that they should 
do unto us ? The criminality of this conduct rises 
to its highest pitch in those cases in which domes- 
tic ties are rent asunder by the ruthless hand of 
the master bent upon gain. A man may stop his 
ears to the agonizing cry of the wife rudely forced 
away from her husband and separated for ever ; 
he may refuse to hear the wailing of the mother for 
her children torn from her ; but there is a voice to 
which he must one day listen, the voice of the Eter- 
nal pronouncing judgment upon him, for his tram- 
pling upon the rights of humanity, and treating his 
fellow-men as if they were beasts of the field. 

Such is a delineation of a master's duty. The 
outlme might be profitably filled up, did time per- 
mit, by many additional proofs, illustrations, and 
minute specifications ; but every man, for a full 
knowledge of his duty, must depend in a great 
degree on the application, by his own understand- 
ing, aided by an honest conscience, of the great 
principles of rectitude to his own peculiar circum- 
stances. You can scarcely fail to arrive at truth, 
if, in points of inquiry as to duty not specifically 



DUTY OF MASTERS. 



141 



covered by these directions, you shall honestly 
examine what the great rule of "just and equaP' 
would require. 

Many may now perhaps be disposed to say, 
"If the case of the master be so with his ser- 
vants, it is not good to have servants." This is 
precisely similar to what the Jews said to our 
Saviour, when he explained to them the nature 
and duties of the marriage-relation : " If the case 
of the man be so with his wife, it is not good to 
marry." It would not then be surprising, if, when 
we represent fairly and correctly a master^s duties, 
many should regard it as assigning to him a hard 
lot. The Jews had a mistaken view of the nature 
of marriage, just as many among us have a mis- 
taken view of the nature of servitude. Marriage, 
according to their conception of it, was mainly 
designed for the convenience and comfort of the 
man alone ; and the laws and duties of married 
life they deduced from this erroneous principle. 
So now, many among us think that God has sanc- 
tioned the relation of master and servant simply 
and mainly for the benefit of the master ; and from 
this erroneous principle they deduce their ideas 
of a master's duties. But " God is no respecter 
of persons ;" in his sight the servant is as precious 
as the master ; and this relation can have God's 
sanction only so far as it is designed for the mu- 



142 SLAVE-TRADE — COLORED RACE. 

tual good of master and servant. The master is 
as much bound to promote the happiness of the 
servant, as the servant is bound to promote that 
of the master. This is the true principle, and on 
this we should act, discharging to our servants 
all the duties which flow from it. It is a great 
mistake too, to imagine that we would be gainers, 
even for this world, by disregarding this princi- 
ple and neglecting our duties. We see how er- 
roneous was the judgment of the Jews when they 
objected to the doctrine of the Saviour on mar- 
riage, that it rendered the condition of the man 
so intolerable that he had better not marry. "We 
recognize the Saviour's doctrine as true, and act 
upon it — no longer granting to man the right to 
divorce his wife at pleasure, no longer regarding 
woman as the mere instrument of man's gratifica- 
tion and the slave of his caprices ; and what has 
been the consequence ? Is the husband's condi- 
tion less happy than it was among the Jews ? So 
far is this from being true, that our domestic com- 
fort is greatly increased. By regarding and treat- 
ing woman as God intended that she should be 
regarded and treated, she has become a more 
refined, intelligent, and virtuous companion and 
help-meet to man. And even so regarding and 
treating our servants as fellow-beings whose inter- 
ests we are bound to promote as our own, will 



DUTY OF MASTERS. 



143 



make them more intelligent, more active, more 
capable, more cheerful, more faithful, more consci- 
entious, and more devoted assistants to us in all 
the labors in which we employ them. Besides the 
reward of well-doing, which we shall receive in 
the pleasing consciousness that we are improving 
the condition and character of our rational and 
immortal fellow-beings, who are to stand with us 
before the same judgment-seat, we shall receive 
an additional reward in the increased satisfaction 
of our intercourse with them, and the increased 
value of their services. 

It may again be objected, that if this represen- 
tation of our duties is correct, then all of us have 
been, to some degree, deficient in their discharge. 
This objection, so far from disproving the correct- 
ness of our representation, serves rather to con- 
firm it. If I so explained your duties either to 
God or your neighbor, that any one of you could 
say with truth, All this I have done," I would 
be sure that I had taught you what was false. 
But our imperfections should neither hinder us 
from acknowledging our duty, nor operate as an 
excuse for neglecting it. While we honestly and 
conscientiously recognize all our duties to our 
servants, this recognition should humble us under 
a sense of our past deficiencies, and stimulate us 
to greater future diligence. 



144 SLAVE-TRADE— COLORED RACE. 

If you thus act, great will be your reward in 
heaven. Your servants will be something* more 
to you than a source of profit in this world, they 
will become a source of blessedness to you in the 
world to come. You are God's trustees, to whom, 
in his providence, he commits these souls for their 
temporal and eternal good. Will you exercise 
this trusteeship faithfully, and receive the promised 
gracious reward? Or, claiming them as absolutely 
yours, will you usurp an authority never granted you 
by God, and meet his dread displeasure ? Kemem- 
ber, that very soon you must depart from earth, 
and stand before that awful tribunal where the 
slave is equal with his master, and where both 
alike must receive their doom from a righteous 
Judge. Masters, give unto your servants that 
which is just and equal ; knowing that ye also 
have a Master in heaven.'^ 



An officer of the Society has contributed S50 for issuing 
this treatise. 



