Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  So we hear the Baltimore Sun, a paper in a slave State, and no way suspected of leaning towards abolitionism, thus scornfully disposing of the scriptural argument: —

  Messrs. Burgess, Taylor, and Co., Sun Iron Building, send us a copy of a work of imposing exterior, a handsome work of nearly six hundred pages, from the pen of the Rev. Josiah Priest, A.M., and published by Rev. W. S. Brown, M.D., at Glasgow, Kentucky, the copy before us conveying the assurance that it is the “fifth edition, stereotyped.” And we have no doubt it is; and the fiftieth edition may be published, but it will amount to nothing, for there is nothing in it. The book comprises the usually quoted facts associated with the history of slavery, as recorded in the Scriptures, accompanied by the opinions and arguments of another man in relation thereto. And this sort of thing may go on to the end of time. It can accomplish nothing towards the perpetuation of slavery. The book is called “Bible Defence of Slavery; and Origin, Fortunes, and History of the Negro Race.” Bible defence of slavery! There is no such thing as a Bible defence of slavery at the present day. Slavery in the United States is a social institution, originating in the convenience and cupidity of our ancestors, existing by State laws, and recognised to a certain extent — for the recovery of slave property — by the constitution. And nobody would pretend that, if it were inexpedient and unprofitable for any man or any State to continue to hold slaves, they would be bound to do so on the ground of a “Bible defence” of it. Slavery is recorded in the Bible, and approved, with many degrading characteristics. War is recorded in the Bible, and approved, under what seems to us the extreme of cruelty. But are slavery and war to endure for ever because we find them in the Bible? or are they to cease at once and for ever because the Bible inculcates peace and brotherhood?

  The book before us exhibits great research, but is obnoxious to severe criticism, on account of its gratuitous assumptions. The writer is constantly assuming this, that, and the other. In a work of this sort a “doubtless” this, and “no doubt” the other, and “such is our belief,” with respect to important premises, will not be acceptable to the intelligent reader. Many of the positions assumed are ludicrous; and the fancy of the writer runs to exuberance in putting words and speeches into the mouths of the ancients, predicated upon the brief record of Scripture history. The argument from the curse of Ham is not worth the paper it is written upon. It is just equivalent to that of Blackwood’s Magazine, we remember examining some years since, in reference to the admission of Rothschild to Parliament. The writer maintained the religious obligation of the Christian public to perpetuate the political disabilities of the Jews because it would be resisting the Divine will to remove them, in view of the “curse” which the aforesaid Christian Pharisee understood to be levelled against the sons of Abraham. Admitting that God has cursed both the Jewish race and the descendants of Ham, He is able to fulfil His purpose, though the “rest of mankind” should in all things act up to the benevolent precepts of the “Divine law.” Man may very safely cultivate the highest principles of the Christian dispensation, and leave God to work out the fulfilment of His curse.

  According to the same book and the same logic, all mankind being under a “curse,” none of us ought to work out any alleviation for ourselves, and we are sinning heinously in harnessing steam to the performance of manual labour, cutting wheat by McCormick’s diablerie, and laying hold of the lightning to carry our messages for us, instead of footing it ourselves, as our father Adam did. With a little more common sense, and much less of the uncommon sort, we should better understand Scripture, the institutions under which we live, the several rights of our fellow-citizens in all sections of the country, and the good, sound, practical, social relations which ought to contribute infinitely more than they do to the happiness of mankind.

  If the reader wishes to know what kind of preaching it is that St. Clare alludes to, when he says he can learn what is quite as much to the purpose from the Picayune, and that such scriptural expositions of their peculiar relations don’t edify him much, he is referred to the following extract from a sermon preached in New Orleans, by the Rev. Theophilus Clapp. Let our reader now imagine that he sees St. Clare seated in the front slip, waggishly taking notes of the following specimen of ethics and humanity: —

  Let all Christian teachers show our servants the importance of being submissive, obedient, industrious, honest, and faithful to the interests of their masters. Let their minds be filled with sweet anticipations of rest eternal beyond the grave. Let them be trained to direct their views to that fascinating and glorious futurity where the sins, sorrows, and troubles of earth will be contemplated under the aspect of means indispensable to our everlasting progress in knowledge, virtue, and happiness. I would say to every slave in the United States, “You should realise that a wise, kind, and merciful Providence has appointed for you your condition in life; and, all things considered, you could not be more eligibly situated. The burden of your care, toils, and responsibilities is much lighter than that which God has imposed on your master. The most enlightened philanthropists, with unlimited resources, could not place you in a situation more favourable to your present and everlasting welfare than that which you now occupy. You have your troubles; so have all. Remember how evanescent are the pleasures and joys of human life.

  But, as Mr. Clapp will not, perhaps, be accepted as a representation of orthodoxy, let him be supposed to listen to the following declarations of the Rev. James Smylie, a clergyman of great influence in the Presbyterian Church, in a tract upon slavery, which he states in the introduction to have been written with particular reference to removing the conscientious scruples of religious people in Mississippi and Louisiana with regard to its propriety.

  If I believed, or was of opinion, that it was the legitimate tendency of the gospel to abolish slavery, how would I approach a man, possessing as many slaves as Abraham had, and tell him I wished to obtain his permission to preach to his slaves?

  Suppose the man to be ignorant of the gospel, and that he would inquire of me what was my object; I would tell him candidly (and every minister ought to be candid) that I wished to preach the gospel, because its legitimate tendency is to make his slaves honest, trusty, and faithful; not serving “with eye-service, as men-pleasers,” “not purloining, but showing all good fidelity.” “And is this,” he would ask, “really the tendency of the gospel?” I would answer, “Yes.” Then I might expect that a man who had a thousand slaves, if he believed me, would not only permit me to preach to his slaves, but would do more. He would be willing to build me a house, furnish me a garden, and ample provision for a support; because he would conclude, verily that this preacher would be worth more to him than a dozen overseers. But suppose, them, he would tell me that he understood the tendency of the gospel was to abolish slavery, and inquire of me if that was the fact. Ah! this is the rub. He has now cornered me. What shall I say? Shall I, like a dishonest man, twist and dodge, and shift and turn, to evade an answer? No; I must, Kentuckian like, come out broad, flat-footed, and tell him that abolition is the tendency of the gospel. What am I now to calculate upon? I have told the man that it is the tendency of the gospel to make him so poor as to oblige him to take hold of the maul and wedge himself; he must catch, curry, and saddle his own horse; he must black his own brogans (for he will not be able to buy boots). His wife must go herself to the wash-tub, take hold of the scrubbing-broom, wash the pots, and cook all that she and her rail- mauler will eat.

  Query. — Is it to be expected that a master, ignorant heretofore of the tendency of the gospel, would fall so desperately in love with it, from knowledge of its tendency, that he would encourage the preaching of it among his slaves? Verily, NO.

  But suppose, when he put the last question to me as to its tendency, I could and would, without a twist or quibble, tell him plainly and candidly that it was a slander on the gospel to say that emancipation or abolition was its legitimate tendency. I would tell him that the commandments of some men, and not the comma
ndments of God, made slavery a sin. — Smylie on Slavery, .

  One can imagine the expression of countenance and tone of voice with which St. Clare would receive such expositions of the gospel. It is to be remarked that this tract does not contain the opinions of one man only, but that it has in its appendix a letter from two ecclesiastical bodies of the Presbyterian Church, substantially endorsing its sentiments.

  Can any one wonder that a man like St. Clare should put such questions as these?

  “Is what you hear at church religion? Is that which can bend and turn, and descend and ascend, to fit every crooked phase of selfish, worldly society, religion? Is that religion which is less scrupulous, less generous, less just, less considerate for man, than even my own ungodly, worldly, blinded nature? No! When I look for a religion, I must look for something above me, and not something beneath.”

  The character of St. Clare was drawn by the writer with enthusiasm and with hope. Will this hope never be realised? Will those men at the South, to whom God has given the power to perceive and the heart to feel the unutterable wrong and injustice of slavery, always remain silent and inactive? What nobler ambition to a Southern man than to deliver his country from this disgrace? From the South must the deliverer arise. How long shall he delay? There is a crown brighter than any earthly ambition has ever worn — there is a laurel which will not fade: it is prepared and waiting for that hero who shall rise up for liberty at the South, and free that noble and beautiful country from the burden and disgrace of slavery.

  CHAPTER X.

  LEGREE.

  AS St. Clare and the Shelbys are the representatives of one class of masters, so Legree is the representative of another; and, as all good masters are not as enlightened, as generous, and as considerate, as St. Clare and Mr. Shelby, or as careful and successful in religious training as Mrs. Shelby, so all bad masters do not unite the personal ugliness, the coarseness and profaneness, of Legree.

  Legree is introduced not for the sake of vilifying masters as a class, but for the sake of bringing to the minds of honourable Southern men, who are masters, a very important feature in the system of slavery, upon which, perhaps, they have never reflected. It is this: that no Southern law requires any test of CHARACTER from the man to whom the absolute power of master is granted.

  In the second part of this book it will be shown that the legal power of the master amounts to an absolute despotism over body and soul, and that there is no protection for the slave’s life or limb, his family relations, his conscience, nay, more, his eternal interests, but the CHARACTER of the master.

  Rev. Charles C. Jones, of Georgia, in addressing masters, tells them that they have the power to open the kingdom of heaven, or to shut it, to their slaves (Religious Instruction of the Negroes, ); and a South Carolinian, in a recent article in Frazer’s Magazine, apparently in a very serious spirit, thus acknowledges the fact of this awful power: “Yes, we would have the whole South to feel that the soul of the slave is in some sense in the master’s keeping, and to be charged against him hereafter.”

  Now, it is respectfully submitted to men of this high class, who are the law-makers, whether this awful power to bind and to loose, to open and to shut the kingdom of heaven, ought to be intrusted to every man in the community, without any other qualification than that of property to buy. Let this gentleman of South Carolina cast his eyes around the world. Let him travel for one week through any district of country either in the South or the North, and ask himself how many of the men whom he meets are fit to be trusted with this power, — how many are fit to be trusted with their own souls, much less with those of others?

  Now, in all the theory of government as it is managed in our country, just in proportion to the extent of power is the strictness with which qualification for the proper exercise of it is demanded. The physician may not meddle with the body, to prescribe for its ailments, without a certificate that he is properly qualified. The judge may not decide on the laws which relate to property, without a long course of training, and most abundant preparation. It is only this office of MASTER, which contains the power to bind and to loose, and to open and shut the kingdom of heaven, and involves responsibility for the soul as well as the body, that is thrown out to every hand, and committed without inquiry to any man of any character. A man may have made all his property by piracy upon the high seas, as we have represented in the case of Legree, and there is no law whatever to prevent his investing that property in acquiring this absolute control over the souls and bodies of his fellow- beings. To the half-maniac drunkard, to the man notorious for hardness and cruelty, to the man sunk entirely below public opinion, to the bitter infidel and blasphemer, the law confides this power, just as freely as to the most honourable and religious man on earth. And yet, men who make and uphold these laws think they are guiltless before God, because, individually, they do not perpetrate the wrongs which they allow others to perpetrate!

  To the Pirate Legree the law gives a power which no man of woman born, save One, ever was good enough to exercise.

  Are there such men as Legree? Let any one go into the low districts and dens of New York, let them go into some of the lanes and alleys of London, and will they not there see many Legrees? Nay, take the purest district of New England, and let people cast about in their memory and see if there have not been men there, hard, coarse, unfeeling, brutal, who, if they had possessed the absolute power of Legree, would have used it in the same way; and that there should be Legrees in the Southern States, is only saying that human nature is the same there that it is everywhere. The only difference is this — that in free States Legree is chained and restrained by law; in the slave States, the law makes him an absolute, irresponsible despot.

  It is a shocking task to confirm by fact this part of the writer’s story. One may well approach it in fear and trembling. It is so mournful to think that man, made in the image of God, and by his human birth a brother of Jesus Christ, can sink so low, can do such things as the very soul shudders to contemplate — and to think that the very man who thus sinks is our brother — is capable, like us, of the renewal by the Spirit of grace, by which he might be created in the image of Christ and be made equal unto the angels. They who uphold the laws which grant this awful power, have another heavy responsibility, of which they little dream. How many souls of masters have been ruined through it! How has this absolute authority provoked and developed wickedness which otherwise might have been suppressed! How many have stumbled into everlasting perdition over this stumbling-stone of IRRESPONSIBLE POWER!

  What facts do the judicial trials of slave-holding States occasionally develope! What horrible records defile the pages of the law-book, describing unheard-of scenes of torture and agony, perpetrated in this nineteenth century of the Christian era, by the irresponsible despot who owns the body and soul! Let any one read, if they can, the ninety-third page of Weld’s Slavery As It Is, where the Rev. Mr. Dickey gives an account of a trial in Kentucky for a deed of butchery and blood too repulsive to humanity to be here described. The culprit was convicted, and sentenced to death. Mr. Dickey’s account of the finale is thus: —

  The Court sat — Isham was judged to be guilty of a capital crime in the affair of George. He was to be hanged at Salem. The day was set. My good old father visited him in the prison — two or three times talked and prayed with him; I visited him once myself. We fondly hoped that he was a sincere penitent. Before the day of execution came, by some means, I never knew what, Isham was missing. About two years after, we learned that he had gone down to Natchez, and had married a lady of some refinement and piety. I saw her letters to his sisters, who were worthy members of the church of which I was pastor. The last letter told of his death. He was in Jackson’s army, and fell in the famous battle of New Orleans.

  I am, sir, your friend, WM. DICKEY.

  But the reader will have too much reason to know of the possibility of the existence of such men as Legree, when he comes to read the records of the trials and j
udicial decisions in Part II.

  Let not the Southern country be taunted as the only country in the world which produces such men; let us in sorrow and in humility concede that such men are found everywhere; but let not the Southern country deny the awful charge that she invests such men with absolute, irresponsible power over both the body and the soul.

  With regard to that atrocious system of working up the human being in a given time on which Legree is represented as conducting his plantation, there is unfortunately too much reason to know that it has been practised and is still practised.

  In Mr. Weld’s book, Slavery As It Is, under the head of Labour, , are given several extracts from various documents, to show that this system has been pursued on some plantations to such an extent as to shorten life, and to prevent the increase of the slave population, so that, unless annually renewed, it would of itself die out. Of these documents we quote the following: —

  The Agricultural Society of Baton Rouge, La., in its report published in 1829, furnishes a laboured estimate of the amount of expenditure necessarily incurred in conducting “a well-regulated sugar estate.” In this estimate, the annual net loss of slaves, over and above the supply by propagation, is set down at TWO AND A HALF PER CENT.! The late Hon. Josiah S. Johnson, a member of Congress from Louisiana, addressed a letter to the Secretary of the United States Treasury in 1830, containing a similar estimate, apparently made with great care, and going into minute details. Many items in this estimate differ from the preceding; but the estimate of the annual decrease of the slaves on a plantation was the same — TWO AND A HALF PER CENT.!