DE BOW'S REVIEW.

OCTOBER, 1855.

FREE NEGRODOM-THE MASTER AND THE SLAVE.*

If, as has been attempted to be shown by our author, that the free people of color have not been saved from the deepest degradation of condition among those who style themselves par excellence their friends; if they are, in the words of a most devoted abolitionist, "rotting mentally and physically in our cities;" if abolition of slavery has been followed wherever it has been attempted by ruin and social devastation; if the products of slave labor are never incorporated with the industry and business of the United States and of the world to amounts and with consequences that mock all calculation that cannot number the sands of the sea, what is to be done with this perplexing institution of slavery? Our author answers, as some of the wisest and most temperate answer, by morally restraining and governing the power reposed in the master like every other human power, as the power of husband over wife, parent over child, master over his free-born apprentice, and the power of political government over the subject. In no other way has Providence guarded the dearest and most important relations of social life. Not by municipal laws alone, even when they second the yearnings of the heart, not by avoiding all abuse and perversion of power, for abuse is necessarily incident to its possession, but the interests of life are guarded by both combined, the enlightened conscience, and humane and merciful laws.

Social condition and character cannot be formed at the beck and will of political reformers; manners in all states of society are stronger than laws, and constantly override them. The slaves of the West Indies, generally, have been transferred directly from the bosom of African barbarism to a barbarism of most oppressive labor, scarcely superior in happiness or the

*This article is in conclusion of those in the last number, entitled "Cotton is King," see pages 263, 308.

means of social improvement to the one they had left. The missionaries say that "the free colored people of Jamaica for nearly three hundred years were entirely without the gospel, and it gained a permanent footing among them only at a few points at their emancipation twenty years ago, so that when liberty reached them the great mass of the Africans in the British West Indies were heathen." (Note, page 149, and Rev. Mr. Phillippe, for twenty years a missionary in Jamaica, in his "Jamaica, its Past and Present Condition.") Our own colored race were, at their introduction into the British colonies two hundred and thirty years ago, in the same condition of heathenism, rife with all the superstitious ignorance of Fetiche worship, laboring "under the disadvantages of hereditary heathenism and involuntary servitude.' The superiority of our negroes to their countrymen in the native wilds of Africa is established in the most incontrovertible manner by our colony of Liberia. There, in all the intercourse of the Afro-Americans with the natives, the mental and physical superiority of the former has been most signally established; they have raised themselves to an enviable attitude of mediators and arbiters in most of the disputes among the barbarian chiefs of the coast of Africa where they have settled. "The republic of Liberia has been conducted from infancy to independence almost wholly by liberated slaves and those who were born in the midst of slavery." (Note, page 154.) How comes this most remarkable result? Our author answers, most forcibly, "Slavery is not an element of human progress under which the mind necessarily becomes enlightened, but Christianity is the primary element of progress, and can elevate the savage, whether in bondage or freedom, if its principles are taught him in his youth.' Both the West Indies and the United States began their system of slavery with savage men. "For three hundred years" the slaves of the former "were destitute of the gospel, and their barbarism was left to perpetuate itself. But in the United States the Africans were brought under the influence of Christianity on their first introduction," "and have continued to enjoy its teachings, in a greater or less degree, to the present moment. The disappearance from our colored people of the heathen condition of the human mind, the incapacity to comprehend religious truths, and its continued existence among those of Jamaica, can now be understood." "But while all this must be admitted of the colored people of Jamaica, it is not true of those of our own country, for long since they have cast off the heathenism of their fathers, and have become enlightened in a very encouraging degree. Hence it is that the colored people of the United States, both

bond and free, have made vastly greater progress than those of the British West Indies in the knowledge of moral duties and the requirements of the gospel." (Pages 148, 151.) Time, long time, and favorable culture are, then, essential to the improvement of the African race as well as any other. And these are to be obtained by the voluntary and cordial co-operation of the slaveholders with the other friends of the slave.

Nothing under our government is to be expected in favor of the slave by abuse and vituperation of the master. This may go far, as it has already done, to inflame the parties against one another, and, by the common tendency of the human mind, to disaffect the slaveholder against his assailants, and indispose him to adopt their projects. It will go farther, and by inevitable retaliation and irritated feeling will rivet the bonds of the slave tighter than the generous spirit of a Christian and republican people would naturally incline them, if unprovoked. The American slaveholder is no West India planter, subject to the prejudices, or, it may be, the caprices, of conventions and parliaments on this or on the other side of the Atlantic. He has been not only for one hundred and fifty years the constitutional and legal owner of his slaves, but he is more he is their political master, enacting the laws which govern the acting of both bond and free. How infatuated, then, the course of our abolitionists who, so far from appealing, in Christian and patriotic tones, to the conscience and the judgment of the slaveholder, condemn him absolutely, and assume the peremptory authority of a master? Do they forget or disregard the paramount obligation of a fair and free social compact, joyfully entered into by all parties, slaveholders and non-slaveholders, at the time as a city of refuge, the salvation of an expiring republic? Do they despise the administration of this republic which, for sixty-four years, has excited the admiration of the world, and secured the greatest mass of social happiness on the earth? So much so has this been the case, that it has well been called "the last asylum of oppressed humanity." But while the opinion that slavery is malum per se, or absolute wickedness, incapable of any indulgence or extenuation, may be entertained by some whose worship of their higher law is so exclusive as to override all other moral principles, all reverence for national compacts, and respect for the lawful rights of fellow-countrymen, there is another party to this great social issue. There are some portions of this people quite as moral, as patriotic, and as gallant as their antagonists, who, while they deplore the existence of slavery, subm

to the necessities of their involuntary social position, and endeavor to infuse into the dominion entailed by it all the mercy and consideration of which it is so largely susceptible; who, while they dread and most reasonably abhor the manumission of a degraded race, among themselves, still feel bound by all their duties to God and man to render their power productive of good and enjoyment to their slaves. They appeal to the principles which should regulate and govern all the forms of human power-the eternal principles of justice and right. They are as applicable to the relations of master and servant as they are to the other relations of life. There always has existed, and, I fear, ever will be, much abuse of power in all these relations; but it would be but feeble sense and bad logic that should maintain that these indispensable relations of society should be abolished, because they are and must be subject to abuse and perversion. This is at once to impeach the whole system of God's providence and the free responsible agency of man. Granted, for the sake of argument, that domestic slavery is intrinsically and absolutely wrong, and contrary to the rights of man, (as, in my soul, I believe,) still an enlightened and conscientious master may well hesitate to renounce this power, devolved upon him by the laws around him, till some provision shall be made to secure him and his country from the mischiefs and ills that have ever followed the unprepared manumission of masses of men. It is a pure question of self-preservation with the present generation. Is there anything fallacious or sophistical in this argument? Is power over a human being as a servant, even for life, essentially different in its obligations and duties from the power over a wife, a child, an apprentice, or a subject of political government? If, in some of these relations, the tenure of the power is less than the usual relation of master and slave, that does not affect the power itself, but its duration.

All peaceable attempts to regulate this moral power except by moral means, and not by artificial laws alone, must prove futile. It is contrary to the nature of man and the laws which govern his thoughts and his habits of action. How then is this direction to be given? Let the teachers of Christianity answer, and let them act towards our slaves as Jesus Christ and their primitive predecessors acted towards the slaves of the Roman empire. Let them act as succeeding generations have done towards the serfs of the middle ages of European history. Let them oppose sin and wickedness in all men, of all colors and conditions. Let them inculcate, after the example and precept of Jesus Christ, love and mercy