Reader, this diabolical law is the "public opinion" of Georgia and South Carolina toward the slaves. This is the vaunted "protection"
afforded them by their "high-souled chivalry." To show that the "public opinion" of the slave states far more effectually protects the _property_ of the master than the _person_ of the slave, the reader is referred to two laws of Louisiana, pa.s.sed in 1819. The one attaches a penalty "not exceeding one thousand dollars," and "imprisonment not exceeding two years," to the crime of "cutting or breaking any iron chain or collar," which any master of slaves has used to prevent their running away; the other, a penalty "not exceeding five hundred dollars," to "wilfully cutting out the tongue, putting out the eye, _cruelly_ burning, or depriving any slave of _any limb_." Look at it--the most horrible dismemberment conceivable cannot be punished by a fine of _more_ than five hundred dollars. The law expressly fixes that, as the utmost limit, and it _may_ not be half that sum; not a single moment"s imprisonment stays the wretch in his career, and the next hour he may cut out another slave"s tongue, or burn his hand off.
But let the same man break a chain put upon a slave, to keep him from running away, and, besides paying double the penalty that could be exacted from him for cutting off a slave"s leg, the law imprisons him not exceeding two years!
This law reveals the _heart_ of slaveholders towards their slaves, their diabolical indifference to the most excruciating and protracted torments inflicted on them by "_any_ person;" it reveals, too, the _relative_ protection afforded by "public opinion" to the _person_ of the slave, in appalling contrast with the vastly surer protection which it affords to the master"s _property_ in the slave. The wretch who cuts out the tongue, tears out the eyes, shoots off the arms, or burns off the feet of a slave, over a slow fire, _cannot_ legally be fined more than five hundred dollars; but if he should in pity loose a chain from his galled neck, placed there by the master to keep him from escaping, and thus put his property in some jeopardy, he may be fined _one thousand dollars_, and thrust into a dungeon for two years!
and this, be it remembered, not for _stealing_ the slave from the master, nor for _enticing_, or even advising him to run away, or giving him any information how he can effect his escape; but merely, because, touched with sympathy for the bleeding victim, as he sees the rough iron chafe the torn flesh at every turn, he removes it;--and, as escape without this inc.u.mbrance would be easier than with it, the master"s property in the slave is put at some risk. For having caused this slight risk, the law provides a punishment--fine not exceeding one thousand dollars, and imprisonment not exceeding _two years_. We say "slight risk," because the slave may not be disposed to encounter the dangers, and hunger, and other sufferings of the woods, and the certainty of terrible inflictions if caught; and if he should attempt it, the risk of losing him is small. An advertis.e.m.e.nt of five lines will set the whole community howling on his track; and the trembling and famished fugitive is soon scented out in his retreat, and dragged back and delivered over to his tormentors.
The preceding law is another ill.u.s.tration of the "protection" afforded to the limbs and members of slaves, by "public opinion" among slaveholders.
Here follow two other ill.u.s.trations of the brutal indifference of "public opinion" to the _torments_ of the slave, while it is full of zeal to compensate the master, if any one disables his slave so as to lessen his market value. The first is a law of South Carolina. It provides, that if a slave, engaged in his owner"s service, be attacked by a person "not having sufficient cause for so doing," and if the slave shall be "_maimed or disabled_" by him, so that the owner suffers a loss from his inability to labor, the person maiming him shall pay for his "lost time," and "also the charges for the cure of the slave!" This Vandal law does not deign to take the least notice of the anguish of the "_maimed" slave_, made, perhaps, a groaning cripple for life; the horrible wrong and injury done to _him_, is pa.s.sed over in utter silence. It is thus declared to be _not a criminal act_. But the pecuniary interests of the master are not to be thus neglected by "public opinion". Oh no! its tender bowels run over with sympathy at the master"s injury in the "lost _time_" of his slave, and it carefully provides that he shall have pay for the whole of it.--See 2 _Brevard"s Digest_, 231, 2.
A law similar to the above has been pa.s.sed in Louisiana, which contains an additional provision for the benefit of the _master_--ordaining, that "if the slave" (thus _maimed and disabled_,) "be forever rendered unable to work," the person maiming, shall pay the master the appraised value of the slave before the injury, and shall, in addition, _take_ the slave, and maintain him during life."
Thus "public opinion" transfers the helpless cripple from the hand of his master, who, as he has always had the benefit of his services, might possibly feel some tenderness for him, and puts him in the sole power of the wretch who has disabled him for life--protecting the victim from the fury of his tormentor, by putting him into his hands!
What but butchery by piecemeal can, under such circ.u.mstances, be expected from a man brutal enough at first to "maim" and "disable"
him, and now exasperated by being obliged to pay his full value to the master, and to have, in addition, the daily care and expense of his maintenance. Since writing the above, we have seen the following judicial decision, in the case of Jourdan, vs. Patton--5 Martin"s Louisiana Reports, 615. A slave of the plaintiff had been deprived of his _only eye_, and thus rendered _useless_, on which account the court adjudged that the defendant should pay the plaintiff his full value. The case went up, by appeal, to the Supreme court. Judge Mathews, in his decision said, that "when the defendant had paid the sum decreed, the slave ought to be placed in his possession,"--adding, that "the judgment making full compensation to the owner _operates a change of property_. He adds, "The principle of humanity which would lead us to suppose, that the mistress whom he had long served, would treat her miserable blind slave with more kindness than the defendant to whom the judgment ought to transfer him, CANNOT BE TAKEN INTO CONSIDERATION!" The full compensation of the mistress for the loss of the services of the slave, is worthy of all "consideration," even to the uttermost farthing; "public opinion" is omnipotent for _her_ protection; but when the food, clothing, shelter, fire and lodging, medicine and nursing, comfort and entire condition and treatment of her poor blind slave throughout his dreary pilgrimage, is the question--ah! that, says the mouthpiece of the law, and the representative of "public opinion," "CANNOT BE TAKEN INTO CONSIDERATION." Protection of slaves by "public opinion" among slaveholders!!
The foregoing ill.u.s.trations of southern "public opinion," from the laws made by it and embodying it, are sufficient to show, that, so far from being an efficient protection to the slaves, it is their deadliest foe, persecutor and tormentor.
But here we shall probably be met by the legal lore of some "Justice Shallow," instructing us that the life of the slave is fully protected by law, however unprotected he may be in other respects. This a.s.sertion we meet with a point blank denial. The law does not, in reality, protect the life of the slave. But even if the letter of the law would fully protect the life of the slave, "public opinion" in the slave states would make it a dead letter. The letter of the law would have been all-sufficient for the protection of the lives of the miserable gamblers in Vicksburg, and other places in Mississippi, from the rage of those whose money they had won; but "gentlemen of property and standing "laughed the law to scorn, rushed to the gamblers" house, put ropes round their necks, dragged them through the streets, hanged them in the public square, and thus saved the sum they had not yet paid. Thousands witnessed this wholesale murder, yet of the scores of legal officers present, not a soul raised a finger to prevent it, the whole city consented to it, and thus aided and abetted it. How many hundreds of them helped to commit the murders, _with their own hands_, does not appear, but not one of them has been indicted for it, and no one made the least effort to bring them to trial. Thus, up to the present hour, the blood of those murdered men rests on that whole city, and it will continue to be a CITY OF MURDERERS, so long as its citizens, agree together to shield those felons from punishment; and they do thus agree together so long as they encourage each other in refusing to bring them to justice. Now, the _laws_ of Mississippi were not in fault that those men were murdered; nor are they now in fault, that their murderers are not punished; the laws demand it, but the people of Mississippi, the legal officers, the grand juries and legislature of the state, with one consent agree, that the law _shall be a dead letter_, and thus the whole state a.s.sumes the guilt of those murders, and in bravado, flourishes her reeking hands in the face of the world.[34]
[Footnote 34: We have just learned from Mississippi papers, that the citizens of Vicksburg are erecting a public monument in honor of Dr.
H.S. Bodley, who was the ring-leader of the Lynchers in their attack upon the miserable victims. To give the crime the cold encouragement of impunity alone, or such slight tokens of favor as a home and a sanctuary, is beneath the chivalry and hospitality of Mississippians; so they tender it incense, an altar, and a crown of glory. Let the marble rise till it be seen from afar, a beacon marking the spot where law lies lifeless by the hand of felons; and murderers, with chaplets on their heads, dance and shout upon its grave, while "all the people say, amen."]
The letter of the law on the statute book is one thing, the practice of the community under that law often a totally different thing. Each of the slave states has laws providing that the life of no _white_ man shall be taken without his having first been indicted by a grand jury, allowed an impartial trial by a pet.i.t jury, with the right of counsel, cross-examination of witnesses, &c.; but who does not know that if ARTHUR TAPPAN were pointed out in the streets of New Orleans, Mobile, Savannah, Charleston, Natchez, or St. Louis, he would be torn in pieces by the citizens with one accord, and that if any one should attempt to bring his murderers to punishment, he would be torn in pieces also. The editors of southern newspapers openly vaunt, that every abolitionist who sets foot in their soil, shall, if he be discovered, be hung at once, without judge or jury. What mockery to quote the _letter of the law_ in those states, to show that abolitionists would have secured to them the legal protection of an impartial trial!
Before the objector can make out his case, that the life of the slave is protected by the law, he must not only show that the _words of the law_ grant him such protection, but that such a state of public sentiment exists as will carry out the provisions of the law in their true spirit. Any thing short of this will be set down as mere prating by every man of common sense. It has been already abundantly shown in the preceding pages, that the public sentiment of the slaveholding states toward the slaves is diabolical. Now, if there were laws in those states, the _words_ of which granted to the life of the slave the same protection granted to that of the master, what would they avail? ACTS const.i.tute protection; and is that public sentiment which makes the slave "property," and perpetrates hourly robbery and batteries upon him, so penetrated with a sense of the sacredness of his right to life, that it will protect it at all hazards, and drag to the gallows his OWNER, if he take the life of his own _property_? If it be asked, why the penalty for killing a slave is not a mere _fine_ then, if his life is not really regarded as sacred by public sentiment--we answer, that formerly in most, if not in all the slave states, the murder of a slave _was_ punished by a mere fine. This was the case in South Carolina till a few years since. Yes, as late as 1821, in the state of South Carolina, which boasts of its chivalry and honor, at least as loudly as any state in the Union, a slaveholder might butcher his slave in the most deliberate manner--with the most barbarous and protracted torments, and yet not be subjected to a single hour"s imprisonment--pay his fine, stride out of the court and kill another--pay his fine again and butcher another, and so long as he paid to the state, cash down, its own a.s.sessment of damages, without putting it to the trouble of prosecuting for it, he might strut "a gentleman."--See 2 _Brevard"s Digest_, 241.
The reason a.s.signed by the legislature for enacting a law which punished the wilful murder of a human being by a _fine_, was that "CRUELTY _is_ HIGHLY UNBECOMING," and "ODIOUS." It was doubtless the same reason that induced the legislature in 1821, to make a show of giving _more_ protection to the life of the slave. Their fathers, when they gave _some_ protection, did it because the time had come when, not to do it would make them "ODIOUS," So the legislature of 1821 made a show of giving still greater protection, because, not to do it would make them "_odious_." Fitly did they wear the mantles of their ascending fathers! In giving to the life of a slave the miserable protection of a fine, their fathers did not even pretend to do it out of any regard to the sacredness of his life as a human being, but merely because cruelty is "unbecoming" and "odious." The legislature of 1821 _nominally_ increased this protection; not that they cared more for the slave"s rights, or for the inviolabity of his life as a human being, but the civilized world had advanced since the date of the first law. The slave-trade which was then honorable merchandise, and plied by lords, governors, judges, and doctors of divinity, raising them to immense wealth, had grown "unbecoming," and only raised its votaries by a rope to the yard arm; besides this, the barbarity of the slave codes throughout the world was fast becoming "odious" to civilized nations, and slaveholders found that the only conditions on which they could prevent themselves from being thrust out of the pale of civilization, was to meliorate the iron rigor of their slave code, and thus _seem_ to secure to their slaves some protection. Further, the northern states had pa.s.sed laws for the abolition of slavery--all the South American states were acting in the matter; and Colombia and Chili pa.s.sed acts of abolition that very year. In addition to all this the Missouri question had been for two years previous under discussion in Congress, in State legislatures, and in every village and stage coach; and this law of South Carolina had been held up to execration by northern members of Congress, and in newspapers throughout the free states--in a word, the legislature of South Carolina found that they were becoming "odious;" and while in their sense of justice and humanity they did not surpa.s.s their fathers, they winced with equal sensitiveness under the sting of the world"s scorn, and with equal prompt.i.tude sued for a truce by modifying the law.
The legislature of South Carolina modified another law at the same session. Previously, the killing of a slave "on a sudden heat or pa.s.sion, or by undue correction," was punished by a fine of three hundred and fifty pounds. In 1821 an act was pa.s.sed diminishing the fine to five hundred dollars, but authorizing an imprisonment "not exceeding six months." Just before the American Revolution, the Legislature of North Carolina pa.s.sed a law making _imprisonment_ the penalty for the wilful and malicious murder of a slave. About twenty years after the revolution, the state found itself becoming "odious,"
as the spirit of abolition was pervading the nations. The legislature, perceiving that Christendom would before long rank them with barbarians if they so cheapened human life, repealed the law, candidly a.s.signing in the preamble of the new one the reason for repealing the old--that it was "DISGRACEFUL" and "DEGRADING! As this preamble expressly recognizes the slave as "a human creature," and as it is couched in a phraseology which indicates some sense of justice, we would gladly give the legislature credit for sincerity, and believe them really touched with humane movings towards the slave, were it not for a proviso in the law clearly revealing that the show of humanity and regard for their rights, indicated by the words, is nothing more than a hollow pretence--hypocritical flourish to produce an impression favorable to their justice and magnanimity. After declaring that he who is "guilty of wilfully and maliciously killing a slave, shall suffer the same punishment as if he had killed a freeman;" the act concludes thus: "Provided, always, this act shall not extend to the person killing a slave outlawed by virtue of any act of a.s.sembly of this state; or to any slave in the act of resistance to his lawful overseer, or master, or to any slave dying under _moderate correction_." Reader, look at this proviso. 1. It gives free license to all persons to kill _outlawed slaves_. Well, what is an outlawed slave? A slave who runs away, lurks in swamps, &c., and kills a _hog_ or any other domestic animal to keep himself from starving, is subject to a proclamation of _outlawry_; (Haywood"s Manual, 521,) and then whoever finds him may shoot him, tear him in pieces with dogs, burn him to death over a slow fire, or kill him by any other tortures. 2.
The proviso grants full license to a master to kill his slave, if the slave _resist_ him. The North Carolina Bench has decided that this law contemplates not only actual resistance to punishment, &c., but also _offering_ to resist. (Stroud"s Sketch, 37.) If, for example, a slave undergoing the process of branding should resist by pushing aside the burning stamp; or if wrought up to frenzy by the torture of the lash, he should catch and hold it fast; or if he break loose from his master and run, refusing to stop at his command; or if he _refuse_ to be flogged; or struggle to keep his clothes on while his master is trying to strip him; if, in these, or any one of a hundred other ways he _resist_, or offer, or _threaten_ to resist the infliction; or, if the master attempt the violation of the slave"s wife, and the husband resist his attempts without the least effort to injure him, but merely to shield his wife from his a.s.saults, this law does not merely permit, but it _authorizes_ the master to murder the slave on the spot.
The brutality of these two provisos brands its authors as barbarians.
But the third cause of exemption could not be outdone by the legislation of fiends. "DYING under MODERATE _correction_!" MODERATE _correction_ and DEATH--cause and effect! "Provided ALWAYS," says the law, "this act shall not extend to any slave dying under _moderate correction_!" Here is a formal proclamation of impunity to murder--an express pledge of _acquittal_ to all slaveholders who wish to murder their slaves, a legal absolution--an indulgence granted before the commission of the crime! Look at the phraseology. Nothing is said of maimings, dismemberments, skull fractures, of severe bruisings, or lacerations, or even of floggings; but a word is used the common-parlance import of which is, _slight chastis.e.m.e.nt_; it is not even _whipping_, but "_correction_" And as if hypocrisy and malignity were on the rack to outwit each other, even that weak word must be still farther diluted; so "_moderate_" is added: and, to crown the climax, compounded of absurdity, hypocrisy, and cold-blooded murder, the _legal definition_ of "moderate correction" is covertly given; which is, _any punishment_ that KILLS the victim. All inflictions are either _moderate_ or _immoderate_; and the design of this law was manifestly to shield the murderer from conviction, _by carrying on its face the rule for its own interpretation_; thus advertising, beforehand, courts and juries, that the fact of any infliction _producing death_, was no evidence that it was _immoderate_, and that beating a man to death came within the legal meaning of "moderate correction!" The _design_ of the legislature of North Carolina in framing this law is manifest; it was to produce the impression upon the world, that they had so high a sense of justice as voluntarily to grant adequate protection to the lives of their slaves. This is ostentatiously set forth in the preamble, and in the body of the law.
That this was the most despicable hypocrisy, and that they had predetermined to grant no such protection, notwithstanding the pains taken to get the _credit_ of it, is fully revealed by the _proviso_, which was framed in such a way as to nullify the law, for the express accommodation of slaveholding gentlemen murdering their slaves. All such find in this proviso a convenient accomplice before the fact, and a packed jury, with a ready-made verdict of "not guilty," both gratuitously furnished by the government! The preceding law and proviso are to be found in Haywood"s Manual, 530; also in Laws of Tennessee, Act of October 23, 1791; and in Stroud"s Sketch, 37.
Enough has been said already to show, that though the laws of the slave states profess to grant adequate protection to the life of the slave, such professions are mere empty pretence, no such protection being in reality afforded by them. But there is still another fact, showing that all laws which profess to protect the slaves from injury by the whites are a mockery. It is this--that the testimony, neither of a slave nor of a free colored person, is _legal_ testimony against a white. To this rule there is _no exception_ in any of the slave states: and this, were there no other evidence, would be sufficient to stamp, as hypocritical, all the provisions of the codes which _profess_ to protect the slaves. Professing to grant _protection_, while, at the same time, it strips them of the only _means_ by which they can make that protection available! Injuries must be legally _proved_ before they can be legally _redressed_: to deprive men of the power of _proving_ their injuries, is itself the greatest of all injuries; for it not only exposes to all, but invites them, by a virtual guarantee of impunity, and is thus the _author_ of all injuries. It matters not what other laws exist, professing to throw safeguards round the slave--_this_ makes them blank paper. How can a slave prove outrages perpetrated upon him by his master or overseer, when his own testimony and that of all his fellow-slaves, his kindred, a.s.sociates, and acquaintances, is ruled out of court? and when he is entirely in the _power_ of those who injure him, and when the only care necessary, on their part, is, to see that no _white_ witness is looking on. Ordinarily, but _one_ white man, the overseer, is with the slaves while they are at labor; indeed, on most plantations, to commit an outrage in the _presence_ of a white witness would be more difficult than in their absence. He who wished to commit an illegal act upon a slave, instead of being obliged to _take pains_ and watch for an opportunity to do it un.o.bserved by a white, would find it difficult to do it in the presence of a white if he wished to do so.
The supreme court of Louisiana, in their decision, in the case of Crawford vs. Cherry,(15, _Martin"s La. Rep._ 112; also "_Law of Slavery,_" 249,) where the defendant was sued for the value of a slave whom he had shot and killed, say, "The act charged here, is one _rarely_ committed in the presence of _witnesses_," (whites). So in the case of the State vs. Mann, (_Devereux, N.C. Rep._ 263; and _"Law of Slavery," _247;) in which the defendant was charged with shooting a slave girl "belonging" to the plaintiff; the Supreme Court of North Carolina, in their decision, speaking of the provocations of the master by the slave, and "the consequent wrath of the master"
prompting him to _b.l.o.o.d.y vengeance_, add, _"a vengeance generally practised with impunity, by reason of its privacy."_
Laws excluding the testimony of slaves and free colored persons, where a white is concerned, do not exist in all the slave states. One or two of them have no legal enactment on the subject; but, in those, _"public opinion"_ acts with the force of law, and the courts _invariably reject it_. This brings us back to the potency of that oft-quoted "public opinion," so ready, according to our objector, to do battle for the _protection_ of the slave!
Another proof that "public opinion," in the slave states, plunders, tortures, and murders the slaves, instead of _protecting_ them, is found in the fact, that the laws of slave states inflict _capital_ punishment on slaves for a variety of crimes, for which, if their masters commit them, the legal penalty is merely _imprisonment_. Judge Stroud in his Sketch of the Laws of Slavery, says, that by the laws of Virginia, there are "seventy-one crimes for which slaves are capitally punished though in none of these are whites punished in manner more severe than by imprisonment in the penitentiary." (P. 107, where the reader will find all the crimes enumerated.) It should be added, however, that though the penalty for each of these seventy-one crimes is "death," yet a majority of them are, in the words of the law, "death within clergy;" and in Virginia, _clergyable_ offences, though _technically_ capital, are not so in fact. In Mississippi, slaves are punished capitally for more than _thirty_ crimes, for which whites are punished only by fine or imprisonment, or both. Eight of these are not _recognized as crimes_, either by common law or by statute, when committed by whites. In South Carolina slaves are punished capitally for _nine_ more crimes than the whites--in Georgia, for _six_--and in Kentucky, for _seven_ more than whites, &c. We surely need not detain the reader by comments on this monstrous inequality with which the penal codes of slave states treat slaves and their masters. When we consider that guilt is in proportion to intelligence, and that these masters have by law doomed their slaves to ignorance, and then, as they darkle and grope along their blind way, inflict penalties upon them for a variety of acts regarded as praise worthy in whites; killing them for crimes, when whites are only fined or imprisoned--to call such a "public opinion" inhuman, savage, murderous, diabolical, would be to use tame words, if the English vocabulary could supply others of more horrible import.
But slaveholding brutality does not stop here. While punishing the slaves for crimes with vastly greater severity than it does their masters for the same crimes, and making a variety of acts _crimes_ in law, which are right, and often _duties_, it persists in refusing to make known to the slaves that complicated and barbarous penal code which loads them with such fearful liabilities. The slave is left to get a knowledge of these laws as he can, and cases must be of constant occurrence at the south, in which slaves get their first knowledge of the existence of a law by suffering its penalty. Indeed, this is probably the way in which they commonly learn what the laws are; for how else can the slave get a knowledge of the laws? He cannot _read_--he cannot _learn_ to read; if he try to master the alphabet, so that he may spell out the words of the law, and thus avoid its penalties, the law shakes its terrors at him; while, at the same time, those who made the laws refuse to make them known to those for whom they are designed. The memory of Caligula will blacken with execration while time lasts, because be hung up his laws so high that people could not read them, and then punished them because they did not keep them. Our slaveholders aspire to blacker infamy. Caligula was content with hanging up his laws where his subjects could _see_ them; and if they could not read them, they knew where they were, and might get at them, if, in their zeal to learn his will, they had used the same means to get up to them that those did who hung them there. Even Caligula, wretch as he was, would have shuddered at cutting their legs off, to prevent their climbing to them; or, if they had got there, at boring their eyes out, to prevent their reading them. Our slaveholders virtually do both; for they prohibit their slaves acquiring that knowledge of letters which would enable them to read the laws; and if, by stealth, they get it in spite of them, they prohibit them books and papers, and flog them if they are caught at them. Further--Caligula merely hung his laws so high that they could not be _read_--our slaveholders have hung theirs so high above the slave that they cannot be _seen_--they are utterly out of sight, and he finds out that they are there only by the falling of the penalties on his head.[35] Thus the "public opinion" of slave states protects the defenceless slave by arming a host of legal penalties and setting them in ambush at every thicket along his path, to spring upon him unawares.
[Footnote 35: The following extract from the Alexandria (D.C.) Gazette is all ill.u.s.tration. "CRIMINALS CONDEMNED.--On Monday last the Court of the borough of Norfolk, Va. sat on the trial of four negro boys arraigned for burglary. The first indictment charged them with breaking into the hardware store of Mr. E.P. Tabb, upon which two of them were found guilty by the Court, and condemned to suffer the penalty of the law, which, in the case of a slave, is death. The second Friday in April is appointed for the execution of their awful sentence. _Their ages do not exceed sixteen_. The first, a fine active boy, belongs to a widow lady in Alexandria; the latter, a house servant, is owned by a gentleman in the borough. The value of one was fixed at $1000, and the other at $800; which sums are to be re-imbursed to their respective owners out of the state treasury." In all probability these poor boys, who are to be hung for stealing, never dreamed that death was the legal penalty of the crime.
Here is another, from the "New Orleans Bee" of ---- 14, 1837--"The slave who STRUCK some citizens in Ca.n.a.l street, some weeks since, has been tried and found guilty, and is sentenced to be HUNG on the 24th."]
Stroud, in his Sketch of the Laws of Slavery, page 100, thus comments on this monstrous barbarity.
"The hardened convict moves their sympathy, and is to be taught the laws before he is expected to obey them;[36] yet the guiltless slave is subjected to an extensive system of cruel enactments, of no part of which, probably, has he ever heard."
[Footnote 36: "It shall be the duty of the keeper [of the penitentiary]
on the receipt of each prisoner, to _read_ to him or her such parts of the penal laws of this state as impose penalties for escape, and to make all the prisoners in the penitentiary acquainted with the same.
It shall also be his duty, on the discharge of such prisoner, to read to him or her such parts of the laws as impose additional punishments for the repet.i.tion of offences."--_Rule 12th_, for the internal government of the Penitentiary of Georgia. Sec. 26 of the Penitentiary Act of 1816.--Prince"s Digest, 386.]
Having already drawn so largely on the reader"s patience, in ill.u.s.trating southern "public opinion" by the slave laws, instead of additional ill.u.s.trations of the same point from another cla.s.s of those laws, as was our design, we will group together a few particulars, which the reader can take in at a glance, showing that the "public opinion" of slaveholders towards their slaves, which exists at the south, in the form of law, tramples on all those fundamental principles of right, justice, and equity, which are recognized as sacred by all civilized nations, and receive the homage even of barbarians.
1. One of these principles is, that the _benefits_ of law to the subject should overbalance its burdens--its protection more than compensate for its restraints and exactions--and its blessings altogether outweigh its inconveniences and evils--the former being numerous, positive, and permanent, the latter few, negative, and incidental. Totally the reverse of all this is true in the case of the slave. Law is to him all exaction and no protection: instead of lightening his _natural_ burdens, it crushes him under a mult.i.tude of artificial ones; instead of a friend to succor him, it is his deadliest foe, transfixing him at every step from the cradle to the grave. Law has been beautifully defined to be "benevolence acting by rule;" to the American slave it is malevolence torturing by system. It is an old truth, that _responsibility_ increases with _capacity_; but those same laws which make the slave a "_chattel_," require of him _more_ than of _men_. The same law which makes him a _thing_ incapable of obligation, loads him with obligations superhuman--while sinking him below the level of a brute in dispensing its _benefits_, he lays upon him burdens which would break down an angel.
2. _Innocence is ent.i.tled to the protection of law._ Slaveholders make innocence free plunder; this is their daily employment; their laws a.s.sail it, make it their victim, inflict upon it all, and, in some respects, more than all the penalties of the greatest guilt. To other innocent persons, law is a blessing, to the slave it is a curse, only a curse and that continually.
3. _Deprivation of liberty is one of the highest punishments of crime_; and in proportion to its justice when inflicted on the guilty, is its injustice when inflicted on the innocent; this terrible penalty is inflicted on two million seven hundred thousand, innocent persons in the Southern states.
4. _Self-preservation and self-defence_, are universally regarded as the most sacred of human rights, yet the laws of slave states punish the slave with _death_ for exercising these rights in that way, which in others is p.r.o.nounced worthy of the highest praise.
5. _The safeguards of law are most needed where natural safe-guards are weakest._ Every principle of justice and equity requires, that, those who are totally unprotected by birth, station, wealth, friends, influence, and popular favor, and especially those who are the innocent objects of public contempt and prejudice, should be more vigilantly protected by law, than those who are so fortified by defence, that they have far less need of _legal_ protection; yet the poor slave who is fortified by _none_ of these _personal_ bulwarks, is denied the protection of law, while the master, surrounded by them all, is panoplied in the mail of legal protection, even to the hair of his head; yea, his very shoe-tie and coat-b.u.t.ton are legal protegees.
6. The grand object of law is to _protect men"s natural rights_, but instead of protecting the natural rights of the slaves, it gives slaveholders license to wrest them from the weak by violence, protects them in holding their plunder, and _kills_ the rightful owner if he attempt to recover it.
This is the _protection_ thrown around the rights of American slaves by the "public opinion," of slaveholders; these the restraints that hold back their masters, overseers, and drivers, from inflicting injuries upon them!
In a Republican government, _law_ is the pulse of its _heart_--as the heart beats the pulse beats, except that it often beats _weaker_ than the heart, never stronger--or to drop the figure, laws are never _worse_ than those who make them, very often better. If human history proves anything, cruelty of practice will always go beyond cruelty of law.
Law-making is a formal, deliberate act, performed by persons of mature age, embodying the intelligence, wisdom, justice and humanity, of the community; performed, too, at leisure, after full opportunity had for a comprehensive survey of all the relations to be affected, after careful investigation and protracted discussion. Consequently laws must, in the main, be a true index of the permanent feelings, the settled _frame of mind_, cherished by the community upon those subjects, and towards those persons and cla.s.ses whose condition the laws are designed to establish. If the laws are in a high degree cruel and inhuman, towards any cla.s.s of persons, it proves that the feelings habitually exercised towards that cla.s.s of persons, by those who make and perpetuate those laws, are at least _equally_ cruel and inhuman.
We say _at least equally_ so; for if the _habitual_ state of feeling towards that cla.s.s be unmerciful, it must be unspeakably cruel, relentless and malignant when _provoked_; if its _ordinary_ action is inhuman, its contortions and spasms must be tragedies; if the waves run high when there has been no wind, where will they not break when the tempest heaves them!
Further, when cruelty is the _spirit_ of the law towards a proscribed cla.s.s, when it _legalizes great outrages_ upon them, it connives at, and abets _greater_ outrages, and is virtually an accomplice of all who perpetrate them. Hence, in such cases, though the _degree_ of the outrage is illegal, the perpetrator will rarely be convicted, and, even if convicted, will be almost sure to escape punishment. This is not _theory_ but _history_. Every judge and lawyer in the slave states _knows_, that the legal conviction and _punishment_ of masters and mistresses, for illegal outrages upon their slaves, is an event which has rarely, if ever, occurred in the slave states; they know, also, that although _hundreds_ of slaves have been _murdered_ by their masters and mistresses in the slave states, within the last twenty-five years, and though the fact of their having committed those murders has been established beyond a _doubt_ in the minds of the surrounding community, yet that the murderers have not, in a single instance, suffered the penalty of the law.
Finally, since slaveholders have deliberately legalized the perpetration of the most cold-blooded atrocities upon their slaves, and do pertinaciously refuse to make these atrocities _illegal_, and to punish those who perpetrate them, they stand convicted before the world, upon their own testimony, of the most barbarous, brutal, and habitual inhumanity. If this be slander and falsehood, their own lips have uttered it, their own fingers have written it, their own acts have proclaimed it; and however it may be with their _morality_, they have too much human nature to perjure themselves for the sake of publishing their own infamy.
Having dwelt at such length on the legal code of the slave states, that unerring index of the public opinion of slaveholders towards their slaves; and having shown that it does not protect the slaves from cruelty, and that even in the few instances in which the letter of the law, if _executed_, would afford some protection, it is virtually nullified by the connivance of courts and juries, or by popular clamor; we might safely rest the case here, a.s.sured that every honest reader would spurn the absurd falsehood, that the "public opinion" of the slave states protects the slaves and restrains the master. But, as the a.s.sertion is made so often by slaveholders, and with so much confidence, notwithstanding its absurdity is fully revealed by their own legal code, we propose to show its falsehood by applying other tests.
We lay it down as a truth that can be made no plainer by reasoning, that the same "public opinion," which restrains men from _committing_ outrages, will restrain them from _publishing_ such outrages, if they do commit them;--in other words, if a man is restrained from certain acts through fear of losing his character, should they become known, he will not voluntarily destroy his character by _making them known_, should he be guilty of them. Let us look at this. It is a.s.sumed by slaveholders, that "public opinion" at the south so frowns on cruelty to the slaves, that _fear of disgrace_ would restrain from the infliction of it, were there no other consideration.
Now, that this is sheer fiction is shown by the fact, that the newspapers in the slaveholding states, teem with advertis.e.m.e.nts for runaway slaves, in which the masters and _mistresses_ describe their men and women, as having been "branded with a hot iron," on their "cheeks," "jaws," "b.r.e.a.s.t.s," "arms," "legs," and "thighs;" also as "scarred," "very much scarred," "cut up," "marked," &c. "with the whip," also with "iron collars on," "chains," "bars of iron,"
"fetters," "bells," "horns," "shackles," &c. They, also, describe them as having been wounded by "buck-shot," "rifle-b.a.l.l.s," &c. fired at them by their "owners," and others when in pursuit; also, as having "notches," cut in their ears, the tops or bottoms of their ears "cut off," or "slit," or "one ear cut off" or "both ears cut off" &c. &c.
The masters and mistresses who thus advertise their runaway slaves, coolly sign their names to their advertis.e.m.e.nts, giving the street and number of their residences, if in cities, their post office address, &c. if in the country; thus making public proclamation as widely as possible that _they_ "brand," "scar," "gash," "cut up," &c. the flesh of their slaves; load them with irons, cut off their ears, &c.; they speak of these things with the utmost _sang froid_, not seeming to think it possible, that any one will esteem them at all the less because of these outrages upon their slaves; further, these advertis.e.m.e.nts swarm in many of the largest and most widely circulated political and commercial papers that are published in the slave states. The editors of those papers const.i.tute the main body of the literati of the slave states; they move in the highest circle of society, are among the "popular" men in the community, and _as a cla.s.s_, are more influential than any other; yet these editors publish these advertis.e.m.e.nts with iron indifference. So far from proclaiming to such felons, homicides, and murderers, that they will not be their blood-hounds, to hunt down the innocent and mutilated victims who have escaped from their torture, they freely furnish them with every facility, become their accomplices and share their spoils; and instead of outraging "public opinion," by doing it, they are the men after its own heart, its organs, its representatives, its _self_.
To show that the "public opinion" of the slave states, towards the slaves, is absolutely _diabolical_, we will insert a few, out of a mult.i.tude, of similar advertis.e.m.e.nts from a variety of southern papers now before us.
The North Carolina Standard, of July 18, 1838, contains the following:--