But we have a way, at the North, of delivering over our Southern brethren to supposed terrible liabilities in their relation to the slaves. "They are sleeping on a volcano;" "they keep weapons under their pillows;" "they are always in fear." And when a servile insurrection takes place, many close their eyes and lift their hands, and say, "Perhaps the day of retribution is come! They have been 'sinning against the Northern conscience;' they have been resisting our well-meant efforts for their good; we would not stir up the slaves against them," (some kindly say,) "but if they rise, did not Jefferson say, 'There is not an attribute of the Almighty that would take part with the whites?'" Thus we prefer to take Jefferson's opinion on this subject, though hundreds as good and wise as he, and quite as decided in their acceptance of the Christian religion, differ totally from him. In strictly political matters, many of the same people who love to quote Jefferson against modern slave-holders, are of opinion that time and experience give modern statesmen some advantages in their judgments. As to Jefferson's oft-quoted remark, above cited, it appears to me that if the Almighty has anywhere set the seal of his divine blessing, clear and broad, it is on the Christian influence of our Southern friends upon this colored race.

It is humiliating to me, in looking back to the North, to see how injudicious and weak we are in pouring out our sympathy upon a fugitive slave, without discrimination. The lecture before the Boston audience, already mentioned, contains a perfect illustration of Northern credulity in the case of fugitive slaves. The lecturer tells us that while reading the printed report of Mr. Everett's Oration at the inauguration of the Webster statue, a fugitive slave appeared at his door, and, baring his breast and back, showed him the marks of the branding-iron, and the scars from the lash. At the sight, he says, the paper dropped from his hand. He "thought of Webster and the Fugitive Slave Law."

Now this negro was, just as likely as not, one of those characters whom we call jail-birds. If so, and he had lived at the North, instead of branding-iron and stripes, he might have had parti-colored pants, and manacles, and a record of ten or twenty years in the state's prison. But because he ran away from the South, he straightway became, as a matter of course, a martyr and a saint. Perhaps he was, truly, a saint; and perhaps he was not.

Looking out of the window in a hotel the other day, we saw two white men leading up a black man with a leather bridle around his neck.

"Here, Hattie," said your Uncle, "here is slavery; now you have it in full bloom."

The poor fellow was crying and protesting and begging to be released. Your Uncle stepped out and spoke to a very respectable gentleman whom he met on the piazza. He could not refrain from expressing some feeling at the sight of a fellow-creature so literally "reduced to the level of the brutes." I did not hear the whole of the conversation, for my attention was diverted by two roosters who just then flew at each other and were assailed by a troop of black urchins who tried to scare them apart, pulling their tail-feathers and uttering ludicrous cries.

"You are from the North, sir, I take it," said the gentleman, in reply to your Uncle.

"I am, sir," said your Uncle. "Do you often bridle your slaves in this way, in these parts? I am seeking for information on the subject of slavery."

"I shall be happy to give you any," said the gentleman. "I am here as a magistrate."

"I am one at home," said my husband.

"One of these white men who led the negro," said the gentleman, "was riding on horseback, and was attracted to a by-place by the screams of a child, and found this black man attempting violence upon a black girl ten years old. He knocked the fellow down and held him, and called for help. A white man who came up took the bridle from the horse, to secure the villain with it. They have with difficulty kept the negroes from putting him to death."

"We are all ready, sir," said a sheriff to the gentleman.

"Will you walk into the hall?" said the magistrate to your Uncle.

But the stage-coach was waiting for him, and we were soon on our way. Your Uncle was silent for nearly fifteen minutes, when he said,—

"What is that passage, Hattie, about answering a matter before you understand it?"

I gave Hattie my Bible, and, after a while, she read:

"He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him. The spirit of a man"—

"That will do, child," said your Uncle, "I wanted only that one verse."

* * * * *

I should be glad to transfer some of this Southern ease and beauty of manners to the North. I wish that we could see more of these Southern ladies and gentlemen there. They stay away very much, because they cannot bring servants with them. Whole families would rejoice to visit our Northern shores and mountains for summer residences, were it not for this. When our passions subside, and we can look at this subject fairly, we shall repeal the statutes which prevent a Southerner from residing in a free state for a season, with his or her servant. The people of Massachusetts, for example, can easily appreciate the hardship of being kept away from a clime which they would visit for health or recreation, by the fear of being set upon by a mob of whites and blacks seeking to drag a wet-nurse, for example, before a court to be interrogated whether she does not wish to leave us. How long will our warm-hearted, hospitable people allow such things? The answer, from ten thousand tongues, will be, So long as Southern people imprison colored seamen from the North!—If Southern slaves should come here and make trouble between our domestics and us, and we should forbid their coming, the cases would be more nearly parallel.—Moreover, it will be said that the manner in which people from the North have in many instances of late been treated at the South, does not encourage the hope and prospect of amicable intercourse. This is certainly so; and therefore what have we to look for but everlasting hatred and strife? and that whether we be one nation or two confederacies.

A distinguished Southern gentleman came home from his visit to the North, where he had received great attentions, and he filled his hearers with his enthusiastic admiration of us for our wonderful ingenuity in all the arts of life.

"It is astonishing," said he, "how they work everything into shape, and create instruments for their purposes. But," said he, "there is one thing in which they are deficient. They are omnipotent with matter, but they do not know how to govern men. If they did," said he, "there would be no chance for us in any form of contest with them."

I was much entertained, and I said to him that I supposed his remarks would need qualification on both sides; but I was greatly impressed, as I often am here, with the secret, strong attachment which there is in Southern hearts to the North as a part of the country, irrespective of its anti-slavery views and feelings. Its climate and institutions and arts and scenery are adapted to their diversified wants. "The North and the South, Thou hast created them." God made the North for the South, and the South for the North, and our acts of non-intercourse are in violation of his will. We are in a war of "conscience," inflamed by doctrinal error on our part. It allows no "conscience" to the other side. The state of our "consciences" at the North is jury, judge, and executioner. There is no "conscience," we think, in Southern churches, ministers, judges, citizens, except that which is defiled. Probably there is not on earth this day a greater despot, or one more prepared for inquisitorial proceedings, than "Northern Conscience."

No doubt I should be contented and happy to be a slave-holder, had I been born and bred here, but I rejoice that I belong to a free state. I love to think of my capable girls, my "help." at home, who make the household go like clock-work, instead of having a swarm of servants who do only half as much, and only half as well. I am glad, too, that my children live in a climate favorable to labor, and are not born to be waited upon. But I am ashamed of those who erect these things into an invidious comparison, and with a supercilious, reproachful spirit. God, who made us of one blood, has fixed the bounds of our habitations. I love these Southerners as I never loved new acquaintances before. But I prefer a state of society free from slavery: yet this makes me love those to whom God has given a South country, and imposed upon it a necessity, at present at least, to employ the African race as cultivators of the soil. It has often disturbed my feelings to hear some people inveigh reproachfully against the Southern country, as comparing unfavorably with neighboring free states. Going up the Ohio River one day, a Northern gentleman pointed to some poor-looking lands in Kentucky on the one hand, and some flourishing fields of Ohio on the other. "There, ladies and gentlemen," said he, "is slavery," pointing to Kentucky, "and there," turning to the other side, "is freedom."

"Now," said an intelligent Ohioan, "if you will excuse me for saying it, I regard that as clear humbug. What is cultivated on either side? The products of Kentucky, if raised in Ohio, would give the same look to her lands. It is not slavery and freedom that make the difference; it is the difference between large staples sown over large territories, and smaller staples raised on smaller fields. Kentucky's soil would be exhausted just as fast under free labor, so long as she cultivated her present crops."

I long to see some clear running water. Our streams and brooks in New England are not appreciated till one comes to this part of the land. I long to see some good grass. I yearn for some hills. I would sail again along our rock-bound coast; Oh for a walk on its beaches, to see the tunnellings of the sea in the rocks, and the spouting-horns. But what a relief it is to be in a section where the Christian religion is so generally accepted, and the swarms of errorists and sectarians which abound elsewhere are comparatively unknown. Here, the lowest class, in which error would be prolific, is under instruction, to a great degree. I see now why it is that false views about slavery are a great stimulant to heretical views and feelings;—they are a convenient substitute for the love and zeal which true Christianity supplies. The human mind, where it is accustomed to act freely, must be impelled by some master-passion; and when true religion does not supply it, error stands ready to satisfy the demand.

On the whole, I am persuaded that our Northern people behave full as well under the anti-slavery excitement as Southerners would if their consciences were perverted like ours, and we were the objects of their opposition. I think that a change will come over us. At the North, you have heard the wind, at midnight, after a warm rain, in winter, haul out to the north-west, and you know what a piping time we then have of it, and how the clear cold air, the next morning, and the bright sun, excite and cheer us. There has been with us for a long time at the North, in our political and religious atmosphere, a warm, foggy, unwholesome drizzle of weak, fanatical feeling, with now and then gusts of wind and scud,—a kind of weather most abhorred by mariners. But we hope that the wind is changing, and that "fair weather cometh out of the North." God will not suffer us to live long, we earnestly hope, in this condition of misunderstanding and hatred, for it would be contrary to his established laws that we should long continue to be one nation with such feelings toward each other. The change will be in the North. Slavery will come to be regarded as not in itself a sin, and the evils incident to it will be left for those immediately concerned to bear them or seek their removal. Or, if we become divided, the Southern section may extend its conquests into the whole southern part of the American continent, and spread the institution of slavery over that vast domain. God may have purposed that the good which has flowed to the African race in this land by its connection with us, shall be extended to millions more, not by importation, we may suppose, but by propagation here. I say this to show that fanatical opposers of slavery may be employed under God as the instruments of extending slavery to the very limits of habitable land in the southern parts of our continent. We have tried in vain at the North, for thirty years, to abolish slavery. It is time either to cease, or to try some entirely different influences.

But I must close my long letter. When you write again, I have no doubt that you will have seen some things in a new light. Tell me more about your studies. I was interested in your way of describing things. I only wondered that, with your occasional sense of the ludicrous, you should not have been aware of the impression which you yourself must have made on others. Burns's "giftie," "to see oursel's," etc., we all, more or less, need. I told Hattie the other day that I thought some parts of your letter did you very great credit, but that the monomania of the North has fallen upon you, and that you have it, as it seemed to me, in one of its worst forms. Some it makes fierce, others, flat, according as the victim is, naturally, more or less amiable.

Your mother gave you in charge to me in her last sickness, and I must do all in my power for your best good. I have, therefore, told you some things which I have seen and considered. These you must now add to the facts of your "inductive philosophy." Your definition of "pro-slavery," and "friends of oppression," is a fair illustration of a prevailing state of mind at the North:—"Pro-slavery—i.e., do not agree with me in my manner of viewing and treating the subject." This you will correct. Excuse my freedom, but you have no father nor mother now, to advise and guide you, and you must let me be your Mentor in some things. I shall keep your letter and let you see it perhaps ten years hence. Be careful what newspapers you read. Those which abound with low, opprobrious language about the South and Southerners, avoid. There are some low Southerners about here who go around buying up refractory and vicious negroes; they are the dregs of society; but I have listened, with others, at the North, to men, on the subject of "freedom," who, I think, would take kindly to this business, and they would be as hearty in it as they are now in vilifying it. The "Legrees" are not confined to the South. Do not incline your ear to those who systematically inveigh against slavery, making it their principal business. You will invariably find that there is something false and wrong in their principles as well as spirit. Be careful to what influences you commit your thoughts and your taste.

You need not become a friend of oppression; you need not approve of "auction-blocks," and "separation of families;" slavery can exist when these are done away. Until you are appointed and commissioned as a minister of righteousness to Southern Christians and ministers, I advise you to blot slavery out of the list of topics about which you are called to express the least concern. The South will work out the problem for herself, with the help of that God who has evidently appointed her to do a great work for the African race, and all the more perfectly and speedily as our Northern people let her entirely alone as to the moral relations of the subject.

You subscribe yourself, "Yours for the slave;" I shall subscribe myself, "Yours for preaching the Gospel to every creature."

With the strongest love, Your affectionate Aunt.



CHAPTER VI.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS.

"The sages say dame Truth delights to dwell, Strange mansion! in the bottom of a well. Questions are, then, the windlass and the rope That pull the grave old gentlewoman up."

PETER PINDAR.

My friend, Mr. North, having read the foregoing letters, wrote me a note requesting me to come and spend an evening with him and his wife, and answer some questions occasioned by these letters. The lady was earnest that I should do so.

After being seated before a cheerful fire in my friend's house, while it was raining violently, so that we felt defended from all interruption, my friend said,—

"Here, first of all, is the Southern lady's letter to her father, which, I suppose, belongs to him, and which you may wish to send back."

"I do," said I.

"But, please," said Mrs. North, "let it be published. Add to it the incident of the Southern lady nursing the sick babe of a slave."

"O my dear," said her husband, "that would create a false impression. It would be a pro-slavery tract. It would abate Northern zeal against the 'sum of all villanies.' Something should go forth with such representations to correct their influence in the Free States. What would become of the cause of freedom should such stories make their impression upon the minds of our people?"

"You might," said I, "make a heading of an auction-block, or slave-coffle; add the last pattern of a slave-driver's whip; picture a panting fugitive on his way to the North; give us a ship's hold, with a black boy just detected among the stowage. You would thus, perhaps, keep these beautiful, touching illustrations of loving-kindness in slave-holders from having the least effect."

"It is very important," said he, seriously, "to keep up a just abhorrence of slavery here at the North, because"—

"Excuse me," said I, "but what do you mean by an abhorrence of slavery?"

"Why," said he, "is not the Christian world agreed that 'slavery is the sum of all villanies'?"

"By no means, in the United States," said I; "you might with as real truth say that here slavery is the sum of all the loving-kindnesses."

"Is not that letter of the Southern lady to her father," said he, "as rare a thing almost as a white crow?"

"O husband," said Mrs. North, "what an opinion you must have of Southern society!"

"Is not Gustavus," said I, "a perfect representative of the North, on the subject of slavery? Does not ultra anti-slavery find or make everybody, as the Aunt says, either fierce or flat?"

"You do not believe so," said he.

"Neither do you believe," said I, "that where Christianity has exerted the same influence on the hearts of men and women as on yours, and all the humanizing and elevating influences of society prevail, that letter is a rare product."

"I cannot believe," said he, "that one can own a fellow-creature, hold God's image as property, and be a true Christian. This lady is an exception which does not destroy the general rule."

"My dear sir," said I, "you are an abstractionist. You make the best possible condition under the sun your standard, to which you would make all men and things conform, instead of allowing for the vast inequalities, the necessities, the mutual dependence, the long historical conditions of men, as individuals and races. A race or class of human beings may be in such a condition, that being 'owned' by a superior race will be, in their circumstances, a real mercy and a great blessing."

"O my dear sir," said he, "I weep over the degradation of your moral sense. 'Owning a fellow-creature!' I would not hold property in a human being 'for all the wealth that sinews bought and sold have ever earned.'"

"Thousands of men and women," I replied, "as good in the sight of God as you or I, think otherwise. There is nothing in the relation of ownership to a human being which in itself is sinful, or wrong."

"If it is your purpose," said he, "to argue in favor of oppression, perhaps we had better not pursue the conversation."

"Uncharitableness, false judgments, self-righteousness," said I, "condemning a whole people for the sins of a few, are as truly 'oppression' as anything can be. I plead for no wrongs; I justify no selfishness in the relation of master and servant; I regard the golden rule of Christ as the law by which slave-holding should be regulated in every instance."

"I never expected," said he, "to live long enough to hear of the golden rule being applied to slavery! It would be like applying light to darkness, truth to falsehood, holiness to sin."

"By what rule," I inquired, "do you think the lady is habitually governed who wrote the letter which has interested you so much?"

"Why," said he, "there are good people under every iniquitous system. These exceptional cases are not the rule of judgment with regard to the nature and effect of a system."

"Can you not imagine one man owning another," said I, "under circumstances, and with motives, and in a temper and spirit which will make the relation most desirable?"

"I go further back," said he, "and I deny that it is right for one human being to own another."

"Has not God a right," said I, "to place one human being over another as his owner?"

"Has God a right," said he, "to countenance theft and oppression?"

I said to him: "I might follow your example, and answer you by asking, Has God a right to countenance war? But I will relieve all your disagreeable apprehensions as to our conversation at once, by saying that I am not to argue in favor of oppression. If holding a slave is oppression, it is a sin. And if it be inconsistent with the golden rule, it is a sin."

"If that be your doctrine," said he, "we shall soon agree. Now apply the golden rule to slavery. Are there any circumstances in which you would yourself be willing to be 'owned'?"

"Certainly," I replied.

He rose, and put some lumps of coal upon the fire with the tongs, and said, "I presume you mean what you say, and that you do not wish to trifle with the subject."

"Mr. North," said I, "would you be willing that any one should make you head-cook in a hotel, engineer in a steamboat, or keeper of a floating light?"

"No, Sir," said he.

"You would, Mr. North," said I, "under given circumstances. You would petition for such places, get recommendations for them, and count yourself perfectly happy, if you succeeded in obtaining them.

"Now look at the slaves. They are a foreign race, we are their civil superiors, and unless we amalgamate, we intend to remain so. While we are in this relation, it is a privilege to the blacks to have owners, but they must use their ownership according to the golden rule. When this is done, the condition of the blacks, in their present relation to us, is happy."

"How often," said he, "do you suppose that it is done?"

"That," said I, "is another and a very interesting question, which we will consider soon. You took the ground, as I understood you, that the law of love would prevent any one from holding a fellow-creature as a slave. I reply that it would be in perfect accordance with it, as the blacks at the South are now situated, for the whites to be their humane owners. But pray what do you mean by 'owning' a human being?"

"I mean," said he, "having the right to abuse them, domineer over them, work them as cattle, sell them, and—"

"Did this Southern lady," said I, while he paused for more words, "ever acquire a right with her ownership to treat Kate so?"

"Her laws," said he, "give her a right to punish her; and such irresponsible power is fearful. She could whip her to death and"—

"And be punished for it," said I, "as surely as you would be for whipping a servant to death."

"She is at liberty to punish more severely than the case warrants," said he, "and then she can shield herself under the laws."

"I presume," said I, "a Northern parent never gives a hasty box on the ear, never strikes one passionate blow in the chastisement, never shakes a child a single trill beyond the due harmony of parental affection, never scourges it with the tongue to momentary madness! What a dreadful thing parental authority is! Would it not be well to abolish the authority of parents over children! Indeed, would it not be well to go further, and interdict the public lands of the United States from being settled; for as surely as men live there, every form of wickedness will, in its turn, be perpetrated. How much better the calm and holy silence of the woods and fields, than if the tumultuous passions of men should roll over them!"

"But, my dear sir," said he, "I maintain that oppression is inseparable from the holding of a slave. I insist that this Southern lady, if all her feelings and conduct toward her servants are like her letter, is an exception among her people."

"No, Sir," said I, "she is the general rule among all decent people, and there is as much sense of decency and propriety there as with us, as many good people, kind, humane, generous, and it is as rare a thing for a servant to be ill-used there, as for our apprentices, and servants, and even our children. How kind and good you would be, Sir, if Providence should place a human being under you as his owner, for the mutual good of both of you."

"Dear me," said he, "I should try to feel and act just as I suppose those Southerners do who, you say, are fairly represented by this lady's letter about the slave-babe."

"Mr. North," said I, "suppose that the State should make you the absolute owner of some of those boys who set fire to the Westboro' and Deer Island institutions. In consideration of your personal responsibility for them, there is ceded to you all right and title to their services, and absolute control over them, subject, of course, to the laws against misdemeanors and crimes against the person. My only point is this: Where would be the sinfulness of that relation? All that would be sinful about it would be in your neglect or violation of your duty as a master."

"How glad all this makes me feel," said he, "that I am not troubled with slaves. If we do not like our servants or apprentices, we can get rid of them."

"Then," said I, "you surely ought to pity those who are bound to their slaves and have to put up with a thousand things which you say we can escape by changing our help."

"But," said he, "can they not sell off their slaves when they please?"

"Suppose, however," said I, "that they happen to be humane, as Mr. North is, and as we all are in the Free States! and that they are unwilling to turn off a poor helpless creature for her faults, to be sold, and to go they know not where!"

"Slavery," said Mr. North, "is surely a great curse. I am so glad that I live under free institutions."

"Who made us to differ from the South in this respect? How came those blacks there? Whose ships, whose money, imported them? You remember that it was by the votes of Free States, that the importation of slaves was continued for eight years beyond the time when the Southern States had voted in the Convention that it should cease. And now what would you have the South do with the slaves, to-day?"

"Set them all free," said he, "'break every yoke; proclaim liberty to the captives, the opening of the prison-doors to them that are bound.'"

"Allow me," said I, "to smile at your simplicity, for you are very child-like, not to say childish, in your feelings. You would have the colored people universally go free. Do you really think that Kate is worse off in being what you call a slave, than that young, free black woman who keeps a stall and sells verses and knives near our Park?"

"O dear sir," said he, "liberty is a priceless boon; liberty"—

"Liberty to what?" said I.

"Why," said he, "liberty not to be sold, nor to be beaten, nor to be subject to the wicked passions of a master."

"Would you rather," said I, "have your daughter a servant in a Southern family, brought up as a playmate with the children, a sharer in many of their gifts, a partner with their parents, as the children grew up, in the pride and joy of the parents, an honored member of the wedding party when a daughter is married, one of the principal mourners when the bride departs, identified with the history of the family, provided for in the will, a support guaranteed to her by law in sickness and old age, and that, too, not in a pauper establishment, but in her owner's home, and when the parents die, if she survives, taken by some branch of the family or neighbor from regard to her and to them; her moral and religious character improved under their training, a respectable standing in society conferred upon her by her connection with them, her religious privileges sacredly secured to her, any insult redressed as though it were the family's personal affair; she a partaker of their food and of all their comforts, and followed to her grave with respect and love; or, for the sake of 'priceless liberty,' 'heaven's best gift to man,' would you prefer to see her seated under the iron fence of a park, an old umbrella tied to the pickets for her shelter, and she, in rain and sunshine, selling 'Old Dan Tucker,' 'Jim Crow, Illustrated,' and pea-nuts, and sleeping you know not where? Which lot would you choose for a child? Which is best for this world and the next? In one case, she is 'owned,' she is 'a slave;' and in the other, she is a free woman."

"You have no right," said he, with some warmth, "to take the best condition in slavery, and the very worst in freedom, and compel me to choose."

"'Best condition in slavery!'" said I; "is there any 'best' in being a slave, in not being free? Does it admit of degrees? Is not being 'owned' such a curse, such an unmixed iniquity in its essence, that to compare its best estate with the worst in freedom, is like comparing the best devil with the most inferior saint? Is not a devil's nature incapable of comparison as good, better, best, with anything which is not, in its nature, devilish? According to your conversation just now, it seemed as though being 'owned' always implied an unmitigated transgression; and now when I inquire whether you would prefer degradation to the iniquity of being 'owned' in comfort and usefulness, respectability and happiness, you shrink from the question. If freedom in the abstract is the best thing under the sun, of course you will prefer it to everything else. No happy condition, no happy prospect for this life, and the life to come can, in your view, make being 'a slave,' as you call it, capable of being compared with this abstract privilege of being free. In this you and your friends labor under a huge mistake, and it poisons all your views and feelings about slavery. When you denounce slave-holders and slavery, and depict the condition of the slave in your awful colors, they at the South know that in hundreds of thousands of instances, as it regards masters and slaves, all that you say is practically false; you are carried away by your zeal against a theoretical wrong.

"Now suppose that instead of starting with the theoretical wrong and getting only such facts as illustrate it, you should travel through the South to pick up such letters as you consider this, respecting Kate, to be;—what a pleasing view might be presented of the slaves' condition in cases without number!"

"But," said he, "there are terrible evils underlying these fair features of slavery."

"True," said I, "but why, in the name of truth and love do you never hear such a letter as this read on the platforms of Northern abolition societies? What mingled groans and hisses and shrieks for freedom, and then what an emptying of the demoniacal epithets there would be, if such a letter should be offered. One case of whipping would have more effect than a thousand such letters, in your assemblies and newspapers. No one from the continent of Europe would infer from those meetings that such beings as Kate and her little babe, and this lady and her husband and father, existed even in fiction, but that slave-holders are Legrees, and the slaves their victims. What a beautiful effect it would have on us and on the South, if touching tales of loving-kindness between masters and slaves, instances of perfect happiness in that relation, should be cited, and then you should enter your candid, but decided opposition to the system, to its extension, to its evils where it exists. How soon we should all be found working together, so far as we might, for the amelioration of the colored race here, with a view to the extinction of slavery in every form of it in which it is an evil, or a greater evil than anything which might properly be substituted."

"Well," said Mrs. North, "husband, what do you say to that?"

"I like it," said he.

"But now," said I, "the language of the place of despair is exhausted in describing and denouncing the South. If a man among us lifts up his voice to say good things about Southerners, one universal hiss goes up from all your conventions and anti-slavery prints. He may be seeking the same end with you, namely, the peaceful removal of slavery, with due regard to the highest good of all concerned; but let him utter a word in arrest of your unqualified condemnation of slavery as it actually is, and there are no persecutors, nor scourges, nor intolerance on the earth, more fierce and cruel than you and your denunciations."

"Take it patiently, husband," said Mrs. North, "you know that you deserve it."

"I know from this," said I, "if from nothing else, that your theory is wrong. The truth does not excite such passions in those who love and seek to promote it. We see that, in cases without number, the present condition of the slaves is a blessing for both worlds, and that if all who possess slaves were, as many are, slavery would cease to be any more of a curse than any dependent condition in this world. There must always be those who will do every sort of menial work. The great Father of all, who himself says that he has 'deprived' the ostrich 'of wisdom, neither hath he imparted to her understanding,' so arranges the capacities of some that their happiness consists in leaning upon superior intelligence and capability.

"The serving people, in some districts of country, are volunteers from all races; at the South, they consist of one inferior, dependent race, who for ages have been slaves in their own country, and would be such even now, if they were there. We will not shut the door of hope forever upon any part of the human family, as to their elevation among the tribes of men, but this race has, for a long period of its history, evidently been undergoing a tutelage and discipline at the hand of Providence. There is some marvellous arrangement of Providence, it seems to me, designing that this black race shall lean upon us. Let the same number of any other immigrant race have gone from us to Canada as of this colored race, and the world would have heard a better report from them ere this. They thrive best in connection with us as their masters, whether it be right or wrong for us to be in such relation to them."

"But now," said he,—in a persuasive tone, and evidently wishing to turn the drift of the remarks,—"just set them free, and hire them; we shall agree then. The slaves will be as well off, and so will their masters."

"Mr. North," said I, "being owned is, in itself, irrespective of the character of the master, a means of protection to the negro. Somebody then is responsible for him as his guardian and provider, and is amenable to the State for his sustenance. You can easily see that, let the colored people come to be a hireling class, and their interests and those of their masters are disjoined. There would be conflicts and oppressions among themselves; they would fall into a degraded, serf-like condition; but now each of them partakes of his master's interests, and rises with him. I am not here pleading for slavery in the abstract, but, the blacks being on the soil, it is far better for them to be owned than to be free. Why are the Southwestern States, one after another, passing laws, or framing their constitutions, to shut out from their borders free negroes,—people in the very condition into which you would reduce by wholesale all the blacks in the South? I pray you look and see that you are an abstractionist, setting what you deem a theoretical wrong against a practical good, and under the circumstances, a real mercy."

"But," said Mr. North, "slavery impoverishes the soil, makes the whites shun labor, feeling it to be degrading, and it keeps the white children from industrial pursuits, and"—

"Please stop," said I, "my dear Sir, and think of what you are saying, and be not carried away by that popular flood of cant phrases. Now you know that God has given our Southern friends a south country, nearer than ours to the tropics. Out-of-door labor there is injurious to the white people, as you know. They are not to be blamed for this. God has not given them strength to endure exposure to the sun. Had they a northern climate, in which the labor required by the mechanic arts could be performed with safety and comfort, do you not suppose that they would have the same aptitude and relish as we for handicraft? Their children cannot be brought up to manual labor to the extent that ours are, because the God of heaven has ordained their lot in a land less favorable than ours to toil. His providence, making use of the sins of men, has placed the blacks here; you and the rest of the world, who depend upon their cotton, are willing enough to use it in its countless forms, while you reproach your Maker, as I think, for having caused it to be raised as he has seen fit to do."

"But Oh," said Mr. North, "free labor is more profitable than slave labor. You well know how it affects the soil, and that the great price of slaves will in time make the system oppressive to the masters, especially if they are all as considerate as you say they are about selling."

"The good Aunt has replied to you as to the soil, and we need not distress ourselves about the price of slaves; that will regulate itself. You well understand," said I, "that I am not arguing in favor of slavery per se, nor for the slave-trade, nor for the extension of slavery; but I contend that where slavery now exists, no one has yet proposed a scheme which is better than the continuance of ownership, the blacks remaining on the same soil with their present masters. Nor do I mean to say that the present system must inevitably continue forever. We must leave future developments in other hands. Of course there are difficult problems on such a subject as this. Intelligent Christian gentlemen at the South say that the best schemes which have been proposed by Europeans for the substitution of apprenticed negroes for slaves would make the condition of the negro as far worse than our slavery as the condition of a degraded negro here is below that of his master. Who will care for him when he is old, or sick? Granting this apprentice scheme to be arranged without oppression or sin of any kind, I hold that the condition of our slaves owned by masters and mistresses, is better than such a hireling condition, though it have the appearance of liberty."

"Why so?" inquired Mr. North.

"The slaves are not treated as hired horses are liable to be treated," I replied. "We know how a man is likely to treat his own horse, compared with the horse which he hires. Men nurse their slaves when they are sick; they provide for them when they are old. By their care and responsibility for them, and in relieving them from responsibility, they pay them wages whose market-value, if it could be reckoned in dollars, would be higher wages than are paid to the same class of laborers in the land. There are not four millions of the lower class of the laboring people in any one district of the earth whose condition is to be compared with that of the Southern slaves for comfort and happiness."

"I presume," said Mrs. North, "that you would not regard exemption from responsibility as in itself a blessing. You know how it educates us, how it sharpens the faculties, how it makes a man more of a man; therefore is it, after all, any kindness to the slaves, that they are relieved from responsibility?"

"I thank you," said I, "for that question. Does it concern us that our domestic servants are relieved, for the time, of all responsibility for house-rent, taxes, political duties?

"Every condition of poverty and toil has its peculiar hardships and sorrows. But putting together, respectively, all the advantages and the disadvantages of our slaves, he who looks upon a population with enlarged views of liabilities and of the inevitable results in the working of different schemes of labor, and is not so weak or morbid as to dwell inordinately on real and imaginary wrongs and miseries, which, after all, if real, are compensated for by advantages or surpassed by aggregated smaller evils in other conditions, must admit that, the colored people being here, their being owned is the very best possible thing for their protection, and the surest guarantee against all their liabilities to want in hard times, sickness, and old age.

"Speaking of hard times leads me to say, that if you could put four millions of laboring people in the Free States, for a winter or during commercial distresses and the stagnation of every kind of business, in a position where, while they were still active and useful, a single thought or care about their sustenance would not visit them, you would be deemed a philanthropist and public benefactor. There will not be the same number of people in the laboring class throughout our land next winter, in any one section, whose comfort and happiness will exceed that of our slaves."

"Oh, well," said Mr. North, "all this may be true, but this does not reconcile me to slavery. Our horses here at the North will all be comfortably provided for, notwithstanding any money pressure. But I would rather be a human being and fail, every winter, than be a horse."

"Husband," said Mrs. North, "do you consider that a parallel case? Mr. C. is not arguing, as I understand him, that slavery is better than freedom. He is not persuading us to be slaves rather than free. He takes these four millions of blacks as he finds them, in bondage, and he asks, What shall we do with them? You say, Set them free. He says, They are better off, as a race, in their present bondage, than they would be if made free, to remain here. Not that they are better off than four millions of colored people, who had never been slaves, would be in a commonwealth by themselves."

"I thank you, Mrs. North," said I, "for your clear and correct statement of my position. And now I will take up Mr. North's parable about the horses, and apply it justly. Let hay and grass be exceedingly scarce, and I had rather take my chance with an owner and be a horse, in a stable, and at work, than a horse roaming in search of food, chased away everywhere. The comparison is between horse and horse, and man and man."

"You make me think," said Mrs. North, "of an interesting passage in a late magazine, written by a lady. She was on a voyage to Cuba. She arrived at Nassau. She says, 'There were many negroes, together with whites of every grade; and some of our number, leaning over the side, saw for the first time the raw material out of which Northern Humanitarians have spun so fine a skein of compassion and sympathy. You must allow me one heretical whisper,—very small and low. Nassau, and all we saw of it, suggested to us the unwelcome question whether compulsory labor be not better than none.'"[3]

[Footnote 3: Atlantic Monthly, May, 1859, p. 604.]

"There is," said I, "this great question of right, with some, as to slavery: As the State has a right to interpose and send vagrant children to school, has the world a right to interpose, in certain cases, and send certain races to labor for the good of mankind? This was the question which broke upon the lady's mind. It is very interesting to see the question thus stated, and to notice the graceful touch of apology, and of playfulness, in the manner of stating it. There was risk, and even peril, in making the suggestion, but, withal, some moral courage. Still a lady may sometimes venture where it might not be safe for a gentleman to go.

"But the question between us is not, 'Freedom or slavery,' in the abstract, nor, Whether it is right, in any case, to reduce a people to slavery; but, What is best for our slaves? All your proofs that freedom is better than slavery in the abstract, are nothing to the point."

"It is the foulest blot on our nation in the eyes of the world," said Mr. North, "that we have four millions of human beings in bondage."

"Have you read 'Uncle Tom's Cabin?'" I inquired.

"Ask me," said he, pleasantly, "if I know how to read. Every lover of liberty and hater of oppression has read 'Uncle Tom.'"

"That is very far from being true," said I; "but still, you like Uncle Tom as a character, do you?"

"You astonish me," said he, "by making a question about it. He is the most perfect specimen of Christianity that I ever heard of."

"Among the martyrs," said I, "have you ever found his superior?"

"No, Sir!" was his energetic answer.

"Now," said I, "what made Uncle Tom the paragon of perfection?"

"What made him?" said he.

"Yes," said I, "what made him the model Christian? You do not reply, and I will tell you. SLAVERY MADE UNCLE TOM. Had it not been for slavery, he would have been a savage in Africa, a brutish slave to his fetishes, living in a jungle, perhaps; and had you stumbled upon him he would very likely have roasted you and picked your bones. A system which makes Uncle Toms out of African savages is not an unmixed evil."

"But," said he, "it makes Legrees also."

"I beg your pardon, Sir," said I, "it does not make Legrees. There are as many Legrees at the North as at the South, especially if we include all the very particular 'friends of the slave.' Legree would be Legree in Wall Street, or Fifth Avenue; Uncle Tom would not be Uncle Tom in the wilds of Africa."

"And so," said he, "it is right to fit out ships, burn villages in Africa, steal the flying people, bestow them in slave-ships, and sell them into hopeless bondage!"

"So you all love to reason," said I, "or seek to force that conclusion upon us. No such thing. If God overrules the evil doings of men, this is no reason for repeating the wrong. I am insisting that slavery as it exists in the South has been a blessing to the African. This does not warrant you in perpetrating outrages on those who are still in Africa.

"But the result has been, through the mercy of God as though we had taken millions of degraded savages out of Africa, and had made them contribute greatly to the industrial interests of mankind.

"We have raised them from heathenish ignorance and barbarism to the condition of intelligent beings. Look at them in their churches and Sabbath-schools. Slavery has done this. See the colored population of Charleston, S.C., voluntarily contributing, as they do, on an average, three dollars apiece, annually, for the propagation of the Gospel at home and abroad. See the meeting-house of the African Church at Richmond, Va., a place selected for public speakers from the North to deliver their addresses in it to the citizens of Richmond, because it is more commodious than any other public building in the city. Think of the membership of slaves in Christian Churches; of the multitudes of them who have died in the faith and hope of the Gospel. Slavery has done this. The question is whether slavery has been, or is, such a curse, on the whole, to the African race, that we must now set free the whole colored population? Please let us keep to the point. The reopening of the slave-trade is a question by itself.

"It seems that God had chosen to redeem and save large numbers of the African race by having them transported to this Christian land. Philanthropists would not be at the cost and trouble of all this. God has, therefore, used the cupidity of men to accomplish his purposes, and he punishes the wicked agents of his own benevolent schemes. His curse has for ages rested on the African race, and the laws of nature have, to a great degree, interposed to prevent Christian efforts in their behalf. God saw fit to change the prison-house, and prison yards and shops of this race from one continent to another, and New England merchantmen, in part, have been allowed to be the conveyers. In the process of transferring these future subjects of civilization and Christianity, vast misery is endured, as in opening a way by the sword for the execution of his decrees, great slaughter is the inevitable attendant. I look at the whole subject of slavery in the light of God's providence. And I do not see that his providence yet indicates any way for its termination consistent with the interests of the colored people.

"As to the extension of slavery, in this land, if the Most High has any further purposes of mercy for the African race in connection with us, he will not consult you nor me. He will open districts of our country for them; if my political party refuses to be the instrument in doing this, from benevolent motives, or from any other cause, He will make that party to be defeated, it may be by a party below us in moral principle, as we view it. This question of slavery, its extension and continuance, is therefore among the great problems of God's providence. I shall do all that I properly can to prevent it, and to encourage, and, if called upon, to aid my brethren now in immediate charge of the slaves, to fulfil their solemn trust; but anything like impatience and passion at the existence of slavery, I hold to be a sin against God. I pity those good men whose minds are so inflamed by the consideration of individual cases of suffering as not to perceive the great and steadfast march of the divine administration. Politicians and others who get their places, or their bread, by easy appeals to sympathy for individual cases of suffering, are the causes of much misplaced commiseration and of a low, uninstructed view of the great interests involved in slavery. Yet these very men who, for selfish purposes, stir up the passions of our people, by dwelling on cases of hardship in slavery, are greatly disappointed when Napoleon III., at Villafranca, prematurely terminates a war of unparalleled slaughter. They would have preferred, for the cause of constitutional liberty and for its possible influence against the Pope, that the fighting had continued a month longer; we hear no pathetic remonstrances from them on the score of the killed and maimed, the widows and orphans and the childless, of homes made desolate, by this additional month of battle. Such is man, so inconsistent, so blinded by party prejudice, so ready to maintain that which, in a change of persons and places, he will denounce. He will be wholly blinded by individual acts of suffering to all that is good in a system; and again, the good to be effected by a war will blind him to the hundreds of thousands of dead or mutilated soldiers, with five times that number of bleeding hearts, rifled by the sword of their precious treasures."

I saw that I had prolonged my remarks to an undue length. We sat in silence for a little while, looking into the fire, and listening to the rain against the windows, when Judith called Mrs. North to the door; and, after some whispering between them, Mrs. North said to her,

"Oh, bring them in; our company will excuse it."

The cranberries, it seems, were not doing well over the fire in Judith's department, and she had hesitatingly proposed that they should be promoted to the parlor grate, where, after due apologies, they were placed. They soon began to simmer; then one would burst, and then another, we pausing unconsciously to hear them surrendering themselves to their fate, while one mouth, at least, watered at the thought of the delicious dish which they were to furnish; the rich, ruby color of their juice in the best cut-glass tureen, and the added spoonful, as a reward for not spilling a drop on the table-cloth the last time they were served, coming to mind, with thoughts of early days. And here I was discussing slavery. Now, while the cranberries were over the fire, making one feel domestic and also bringing back young days, it was impossible to be disputatious, had we been so inclined. The Northern cranberry-meadow and the Southern sugar-plantation seemed mixed up in my feelings on this subject, qualifying and rectifying each other. Perhaps the soothing presence of the cranberry saucepan was timely; for, without any design, a phase of our subject next presented itself which was not the most agreeable. I broke the silence, and said,—

"Mr. North, what do you think is the mission of the abolitionists as a party, and of all who sympathize with them?"

"Why," said he, "to abolish slavery, to be sure. What else can it be?"

"You are mistaken," said I. "The real mission of the abolitionists, thus far, is, To perpetuate slavery till Providence has accomplished its plan. You know what Southern synods, and general assemblies, and many of the ablest men at the South have said about slavery; how they deplored it, and called upon Christians to seek its extinction. The South would probably have tried to abolish slavery ere this, if left to themselves. But they would have failed; and Providence prevented the useless effort. The influence of those sentiments which prevailed in the General Assembly of 1818 would have been to remove all the objectionable features of slavery, at least, preparatory to its final extinction, if that could be reached. It looked as though Churches generally would, in obedience to the General Assembly, have made it, in certain cases, the subject of discipline. Abolitionism, however, began about that time. It had the effect to make the South defend themselves and slavery too. Providence saw that the South was weary of the system, and wished to throw it off. But the years of the captivity appointed of God had not come to an end. Purposes of mercy for the African race had not been accomplished; the South must be made willing to hold these poor people for the 'time, times, and half a time,' ordained of God. To encourage them, the God of Nature makes the great Southern staple, cotton, to be in greater demand for the supply of the world; the cotton-gin is invented, and immediately the slaves are thereby assisted to retain that hold upon the South which was about to be broken off. All this seems to me designed, as it certainly has the effect, to perpetuate slavery until Providence shall indicate measures for the removal of the colored people among us. This may be delayed for centuries to come. In the mean time, we at the North, by keeping up our agitation of the subject, have impressed the South with the importance of being united against us; but if any of our schemes of emancipation had divided them, it would not have been for the good of the slaves. So the abolitionists have been fulfilling their destiny by fighting against Providence to help perpetuate slavery till the Most High shall disclose his will concerning it."

"And helped the South," said Mr. North, "perpetuate violations of the marriage relation, and to separate families, and to countenance all the sins in slavery!"

"Yes, to some degree," said I; "for should we treat them with common candor and truthfulness, make them feel that we appreciate the perplexities of the subject, admit for once, and act upon it, that they are better and more competent 'friends of the slave' than we, it would be the surest way to put a stop to every evil in slavery. Now they have little power over a certain class of men among them, who, when measures are proposed for the relief of the slaves, raise the cry that they are abolitionists, and excite an odium which deters them from doing many things which would otherwise be attempted."

"They might all certainly join," said Mr. North, "one would think, to prevent the violation of the marriage contract by the slaves, and the sundering of the marriage tie by the auctioneer."

"Now," said I, "there are two allegations, and I will answer them. As to the violation of the marriage covenant by the slaves, are you aware how many divorces for the same cause are granted in your own state yearly? You will find, on inquiry, that 'freedom' has nothing to boast of in this respect. As to the auctioneer, and the separation of the marriage tie by him, how often do you think that an honest black man, for no crime, is taken from his wife and sold, or she from him? How often, do you suppose, are families divided and scattered at the auction-block? If you will inquire, you will find that the cases are extremely rare; that in some large districts it has not occurred for several years; and that in other cases, where it has occurred, regard has been had to the neighborhood of the purchasers, so that members of the same families have been within reach of one another. You seem to think that a great feature, and the most common effect, of slavery is to separate families. Such is the general belief at the North. Let me remind you that there is no form or condition of service in the world which has more effect than slavery to keep families together."

"Well," said Mrs. North, dropping her work in her lap, "I never thought of that before."

"Why," said I, "where will you find in the Free States husband and wife and children living together as servants in the same family?"

Said Mrs. North, "It is rather uncommon with us to find two sisters living together as help in a family. At least, it is always spoken of and noted as pleasant and desirable."

"What would Northerners think," said I, "of gathering the old parents and all the brothers and sisters of their domestics together, in small tenements near their own dwellings? He who should do this would be regarded as a very great saint. So that you may as well say that slavery is a system by which a serving class is kept together in families, as to say that its purpose and effect is to break up families."

"Just think," said Mrs. North, "of the serving class in our families here at the North,—how they are separated by states, by oceans, from one another!"

"Be careful, Mrs. North," said I, "how you even hint at such mitigations in slavery, for you will be denounced as a 'friend of oppression' if you discern anything in the system but 'villanies.' You never hear such a feature of slavery, as that of which we have just spoken, recognized here at the North by our zealous anti-slavery people."

"Do you not think," said she, "that if we were candid and less passionate, and viewed the subject as anti-slavery men at the South do, we should exert far more influence against slavery?"

"If we exerted any," I replied, "it would be 'far more' than we do now. If we would only cease to 'exert influence' in that direction, and begin to learn that the people of the South are as Christian, benevolent, and good in every respect as we, this first, great lesson, which we all need to learn, would do us all great good. Self-righteousness is the great characteristic of the Northern people with regard to the South. Fifteen States declare that they are justified before God in continuing the system of slavery. The other States would be ashamed to condemn those fifteen States for immorality in the discussion of any other subject; but here they assume that one half of the American nation is convicted of crime. I take the ground that, if the Churches and the ministry of those fifteen States say, With all the evils of slavery, it is right and best that we should maintain it, I will so far yield my convictions as not to feel that they are less righteous than I."

"Oh," said Mr. North, "but they have been born and educated under the system. Of course they must be blinded by it, and their moral sense perverted."

"There," said I, "Mr. North, is the 'Northern Evil' again. Oh, what a shame it is for intelligent people to decry Southern Christians in this way, and to erect their own moral sense into such self-complacent superiority!

"You will see in your church one excellent brother, whose heart is filled with anguish at the thought of the 'poor slave.' One sits by him who knows full as much on this and on all subjects as he, who feels that the people at the South are perfectly qualified to manage this subject, and that we have no need to interpose. He thinks that if one wishes to be excited with compassion at the sorrows and woes of men, a short walk will bring him to certain abodes such as no Southern slave would be allowed by any human master to inhabit. If he would benefit men as a class, our own sailors need all his philanthropy. But the good anti-slavery brother is possessed with the idea that the Southern slave is the impersonation of injustice and misery, and that those who stand in the relation of masters are guilty of crimes, daily, which ought to shut them out of the Church.

"I have often thought that the most appropriate prayers in our public assemblies, with regard to slavery, would be petitions against Northern ignorance and passion with respect to Southern Christians. It is we who most need to be prayed for. When I think of those assemblies of Christians of all denominations in the South, with a clergy at their head who have no superiors in the world, and then hear a Northern preacher indicting them before God in his prayers, what shall I say? The verdict of a coroner's inquest, if it were held over some of his hearers at such a time, might almost be, Died of disgust."

"Now I desire to know," said Mr. North, "if we are never to pray in public about slavery? Is it not the great subject before the country, and are not all our interests in Church and State deeply involved in it?"

"While we believe," said I, "that holding slaves is a sin, I take the ground that praying for the Southerners is a false impeachment. When we are rid of this error, we do not feel their need of being prayed for any more than 'all men,' for whom Paul says, 'I will that men pray everywhere,'—'lifting up holy hands without wrath or doubting.' Our 'hands' must be 'holy' when we lift them up for 'all men,' including Southerners; there must be no 'wrath' in our prayers,—which I am sorry to say is too easily discerned in prayers against the South; and there must be no 'doubting' in the petitioners whether their feelings and motives are right before God. There is as much in the relation of officers and crews in our merchant vessels, to say the least, to enlist the prayers of ministers, as in slavery. But this relates to ourselves, and has not the enchantment of a distant sin.

"You must bring yourself to believe, Mr. North, that Southern hearts are in general as humane and cultivated as ours. This, it is true, is a great demand upon a Northerner."

"But oh," said he, (we happening to be alone just then,) "the cruelty of compelling virtuous people, members of Churches, to commit sin, under pain of being sold."

"Mr. North," said I, "how do you dare to open your lips on that subject,—you, with myself, a member of a denomination in which men, eminent in our pulpits, have—so many of them of late years—fallen. One would think that we would never cast a stone at the South on that subject.

"Some among us seem to think that the power and the opportunity to commit sin must necessarily be followed by criminal indulgence. They do themselves no credit in this supposition. They also leave out of view a natural antipathy which must be overcome, sense of degradation, probability of detection, loss of character, conscience, and all the moral restraints which are common to men everywhere; and they only judge that all who exercise authority over an abject race must, as a general thing, be polluted.

"As to opportunities for evil-doing at the South compared with the North, no one who walks the streets of a Northern city, by day or night, with the ordinary discernment of one who sets himself to examine the moral condition of a place, will fail to see that we need not go to the South to find humiliating proofs of baseness and shame. There is less solicitation at the South; here it is a nightly trade, without disguise. At the South the young must go in search of opportunity; here it confronts them. The small number of yellow children in the interior of the Cotton States, on 'lone plantations,' is positive proof against the ready suspicions and accusations of Northern people. Let all be true which is said of 'yellow women,' 'slave-breeders,' and every form of lechery, he is simple who does not believe that the statistics of a certain wickedness at the North would, if made as public as difference of color makes the same statistics at the South, leave no room for us to arraign and condemn the South in this particular. Their clergy, their husbands, their young men, if they are no better, are no worse than we. But there is nothing in which the self-righteousness created by anti-slavery views and feelings is more conspicuous than in the way in which the South is judged and condemned by us with regard to this one sin. Had the pulpits of the South afforded such dreadful instances of frailty, for the last ten or fifteen years, as we have had at the North, what confirmation would we have found for our invectives against the corrupting and 'barbarous' influence of slavery!

"How the morbid fancy of a Northerner loves to gloat over occasional instances of violence at the South, and is never employed in depicting scenes of betrayal and cruelty which our policemen in large cities could recount by scores."

"I saw," said Mr. North, "in a recent paper, that a slave in Washington County, N.C., was hanged by the sheriff in the presence of three thousand spectators, for the murder of a white man, whom he shot with a pistol because he suspected him of undue familiarity with the wife of the black man. Poor fellow! no doubt he swung for it because he was a slave. He must let his marriage rights be invaded by the whites, and bear it in silence, or die."

Said I, "What a perfect specimen of Northern anti-slavery feeling and logic have we in what you now say. If a man, on suspicion of you, takes the law into his hands and shoots you with a pistol, does he not deserve to die? He does, if he is a white man; perhaps, if he be a slave, that excuses him! Even where a man is known to be guilty of the crime referred to, and the husband shoots him, he is apt to have a narrow escape from being punished. As to bearing such violations of one's rights in silence under intimidation, there is no more power in intimidation to save a villain at the South from disgrace and abhorrence in his community, than at the North."

"But he can evade prosecution under the statute," said Mr. North, "more easily at the South than here."

"When you have served on the grand jury a few terms," said I, "you will be more charitable toward Southerners. Human nature is the same everywhere. It makes, where it does not find, occasion for sin.

"Now you will not understand, in all that I have said, that I am pleading for slavery, that I desire to have this abject race among us, that Southerners are purer and better than we. We are both under sin. We all have our temptations and trials; each form of society has its own kind of facilities for evil; but the grace of God and all the influences which bear on the formation and the preservation of character, are the same wherever Christianity prevails."

"Well, after all," said he, "it must be a semi-barbarous state of society, where such a system is maintained."

"I shall have to send you," said I, "to the 'Hotel des Incurables.' I think that your judgments are more than semi-barbarous. If you please to term even the Southern negroes 'semi-barbarous,' you may do so; but you are bearing false witness against your neighbor.

"My dear friend," said I, "sum up all the evils of the laboring classes, of foreigners and the lower orders of society. Take their miseries, vices, crimes, with all the blessings of freedom and everything else. Get the proportion of evil to the good. Remember that these classes will continue to exist among us. Then take the slaves, the lower order at the South, as foreigners are with us, and say if, on the whole, the proportion of evil among the slaves is any greater than among the corresponding classes elsewhere. Do not be an optimist. Acknowledge that society, in this fallen world, must have elements of evil, by reason at least of imbecility, want of thrift, misfortune, and other things. You will not fail to see that slavery with all its evils is, under the circumstances, by no means, the worst possible condition for the colored people."

"Well," said he, "I will think of all you have said. I do not wish to be an ultraist, nor to shut my eyes against truth. You will wish to go to bed; there are some further points on which I would know your views, and we will, if you please, resume the subject to-morrow."



CHAPTER VII.

OWNERSHIP IN MAN.—THE OLD TESTAMENT SLAVERY.

"Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them; FOR THIS IS THE LAW AND THE PROPHETS."

HOLY WRIT.

The rain still poured down in the morning, making it agreeable to us that we had the prospect of an uninterrupted forenoon for our conversation.

So when we found ourselves together again in the course of the forenoon, by the fire, we opened the discussion.

Mr. North inquired what I understood by the term "owning a fellow-creature."

"I understand by it," I replied, "a right to use, and to dispose of, the services of another, wholly at my will. That will must be subject to the whole law of God, which includes the golden rule. I do not mean by it that a man owns the body of a man in such a sense that he can maim it at will, or in any way abuse it. Ownership in men is power to use their services and to dispose of them, at will."

"Now," said he, "who gives you a right to go to Africa or to a slave auction and to say to a human being, 'I propose to own you.' How would you like to have a black man come to you in a solitary place and say, 'My dear Sir, I propose to own you. Henceforth your services are subject to my will.'?"

"As to Africa," said I, "and making slaves of those who are now free, we cannot differ. As to the other part of your question, I will carry the illustration a little further, and in doing so, will answer you in part. How would you like to have some Michael O'Connor come to you and say, 'Mr. North, I propose to hire you and pay you wages as my body-servant, or my ostler.' Why should you not consent? If you do not, why should you hire Mike himself to serve you in either of those capacities? What has become of the golden rule, if you hire a man to do work for you which you would not be hired to do?

"You are feasting with a company of friends; and your domestics, below, hear your cheerful talk, and feel the wide difference between your state and theirs. Why do you not go down and say, 'Dear fellow-creatures, go up and take our places at table, and let us be servants'? Does the golden rule require that? Inequalities in human conditions are a wise and benevolent provision for human happiness, so long as men are dependent on one another, as they are and ever must be. Some are so constituted by an all-wise God that they are happier to be in subordinate situations. Mind is lord; and they, seeing and feeling the superiority of others, gladly attach themselves to them as helpers, to be thought for and protected, and to enjoy their approbation. There is nothing cruel in this, unless it be cruel not to have made all men equal. There are important influences growing out of these relationships of superiors and inferiors,—gentleness, kindness, benevolence, in all its forms, on the one hand, and on the other, respect, deference, love, strong attachments and identification of interests.

"As to the remaining part of your question, let me ask, What nation or tribes are capable of such bondage as the Africans at home inflict and bear? We never had a right to go and steal them, nor to encourage their captors in their pillage and violent seizure of the defenceless creatures; nor do I think that all the blessings which multitudes of them have received, for both worlds, in consequence of their transportation from Africa, lessens the guilt of slave-traders; nor are these benefits any justification of the trade, nor do they afford ground for its continuance. Nothing can justify it. Such is the voice of the human conscience everywhere except where covetousness or controversy prevail.

"But finding these colored people here, the question upon which you and I differ, is, What is our duty with regard to them?

"You say, Set them all free. I reply, The relation of ownership on our part toward them is best for all concerned. You say, It is wrong in itself. To say this, I think, is to be more righteous than God."

"Then you maintain," said he, "that the Most High, in the Bible, countenances all the atrocities of American slavery."

"What a strange way," said I, "of arguing, do we very generally find among anti-slavery men, when their feelings are enlisted, as they are so apt to be. They take unwarrantable, extreme inferences from what we say, and oppose these as logical answers to a statement or argument. 'Auction block' and 'Bunker Hill,' are sufficient answers with them to most of our reasoning on this subject. But let us look at this point in a dispassionate manner.

"But," said I, "before I begin I wish to be distinctly understood as holding this doctrine; namely, The Bible does not justify us in reducing men to bondage at our will. God might appoint that certain tribes should be slaves to others; but before we proceed to reduce men to slavery, our warrant for it must be clear.

"If, however, slavery is found by a certain generation among them, and it is not right and just nor expedient to abolish it, may we not safely ask, How did the Most High legislate concerning slavery among the people to whom he gave a code of laws from his own lips?

"Learning this, we must then consider whether circumstances in our day warrant, or require, different rules and regulations.

"But our inquiry into the divine legislation respecting slavery, will disclose some things which draw largely upon one's implicit faith in the divine goodness; and if a man is disposed to be a sceptic and his anti-slavery feelings are strong, here is a stone on which, if that anti-slavery man falls, he shall be broken, but if it falls on him, it shall grind him to powder.

"You will acknowledge this, if you will allow me to speak further on this subject.

"Did you ever notice," said I, "with what words Christ concludes his enunciation of the golden rule? They are a remarkable answer to our modern infidels, who impugn the Old Testament as far behind the New in its moral standard. After declaring that the rule by which we should treat others is self-love, the Saviour says,—'for this is the Law and the Prophets.' So there was nothing in the Law and Prophets inconsistent with the golden rule. The golden rule therefore marks the history of divine legislation from the beginning; and if God appointed slavery, he ordained nothing in connection with it which was inconsistent with equal love to one's self and to a neighbor.

"This deserves to be considered by those who, finding slavery in the Old Testament appointed by God, begin, as it were, to exculpate their Maker by saying that the Hebrews were a rude, semi-barbarous people, and that divine legislation was wisely accommodated to their moral capacity. Now it is singular, if this be so, that the Mosaic code should be the basis, as it is, of all good legislation everywhere. The effort to make the Hebrew people and their code appear inferior, in order to excuse slavery, is one illustration of the direful effect which anti-slavery principles have had in lowering the respect of many for the Bible, and loosening its hold upon their consciences. Now it is to me a perfect relief on this subject of slavery in the Old Testament, to know that God appointed nothing in the relation of his people to men of any class or condition which his people in a change of circumstances, might not be willing should be administered to them. If slavery was ordained of God to the Hebrews, it must, therefore, have been benevolent. If we start with the doctrine that 'Slavery is the sum of all villanies,' no wonder that we find it necessary to use extenuating words and a sort of apologetic, protecting manner of treating the divine oracles. After all it is evidently hard work, with many anti-slavery men to maintain that reverence for the Old Testament and that confidence in God which they feel are required of them. So they lay all the responsibility of imperfection in the divine conduct, to the 'semi-barbarous Hebrews!'—a people by the way, whose first leader combined in himself a greater variety, and a higher order, of talent, than any other man in history. As military commander, poet, historian, judge, legislator, who is to be named in comparison with the man Moses?

"We must come to the conclusion," said I, "that the relation of ownership is not only not sinful, but that it is in itself benevolent, that it had a benevolent object; for its origin was certainly benevolent."

"What was its origin?" said Mrs. North; "I always had a desire to know how slavery first came into existence."

"Blackstone tells us," I replied, "that its origin was in the right of a captor to commute the death of his captives with bondage. The laws of war give the conqueror a right to destroy his enemies; if he sees fit to spare their lives in consideration of their serving him, this is also his right. Thus, we suppose, slavery gained its existence.

"True, its very nature partakes of our fallen condition; it is not a paradisiacal institution; it is not good in itself; it is an accompaniment of the loss which we have incurred by sin. In that light it is proper to speak of the Most High as adapting his legislation to the depraved condition of man; but that is no more true of slavery than of redemption; everything in the treatment of us by the Almighty is an exponent of our departure from our first estate."

"Now," said Mrs. North, "all this is a relief to me; for I have always been sorely tried by remarks seemingly impugning the divine wisdom and goodness, whenever slavery in the Bible has been under discussion."

"Please give us an outline," said Mr. North, "of the Hebrew legislation on this subject." He handed me a Bible.

"I will try and not be tedious," said I, "and will repeat to you in few words the principal points of the Hebrew Code, with regard to involuntary servitude.

* * * * *

"Slavery is the first thing named in the law given at Sinai, after the moral law and a few simple directions as to altars. This is noticeable. In the twenty-first chapter of Exodus, and in the twenty-fifth chapter of Leviticus, we find the Hebrew slave-code. The following is a summary of it:—

"1. Hebrews themselves might be bought and sold by Hebrews; but for six years only, at farthest. If the jubilee year occurred at any time during these six years, it cut short the term of service.

"2. Hebrew paupers were an exception to this rule. They could be retained till the year of jubilee next ensuing.

"3. Hebrew servants, married in servitude, if they went out free in the seventh, or in the jubilee year, must go out alone, leaving their wives which their masters had given them, and their children by these wives, (if any,) behind them, as their masters' possession. If, however, they chose to remain with their wives and children, the ear of the servant was bored with an awl to the door-post, and his servitude became perpetual.

"4. Hebrew servants might also, from love to their masters, in like manner and by the same ceremony, become servants forever.

"5. Strangers and sojourners among the Hebrews, 'waxing rich,' were allowed to buy Hebrews who were 'waxen poor,' and who were at liberty to sell themselves to these sojourners or to the family of these strangers. The jubilee year, however, terminated this servitude. The price of sale was graduated according to the number of years previous to the jubilee year. The kindred of the servant had the right of redeeming him, the price being regulated in the same way.

"6. In all these cases in which Hebrews were bought and sold, there were special injunctions that they should not be treated 'with rigor,' the reason assigned by the Most High being substantially the same in all cases, namely, 'For unto me the children of Israel are servants; they are my servants whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.'

"7. Liberal provision was to be made for the Hebrew servant at the termination of his servitude. During his term of service, he was to be regarded and treated 'as an hired servant and a sojourner.'

"8. Bondmen and bondmaids, as property, without limitation of time, and transmissible as inheritance to children, might be bought of surrounding nations. The children of sojourners also could be thus acquired. To these the seventh year's and the fiftieth year's release did not apply.

"Now, Mr. North," said I, "let me proceed to try your faith somewhat. I will see whether your confidence in divine revelation is sound, for nothing at the present day has overthrown the faith of many like the manifest teachings of the Bible with regard to slavery. You have felt that the Hebrew code is better than ours, so far as it relates to slaves who were Hebrews. As to the slaves from the heathen, we infer that they met 'with rigor,' or at least were liable to it; for God continually enjoins it upon the Hebrews that they shall not use rigor with their brethren.

"Now let me mention some things which will try your faith in revelation, if you are an abolitionist.

"The Hebrews were allowed to sell their servants to other people.

"Thus they traded in flesh and blood. This was prohibited in the case of a Hebrew maid-servant, whom a man had bought and had made her his concubine. If she did not please him, it was said that—'to sell her unto a strange nation he shall have no power.' The inference is that they sold their Gentile slaves, if they pleased, 'to a strange nation.' Again. When a father or mother became poor, their creditor could take their children for servants. Thus you read: 'Now there cried a certain woman of the wives of the sons of the prophets unto Elisha saying, Thy servant my husband is dead, and thou knowest that thy servant did fear the Lord; and the creditor is come to take unto him my two sons to be bondmen.' This was according to the law of Moses, in the twenty-fifth of Leviticus; 'bondmen,' however, meaning here a servant for a term of years. See also the New Testament parable of the unforgiving servant.

"This was hard, it will seem to you and to all of us, that if one became poor in Israel, his children could be attached. Thus the idea of involuntary servitude, where no crime was, prevailed in the Theocracy.

"But we come now to something which draws harder upon our faith.

"We find the Most High prescribing, Exodus xxi. 20, 21, that a master who kills his servant under chastisement shall be punished (but not put to death); and if the servant survives a day or two, the master shall not even be 'punished' for the death of his slave!

"The reason which the Most High gives is this: 'For he is his money'!

"A human being, 'money'! An immortal soul, 'money'! God's image, 'money'! And this the reasoning, these the very words of my Maker! Is it not astonishing, if your principles are correct, that there has been no controversy for ages against this? and that the Bible, with such passages in it should have retained its hold on the human mind? 'He is his money'! It would have been no different had it read: 'He is his cotton.' You see that the Most High recognized 'ownership,' 'property in man.' Why is it said, 'He is his money'? Poole (Synopsis) says,—'that is, his possession bought with money; and therefore 1. Had a power to chastise him according to his merit, which might be very great. 2. Is sufficiently punished with his own loss. 3. May be presumed not to have done this purposely or maliciously.'

"Either and all of which explanations, or any other which can be given, only bring more clearly to view the idea of 'money' as a reason why the master is not to be punished, for causing the death of a slave by whipping, if the slave happens to continue a day or two, no matter under what mutilations and sufferings.

"Furthermore. We find the Most High decreeing perpetual bondage in certain cases, and more than all, as we have seen, the forcible separation of husband and wife among slaves. Let me turn to Exodus xxi. and read:—

"'1. Now these are the judgments which thou shalt set before them.

"'2. If thou buy an Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve: and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing.

"'3. If he came in by himself, he shall go out by himself: if he were married, then his wife shall go out with him.

"'4. If his master have given him a wife and she have borne him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master's, and he shall go out by himself.'

"I have not finished my reading," said I; "but what do you say to that, Mr. North?"

"Read on," said he.

"'5. And if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife, and my children, I will not go out free:

"'6. Then his master shall bring him unto the judges, he shall also bring him to the door, or unto the door-post, and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl, and he shall serve him forever.'

"God decreed, therefore, that the marriage of a slave in bondage, in those days, was dissoluble, as no other marriage was. Divorces among the Hebrews, allowed for the hardness of their hearts, were not parallel to the forcible separation of a slave from his wife under the hard necessity of choice between perpetual bondage with a wife, or freedom without her. The merciful God who kindly enacted, 'No man shall take the nether nor the upper millstone to pledge: for he taketh a man's life to pledge,' and that a garment pawned should be restored before sundown, that wages should not be withheld over night, yes, the God who legislated about bird's-nests ordained the dissolution of the marriage tie between slaves in certain cases, unless the slave husband was willing for his wife's sake, to be a slave forever!

"What do you say to this, Mr. North?" I asked again.

Said Mrs. North, "I begin to see the origin and cause of infidelity among the abolitionists."

"Tell me," said Mr. North, "how you view it."

"On stating this, once," said I, "in a public meeting, I raised a clamor. Three or four men sprung to their feet, and one of them, who first caught the chairman's eye, cried out, his face turning red, his eyes starting from their sockets, his fist clenched, 'I demand of the gentleman whether he means to approve of all the abominations of American slavery! Is he in favor of separating husbands and wives, parents and children? Let us know it, Sir, if it be so. No wonder that strong anti-slavery men turn infidels when they hear Christian men defending American slavery from the Bible. No wonder that they say, "The times demand, and we must have, an anti-slavery constitution, an anti-slavery Bible, and an anti-slavery God." Mr. Moderator, will the gentleman answer my question,—Do you mean to approve all the atrocities of American slavery, on the ground that the Bible countenances them?'

"I was never more calm in my life. I replied, 'Mr. Chairman, taking for my warrant an inspired piece of advice as to the best way of answering a man according to his folly, it would be just, should I reply to the gentleman's question, Yes, I do. But the gentleman, I perceive, is too much excited to hear me.'

"He had flung himself round in his seat, put his elbow on the back of it, and his hand through his hair; he then flung himself round in the opposite direction, and put his arm and hand as before, and he blew his nose with a sound like a trombone.

"I then said, 'Mr. Chairman, if all that the gentleman meant to ask was, Do you find any countenance under any circumstances, for the relation of master and slave in the divine legation of Moses,—and this was all which, as a fair man, not carried away by a gust of passion, he should have asked me,—my answer was correct and proper. If he wished to know my views of what is right and proper as to the marriage relation of our slaves, he should have put the question in a different shape. But first, Sir,' said I, 'if he dislikes the twenty-first chapter of Exodus, his controversy must be with his God, not with me. Sinai was, let me remind him, more of a place than Bunker Hill. I am not a friend of "oppression" any more than the gentleman; but I trust that had I lived in Israel, I should never have thought of being more humane than my Maker.'

"I then proceeded to say that (as before remarked to you) we are not warranted by the Bible to make men slaves when we please; nor, if slavery exists, are we commanded to adopt the rules and regulations of Hebrew slavery.

"But we do learn from the Bible that property in man is not in itself sinful,—not even to say of a man, 'He is my money.'

"Were it intrinsically wrong, God would not have legislated about it in such ways; for granting, if you please, the untenable distinction about his 'not appointing' slavery, but 'finding it in existence' and legislating for it, what necessity could there have been for making such a law as that relating to the boring of the ear, rather than giving the slave his wife and children and suffering them all to go free?

"No, Mr. North," said I, continuing our conversation, "I cannot oppose the relation of master and slave as in itself sinful; for then I become more righteous than God. But I must inquire whether it is right, in each given case, to reduce men to bondage: shall that be, for example, the mode in which prisoners of war shall be disposed of? or a subjugated people? or criminals? or, in certain cases, debtors? In doing so, there is no intrinsic sin; the act itself, under the circumstances, may be exceedingly sinful; but the relation of ownership is not necessarily a sin. This, I hold, is all that can be deduced from the Bible in favor of slavery: The relation is not in itself sinful."

"But," said Mr. North, "we sinned in stealing these people from Africa; all sin should be immediately forsaken; therefore, set the slaves free at once."

I replied, "Let us apply that principle. You and I, and a large company of passengers, are in a British ship, approaching our coast. We find out, all at once, that the crew and half of the passengers stole the ship. We gain the ascendency; we can do as we please. Now, as all sin must be repented of at once, it is the duty of the passengers and crew to put the ship about, and deliver it to the owners in Glasgow! Perhaps we should not think it best to put in force the 'ruat coelum' doctrine, especially if we had had some 'ruat coelum' storms, and it was late in the season. But then we should actually be enjoying the stolen property—the ship and its comforts—for several days, with the belief that benevolence and justice to all concerned required us to reach the end of the voyage before we took measures to perform that justice, which, before, would have been practical folly.

"Now, please, do not require this illustration to go on all fours. All that I mean is this: A right thing may be wrong, if done unseasonably, or in disregard of circumstances which have supervened.

"But to go a little further, and beyond mere expediency: Can you see no difference between buying slaves, and making men slaves? While it would be wicked for you to reduce people to slavery, is that the same as becoming owners to those who are already in slavery? In one case, you could not apply the golden rule; in the other, the golden rule would absolutely compel you, in many instances, to buy slaves. Go to almost any place where slaves are sold, and they will come to you, if they like your looks, and, by all the arts of persuasion, entreat you to become their master. Having succeeded, step behind the scenes, if you can, and hear them exulting that they 'fetched more' than this or that man. Is there no difference between this and reducing free people to slavery?"