2. Were there nothing else to prove it a system of monstrous cruelty, the fact that FEAR is the only motive with which the slave is plied during his whole existence, would be sufficient to brand it with execration as the grand tormentor of man. The slave"s _susceptibility of pain_ is the sole fulcrum on which slavery works the lever that moves him. In this it plants all its stings; here it sinks its hot irons; cuts its deep gashes; flings its burning embers, and dashes its boiling brine and liquid fire: into this it strikes its cold flesh hooks, grappling irons, and instruments of nameless torture; and by it drags him shrieking to the end of his pilgrimage. The fact that the master inflicts pain upon the slave not merely as an _end_ to gratify pa.s.sion, but constantly as a _means_ of extorting labor, is enough of itself to show that the system of slavery is unmixed cruelty.
3. That the slaves must suffer frequent and terrible inflictions, follows inevitably from the _character of those who direct their labor_. Whatever may be the character of the slaveholders themselves, all agree that the overseers are, as a cla.s.s, most abandoned, brutal, and desperate men. This is so well known and believed that any testimony to prove it seems needless. The testimony of Mr. WIRT, late Attorney General of the United States, a Virginian and a slaveholder, is as follows. In his life of Patrick Henry, p. 36, speaking of the different cla.s.ses of society in Virginia, he says,--"Last and lowest a feculum, of beings called "overseers"--_the most abject, degraded, unprincipled race_, always cap in hand to the dons who employ them, and furnishing materials for the exercise of their _pride, insolence, and spirit of domination_."
Rev. PHINEAS SMITH, of Centreville, New-York, who has resided some years at the south, says of overseers--
"It need hardly be added that overseers are in general ignorant, _unprincipled and cruel_, and in such low repute that they are not permitted to come to the tables of their employers; yet they have the constant control of all the human cattle that belong to the master.
"These men are continually advancing from their low station to the higher one of masters. These changes bring into the possession of power a cla.s.s of men of whose mental and moral qualities I have already spoken."
Rev. HORACE MOULTON, Marlboro", Ma.s.sachusetts, who lived in Georgia several years, says of them,--
"The overseers are _generally loose in their morals_; it is the object of masters to employ those whom they think will get the most work out of their hands,--hence those who _whip and torment the slaves the most_ are in many instances called the best overseers. The masters think those whom the slaves fear the most are the best. Quite a portion of the masters employ their own slaves as overseers, or rather they are called drivers; these are more subject to the will of the masters than the white overseers are; some of them are as lordly as an Austrian prince, and sometimes more cruel even than the whites."
That the overseers are, as a body, sensual, brutal, and violent men is _proverbial_. The tender mercies of such men _must be cruel_.
4. The _ownership_ of human beings necessarily presupposes an utter disregard of their happiness. He who a.s.sumes it monopolizes their _whole capital_, leaves them no stock on which to trade, and out of which to _make_ happiness. Whatever is the master"s gain is the slave"s loss, a loss wrested from him by the master, for the express purpose of making it _his own gain_; this is the master"s constant employment--forcing the slave to toil--violently wringing from him all he has and all he gets, and using it as his own;--like the vile bird that never builds its nest from materials of its own gathering, but either drives other birds from theirs and takes possession of them, or tears them in pieces to get the means of constructing their own. This daily practice of forcibly robbing others, and habitually living on the plunder, cannot but beget in the mind the _habit_ of regarding the interests and happiness of those whom it robs, as of no sort of consequence in comparison with its own; consequently whenever those interests and this happiness are in the way of its own gratification, they will be sacrificed without scruple. He who cannot see this would be unable to _feel_ it, if it were seen.
OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED.
Objection I--"SUCH CRUELTIES ARE INCREDIBLE."
The enormities inflicted by slaveholders upon their slaves will never be discredited except by those who overlook the simple fact, that he who holds human beings as his bona fide property, _regards_ them as property, and not as _persons;_ this is his permanent state of mind toward them. He does not contemplate slaves as human beings, consequently does not _treat_ them as such; and with entire indifference sees them suffer privations and writhe under blows, which, if inflicted upon whites, would fill him with horror and indignation. He regards that as good treatment of slaves, which would seem to him insufferable abuse if practiced upon others; and would denounce that as a monstrous outrage and horrible cruelty, if perpretated upon white men and women, which he sees every day meted out to black slaves, without perhaps ever thinking it cruel.
Accustomed all his life to regard them rather as domestic animals, to hear them stormed at, and to see them cuffed and caned; and being himself in the constant habit of treating them thus, such practices have become to him a mere matter of course, and make no impression on his mind. True, it is incredible that men should treat as _chattels_ those whom they truly regard as _human beings;_ but that they should treat as chattels and working animals those whom they _regard_ as such, is no marvel. The common treatment of dogs, when they are in the way, is to kick them out of it; we see them every day kicked off the sidewalks, and out of shops, and on Sabbaths out of churches,--yet, as they are but _dogs_, these do not strike us as outrages; yet, if we were to see men, women, and children--our neighbors and friends, kicked out of stores by merchants, or out of churches by the deacons and s.e.xton, we should call the perpetrators inhuman wretches.
We have said that slaveholders regard their slaves not as human beings, but as mere working animals, or merchandise. The whole vocabulary of slaveholders, their laws, their usages, and their entire treatment of their slaves fully establish this. The same terms are applied to slaves that are given to cattle. They are called "stock."
So when the children of slaves are spoken of prospectively, they are called their "increase;" the same term that is applied to flocks and herds. So the female slaves that are mothers, are called "breeders"
till past child bearing; and often the same terms are applied to the different s.e.xes that are applied to the males and females among cattle. Those who compel the labor of slaves and cattle have the same appellation, "drivers:" the names which they call them are the same and similar to those given to their horses and oxen. The laws of slave states make them property, equally with goats and swine; they are levied upon for debt in the same way; they are included in the same advertis.e.m.e.nts of public sales with cattle, swine, and a.s.ses; when moved from one part of the country to another, they are herded in droves like cattle, and like them urged on by drivers; their labor is compelled in the same way. They are bought and sold, and separated like cattle: when exposed for sale, their good qualities are described as jockies show off the good points of their horses; their strength, activity, skill, power of endurance, &c. are lauded,--and those who bid upon them examine their persons, just as purchasers inspect horses and oxen; they open their mouths to see if their teeth are sound; strip their backs to see if they are badly scarred, and handle their limbs and muscles to see if they are firmly knit. Like horses, they are warranted to be "sound," or to be returned to the owner if "unsound." A father gives his son a horse and a _slave_; by his will he distributes among them his race-horses, hounds, game-c.o.c.ks, and _slaves_. We leave the reader to carry out the parallel which we have only begun. Its details would cover many pages.
That slaveholders do not practically regard slaves as _human beings_ is abundantly shown by their own voluntary testimony. In a recent work ent.i.tled, "The South vindicated from the Treason and Fanaticism of Northern Abolitionists," which was written, we are informed, by Colonel Dayton, late member of Congress from South Carolina; the writer, speaking of the awe with which the slaves regard the whites, says,--
"The northerner looks upon a band of negroes as upon so many _men_, but the planter or southerner _views them in a very different light._"
Extract from the speech of Mr. SUMMERS, of Virginia, in the legislature of that state, Jan. 26, 1832. See the Richmond Whig.
"When, in the sublime lessons of Christianity, he (the slaveholder) is taught to "do unto others as he would have others do unto him," HE NEVER DREAMS THAT THE DEGRADED NEGRO IS WITHIN THE PALE OF THAT HOLY CANON."
PRESIDENT JEFFERSON, in his letter to GOVERNOR COLES, of Illinois, dated Aug. 25, 1814, a.s.serts, that slaveholders regard their slaves as brutes, in the following remarkable language.
"Nursed and educated in the daily habit of seeing the degraded condition, both bodily and mental, of these unfortunate beings [the slaves], FEW MINDS HAVE YET DOUBTED BUT THAT THEY WERE AS LEGITIMATE SUBJECTS OF PROPERTY AS THEIR HORSES OR CATTLE."
Having shown that slaveholders regard their slaves as mere working animals and cattle, we now proceed to show that their actual treatment of them, is _worse_ than it would be if they were brutes. We repeat it, SLAVEHOLDERS TREAT THEIR SLAVES WORSE THAN THEY DO THEIR BRUTES.
Whoever heard of cows or sheep being deliberately tied up and beaten and lacerated till they died? or horses coolly tortured by the hour, till covered with mangled flesh, or of swine having their legs tied and being suspended from a tree and lacerated with thongs for hours, or of hounds stretched and made fast at full length, flayed with whips, red pepper rubbed into their bleeding gashes, and hot brine dashed on to aggravate the torture? Yet just such forms and degrees of torture are _daily_ perpetrated upon the slaves. Now no man that knows human nature will marvel at this. Though great cruelties have always been inflicted by men upon brutes, yet incomparably the most horrid ever perpetrated, have been those of men upon _their own species_. Any leaf of history turned over at random has proof enough of this. Every reflecting mind perceives that when men hold _human beings_ as _property_, they must, from the nature of the case, treat them worse than they treat their horses and oxen. It is impossible for _cattle_ to excite in men such tempests of fury as men excite in each other.
Men are often provoked if their horses or hounds refuse to do, or their pigs refuse to go where they wish to drive them, but the feeling is rarely intense and never permanent. It is vexation and impatience, rather than settled rage, malignity, or revenge. If horses and dogs were intelligent beings, and still held as property, their opposition to the wishes of their owners, would exasperate them immeasurably more than it would be possible for them to do, with the minds of brutes.
None but little children and idiots get angry at sticks and stones that lie in their way or hurt them; but put into sticks and stones intelligence, and will, and power of feeling and motion, while they remain as now, articles of property, and what a towering rage would men be in, if bushes whipped them in the face when they walked among them, or stones rolled over their toes when they climbed hills! and what exemplary vengeance would be inflicted upon door-steps and hearth-stones, if they were to move out of their places, instead of lying still where they were put for their owners to tread upon. The greatest provocation to human nature is _opposition to its will_. If a man"s will be resisted by one far _below_ him, the provocation is vastly greater, than when it is resisted by an acknowledged superior.
In the former case, it inflames strong pa.s.sions, which in the latter lie dormant. The rage of proud Haman knew no bounds against the poor Jew who would not do as he wished, and so he built a gallows for him.
If the person opposing the will of another, be so far below him as to be on a level with chattels, and be actually held and used as an article of property; pride, scorn, l.u.s.t of power, rage and revenge explode together upon the hapless victim. The idea of _property_ having a will, and that too in opposition to the will of its _owner_, and counteracting it, is a stimulant of terrible power to the most relentless human pa.s.sions and from the nature of slavery, and the const.i.tution of the human mind, this fierce stimulant must, with various degrees of strength, act upon slaveholders almost without ceasing. The slave, however abject and crushed, is an intelligent being: he has a _will_, and that will cannot be annihilated, _it will show itself_; if for a moment it is smothered, like pent up fires when vent is found, it flames the fiercer. Make intelligence _property_, and its manager will have his match; he is met at every turn by an _opposing will_, not in the form of down-right rebellion and defiance, but yet, visibly, an _ever-opposing will_. He sees it in the dissatisfied look, and reluctant air and unwilling movement; the constrained strokes of labor, the drawling tones, the slow hearing, the feigned stupidity, the sham pains and sickness, the short memory; and he _feels_ it every hour, in innumerable forms, frustrating his designs by a ceaseless though perhaps invisible countermining. This unceasing opposition to the will of its "owner," on the part of his rational "property," is to the slaveholder as the hot iron to the nerve. He raves under it, and storms, and gnashes, and smites; but the more he smites, the hotter it gets, and the more it burns him.
Further, this opposition of the slave"s will to his owner"s, not only excites him to severity, that he may gratify his rage, but makes it necessary for him to use violence in breaking down this resistance--thus subjecting the slave to additional tortures. There is another inducement to cruel inflictions upon the slave, and a necessity for it, which does not exist in the case of brutes.
Offenders must be made an example to others, to strike them with terror. If a slave runs away and is caught, his master flogs him with terrible severity, not merely to gratify his resentment, and to keep him from running away again, but as a warning to others. So in every case of disobedience, neglect, stubbornness, unfaithfulness, indolence, insolence, theft, feigned sickness, when his directions are forgotten, or slighted, or supposed to be, or his wishes crossed, or his property injured, or left exposed, or his work ill-executed, the master is tempted to inflict cruelties, not merely to wreak his own vengeance upon him, and to make the slave more circ.u.mspect in future, but to sustain his authority over the other slaves, to restrain them from like practices, and to preserve his own property.
A mult.i.tude of facts, ill.u.s.trating the position that slaveholders treat their slaves _worse_ than they do their cattle, will occur to all who are familiar with slavery. When cattle break through their owners" inclosures and escape, if found, they are driven back and fastened in again; and even slaveholders would execrate as a wretch, the man who should tie them up, and bruise and lacerate them for straying away; but when _slaves_ that have escaped are caught, they are flogged with the most terrible severity. When herds of cattle are driven to market, they are suffered to go in the easiest way, each by himself; but when slaves are driven to market, they are fastened together with handcuffs, galled by iron collars and chains, and thus forced to travel on foot hundreds of miles, sleeping at night in their chains. Sheep, and sometimes horned cattle are marked with their owners" initials--but this is generally done with paint, and of course produces no pain. Slaves, too, are often marked with their owners"
initials, but the letters are stamped into their flesh with a hot iron. Cattle are suffered to graze their pastures without stint; but the slaves are restrained in their food to a fixed allowance. The slaveholders" horses are notoriously far better fed, more moderately worked, have fewer hours of labor, and longer intervals of rest than their slaves; and their valuable horses are far more comfortably housed and lodged, and their stables more effectually defended from the weather, than the slaves" huts. We have here merely _begun_ a comparison, which the reader can easily carry out at length, from the materials furnished in this work.
We will, however, subjoin a few testimonies of slaveholders, and others who have resided in slave states, expressly a.s.serting that slaves are treated _worse than brutes_.
The late Dr. GEORGE BUCHANAN, of Baltimore, Maryland, a member of the American Philosophical Society, in an oration delivered in Baltimore, July 4, 1791, page 10, says:
"The Africans whom you despise, whom you _more inhumanly treat than brutes_, are equally capable of improvement with yourselves."
The Rev. GEORGE WHITEFIELD, in his celebrated letter to the slaveholders of Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia, written one hundred years ago, (See Benezet"s Caution to Great Britain and her Colonies, page 13), says:
"Sure I am, it is sinful to use them as bad, nay worse than if they were brutes; and whatever particular _exceptions_ there may be, (as I would charitably hope there are _some_) I fear the _generality_ of you that own negroes, _are liable to such a charge_."
Mr. RICE, of Kentucky in his speech in the Convention that formed the Const.i.tution of that state, in 1790, says:
"He [the slave] is a rational creature, reduced by the power of legislation to the _state of a brute_, and thereby deprived of every privilege of humanity.... The brute may steal or rob, to supply his hunger; but the slave, though in the most starving condition, _dare not do either, on penalty of death, or some severe punishment_."
Rev. HORACE MOULTON, a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church, in Marlborough, Ma.s.s. who lived some years in Georgia, says:
"The southern horses and dogs have enough to eat, and good care is taken of them; but southern negroes--who can describe their misery and their wretchedness, their nakedness and their cruel scourgings! None but G.o.d. Should we _whip our horses_ as they whip their slaves, even for small offences, we should expose ourselves to the penalty of the law."
Rev. PHINEAS SMITH, Centerville, Allegany county, New York, who has resided four years in the midst of southern slavery--
"Avarice and cruelty are twin sisters; and I do not hesitate to declare before the world, as my deliberate opinion, that there is _less compa.s.sion_ for working slaves at the south, than for working oxen at the north."
STEVEN SEWALL, Esq. Winthrop, Maine, a member of the Congregational Church, and late agent of the Winthrop Manufacturing Company, who resided five years in Alabama, says--
"I do not think that brutes, not even horses, are treated with _so much cruelty_ as American slaves."
If the preceding considerations are insufficient to remove incredulity respecting the cruelties suffered by slaves, and if northern objectors still say, "We might believe such things of savages, but that civilized men, and republicans, in this Christian country, can openly and by system perpetrate such enormities, is impossible";--to such we reply, that this incredulity of the people of the free states, is not only discreditable to their intelligence, but to their consistency.
Who is so ignorant as not to know, or so incredulous as to disbelieve, that the early Baptists of New England were fined, imprisoned, scourged, and finally banished by our puritan forefathers?--and that the Quakers were confined in dungeons, publicly whipped at the cart-tail, had their ears cut off, cleft sticks put upon their tongues, and that five of them, four men and one woman, were hung on Boston Common, for propagating the sentiments of the Society of Friends? Who discredits the fact, that the civil authorities in Ma.s.sachusetts, less than a hundred and fifty years ago, confined in the public jail a little girl of four years old, and publicly hung the Rev. Mr. Burroughs, and eighteen other persons, mostly women, and killed another, (Giles Corey,) by extending him upon his back, and piling weights upon his breast till he was crushed to death [17]--and this for no other reason than that these men and women, and this little child, were accused by others of _bewitching_ them.
[Footnote 17: Judge Sewall, of Ma.s.s. in his diary, describing this horrible scene, says that when the tongue of the poor sufferer had, in the extremity of his dying agony, protruded from his mouth, a person in attendance took his cane and thrust it back into his mouth.]
Even the children in Connecticut, know that the following was once a law of that state: