The ethics of American slavery

Front matter

:1062.

S. 6. & E. L. ELBERT

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Chapter I

Definitions. — Service and Servitude. — Spanish Law. — Law of South Carolina. — Status of American Slaves

CHAPTER IL

Preliminary Discussion. — Slavery the Child of Force ; opposed to Philosophy ; to Legal Right ; to Moral Dictates ; One authority still higher — Does Christianity sanction Slavery ? ,

CHAPTER HI.

Importance of the Question, from its relation to Scepticism ; to Natural Religion ; to a large class of Christians ; to the action of the American Church. — Examples of Modern Perversity in wresting Truth

CHAPTER IV.

Patriarchal Servitude. — Nature and Limit of ; not Involuntary, but like dependents on an Arab Shiek. — Harmer and others illustrate and Scripture confirms the view ....

CHAPTER V.

Bondage of the Jews in Egypt. — Facts in reference to their Condition ; not Slaves ; Curse upon Egypt for oppressing a Colony whom God had sent for Protection, not for destruction and oppressive Tribute vi

Contexts.

chapter VL

Jewish Servitude. — Classes of Servants ; those of Hebrew birth not Slaves ; Faces and Proofs , 38

CHAPTER VE.

Jewish Servitude continued. — Service of Aliens ; the Curse of Canaan exploded ; Dr. Hale on it, and Scripture ; no Canaanites Living ; Warrant from Lev. xxv. considered ; Verbal Criticism ; Fair exegesis excludes the idea of Slavery ; Given not to Sanction Slavery but Exclude it. — Proofs from Scripture 44

CHAPTER VIII.

Preceptive Confirmation. — Allusion to our Constitution ; Mosaic Precepts ; Fugitive Slave Law ; Year of Jubilee. Manstealing ; Josephus, Macknight, Clark, and others on it 61

CHAPTER IX.

Historical Confirmation. — Cases Considered ; Gibeonites ; Law for Disposition of Captives ; Actual Disposition ; Actual Bondservice illustrated by Scripture and from Josephus , 69

CHAPTER X.

Testimony of Prophets. — Jeremiah ; Isaiah ; Ezekiel ; Malachi ; Joel ; all prove the absence of Involuntary Servitude in Israel, and condemn it in other Nations 73

CHAPTER XI.

Final Question on the Teaching of the Old Testament. — Slavery among other Nations ; no Evidence of its Existence in Israel ; Summary of the Argument ; Sixteen Indisputable Facts, every one of which militates against the idea of Slavery 81

Contents

vii

CHAPTER XII.

Teaching of our Lord. — His Special Mission to Israel ; Rebuke of Sin ; Why Silent on the Subject of Slavery ; no Slavery among the Jews ; Meaning of doulos ; Centurion's Servant ; Positive Teaching of our Lord in conflict with Slavery everywhere ; Law re-affirmed ; Royal Law ; Golden Rule ; Application of them to Slavery ; Answer to Objections 87

Chapter II. Preliminary Discussion

Slavery is the child of force. It is the hand of power alone that first imposes the condition of slavery upon any class of our fellow men. It has no ground of ethical right, or legal obligation, or natural distinction upon which it can base a defence of its first making man a slave.

The foundation of philosophy, as it regards human relations, is the equality of man in respect to essential rights. It recognizes no natural distinction. If distinction is justly made as between governed and governing, servant and master, it can come only by covenant on the part of the superior, and concession on the part of the subordinate, and is hence the result of mutual contract. Any assumption of power beyond the limit of concession, philosophy brands as despotism and tyranny. It proclaims it at war with the first principles of social and political bodies.

Philosophy allows of no obligation from one man to another without an equivalent. But slavery violates this principle of equity. It makes man a slave by constraint, gnd binds him. person, aad powers, and property to the absolute disposal

Preliminary Discussion. 9

of the master, without compensatory obligations. Philosophy, hence, cannot recognize as just any such relation. Any approximation toward such constraint ; any such unjust assumption of privilege and power, it ever has, it ever must pronounce essentially wrong.

Nor can slavery more justly be regarded as a legal relation.

True, it is declared such ; but the point I make is, that if so, it is unjustly. The slave has no legal rights, he can hence have no legal obligations. The law treats him as property, as property, in nearly the same sense as the plantation team. He can hence no more justly be said to be legally bound to service than the horse or mule. The constraint in each case is one of force. Society transcends its own definition of legal rights and obligations when it legislates in reference to the slave. The laws of slave States declare the slave a chattel, and yet impose obligation and penalty, as if he were a person. In all such cases legislation is guilty of the stupendous absurdity of making the slave a person and a thing at the same time. If he is one he cannot be the other, nor can he be both. The owner of a vicious animal is held responsible for any injury committed by it. The slave is himself called to account and punished, while the master bears no responsibility, but actually receives damage for the loss of his servant. The incongruities attending all such legislation are manifest, yet this sad conflict is revealed in every slave code. It seeks in vain to reduce the slave quite to the condition of a chattel, for the stamp of the Maker's image is so clearly revealed, in the face and mind of the black, that the effort leads to endless absurdities.

Slavery is quite as inconsistent -with the dictates of our moral nature. Every man possesses an individual worth, and obligations to the fulfilment of which he is personally held. These obligations he cannot transfer to another. To give up his individual liberty, so far as the restraint binds him, is to disqualify himself for fulfiling the grea objects of his being. Moral law recognizes man solely as an individual. Society is perfect just as far as it most completely recognizes this truth, and enables man to fulfill, most perfectly, the ends of his individual being. Any restraint upon this right and duty of man, is an aggression, against which his nature must cry out in reprobation of the wrong.

Were I to assume the power or right to enslave my reader, he would remonstrate against the act as an outrage upon his natural rights. But in such a remonstrance he would only express a conviction which ought to be as authoritative were I to attempt the enslaving of his own brother, or ai^yfellow-man, of whatever race or social condition. Such a conviction is instinctive with man as man. It is not passing the truth, therefore, to say that

Preliminary Discussion.

we must regard as unnatural, arbitrary, and degrading, any law that places one man in possession of another, in the sense and with only the rights of property. For any man to assume power to sell, to task, to beat, to imprison, to sunder from wife and children, to deprive of all intellectual and moral culture a fellow man, is to assume a power over him which the most arbitrary government never transcended. To assume to do all this at the mere will of the holder, without process of law, or any exercise of equity, beyond the caprice or conscience of the holder, is despotism and tyranny beyond the usual meaning of those dread words.

These are plain statements. Here are three of the highest authorities, recognized as the law of human conduct, all which plainly oppose the enslaving of man. There is one authority still higher, and absolute. Does Christianity sanction human slavery? In other words, may it ever, and has it ever been imposed in obedience to the revealed will of God ?

I do not ^raise the question, whether God, as sovereign, might not make a requisition to enslave as well as to destroy men. The question is, whether he has done so ; and what does the precedent warrant in us.

Again, the question is not whether He has suffer ed slavery, or threatened it by the hands of ungodly nations, or by His prophets predicted the subjection of one people to another ? God indeed makes the wrath of man his sword, but evils are not from Him by purpose, but by sufferance; and the evildoer, unconsciously, working out, by his wickedness, the advancement of the just, is still guilty. " He is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity f yea, kt though hand join in hand the wicked shall not go unpunished." * To return then, the simple question to be discussed, is this, Have we any revelation from God sanctioning such a relation of slavery ?

Chapter III. Importance Of The Question

Such a question is of obvious importance, in view of the conflict of slavery with philosophy and the moral dictates of the human mind, as shown in the last chapter.

1 . It is because of this remonstrance of our moral nature, that we find a large class of sceptical minds choosing as the field of attack upon Christianity the supposed warrant of the Scriptures for involuntary servitude. To such minds natural religion is the ultimate rule. Nothing gratifies them more, than to find the sanctions of revealed religion in conflict with the form to which they appeal.

They may admit its moral precepts salutary, and its summary of human duty comprehensive and beneficent, but when you take your Bible and begin to cite a Divine warrant for a system acknowledged to be the fountain of innumerable and inevitable evils, and in its very root in conflict with philosophy and humanity, you give them an advantage. As they would reject a preacher guilty of teaching any known im-

1 Q

Jlo morality — so they reject the Bible,' as unreliable and not divine, on the ground of its teaching a gross moral wrong.

Such an objection cannot be shuffled off as unimportant ; nor can it be met by referring to a darker period in the life of the race ; nor yet by evasive reference to the abstract right of Deity as sovereign. These men, are many of them, men of intelligence and social worth. They state the objection fairly. It is a source of perplexity. They cannot believe slavery right. They suppose it sanctioned in the word of God, and they stand in the dilemma of believing a word bearing the sanction of a wrong, or of rejecting the word as from God. We are bound, if possible, to remove the stumbling block, which arrests the approach of such minds to the word of God. We must meet them on Bible grounds, and give the best answer in our power to the objection.

2. The question is again important from its relation to a large class of Christian men.

Many of them have withdrawn from the religious bodies of the land, because the churches have sanctioned or refuse to condemn slavery. There are others still in the churches who are perplexed with the question, who supnose the Bible to be silent on the wrongs of the relation, if it does not warrant it, who hence hope against hope in the mental conflict they feel. Much oi our disrespect for those branded as " Seceders,"

1 Abolitionists," " Agitators/7 has come from the persuasion, that the Bible does not condemn the system of slavery, and therefore we should not.

3, The question is important also from its relation to the action of the American Church.

It is a singular fact that the form of domestic slavery now prevalent, was partially the fruit of religious feeling. Cupidity was indeed the real motive — these Christian views only the cover to the wrong. The Spaniards, who settled in North America, looked upon the Indians much in the same light in which ancient nations as the Roman and Greek viewed the Barbarians, " as having the body only to obey, while themselves possessed the power and understanding to rule."*) But it made a prominent argument that the Indians could more easily be converted to Christianity in slavery than in freedom.

Similar was the plea under which the Negro was first enslaved. The cry was one of humanity. Humanity to the Indian who wasted away under the toil and hardships of bondage. Humanity to the black, who was to be brought from the depth of pagan darkness, and placed under the care of Christian Masters, thus to be gradually introduced to the light and salvation of the gospel.

It was this specious pretext, which was thrown to the Christian world to cover the enormity of

° Aristotle.

the wrong ; a pretext, alas ! too successful in blinding the church, and preventing the protest of its piety and humanity. So plausible seemed the argument, that even church functionaries of high standing seized upon it as a successful and cheap means of propagating the gospel. The enslaving of the African was not asserted right. The best face it could bear was doing evil that good might come. But

"New times demand new manners."

The argument so potent in the establishment of slavery has lost its weight for perpetuating it. Then men were to be enslaved for the culture of the mind and the welfare of the soul. Now to keep them enslaved — all moral and intellectual culture is withheld — save a little oral instruction. Then slavery did not claim a divine sanction. It made no boast of a scriptural support. It was based upon the plea, that while involving a temporary evil, the end justified the means, since the salvation and civilization of the black, was held to be an ample compensation for the wrong in making him a slave.

How different is the teaching of the South now in its arrogant assumptions? To illustrate the position it takes, and to show the importance of the question, in view of such claims, take a single statement of high religious authority — it being from the Southern Presbyterian Review (0. S.):

" Whatever may be true or false of other na-

Importance of the Question.

IT tions generally, whatever of other Africans, — as concerns those Africans who live amorg us, they are justly held by us in bondage. Towards them we have duties, over them we have rights. The existing relation between the white and the black man in these Southern States is a necessary, and a just, and a good relation. It is the best form of society possible amongst us. It is good not only for us, but good for them. Evils, and some of them great ones, evils to us and evils to them, are no doubt to be connected incidentally with the relation, (and what human relation is without incidental evils ?) but the relation itself, is the very best possible for both the races, thus strangely brought together in God's mysterious providence. Existing as they do in the midst of us, the end of this relation would necessarily be the end of all their wonderful progress — the beginning of their retrogression, very rapidly, into the barbarism out of which we have been God's agents in partly reclaiming them ; and existing as they do in the midst of us, the end of this relation would be the end of all ability on our and their part to dwell peaceably together. Therefore the relation is good. And born under it, we and they both like it ; and under it, all things taken into view, we and they constitute together perhaps the happiest people in the whole world ! Such we conceive to be the position which the South takes.77

We refer the reader also to recent fragments and volumes, like the sermon of Dr. Palmer, Seabury's and Van Evrie's works and others, where the OTgument is pushed to the- very verge of Atheism. They do not indeed quite cast the Negro out of the pale of humanity.* But they do suggest the question, and yet leave it unanswered. Are, then, Africans of the race of our Adam — or of some other, unre.vealed in the word of God ? This is dangerous ground. These men recoil from the precipice whereon they stand. They return to ground which is more biblical, leaving the

6 These writers do not indeed all take the same decided ground, yet they agree virtually, in making the negro a different human being from the white man, physically and mentally, and on the ground ot assumed natural inferiority and weakness, justify Slavery by the law of nature and the law of God.

The Shetland pony differs from the Morgan horse in 44 color, figure, hair, features, language, brain, &c," yet no scholar would presume even for a sensation volume, to declare them of different species. The difference is wholly accounted for by the influence of climate and usage. The same causes make the black differ from the white, and the very 44 raullatoism " of which one of these authors so often speaks, proves the original identity of the races, absolutely beyond a question, More than this, one of the prominent causes of African degradation these authors ignore — the cruelty of the whites in devastating their lands and tribes ; in grinding them down here and in Africa to the condition of a fugitive and despised people, a process which would in less centuries, utterly extinguish the race of whites.

There is an absurdity in these volumes, rendering them undeserving of protracted reply. They attempt to separate incidents which on their own premises are inseparable, for admitting that the black is human — though widely different in color and position from the white — it is impossible to strike away the 44 moral, religious, and social element," and leave it to mere 44 economical and political " considerations. The question of the oppressed African meets us at every page of each discussion, asking, 44 Am I not a man and a brother?" with the same breath, the South says Yes, and No. But reason and humanity, and Scripture, answer only yes ; and as- a man and a brother, the moral and religious aspects of this question are as inseparable from it as light from day. It has been the curse of Africa that these aspects have been so long ignored — we must return to them.

Negro still a part and parcel of our race, and so with ns subjects of divine solicitude and salvation. If they cast him down, they do not cast him out, and hence, on moral ground*, must the subject be discussed to meet the work of such minds, who are raining inhumanity and scepticism upon the entire nation.

These are more melancholy instances of defending slavery by the Scriptures. The Methodist Episcopal church South, the second religious body in numbers, after declaring in a previous General Conference, that the general rule on slavery, referred to the slave trade, at a late session rescinded the rule entire ! This action was taken while Southern politicians, including Governors of States, were advocating the re-opening of the slave trade ! It was a voluntary and deliberate removal from the Book of Discipline, of the only passage which it contained, conveying a suggestion of wrong in slavery. It hence throws icide open the door to a practice of the traffic, by any of its members in any form, without liability to church censure or discipline.

Following in the same path, the Union Assembly of Southern Presbyterians separated from the General Assembly solely on the ground of slave, ry, that its members might continue the practice, without fear of question or rebuke by their brethren, holding different views from themselves. How does the South interpret this action ? A single quotation, the sentiment of which might be gleaned from many sources may suffice.

It is in view of the action of the M. E. church in expunging the rule on slavery, that the Richmond Whig justly asks: "When a whole Christian denomination see nothing wrong, or immoral, or improper in the buying and selling of men, women and children with an intention to enslave them, why should mere politicians presume to pronounce as wicked and atrocious the re-opening of the African slave trade ??;

Comment is needless.

The question becomes more important from the fact, that the church is the exponent of Christian doctrine. The church is also the standard of the public conscience, and it is hence of momentous consequence, that her teaching be clear and correct on all points involving the wrong practice of its members, or of its congregations.

Let the churches of America for example approve of or refuse to disapprove of dancing and w hat is the result ? The youth of the land seldom care to study the bearing of the word of God upon such an amusement, and they receive the action of the church as authoritative. " Grave Christian men approve of the amusement. I may practice it f or " grave Christian men are aware of the custom, they refuse to pronounce it sinful, it cannot be wrong to enjoy it." The conscience of nearly every young man and woman receives its tone in relation to this amusement from the decision of the churches. If they decidedly disapprove of it, there is no thoughtful youth who will not feel at least a question of the propriety of indulging in a pleasure thus condemned.

So it is with spirituous liquors. Society at large does not brand the use of these stimulants as wrong, until the conscience of the church awakes and pronounces the use sinful. The churches embrace a large proportion of the better class of citizens. The public conscience must therefore take its tone from them.

But the standard of the church is the word of God. If the church takes that word and interprets it as silent on the sin of becoming or making drunkards, in vain will men plead for the stay of this desolating evil. If the church interprets the word as silent on the subject of slavery, men?s conscience, will be silent. If it refuse to disapprove, men will both approve and practice it.

The vox ecdesice rather than the vox populi is to the world the voice of God. If there be any human power, which can mould into humanity toward the African, the minds of Southern men, it is the moral power of the church, sustained by the sanctions and the judgments of Heaven. It must be this " power of the world to come," which shall awe into silence the merchants, and make the slaveholder himself feel that in this moral con-

The Ethics of Slavery.

flict, not only is the conscience of the world, but the mind of the Maker arrayed against him.

There is a conscience in this matter — a conscience among Christian men, awed in contemplating this unparalelled wickedness! A conscience demanding that the churches speak out in rebuke of the system ; and thatwhile tobacco and dancing find a place in the discussions of their deliberative bodies, and in resolutions of censure, slavery also shall be recognized as no less offensive to humanity than the weed to a refined taste ; no less abhorrent to a Christian profession in the master than is shaking heels at an evening party, to the sobriety of a Christian walk. There is a conscience at the wouth, trembling, most of all, to hear such a reprobation,— a disturbed mind, saying, " Speak peace;" and lulled, as with anodynes, when " Peace" is the answer ; but shaking in fear, as over an earthquake, when the church kindly and solemnly says, u First pure.'7 No peace to sin and crime. The fast, the worship, the piety God has chosen, is to " let the oppressed go free," to give bread to the hungry, culture to the ignorant, the healing of Christianity to wounded souls, ministering to, loving, treating the black as well as the white, as you would treat Christ in person, were he still walking among us.

This disturbed conscience is evident from the very agony with which men wrest the Scriptures for some sort of warrant with which to repel the accusation of wrong. It is an amazing spectacle, presented at this hour. Half a million slave owners, and half a million abettors, North and South, in the church and out, voluntarily, as a final refuge, fleeing to the Word of God, and asserting a Divine warrant for the relation. On the other hand, four million slaves, every day groaning under an oppression more bitter than that of Israel in Egypt — their very helplessness, and ignorance, and suffering, crying to the throne of God — l< the plea is blasphemy and the Christian world adding its protest against it as an inhuman and appallingcrime. Verily, were we to be silent, the stones would cry out ! And the dumb, mournful wail of the slave, bound in a doom, every year more terrible, would ascend to God, with the unanswerable accusation, " I was poor, sick, in prison, and in bonds, and ye remembered me not, nor plead for me, nor visited me. ;?

Of the men (ministers of Christianity, alas !) of the North, who defend slavery, and would bind the captive with new chains, — I will not speak nor name them. They have their reward ! I do not know of a more melancholy spectacle, — surely none more painful to a Christian heart, touched in any measure with the compassion of Jesus Christ than to look on the name of an ambassador of eternal mercy, going abroad as a sanction and in defence of the crime of slavery, in the year of grace 1861 ! ! !

The Ethics of Slavery.

But we live in times when nothing startles ; when the fail of captains in Israel, and their complicity with evil, is only a foreshadowing of .another scene, fraud, breach of great trusts, treason, perjury, rebellion in high places, wrought out as virtues by thousands, some of the most guilty of these giants in crime, it is to be feared, calling themselves Christian men ! !

For the slave, and the slaveholder, for his confederates North and South, we are rejoiced that the question has taken its present aspect. It reveals one light tint in the cloud covering us ; a reverence for the Word of God. Appeal is made to it as final. With reverence and confidence do we join issue with them on this ground. Let God speak and let the whole earth be silent, for he cometh to judge the earth, and all nations by his truth.

This is just the appeal we are called upon by the Word itself to make. *The Scriptures command every believer, in speaking on a moral question, or on any question involving the principles of rectitude, (if men say slavery does not involve morality, I answer, let them believe it if they can !) to speak according to the oracles of God. With reference to slaveholding, buying, selling, and all connected with it, we appeal to the Word : " Sure that the judgment of God is according to truth against them that commit such things."

A word with the reader, and I enter upon the Scripture examination.

I do not hope that any one chapter of this work will give the reader a knowledge of the subject. The references to service in the Word of God, are so numerous and of such a character that a patient comparison of its teaching and statements is necessary in order to learn the whole truth. The argu ment we give is cumulative, and if followed patiently, I am confident an impartial judgment will assent to the conclusion, that there is no sanction of American Slavery in the Word of God ; that so far from being a Divine institution it is a relation fraught with evil, and in its very nature unnatural, oppressive, and sinful.

Chapter IV. Patriarchal Servitude

The Scriptures speak of various kinds of service, of which we shall treat in the order of the second narrative. The first mentioned is that form practised by the patriarchs.

The precise nature and limits of this early system, we cannot closely define, yet this much is clear, that the service was mild, benevolent, and voluntary.

The servants of the patriarchs were of two classes ; those " bought with money " and those " born in the house." In Gen. xvii. 13 and 27, both classes are mentioned in the command to circumcise them. Of these servants Abraham held a large number. He is said to have armed at one time 318 to rescue his kinsman Lot : Gen. xiv. 14 to 16. The relation of these servants may be seen as in a picture, in the following passage from Harmer :

1 If we should turn our thoughts to the strength of an Arab Emir, or the number of men they command, we shall find it is not great ; and that were Abraham still alive he would be a prince among them. Each of the Arab Emirs has a number of Arabs particularly attached to him, who call them-

Patriarchal Servitude. 27 selves his servants, but are properly his troops and attendants*"

The Eastern Emir is a patriarch, with many families united to him as chief. They hold themselves as dependent and subordinate to their master mind — for this common bond of union gives them security from enemies, and unites them in a social community. " They appear/7 says Roberts, " as equals, and the difference between them in reference to property, is sometimes not great." The difference between "home born" and " bought" seems to have been merely this : home born servants were those who were by birth members of the community ; those bought were families and individuals engaged as servants, troops, or attendants, in times of emergency or prosperity : and thus gradually becoming part of the common household. This distinction is implied in Genesis, xvii. 12, where home born are the kith of the household, near or remote ; strangers, or those bought, are servants incorporated from other tribes. The lapse of centuries makes no visible difference in the domestic life of eastern nomadic tribes, and the relation of master and servant now is doubtless essentially what it was among the nomadic families of patriarchal days. This is more evident from a fact still true, that intermarriage was common ; and when the chief had no male issue, a servant might become his heir, and succeed him as chief, as was the prospect with Eliezer of