I verily believe that, giving all due consideration to the benefits conferred upon this nation by the Const.i.tution, its national unity, its swelling ma.s.ses of wealth, its power, and the external prosperity of its multiplying millions; yet the moral injury that has been done, by the countenance shown to slavery; by holding over that tremendous sin the shield of the Const.i.tution, and thus breaking down in the eyes of the nation the barrier between right and wrong; by so tenderly cherishing slavery as, in less than the life of a man, to multiply her children from half a million to nearly three millions; by enacting oaths from those who occupy prominent stations in society, that they will violate at once the rights of man and the law of G.o.d; by subst.i.tuting itself as a rule of right, in place of the moral laws of the universe;--thus in effect, dethroning the Almighty in the hearts of this people and setting up another sovereign in his stead--more than outweighs it all. A melancholy and monitory lesson this, to all time-serving and temporizing statesmen! A striking ill.u.s.tration of the _impolicy_ of sacrificing _right_ to any considerations of expediency!
Yet, what better than the evil effects that we have seen, could the authors of the Const.i.tution have reasonably expected, from the sacrifice of right, in the concessions they made to slavery? Was it reasonable in them to expect that, after they had introduced a vicious element into the very Const.i.tution of the body politic which they were calling into life, it would not exert its vicious energies? Was it reasonable in them to expect that, after slavery had been corrupting the public morals for a whole generation, their children would have too much virtue to _use_ for the defence of slavery, a power which they themselves had not too much virtue to _give_? It is dangerous for the sovereign power of a State to license immorality; to hold the shield of its protection over anything that is not "legal in a moral view." Bring into your house a benumbed viper, and lay it down upon your warm hearth, and soon it will not ask you into which room it may crawl. Let Slavery once lean upon the supporting arm, and bask in the fostering smile of the State, and you will soon see, as we now see, both her minions and her victims multiply apace, till the politics, the morals, the liberties, even the religion of the nation, are brought completely under her control.
To me, it appears that the virus of slavery, introduced into the Const.i.tution of our body politic, by a few slight punctures, has now so pervaded and poisoned the whole system of our National Government, that literally there is no health in it. The only remedy that I can see for the disease, is to be found in the _dissolution of the patient_.
The Const.i.tution of the United States, both in theory and practice, is so utterly broken down by the influence and effects of slavery, so imbecile for the highest good of the nation, and so powerful for evil, that I can give no voluntary a.s.sistance in holding it up any longer.
Henceforth it is dead to me, and I to it. I withdraw all profession of allegiance to it, and all my voluntary efforts to sustain it. The burdens that it lays upon me, while it is held up by others, I shall endeavor to bear patiently, yet acting with reference to a higher law, and distinctly declaring, that while I retain my own liberty, I will be a party to no compact, which helps to rob any other man of his.
Very respectfully, your friend,
FRANCIS JACKSON
FROM
MR. WEBSTER"S SPEECH
AT NIBLO"S GARDENS.
"We have slavery, already, amongst us. The Const.i.tution found it among us; it recognized it and gave it SOLEMN GUARANTIES. To the full extent of these guaranties we are all bound, in honor, in justice, and by the Const.i.tution. All the stipulations, contained in the Const.i.tution, _in favor of the slaveholding States_ which are already in the Union, ought to be fulfilled, and so far as depends on me, shall be fulfilled, in the fulness of their spirit, and to the exactness of their letter." !!!
EXTRACTS FROM
JOHN Q. ADAMS"S ADDRESS
AT NORTH BRIDGEWATER, NOVEMBER 6, 1844.
The benefits of the Const.i.tution of the United States, were the restoration of credit and reputation, to the country--the revival of commerce, navigation, and ship-building--the acquisition of the means of discharging the debts of the Revolution, and the protection and encouragement of the infant and drooping manufactures of the country.
All this, however, as is now well ascertained, was insufficient to propitiate the rulers of the Southern States to the adoption of the Const.i.tution. What they specially wanted was _protection_.--Protection from the powerful and savage tribes of Indians within their borders, and who were hara.s.sing them with the most terrible of wars--and protection from their own negroes--protection from their insurrections--protection from their escape--protection even to the trade by which they were brought into the country--protection, shall I not blush to say, protection to the very bondage by which they were held. Yes! it cannot be denied--the slaveholding lords of the South prescribed, as a condition of their a.s.sent to the Const.i.tution, three special provisions to secure the perpetuity of their dominion over their slaves. The first was the immunity for twenty years of preserving the African slave-trade; the second was the stipulation to surrender fugitive slaves--an engagement positively prohibited by the laws of G.o.d, delivered from Sinai; and thirdly, the exaction fatal to the principles of popular representation, of a representation for slaves--for articles of merchandise, under the name of persons.
The reluctance with which the freemen of the North submitted to the dictation of these conditions, is attested by the awkward and ambiguous language in which they are expressed. The word slave is most cautiously and fastidiously excluded from the whole instrument. A stranger, who should come from a foreign land, and read the Const.i.tution of the United States, would not believe that slavery or a slave existed within the borders of our country. There is not a word in the Const.i.tution _apparently_ bearing upon the condition of slavery, nor is there a provision but would be susceptible of practical execution, if there were not a slave in the land.
The delegates from South Carolina and Georgia distinctly avowed that, without this guarantee of protection to their property in slaves, they would not yield their a.s.sent to the Const.i.tution; and the freemen of the North, reduced to the alternative of departing from the vital principle of their liberty, or of forfeiting the Union itself, averted their faces, and with trembling hand subscribed the bond.
Twenty years pa.s.sed away--the slave markets of the South were saturated with the blood of African bondage, and from midnight of the 31st of December, 1807, not a slave from Africa was suffered ever more to be introduced upon our soil. But the internal traffic was still lawful, and the _breeding_ States soon reconciled themselves to a prohibition which gave them the monopoly of the interdicted trade, and they joined the full chorus of reprobation, to punish with death the slave-trader from Africa, while they cherished and shielded and enjoyed the precious profits of the American slave-trade exclusively to themselves.
Perhaps this unhappy result of their concession had not altogether escaped the foresight of the freemen of the North; but their intense anxiety for the preservation of the whole Union, and the habit already formed of yielding to the somewhat peremptory and overbearing tone which the relation of master and slave welds into the nature of the lord, prevailed with them to overlook this consideration, the internal slave-trade having scarcely existed, while that with Africa had been allowed. But of one consequence which has followed from the slave representation, pervading the whole organic structure of the Const.i.tution, they certainly were not prescient; for if they had been, never--no, never would they have consented to it.
The representation, ostensibly of slaves, under the name of persons, was in its operation an exclusive grant of power to one cla.s.s of proprietors, owners of one species of property, to the detriment of all the rest of the community. This species of property was odious in its nature, held in direct violation of the natural and inalienable rights of man, and of the vital principles of Christianity; it was all acc.u.mulated in one geographical section of the country, and was all held by wealthy men, comparatively small in numbers, not amounting to a tenth part of the free white population of the States in which it was concentrated.
In some of the ancient, and in some modern republics, extraordinary political power and privileges have been invested in the owners of horses but then these privileges and these powers have been granted for the equivalent of extraordinary duties and services to the community, required of the favored cla.s.s. The Roman knights const.i.tuted the cavalry of their armies, and the bushels of rings gathered by Hannibal from their dead bodies, after the battle of Cannae, amply prove that the special powers conferred upon them were no gratuitous grants. But in the Const.i.tution of the United States, the political power invested in the owners of slaves is entirely gratuitous. No extraordinary service is required of them; they are, on the contrary, themselves grievous burdens upon the community, always threatened with the danger of insurrections, to be smothered in the blood of both parties, master and slave, and always depressing the condition of the poor free laborer, by compet.i.tion with the labor of the slave. The property in horses was the gift of G.o.d to man, at the creation of the world; the property in slaves is property acquired and held by crimes, differing in no moral aspect from the pillage of a freebooter, and to which no lapse of time can give a prescriptive right. You are told that this is no concern of yours, and that the question of freedom and slavery is exclusively reserved to the consideration of the separate States. But if it be so, as to the mere question of right between master and slave, it is of tremendous concern to you that this little cl.u.s.ter of slave-owners should possess, besides their own share in the representative hall of the nation, the exclusive privilege of appointing two-fifths of the whole number of the representatives of the people. This is now your condition, under that delusive ambiguity of language and of principle, which begins by declaring the representation in the popular branch of the legislature a representation of persons, and then provides that one cla.s.s of persons shall have neither part nor lot in the choice of their representatives; but their elective franchise shall be transferred to their masters, and the oppressors shall represent the oppressed. The same perversion of the representative principle pollutes the composition of the colleges of electors of President and Vice President of the United States, and every department of the government of the Union is thus tainted at its source by the gangrene of slavery.
Fellow-citizens,--with a body of men thus composed, for legislators and executors of the laws, what will, what must be, what has been your legislation? The numbers of freemen const.i.tuting your nation are much greater than those of the slaveholding States, bond and free. You have at least three-fifths of the whole population of the Union. Your influence on the legislation and the administration of the government ought to be in the proportion of three to two--But how stands the fact? Besides the legitimate portion of influence exercised by the slaveholding States by the measure of their numbers, here is an intrusive influence in every department, by a representation nominally of persons, but really of property, ostensibly of slaves, but effectively of their masters, overbalancing your superiority of numbers, adding two-fifths of supplementary power to the two-fifths fairly secured to them by the compact, CONTROLLING AND OVERRULING THE WHOLE ACTION OF YOUR GOVERNMENT AT HOME AND ABROAD, and warping it to the sordid private interest and oppressive policy of 300,000 owners of slaves.
From the time of the adoption of the Const.i.tution of the United States, the inst.i.tution of domestic slavery has been becoming more and more the abhorrence of the civilized world. But in proportion as it has been growing odious to all the rest of mankind, it has been sinking deeper and deeper into the affections of the holders of slaves themselves. The cultivation of cotton and of sugar, unknown in the Union at the establishment of the Const.i.tution, has added largely to the pecuniary value of the slave. Aud the suppression of the African slave-trade as piracy upon pain of death, by securing the benefit of a monopoly to the virtuous slaveholders of the ancient dominion, has turned her heroic tyrannicides into a community of slave-breeders for sale, and converted the land of GEORGE WASHINGTON, PATRICK HENRY, RICHARD HENRY LEE, and THOMAS JEFFERSON, into a great barrac.o.o.n--a cattle-show of human beings, an emporium, of which the staple articles of merchandise are the flesh and blood, the bones and sinews of immortal man.
Of the increasing abomination of slavery in the unbought hearts of men at the time when the Const.i.tution of the United States was formed, what clearer proof could be desired, than that the very same year in which that charter of the land was issued, the Congress of the Confederation, with not a t.i.the of the powers given by the people to the Congress of the new compact, actually abolished slavery for ever throughout the whole Northwestern territory, without a remonstrance or a murmur. But in the articles of confederation, there was no guaranty for the property of the slaveholder--no double representation of him in the Federal councils--no power of taxation--no stipulation for the recovery of fugitive slaves. But when the powers of _government_ came to be delegated to the Union, the South--that is, South Carolina and Georgia--refused their subscription to the parchment, till it should be saturated with the infection of slavery, which no fumigation could purify, no quarantine could extinguish. The freemen of the North gave way, and the deadly venom of slavery was infused into the Const.i.tution of freedom. Its first consequence has been to invert the first principle of Democracy, that the will of the majority of numbers shall rule the land. By means of the double representation, the minority command the whole, and a KNOT OF SLAVEHOLDERS GIVE THE LAW AND PRESCRIBE THE POLICY OF THE COUNTRY. To acquire this superiority of a large majority of freemen, a persevering system of engrossing nearly all the seats of power and place, is constantly for a long series of years pursued, and you have seen, in a period of fifty-six years, the Chief-magistracy of the Union held, during forty-four of them, by the owners of slaves. The Executive department, the Army and Navy, the Supreme Judicial Court and diplomatic missions abroad, all present the same spectacle;--an immense majority of power in the hands of a very small minority of the people--millions made for a fraction of a few thousands.
From that day (1830,) SLAVERY, SLAVEHOLDING, SLAVE-BREEDING AND SLAVE-TRADING, HAVE FORMED THE WHOLE FOUNDATION OF THE POLICY OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, and of the slaveholding States, at home and abroad; and at the very time when a new census has exhibited a large increase upon the superior numbers of the free States, it has presented the portentous evidence of increased influence and ascendancy of the slave-holding power.
Of the prevalence of that power, you have had continual and conclusive evidence in the suppression for the s.p.a.ce of ten years of the right of pet.i.tion, guarantied, if there could be a guarantee against slavery, by the first article amendatory of the Const.i.tution.
No. 12.
ANTI-SLAVERY EXAMINER.
CHATTEL PRINCIPLE
THE ABHORRENCE OF JESUS CHRIST AND THE APOSTLES; OR, NO REFUGE FOR AMERICAN SLAVERY IN THE NEW TESTAMENT.
BY BERIAH GREEN.
NEW YORK
PUBLISHED BY THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY, NO. 143 Na.s.sAU STREET
1839
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THE NEW TESTAMENT AGAINST SLAVERY.
"THE SON OF MAN IS COME TO SEEK AND TO SAVE THAT WHICH WAS LOST."
Is Jesus Christ in favor of American slavery? In 1776 THOMAS JEFFERSON, supported by a n.o.ble band of patriots and surrounded by the American people, opened his lips in the authoritative declaration: "We hold these truths to be SELF-EVIDENT, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, LIBERTY, and the pursuit of happiness." And from the inmost heart of the mult.i.tudes around, and in a strong and clear voice, broke forth the unanimous and decisive answer: Amen--such truths we do indeed hold to be self-evident. And animated and sustained by a declaration, so inspiring and sublime, they rushed to arms, and as the result of agonizing efforts and dreadful sufferings, achieved under G.o.d the independence of their country. The great truth, whence they derived light and strength to a.s.sert and defend their rights, they made the foundation of their republic. And in the midst of this republic, must we prove, that He, who was the Truth, did not contradict "the truths" which He Himself; as their Creator, had made self-evident to mankind?
Is Jesus Christ in favor of American slavery? What, according to those laws which make it what it is, is American slavery? In the Statute-book of South Carolina thus it is written:[1] "Slaves shall be deemed, held, taken, reputed and adjudged in law to be chattels personal in the hands of their owners and possessors, and their executors, administrators and a.s.signs, to all intents, construction and purposes whatever." The very root of American slavery consists in the a.s.sumption, that law has reduced men to chattels. But this a.s.sumption is, and must be, a gross falsehood. Men and cattle are separated from each other by the Creator, immutably, eternally, and by an impa.s.sable gulf. To confound or identify men and cattle must be to lie most wantonly, impudently, and maliciously. And must we prove, that Jesus Christ is not in favor of palpable, monstrous falsehood?
[Footnote 1: Stroud"s Slave Laws, p. 23.]