this certainly cannot be proved, for it is directly contrary to the
plain matter of fact.
I repeat it, then, again--there is nothing in the language of
this statute, there is nothing in the connexion in which it stands,
there is nothing in the history of the Mosaic legislation on this
subject, to limit the application of the law to the case of
servants escaping from foreign masters; but every considera-
tion from every legitimate source leads us to a conclusion
directly the opposite. Such a limitation is the arbitrary, unsup-
ported stet voluntas pro ratione assumption of the commentator,
and nothing else. The only shadow of a philological argument
that I can see, for limiting the statute, is found in the use of
the words to thee, in the fifteenth verse. It may be said that
the pronoun thee is used in a national and not individual sense,
implying an escape from some other nation to the Hebrews.
But examine the statute immediately preceding this, and observe
use of the pronoun thee in the thirteenth verse. Most ob-
viously, the pronouns in these statutes are used with reference
to the individuals addressed, and not in a collective or national
sense exclusively; very rarely, if ever, can this sense be given
to them in the way claimed by the argument referred to.
2. It is said that the proclamation, “Thou shalt proclaim
liberty through the land to all the inhabitants thereof,” related
only to Hebrew slaves. This assumption is based entirely on
the supposition that the slave was not considered in Hebrew
law as a person, as an inhabitant of the land, and a member of
the State; but we have just proved that in the most solemn
transaction of the State the hewer of wood and drawer of water
is expressly designated as being just as much an actor and par-
tieipator as his master; and it would be absurd to suppose that,
in a statute addressed to all the inhabitants of the land, he is
not included as an inhabitant.
Barnes enforces this idea by some pages of quotations from
Jewish writers, which will fully satisfy anyone who reads his
work.
From a review, then, of all that relates to the Hebrew slave-
law, it will appear that it was a very well-considered and wisely
adapted system of education and gradual emancipation. No
rational man can doubt that if the same laws were enacted and
the same practices prevailed with regard to slavery in the United
States, that the system of American slavery might be considered,
to all intents and purposes, practically at an end. If there is
any doubt of this fact, and it is still thought that the permission
of slavery among the Hebrews justifies American slavery, in all
fairness the experiment of making the two systems alike ought
to be tried, and we should then see what would be the result.
CHAPTER XV.
SLAVERY IS DESPOTISM.
It is always important, in discussing a thing, to keep before
our minds exactly what it is.
The only means of understanding precisely what a civil
institution is, are an examination of the laws which regulate it.
In different ages and nations, very different things have been
called by the name of slavery. Patriarchal servitude was one
thing, Hebrew servitude was another, Greek and Roman servi-
tude still a third; and these institutions differed very much from
each other. What, then, is American slavery, as we have seen
it exhibited by law, and by the decision of Courts?
Let us begin by stating what it is not:--
1. It is not apprenticeship.
2. It is not guardianship.
3. It is in no sense a system for the education of a weaker race
by a stronger.
4. The happiness of the governed is in no sense its object.
5. The temporal improvement or the eternal well-being of the
governed is in no sense its object.
The object of it has been distinctly stated in one sentence by
security, and the public safety.”
Slavery, then, is absolute despotism, of the most unmitigated
form.
It would, however, be doing injustice to the absolutism of any
civilised country to liken American slavery to it. The absolute
governments of Europe none of them pretend to be founded on
a property right of the governor to the persons and entire capa-
bilities of the governed.
This is a form of despotism which exists only in some of the
most savage countries of the world; as, for example, in
Dahomey.
The European absolutism or despotism, now, does, to some
extent, recognise the happiness and welfare of the governed as
the foundation of government; and the ruler is considered as
invested with power for the benefit of the people; and his right
to rule is supposed to be in somewhat predicated upon the idea
that he better understands how to promote the good of the
people than they themselves do. No government in the civilised world now presents the pure despotic idea, as it existed in the
old days of the Persian and Assyrian rule.
The arguments which defend slavery must be substantially
the same as those which defend despotism of any other kind;
and the objections which are to be urged against it are pre-
cisely those which can be urged against despotism of any other
kind. The customs and practices to which it gives rise are
precisely those to which despotisms in all ages have given rise.
Is the slave suspected of a crime? His master has the power
to examine him by torture (see State v. Castleman). His
master has, in fact, in most cases, the power of life and death,
owing to the exclusion of the slave's evidence. He has the
power of banishing the slave, at any time, and without giving
an account to anybody, to an exile as dreadful as that of Siberia,
and to labours as severe as those of the galleys. He has also
unlimited power over the character of his slave. He can accuse
him of any crime, yet withhold from him all right of trial or
investigation, and sell him into captivity, with his name
blackened by an unexamined imputation.
These are all abuses for which despotic governments are
blamed. They are powers which good men who are despotic
rulers are beginning to disuse; but, under the flag of every
slaveholding State, and under the flag of the whole United
States in the District of Columbia, they are committed indiscri-
minately to men of any character.
But the worst kind of despotism has been said to be that
which extends alike over the body and over the soul; which can
bind the liberty of the conscience, and deprive a man of all
right of choice in respect to the manner in which he shall learn
the will of God, and worship him. In other days, kings on
their thrones, and cottagers by their fire-sides, alike trembled
before a despotism which declared itself able to bind and to loose,
to open and to shut the kingdom of heaven.
Yet this power to control the con
science, to control the
religious privileges, and all the opportunities which man has of
acquaintanceship with his Maker, and of learning to do his will,
is, under the flag of every slave State, and under the flag of the
United States, placed in the hands of any men of any character
who can afford to pay for it.
It is a most awful and most solemn truth that the greatest
republic in the world does sustain under her national flag the
worst system of despotism which can possibly exist.
With regard to one point to which we have adverted--the
power of the master to deprive the slave of a legal trial while
accusing him of crime--a very striking instance has occurred in
the District of Columbia, within a year or two. The particulars
of the case, as stated at the time, in several papers, were briefly
these: A gentleman in Washington, our national capital--an
elder in the Presbyterian church--held a female slave, who had,
for some years, supported a good character in a Baptist church
of that city. He accused her of an attempt to poison his
family, and immediately placed her in the hands of a slave-
dealer, who took her over and imprisoned her in the slave-pen
at Alexandria, to await the departure of a coffle. The poor
girl had a mother, who felt as any mother would naturally feel.
When apprised of the situation of her daughter she flew to
the pen, and, with tears, besought an interview with her only
child; but she was cruelly repulsed, and told to be gone! She
then tried to see the elder, but failed. She had the promise of
money sufficient to purchase her daughter, but the owner would
listen to no terms of compromise.
In her distress, the mother repaired to a lawyer in the city,
and begged him to give form to her petition in writing. She
stated to him what she wished to have said, and he arranged it
for her in such a form as she herself might have presented it in,
had not the benefits of education been denied her. The following
is the letter:--
Washington, July 25, 1851.
Sir,--I address you as a rich Christian freeman and father, while I am myself
but a poor slave-mother. I come to plead with you for an only child whom I
love, who is a professor of the Christian religion with yourself, and a member of a
Christian church; and who, by your act of ownership, now pines in her imprison-
ment in a loathsome man-warehouse, where she is held for sale. I come to plead
with you for the exercise of that blessed law, “Whatsoever ye would that men
should do unto you, do ye even so to them.”
With great labour, I have found friends who are willing to aid me in the
purchase of my child, to save us from a cruel separation. You, as a father, can
judge of my feelings when I was told that you had decreed her banishment to
distant as well as to hopeless bondage!
For nearly six years my child has done for you the hard labour of a slave; from
the age of sixteen to twenty-two she has done the hard work of your chamber,
kitchen, cellar, and stables. By night and by day, your will and your commands
have been her highest law; and all this has been unrequited toil. If in all this
time her scanty allowance of tea and coffee has been sweetened, it has been at
the cost of her slave-mother, and not at yours.
You are an office-bearer in the church, and a man of prayer. As such, and as
the absolute owner of my child, I ask candidly whether she has enjoyed such
mild and gentle treatment, and amiable example, as she ought to have had, to
encourage her in her monotonous bondage? Has she received at your hands, in
faithful religious instruction in the Word of God, a full and fair compensation
for all her toil? It is not to me alone that you must answer these questions.
You acknowledge the high authority of His laws who preached a deliverance to
the captive, and who commands you to give to your servant “that which is just
and equal.” Oh, I entreat you, withhold not, at this trying hour, from my
child that which will cut off her last hope, and which may endanger your own
soul!
It has been said that you charge my daughter with crime. Can this be really
so? Can it be that you would set aside the obligations of honour and good
citizenship--that you would dare to sell the guilty one away for money, rather
than bring her to trial, which you know she is ready to meet? What would you
say, if you were accused of guilt and refused a trial? Is not her fair name as
precious to her, in the church to which she belongs, as yours can be to you?
Suppose, now, for a moment, that your daughter, whom you love, instead of
mine, was in these hot days incarcerated in a negro-pen, subject to my control,
fed on the coarsest food, committed to the entire will of a brute, denied the
privilege commonly allowed even to the murderer--that of seeing the face of his
friends? Oh, then you would feel!--feel soon, then, for a poor slave-mother
and her child, and do for us as you shall wish you had done when we shall meet
before the Great Judge, and when it shall be your greatest joy to say, “I did let
the oppressed free!”
Ellen Brown.
Mr.--
The girl, however, was sent off to the Sourthern market.
The writer has received these incidents from the gentleman
who wrote the letter. Whether the course pursued by the
master was strictly legal is a point upon which we are not en-
tirely certain; that it was a course in which the law did not in
fact interfere, is quite plain, and it is also very apparent that it
was a course against which public sentiment did not remon-
strate. The man who exercised this power was a professedly
religious man, enjoying a position of importance in a Christian
church; and it does not appear, from any movements in the
Christian community about him, that they did not consider his
course a justifiable one.
Yet is not this kind of power the very one at which we are so
shocked when we see it exercised by foreign despots?
Do we not read with shuddering that in Russia, or in Austria,
a man accused of crime is seized upon, separated from his friends,
allowed no opportunities of trial or of self-defence, but hurried
off to Siberia, or some other dreaded exile?
Why is despotism any worse in the governor of a State than
in a private individual?
There is a great controversy now going on in the world be-
tween the despotic and the republican principle. All the common
arguments used in support of slavery are arguments that apply
with equal strength to despotic government, and there are some
arguments in favour of despotic governments that do not apply
to individual slavery.
There are arguments, and quite plausible ones, in favour of
despotic government. Nobody can deny that it possesses a cer-
tain kind of efficiency, compactness, and promptness of move-
ment, which cannot, from the nature of things, belong to a re-
public. Despotism has established and sustained much more
efficient systems of police than ever a republic did. The late
King of Prussia, by the possession of absolute despotic power, was
enabled to carry out a much more efficient system of popular
education than we ever have succeeded in carrying out in Ame-
rica. He districted his kingdom in the most thorough manner,
and obliged every parent, whether he would or not, to have his
children thoroughly educated.
If we reply to all this, as we do, that the possession of absolute
power in a man qualified to use it right is undoubtedly calculated
for the good of the state, but that there are so few men that know
how to use it, that this form of government is not, on the whole,
a safe one, then we have stated an argument that goes to over-
throw slavery as much as it does a despotic government; for cer-
tainly the chances are much greater of finding one man, in the
course of fifty years, who is capable of wisely using this power,
than of finding thousands of men every day in our streets,
who can be trusted with such power. It is a painful and most
serious fact, that America trusts to the hands of the most
brutal men of her country, equally with the best, that despotic
power which she thinks an unsafe thing even in the hands
of the enlightened, educated, and cultivated Emperor of the
Russias.
With all our republican prejudices, we cannot deny that
Nicholas is a man of talent, with a mind liberalised by educa-
tion; we have been informed, also, that he is a man of serious
and religious character; he certainly, acting as he does in the
eye of all the world, must have great restraint upon him from
public opinion, and a high sense of character. But who is the
man to whom American laws intrust powers more absolute than
those of Nicholas of Russia, or Ferdinand of Naples? He may
have been a pirate on the high seas; he may be a drunkard;
he may, like Souther, have been convicted of a brutality at
which humanity turns pale; but, for all that, American slave-
law will none the less trust him with this irresponsible power,
--power over the body, and power over the soul.
On which side, then, stands the American nation, in the
great controversy which is now going on between self-govern-
ment and despotism? On which side does America stand, in