Despotism in America, or, An inquiry into the nature and results of the slave-holding system in the United States

Front matter

Rare Collection

Brigham Young University

BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY

Chapter First. The Relation Of Master And Slave

Sect. I. — Origin of Slavery 35

Sect. II.— General idea of a Slave-holding Commu-

^ nity 36

Sect. III.— Empire claimed by the American Slave

Master 00

Sect. IV.— Means of enforcing the Master's Empire . 41 Sect. V.— Methods of resistance on the part of the Slaves aq

Sect. VI.— The treatment of American Slaves considered as animals $q

Sect. VII.— The treatment of American Slaves considered as men g2

Sect. VIII— Wealth and luxury of the Masters, as it affects the condition of Slaves 74

Sect. IX.— Improvement in physical condition, as it affects the condition of servitude 77

Chapter Second. Political Results Of The Slave-holding System

Sect. I.— General view of the subject 83

Sect. II.— Slavery as it affects the security of the

privileged class ca

1# ou

VI CONTENTS.

Page.

Sect. III. — Slavery as it affects the liberty of the privileged class 92

Sect. IV. — Slavery in its influence upon Equality . 96

Sect. V. — Education in the Slave-holding States . 104 Sect. VI. — Military strength of the Slave-holding

States 107

Chapter Third. Economical Results Of The Slave-holding System

Sect. I. — Effect of Slavery upon the Sources of Wealth Ill

Sect. II. — Slavery as it affects the amount of capital required for industrious undertakings .... 119

Sect. III. — Agriculture in the Slave-holding States 123

Sect. IV. — Manufactures and Commerce in the Slave-holding States 132

Sect. V. — Instability and uncertainty of values in the Slave-holding States 134

Sect. VI. — Comparative Progress and Prosperity of the Free and of the Slave-holding States . . . 138

Chapter Fourth. Personal Results Of The Slave-holding System

Sect. I. — Personal effects of Slavery upon the privileged class 142

Sect. II. — Personal effects of Slavery upon the unprivileged class 157

Sect. III. — Points of diversity in the personal character of the privileged and the unprivileged classes 164

CONCLUSION 169

Introduction

It has been said, and is often repeated, that the United States of America are trying a great social experiment, upon the result of which hangs the future fate not of America only, but to a certain extent, of all mankind.

The consequences likely to flow from the success or failure of this experiment, are doubtless exaggerated ; for those universal laws which regulate the feelings and the actions of men, will ultimately produce their necessary effects, in spite of narrow systems of policy and morals, founded upon the success or failure of any single experiment.

But whatever we may think of its probable consequences, however fancy may magnify, or reason may diminish them, the experiment itself, is a great one. It is in fact far more complicated and more critical, and therefore greater and more interesting, than it is commonly represented.

The American experiment is usually described, as purely an experiment of democracy; an attempt to establish a perfect equality of political rights ; an essay towards the equal distribution among all the members of the community, of freedom, property, knowledge, social advantages, and those other good things which make up the mass of human happiness. And this experiment — as we are assured by every writer, native, or foreign, who has touched upon the subject, owing to the peculiar circumstances of the country, is carried on to the greatest possible advantage, not being compelled to encounter a multitude of hostile influences, by which such an undertaking, any where else, would be most vigorously opposed.

This is not a true representation of the case. If in certain parts of the American Union, the experiment of Democracy be steadily and quietly pursued, and with an influence and a feeling in its favor which have at length become predominant, in certain other parts of the country, it is quite overshadowed, and is reduced to creep pale and sickly on the ground, by another experiment, less talked about, less celebrated, but not the less real or important, to wit, the experiment of Despotism.

The Northern States of the Union are unquestionable Democracies, and every &&y they are verging nearer and nearer towards the simple idea and theoretic perfection of that form of government. The Southern States of the Union, though certain democratic principles are to be found in their constitutions and their laws, are in no modern sense of the word entitled to the appellation of Democracies : They are Aristocracies ; and aristocracies of the sternest and most odious kind. Property, and all. the rights, advantages and enjoyments which the laws bestow, are limited to certain families and their descendants. Certain other families and their offspring, to the latest generation, are not only deprived of all political privileges and social advantages, but they are the hereditary subjects, servants, bondsmen of the privileged class. Every man of the privileged order who is possessed of any property at all, is apt to own at least one slave ; if he is rich, he may own a thousand ; but whether one or a thousand, of those he does own, the laws create him with but a single slight, and in fact merely nominal exception, the absolute master, lord and despot. In their relation towards each other, the members of the privileged class are nominally equal ; and in that aspect, it may happen that the lord of a plantation and five hundred slaves, shall be a great stickler for liberty and equality. But the liberty and equality for which he contends, is wholly confined to the privileged order ; and the total subjection and eternal servitude of the unprivileged class, is considered a matter of course, a first principle, a fixed and established ordinance, as inevitable and as incapable of alteration, as the laws of nature.

It is evident then, how complicated is the American experiment. If the democratical part of it, has hitherto been pursued in silence and quiet, and with such apparent success, that the admirers of Democracy have been ready to cry out, that the problem is already solved ; — that quiet and silence have been merely accidental ; that success has been only a progress which was comparatively speaking, but slightly opposed; and it is but now that Democracy and Despotism face to face, like Gabriel and the Arch-enemy, make ready for a desperate and dreadful struggle. The preparation, the courage, the arms, the loftiness of soul were not on the part of the " angelic squadron" alone : —

On t' other side, Satan alarm'd

Collecting all his might, dilated stood Like Teneriffe, or Atlas, unremoved His stature reached the sky, and on his crest Sat horror plum' d; nor wanted in his grasp What seem'd both spear and shield. —

The struggle that impends is of a nature to shake the country to the centre, and to end, if we believe the prophecies of our southern friends, in civil commotions, infuriated hostilities, and savage war.

So it may be. The event is in their power. Let them be wise in time. The balance of justice is stretched across the sky, — and is it not their scale that kicks the beam ? Let them look up and read their lot in that celestial sign, and know themselves, how light, how weak, if they resist. Even the arch-fiend cared not to struggle against inevitable fate, and fled a strife in which he could but suffer.

That heterogeneous mixture of aristocracies and democracies, which makes up the American Union ; that strange compound of liberty and despotism, which pervades the laws of so many of the States, and lurks demurely, in the federal constitution ; such hostile and repulsive elements having been so long quietly in contact without producing an explosion, it has thence been argued, and believed, that they might always remain so. But those who reason thus, have not well considered the history of the American States, nor the kind of progress which Democracy has hitherto made.

The dispute which severed the colonies from Great Britain, gave rise to constitutions in the northern States of the confederacy, which acknowledged to a greater or less degree, the leading principles of liberty and equality ; principles which before hardly had an existence, except in the speculations of a few political theorists. In no part of the country, were the fundamental theorems of this modern system of policy, more generally received or more warmly maintained, than in the New England States, where the equal distribution of property seemed to open the way for the easy introduction of a purely democratical system.

But property is not the only source of political power. From the earliest settlement of those States, the Clergy had always exercised a predominant influence. They formed a distinct order, acting together with decision and promptitude, and monopolizing all the learning and no small share of the active talent of the community. The mass of the people, though all could read, — an inestimable accomplishment, and under favorable circumstances, capable in itself of becoming the foundation of the most liberal knowledge, — were yet extremely ignorant ; for they had no book but the. bible, and for the most part they relied upon their religious teachers with a submissive and superstitious dependance, for such expositions of its contents as they saw fit to give. In this state of the case, the power which the clergy exercised was very great. It was however for the most part a moral power, a power not over the bodies, but over the minds of men, and of course, it was least felt by those who yielded to it the most implicit submission. Some harsh acts of persecution and punishment, were occasionally dealt out to such insubordinate persons, as were bold enough to think for themselves, or to question the infallible and divine authority of the " standing order.53 But in general, that veneration which the " ministers" claimed, was spontaneously yielded, and the power thus conferred was judiciously fortified by being shared with such of the laymen as most excelled in shrewdness, ambition, and spiritual gifts.

The Revolution, and those questions of constitutional law to which it gave rise, and more yet, those extensive and iniquitous fluctuations of property which the paper money system produced, raised into consequence another body of men, superior to the clergy in active talent ; almost their equals in learning ; and if they were not regarded with the same affectionate awe, yet both feared and respected by the people. These were the Lawyers.

This new order did not hazard its influence nor waste its strength in a struggle for power, with the clergy. Oh the contrary, the clergy and the lawyers soon formed an intimate union ; and though these latter were sometimes a little wanting in respect for the theological dogmas, and the austere morality of their allies, these deficiencies of faith and practice were more than made up for, by the zeal and subtlety with which they defended the legal privileges of the clergy, and labored to uphold their influence and authority.

This double hierarchy of law and divinity, long maintained a predominating influence over the yeomanry of New England. Bred up on their farms in the simplest way, and with a deep reverence for religion and the law, a reverence easily and naturally transferred to the clergy and the lawyers ; depending upon the pulpit for their weekly supply of knowledge and opinions, or if they read a newspaper, — and American newspapers in those times were but small affairs — choosing such an one as the minister recommended ; the Legislature filled with lawyers, whose superior information, eloquence and adroitness, put every thing in their power ; the judges, secure in the tenure of their office, and the profound respect with which it was regarded, contributing by their decisions, to uphold a system of Avhich they formed a part ; thus beset, hemmed in, controlled and over-awed, all the weaker spirits and more submissive tempers, that is to say, the mass of the community, cowered and submitted to a power, so boldly claimed, so vigorously enforced, and exercised on the part of those who held it, with a serious and sincere belief that superior knowledge, virtue and capacity, justly entitled them to pre-eminent authority.

But notwithstanding this moral oligarchy to which New England was subjected, the spirit of democracy had nestled in the bosoms of her people ; and cherished by degrees into energy and strength, it presently began to plume its wings, and to make ready for asserting its just dominion.

The history of the contest in New England, between Democracy on the one hand, and the priestly and legal alliance on the other, has never yet been written. It is not adorned with any of those palpable acts, those scenes of devastation and slaughter, which have hitherto formed the chief topics of historic narration ; and though a most violent and bitter struggle, so little has it attracted the attention of political writers, that the progress of American Democracy, thus far, has been generally described as quiet, silent and almost unresisted.

To one, who from the the array of the combatants, had divined the probable termination of the conflict, the speedy discomfiture of the democratical party would have appeared inevitable. Behind the legal and clerical champions who proudly led the van of the opposing forces, there followed a goodly host, including by far the most respectable, and apparently the most worthy portions of society. The wealthy, almost to a man, enlisted in behalf of the established order of things, which having made them rich, in their estimation, conld not but be good. Besides, their wealth enabled them to purchase by gifts to pious uses, and without any special personal merit, high seats in the synagogue ; and sufficed to enrol them in the list of "gentlemen," with whom the ministers and the lawyers were accustomed to share their authority. Next followed the great mass of the religiously disposed ; for it requires an unusual degree of discernment and decision, to escape from the influences of education and habit, and to distinguish between a reverence for religion, and a blind submission to spiritual guides. The literature of the country, such as it was, naturally appeared on the side of those who were its principal patrons ; and crowding in the rear, came the young talent and ambition of the times, anxious to sustain a system, which seemed to offer a rightful preeminence to talent, and to ambition a station above the vulgar level.

The array upon the other side, was contemptible in comparison. Some leaders there were, u sons of liberty," who had been nursed in the cradle of the revolution, whose character, whose honor, whose patriotism was unquestionable, and upon whose clear reputation not all the outrageous calumny of their opponents could fix the shadow of a stain. And there were some followers too, who seemed to love democracy for itself; men enamoured of the idea of equality, who sought no private advantage, but only the public good. But these, whether leaders or followers, were comparatively few. The mass of the party seemed made up like the band of David, when he rose in rebellion against the Lord's anointed ; — all who were in debt, all who were in distress, all who were discontented, enlisted beneath this banner; and to believe the account of their opponents, not the tatterdemalions of Falstaff's enlistment were more idle, vicious, dishonest and dangerous.

The truth is, that so stern, severe, active and influ- 2 ential, was the authority which the allied hierarchy exercised, that few men who had property, standing, character, friends, to lose, cared to risk the consequences of those bulls of excommunication which were fulminated from the pulpit and the press, and those torrents of calumny, denunciation, and abuse, poured forth by a thousand fluent tongues, against whomsoever deserted the ark of the covenant, and allied himself to the uncircumcised Philistines.

The democratic party were not wanting in efforts to enlist the powerful aid of religion upon their side. They made friends with the Baptists and other dissenters from the established creed, who cherished an hereditary hatred toward the congregational priesthood, and who were struggling to escape from the legal disabilities with which their heresies still continued to be visited. These clerical allies, in imitation of their opponents, mingled religion with politics, and sought to turn the excited feelings of their hearers, into political channels. They were denounced by the regular order, as hedge-priests, sectarians, wild enthusiasts, puffed up with a ridiculous over-estimate of their spiritual endowments, ignorant, turbulent, bad men, who in attempting to overturn the platform on which was raised the sober edifice of congregationalism, sought to destroy the foundations of society, and to mix up all things in chaotic confusion.

In this situation of affairs, democratical principles were still enabled to gain the ascendency in New England, and to become the prevailing creed, by the joint effect of two separate causes, each of which was perhaps potent enough in itself to have ensured the victory.

Though the professors of these principles were proscribed by the New England oligarchy, declared destitute of any claims to attention or indulgence, represented as wild political fanatics, the disciples of Robespierre, desirous to abolish religion, and to root up morals, to destroy the natural instincts of humanity, and to sprinkle the land with fire and blood; they found encouragement, support and aid, where there was the least reason to expect it, to wit, at the hands of the southern slave-holders. Who could have anticipated that the apostle of American democracy should himself have been an aristocrat and a despot ! Yet so it was. Jefferson, is revered, and justly, as the earliest, ablest, boldest and most far-going of those who became the expounders and advocates of the democratical system in America. Most of the others, whether leaders or followers, seemed driven on by a blind instinct. They felt, but did not reason. Jefferson based his political opinions upon general principles of human nature. Men were supposed, in other systems of politics, to be helpless, blind, incapable children, unfit to take care of themselves, and certain, if the experiment were tried, to do themselves presently some dreadful and irreparable harm. Jefferson argued, that however weak and blind men might be, yet their own strength and eye-sight were still their surest hope, and best dependance. If aid were elsewhere sought, whence could it come? These guides, these guardians, these governors, who are they 1 Are they not men, weak and blind ? Worse yet, men ready to betray the confidence placed in them, and under pretence of protection, themselves to plunder and oppress ? It is therefore better to make each man, blind and weak though he be, the chief guardian of his own welfare. Subject no man to the arbitrary control of another, who if he may be wiser and better, may just as likely, be blinder and be worse. Such necessary rules of social conduct as the judgment of the majority shall approve, let them be laws, so long as that judgment continues to approve them ; and let the laws govern, and the laws alone.

Such was the political creed of Jefferson. It is the creed of democracy ; and he espoused it with a warm, an active, almost a fanatic zeal. The perfect political equality of all men ; the absolute right of every man to be guided by his own pleasure and judgment, so long as he transgresses no law, and his equal claim to a fair participation in the enactment and repeal of every law ; these were the very fundamental principles of this political system. Yet Jefferson remained all his life the tyrant of a plantation, in the enforcement of an usurped authority, either personally, or by his delegate, which he himself describes, as " a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, — the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submission on the other." Ah Truth ! 'Tis thee alone that men should reverence ! Do they reverence men, it is an idolatry as base as if they bowed to stocks and stones. Men are blind and weak, the wisest and the best ! But Truth, — it is unblemished, in itself complete, divine, pure, perfect !

Had Jefferson attempted to preach the full extent of his doctrines in his native state, he would doubtless have drawn down upon his head a storm of hatred and reproach, not rashly to have been encountered, nor easily to have been withstood. But that was an adventure of difficulty and peril, which he felt no call to undertake. Like Henry and Washington, and those other great men whose devoted patriotism and many virtues would make us willingly forget that on their own estates they were tyrants, — though he acknowledged the trampled rights and crying wrongs of the disenfranchised half of his fellow countrymen, he yet despaired to make any impression upon the ignorance, the prejudices, the blind and narrow self-interest of the privileged class, and he contented himself with now and then a protest against a system of tyrannical usurpation, which carried away by custom and convenience, he still continued to uphold through the support of his own example.

The democracy which he preached at home, was democracy among the aristocrats ; — and the perfect equality of all the members of the privileged order, has ever been a popular doctrine in all aristocracies. The "love of liberty" is a phrase under which are included two feelings of a very distinct, and sometimes of an opposite kind. Each individual is always the ardent and zealous champion of his own liberty, because the hatred of all extraneous control, the desire to be solely governed by the free impulses of his own mind, is a part of the constitution of human nature too essential ever to be wanting. Hence it is that we find kings and emperors among the champions of liberty and equal rights, by which they understand, the liberty of governing their own realms without foreign control, and the absolute equality of all crowned heads. Have we not seen the Austrian and Russian despots, leaguing with the king of Prussia and the haughty aristocracy of England to vindicate the liberties of Europe against the usurpation and tyrannies of a Bonaparte ? When the chains threatened to bind them, when they were like to be compelled to bow their necks beneath the yoke of a master, who more sensitive than they to the degradations of servitude ? Who more zealous, more earnest, more sincere in liberty's cause ? Alexander of Russia turned a demagogue, and the princes of Germany harangued their subjects, not in the dry and austere style of absolute authority, but with the supplicating tone, the humble and insinuating eloquence, the flattery and fair promises, with which ambitious men, in popular states, seek to inveigle the popular favor.

This passion for personal liberty burns fiercely in the soul of every human being, and no where fiercer than in the hearts of an aristocracy bred to its possession, and who have learned to estimate its value by having constantly before their eyes the terrible contrast of servitude.

But the "love of liberty" has also another meaning. It describes a passion not for individual freedom, but for the freedom of all men ; a wide, expansive feeling, the offspring of benevolence, the height of philanthropy, the extension to others of that which we find best and most desirable for ourselves ; its extension not only to those to whom we are bound by familiar ties of interest and sympathy, our friends and kindred, or those whom however otherwise unconnected with us, we still assimilate to ourselves by 2* some real or fanciful analogies ; but absolutely, its extension to all men, — the love of freedom wherever, by whomsoever, exercised, as an abstract good.

It is evident that the love of liberty in this high sense, can shine out in perfection only from hearts the warmest, souls the most cultivated, minds the most lofty, unclouded and serene. But fragments of it, sparks from this celestial flame, sometimes but dim, the smallest atom almost, and that too buried, and quite smothered amid the ashes of selfish passions, — yet dim or bright, smothered or burning clear, this passion for universal freedom is still a part of human nature, but a part of it which lies dead and dark in uncultivated souls, and which only begins to kindle and to blaze, in the forward and quick feeling minds of a polished and reflecting age.

To this latter feeling, noble and refined, and which lurks, however invisible, even in the hearts of a slave-holding aristocracy, Jefferson did not dare to appeal. He was content to act the humble and comparatively inconsiderable part of a champion for equality among the aristocrats ; and laboring to forget that the unprivileged class — some of whom, to believe the voice of common report, were his own children, — had any greater capacities or rights than beasts of burden, he curtailed the expansive and universal clauses of his political creed, till the mantle of liberty which should have extended its protection to every citizen, embraced within its torn and mutilated folds only the privileged order.

The oligarchical party in the southern aristocracies, the aristocracy, so to speak, of the privileged order, though they were richer and better educated than their neighbors of the common sort, had no such moral hold upon men's minds as the hierarchy of the north. The prejudices in favor of family and rank to which they were indebted for the general acknowledgment of their superiority, had been shaken by the revolution, and after a short and ineffectual resistance, the oligarchical party in Virginia and the Carolinas was completely broken down by the vigorous assault which the Jeffersonians made upon them. Henceforward the most complete and democratical equality among all the members of the privileged class, became the settled and established creed of southern politics. But the Jeffersonian party, while it aimed at overturning the oligarchies of the southern states, aimed also at supremacy in the federal government ; and the same victory which assured their ascendency at home, raised their leader to the presidential chair.

From that elevation, Jefferson stretched forth a helping hand to the struggling democrats of New England ; and by means of the honors and offices within his gift, he enlisted into their cause divers mercenaries of courage and ability, who were seduced from the ranks of the hierarchy, and having taken pay at the hands of democracy, fought valiantly in her cause.

As the Jeffersonians continued for twenty-four years at the head of the federal government, and during all that time, consoled, comforted, aided and abetted the democrats of New England, the party began presently to grow somewhat more respectable ; and as the advantages to be derived from belonging to it, became more and more numerous, converts were multiplied, and presently there might be numbered among them even some of the clergy and the lawyers.

It is evident that this process alone would at length have given to democratical principles a nominal, if not a practical ascendency. But as I have mentioned, there was another cause in operation, in itself sufficient to have ensured an ultimate, and a more substantial triumph. Notwithstanding the grand array of followers mustered by the hierarchy, there were many among them who at heart were traitors to the cause. They had been bred up in a horror of democracy, which they were taught to regard as the concentration of all possible evil, and to the repetition of certain dogmas containing the substance of the oligarchical creed. Yet insensibly they became democrats themselves ; and the superior order, to maintain its influence and preserve its ascendency, was soon obliged to descend to all those arts of popularity, which when practised by their opponents, they had denounced as fit only for demagogues.

The power of the priestly and legal hierarchy consisted in their monopoly of talent and education, and in a certain superstitious reverence with which they were regarded by the people. So long as these two sources of power continued in full operation, their credit could not be shaken, and their influence carried every thing before it. But with the progress of time, and the increasing wealth of the community, education became more general, books and periodicals were multiplied, and knowledge was disseminated. The oligarchical order lost their superiority in this respect, and with it, they lost the awe and veneration of the people. To complete their discomfiture, they quarrelled among themselves on certain points of theology ; and as the dispute waxed warm, the parties to it became more intent upon destroying each other's influence, than upon maintaining their own.

Such was the end of the oligarchical rule in New England, of which some vestiges yet remain, but of which the life and spirit has departed. The political creed, generally and it may be said, universally, professed,— albeit the ancient regime has still many secret adherents, — is a purely democratic creed, and the struggle for influence and office between contending politicians, turns wholly upon the question, who among them are the best democrats, who are most devoted to the interests of the people ?

Though the New England States formed that part of the Union which held out longest against the general reception of the democratic theory, yet the equal distribution of property, the more extensive diffusion of knowledge, and that feeling of personal independence and equality long cherished among the people, made them from the beginning, the best adapted of all the states, to enter fully into the spirit of democracy, and to display, in the most striking light, the advantages of that form of government. Accordingly it may be said that the New England States, notwithstanding some gross defects in their political and social system, afford, at this moment, the most remarkable approach any where to be found, toward the theoretical perfection of ideal democracy.