3. It was formerly wholly sustained by the forced labor of slaves, purchased at Vera Cruz at $300 to $400 each.
4. Abolition in this section was effected not by governmental interference, not even from motives of humanity, but from an irresistible conviction on the part of the planters that their pecuniary interest demanded it.
5. The result has proved the entire correctness of this conviction; and the planters would now be as unwilling as the blacks themselves to return to the old system.
Let our Southern brethren imitate this example. It is in vain, in the face of facts like these, to talk of the necessity of maintaining the abominable system, operating as it does like a double curse upon planters and slaves. Heaven and earth deny its necessity. It is as necessary as other robberies, and no more.
Yes, putting aside altogether the righteous law of the living God--the same yesterday, to-day, and forever--and shutting out the clearest political truths ever taught by man, still, in human policy selfish expediency would demand of the planter the immediate emancipation of his slaves.
Because slave labor is the labor of mere machines; a mechanical impulse of body and limb, with which the mind of the laborer has no sympathy, and from which it constantly and loathingly revolts.
Because slave labor deprives the master altogether of the incalculable benefit of the negro's will. That does not cooperate with the forced toil of the body. This is but the necessary consequence of all labor which does not benefit the laborer. It is a just remark of that profound political economist, Adam Smith, that "a slave can have no other interest than to eat and waste as much, and work as little, as he can."
To my mind, in the wasteful and blighting influences of slave labor there is a solemn and warning moral.
They seem the evidence of the displeasure of Him who created man after His own image, at the unnatural attempt to govern the bones and sinews, the bodies and souls, of one portion of His children by the caprice, the avarice, the lusts of another; at that utter violation of the design of His merciful Providence, whereby the entire dependence of millions of His rational creatures is made to centre upon the will, the existence, the ability, of their fellow-mortals, instead of resting under the shadow of His own Infinite Power and exceeding love.
I shall offer a few more facts and observations on this point.
1. A distinguished scientific gentleman, Mr. Coulomb, the superintendent of several military works in the French West Indies, gives it as his opinion, that the slaves do not perform more than one third of the labor which they would do, provided they were urged by their own interests and inclinations instead of brute force.
2. A plantation in Barbadoes in 1780 was cultivated by two hundred and eighty-eight slaves ninety men, eighty-two women, fifty-six boys, and sixty girls. In three years and three months there were on this plantation fifty-seven deaths, and only fifteen births. A change was then made in the government of the slaves. The use of the whip was denied; all severe and arbitrary punishments were abolished; the laborers received wages, and their offences were all tried by a sort of negro court established among themselves: in short, they were practically free.
Under this system, in four years and three months there were forty-four births, and but forty-one deaths; and the annual net produce of the plantation was more than three times what it had been before.--(English Quarterly Magazine and Review, April, 1832.)
3. The following evidence was adduced by Pitt in the British Parliament, April, 1792. The assembly of Grenada had themselves stated, "that though the negroes were allowed only the afternoon of one day in a week, they would do as much work in that afternoon, when employed for their own benefit, as in the whole day when employed in their master's service."
"Now after this confession," said Mr. Pitt, "the house might burn all its calculations relative to the negro population. A negro, if he worked for himself, could no doubt do double work. By an improvement, then, in the mode of labor, the work in the islands could be doubled."
4. "In coffee districts it is usual for the master to hire his people after they have done the regular task for the day, at a rate varying from 10d. to 15.8d. for every extra bushel which they pluck from the trees; and many, almost all, are found eager to earn their wages."
5. In a report made by the commandant of Castries for the government of St. Lucia, in 1822, it is stated, in proof of the intimacy between the slaves and the free blacks, that "many small plantations of the latter, and occupied by only one man and his wife, are better cultivated and have more land in cultivation than those of the proprietors of many slaves, and that the labor on them is performed by runaway slaves;" thus clearly proving that even runaway slaves, under the all-depressing fears of discovery and oppression, labor well, because the fruits of their labor are immediately their own.
Let us look at this subject from another point of view. The large sum of money necessary for stocking a plantation with slaves has an inevitable tendency to place the agriculture of a slave-holding community exclusively in the hands of the wealthy, a tendency at war with practical republicanism and conflicting with the best maxims of political economy.
Two hundred slaves at $200 per head would cost in the outset $40,000.
Compare this enormous outlay for the labor of a single plantation with the beautiful system of free labor as exhibited in New England, where every young laborer, with health and ordinary prudence, may acquire by his labor on the farms of others, in a few years, a farm of his own, and the stock necessary for its proper cultivation; where on a hard and unthankful soil independence and competence may be attained by all.
Free labor is perfectly in accordance with the spirit of our institutions; slave labor is a relic of a barbarous, despotic age. The one, like the firmament of heaven, is the equal diffusion of similar lights, manifest, harmonious, regular; the other is the fiery predominance of some disastrous star, hiding all lesser luminaries around it in one consuming glare.
Emancipation would reform this evil. The planter would no longer be under the necessity of a heavy expenditure for slaves. He would only pay a very moderate price for his labor; a price, indeed, far less than the cost of the maintenance of a promiscuous gang of slaves, which the present system requires.
In an old plantation of three hundred slaves, not more than one hundred effective laborers will be found. Children, the old and superannuated, the sick and decrepit, the idle and incorrigibly vicious, will be found to constitute two thirds of the whole number. The remaining third perform only about one third as much work as the same number of free laborers.
Now disburden the master of this heavy load of maintenance; let him employ free able, industrious laborers only, those who feel conscious of a personal interest in the fruits of their labor, and who does not see that such a system would be vastly more safe and economical than the present?
The slave states are learning this truth by fatal experience. Most of them are silently writhing under the great curse. Virginia has uttered her complaints aloud. As yet, however, nothing has been done even there, save a small annual appropriation for the purpose of colonizing the free colored inhabitants of the state. Is this a remedy?
But it may be said that Virginia will ultimately liberate her slaves on condition of their colonization in Africa, peacefully if possible, forcibly if necessary.
Well, admitting that Virginia may be able and willing at some remote period to rid herself of the evil by commuting the punishment of her unoffending colored people from slavery to exile, will her fearful remedy apply to some of the other slaveholding states?
It is a fact, strongly insisted upon by our Southern brethren as a reason for the perpetuation of slavery, that their climate and peculiar agriculture will not admit of hard labor on the part of the whites; that amidst the fatal malaria of the rice plantations the white man is almost annually visited by the country fever; that few of the white overseers of these plantations reach the middle period of ordinary life; that the owners are compelled to fly from their estates as the hot season approaches, without being able to return until the first frosts have fallen. But we are told that the slaves remain there, at their work, mid-leg in putrid water, breathing the noisome atmosphere, loaded with contagion, and underneath the scorching fervor of a terrible sun; that they indeed suffer; but, that their habits, constitutions, and their long practice enable them to labor, surrounded by such destructive influences, with comparative safety.
The conclusive answer, therefore, to those who in reality cherish the visionary hope of colonizing all the colored people of the United States in Africa or elsewhere, is this single, all-important fact: The labor of the blacks will not and cannot be dispensed with by the planter of the South.
To what remedy, then, can the friends of humanity betake themselves but to that of emancipation?
And nothing but a strong, unequivocal expression of public sentiment is needed to carry into effect this remedy, so far as the general government is concerned.
And when the voice of all the non-slave-holding states shall be heard on this question, a voice of expostulation, rebuke, entreaty--when the full light of truth shall break through the night of prejudice, and reveal all the foul abominations of slavery, will Delaware still cling to the curse which is wasting her moral strength, and still rivet the fetters upon her three or four thousand slaves? Let Delaware begin the work, and Maryland and Virginia must follow; the example will be contagious; and the great object of universal emancipation will be attained. Freemen, Christians, lovers of truth and justice Why stand ye idle? Ours is a government of opinion, and slavery is interwoven with it. Change the current of opinion, and slavery will be swept away. Let the awful sovereignty of the people, a power which is limited only by the sovereignty of Heaven, arise and pronounce judgment against the crying iniquity. Let each individual remember that upon himself rests a portion of that sovereignty; a part of the tremendous responsibility of its exercise.
The burning, withering concentration of public opinion upon the slave system is alone needed for its total annihilation. God has given us the power to overthrow it; a power peaceful, yet mighty, benevolent, yet effectual, "awful without severity," a moral strength equal to the emergency.
"How does it happen," inquires an able writer, "that whenever duty is named we begin to hear of the weakness of human nature? That same nature which outruns the whirlwind in the chase of gain, which rages like a maniac at the trumpet call of glory, which laughs danger and death to scorn when its least passion is awakened, becomes weak as childhood when reminded of the claims of duty." But let no one hope to find an excuse in hypocrisy.
The humblest individual of the community in one way or another possesses influence; and upon him as well as upon the proudest rests the responsibility of its rightful exercise and proper direction. The overthrow of a great national evil like that of slavery can only be effected by the united energies of the great body of the people.
Shoulder must be put to shoulder and hand linked with hand, the whole mass must be put in motion and its entire strength applied, until the fabric of oppression is shaken to its dark foundations and not one stone is left upon another.
Let the Christian remember that the God of his worship hateth oppression; that the mystery of faith can only be held by a pure conscience; and that in vain is the tithe of mint, and anise, and cummin, if the weihtier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and truth, are forgotten. Let him remember that all along the clouded region of slavery the truths of the everlasting gospel are not spoken, that the ear of iniquity is lulled, that those who minister between the "porch and the altar" dare not speak out the language of eternal justice: "Is not this the fast which I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free?" (Isa. viii. 6.) "He that stealeth a man and selleth him; or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death." (Exod. xxi. 16.1) Yet a little while and the voice of impartial prayer for humanity will be heard no more in the abiding place of slavery. The truths of the gospel, its voice of warning and exhortation, will be denounced as incendiary? The night of that infidelity, which denies God in the abuse and degradation of man, will settle over the land, to be broken only by the upheaving earthquake of eternal retribution.
To the members of the religious Society of Friends, I would earnestly appeal. They have already done much to put away the evil of slavery in this country and Great Britain. The blessings of many who were ready to perish have rested upon them. But their faithful testimony must be still steadily upborne, for the great work is but begun. Let them not relax their exertions, nor be contented with a lifeless testimony, a formal protestation against the evil. Active, prayerful, unwearied exertion is needed for its overthrow. But above all, let them not aid in excusing and palliating it. Slavery has no redeeming qualities, no feature of benevolence, nothing pure, nothing peaceful, nothing just. Let them carefully keep themselves aloof from all societies and all schemes which have a tendency to excuse or overlook its crying iniquity. True to a doctrine founded on love and mercy, "peace on earth and good will to men," they should regard the suffering slave as their brother, and endeavor to "put their souls in his soul's stead." They may earnestly desire the civilization of Africa, but they cannot aid in building up the colony of Liberia so long as that colony leans for support upon the arm of military power; so long as it proselytes to Christianity under the muzzles of its cannon; and preaches the doctrines of Christ while practising those of Mahomet. When the Sierra Leone Company was formed in England, not a member of the Society of Friends could be prevailed upon to engage in it, because the colony was to be supplied with cannon and other military stores. Yet the Foreign Agent of the Liberia Colony Society, to which the same insurmountable objection exists, is a member of the Society of Friends, and I understand has been recently employed in providing gunpowder, etc., for the use of the colony. There must be an awakening on this subject; other Woolmans and other Benezets must arise and speak the truth with the meek love of James and the fervent sincerity of Paul.
To the women of America, whose sympathies know no distinction of cline, or sect, or color, the suffering slave is making a strong appeal. Oh, let it not be unheeded! for of those to whom much is given much will be required at the last dread tribunal; and never in the strongest terms of human eulogy was woman's influence overrated. Sisters, daughters, wives, and mothers, your influence is felt everywhere, at the fireside, and in the halls of legislation, surrounding, like the all-encircling atmosphere, brother and father, husband and son! And by your love of them, by every holy sympathy of your bosoms, by every mournful appeal which comes up to you from hearts whose sanctuary of affections has been made waste and desolate, you are called upon to exert it in the cause of redemption from wrong and outrage.
Let the patriot, the friend of liberty and the Union of the States, no longer shut his eyes to the great danger, the master-evil before which all others dwindle into insignificance. Our Union is tottering to its foundation, and slavery is the cause. Remove the evil. Dry up at their source the bitter waters. In vain you enact and abrogate your tariffs; in vain is individual sacrifice, or sectional concession. The accursed thing is with us, the stone of stumbling and the rock of offence remains.
Drag, then, the Achan into light; and let national repentance atone for national sin.
The conflicting interests of free and slave labor furnish the only ground for fear in relation to the permanency of the Union. The line of separation between them is day by day growing broader and deeper; geographically and politically united, we are already, in a moral point of view, a divided people. But a few months ago we were on the very verge of civil war, a war of brothers, a war between the North and the South, between the slave-holder and the free laborer. The danger has been delayed for a time; this bolt has fallen without mortal injury to the Union, but the cloud from whence it came still hangs above us, reddening with the elements of destruction.
Recent events have furnished ample proof that the slave-holding interest is prepared to resist any legislation on the part of the general government which is supposed to have a tendency, directly or indirectly, to encourage and invigorate free labor; and that it is determined to charge upon its opposite interest the infliction of all those evils which necessarily attend its own operation, "the primeval curse of Omnipotence upon slavery."
We have already felt in too many instances the extreme difficulty of cherishing in one common course of national legislation the opposite interests of republican equality and feudal aristocracy and servitude.
The truth is, we have undertaken a moral impossibility. These interests are from their nature irreconcilable. The one is based upon the pure principles of rational liberty; the other, under the name of freedom, revives the ancient European system of barons and villains, nobles and serfs. Indeed, the state of society which existed among our Anglo-Saxon ancestors was far more tolerable than that of many portions of our republican confederacy. For the Anglo-Saxon slaves had it in their power to purchase their freedom; and the laws of the realm recognized their liberation and placed them under legal protection.
(The diffusion of Christianity in Great Britain was moreover followed by a general manumission; for it would seem that the priests and missionaries of religion in that early and benighted age were more faithful in the performance of their duties than those of the present. "The holy fathers, monks, and friars," says Sir T.
Smith, "had in their confessions, and specially in their extreme and deadly sickness, convinced the laity how dangerous a thing it was for one Christian to hold another in bondage; so that temporal men, by reason of the terror in their consciences, were glad to manumit all their villains."--Hilt. Commonwealth, Blackstone, p. 52.)
To counteract the dangers resulting from a state of society so utterly at variance with the great Declaration of American freedom should be the earnest endeavor of every patriotic statesman. Nothing unconstitutional, nothing violent, should be attempted; but the true doctrine of the rights of man should be steadily kept in view; and the opposition to slavery should be inflexible and constantly maintained. The almost daily violations of the Constitution in consequence of the laws of some of the slave states, subjecting free colored citizens of New England and elsewhere, who may happen to be on board of our coasting vessels, to imprisonment immediately on their arrival in a Southern port should be provided against. Nor should the imprisonment of the free colored citizens of the Northern and Middle states, on suspicion of being runaways, subjecting them, even after being pronounced free, to the costs of their confinement and trial, be longer tolerated; for if we continue to yield to innovations like these upon the Constitution of our fathers, we shall erelong have the name only of a free government left us.
Dissemble as we may, it is impossible for us to believe, after fully considering the nature of slavery, that it can much longer maintain a peaceable existence among us. A day of revolution must come, and it is our duty to prepare for it. Its threatened evil may be changed into a national blessing. The establishment of schools for the instruction of the slave children, a general diffusion of the lights of Christianity, and the introduction of a sacred respect for the social obligations of marriage and for the relations between parents and children, among our black population, would render emancipation not only perfectly safe, but also of the highest advantage to the country. Two millions of freemen would be added to our population, upon whom in the hour of danger we could safely depend; "the domestic foe" would be changed into a firm friend, faithful, generous, and ready to encounter all dangers in our defence. It is well known that during the last war with Great Britain, wherever the enemy touched upon our Southern coast, the slaves in multitudes hastened to join them. On the other hand, the free blacks were highly serviceable in repelling them. So warm was the zeal of the latter, so manifest their courage in the defence of Louisiana, that the present Chief Magistrate of the United States publicly bestowed upon them one of the highest eulogiums ever offered by a commander to his soldiers.
Let no one seek an apology for silence on the subject of slavery because the laws of the land tolerate and sanction it. But a short time ago the slave-trade was protected by laws and treaties, and sanctioned by the example of men eminent for the reputation of piety and integrity. Yet public opinion broke over these barriers; it lifted the curtain and revealed the horrors of that most abominable traffic; and unrighteous law and ancient custom and avarice and luxury gave way before its irresistible authority. It should never be forgotten that human law cannot change the nature of human action in the pure eye of infinite justice; and that the ordinances of man cannot annul those of God. The slave system, as existing in this country, can be considered in no other light than as the cause of which the foul traffic in human flesh is the legitimate consequence. It is the parent, the fosterer, the sole supporter of the slave-trade. It creates the demand for slaves, and the foreign supply will always be equal to the demand of consumption. It keeps the market open. It offers inducements to the slave-trader which no severity of law against his traffic can overcome. By our laws his trade is piracy; while slavery, to which alone it owes its existence, is protected and cherished, and those engaged in it are rewarded by an increase of political power proportioned to the increase of their stock of human beings! To steal the natives of Africa is a crime worthy of an ignominious death; but to steal and enslave annually nearly one hundred thousand of the descendants of these stolen natives, born in this country, is considered altogether excusable and proper! For my own part, I know no difference between robbery in Africa and robbery at home. I could with as quiet a conscience engage in the one as the other.
"There is not one general principle," justly remarks Lord Nugent, "on which the slave-trade is to be stigmatized which does not impeach slavery itself." Kindred in iniquity, both must fall speedily, fall together, and be consigned to the same dishonorable grave. The spirit which is thrilling through every nerve of England is awakening America from her sleep of death. Who, among our statesmen, would not shrink from the baneful reputation of having supported by his legislative influence the slave-trade, the traffic in human flesh? Let them then beware; for the time is near at hand when the present defenders of slavery will sink under the same fatal reputation, and leave to posterity a memory which will blacken through all future time, a legacy of infamy.
"Let us not betake us to the common arts and stratagems of nations, but fear God, and put away the evil which provokes Him; and trust not in man, but in the living God; and it shall go well for England!" This counsel, given by the purehearted William Penn, in a former age, is about to be followed in the present. An intense and powerful feeling is working in the mighty heart of England; it is speaking through the lips of Brougham and Buxton and O'Connell, and demanding justice in the name of humanity and according to the righteous law of God. The immediate emancipation of eight hundred thousand slaves is demanded with an authority which cannot much longer be disputed or trifled with. That demand will be obeyed; justice will be done; the heavy burdens will be unloosed; the oppressed set free. It shall go well for England.
And when the stain on our own escutcheon shall be seen no more; when the Declaration of our Independence and the practice of our people shall agree; when truth shall be exalted among us; when love shall take the place of wrong; when all the baneful pride and prejudice of caste and color shall fall forever; when under one common sun of political liberty the slave-holding portions of our republic shall no longer sit, like the Egyptians of old, themselves mantled in thick darkness, while all around them is glowing with the blessed light of freedom and equality, then, and not till then, shall it go well for America!