The Institution of Slavery

There is one subject which no person who pretends to convey to the reader the honest thoughts and impressions which occupied his mind during his travels in this vast Republic, can pass over in silence; and that subject, I need scarcely observe, is Slavery. It is an institution which deserves most serious consideration; for while a general unity of sentiment binds the various States together in a manner that justifies the national motto, “E pluribus unum,” the question of slavery hangs fearfully over their Union; and the thread by which it is suspended is more uncertain than the fragile hair of the sword of Damocles, for it is dependent upon the angry passions of angry man.

So true do I feel this to be, that were I a citizen of one of the Free States of America, I might hesitate before I committed my opinions to the Press. I trust, however, that I may so treat the subject that no cause for ill-blood may be given. Unquestionably, the origin of the evil is wholly with the mother country. We entered into the diabolical traffic of our fellow-creatures, and forced the wretched negro upon a land which had never before received the impress of a slave’s foot; and this we did despite all the remonstrances of the outraged and indignant colonists; and with this revolting sin upon our shoulders, it is but natural we should feel deeply interested in the sable ivy-shoot we planted, and which now covers the whole southern front of the stately edifice of the Giant Republic. Time was when a Newcastle collier might have carried the sable shoot back to the soil whence it had been stolen; now, the keels of many nations combined would scarce suffice to move the rapid growth.

But, while at England’s door lies the original guilt, America has since put the solemn seal of her paternity upon it; every foot of land which, in the rapid career of her aggrandisement, has been sullied with the footsteps of the slave for the first time, mars the beauty of the cap of liberty, and plants a slave-trader’s star in the banner of the nation. She is only doing a century later what we wickedly did a century before viz., planting slavery on a soil hitherto free, and enlarging the market for the sale of flesh and blood. The futile excuse sometimes offered, that they were merely moved from one part to another of the same country, cannot be admitted; or, if it be, upon the same principle all the Free States might return again to slavery. If it be no sin to introduce slavery into a free Sovereign State, then was England not so guilty in the first instance, for she sent slaves from a land of ignorance, cruelty, and idolatry, to an enlightened and Christian colony. It is in vain for either England or the United States to shirk the guilty responsibility of introducing slaves on free soil. England has the additional guilt of having acted against the wishes of the colonists; the United States has the additional guilt of increasing slave territory a century later, and when the philanthropists of every country were busied in endeavours to solve the problem, “How can slavery be abolished?”

Without dwelling further upon respective guilt, I will at once proceed to review the crusades which have been made against the institution, and the hopes of the slave under it; after which, I will offer for consideration such proposals as appear to me worthy the attention of all the true friends of the negro, whether owners or not. While thus treating the subject, I beg to observe that I fully recognise each individual State as possessing plenipotentiary powers within the limits of that constitution by which they are all bound together: and I trust that, in any observations I may make, no one expression will be so misconstrued as to give offence; for I know full well the stupendous difficulties with which the whole question is surrounded, and I feel it is one which should be approached only in a true spirit of charity and kindness towards the much-maligned gentlemen of the South.

I open the question by asking what is the meaning of the cry raised by the fanatics of the North the abolition crusaders? In words, it is freedom to the slave; in fact, it is spoliation of their neighbours. Had the proposition come from wild Arabs who live in houses they carry on their backs, and feed on the milk of flocks that pasture at their side, I might have comprehended the modest proposal; but coming from those whose energy for business is proverbial, and whose acuteness in all matters of dollars and cents is unsurpassed, if equalled, by the shrewdest Hebrew of the Hebrews, I confess it is beyond my puny imagination to fathom. Were it accompanied with any pecuniary offer adequate to the sacrifice proposed, I might be able to comprehend it: but for those, or the descendants of those, who, as they found white labour more profitable, sold their sable brethren to their southern neighbours, and thus easily and profitably removed slavery from their borders, for those, I say, to turn round and preach a crusade for the emancipation of the negro, in homilies of contumely, with the voice of self-righteousness, exhibits a degree of assurance that cannot be surpassed. Had they known as much of human nature as of the laws of profit and loss, they might have foreseen that in every epithet heaped upon their southern countrymen, they were riveting a fresh bolt in the slave’s fetters. On what plea did the American colony rebel? Was it not, as a broad principle, the right of self-government? Does not their constitution allow independent action to each State, subject only to certain obligations, binding alike on all? If those are complied with, on what principle of patriotism or honour do individuals or societies hurl torches of discord among their southern co-citizens?

No person who has watched or inquired into the social state of the slaves during the present century, can fail to have observed that much has been done to improve their condition among the respectable holders thereof, both as regards common education and religious instruction; at the same time, they will perceive that the first law of nature self-preservation compelled them to make common education penal, as soon as fanatical abolitionists inundated the country with firebrand pamphlets. No American can deny, that when an oppressed people feel their chains galling to them, they have a right to follow the example of the colonists, and strike for freedom. This right doubtless belongs to the negro, and these inflammable publications were calculated to lead them on to make the effort. But what reflecting mind can fail to foresee the horrors consequent upon such a hopeless endeavour? More especially must it have presented itself to the mind of the slave-masters; and could they, with sure visions before their eyes of the fearful sacrifice of human life, the breaking-up of whatever good feeling now exists between master and slave, and the inauguration of a reign of terror and unmitigated severity could they, I say, with such consequences staring them in the face, have taken a more mild, sensible, and merciful step than checking that education, through the instrumentality of which, the abolitionists were hastening forward so awful a catastrophe?

The following extract may suffice to prove the irritation produced by the abolitionists in Virginia, though, of course, I do not pretend to insinuate that the respectable portion of the community in that State would endorse its barbarous ravings:

“SLAVERY IN THE SCHOOL-ROOM. The (American) Richmond Examiner, in connexion with the recent trial of Ward of Kentucky, has the following theory on the extinction of schoolmasters in general: ’The South has for years been overrun with hordes of illiterate, unprincipled graduates of the Yankee free schools (those hot-beds of self-conceit and ignorance), who have, by dint of unblushing impudence, established themselves as schoolmasters in our midst. So odious are some of these “itinerant ignoramuses” to the people of the South; so full of abolitionism and concealed incendiarism are many of this class; so full of guile, fraud, and deceit, that the deliberate shooting one of them down, in the act of poisoning the minds of our slaves or our children, we think, if regarded as homicide at all, should always be deemed perfectly justifiable; and we imagine the propriety of shooting an abolition schoolmaster, when caught tampering with our slaves, has never been questioned by any intelligent Southern man. This we take to be the unwritten common law of the South, and we deem it advisable to promulgate the law, that it may be copied into all the abolition papers, thundered at by the three thousand New England preachers, and read with peculiar emphasis, and terrible upturning of eyes, by Garrison, at the next meeting of the anti-slavery party at Faneuil Hall. We repeat, that the shooting of itinerant abolition schoolmasters is frequently a creditable and laudable act, entitling a respectable Southern man to, at least, a seat in the Legislature or a place in the Common Council. Let all Yankee schoolmasters who propose invading the South, endowed with a strong nasal twang, a long scriptural name, and Webster’s lexicographic book of abominations, seek some more congenial land, where their own lives will be more secure than in the “vile and homicidal Slave States.” We shall be glad if the ravings of the abolition press about the Ward acquittal shall have this effect.’”

We now see that the abolitionists have rendered the education of the negro, with a view to his ultimate fitness for freedom or self-government, utterly impracticable, however anxious the slave-owner might have otherwise been to instruct him. Thus, by their imprudent violence, they have effectually closed the educational pathway to emancipation. It should not either be forgotten that the Southerners may have seen good reason to doubt the Christian sincerity of those who clamoured so loudly for loosening the fetters of the slaves. The freed slaves in the Northern States must have frequently been seen by them, year after year, as they went for “the season” to the watering-places, and could they observe much in his position there to induce the belief that the Northerners are the friends of the negro? In some cities, he must not drive a coach or a car; in others, he must not enter a public conveyance; in places of amusement, he is separated from his white friend; even in the house of that God with whom “there is no respect of persons,” he is partitioned off as if he were an unclean animal; in some States he is not admitted at all.

With such evidences of friendship for the negro, might they not question the honesty of Northern champions of emancipation? Could they really place confidence in the philanthropic professions of those who treat the negro as an outcast, and force on him a life of wretchedness instead of striving to raise him in the social scale? If a negro had the intellect of a Newton if he were clothed in purple and fine linen, and if he came fresh from an Oriental bath, and fragrant as “Araby’s spices,” a Northerner would prefer sitting down with a pole-cat he would rather pluck a living coal from the fire than grasp the hand of the worthiest negro that ever stepped. Whoever sees a negro in the North smile at the approach of the white man? Who has not seen a worthy planter or slave-owner returning from a short absence, greeted with smiles in abundance, or perhaps receiving a broad grin of pride and pleasure as the worthy owner gave his hand to some old faithful slave?

I think I have shown, in the foregoing remarks, that the Southern has three solid and distinct grounds of objection to the Free States abolitionist. First, The natural spirit of man, which rebels against wholesale vituperation and calumny. Secondly, The obstacle they have placed in the way of giving the slave simple education, by introducing most inflammable pamphlets. Thirdly, The questionable sincerity of their professed sympathy for the slave, as evidenced by the antipathy they exhibit towards the free negro, and by the palpable fact that he is far worse off in a free than in a slave State.

The same objection cannot justly be taken against English abolitionists, because they act and think chiefly upon the evidence furnished by American hands; besides which, slavery in the West Indian colonies was felt by the majority of the nation to be so dark a stain upon our national character, that, although burdened with a debt such as the world never before dreamt of, the sum of 20,000,000l. was readily voted for the purposes of emancipation. Whether the method in which the provisions of the act were carried out was very wise or painfully faulty, we need not stop to inquire: the object was a noble one, and the sacrifice was worthy of the object.

With all the feelings of that discussion fresh in the public mind, it is no wonder that philanthropists, reading the accounts published by American authors of the horrors of slavery, should band themselves together for the purpose of urging America in a friendly tone to follow Great Britain’s noble example, and to profit by any errors she had committed as to the method of carrying emancipation into effect. I am quite aware a slaveholder may reply, “This is all very good; but I must have a word with you, good gentlemen of England, as to sincerity. If you hold slavery so damnable a sin, why do you so greedily covet the fruits of the wages of that sin? The demand of your markets for slave produce enhances the value of the slave, and in so doing clenches another nail in the coffin, of his hopes.” I confess I can give no reply, except the humiliating confession which, if the feeling of the nation is to be read in its Parliamentary acts, amounts to this “We have removed slavery from our own soil, and we don’t care a farthing if all the rest of the world are slaves, provided only we can get cheap cotton and sugar, &c. Mammon! Mammon! Mammon! is ever the presiding deity of the Anglo-Saxon race, whether in the Old or the New World.

There can be no doubt that the reception of Mrs. Beecher Stowe’s work and person in England was very galling to many a Southerner, and naturally so; because it conveyed a tacit endorsement of all her assertions as to the horrors of the slavery system. When I first read Uncle Tom, I said, “This will rather tend to rivet than to loosen the fetters of the slave, rousing the indignation of all the South against her and her associates.” Everything I have since seen, heard, and read, only tends to confirm my original impression. While I would readily give Mrs. Stowe a chaplet of laurel as a clever authoress, I could never award her a faded leaf as the negro’s friend. There can be no doubt that Mrs. Beecher Stowe has had no small share in the abolition excitement which has been raging in the States, and which has made Kansas the battle-field of civil war; but the effect of this agitation has gone farther: owing to husting speeches and other occurrences, the negro’s mind has been filled with visionary hopes of liberty; insurrections have been planned, and, worse still, insurrections have been imagined. In fear for life and property, torture worthy of the worst days of the Inquisition has been resorted to, to extort confession from those who had nothing to confess. Some died silent martyrs; others, in their agony, accused falsely the first negro whose name came to their memory; thus, injustice bred injustice, and it is estimated that not less than a thousand wretched victims have closed their lives in agony. One white man, who was found encouraging revolt, and therefore merited punishment of the severest kind, was sentenced, in that land of equality, to 900 lashes, and died under the infliction a sight that would have gladdened the eyes of Bloody Jeffreys. And why all these horrors? I distinctly say, thanks to the rabid Abolitionists.

Let me now for a moment touch upon the treatment of slaves. The farms of the wealthy planters, and the chapels with negro minister and negro congregation, bear bright evidence to the fact that negroes have their bodily and spiritual wants attended to, not forgetting also the oral teaching they often receive from the wife of the planter. But is that system universal? Those who would answer that question truthfully need not travel to the Southern States for documentary evidence. Is any human being fit to be trusted with absolute power over one of his fellow-creatures, however deeply his public reputation and his balance at the banker’s may be benefited by the most moderate kindness to them? If every man were a Howard or a Wilberforce, and every woman a Fry or a Nightingale, the truth would be ever the same, and they would be the first to acknowledge it. Man is unfit for irresponsible power.

Now the only bar before which the proprietor of slaves is likely to be arraigned, is the bar of public opinion; and the influence which that knowledge will have upon his conduct is exactly in the inverse ratio to its need; for the hardened brute, upon whom its influence is most wanted, is the very person who, if he can escape lynching, is indifferent to public opinion. No Southerner can be affronted, if I say that he is not more Christian, kind-hearted, and mild-tempered than his fellow-man in the Northern States, in France, or in England; and yet how constantly do we find citizens of those communities evincing unrestrained passions in the most brutal acts, and that with the knowledge that the law is hanging over their heads, and that their victims can give evidence against them; whereas, in the Slave States, provided the eye of a white man is excluded, there is scarce a limit to the torture which a savage monster may inflict upon the helpless slave, whose word cannot be received in evidence. It is as absurd to judge of the condition of the slave by visiting an amiable planter and his lady, as it would be to judge of the clothing, feeding, and comfort of our labouring population by calling at the town-house of the Duke of Well-to-do and carefully noting the worthy who fills an arm-chair like a sentry-box, and is yclept the porter. Look at him, with his hair powdered and fattened down to the head; behold him as the bell rings, using his arms as levers to force his rotundity out of its case; then observe the pedestals on which he endeavours to walk; one might imagine he had been tapped for the dropsy half-a-dozen times, and that all the water had run into the calves of his legs. Is that a type of the poorer classes?

Where, then, are we to look for true data on which to form an opinion of the treatment of the slave? Simply by studying human nature and weighing human passions, and then inquiring by what laws they are held in check. Now, as to the laws, they amount to nothing, inasmuch as slave evidence is not admissible, and the possibility of any oppression, even to death itself, must frequently be, without any fear of punishment, in the hands of the owner. If law, then, affords the negro no efficient protection from human passions, where are we to look for it in human nature, except it be in the influences of Christianity, self-interest, or public opinion? The last of these, we have seen, is upon a sliding-scale of an inefficiency which increases in proportion to the necessity for its influence, and is therefore all but impotent for good.

Let us now consider self-interest. Will any one assert that self-interest is sufficient to restrain anger? How many a hasty word does man utter, or how many a hasty act does man commit, under the influence of passion he cannot or will not restrain and that among his equals, who may be able to resent it, or in the face of law ready to avenge it! How prone are we all, if things go wrong from some fault of our own, to lose our temper and try to throw the blame on others, rather than admit the failure to be our own fault! Without dwelling upon the serious injury people often do to themselves by unrestrained passion, think for a moment of the treatment frequently inflicted upon the poor animals over whom they rule absolute. Is not kindness to a horse the interest as well as the duty of the owner? and yet how often is he the unfortunate victim of the owner’s rage or cruel disposition, while faithfully and willingly expending all his powers in the service of his tyrant master! If these things be so among equals, or comparative equals, and also in man’s dealings with the lower orders of the creation, what chance has the poor slave, with the arm of legislative justice paralysed, and an arm nerved with human passion his only hope of mercy? for self-defence, that first law of nature, is the highest crime he can be guilty of: and, while considering the mercenary view of self-interest, let it not be forgotten that an awful amount of human suffering is quite compatible with unimpaired health, and that a slave may be frequently under the lash and yet fully able to do his day’s work.

The last influence we have to consider is indeed the brightest and best of all Christianity: high on the brotherly arch of man’s duty to his fellow-man, and forming its enduring keystone, we read, traced by Jéhovah in imperishable letters, radiant with love, “Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you;” “Love thy neighbour as thyself.” Surely it needs no words of mine to show, that a faithful history of the most Christian country in the most Christian times the world ever witnessed, would contain, fearful evidence of the cruelty of man setting at nought the above blessed precept. Nay, more I question if, viewed in its entire fulness, there is any one single command in Scripture more habitually disregarded. Proverbs are generally supposed to be a condensation of facts or experiences. Whence comes “Every one for himself, and God for us all”? or, the more vulgar one, “Go ahead, and the d l take the hindmost?” What are they but concentrations of the fact that selfishness is man’s ruling passion? What are most laws made for, but to restrain men by human penalties from a broach of the law of love? and, if these laws be needful in communities, all the members of which are equal in the eyes of the law, and even then be found inefficient for their purpose, as may be daily witnessed in every country, who will say that the influence of Christianity is sufficient protection to the poor slave?

There is only one other influence that I shall mention that is habit; it acts for and against the slave. Thus, the kind and good, brought up among slaves, very often nursed by them, and grown up in the continual presence of their gentleness and faithfulness, repay them with unmeasured kindness, and a sympathy in all their sickness and their sorrows, to a degree which I feel quite certain the most tender-hearted Christian breathing could never equal, if landed among slaves, for the first time, at years of maturity. The Christian planter’s wife or daughter may be seen sitting up at night, cooking, nursing, tending an old sick and helpless slave, with nearly, if not quite, the same affectionate care she would bestow upon a sick relation, the very friendlessness of the negro stimulating the benevolent heart. This is, indeed, the bright side of the influence of habit. But the other side is not less true; and there the effect is, that a coarse, brutal mind, trained up among those it can bully with impunity, acquires a heartlessness and indifference to the negro’s wants and sufferings, that grow with the wretched possessor’s growth. This is the dark side of the influence of habit.

Let two examples suffice, both of which I have upon the very best authority. A faithful slave, having grown up with his master’s rising family, obtained his freedom as a reward for his fidelity, and was entrusted with the management of the property; realizing some money, he became the owner of slaves himself, from among whom he selected his wife, and to all of whom he showed the greatest consideration. Some time after, lying upon his deathbed, he made his will, in which he bequeathed his wife and all his other negroes to his old master, giving as his reason, that, from his own lively recollections of his master’s unvarying kindness to himself and the other slaves, he felt certain that in so doing he was taking the best means in his power of securing their future happiness. What stronger evidence of the growth of kindness in the master’s heart could possibly be desired? Here, then, is the effect of habit in a benevolent owner. Now, turn to the opposite picture. A lady of New Orleans was accustomed to strip and flog a slave for the pleasure of witnessing sufferings which she endeavoured to render more acute by rubbing soft soap into the broken skin. Here you have the effect of habit upon a brutal mind.

To the credit of New Orleans be it recorded, that the knowledge of this atrocity having come to white ears, her house was broken open, every article it contained pulled out in the street and burnt, and, had she not succeeded in eluding search, the she-devil would have been most assuredly reduced to ashes with her own goods. America became too hot for her, and Providence alone knows the demon’s cave of concealment.

Having thus passed in review the various influences bearing upon the treatment of the slave, and seen how utterly inadequate they are to protect him from ill-treatment, who can wonder that the tales of real or supposed cruelty inflicted upon slaves by the Southerners are received with indignation by both parties in the States? the virtuous and kind master, indignant at the thought of being included in the category of monsters, and the real savage, if possible, still more indignant, because his conscience brings home to his seared heart the truthfulness of the picture, even if it be overdrawn almost to caricature. And here it is curious to observe the different action of these two parties: the former, in the consciousness of a kind heart and a real desire for the negro’s good, calmly states what has been done and is doing for the negro, and throws a natural veil of doubt over horrors so utterly repulsive to the feelings that their existence is discredited; the latter, with a shallowness which Providence sometimes attaches to guilt, aware that some such accusations come too painfully and truthfully home, pronounce their own condemnation by their line of defence recrimination.

Take, for example, the following extract from an article in a Slave State paper, entitled “A Sequel to Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and in which Queen Victoria, under the guidance of a “genius,” has the condition of her subjects laid bare before her. After various other paragraphs of a similar nature comes the following:

“The sky was obscured by the smoke of hundreds of small chimneys and vast edifices, stretching in lines for miles and miles. The latter were crowded with women and children, young in years, but withered in form and feature. The countenances of the men were as colourless as the white fabric in their looms; their eyes sparkled with intelligence, but it was chiefly the intelligence of suffering, of privation, of keen sense of wrong, of inability to be better, of rankling hatred against existing institutions, and a furtive wish that some hideous calamity would bury them all in one common, undistinguishable ruin.

“’Are these the people? groaned the Queen, as the cold damp of more than mortal agony moistened her marble forehead.

“’Not all of them!” sounded the voice in her ear, so sharply that her Majesty looked up eagerly, and saw written, in letters of fire, on the palace wall:

“’1. Every twelfth person in your dominions is a pauper, daily receiving parochial relief.

“’2. Every twentieth person in your dominions is a destitute wanderer, with no roof but the sky no home but a prison. They are the Ishmaelites of modern society; every one’s hand is against them, and their hands are against every one.

“’3. There are in Freeland 10,743,747 females; divide that number by 500,000, and you will find that every twentieth woman in your dominions is Oh! horror piled on horror! a harlot!’”

Then follows the scene of a disconsolate female throwing herself over a bridge, the whole winding up with this charming piece of information, addressed by the genius to her Majesty:

“In your own land, liberty, the absence of which in another is deplored, is, in its most god-like development, but a name unless that may be termed liberty which practically is but vulgar license license to work from rosy morn to dark midnight for the most scanty pittances license to store up wealth in the hands and for the benefit of the few license to bellow lustily for rival politicians license to send children to ragged schools license to sot in the ale-house license to grow lumpish and brutal license to neglect the offices of religion, to swear, to lie, to blaspheme license to steal, to pander unchecked to the coarsest appetites, to fawn and slaver over the little great ones of the earth license to creep like a worm through life, or bound through it like a wild beast; and, last and most precious of all for it is untaxed license to starve, to rot, to die, and be buried in a foetid pauper’s grave, on which the sweet-smelling flowers, sent to strew the pathway of man and woman with beauty, love, and hope, will refuse to grow, much less bloom.”

Setting aside all exaggerations, who does not recognise in the foregoing quotations “the galled jade wincing”? Were the writer a kind owner of slaves, he might have replied to Uncle Tom’s Cabin by facts of habitual kindness to them, sufficient to prove that the authoress had entered into the region of romance; but in his recrimination he unconsciously displays the cloven hoof, and leaves no doubt on the mind that he writes under the impulse of a bitterly-accusing monitor within. It would be wasting time to point out the difference between a system which binds millions of its people in bondage to their fellow-man, a master’s sovereign will their only practical protection, and a system which not only makes all its subjects equal in the eye of the law, and free to seek their fortunes wherever they list, but which is for ever striving to mitigate the distress that is invariably attendant upon an overcrowded population. Even granting that his assertions were not only true, but that they were entirely produced by tyrannical enactments, what justification would England’s sins be for America’s crimes? Suppose the House of Commons and the Lords Temporal and Spiritual obtained the royal sanction to an act for kidnapping boys and grilling them daily for a table-d’hote in their respective legislative assemblies, would such an atrocity or any worse atrocity, if such be possible in any respect alter the question of right and wrong between master and slave? Let any charge of cruelty or injustice in England be advanced on its own simple grounds, and, wherever it comes from, it will find plenty of people, I am proud and happy to say, ready to inquire into it and to work hard for its removal; but when it comes in the shape of recrimination, who can fail to recognise an accusing conscience striving to throw the cloak of other people’s sins over the abominations which that conscience is ever ringing in the writer’s ears at home.

I must, however, state that, in speaking of the sufferings or injuries to which the slave is liable, I am not proclaiming them merely on the authority of Northern abolitionists, or on the deductions which I have drawn from human nature; many travellers have made similar charges. Miss Bremer writes: “I beheld the old slave hunted to death because he dared to visit his wife beheld him mangled, beaten, recaptured, fling himself into the water of the Black River, over which he was retaken into the power of his hard master and the law was silent. I beheld a young woman struck, for a hasty word, upon the temples, so that she fell down dead! and the law was silent. I heard the law, through its jury, adjudicate between a white man and a black, and sentence the latter to be flogged when the former was guilty and they who were honest among the jurymen in vain opposed the verdict. I beheld here on the shores of the Mississippi, only a few months since, a young negro girl fly from the maltreatment of her master, and he was a professor of religion, and fling herself into the river.” Homes of the New World. Would Miss Bremer write these things for the press, as occurring under her own eye, if they were not true?

Then, again, the Press itself in the South bears witness to what every one must admit to be an inhuman practice. How often must the reader of a Southern States’ paper see children of the tenderest age, sometimes even under a year old, advertised for public sale! Did any one every take up the New Orleans paper without seeing more than one such advertisement as the following?

150 NEGROES FOE SALE.

Just arrived, and for sale, at my old stand, N, Moreau-street, Third Municipality, one hundred and fifty young and likely NEGROES, consisting of field-hands, house servants, and mechanics. They will be sold on reasonable terms for good paper or cash. Persons wishing to purchase will find it to their advantage to give me a call. Wm. F. TALBOTT.

What happiness can the slave enjoy among a community where such an advertisement as the following can be tolerated, or, worse still, when, as in the present instance, it is sent forth under the sanction of the law? The advertisement is taken from a paper published at Wilmington, North Carolina.

$225 REWARD. STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA, NEW HANOVER COUNTY. Whereas, complaint upon, oath hath this day been made to us, two of the Justices of the Peace for the State and County aforesaid, by BENJAMIN HALLET, of the said county, that two certain male slaves belonging to him, named LOTT, aged about twenty-two years, five feet four or five inches high, and black, formerly belonging to LOTT WILLIAMS, of Onslow county; and BOB, aged about sixteen years, five feet high, and black; have absented themselves from their said master’s service, and are supposed to be lurking about this county, committing acts of felony and other misdeeds. These are, therefore, in the name of the State aforesaid, to command the slaves forthwith to return home to their masters; and we do hereby, by virtue of the Act of the General Assembly in such cases made and provided, intimate and declare that if the said LOTT and BOB do not return home and surrender themselves, immediately after the publication of these presents, that ANY PERSON MAY KILL AND DESTROY THE SAID SLAVES, by such means as he or they may think fit, without accusation or impeachment of any crime or offence for so doing, and without incurring any penalty or forfeiture thereby.

Given under our hands and seals, this 28th day of February, 1853.

W.N. PEDEN, J.P.,

W.C. BETTENCOURT, J.P.,

$225 REWARD. TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS will be given for negro LOTT, EITHER
DEAD OR ALIVE; and TWENTY-FIVE DOLLARS FOR BOB’S HEAD, delivered to
the subscriber in the town of Wilmington.

BENJAMIN HALLET.

March 2nd, 1853.

There is another evidence of a want of happiness among the slaves, which, though silent and unheard, challenges contradiction: I mean the annual escape of from one to two thousand into Canada, in spite not only of the natural difficulties and privations of the journey, but also of the fearful dread of the consequences of re-capture. Doubtless some of these may be fleeing from the dread of just punishment for offences against the law, but none can doubt that many more are endeavouring to escape from what they feel to be cruelty, injustice, and oppression.

I do not wish to pander to a morbid appetite for horrors by gathering together under one view all the various tales of woe and misery which I have heard of, known, or seen. I think I have said enough to prove to any unprejudiced person that such things do and must ever exist under the institution of slavery; and that, although the statements of rabid abolitionists are often the most unwarranted exaggerations, the all but total denial of their occurrence by the slave-owners is also not correct. The conviction forced upon my own mind, after much thought and inquiry on this most interesting topic is, that there are many dark clouds of cruelty in a sky which is bright with much of the truest and kindest sympathy for the poor slave.

I now propose to take a short review of the progress and real state of slavery, and I will commence by giving in extenso an enactment which materially affects the negro, and, as I have before observed, has more than once threatened the Republic with disunion:

Section 2. Privileges of Citizens. Clause 3. “No person held to service or labour in one state under the laws thereof, escaping to another, shall in consequence of any law or regulation therein be discharged from such service or labour, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labour may be due.”

Of course the word “slave” would have read strangely among a community who set themselves up as the champions of the “equal rights of man;” but it is clear that, according to this clause in the constitution which binds the Republic together, every free state is compelled to assist in the recapture of a fugitive slave.

What was the exact number of slaves at the date of this law being passed I have not the means of ascertaining: at the beginning of this century it was under 900,000; in the Census of 1850 they had increased to 3,200,000. There were originally 13 States. At present there are 31, besides territory not yet incorporated into States. The Slave States are 15, or nearly half. Thus much for increase of slaves and the slave soil. But, it will naturally be asked, how did it happen that, as the additional soil was incorporated, the sable workmen appeared as if by magic? The answer is very simple. The demand regulated the supply, and slave breeding became a most important feature in the system: thus the wants of the more southern States became regularly lessened by large drafts from Maryland, Kentucky, and Virginia. Anybody desirous of testing the truth of this statement will find statistical data to assist him in an unpretending volume by Marshall Hall, M.D., &c., On Twofold Slavery, which I read with much interest, although I cannot agree with him in everything.

I am aware that residents in these breeding States are to be found who would scorn to utter a wilful falsehood, and who deny this propagation of the human chattel for the flesh market; but there can be little doubt that the unbiased seeker after truth will find that such is the case. And why not? Why should those who make their livelihood by trafficking in the flesh of their fellow-creatures hesitate to increase their profits by paying attention to the breeding of them? These facts do not come under the general traveller’s eye, because, armed with letters of introduction, he consorts more with worthy slave-owners, who, occupied with the welfare of those around and dependent upon them, know little of the world beyond; in the same way as in England, a Christian family may be an example of patriarchal simplicity and of apostolic zeal and love, and yet beyond the circle of their action, though not very far from its circumference, the greatest distress and perhaps cruelty may abound. How many of the dark spots on our community has the single zeal of the Earl of Shaftesbury forced upon the public mind, of which we were utterly ignorant, though living in the midst of them. The degraded female drudge in a coal-pit, the agonized infant in a chimney, and the death-wrought child in a factory each and all bear testimony to how much of suffering may exist while surrounded by those whose lives are spent in Christian charity. And so it is in every community, Slave States included. Christian hearts, pregnant with zeal and love, are diffusing blessings around them; and, occupied with their noble work, they know little of the dark places that hang on their borders. The Southern planter and his lady may be filled with the love of St. John, and radiate the beams thereof on every man, woman, and child under their guardianship, and then, “measuring other people’s corn by their own lovely bushel,” they may well hesitate to believe in the existence of a profligate breeding Pandemonium within the precincts of their immediate country. Yet, alas! there can be little doubt that it does exist.

Let us now fix our attention on the actual facts of the case which all parties admit. First, we have a slave population of 3,200,000. I think, if I estimate their marketable value at 80_l_ a head, I shall be considerably below the truth. That gives us in human flesh, 250,000,000l. Secondly, let us take the product of their labour. The Slave States raise annually

Rice             215,000,000 lbs.
Tobacco          185,000,000  "
Sugar            248,000,000  "
Cotton         1,000,000,000  "
Molasses          12,000,000 gallons.
Indian Corn.     368,000,000 bushels.

Estimating these at a lower value than they have ever fallen to, you have here represented 80,000,000l. sterling of annual produce from the muscle and sinew of the slave. Surely the wildest enthusiast, did he but ponder over these facts, could not fail to pause ere he mounted the breach, shouting the rabid war-cry of abolition, which involves a capital of 250,000,000_l_, and an annual produce of 80,000,000l.

The misery which an instantaneous deliverance of the slave would cause by the all but certain loss of the greater portion of the products above enumerated, must be apparent to the least reflecting mind. If any such schemer exist, he would do well to study the history of our West India islands from the period of their sudden emancipation, especially since free-trade admitted slave produce on equal terms with the produce of free labour. Complaints of utter ruin are loud and constant from the proprietors in nearly every island; they state, and state with truth, that it is impossible for free labour at a high price, and which can only be got perhaps for six hours a day, to compete with the steady slave work of twelve hours a day; and they show that slaveholding communities have materially increased their products, which can only have been effected by a further taxing of the slave’s powers, or a vast increase of fresh human material. But they further complain that the negro himself is sadly retrograding. “They attend less to the instruction of their religious teachers; they pay less attention to the education of their children; vice and immorality are on the increase,” &c. Petition to the Imperial Parliament from St. George’s, Jamaica, July, 1852.

I might multiply such statements from nearly every island, and quote the authority of even some of their governors to the same effect; but the above are sufficient for my purpose. They prove three most important facts for consideration, when treating the question of Slavery. First, that you may ruin the planter. Secondly, that you may free without benefiting the slave. Thirdly, that each State, as it becomes free, tends to give additional value to the property of those States which choose to hold on to slavery; and all these results may occur despite the wisdom (?) of senators, and an indemnity of 20,000,000l.

Surely, then, the Southern planter may well assert that he sees not sufficient inducement to follow our hasty wholesale example. But while such convictions are forced upon him, he will be a degenerate son of energetic sires, if he be so scared at our ill-success as to fear to look for some better path to the same noble object; and there is one most important consideration which should impel him, while avoiding all rash haste, to brook no dangerous delay; that consideration is, that the difficulty of dealing with the question is increasing with fearful rapidity, for the slave population has nearly quadrupled itself since the beginning of the century. The capital involved is, we have seen, gigantic; but the question of numbers is by far the most perplexing to deal with, in a social point of view. The white population of the Slave States is, in rough numbers, 6,000,000; the slave population is more than 3,000,000, and the free blacks 250,000. Does any sane man believe that, if slavery had existed in Great Britain, and that the slaves had constituted one-third of the population, we should have attempted to remove the black bar from our escutcheon, by the same rapid and summary process which we adopted to free the negro in our colonies?

An American writer on Slavery has said, and I think most justly, “that two distinct races of people, nearly equal in numbers, and unlike in colour, manners, habits, feelings and state of civilization to such a degree that amalgamation is impossible, cannot dwell together in the same community unless the one be in subjection to the other.” So fully am I convinced of the truth of this statement, and so certain am I that every one who has been in a Slave State must be satisfied of the truth of it, that I feel sure, if the South freed every slave to-morrow, not a week would elapse before each State in the Union without exception would pass stringent laws to prevent them settling within their borders; even at this moment such a law exists in some States.

With all these difficulties constantly before them, who can wonder that a kind-hearted planter, while gazing on the cheerful and happy faces of his well-fed and well-housed slaves, should look distrustfully at emancipation, and strive to justify to his conscience opposition to any plan, however gradual, which leads thereto. Nevertheless, however satisfied in his mind that the slaves are kindly treated, and that harshness even is never used, he cannot contemplate the institution from a sufficient distance to be beyond its influences, without feeling that emancipation is the goal towards which his thoughts should ever bend, and that in proportion as the steps towards it must be gradual, so should they speedily commence. But how? Washington, while confessing his most earnest desire for abolition, declares his conviction that “it can only be effected by legislative authority.”

The next chapter will detail such propositions as, in my humble opinion, appear most worthy of the consideration of the Legislature, with a view to the gradual removal of the black star from the striped banner.