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" A generation, O how lofty are their eyes ! — whose teeth are as swords^ and their jawjeeth as knives, to devour the poor from off the earth, and the^ needy from among men!" — Agar. mJ&A
" They have given a boy for a harlot, and sold a girl for wine, that they might drink ! " — Joel.
(- They sold the righteous for silver, and the poor for a pair of shoes ; and turn aside the way of the meek. A man and his father will go in unto the same maid, to profane my holy name!" — Amos.
£
BOSTON:
PUBLISHED BY ISAAC KNAPP,
25 Cornhill.
1837.
m i
Entered, according to an Act of Congress, in the year 1837, by
ISAAC KNAPP, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Massachusetts.
Marden & Kimball, Printers, 3 School Street.
THIS VOLUME
I 9
&f f ecttonat els Enscrifcefc
TO
All the Members of
WITH PROFOUND SOLICITUDE
That those sisters in philanthropy may be stimulated to
UNTIRING E3ERTION IN BEHALF OF
TWELVE HUNDRED THOUSAND
Who are now chained in
THE AMERICAN
HOUSE OF BONDAGE.
Oh, lady, when a sister's cry is ringingon the air,
When woman's pleading eye is raised in agonized despair,
When woman's limbs are scourged and sold 'midst rude and brutal mirth,
And all affections holiest ties are trampled to the earth,
May female hearts be still unstirred, and 'midst their wretched lot,
The victims of unmeasured wr >ngs, be carelessly forgot I
Or shall the prayer be poured for them, the tear be freely given,
Until the chains that bind them now, from every limb be riven !
E. M. Chandler.
By virtue of special contract, Shylock demanded a pound of flesh cut nearest to the heart. Those who sell mothers separately from their children, likewise claim a legal right to human flesh ; and they too cut it nearest to the heart. L. M. Child.
CONTENTS
Notice. 5
Chap. I. Introductory. 9
II. Marriage. 33
III. Condition of Female Slaves. - ... 45
IV. Effects of Slavery upon Domestic Relationship. 70 V. Duty of the Slave-holder's Female Relatives. - 95
VI. Impurity of the Christian Churches. - - 107
VII. Duty of Northern Christian Women. - - 121
NOTICE
If we have whispered truth.
Whisper no longer ; Speak as the tempest doth,
Sterner and stronger: Yet be the tones of truth
Louder and firmer ; Startling the haughty South
With the deep murmur. Whittier.
Deeply has the conviction been rooted, during the last twenty-five years, that the condition of American colored women, and the collateral topics included in the seventh commandment, are the most important theme in the whole controversy upon slavery ; because it combines the ecclesias- tical questions with all the grand moral points. Yet this vol- ume probably would not at present have been promulged, had not the moral and religious warfare assumed a hideous char- acter, not less fearful than it is astounding.
As long as the sons of corruption pretended to justify or to palliate the enormities of slave-driving by the principles of carnal policy, or a temporising expediency, or worldly inter- est, or any other of the pleas which plainly are branded with the mark of Cain, they might be repelled with mild weapons ;
VI NOTICE.
and any anti-slavery man can discomfit hosts of the cham- pions for kidnapping, although they are " like the grasshop- pers or the sand of the seashore for multitude." Those motley " uncircumcised Philistines who defy the armies of the living God,55 have therefore changed their weapons ; and now, after the example of their master, " that old serpent called the Devil and Satan, who deceiveth the whole world,55 those " deceitful workers are transforming themselves into angels of light.55
It has therefore become indispensable for their overthrow, to verify the truth of Elihu5s declaration, — " There is no darkness, nor shadow of death where the workers of iniquity may hide themselves.55 The apostolic declaration is appre- ciated in all its solemn and weighty import. " It is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret.55 But it is equally proper practically to exemplify PauPs admonition, — " Have no fellowship with the unfruit- ful works of darkness, but rather reprove.55
Now if any man-stealing ecclesiastical Tertullus is anxious to confute the principles or to disprove the facts in the ensu- ing pages, let him appoint a period for a meeting in Boston for that purpose ; or if the southern slave-drivers prefer to act by deputy, let them despatch one of their hireling editors who will promulge slander and falsehood to the full worth of the slave produce, which, having been filched from the colored citizen, they may send to Boston, or New-York, as a recom- pense for their outrageous work.
During some time past, by individuals, and by ecclesiastical combinations, elaborate attempts have been made to array the Holy Scriptures on behalf of the pro-slavery combatants. This has been done by false criticisms, by groundless assump- tions, by perverted truth, and by dishonest evasions of the cardinal topics in debate. American slavery is always, in all its modifications, and from beginning to end, condemned by
NOTICE. Vll
divine revelation. Such a thing as an American slave was unknown to the Israelites and Jews ; and it is not less insult- ing to man than it is dishonoring to God, to send Christians of this nineteenth century after the day of Pentecost, back to the idolators of ancient Greece and Rome to learn their duty as followers and disciples of Jesus, the Lord of all. But inas- much as this disgraceful course is pursued by Doctors and Professors of Theology, who wish to blind our eyes by per- suading us that a Bible-robbing, a man-stealing, a woman- selling, a chain-forging, a marriage-destroying, a slave-manu- facturing, and a man-slaying system, is " Bible doctrine that will stand ; " and that its perpetuation is indispensable to " preserve the integrity of the Union 5" we give them an- other "bone to gnaw.55
Nothing but imperious necessity could overcome the objec- tions which may be made to the publication of some of the ensuing facts. But it must be remembered, that nothing is told in the following chapters, which is not substantially known to every man and woman, married or single, and to every boy and girl, at an early age, with comparatively few exceptions, throughout the slave-dealing territories. This book contains nothing which is not as familiar to the resi- dents on a slave plantation, as the corn and rice which they eat. The abolition of slavery in America is emphatically the duty and privilege of women. Northern female Christians must clearly " behold the great and wicked abominations that they do 55 in the slave plantations, before they will all combine, "with one heart and soul,55 to cast out the Legion of Devils which there dwell. Besides, it is requi- site to give the pro-slavery perverters of the right ways of the Lord an opportunity to terminate this controversy by de- ciding one vital point. I therefore publicly proffer to become a slave for life to any D. D. Doctor Divinitatis , or Doctor Diaboli, who will demonstrate that Abraham was a slave-
V11I NOTICE.
holder, such as modern preachers are in the southern States ; and that the undeniably accurate delineation of slavery in this volume is "Bible doctrine that will stand" the test of gos- pel examination and the scrutiny of the judgment-seat of Christ !
Boston , August 1, 1837.
I
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
What! shall we guard our neighbor still,
While woman shrieks beneath his rod, And while he tramples down at will.
The image of our common God I Whittier.
The ensuing concise delineation of American Slavery, in the effects which result from one sphere of its ope- ration, is not designed to demonstrate its abstract un- righteousness, as a theory for disputation ; or its op- pressions as totally subversive of all human freedom and conscienlious rights. That slavery is equally un- scriptura! and barbarous, and as unconstitutional as it is unjust, is a proposition which no argument and no evidence can render more certain and convincing to all men whose rational faculties are in ordinary exercise. Slave-drivers and their abettors do not want illumina- tion ; but moral sensibility and Christian principles.
The most common, and yet the most unholy of all the excuses which are alleged for the infatuated adhe- sron to the system of slavery in the United States, are these : — The early prejudices which the slaveholders imbibe ; and the habits of life to which they were ed- ucated, and to which they have been inured from in-
10 INTRODUCTORY.
fancy. What influence those things might have upon the formation of character among that part of mankind who, " having no hope, are without God in the world," it is irrelevant to discuss. Our inquiry adverts to American citizens alone, who have been born and educated in the United States since the ratification of our Federal Constitution. Their first lesson has been this — " All men are created equal, and are possessed of certain inalienable rights." Their boast and their shout, "Liberty!" Their denunciation of almost all other countries, that their inhabitants in dif- ferent degrees are fettered by tyrannical potentates. Their almost unceasing chorus — "We never will be slaves."
These distinctive features are rendered more vivid by another consideration ; that all their mental and moral acquisitions have been obtained amid the splen- dors, and under the acknowledged supremacy and sanction of the gospel of Christ ; which inculcates reciprocal rectitude, and personal responsibility to Je- hovah, as the result of the divinely bestowed boon of civil and religious freedom.
Notwithstanding, therefore, all those immunities, and all those proud exultations, and all the egotism which have emanated from the possession of these invalu- able enjoyments ; there is existing in this Republic a system of slavery, than which nothing more adverse to all human comfort and improvement can possibly be imagined — and than which, no ingenuity of wicked- ness can contrive a machinery more efficient to despoil man of all his loftiest privileges, to drive him into the
INTRODUCTORY. 11
most brutal degradation, and to insure for him the wrath of God. And it should be deeply impressed upon our minds, that all this machination of evil is im- pelled and prolonged by men whose every feeling, conviction, motive, and desire, with all their constant declarations, it ever most strenuously and directly contradicts.
When we speak of prejudices of education or early habits of life, in common parlance, we never intend by it to convey the impression that departures from domestic purity and social equity are the result of an inveterate constitutional bias, similar to the animal in- stinctive loathings or attachments. Yet we are told that slavery may be excused, or rather that the slave- dealer and the slave-torturer are, in a great measure to be pardoned, and notwithstanding its inherent and incurable injustice and inhumanity, that the system it- self is extenuated, because the " broker in the trade of blood," has been brought up in the midst of its scenes, and he " knows no better," through early pre- possessions and habits.
It is one of the grave charges against some of the pretended moral casuists of the European continent, that they taught that deadly doctrine — that men might be invincibly ignorant that violations of the divine com- mandments are sins ; and therefore, that although they are profane, or cruel, or unclean, or mendacious, or fraudulent, or impious, or criminal in every degree, they are not worthy of punishment, because they were not acquainted with the moral law of God, and its authority and obligations, when the act was perpe-
12 INTRODUCTORY.
trated. That doctrine, although it directly subverts all morals and all religion, is the foundation upon which is erected that unhallowed castle where slave-holders attempt to intrench themselves against the evangelical artillery with which the Christian philanthropists are endeavoring to overthrow that stronghold of ungodli- ness and despotism.
No melancholy facts in the annals of human deprav- ity are more direful thai the prominent circumstances connected with American slavery. That slavery should be extenuated under the plea of education, juvenile habits, long associations, and widely influential exam- ple, is most disgraceful to our country, and especially when combined with our public extravagant professions of " Liberty and Equality! " But that slavery should have become fortified in the Christian church ; and sixty years after the American Declaration of Inde- pendence and the Bills of Rights ; and fifty years subsequent to the adoption of our national confed- erated constitution, that the ministers, officers, and members of the religious denominations should con- stitute the prominent and most inveterate actors and defenders of the vilest practical curse which ever des- olated mankind, is an anomaly so atrocious and heart- rending, that, were it not a visible, and oral, and tan- gible fact, its very enormity alone would utterly pre- clude any rational persons from crediting its exist- ence.
That hardness of heart and astounding criminality hitherto have been assailed in vain. The incongruity of liberty aad slavery ; the utter irreconcilableness of
INTRODUCTORY. 13
the reciprocal justice and philanthropy of the gospel with the perpetual frauds andbarbarity, without which American slavery cannot exist for one moment ; the indescribable wickedness of concealing under the garb, and of branding with the name of Christianity an incurable mass of impiety and irreligion ; and the hypocrisy of attempting to combine a profession of love to the gracious Redeemer, with fettering the bodies and destroying the souls of men — all have been illustrated, expatiated upon, and enforced until language has almost lost its influence, admonition its solemnity, warning its fearful menaces, and the last judgment its ineffable terrors.
One subject yet remains to be faithfully disclosed and explained in its application. That is, the exhibi- tion of "Slavery, in its relation to Woman ; and in its effects upon Domestic Society." I am aware that the very mention of that theme will array a motley phalanx of all descriptions of sinners against the cause of truth, who will join the outcry of the slave-holders respecting "indelicacy," and "indecorum." But I am certain that there is no part of the dark and hidden iniquities of slavery which so powerfully demands a correct exposure as the condition and habits of the slave-holders in connection with the duties and prohi- bitions of the seventh commandment. There is a hypocritical and immoral fastidiousness prevalent re- specting the discussion of that part of the divine moral law which is not less unscriptural than it is pernicious. The sexual relation is of God's appointment. The emotions and sensibilities that are indissolubly com-
14 INTRODUCTORY.
bined with that consociation are of the purest and most refining character ; and had our first parents " held fast their integrity," thejr would have embodied no more indelicacy or impurity, than any other of the inseparable instincts of humanity. By the entrance of sin into the world, the craving of hunger has been the cause of gluttony ; the sensation of thirst has been the source of drunkenness ; and the purest attach- ment has been transformed into the grossest corrup- tion.
There are two other facts conjoined with this absurd unwillingness to permit instruction and admonition re- specting the sexual associations, which are equally preposterous and pregnant with evil. Parents, for the sake of their children's health, impress them with the necessity of restraining their appetites from the im- moderate use of food, drink, and useless or pernicious luxuries ; but as they grow up, a passion or instinct equally strong, oftentimes more impetuous, when not under constant moral restriction, than either hunger or thirst, is allowed to develop its morbid impulses with no other counteraction than the dread of discov- ery after indulgence. The immorality, the constitu- tional injury, the irreparable pollutions, and the cost- liness of the ignoble course to which they become ha- bituated, with the other malign consequences in which the transgressors generally- become involved, impress them not, until they have learned the direful lesson by that experience which may embitter all their future earthly pilgrimage. All of which, under the divine blessing, might have been saved, had the parents duly
INTRODUCTORY. 15
taught their children, and warned them, and placed them under proper regimen at that age when the play- ful unconsciousness of infancy assumes the character and energy of that passion which comprises not only the comfort, but also the existence of the human fam- ily. The other circumstance is still more alarming in its effects upon the public morals ; because it demon- strates that there is a profound and fearful apathy generally predominant upon this most important topic. All classes of the impure unite vociferously to con- demn the faithful exposure of the sins of uncleanness ; and a large majority of Christian teachers and disci- ples are either intimidated to silence, or from thought- lessness acquiesce in that sinful attempt to counteract every pungent delineation of those crimes which, more than any other, dissolve the bonds of society, eradi- cate the safeguards of domestic peace and enjoyment, and pollute the very fountains of human existence.
I have known many persons who impute most of their terrestrial sorrows and characteristic wayward- ness, to that grand defect in their parents, when they attained the age of puberty. Well acquainted with the nature of their unavoidable associations, and the " evil communications corrupting good manners," to which their youth were almost constantly exposed ; and if they ever duly reflected, fully conscious of the dan- gers which encircled them, not one syllable ever escaped their Christian father and mother, to warn them against the " paths of the destroyers." I have known persons who, although they were renewed by divine grace, often most bitterly lament that unchris-
16 INTRODUCTORY.
tian squeamishncss which could permit their parents to allow them for four, five, or seven years at the most perilous age, to mingle with companions, listen to ensnarements, contract habits, and engage in scenes, of the unavoidable effects of which they must have been apprised — all without premonition of its guilt, warning of the consequences, advice to resist and flee from the contamination, or one solitary instruction how effectually to repress the augmenting unhallowed fire. Myriads of youth now living, if they were can- didly to detail their own experience, would state that this general portrait, with different features and modi- fications, is their own moral likeness.
This melancholy development is of still deeper in- terest, when it is remembered that there exists at pres- ent a systematic process to corrupt the heart ; against the fascinations and artifices of which, nothing but the most lofty moral principles, enlivened by "pure reli- gion and undefiled," combined with the most sedulous guardianship over the consociations of youth, can pos- sibly shield them. Painful as is the alternative, yet parents at the proper season, of which they alone are competent judges, should impart to their children that partial acquaintance with the subject, in connection with their tenderest advice and affectionate prayers, which then might preserve them, if not from that dis- covered turpitude which results in disgrace, yet from those secret or concealed licentious indulgences, which attach a permanent influence to the moral character during the entire course of their mortal existence.
When we consider the principles and conduct of
INTRODUCTORY. 17
those who are most obstreperous in their revilings of the open combatants against sensual defilements, the mind is lost in amazement, both at their effrontery and their seared consciences. With some few exceptions, those persons may be classified as the promoters of the theatre, and other similar ungodly incentives to vice, with all the mixed multitudes, of the dissipated of every variety, from the finished profligate to the " re- spectable" ladies and gentlemen who attend those vestibules of hell, to behold scenes, at which they de- ceitfully profess to be shocked in any other situation, to exhibit themselves in a manner which they would consider grossly indecent in their own parlors ; and to hear equivoques, and to participate in conversa- tions, which at any other season or in any other place, they would affect indignantly to resent. The fact is this ; no woman can retain her native feminine mod- esty, and visit modern theatres. A thoughtless and uninformed girl, under false pretexts, or impelled by curiosity, may be enticed once into that " cage of un- clean and hateful birds ;" but if she voluntarily enters a second time into that factory of Satan, she must make no more pretensions to innocence, even if she can to personal virtue. Now all the approvers of the licentious danseuses, and all their associates, with every person of depraved principles and disorderly life, whether their irregularity is avowed or disguised, constitute one solid phalanx, who revile with incessant contumely, the moralists that depict and censure their wickedness. They are supported by the political press, the inordinate devotion of the editors of which
18 INTRODUCTORY.
generally to the cause of infidelity and irreligion, is a melancholy "sign of the times." From one end of this republic to the other, in all the cities and populous towns, excluding a few rare and exemplary individuals, the whole editorial corps of the common newspapers form one grand confederacy, who may most graphi- cally be characterized in the words of David — "They walk in the counsel of the ungodly ; they stand in the way of sinners ; they sit in the seat of the scornful ;" and like the raging heathen, they are people "who imagine vain things, and take counsel together against the Lord."
All those persons will doubtless effuse their wrath against the discussion and statements which this vol- ume contains. But no apology is offered for the argu- ment ; and all the ecclesiastical men-stealers from Marcus Hook in Pennsylvania to Cape Florida and New-Orleans, and round about by St. Louis, back to Wilmington, with all the hordes of slave-drivers and slave-traders, who roam within that wide domain, are challenged to disprove the facts. For nearly twenty- five years, it has been my unalterable conviction, and it is also the deliberate judgment of the few consistent citizens and Christian philanthropists who reside in the southern States, that all expectation of extirpating slav- ery is altogether visionary, as long as the profession of religion by one slave-holder or by one slave, upon any possible pretext is recognised as sincere and evan- gelical by the northern churches and by foreign Chris- tians. All efforts to excite that healthful feeling of moral principle and that aversion to slavery which are
INTRODUCTORY. 19
indispensable to the abolition of that monster in the United States, will be nugatory, as long as the women in the slave-holding districts submit to their present debasement. To which may be added, that slavery will not be abolished as long as perjured men-steakrs are elected to fill public offices, either in the legisla- ture, the judiciary, or the executive department.
Among the perplexing annals of the nominal Chris- tian church, no one circumstance is more astonishing, when considered in all its bearings, than the mortify- ing truth, that the spirit of slavery, during more than half a century, should have been permitted to control the American churches ; and that by the deliberate adjudications of many of the large representative bodies of different denominations of Christians in the year 1836, that unacknowledged influence should have been developed and exalted to a similar supremacy with that which is recorded by the spirit of prophecy, of " the man of sin and son of perdition," to which, in different forms, he is twin brother in "all deceiv- ableness of unrighteousness" — for the demon of man* stealing "opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God ; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God."
In various places in the southern States, the church in its consociate character, hold as disposable property a number of slaves. They are transferred, hired, and increased, like other merchantable articles, for the emolument of " the church." "The hire of those laborers which is of them kept back by fraud," is paid to the preacher as his salary for not preaching " the
20
INTRODUCTORY.
gospel to the poor, and deliverance to the captives ;" and for not " publishing good tidings of peace and salvation." The Lord Jesus Christ declared that the tables of money-changers, and the baskets of them who sold doves alone, within the precincts of the an- cient " temple of God," actually transformed his 11 house of prayer into a den of thieves." Then the gracious Saviour overthrew their market, and cast them all out as an abomination to him. What then would " the Messenger of the covenant," pronounce and do, if he were to enter an edifice where the preacher is maintained in luxury by the officers of the church, from money filched from the toil and stripes of his fellow-citizens, from the moans and blood of those very persons, whom probably he acknowledges as Christians, and with whom they pretend to keep " the communion of saints." To such persons may not the pungent question be applied — " who may abide the day of his coming ?" and may we not also with pecu- liar propriety transform the prediction into a prayer — " O, thou,, who dost purify the sons of Levi, purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness."
But so far as moral means and earthly influence are of any value in this connection, the nominal slave- holding church will remain just what they are, "trust- ing in lying words, and saying — peace, peace ; — the temple of the Lord are these!" — as longas Christian women will give "the right hand of fellowship" to slave-defiling men. Know ye not, that the pictures of the prophets Joel and Amos are strictly applicable to
INTRODUCTORY. 21
the letter in myriads of instances among the slave- holders, and even of them who profess to be Chris- tians ? " They cast lots for my people ; and have given a boy for a harlot ; and sold a girl for wine, that they might drink. They sold the righteous for silver, and the poor for a pair of shoes. They pant after the dust of the earth on the hand of the poor, and turn aside the way of the meek. A man and his father will go in unto the same maid, to profane my holy name." Joel iii. 3. Amos ii. 6, 7. Have you forgotten the Lord's authoritative mandate and threat- ening ? "Thus saith the Lord my God — Feed the flock of the slaughter. Whose possessors slay them, and hold themselves not guilty ; and they who sell them, say — Blessed be the Lord ; for I am rich ; and their own shepherds pity them not. I will no more pity the inhabitants of the land, saith the Lord." Zech- ariah xi. 4, 5, 6. Are you totally insensible to Jeho- vah's impressive expostulation and terrific remem- brancer ? Proverbs xxiv. 11, 12. "If thou forbear to deliver them who are drawn unto death, and those who are ready to be slain — if thou sayest, behold, we knew it not : doth not he who pondereth the heart, consider it ? and he who keepeth thy soul, doth not he know it ? and shall not he render unto every man ac- cording to his works ?"
To these affecting themes, except as they may be unavoidably applicable, our present discussion has no immediate reference. Our object now is to elucidate the effects of slavery upon the female character, and in its connection with households, in its duplicate as-
22 INTRODUCTORY.
pect, as it relates both to the wives and daughters of slave-holders, and to the colored females around them. But we might be repelled from proceeding in our at- tempt, by the appalling opposition which " the enemies of the cross of Christ" will undoubtedly make to every endeavor to unfold the moral impurity which is inseparable from slavery. Nevertheless, nothing can be conceived which is net universally practiced among the slave-drivers — and few facts can be disclosed which are not known to every girl who has attained the age of puberty. Their mere acquaintance with the ungodliness which surrounds them, and the hear- ing and seeing of which they cannot possibly avoid, are not the sources o£ complaint. The criminality on their part is found in their death-like silence upon points which comprise all that is dear to woman in her every relation to time and eternity. If only fifty wo- men in Virginia or South Carolina would make such an appeal as they could offer to the women of New- England, unfolding the condition of all their sex among slave-holders, slavery would be abolished in one year, in defiance of Martin Van Buren, with his traitorous pledge, and of all his blustering accom- plices, the women-scourgers and women-destroyers, from the Potomac and the Ohio to the Mexican gulf. American slavery is often condemned as unjust and inhuman ; but it is also more pernicious, when con- sidered as the ever-flowing fountain of all uncleanness. That profligacy is not even attempted to be concealed. It is public, notorious, and uncovered as the daylight. Mothers and sisters are acquainted with the flagrant
INTRODUCTORY. 23
sensuality of their sons and brothers. Wives and daughters are certified of the constant adulterous in- tercourse of their husbands and fathers. This social degeneracy has been continually increasing, and now is extending itself in an equal ratio with the numerical progression of the slaves. Ministers of the gospel in the southern States know these heaven-daring crimes to be undeniable ; and yet by their silence they virtu- ally sanction them. They may suspect, or believe, or be assured of the most nefarious iniquity. They may hear the complaints of violated females, and dishon- ored wives and daughters. All is vain ! The testi- mony of colored women is inadmissible ; and other direct evidence cannot be obtained ; and thus the Ethiopian's skin is gradually transforming into the hue of the Circassian's.
Now suppose that the same course of life could be commenced in New-England ; that men of all classes and filling every station of civil and ecclesiastical honor and influence, at once should sever all the bonds of duty and vows of affection, and organize a perren- nial system of all diversified pollution, — would the daughters of the pilgrims calmly sit down, fold their arms, watch the iniquitous process, and tacitly admit that machination to be prolonged, until precedent was pleaded for law ; and the antiquity and extension of the sin were alleged as proofs of chastity and inno- cence ? Not at all. The puritan women would raise a moral hail-storm and whirlwind within twenty-four hours, which would so affright their c 'lords and mas- ters," that they would hide themselves "in the dens
24 INTRODUCTORY.
and in the rocks of the mountains;" whence they would not dare to come forth to obtain absolution, until they had verified their penitence, and solemnly vowed immediate cessation from their sin, and faithful and lasting amendments.
There is an example for the women of the south. Multitudes of them are partially guiltless, except that they do not "put on the whole armor of God, and stand against the wiles of the devil." They mourn over that iniquity which they feel themselves too pow- erless efficiently to resist. Hence it is our duty in New-England to " come to the rescue ;" and to di- vulge those awful corruptions which our sisters among the slave-holders dare not reveal. On their behalf, to draw aside the veil which conceals the grand slave- holding "mystery of iniquity." For their sakes, to depict that "working of Satan," which crushes them with agony and degradation — and thus to expedite that hallowed period and state of society, when the connubial obligations shall be more than a ceremonial form ; female purity shall not depend upon the power and the will to exercise brutal violence ; all do- mestic relations shall not be abolished at the impulse of lascivious desires and pecuniary demands ; and a million of women shall not constitute one vast ha- rem where men-stealers may prowl, corrupt, and de- stroy.
An additional gloomy and portentous development of the wicked influence of slavery has recently been forced upon us, which, in its moral and religious com- binations, should produce continuous alarm, with the
INTRODUCTORY. 25
profoundest contrition. Since the friends of gospel liberty and Christian benevolence have more loudly reiterated their demands for the abolition of slavery, and have made their assaults more directly upon the enormous sin of that consociation which fills the church of God with those persons who are denounced by Moses, the Jewish law-giver, and by Paul, the apostle of the Gentiles, as " men-stealers" — for they are " sinners of the first rank, and guilty of the highest kind of theft," as the Presbyterian confession of faith declared — and as the Methodist discipline affirms, they never had a " sincere desire to be saved, and to flee from the wrath to come," — the slave-drivers and their northern confederates, who, when they " see the thief, consent with him, and are partakers with adul- terers," (Psalm 1. 16,22;) all of them who "hate instruction, and cast the words of the mighty God be- hind thern," have coalesced, directly or remotely, " to pervert the right ways of the Lord;" and after the example of Satan, to cite "the scripture of truth" as a sanction for falsehood ; and the Lord's " instruction for righteousness," as infallible authority for those fla- gitious crimes which violate the whole divine moral law. If there be any one iniquity which is prominently em- blazoned in "the oracles of God," as a topic of ad- monition, warning, denunciation, and curse, it is the transgression of the seventh commandment. Female purity is an especial object of Jehovah's government among mankind. It would seem from Genesis vi. 1, 2, that the deluge was sent as a punishment for licen- tiousness. It certainly was the cause of the fire and
26 INTRODUCTORY.
brimstone which consumed Sodom and Gomorrha, In many recorded instances, it was the immediate source of the misery which the Israelites and other nations realized. The sacred volume is full of illus- trations and discussions upon that subject. Lot, Da- vid, Solomon, Herod, with many other personages re- nowned in ancient history, while modern Europe re- peats the mournful tale, all certify, that the sins against female chastity and matrimonial purity ever are at- tended by the severest exhibitions of God's dis- pleasure.
The annals of mankind do not afford a parallel, either in enormity, or extent, or continuance, to the degradation of the colored women in the United States. Despoiled of all protection ; exposed to every indig- nity ; obliged to submit to the brutal demand of any lawless white man ; coerced to degradation by heart- rending tortures ; doomed to sacrifice the tender- est affections ; scourged to conceal their instinctive sensibilities ; and robbed of a husband's love, a fa- ther's guardianship, a son's aid, and a brother's en- dearment ; they are merely human tools to pander to the sensuality, and to gratify the unclean desires of their inhuman task-masters. Among slaves, matri- mony is unknown ; and in some very few cases where a pretended form is impiously engaged in as a mock sanction to the cohabitation of a colored man and wo- man, the promise is not exacted by the base and ser- vile preacher, that the bridegroom and bride shall live faithfully as husband and wife until death severs them, but M as long as circumstances will 'permit ;" in other
INTRODUCTORY. 27
words, until the maii-stealer wants money, and can sell one or both of them, with an impassable distance between them — and instead of using the Lord's words, "What God hath joined together, let not man put asunder," he altogether omits the divine approba- tion of their union, or substitutes his own adage — What slave-drivers join together, let men-stealers pat asunder.
Hence the slave States are one vast brothel, in which multiform incests, polygamy, adultery, and other uncleanness are constantly perpetrated — and there is not a man, or woman, or boy, or girl, or any who has arrived at the age of puberty, that is not acquainted with nearly the whole mass of abominations.
All the upholders of slavery have fellowship with that lt throne ofiniquitij which frameth mischief by law." li They gather themselves together against the soul of the righteous, and condemn the innocent blood." The truth in this connection cannot be contemplated with- out dismay. Direful as are the effects of slavery in political, civil, and social aspects, yet it is " lighter than dust in the balance," when contrasted with the novel manifestations of the spirit, tendency and claims of that iniquitous system, which will, ere long, sweep over our southern republics in a whirlwind of desola- tion, unless the monsters be caught and drowned in the Atlantic. In the religious application of the woful requisitions of that accursed enemy of mankind, its withering pestilence is most to be dreaded. The en- listing of the sacred volume into an authoritative sanc- tion of slavery is the last " refuge of lies" in which
28 INTRODUCTORY.
" the sinners and hypocrites in Zion" can entrench themselves. The walls of the town of " carnal pol- icy" have been battered down. The tower of expe- diency has been demolished. The cannons of gradual emancipation have been spiked. The sword of Afri- can colonization has been so blunted by attempting to hew in pieces the rock of emancipation, that when it is now drawn out for warfare, it only excites ridicule and contempt. All the weapons which kidnappers have used, having been found powerless against the artil- lery of truth, the ecclesiastical slave-drivers. and soul- traders, in the spirit of their prototypes, the Egyptian magicians, are striving with their enchantments to convince the successors of Pharoah, that the mandates of Jehovah are only a contrivance of " incendiary fanatics," after the ancient example of Moses and Aaron, to render the slave discontented and to hinder their work.
Without controversy, this is the modern fulfilment of the dread and capital charge which the apostle Paul alleged against the old Romans — "They changed the truth of God into a lie." That is a solemn and un- deniable fact in reference to those pretended biblical critics, expositors, and pro-slavery theologians who professedly adduce the holy scriptures, their doc- trines, precepts, and examples, as a justification for American slavery. In the Mosaic laws, or in the New Testament, no Jesuitical ingenuity of corruption can quote one sentence which in any form countenances that servitude which exists in the United States of America. Excluding all irrelevant topics, we defy
INTRODUCTORY* 29
any man to adduce from the law, or the prophets, or the psalms, or the evangelists and apostles, one soli- tary word which justifies the dissolution of the nuptial covenant ; and destroys all domestic relations ; and necessarily transforms men and women into fornica- tors and adulterers ; and fetters every woman as a creature for defilement without redress or possibility of escape whenever her vile tyrants choose to tram- ple upon the seventh commandment.
Notwithstanding all persons who are acquainted with the theory and practices of slavery in our land, know that it is one unmingled mass of the basest tur- pitude ; and that slavery, as it is established by law among us, cannot possibly co-exist with marriage, fe- male chastity, and domestic relationship ; yet the abominations are sustained by the professedly Chris- tian churches ; and D. D's., professers of theology, with an almost interminable race of inferior writers and disputants, all unite in the shout, il Great is Di- ana of the Ephesians," — or, in their wondrous phra- seology, which is the inspiration of the father of lies, "Slavery is sanctioned by the bible" — in other words, that the transformation of twelve hundred thou- sands of native born American women into creatures to be used whenever the men-stealers please, for loath- some intercourse, is " bible doctrine."
It may be retorted that this representation of the pro-slavery ecclesiastics is indecorous and reproachful. I deny that objection. It is unimpeachably accurate. The defence of slavery which is now carried on in the United States, is chiefly if not entirely managed
3*
30 INTRODUCTORY.
by individual preachers, so called, and congregated bodies of them, who avowedly represent the denomi- nations and churches to which they appertain. The religious newspapers have long been agitating the question ; and where the controvertists on both sides are permitted to issue their opinions, in almost all cases, it is ascertained that the defenders of slave- driving and slave-trading, in name, are ministers of the gospel ; who, like Elymas the sorcerer, by their being enemies of righleons7iess, demonstrate that they are "full of all subtility and mischief."
Loud lamentations are often heard respecting the prevalence of the sins of uncleanness. Laudable ex- ertions are made to sustain the general cause of moral reform ; and much good has been achieved. But may it not be justly asked, what substantial benefit, what gen- uine amendment can consistently be hoped for, while rapes, incests, and all other ungodliness of the most nefarious atrocity, are virtually enacted by law as in- nocence— and while ministers of the gospel exercise all their ingenuity to persuade those who believe their "fables and endless genealogies, that a system of complex moral filthiness absolutely unknown to all other ages and countries, is the appointment of Jeho- vah, and that these abominations are the legitimate offspring of "bible doctrine."
It requires very little discernment to prove that this hell-born contrivance necessarily opens the flood-gates of all iniquity — and it would be just as infatuated to expect to " gather grapes from thorns, and figs from thistles," as to anticipate anything but horrible pollu-
INTRODUCTORY. 31
tions in the slave-holding States while the public ex- positors of " the oracles of God," pertinaciously sus- tain, if they do not directly inculcate, the general prin- ciple, that American women with a colored skin are only found to be slaves for odious lusts.
Within a very short period, the justification and defence of slavery have been undertaken by men of several different denominations — and however much they maybe at variance upon nearly all other topics, yet upon that iniquity and in support of it, they perfectly coalesce. A contemptible discourse was lately read and published by an Episcopalian minister in North Carolina, and to it the prelate of that diocess appended his authentic official sanction. Many Baptists have also promulged their views upon the subject ; and they generally hold, as far as the south is concerned, that slavery is right, and accurately do they fulfil the divine declaration — the possessors of slaves "slay the flock of the slaughter and hold themselves not guilty;" and the men-traders who sell them say, " Blessed be the Lord, for I am rich, and their own shepherds pity them not."
The Presbyterian general assembly, and the Method- ist conferences are still more criminal than the minor ecclesiastical bodies ; for they have directly nullified, as far as they can, by their ecclesiastical enactments, the law of God, and their own avowed creeds of faith and rules of discipline, and thus have obliterated the spirit and requirements of Christianity. By their impious' usurpations, and by persecuting the staunch friends of emancipation, and by their approval of the
32 INTRODUCTORY.
existing system of slavery, and its prolongation, they do boldly proclaim before the whole world, that the debasement of twelve hundred thousands of American women, as victims of ungovernable lust, and the dis- solution of all domestic relations and privileges among two millions and a half of American citizens, are " bi- ble doctrine ;" and that the t€ southern institutions " are in full accordance with the providential appointments of Jehovah, as ratified by that word which is "the lamp of our feet and the light of our path ;" by that 11 word which shall judge us at the last day." This is the climax of all iniquity ; and if there be any way to understand the signs of the times, or to interpret God's revealed will; we may anticipate, both as churches and as a nation, without a speedy repentance and re- form, that tremendous retribution which will make " every man's ears that heareth it to tingle.1'
CHAPTER II.
MARRIAGE,
The whole order of human society is based upon the grand principle which was announced by Jehovah at the creation of the world. Genesis ii. 18 — 24. "It is not good that man should be alone. I will make him a help meet for him. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and shall cleave unto his wife ; and they shall be one flesh." That comprises the divine appointment of matrimony which was rati- fied by the Lord Jesus Christ himself. Matthew xix. 3c — 6. To which the inspired apostle adds, as the fundamental object and condition of the nuptial cove- nant, both as to the fact and to the restriction — "Let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband."
Many persons intimate that it is indecorous and in- delicate to talk of marriage and its obligations ; but they forget that the domestic union of man and woman preceded all other relations and laws — that much of the Jewish economy is specially devoted to that sub- ject— that no small portion of the sacred history ad- verts to that important theme — that the larger quan- tity of the crimes and miseries which have deluged
34 MARRIAGE.
the world, flows from the violation of that primitive law of the all-wise Creator ; and in the application of the rule to our present topic, that slavery could not exist for one moment, if the ordinance of Paradise, as au- thoritatively expounded by Immanuel, were practically enforced.
Female chastity is the corner-stone of society. It is woman's instinct to be undejiled. The very fact that God has appointed that she shall be honorably wooed, prior even to the sanctified and endeared intercourse of connubial life, is a plain proof that her every natu- ral sensibility revolts from personal contamination. Now this inestimable attribute which combines the wife's affection, the mother's love, and the sister's ten- derness, in all their energetic purity, is entirely eradi- cated by slavery. The system of servitude which is the curse of the southern States, and the grand source of contention and mischief to our whole republic, totally destroys the constitution of things of divine appoint- ment ; and disturbs those relations which are of vital interest, not only to the social prosperity but also to the existence of mankind.
It is a remarkable circumstance in the history of the world, that a departure from the primitive law of God respecting marriage has always been attended with the divine malediction. It was the origin of that inordi- nate wickedness which produced the desolation of the world at the deluge. It was the unfailing cause of al- most all the crimes and punishments of the Israelites ; from their first aberration in the wilderness, through the enticements of the daughters of Moab and the
MARRIAGE. 35
Midianitish women, until their captivity in Assyria and in Babylon. In modern periods it has been the prolific parent of that darkness, penury, bondage and guilt, with their concomitant misery, which have overspread the European nations. From the north to the south pole, and from the western capes of Europe and Af- rica, round to the eastern points of America, at this day, the moral and mental character of the human fam- ily, and the domestic and social comforts of the peo- ple, and the national prosperity and improvements of the various separate. communities, are all determined by their degree of conformity to that original law of Jehovah respecting marriage, which was proclaimed in the garden of Eden on the day when man was cre- ated. Slavery necessarily abrogates that law : and it ever has cursed the nations who adopted that system, or who have introduced and fostered its evils. They have invariably been visited and requited with tremen- dous retribution.
There is an analogy of contrast equally convincing as analogies of similitude ; and that furnished by the only historian of the primeval ages is a fountain of in- struction. The Israelites in Egypt were additionally oppressed as they increased in numbers, and multiplied in proportion to their augmented afflictions. Finally to subserve their avarice and sensuality, and to extir- pate the alarms which their own despotism produced, a decree was promulgated by the Pharoahs, that every son ot the Israelites should be cast into the river im- mediately after its birth. The wrath of man, however, was so restrained that the royal tyrant's own daughter
36 MARRIAGE.
became the guardian of the future emancipator of the enslaved tribes ; and the Egyptians who had doomed Israel to extinction by the drowning of their whole male race, afterwards realized the anguish which they had designed to inflict by the simultaneous death of the first-born child in every family throughout that whole nation of slave-holding task-masters. At midnight there was a great cry throughout all Egypt. There was neither time for aid, nor place for sympathy, nor exercise of condolence, nor exemption from terror. Weeping, and wailing, and horror, and death, were identical, instantaneous, and universal !
Remember the United States ! Slaveholders are copying Pharoah and his ungodly courtiers and inferior rulers to the minutest characteristic ; and with addi- tional iniquities of which it is presumed those drowned slave-holders were not guilty. By the inscrutable dis- pensations of God, our ancestors were allowed to sail to Africa. There they kidnapped and brought to the United States all the living men and women who were not wounded or mutilated in the hideous wars and pirat- ical incursions which the white men-stealers bribed and paid the tribes on the western coast of Africa to com- mence and prolong until the cargoes of " human cat- tle" were stolen to be transferred to the American col- onies. From the first day to the present hour, these kidnapped Africans and their descendants, of all grades and hues, have been doomed, by law, to unintermitting toil and agonies. Every measure which hell-inspired craftiness can contrive, has been authorized, and with equal solicitude executed, without one kindly emotion
MARRIAGE. 37
or humane consideration, to obtain the largest possible proportion of manual labor, and of the means of luxu- rious indulgence, at the lowest expense. Yet that un- godly scheme has only increased the number of slaves in a fearful ratio ; who, like those " of whom the world was not worthy, have trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, being destitute, afflicted, and tormented." The rapid multiplication of the slaves has been at- tended with proportionately increased danger to the slave-holders ; and therefore new scenes of oppression are constantly unfolding in the legislative enactments to crush the rising spirit of freedom. The desecration of the Lord's day, the silence of preachers, the priva- tion of all instruction for both worlds, and the robbery of every immunity which belongs to them by donation from their Creator, with the unceasing lacerations and defilement and barbarities which they continually re- alize, only enlarge their multitudes and strengthen their physical energies ; until it is manifest that their deliverance from the house of bondage must speedily be effected either by Christian philanthropy, or by the wrathful interposition of the righteous Judge.
It is not a little marvellous, also, that the Lord is permitting a system which is promoted from the very worst motives and for the most corrupt object which possibly can exist among men, to involve eventually, and it may be feared with most appalling terrors, the -liberation of the slaves and the punishment of their impure and unrelenting tormentors — the propagation of slaves as articles of merchandize. The rearing of human creatures expressly for the degradation of slav-
38 MARRIAGE.
ery, now is as regular and systematized a traffic among American citizens, as the culture of the farm. In countless instances, many of the southern families live in sloth and voluptuousness and "frolic," solely from the annual sales of the colored people as they arrive at the ordinary age of manhood Hence it is no won- der that in comparison, the colored people should in- crease with so much more celerity than the white pop- ulation. The trade in " breeding ivenches," and the constant contrivances to diminish the sable color, to augment the number, and to extend the traffic of slaves, are facts notorious as the existence of slavery itself; and every attempt to extend the United States by ad- mitting slave-holding communities into the Common- wealth, is merely expanding the present market for our colored citizens ; and directly sanctioning that hell- born system which encourages its adherents to " work all uncleanness with greediness."
Ere many years shall have elapsed, a voice will be heard from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, reverbera- tino- in frightful thunders : " How long wilt thou refuse to humble thyself before me ? Let my people go, that they may serve me." At that eventful period the pro- digious numbers of the colored people will constitute the scorpions with which the divine Liberator in equi- table retribution will chastise this "sinful nation, a peo- ple laden with iniquity, a seed of evil-doers, and chil- dren who are corrupters ; who have forsaken the Lord, and provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger."
Slavery abrogates the law and institution of mar- riage ; the prime object of which ordinance is this : to
MARRIAGE. 39
preserve the native purity of woman in all its unsullied freshness and primitive vigor.
No subject in this reference is more painful and hu- miliating than the constant and universally desolating effects which slavery produces upon women. It is al- together unfair and irrational to argue respecting the condition of persons in the heathen lands, and similar scenes in our own republic. Comparisons are often made between the debasement, nudity, and brutalized habits ,of many tribes of the native Asiatics, Africans, and Americans — and a justification of slavery in our southern States has been attempted from the deception that the situation of the slave is ameliorated by a trans- fer from the eastern to the western shores of the Atlan- tic, and that the plantations of Carolina and Georgia are superior residences to the wilds of Congo and Guinea for the kidnapped descendants of Ham. The proposition thus enounced and so often depicted in flat- tering vision, and illustrated by romantic tales of imag- ination, is a gross fallacy, an essential part of the cor- rupt and mendacious system of slavery.
Examine this subject in one application. It was the appointment of God after the original transgression, that the human family, to distinguish them from the beasts of the field, should be clothed ; not only to pre- serve them from the inclement weather which sin had introduced into the world, but also to guard them against those unholy propensities which would other- wise render the existence of mankind in large commu- nities utterly impossible. In all countries where the people are nearly or quite all divested of clothing,
40 MARRIAGE.
woman is a mere slave shut up in comparative seclu- sion ; while the consociations of men are small and barbarous. Jealousy, lust, rage, and ferocity in all their malignant characteristics there mark our species. Nor are those turbulent passions much diminished among those people who consider and treat women merely as objects for menial drudgery and voluptuous gratification. Long inured habits and custom from in- fancy produce little or no amendment in this respect ; for among the benighted tribes of men, where clothing is scarcely used, their condition in a moral aspect pre- cludes all accurate conception ; and in reference to that cardinal female attribute, modesty, it is only the animal instinct impelled by human depravity.
Now all the degradation and pollution which that picture exhibits, are developed in actual life in our slave-holding States with inexpressible aggravations ; so that it is utterly impossible for the colored people to acquire any accurate and sterling views Hi the ex- terior obligations and spirituality of the seventh com- mandment. Consequently, to anticipate moral purity from the slave or from the slave-holder, is equally irrational as to pretend to change the Ethiopian's skin or the leopard's spots. I do not imply that all slaves are unclean ; much less would I intimate that ewery slave-driver directly violates that mandate, "Thou shalt not commit adultery ;" but the exceptions are comparatively few ; and unavoidably so, because chastity and matrimonial fidelity are equally opposed to the ungodly system which they sustain ; and di- rectly subversive of their pecuniary interests and
MARRIAGE. 41
worldly advancement ; exclusive of their attractive ca- pacity to gratify "the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.55
This inference is enforced by two dreadful facts which are indissolubly conjoined with slavery. 1. The ordinary code of morals is totally nullified when it is enforced in reference to the colored citizens. For ex- ample : it would be disgraceful publicly to curse a preacher to his face — but it is not deemed at all pro- fane, or at best, a very venial offence to curse a slave. It is dangerous to stab a white man of equal or inferior rank in society — but it is an insult for one "gentle- man" to taunt his drunken, gambling associate that he had "killed a nigger." It would cost the ruffian his life if he were forcibly to violate a planter's wife, or daughter, or sister, or niece — but he may scourge and torture first, and afterwards defile as many colored females as he pleases, not only with impunity, but he will boast of his heaven-defying abominations, and be eulogized and envied. It would not be politic or safe, probably to go into a court-house, and there formally attest upon oath to circumstances, the perverse false- hood of which could be evinced by indubitable counter testimony, but he may commit wilful and corrupt per- jury at every term of court, respecting the colored citizens ; and although every man in the county around him personally knows his entire contradiction to truth and justice, yet no man can punish him ; and nine- tenths of the slave-drivers would admire and praise him for his effrontery and example ; while the others would tacitly sanction his crimes and conceal his im-
42 MARRIAGE,
pious audacity. 2. There is no law against female violation and no redress for the injured colored woman. No earthly tribunal exists to which she can appeal. Not only are the civil courts of law closed against her complaints, but if she has been called by divine grace, and is conscientiously solicitous to ■ 'abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul," yet if her " Chris- tian" master, an officer or member of the same church to which she belongs, forces her, she dare not complain. The minister would not regard her ; the church would not hear her charge ; and her tyrant would only tor- ture her and repeat his ungodliness with aggravations. Thus even the colored Christian women with the most delicate virgin modesty and women with the most reserved chastity and faithfulness to their lovers, are almost universally doomed to submit to defilements which they loathe, and to agonies of conscience equally perplexing and full of disquietude ; because the civil jurisdiction legalizes their debasement, and the church tacitly sanctifies their habitual pollution and groans. Their appeal for deliverance can be made to God alone ; and however long the Hearer of prayer may delay the answer, yet the prophetic vision is equally applicable in this case, as to myriads of other events in divine Providence. cc The vision is yet for an ap- pointed time ; but at the end it shall speak, and not lie. Though it tarry, wait for it ; because it will surely come, it will not tarry." Habakkuk ii. 3.
The following narrative is related by Mr. Fitch, of Boston, in his eloquent essay, entitled, "Slave-holding weighed in the balance of Truth." A physician in
MARRIAGE. 4d
Washington, who is a Christian, originally communi- cated the conscience-harrowing fact. " There is," said that pious physician, "residing in this city, (Washington) a young female slave who is a member of the same church to which I belong. She is a mu- latto, and her complexion nearly white. One day she came to me in great trouble and distress, and wished me to tell her what she could do. She stated to me that her master's son was in the practice of compelling her, whenever he pleased, to go with him to his bed. She had been obliged to submit to it, and she knew of no way to obtain any relief. She could not appeal to her master for protection, for he was guilty of like practices himself. What could she do ? Poor girl ! She dared not to lift a hand in self-defence. She could not flee, for she was a slave. She would be brought back and beaten, and be placed in a worse condition than before. There she was, a pious girl, with all the feel- ings of her heart alive to the woes of her condition, the victim of the brutal lusts of a dissolute young man; with no means of defence or of escape, and no pros- pect before her but that of being again and again polluted, whenever his unbridled passions should dic- tate."
Yet this is the system which ministers of the gospel of almost all denominations maintain to be conformable to the revealed will of God, which collegiate professors teach for moral philosophy ; which biblical contmenta- tors and doctors, Divinitatis and Diaboli, announce as "Bible doctrine ;" and which general assemblies, sy- nods, conferences, conventions, and associations de-
44 MARRIAGE.
liberately sustain as the grand cement of their eccle- siastical confederacy. In truth, they formally annul that hallowed institution which is coeval with the exist- ence of mankind, and without which the human family within fifty years, would be nearly extinct. Neither Asiatic polygamy, nor even the Popish celibacy is equally nefarious and execrable in its reference to the law of chastity, and the transgressions of the seventh commandment as the accursed system of servitude in the United States. Nor is there one prophetic denunciation contained in the sacred volume which is directed against the Mohammedan imposture and the Roman apostacy, that is not equally applicable to American bondage ; for it is justly entitled to the same characteristic appel- latives ; and to it maybe justly said — "Slavery ! thou art the mother of harlots and the abominations of the earth ; and the king of slave-drivers is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name is Appollyon, the de- stroyer !" While the judgment of God against im- penitent slave-drivers, as announced by the apostle from Patmos, is "Bible doctrine that will stand." Revelations xxi. 8. "The fearful and unbelieving, and the abominable and murderers, and whoremon- gers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone."
CHAPTER III.
CONDITION OF FEMALE SLAVES.
"There Mammon hath its altars
Wet o'er with human blood j And hideous lust debases
The workmanship of God." Whittier.
The subject before us is intensely impressive, and demands so forcible an application, that the repetition of a remark is excusable. It has already been stated that the torturers of the enslaved colored women admit, on their part, of no evasion or redress ; because the whole code of slave legislation is diabolically contrived to admit the slave-drivers and the kidnappers to perpe- trate their heinous crimes with impunity.
What are the cardinal principles of American slavery ? Slaves are under the absolute power of their kidnappers ; and are deemed to be chattels and per- sonal estate, except in the case of descents, when they are real estate. They cannot acquire or possess prop- erty. A slave can make no contract ; not even the covenant of marriage ; and above all, cannot be a witness in any cause where any of the parties are white persons ; and dare not attempt to resist the as- sault of the despotic slave-drivers, who would maim the
46 CONDITION OF
man that has offended him, or violate the girl upon whom he has fixed his lascivious desires.
1. In this concise summary, therefore, is instantly seen the helpless debasement in which the law-makers of the southern States have immured the colored women. The doomed victim of lust cannot ascertain how to escape her pollution and anguish. It is true the law of God enacts, (Deuteronomy xxiii. 15, 16) — " Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant who is escaped from his master unto thee. He shall dwell with thee, among you, in that place which he shall choose, where it liketh him best ; thou shalt not oppress him." But the detestable laws of our country are in direct opposition to the enactment of Jehovah. A young woman, sensitive as feminine modesty can imbue her with decorum, is agonized with constant so- licitations voluntarily to abandon herself to her tyrant driver, or his son, or both of them, and intimidated with menaces of their scourging, if she resists their authority and lecherous desires. A white girl can fly to a father, or a brother, or a friend, or to the civil magistrate, to shield her from pollution. There may be scarcely any perceptible difference of color. The young woman may be intellectual, refined, far superior to her debased condition, animated with the purest and most delicate affection for an associate of her own class, and above all a conscientious Christian ; but she has no father to extricate her from her perilous condi- tion. Her own brother may be the debauchee who is re- solved to violate her. Her sole friend and lover would instantly be murdered by slow-paced tortures if he
FEMALE SLAVES. 47
dared to murmur, much less to oppose the vile design, or if their mutual attachment was only suspected. Complaint to a justice of the peace would be an- swered by urging his own claim to the right of carnal knowledge of her, or by commanding the public whip- pers to give " her fifty lashes well laid on."
In the case already alluded to, a white woman may elude the attempt to dishonor her by flying from the scene of danger, but a female slave must remain. Not in one case out of a thousand could she escape. Her seizure, after attempting to elope, would insure the most horrible punishment, while it would not exempt her from the moral anguish which she would also en- dure ; and thus she has no alternative but participa- tion in the most revolting guilt which woman is doomed to suffer.
2. The female slave upon whom her kidnapper has fixed his " eyes full of adultury, and that cannot cease from sin," is not only unable to deliver herself by flight, but she has no means of resistance. A white woman could assume the attitude of self-defence, and if she wounded, maimed, or even killed her brutal as- sailant, the law would exculpate her, and she would be honored for her resistance ; but she who has a colored skin dares not to resist or attempt any opposition ; and if through the impulse of desperation »he should inflict a wound upon her ravisher in the very attempt, she would forfeit her mortal existence if the fact was pre- sented to one of their execrable criminal courts ; and if that course was not adopted, her whole future life would be the subject of her despot's unceasing and malicious revenge.
48 COx\DITION OF
The forcible defilement of a woman constitutes a flagitious transgression against which the divine reve- lation denounces its solemn condemnation ; and to re- press which, even our statutes declare that the convic- tion of the offender shall insure severe punishment. Nevertheless, in reference to the colored woman, the mandates of God are totally abrogated, and the laws of our country virtually sanctify the crime.
The ensuing occurrence is one example of the ordi- nary transactions of life in the southern States. The facts are as public as the houses in which the parties resided.
A lawyer, with a wife and several children, was elected to the Legislature of Virginia. Speedily after his arrival in Richmond to attend the House of Dele- gates, he went to the human flesh market and purchased a superior mulatto girl, expressly for the purposes of concubinage during his stay in Richmond. The young woman, after the session was closed, accompanied him to the village in which he resided. One of his first acts was to dislodge his wife and children from his own dwelling-house, and to rent for them another habita- tion, while he transferred to their abode his (i likely negro wench." Thus he openly lived, retaining his official station, making and expounding laws, dis- honoring his wife and daughters, and training up his sons after his own ungodly example. Speedily subse- quent to that woman's arrival from Richmond, and when her relation to the lawyer was publicly avowed by her occupancy of his usual residence, to the exclu- sion of his wife and legitimate children, a lady of the
FEMALE SLAVES. 49
vicinity inquired of the abused creature respecting her connection with her adulterous paramour. With great modesty she detailed her previous anguish. When it was intimated to her that she was to be sold, she had no suspicions of the direct consequences of the trans- fer. Every allurement had been held out by the auc- tioneer to procure a good price for her, on account of her capaxity for usefulness in all domestic affairs. rj he first evening after the purchase, the legislator made known his design in buying her ; that she might be his concubine during his sojourn in Richmond, after which she should go with him into the country. She re- fused compliance, and resisted his attempts to force her ; because he could not easily execute his base scheme in the tavern where he resided, dreading the noise which she would make. He instantly contrived a plan to have her decoyed into a place of secrecy, where complaints and resistance would be equally unavailing, and pretended to put her out to board. As soon as she was secure in one of those dark and secret dens of pollu- tion which are so numerous in Richmond, he appeared, made known to her the helpless situation in which she was immured, and repeated his demands. Finding all other means ineffectual, with the aid of the monsters to whose guard he had committed her, he scourged her most unmercifully, until through conjoined agony and terror she was obliged to yield. Then she was removed to the tavern as his domestic servant ; and thence proceeded with him to his residence. In the character of his avowed companion, within sight of his family, he associated for years with that colored wo- man, eating his ordinary meals far more frequently with her than with his almost heart-broken wife and
50 CONDITION OF
daughters, the eldest of whom, conscious of her fa- ther's ungodliness, was almost ashamed to be seen ; and finally, at the door of his own house, sold her and several children which she had borne to him.
The above is an exhibition of that brutal usage to which the female slaves are ever exposed, and which they almost constantly experience.
3. Another indescribable evil follows from the dreadful truth that the wretched victim of the slave- driver's unbridled lasciviousness is debarred from all complaint, so that she can obtain neither redress for past injury, nor exemption from future involuntary par- ticipation in crime. Nothing can be more criminal and outrageous in insensibility, than the fact that men have invented apian to exclude every murmur against oppression and to silence the cry of the injured and agonized for relief. * What more unnatural ? Men deliberately have enacted as fundamental laws of so- cial action and national policy, that one class of their fellow-citizens shall have no right to complain and no power to testify. What more awful ? Ministers of the gospel, and ecclesiastical assemblies, and conven- tions, and conferences, and associations openly sanc- tion the system of " abomination which maketh deso- late," and which renders all church discipline a nul- lity. To complete the astounding enormity of wicked- edness, they also daringly promulge as oracular truth, that the Holy Bible sanctions those ungodly deeds and exonerates the hardened perpetrator as guiltless in the judgment of " Jesus the Son of God."
It is a law of the slave plantation and of every slave- holder's domain, that nothing which is done or wit- nessed there, upon any pretext whatever, shall be di-
FEMALE SLAVES. 51
vulged ; and the disclosure of the soul-harrowing se- crets of the "Negro Quarter" ever endangers the peace and life of the sufferer as well as the comfort and safety of the receiver of the doleful history. Ev- ery slave lives under the constant watch of the impe- rious drivers ; and in very few cases indeed, are they able to discover persons who sympathise with their anguish, or who are friendly to their emancipation, or to whom it is safe and proper to divulge their melan- choly tale.
In the darkest night, and amid the " pelting of the pitiless storm," a well-known philanthropist might have heard some years ago — but those persons generally have migrated from the southern States, and the period of that compassion has passed away, never more to return — a humane citizen and a Christian might have heard a knocking at the door of his house. A colloquy substantially as follows would ensue.
"Who is there ?"
" It is me, master."
"What is your name ?"
"O, master, you know poor Caesar."
The voice and person then being identified, the door was opened for his admission, and the inquiry pro- ceeded.
"Well, Caesar, what do you want, out at this time and in such wTeather ?"
"Ah, master, me want you to look at Csesar's back."
The wretched son of sorrow would then throw off his scanty covering, and show a body peeled, flayed, and a mixed mass of battered flesh, morbid matter, congealed blood, and the usual "Nigger Plaster" of salt, vinegar, and other ingredients, which, if Moses
52 CONDITION OF
and Aaron could behold with their ancient commission renewed upon earth, they would set the wonder-work- ing rod in motion until fearfulness would surprise and overwhelm the hypocrites. What then ? Having thus been agonized with a picture of slavery which will stand before his eyes in broad relief during the re- mainder of his future pilgrimage, dare the Christian or the preacher who may have beheld it, to expatiate upon the cruelty, to charge home upon the church of- ficer or the church member who barbarously inflicted such unnatural torture, his outrageous inhumanity, and to publish to the world the doings of the kidnapper or his overseer ? Not at all. The life of a man who would make known the crimes to which he had thus unintentionally become a witness, would not be pro- longed one day without the counteracting interposition of the Omnipotent.
The case is still more flagrant with regard to wo- men, whose modesty precludes them from exhibiting their lacerations. So far from a complaint against the ravisher being regarded with anything like adequate attention, much less with that sympathy and solicitude which the magnitude of the crime demands, if a narra- tive, however appalling, was given to the slave-driver, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred it would only excite ridicule and secure additional insult ; and in nine in- stances out often, if thosejacts were communicated to the wives, daughters, mothers, or sisters of slave-hold- ers, it would produce no other emotion than contempt and disgust that a " nigger wench" should have the impudence to pretend to be so modest ! In truth, the notorious universality of the transgressions of the seventh commandment, and the publicity of the circum-
FEMALE SLAVES. 53
stances which are connected with them, preclude every attempt at concealment.
The ensuing illustrative facts will verify how fruit- less are all the lamentations of the suffering slaves, and how impossible it is to amend the infamous charac- ter of slavery. It is an incurable pestilence, before whose ravages personal purity and social decorum wither and die.
A gentleman of New-York, who lately was, and most probably now is, an officer in one of the churches of that city, some time since went to the south on bus- iness. Among other similar and far more atrocious details, he narrated the following circumstances, part of his personal observation and experience.
In one of the largest towns of North Carolina, when transacting business with one of his friends, he heard a heart-rending noise, and upon inquiry was informed, "It is only some niggers whom they are flogging in the public square/5 Every slave-driver in those places has the power to transfer a slave to the public jail for a short time, and then to direct that the sconrger general, an officer who is regularly appointed i( to preserve the integrity of the Union" shall "well lay on" as many lashes with his whip as the men-stealers may appoint, within the number which is limited by law. The gen- tleman of New-York resolved to sacrifice his feelings, and to take an opportunity that he might be ocularly convinced of the truth or falsehoods of the representa- tions which he had previously heard of American slavery.
Having ascertained that some slaves were about to undergo the flaying process, he walked to the spot, one of the most public places in the town. There was a
5*
54
CONDITION OF
sort of pillory suspended with holes for the neck and the wrists. The victim of lust and rage knelt on a block a little elevated from the ground, and when the head and hands were passed through the boards of the pillory, the whole body was left exposed for the opera- tions of the slave-driver and his merciless hireling, the flayer general.
A man was brought out of the slave dungeon, which was close by ; and having been stripped of his body covering, his head and arms were forced into the pil- lory, and the kidnapper immediately ordered him a dozen or more lashes. The dignified town official, for the preservation of "the integrity of the Union," brandishing a fearful scourge, instantly commenced his patriotic labors. The whip was so long that it curled round the poor creature's body, and drew away with it the skin, peeled entirely off in a circle ; and before the noisy republican had counted out his tale of stripes, scarcely a vestige of skin could be seen. The flesh was cut up in deep lashes. The blood oozed out in every part. After which was applied the slave-doc- tor's panacea, salt, vinegar, and other equally molli- fying ingredients.
The man having been removed and ordered off to the " negro quarter," next appeared a woman. For what reason she had been incarcerated in the prison- house, did not appear ; nor is it requisite that the slave- holder should allege any reason. His will is para- mount, and his mandate is law. She might have re- fused compliance with his lustful desires, for insubor- dination in that respect is the cause of nine-tenths of the stripes and lacerations which female slaves receive in the southern States from their pseudo-republican
FEMALE SLAVES. 55
tyrants. The shrieking creature was also uncovered to her loins in the public square, fastened in the pil- lory and a dozen lashes pronounced as her portion. The gentleman stated that he could not command his unut- terable emotions longer than to see three or four strokes inflicted. He walked away filled with the spirit of pugnacity ; wondering to himself how it was that the woman's breasts were preserved from being cut to pieces, and doubting almost whether such a forcible application of the slave-driver's prodigious whip, would not almost sever her body in two parts.. This is an easy, summary, and at the same time a lawful mode to coerce women to submission. No re- proach attaches to it. The kindly feelings of a mother, wife, or daughter for a favorite slave or for their nurse, if such sensibilities occasionally exist, are not excited. It is alleged that she has been disobedient. The scourging is done out of sight. The tortured woman has no redress or sympathy, for she knows that an ex- posure of the facts to either of the slave-holder's fe- male domestic relatives would only secure for her ad- ditional wrongs and aggravated torment.
While staying in the same town, that gentleman boarded at the house of a widow, whose daughters had arrived at womanhood. He stated that youth of both sexes, with the natural marks of incipient virility constantly served about the house without a particle of covering ; and that when seated between two young women, these attendants would wait upon them with- out exciting apparently the smallest feeling, while he himself would be so perplexed, as scarcely to know where to turn his eyes, or how to express his sickly- agitation.
56
CONDITION OF
In Fayetteville, where he had retired to rest at an early hour, one of the boys who served at the tavern, waked him up and inquired, "Do wish that one of the wenches should come to your room, sir ?"
" What do you mean ?" was the gentleman's retort.
The boy replied, " I always go the round among the gentlemen every night to find out who wishes a girl to come to them." It is proper to add, that from that re- volting fact, the gentleman then understood how to elude the snares which enveloped him.
Now that was one of the most respectable hotels in name, appearance, and the character of the visiters, in the State of North Carolina ; and yet it is manifest that no house of infamous resort in any of the northern cities was an equally loathsome den of pollution as that externally splendid inn. It is still more worthy of notice, that the same system of iniquity could not long be continued, except in connection with slavery. In a northern post town such an establishment would not be tolerated for one week. A large number of supernu- merary women would instantly attract suspicion ; and before the seventh succession of travelling sojourners had heard the inquiry propounded similar to that which was offered by the boy at Fayetteville, the public press would have doomed the whole concern to deathless in- famy. That such is the precise situation of vast num- bers of the public houses in the southern States, is known to all persons who are acquainted with their habits of life and the practices of slavery.
The same gentleman also witnessed another fact, the barbarous turpitude of which can only be accounted for by the presumption that the cause of the tortures was resistance to the slave-driver's demand of illicit
FEMALE SLAVES. 57
intercourse. A planter who resided about twenty miles from one of those towns in North Carolina, in- vited the traveller from New-York to take a ride with him in his curricle to his dwelling. The offer was ac- cepted. About the middle of the day they prepared to start, and the northern citizen was surprised to find a very young woman fast-bound by the arms behind the chaise. It appeared that she had been driven into the town after the same manner and put into the slave- holder's M castle of misery/' as a punishment for her refractory conduct. In what respects she was rebel- lious, was not directly mentioned. The whole distance of about twenty miles over the sand and dust was passed over in less than three hours, and the slave was obliged to keep pace with the horse, unless her arms had been separated at the elbows. Having arrived at the house, after a brief interval, the planter apologized for his absence, as he was about to take a walk and to attend to a little business. The traveller offered to accompany him, which was politely accepted. At a short distance, but out of sight of the family dwelling, the gentleman of New-York perceived the same girl, who had been driven almost at the full speed of a horse for twenty miles, suspended by the two wrists to the limb of a tree, with her body naked to her hips. With one foot she could just rest upon a small block of wood, while the other leg remained without any support. Without any ceremony, after venting a few of those hideous curses, with which the men-stealers generally salute " the flock of the slaughter," he pro- ceeded to flagellate her with the cart whip, within the legally limited number of stripes. Then leaving her bound to the tree, without the possibility of changing
58 CONDITION OF
her position, he returned to the house, conversed about all the common topics with no apparent perturbation, dined as usual, and passed away the afternoon with as much external composure as though no evil had ever entered his domicil. How long the tormented girl remained in her complicated misery, the traveller dared not attempt to ascertain. That gentleman, thus pungently instructed, kept his eyes wide awake during the remainder of his journey ; and he added, that he is convinced from all he saw and heard, that the above facts embody the universally habitual course of life among the vast majority of the slave-holders in the southern States. That inference he draws from one circumstance, which he almost invariably encountered — no secrecy was observed, and no reserve maintained upon the disgusting topic. In proof of which, he men- tioned the following fact. He was riding on horseback with two planters along a public road, when they over- took a young colored woman, who instantly endeavored to avoid the equestrians by turning away into the neighboring wood. One of the planters alighted from his horse and requested the other to hold it for him, remarking, "I want to speak with that wench. ,J He took his whip in his hand and pursued her. The mat- ter was well understood by his companion, so they halted for him. He soon returned, and without any circumlocution, told whose slave the girl was, and what he had done with her. To whom could she com- plain ? Not to her mistress ; most probably she would whip her for giving the intelligence. Not to her mas- ter, for he would have acted to his neighbor's female slave in exactly the same manner, as the gentle- man from New-York ascertained by the explanatory
FEMALE SLAVES. 59
conversation which ensued between the two slave- holders.
There is a most unholy cardinal principle among slave-manufacturers which combines the effervescence of lewdness with the wantonness of ferocity ; thus de- monstrating that the perversion of the most delicate and tender of all our emotions when directed by divine grace, will degenerate into the most abhorrent impulses, where conscience sleeps and Satan instigates. It is the oracular decision of the men-stealers, that it is not only for their interest, but also for the benefit of the female slave — in fact, that it is not only expedient and proper, but just and indispensable, that every " colored girl" at an early period of life, should first admit to her embraces her master or his son, and the utmost care is taken to attain this object. They urge that it secures the lasting affections of the young woman, and especially if her first child should be the known off- spring of her owner. Hence, under this plea, slave- drivers transform their debauchery into a virtue. May not the decision of the Presbyterian general assembly respecting the baptism of colored children be imputed to that custom ? According to that ecclesiastical body's act of 1816, ministers are enjoined to baptize the children of female slaves upon the profession of their masters, (it should be fathers ;) and thus, in truth, the offspring of adultery and incest are directed to be baptized upon the Christian pretensions of fornicators, adulterers, and the unclean of every degree and name.
One of the most dignified men in civil society in the county where he resided, candidly acknowledged to his wife some years ago, on his dying bed, that, under the
60 CONDITION OF
influence of that infamous principle, joined to his own dissolute propensities, he had first carnally known at a very early age, every female slave on his plantation, as they successively advanced to maturity, and to that fact might be attributed their regard for him ; so that they were very obedient and faithful, and he had no cause subsequently to exercise toward them any pecu- liar severity of treatment. All that outrageous iniquity admits of no complaint on the part of the female slave, and diminishes not one particle from the honor, rank, and influence which the profligate has attained, while the increase, as the New-York M. D. expressed it, of M the nation of mulattoes and mongrels" augments his wealth and elevates him in power and dignity. The lady above referred to was constantly attended by his colored children ; and although she was not previously apprized of the extent of his conjugal infidelity, yet the living resemblances of her husband, who were ever before her eyes, in the parlor and the kitchen, and in the negro quarter, reminded her that the character of a wife was merely a name ; and that it required no small portion of evangelical conscientious casuistry in such circumstances, to determine upon the undoubted genuineness of her own Christian attainments.
One practical illustration of that hell-born abomina- tion is too affecting to be omitted. Notwithstanding all the care and watchfulness of the slave-driver and the elder women who may be his tools, either to train up the young female for his own sensual indulgence or to sell her at a higher price on account of her personal purity, the spontaneous affections of the heart will elude all their craftiness, and trample upon e\ery re- straint. For example ; an attachment is formed be-
FEMALE SLAVES. 6i
tween the young woman and one of her male associ- ates, pure as connubial sanctity can refine and author- ize it, which is consummated not by a nuptial cere- mony, for that is abolished on slave plantations, but by mutual protestations of constancy and faithful affection. The first idea that has ever been admitted of the pos- sibility that the slave-holder could be disappointed, originates in her appearance or in symptoms which cannot be mistaken. She is instantly doomed to exam- ination, and either voluntarily, without dread or suspi- cion of the consequences, or through torture, betrays all her secrets. Then are displayed the genuine attributes of slavery and the true qualities of slave-holders. The young woman is shut up in the appointed place, and when the deeds of darkness can be perpetrated without discovery, her lover is introduced. Before her eyes he is mercilessly scourged for having dared to interfere with the prior right, as they allege, of the slave-driver, or his son, or the overseer, or of some other debauchee to whom she may have been promised at a time spe- cified. Then in her delicate condition she is divested of her clothing, and her only friend, whose mutual af- fection constituted the sole cordial amid their degra- dation in the house of bondage, is obliged to whip her, and if he does not strike hard enough, and draw suffi- cient blood, the deficiency is measured out upon him- self. After their rage is glutted with this display of wrath, he is bound fast, and those sons of Belial com- plete their master's abomination by defiling her before her lover's face. Most probably he never again be- holds " the desire of his eyes." As quickly as possi- ble his stripes are healed, and he is then sold to the slave-trader, to be transported to a distant plantation.
62 CONDITION OF
Or if, for the sake of not " injuring the property," the scourging is omitted, the lovers pass through some other scene of torture not less agonizing and hor- rible.
A gentleman who has recently travelled very exten- sively at the south, and who, previous to his journey, was decidedly incredulous respecting the terrific fea- tures of slavery, as they have been lately depicted be- fore the church and the world, mentioned the following circumstance among others, as having occurred under his own observation in one of the towns of South Car- olina. A merchant, with whom he was transacting some business, apologized for deferring it until the fol- lowing morning, and remarked, " I am going to attend a sale of a number of likely nigger wenches this after- noon, as I want to buy one for my own use." He then added that they were all warranted virgins, and were sold expressly for concubinage and the manufacture of light colored slaves. The northern citizen remarked, " As I felt anxious to witness that scene, if it was a re- ality, that I might have my mind at once settled about slavery, I offered to accompany him to the vendue. He was very glad to have my company, and at the spe- cified time we walked to the girl-market. A number of persons had already collected ; some of whom ap- peared to be busily employed in examining a row of decently-dressed young mulatto women, all of them of a light color, and from fourteen to eighteen years of age." The manner in which their persons were ex- posed, examined, handled, and especially the scrutiny they underwent, if possible, to ascertain whether they had ever been severely whipped, that friend described as so atrocious, when it is considered that it was done
FEMALE SLAVES. 63
in open daylight, and by profligates half-drunk and con- stantly uttering the grossest obscenities which their lewd imaginations could invent, that it is almost in- credible. " I would not have believed that such a scene could have been exhibited in our land of repub- lican freedom," he emphatically subjoined, " upon any evidence which could have been adduced. Even now it seems so utterly flagitious, that I can scarcely credit my own ocular testimony." At length the signal was given, and the young women were elevated on a table. The auctioneer recapitulated their history, the manner in which they had been reared, the soundness of their constitutions, their personal purity, their age, their ca- pacity for usefulness, and their various acquirements — whether any of them were sold as Christians is not recollected — and they were successively transferred to the highest bidder. The northern brother's asso- ciate bought the one which attracted his regard. The bills of sale were made out in the usual horse-jockey- ing slang, with the additional guarantee of maidenhood and other moral accomplishments. When he saw his correspondent the next morning, the Georgia merchant informed him that he had already defiled his new pur- chase, and that he was delighted with his female bar- gain. A lady now in New- York attests that she beheld or knew a similar scene just before her removal from Alabama, with one additional circumstance, that the young women were first weighed, and then sold, and that the average price wTas seven dollars per pound !
In all the old families of the slave-holders, many colored relatives can be found ; and in various ap- proximations to the color of their fathers, and with such a similarity of countenance that there can be no dispute respecting their paternity.
64 CONDITION OF
Slavery abolishes all the ties of consanguinity, for no relationship is admitted to exist between the white and the colored members of the same household. Un- der this ungodly evasion, the father will have carnal knowledge of a colored woman, and also with his own daughter by her ; and the son will defile his own sister and her mother ; and thus all the distinctions of do- mestic life are commingled in one indiscriminate as- semblage of unnatural monsters, who not only destroy the law of God and the instincts of humanity, but de- grade woman to the lowest abyss of pollution and in- iquity.
Even that is not the worst species of the direful abomination. Men and even professing Christians will sell their own daughters for the express purposes of an impure life. There is now, or not long ago was a col- ored Baptist preacher in Georgia, who purchased his wife and children. One of the neighboring planters, a Baptist also, it is said, having understood that the preacher had not formally and legally emancipated his children, proposed to him to take his eldest daughter, a superior girl about sixteen years of age, to his house as his concubine, offering the preacher a large pecu- niary douceur and an annuity for life for his attractive daughter, with ample provision for any children whom she might bear. The young woman indignantly re- jected ail his vile solicitations. She reminded her fa- ther of his character as a preacher, of her own pro- fession as a Christian, and that when she was inclined to live with any man, it should only be with a pious man of her own basely stigmatized race, in that mar- riage relation which God had appointed. The preacher assured her that in the present situation of affairs in
FEMALE SLAVES. 65
the United States respecting colored people, the Lord overlooked the ceremonial part of the institution of matrimony, and whatever the planter might do, if she honorably kept faithful to him she would have no sin upon her. Her conscience and her sensibilities re- pelled that "all deceivableness of unrighteousness ;" and therefore, as the only mode of consummating the outrageous scheme, a fictitious bill of sale was made by the Baptist preacher to his brother Baptist, of his own daughter, who was a member, it was said, of his own church, as a slave for the nominal sum of six hundred dollars. The young woman was then forced from her father's house to live in prostitution, because the laws of Georgia precluded her escape, rendered all complaint ineffectual, and doomed her without re- sistance to debasement and despair.
In one of the largest towns of that same State, Georgia, there were lately, and as far as is known, there are now residing two or more women, sisters or near relatives, members in full communion with one of the churches in that place. Some years since, as it is understood, they commenced business by opening a boarding-house, with one or two female slaves. They speedily perceived that by conniving at the sexual in- tercourse between their boarders and the colored wo- men, they should rapidly acquire wealth. Accordingly, inducements were held out to their female slaves to become mothers. The male children were exchanged for "likely nigger wenches," and thus the breeding stock rapidly increased. When they deemed it advis- able, they would invite selected strangers, white men, transient persons in the city, to take tea and lodge in their house. The rest of the matter was managed
6*
G6 CONDITION OF
by their well-tutored slaves, and thus they have gone on, literally "giving boys for harlots," and saying, " Blessed be the Lord, for I am rich," until their house is a prolific slave-factory.
To comprehend the woful condition of woman under the operation of that execrable system of legislative enactments which exist in the southern States, let us examine it in another exhibition. Not far from the residence of a Virginia planter stood the house of his overseer, at the end of which was joined a log cabin that was occupied for spinning and weaving coarse cloth for the slaves. On one occasion, the overseer's wife, who was far above the condition and rank in so- ciety which her husband filled, saw the slave-holder leave that apartment; and speedily after, one of the colored women also walked away from it, apparently in deep distress. With instinctive womanly tenderness and sympathy, she kindly inquired the cause of her disquietude ; but it was a very difficult task to obtain from her any explanation. Finally, however, the agonized creature informed the overseer's wife that the slave-holder would enter the place, and if more than one of the female slaves was present, drive the others away, detain her whom he pleased, and then defile her, either because she knew it was useless to resist, or whip his victim until she could no longer bear the stripes. That afternoon, when he knew no person could witness the scene, he had scourged her in a shocking manner, of which she shewed the self-evident proofs.
The overseer's wife resolved to ascertain the truth of that statement, as she doubted the worst part of the narrative, tilthough the laceration was evident both to
FEMALE SLAVES. 67
the touch and sight. She therefore contrived an aper- ture through the mortar between the logs which formed the partition, so that she might see without discovery what passed in the workshop. Her curiosity was soon gratified, and from repeatedly witnessing similar scenes, she became not only convinced of the truth of the col- ored woman's narrative, but she also felt that it was her duty to acquaint the slave-holder's wife with the circumstances, expressly that she might be on her guard against the morbid effects which might result from her husband's habitual licentiousness. That dis- honored woman, that she might secure herself from disease, sacrificed her feelings, and often witnessed her husband scourging and abusing his female slaves. What could be done ? There was neither redress nor escape. One murmur of complaint, even the intimation only that his lawless doings were known except by his intimidated victims, would most probably have been the cause not only of murder among the colored wo- men, but also of the overseer's wife's death, and the irreparable disgrace and agony of his wife, and prob- ably the ruin of his daughters, then fast verging into maturity.
One more fact only in elucidation of this iniquity shall now be adduced. A widow lady, upon whom had devolved a large number of slaves, but who had no power over them, as they were bequeathed in reversion to her daughters, transferred to a minister of the gos- pel, a girl about thirteen years of age as a domestic servant, conditioned that the slave should be kindly used and subject to be claimed if the aged lady should be called from this world. That girl was taught to read, and in every respect was treated as one of the
63 COxNDITION OF
preacher's own family. After she had continued with the minister about four years, a free young colored man in the vicinity imbibed an attachment for her, which soon became mutual.
The minister was sorely perplexed. He well knew that the girl was looked upon as in a place of secure preservation for one of the executors of the estate, when the old lady should die. It was also impossible to marry the young man and woman ; and to permit them to come together in his house was a virtual sanc- tion of uncleanness. The female slave finally commu- nicated to the preacher's wife her desire that her lover might be permitted to be with her, that she would be faithful to him, and that she thought he would be the same to her. An evening was therefore appointed for him to be at the preacher's house. A candid and fa- miliar exposition was made of their mutual obligations. A solemn promise of attachment and fidelity, as far as divine providence should enable them to fulfil their vow, was exacted. A prayer was offered for the bless- ing of God upon them, and he was allowed to visit the house when he pleased. Four or five months after the commencement of their connubial intercourse, the preacher was called from home in usual duty. Upon his return to his dwelling he found that two kidnappers had been sent by one of the^executors of the estate to take the young woman away. They had remained one or two days prowling about the neighborhood, until they saw the minister depart, manifestly to be absent for some hours. Almost immediately one of them ap- peared at the house, and as soon as he beheld the slave, and noticed that she was pregnant, his wrath knew no bounds, and his filthy language defied all re-
FEMALE SLAVES. 69
petition. A frightened defenceless woman with her young terrified children, could make no resistance where there was no person within call. The colored female was bound to the brute on his horse, and taken away as quickly as she could tie up her bundle and a^ fast as the horse could move. When the preacher re- turned in the evening, he found his household in the greatest trepidation. Speedily after, the young man entered, and was with difficulty pacified so as not to go in pursuit and attempt the rescue of his wife. He fol- lowed her to the plantation fb which she had been car- ried ; but as soon as it was known who he was and his object in visiting there, he was directed to decamp with all speed, or he should either be put to death or be seized as a runaway, and be sold to the southern broker in human blood. It is believed he never saw her after she "was stolen away from the" minister's residence.
Tears, pleadings, anguish, and the law of God are all arrayed in vain against the insatiate horse-leech- like lusts of licentious slave-holders. Nevertheless, that is the hell-born system of all ungodliness, the prolongation of which is demanded, the- gradual sloth- like overthow of which is defended by republicans and moralists, which it is blasphemously said, the example of patriarchs, the law of Moses, and the revelation of prophets oracularly sanction ; and against which it is impiously contended neither the Lord Jesus Christ nor his inspired apostles uttered their rebuke and con- demnation. While D. D.'s boldly and scandalously affirm that the dreadful condition of American colored women is according to " Bible doctrine ;" and per- jured legislators swear that it is essential "to preserve the integrity of the Union."
CHAPTER IV,
EFFECTS OF SLAVERY UPON DOMESTIC RELATIONSHIP.
" O, come to my home! there my servants shall all Depart at thy bidding, and come at thy call — They shall heed thee as mistress with trembling and awe, And each wish of thy heart shall be felt as a law."
" Go back, haughty southron ! thy treasures of gold Are dim with the blood of the hearts thou hast sold: Thy home may be lovely, but round it I hear The crack of the whip and the footsteps of fear.
C{Full low at thy bidding thy negroes may kneel,
With the iron of bondage on spirit and heel ;
Yet know that the Yankee girl sooner would be
In fetters with them, than in freedom with thee ! " Whtttier.
The illustrations which already have been adduced testify beyond doubt that vice is inseparable from the colored woman, and that the exceptions of moral pur- ity must be extremely rare. For the slave-holder makes no difference on account of the profession of religion, or rather that appendage to his female slaves' character would render her a preferable victim for his sensuality, because he would have less dread for the consequences of his criminal intercourse. The defile- ment which even the female members of the churches experience, no person knows. To the preacher she cannot confide her sorrows. The white members of the church would only unite to punish her. To the
EFFECTS OF SLAVERY, &C. 71
church tribunal, whatever it may be, she cannot ap- peal. No one can hear her groans but he that search- eth the heart. No one can ascertain her genuine character but the Judge of all. To herself, as far as she may be instructed, her religion must be an inex- plicable mystery. Well may she ask — how can my life of coerced pollution consist with the command, lc follow after holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord."
It has become a proverbial axiom, even in ordinary social life, that women who have been drawn into li- centiousness by wicked men, if they retain their vi- cious habits, almost invariably display their revenge for their own debasement, by ensnaring others into the same corruption and moral ruin. All persons who are accurately acquainted with slavery as it exists in our southern States, know that the position is true, both in reference to the colored women and the white youth around them. It is a startling fulfilment of the doc- trine of retribution, " As thou hast done, it shall be done unto thee ; thy reward shall return upon thine own head." The prolongation of the system of slavery in no other relation is so much to be deprecated. If slave-holding women ever reflected, they would live in one constant shuddering tremor when they survey their own connivance at a system which has transformed several successive generations of colored women into victims of lust under their own eyes, and which abom- inations, in all their multiform variety, for the sake of luxury and sloth, they have wantonly approved.
Many women among the slave-holders doubtless be- wail their lot. But their relative dependence and the execrable civil laws preclude them from interposing
72 EFFECTS OF SLAVERY
their shield for the protection of their sex. Neverthe- less, the large majority act and live as if they were convinced that colored women were merely formed to toil for them; and to secure their voluptuous indolence, they tolerate their subserviency to the base desires of their male associates. The female relatives of the slave-holders cannot be ignorant of that pernicious in- tercourse which exists between the colored women and her white nurselings, or of those gross familiarities which constantly pass between the white and colored youth of both sexes. It is contrary to common-sense to suppose that the father and mother can believe that the multifarious lewdness which is constantly perpetrated on the plantation is a secret to their sons and daugh- ters. They may not be willing to introduce the de- moralizing subject, or they may avoid all scrutiny into it, but they cannot fancy that their children beyond a certain age are either innocent or pure.
That corruption of morals commences at a very early period of life among the legitimate offspring of slave- holders, and by no ingenuity can that effect be ob- structed as long as slavery exists. The children are probably suckled by any of the colored women who happen at the period to be in the state of lactation. Those youth have boys or girls who are their own property, as they are knavishly denominated. Through them, as they gradually grow, they have intercourse with the colored people, and from them they under- stand all that is said and done in the negro quarter. Colored boys and girls are often especially tutored to relate things to the other youth that they may easily imbibe the vilest ideas, no doubt as an incentive to vi- cious indulgence as they advance towards maturity ;
UPON DOMESTIC RELATIONSHIP. 73
while the colored women exult in the prospect that their boys might dishonor their tyrant's children as he injured and debased them.
That fact was minutely exemplified some years ago in the case of a junior female, whom her father's slave, with her own ascertained inclination, gradually en- snared into habitual lewdness with her colored boy. By the artful woman, that young lady was instructed in all iniquity, and yet she contrived her plans so craftily with the aid of the colored woman, that neither her fa- ther nor mother ever suspected the illicit practices which were constantly going on in their own house. No person dared to hint it to those parents, although some of their friends knew of her course of life as well as if they actually had witnessed the criminal intercourse. Such circumstances are the mildest form in which the sins of the fathers and mothers are visited upon their children. What would it be if the colored men were to retort upon the white women actual violence ? What may be the awful consequences, if ever the colored men by physical force should attain the mastery ? If no other argument could be adduced in favor of imme- diate and universal emancipation, that single fact is sufficient. Delay only increases the danger of the white women and augments the spirit of determined malignity and revenge in the colored men. By the abolition of slavery alone can the outrageous libidinous- ness of the white men and the atrocious violations of the colored women be abated and the good will and forgetfulness of past wrongs in the colored people be fully secured.
Many evils which slavery brings upon women origi- nate in the incurable indolence with which it infects
74 EFFECTS OF SLAVERY
them. The constitutional weakness and physical de- rangements of vast numbers of the southern slave-hold- ing women are derived from this cause alone. From their earliest youth, by example, and by precept, and by habit, they are taught that labor is disgraceful, and that healthful exercise is only adapted to slaves. Hence, everything which looks like toilsome employ- ment or regular occupation, whether in regard to the preparation of food or clothing, is deemed degrad- ing ; and except some frivolous attainment merely for exterior show, the young white women of the south are ordinarily as disqualified for the duties of wives and mothers when they arrive at maturity, as when they were helpless babes. Everything is left to the chief kitchen woman in the culinary department, and to the principal housemaid is transferred all the do- mestic arrangements. The slave-holder's wife merely walks around and sees everything disposed according to her taste or whims.
Another consequence of slavery nmong the white women, is the comparative seclusion in which they live. A northern citizen, when he visits the slave- holder's domain, is at once struck with the harem-like aspect of the large mansion in which he is sojourning. At breakfast, probably only one of the ladies appears, merely as an ornamental appendage to the table. He may roam about for hours or sit still and read until change of pursuit is requisite ; and unless by previous arrangement, purely for their self-gratification, the fe- male portion of the household are almost as invisible as though he was immured in a monk's cell. At din- ner he meets the circle dressed in all the frippery in which a vain head attempts to adorn a frivolous person.
UPON DOMESTIC RELATIONSHIP. 75
From that period nearly until the appearance of tea and coffee, the women disappear, and it is only proba- bly in the evening that the unsocial distance of the day is exchanged for the unreserved familiarity of twi- light. This course is injurious in its tendency both to health and morals. Young women, who are well edu- cated and animated with the decorum and morals nat- ural to their sex, can mingle with men similarly im- bued with honorable and pure sentiments ; and with no others ought they ever to associate, without fastidi- ousness, and without even an emotion of impropriety. On the contrary, the seclusion in which the southern females by custom are immured, bespeaks either that they are coerced to shut themselves up in their own apartments, that as much as possible the surrounding wickedness and ferocity may be concealed from them, or they voluntarily retire from the actual witnessing of scenes which they abhor and of which they have re- solved not to be personal hearers and observers. With regard to young women, the effect is almost identical. It forms in them an artificial character, and by exci- ting the spirit of insatiable curiosity, renders them the easy prey of the colored girl, their attendant and asso- ciate, who ensnares the white female youth into an un- hallowed acquaintance with the surrounding iniquity or into an unlawful connection with her colored broth- er, as a fair set-off for having been scourged and vio- lated by the old slave-driver and his sons.
It is in vain to attempt to hide the arcana of slavery, when its deleterious influence is so palpably exempli- fied in constant and universal practice. Let us exam- ine the subject in a double aspect, under which it ob- trudes itself upon the consideration even of the most superficial observer.
76 EFFECTS OF SLAVERY
A young man is at the head of a plantation with twenty or fifty slaves under his control, and he is un- married. It may be true that he lives continently. But with the avowed principles of slavery, that vice and crime among white persons lose their immoral characteristics when transacted with slaves, no man can prove that he lives chastely, and with seven or ten women at his command, all whose comfort depends upon his kindness and approbation, unless he is en- tirely divested of the ordinary instincts of humanity. No man or woman in their senses will believe such pre- tensions. That single men do live in purity in the northern States is incontrovertible, because they are encircled by numberless and often insuperable re- straints, and more because they can evade the tempta- tions to sin. But on a slave plantation, neither of those counteracting circumstances exist. The incitement to sensuality never ceases. There is no dread of exposure. The loss of character is a fiction. And the idea of pun- ishment in any form is altogether unknown. In no con- dition in American s xiety, is the truth of Jehovah's declaration more forcefully realized than by a young slave-driver at the head of his plantation of colored peo- ple — " It is not good that the man should be alone. " He may continue for a period wantonly to range among his female slaves, but he ever finds the need of some person to whom he can talk in his more compan- ionable intervals, and at whom he can look in his hours of listlessness, and whom he can show off to his friends at his festivals as the living ornament of his splendid dinner-table and his sumptuous household decorations. He is asked, " Why do you not marry ? It is not only contrary to the divine appointment, but
UPON DOMESTIC RELATIONSHIP. 77
also to natural instincts for young men to live unmar- ried ; and in your situation especially, it is contrary to all decorum." The first reply will probably be some- thing like this : "I have no inclination for marriage ;" or, " I have not time to think about it ;" or, " I cannot find a wife." It is rejoined, "But if you have no overpowering desire for matrimonial life, you ought to marry if you can find a congenial disposition in a fe- male companion. For it is neither proper nor decent that a young man should dwell among so many women with no restraint but his own will." Then will be ef- fused the whole secret : " Whom am I to marry ? 1 have not time to go to the north for a wife, and should probably make a fruitless journey." To which re- mark may be retorted, "But cannot you discover among all your female acquaintances one suitable domestic associate as your unchanging lover and friend." With a commingled expression of coun- tenance and tone of voice depicting scorn, aversion, and surprise, of which no language can convey any adequate idea, the young slave-holder will reply, " Do you think that I am going to marry a young woman with a vitiated constitution, the remains of her attach- ment for her father's niggers ?" To a stranger who is profoundly unacquainted with the secrets of "south- ern institutions," the startling reply is something like a sudden loud noise which awakens a man out of a sound sleep to the vivid perception of all the realities around him. There, in a few words, stands disclosed the chief cause that multitudes of southern young men visit the northern States, or of their intermarrying with the families of merchants who move for a permanent or a temporary sojourn to the cities and towns in the
7*
78 EFFECTS OF SLAVERY
States where slavery yet sways. However dissolute may have been their own lives, however voluptuous their own habits, and however vitiated their own mor- als, yet they cannot tolerate in a wife the least ten- dency or even acquaintance with the ungodliness which they have ceaselessly practised ; and as " evil commu- nications corrupt good manners," they are convinced that in ordinary cases their female associates cannot have escaped in some form the general contamination. It is also very probable that from their colored para- mours the young men may have ascertained, in con- nection with their own researches, that no confidence can be placed in the fidelity, or, at all events, in the constitutional energy of the young women with whom they associate.
Young ladies at the north, and especially if they are Christians in spirit and in truth, cannot form any con- ception at all of the trials through which they will have to pass, and the self-denial which they will have to ex- ercise, if they re-echo at the nuptial ceremony after the declaration of a slave-holder, those awful words, "till death do part."
From the experience and evidence of aged widows, it is undeniable that the whole life of a Christian fe- male who is married to a slave-holder, must be a scene of anxiety and trepidation. That testimony is given by those who are nurtured on a slave plantation. How much more galling must be the yoke, and how exceed- ingly amplified must be the doubts and disquietude of a sensitive, delicate, and pious woman from the land of the pilgrims. Slave-driving men and slave-holding women as they appear in Boston, or New-Haven, or at Saratoga and BaLlston, are no more like what they
UPON DOMESTIC RELATIONSHIP. 79
are in Raleigh, or Charleston, or Savannah, or Augusta, than the idol Moloch is like a Christian philanthropist ; or the ancient proverbial Corinthian was like that amia- ble convert and disciple whom the apostle Paul de- scribes as " washed, sanctified and justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the spirit of our God." That fact is most emphatically true in reference to the young men and women from the South who visit the northern States chiefly with a view to form a mat- rimonial compact. Nothing is known of them but their family relationship ; their anticipated patrimonial wealth ; their exterior accomplishments ; and to use their own odious term, which when rightly understood includes all that is loathsome and vile, their chivalry ! It is true, they are slave-holders ; but can young men so polished, so decorous, so attentive, and so charming, be anything else than the most obliging of husbands ? The bandage is effectually applied to the young woman's eyes, so that the horrors of the slave plantation are concealed, and her ears are so completely deafened, that the female shrieks in the negro quarter cannot enter. She is in a measure dependent, and the lure of opulence, and of additional means of doing good, with the persuasions of her worldly-minded relatives, induce her to forget or to misunderstand the apostolic injunc- tion— " Be not unequally yoked together with unbe- lievers ;" and " as the fishes that are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in a snare," so she is " snared in an evil time." In the final result it will appear to the pious woman of New-England, who is thus caught in the slave-driver's trap, although he added to his other attractions a profession of religion, that the pretensions to Christianity by a slave-holder
80 EFFECTS OF SLAVERY
only furnish an inexhaustible source of conscience- harrowing perplexity to herself, in determining the cer- tainty— not of his hypocritical delusions, for they will lamentably be manifest ; but — of her own hopeful " title to mansions in the skies."
Let us suppose that the puritan bride has left her paternal abode, and that she travels by land from Nor- folk to Carolina, or from Philadelphia to the Appoma- tox, James, or Roanoke river. She passes the southern boundary of William Penn's domain, and almost in- stantly the novel scenes produce a compound reverie tinged with Yankee notions. The smooth and safe turnpike is exchanged for rolling logs, and shapeless moving rocks, and sinking bridges. The green pas- tures are transformed into old fields of gullies and sand. The stone walls adorned with lovely hedges have van- ished, and in their place is a zig-zag fence of ugly rails. The decently dressed, manly-looking farmers, have been metamorphosed into ill-clothed and down- cast slaves ; and the place of the rosy-faced tidy fe- male domestic is supplied by a half-naked wretched- looking victim of toil and misery. Thus the daughter of the pilgrims travels onward, imbibing more knowl- edge of evil as she makes progress ; and brooding over her forlorn condition with intenser emotion, as she realizes that every minute places her at a greater dis- tance from all that she has ever known of good.
At length, she arrives at the plantation, and is in- stalled legal mistress of the domain. What can she do ? She has bartered independence, peace, prospects of usefulness, a tender conscience, and hope ; that, in law and by custom, she may be the most favored slave of the planter's il gci7ig." She is soon admitted to the
UPON DOMESTIC RELATIONSHIP. 81
knowledge of the manner in which slavery manages its prisoners ; and then unless she " puts away a good conscience, and then concerning faith makes ship- wreck," she speedily realizes that for independence she has procured bondage ; for the peace of God un- ceasing perturbation ; for opportunities of doing good, the necessity of sanctioning evil ; for M a conscience void of offence," a constant internal strife ; and for the " good hope through grace," a sleepless alarm, lest, after all her mental religious exercises and her sweet experience of the constraining love of Christ, she " should be a castaway," with her profligate des- pot. It is of no importance what crimes she may sus- pect, and what wickedness she may know, and what terrors she may dread, and what good she may wish to perform ; — she pun^ently realizes not only that she i3 powerless, but that she has no earthly friend and com- forter. Her situation was accurately delineated by David when he was in the cave ; Psalm 142 : 4 — " I looked on my right hand, and beheld, but no man would know me. Refuge failed me. No man cared for my soul." Her husband, who ought to be her helper, is the cause of her most distressful agonies ; and she either in desperation plunges into the whirlpool of infatuation and inordinate indulgence with him, or she passes her life in a state of virtual alienation from her natural prop ; or more probably by a premature death, becomes a species of martyr to the fascinations with which slave-drivers decoy their victims into their ruinous en- snarements.
Inspect the contrast ! Young women at the south at all hazards will secure, if possible, a young man from the north as their husband. It would be almost irrele-
82 EFFECTS OF SLAVERY
vant to cite as illustration, junior traders, who, hav- ing their all embodied in a horse and wagon, with its merchantable commodities, start upon their trafficking expeditions, with only one object in view, the acquisi- tion of money, and who are not very scrupulous either respecting the means of attaining it, or the nature of the article in which it is found. Those men count mat- rimony like any other speculation, and having calcu- lated the probable advantages, take the prize offered to them, or refuse it as not worth the supposed sacri- fice. All those persons are excluded from this survey, because their " trade, and swap, and bargain " are arranged and completed with all the usual contin- gencies attached unto it. Consequently they took it "for better and for ivorse ! "
But this discussion refers to young men of a supe- rior condition. Northern collegians who proceed to the slave-holding States as ministers of the gospel, or tutors of youth, and clerks from a merchant's counting- house, either as agents to transact business, or to open a mercantile concern in connection with their northern friends. Now it is certain, that young unmarried men sustaining those characters may reside seven years in the slave-holding cities and amid slave-drivers, and if they had no fanatical curiosity, they would remain in all probability as profoundly unacquainted with the pe- rennial evils of slavery as though no such system ex- isted ; and would be far less likely to become actually acquainted with the blood constantly offered to Moloch, and the virtue daily immolated to Venus, than if they resided at " the. notch." The slave-drivers and their overseers would not rouse them from their peaceful slumbers. Their wives and daughters cannot loosen
rPON DOMES 1IC RELATIONSHIP. 83
the bandage from their eyes, by information which would prompt them to the research after the reality. The colored men, having witnessed no sympathy for their woes, judge of them as in the same class with their despotic torturers. And the female slaves, never having felt that the strangers turned their eyes with compassionate emotion towards them, would not dare to place confidence in them ; and thus, amid anguish and lewdness, and cruelty and desolation, they would live as ignorant of passing scenes, as if they were soaring in a balloon.
This is the solution of the difficulty which often arises in the minds of northern citizens respecting the true character and doings of slavery. Men of reputation und close inspectors of the social condition of persons around them, represent the life of slave-holders, with comparatively few exceptions, as the most revolting state of society which can possibly be conceived ; and especially in its appalling anomaly when viewed in con- nection with our republican bills of rights and other in- stitutions. Other men, apparently veracious and esti- mable, affirm that they have resided year after year in the midst of slavery, and yet they never saw or heard of the facts which had been detailed.
Some short time ago, a gentleman of Richmond, who said that he had resided in Virginia many years, and also in that city for a considerable time, declared that he had never witnessed an auction of human beings — that he had never seen the cage for the temporary in- carceration of the slaves and free colored people — that he had never been present at the scourging of men or women ; and had not even distinctly heard upon credible evidence of the perpetration of that cru-
84 EFFECTS OF SLAVERY
elty — and that the stories which are so often repeated concerning the barbarous and impure usage of the slaves, he did not believe. He had never heard, he said, or seen those things ; and as it was impossible, he thought, that such occurrences could have happened without his knowledge, therefore the account of them as given by the " anti-slavery fanatics," he pronounced was a gross imposition upon the public. Now nothing can be more absurd than this mode of obliterating sun- shine realities. A man who walks up or down the principal street in Richmond has only to stare about, and the red flags with the dreadfully ominous words on them — M Negroes for sale — Negro Auction — Auction for Negroes," will meet his eyes several times ; but the preacher alluded to above, had no eyes for any- thing, the knowledge of which might perplex his judg- ment or disturb his complacency with the rich slave- holders, who are " clothed in purple and fine linen, and who fare sumptuously every day ;" or which could induce him to look with compassion upon the people who have fallen among thieves ! Does his passing by on the other side prove that American citizens are not sold at auction ?
He never saw the cage in which human beings are exposed to public view in a far more pitiable and re- volting aspect than cattle in their fold or hogs in their pen. But does his pertinacious refusal to behold that most melancholy specimen of human debasement, con- vince us that there is in Richmond no such cage.
Because a slave-driver never admitted him to wit- ness the infliction of excruciating tortures, and the brutal defilement of his female slave, does his absence from the scene disprove the marks of the lacerations
CPOX DOMESTIC RELATIONSHIP. 85
and erase the infallible superscription of the slave- holding father from the countenance of the mulatto child ?
Some years ago, a young collegian from Massachu- setts proceeded to Georgia, partly for his health, and to enjoy during the winter the benefits of that climate. He was speedily induced to assume the office of tutor in a private family, and there without any prying dispo- sition he soon ascertained the horrific character of the system, which his letters to his friends amply detailed. After some time, he undesignedly procured intelligence from one of the female slaves, of the extreme suffer- ings to which she had been doomed. The fact that the woman had communicated the heart-rending circum- stances to the teacher, by some unknown means was discovered. She received the usual slave-driver's pun- ishment, for daring to unfold her anguish ; and the Yankee soon ascertained that it was indispensable for him to decamp to some other plantation. Notwithstand- ing all the insight which he had obtained into the abom- inations of slavery, he subsequently married an heiress of slaves, and his correspondence with the "fanatics" was instantly discontinued.
Not long since, two orphan sisters were sent by their guardian from the south to a northern seminary to be instructed in all the arts and sciences and accomplish- ments of a very distinguished female seminary. Dur- ing their sojourn in that place, the eldest young woman attracted the regard of a Christian, and the offer of marriage which he made was accepted. She was re- moved from the school to her native abode, and thither the gentleman followed her with the full expectation of consummating the nuptial covenant. But soon after
86 EFFECTS OF SLAVERY
his arrival at the place where she resided, insuperable obstacles appeared to their union. She could not or would not become his wife, unless he would reside at the south, and take the usual control of a large estate with its slaves. He would not consent to marry her, unless she would accompany him to the north, and re- move her slaves that they might be emancipated ; and thus they separated.
That the young women at the south will entangle the young men of the north into marriage, is a general fact ; and the sole cause is found in their intimate acquaint- ance with the inordinate profligacy which slave-holding necessarily includes. A healthful man from the north- ern States, with proper credentials, a good exterior, decorous manners, and in the character of a minister, or of an instructer of the higher grade, appears in a district where his services are needed. His residence is designated with one of the nabobs. As soon as his principles and qualities are fully ascertained, and all that is needful of his personal history has artfully been obtained from him, if no prior arrangement exists, the plan is formed to enchain him in the fetters of hymen. Everything which could surprise his " Yankee notions " is kept out of sight ; for his strict puritanic principles will be an additional recommendation, as proving that he is not hackneyed in vice. Of slavery he never talks. It is never adverted to in the most distant man- ner ; and is as much excluded from all conversation, as if it had never existed. He sees no colored persons but the immediate household attendants, a well behaved coachman and footman, with two or four youth ap- proaching to manhood, comfortably dressed and appa- rently contented. In due season, he is married. Of
UP0X DOMESTIC RELATIOXSHIP. 87
all the anterior circumstances in the life of his bride, he is profoundly ignorant. He only knew her as a coy, reserved girl, who finally permitted herself to be courted into marriage. Of the negro quarter, and its wretch- edness, debasement and crimes, not a syllable had ever been repeated, and he finds at the end of the honey- moon that he has married a wife, and that to her is al- lied a mass of inexplicable contradictions and moral unaccountables. The apparent exterior is the same, but the animating spirit is entirely metamorphosed. He has no alternative but to flee away, or to fulfil the common proverb, being " with the Romans, to do as the Romans do." To return to New-England is im- possible. The slave-driver would not permit his daugh- ter to go there to " work like a Nigger ;" and if she was there, she would not only be useless, but also his unceasing torment and burden. He therefore resolves to make his necessity a virtue ; and thus he tacitly ad- mits their principles, adopts their habits, and gradually becomes a slave-driver and a slave-dealer.
From his wife he has probably learned the secrets of the plantation, and has also discovered that he has mar- ried a puny, debilitated and almost helpless creature, all whose beautiful color before marriage was paint, and all whose sprightliness was artificial. Her body is as feeble as her mind is enervated ; and from others he may comprehend that her virtuous predilections are not much stronger — as verified before his acquaintance^ with her — than her physical energies. He is thus driven from his last solace ; or if he is not thus informed, his life is embittered, and his usefulness at an end. He therefore becomes a slave-driver. Casting off his pu- ritanism, he justifies man-stealing, and having procured
88 EFFECTS OF SLAVERY
■ D. D. at the end of his name, he devotes his time and his theological lore to prove that man-stealing is honesty, that the system which authorises the commis- sion of " all uncleanness with greediness " is " bihle doctrine that will stand,'5 and that the manufacturing of slaves is essential to " preserve the integrity of the union. "
The women after marriage speedily undergo a strange metamorphosis. They become tame and spiritless, and of little more domestic utility than household statues ; or they submit to be chief mistress manager to super- intend, direct and provide for the rest of the harem and its appendages ; or if they are healthy and strong, they exemplify the irascibility and turbulence of the genuine slave-driver. Then, wo be to their "Nigger wenches, " for they stand between two iires. The lordly despot scourges them for not submitting to his ungodly desires, and the termagant mistress lacerates them for receiving her husband's adulterous embraces ; and thus between the male demon incarnate, and the living daughter of the furies, the slaves are shut up in what may truly be termed a "little hell upon earth."
The above representations of slave-drivers and their " southern institutions " are not designed to be applied to persons who reside in the cities and commercial towns, where the slave-holder has kidnapped only as many men and women as may be deemed necessary for the menial services of the family. The publicity of their circumstances, the observation to which they are exposed, the greater facility of discovery, and the fear of that loss of reputation which might injure their mercantile business, obviously repress the more viru- lent developments of the inherent ferocity and ungod-
UPON DOMESTIC RELATIONSHIP. 89
liness of slavery. Similar causes render it necessary, for the sake of appearances, that the domestic slaves should be better fed, more decently clothed, and in general more kindly treated ; otherwise a man's credit might be injured, and his interests and rank and value in society be depreciated.
Notwithstanding all those obstacles, the insecurity and debasement of the female slaves are equally visi- ble and certain, when the condition of woman is scru- tinized even in the residence of a citizen merchant, with its exterior disguise, as wThen it is beheld in the negro quarter of a slave plantation, in its naked de- formity. That case was well propounded lately by a minister of the gospel in Philadelphia, who was born, educated, and long resided among the slave-drivers. A conversation had passed respecting the veracity of Mr. Thome, in reference to his vivid description of the heinous transgressions of the seventh commandment, which, as he publicly announced at the first meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society, were so incessant wherever slavery predominates. The charge of false- hood which was reiterated against him, was also intro- duced, and the relative value of the testimony of two eye-witnesses, whose statements are separated wide as positive assertion and flat denial can differ, was dis- cussed. That minister finally remarked, " It is equal folly and wickedness to deny what cannot be concealed, which no man considers disgraceful, and which is so common, that no person scarcely ever for one moment seriously reflects upon the obvious anomaly. Go into the house of a preacher, or lay officer, or church mem- ber of any denomination. You perceive one or two men, and three or more women attached to the house-
8*
90 EFFECTS OF SLAVERY
hold. They are all dark colored with the African cast of countenance. You look upon the colored children who are playing about or are suckling infants, and they are of different shades of approximation to white, and their features are marked with different evidences of conformity to the European face. You do not inquire who are their fathers, but the fact is self-evident that they are not the offspring of the black men and women before your eyes. Therefore Mr. Thome's statements are undeniable, except by persons who are ignorant of the state of things where slavery exists, or who wilfully attempt to blind the eyes of northern Christians to the dreadful corruption of the southern churches and the unceasing wickedness of that atrocious system and its ungodly adherents." That preacher left us to draw what inferences we chose from his emphatic and orac- ular testimony.
In every aspect in which the subject can be exam- ined, slavery destroys the moral purity of the youth of both sexes. Constantly to behold the naked bodies of the colored boys and girls must be most pernicious. The practice of having an attendant to perform all those offices about the person from which intuitive del- icacy and modesty would shrink in disgust if they had not been partially extinguished by the force of custom and the plea of indolence^irom the earliest period of recollection — that custom casts a suspicion over the in- nocence and virtue of the youth which nothing can re- move. The comparative seclusion in which the young women live enclosed within the boundaries of the ex- tensive plantation, with no companion scarcely, except the boys and girls who wait upon them, and who, from their association with the kitchen and the negro
UPON DOMESTIC RELATIONSHIP. 91
quarter, become the chief caterers of events with which to fill the morbid vacuity of minds too weak to treasure up useful knowledge and too listless to think, and whose imaginations are constantly impelled to the polluting scenes which their colored attendants describe in all their repulsive grossness ; that seclusion alone must be pestilential to all that is good. But when it is contem- plated in connection with their ordinary unsocial habits of life, with the facilities through the medium of the favorite colored confidante to elude any discovery of their movements, and the general indifference upon that most affecting subject which prevails among the slave- driving licentious fathers on account of their own ir- regularities and devotedness to amusement and dissi- pation, so far from its being a matter of astonishment that the young men on the slave plantations should be profligates, and that young women should be suspected even if not actually corrupt, it is obvious that nothing but a miracle of mercy and a constantly copious effu- sion of divine grace could preserve them from the in- fection of the leprosy which at all times encircles them.
The spirit and principles of Christianity in ordinary cases are far less potent in their practical influence at the south, than in the non-slave-holding States. Slavery has invented a geographical religion, so that a scanty measure of revealed truth, especially if it swayed the heart, conscience and life of its professor at the south, would be branded as singularity or denounced as fa- natical hypocrisy. Therefore the most salutary and effectual restraints upon wicked principles and vitiating habits and practices are virtually extinguished.
The application of this proposition to slavery renders
EFFECTS OF SLAVERY
the previous portraitures not only more convincing as to their accuracy, hut more fearful in their prospects. As the otherwise admitted standard of morals which predominates among the white people in their social intercourse is not supposed to exist, or at least to have any authority among the colored citizens in their rela- tion either to the whites or to each other, it necessarily follows, that the judgment of reason, the dictates of conscience, the laws of reciprocal equity, and the claims of instinctive compassion and benevolence, al- though ratified by the plainest declarations of "the oracles of God," are nullified, except in those cases where, from some especial and peculiar cause, the ini- quities of slavery are not embodied in their natural operation. Besides, the "southern institutions " which we are told " will stand," because they are in con- formity to "Bible doctrine," and which being, as their Sir Oracle announced, "the corner stone and cement of society and of our republic," and as their dough- faced, Judas-like coadjutors aver, being essential to "preserve the integrity of the Union," those "south- ern institutions" are never introduced as themes of investigation and discussion. They comprise a "mys- tery of iniquity" in its most awful characteristics, for it is a compound of man-stealing, lewdness, and cruelty, in their most nefarious varieties and abominations ; but neither the moral law of Jehovah nor the doctrines of Christ are ever applied to it. There is the balance of the sanctuary, but slavery is never weighed in it ; and instead, they have substituted the scales in which to sell almost naked young mulatto women by the pound. There is " the house of prayer," so called, but they have literally "made it a den of thieves."
UrCTN DOMESTIC RELATIONSHIP. 93
There is a preacher, but he is a man-thief and an un- pitying shepherd, who neither feeds nor feels for "the flock of the slaughter." There are the Christian possessors who " slay them, and who hold themselves not guilty." And there is the human cattle manufac- turer—
" A savage ruder than the slave,
Cruel as death, insatiate as the grave.
A Christian broker in the trade of blood I
A reptile baser than the slave, Loathsome as death, corrupted as the grave. Whose children spring alike from sloth and vice, Are born his slaves, and loved at market price. Thus he buys and sells — steals and kills for gold !"
and then says, cc Blessed be the Lord, for I am rich." The Christian lyrist, Montgomery, had he resided during seventy years upon a slave-driver's plantation, where
Darkness, anguish, despair, and death, In profound and lasting silence reign,
could not more graphically have depicted the immoral features and the unholy course of the countless major- ity of that prison-house of sorrow.
One additional evil of slavery, and among the worst of the whole troop of abominations which may be called Gad, is the artificial and deceitful character which everything assumes, and in which slave-holding fam- ilies, to a stranger, generally appear. It is an amalga- mation of polished suavity and furious haughtiness, of splendid prodigality and squalid penury, of sumptuous food and costly raiment with half starvation and en- tire nakedness, of pretensions to the most scrupulous refinement with ferocity and licentiousness, and some- times an exterior respect for the forms of Christian devotion, while all its obligations are incessantly disre-
94
garded. That visor is not worn merely by the men and women who have learned the art and who practice the mutual conventional grimace, until none of the adepts are imposed upon by the flimsy disguise ; but it is understood and adopted by the youth of both sexes, so that all confidence and pure attachment are banished forever, and the " southern institutions," with that " bi- ble doctrine " upon which they stand, and that man- stealing, woman-defiling, and soul-murdering system which republican patriarchs declare is " the corner- stone of freedom " that sustains "the integrity of the Union," those charming "southern institutions" can be perpetuated only by that hypocritical craftiness which ensnares a northern young woman unwittingly to become the chief manager and governess of the slave- holder's harem, and by those deceitful blandishments through wThich northern young men " void of under- standing " in reference to slavery, are decoyed into the station of matrimonial overseers to drive the slaves, and to maintain the voluptuous indolence and extrava- gant decorations of a haughty wife and an imperious mistress. Thus in one sense unintentionally exempli- fying Solomon's vision, " With her much fair speech she caused him to yield ; with the flattering of her lips she forced him. He goeth to her straightway, as an ox goeth to the slaughter or as a fool to the correction of the stocks, till a dart strike through his liver, as ar bird hasteth to the snare, and knoweth not that it is for his life."
CHAPTER V.
DUTY OF THE SLAVE-HOLDER'S FEMALE RELATIVES.
It is not designed to convey the idea that the south- ern women who are allied to slave-holders directly justify, or even formally extenuate the unholy practices which appertain to slavery. But their apparent igno- rance must be assumed, and their silence upon the topic is no better than wilful murder of their own com- forts. This brief discussion, therefore, will unfold their duty, that they may arouse themselves and resolutely strive to stop the course of that ungodliness which in- undates the slave-holding States ere the plagues of Egypt are again exhibited in this republic.
1. The inordinate dissoluteness of slave-drivers in general must be thoroughly understood by their female relatives. They may strive to evade the knowledge of it, or from an idea that an avowed acquaintance with it and an attempt to correct it would be unavailing, they may resolve to act as if they believed that the " negro quarter" was the scene of Eden-like innocence ; yet they cannot be exculpated from the charge of tacitly conniving at the heinous evils which encircle them. The grand inquiry then, is this, " How long ought that slavery to be tolerated which necessarily produces such inveterate horrors ?"
Of all the stupendous impositions with which the
96 DUTY OF
slave-dealers and their northern confederates have en- deavored to deceive our country, nothing is more incred- ible than the hypocritical outcry respecting amalgama- tion. The genuine African race is fast disappearing from the United States ; and citizens with every shade of color, are multiplying with disproportionate celerity. When the slave-holders talk of prejudice against the descendants of the kidnapped Africans, they only mean that they dislike free men and women. They have no disgust for the female slave who suckles their children or who brings forth light-colored offspring to be nur- tured as merchantable cattle. All their objections are made against the free man whom they cannot scourge with impunity, and against the free woman whom they cannot force into submission to their ungovernable lusts. Among white men at the south, amalgamation with colored women is the rule ; and abstinence from illicit intercourse with them, is the exception. That hideous system is the unavoidable result of slavery, while universal and instantaneous emancipa- tion at once would place all colored women, young and old, under the care and guardianship of their natural and affectionate protectors, and the present system of amalgamation, which is rapidly white-washing the skin and transforming the features of the slaves, wrould cease. Except in the cities and large towns, and it is only adopted among the most debased portions of both races, unlawful intercourse between the whites and free colored persons is almost unknown. The aboli- tion of slavery would destroy the prejudice against persons merely on account of their exterior conforma- tion, and extirpate, as soon as the Jubilee trump of freedom resounded, at least nine-tenths of the licentious
slave-holder's female relatives. 97
practices and of the amalgamating atrocities which now defile and curse the slave-holder's domain.
2. Probably no vice has so direct and immediate ten- dency to blind the mind to all correct moral perceptions and to harden the heart against all spiritual and refined sensibilities, and to stupify the conscience into a rejec- tion of all religious impressions, as the sins of unclean- ness. It does not require an actual personal partici- pation in that ungodliness to render a person callous in conscience, at enmity with God, and " carnally- minded, which is death." To the operation of that prin- ciple, it is probably owing, that the slave-holding wo- men in general exhibit so profound an unconcern re- specting the transgressions of the seventh command- ment. May it not be imputed to two exhibitions which are constantly before their eyes from their earliest re- collections ?
Youth must constantly perceive their own likeness in the junior slaves around them. That exhibition can neither improve their minds nor purify their morals. Why is that evil tolerated ? It promotes luxurious in- dulgence and augments wealth ; for these family rela- tives will always obtain a good price. At no very dis- tant period by-gone, a merchant of Baltimore became the father of a colored girl, by one of his slaves. The child was brought up with his other sons and daughters, and received the best instruction which could be obtained. She repaid his care by her supe- rior qualifications and her filial obedience and attach- ment. When near death, he added a codicil to his .will enjoining upon his son, as principal executor, to emancipate her instantly, and bequeathed to her a
98 DUTY OP
comfortable annuity for life, to preserve her from de- pendence and all the solicitations to vice. Immedi- ately after her father's death, her brother ravished her. As soon as she found herself pregnant, the brute, through the agency of one of the men-traders, sold her to a merchant in New-Orleans at a very high price, expressly that she might become his concubine. The widow and sisters were so lost to all feminine sensibil- ity, that little or no solicitude was felt for her fate. Nothing but slavery could have developed such unnat- ural turpitude*
Youth continuously behold colored persons of all ages around them, either almost or totally naked. Not merely children of different ages in the " negro quar- ter," who play and tumble about without covering, like sucking pigs in their piggery, but also men and women work about the house or in the fields, without any cov- ering. A "friend, " who was travelling some short time since, stopped at a tavern for breakfast near the city of Washington. When his attendance was de- sired, he found in the room a tawdrily dressed girl, ready to serve him at the table, and presently there entered a man to wait upon him, without even a shred of clothing. His feelings were so disgusted with the sight of a man thus degraded to the level of a brute, and with the apparent insensibility of the young wo- man, that he was choked ; and after having with great difficulty swallowed one or two mouthfuls of food, he arose and pursued his journey. That such displays must unavoidably be most pernicious to the delicacy and moral purity, not only of young women, but also of boys and men, it would be superfluous to attempt to prove.
Slave-holder's female relatives. 99
A vitiated imagination with all its impure workings, or to use the apostle Paul's impressive language, a 11 mind and conscience defiled," must be the inevitable consequence of that constant development of adul- terous intercourse, and of that beast-like display of the human frame — for women are not less exposed to the sight than men. What high criminality must at- tach to those who transform human beings into brutes ?
The infinite Creator and Judge has denounced with the menace of condign punishment, not only the grosser infringements upon the laws of chastity, but even the interchange of garments by men and women, because it affords an opportunity for secret crime. Thus all masquerades are condemned as an outrage upon mo- rality and decorum ; for in assumed disguise licentious men and women who are "past feeling, may give themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all un- cleanness with greediness." It is therefore manifest that the customs of a slave plantation are destructive of personal purity and social order, and that the sys- tem can produce " only evil continually. " Hence, however they may " profess that they know God, yet in works they deny him, being abominable and disobe- dient, and unto every good work reprobate." So that, like the Cretans (Titus i. 12, 13) they "are alway liars, evil beasts, slow bellies, who must be rebuked sharply, that they may become sound in the faith."
3. The present and the prospective condition of slave-holding women is most perilous, and their dangers are augmenting in constant progression. Among the melancholy evidences of a sin-hardened and a con- science-seared people, none is more pungent than the dejusion in which they live, that they may "forsake
100 DUTY OF
the Lord, provoke the Holy One of Israel to anger, and go away backward," without condemnation.
The holy scriptures contain one most memorable and edifying example which may well be applied " for in- struction in righteousness" to the slave-driving women. By the instigation and counsel of the false prophet, Balaam, the daughters of Midian enticed the Israelites to sin, which was as public and as shameless as it is among the slave-holders ; for Zimri took into his tent a woman in the sight of Moses and all the congre- gation, who were humbling themselves before God for the plague which was then destroying the people, as the punishment of that same iniquity. Almost im- mediately after, the judgment of God came upon them, and every woman who had "known man by lying with him," was condemned to death, because they had " beguiled the children of Israel and vexed them with their wiles."
Among the most terrific scenes which the desolations of war, with the storming and pillage of cities and towns comprise, the most direful are the barbarities which are perpetrated upon the women. The hus- band, and father, and brother instinctively shudders at the idea of his wife, or daughter, or mother, or sister, being abandoned to the furious lusts of those " beasts oi prey, military ruffians/' During the war with Great Britain in 1813, the whole continent resounded with outcries against that small detachment of British troops who landed at Hampton, in Virginia, and who added to their chicken-stealing and similar trophies of war, the violation of the few women who could not es- cape from the grasp of those brutal marauders. That atrocious crime has covered Cockburn and his gang
slave-holder's female relatives. 101
with deathless infamy. Bat what was that single and very restricted outrage, when contrasted with the in- cessant and far more nefarious rapes which are perpe- trated on the slave-plantations near that same village ?
No woman, however abandoned, is so lost to natural instinct, as not to feel injured at the idea of force being used upon her person. Even the ordinary female se- ducers and panderers for debauchees will not directly aid in the rape of a female in their power. What then ought to be the deep and unspeakable penitence of the southern women, wfio are privy to all the violations which pass around them, and to the almost overpower- ing enticements with which the young colored women are always encircled, that they may never admit the embraces except of men lighter colored than themselves. Almost e\ery mulatto child which is born upon a slave plantation is a visible proof of the illicit intercourse which has taken place between the white slave-drivers and their colored female vassals. May not the slave- holding women therefore dread the result of that pro- tracted system, when the whites become too few and powerless to resist the energy and resolution of a large preponderating force, resolved to be free, or to perish in the attempt to gain their liberty and rights ?
That danger now is not only imminent, but it daily becomes more fearful in anticipation. The colored people, especially the mulattoes, are rapidly multiply- ing. All the better members in society, as to morals, health, and the various qualities which constitute the heart of a nation, are migrating from the slave-holding States to the north-western districts ; and it requires not the spirit of prophecy to foresee, that ere long slavery must be abolished in those States by the voluntary con-
9*
102 DfJTT OF
sent of the domestic tyrants, or the Lord will send another Moses and Aaron — and then again will be displayed
"That wonder-working arm which broke From Israel's neck the Egyptian yoke jM
and southern women may be assured that they will have no adequate defenders from the north. Magicians, with their enchantments, may delude them ; but their procrastination will only expedite the period when fe- male Christians at the north will re-echo the joyous chant of emancipated women at the south :
11 How vain was their boasting, the Lord hath but spoken ; Then sing, for the pride of the tyrant is broken — Sound the loud timbrel o'er all the wide sea, Jehovah has triumphed, his people are free I "
4. What then are the duties of the slave-holding women at the south ? In general they may thus be enumerated. To disseminate the truth upon the sub- ject of slavery ; to protest decidedly against the exist- ing evils ; to combine their efforts, that they may more efficiently resist the continued predominance of the hideous iniquity which surrounds them. And above all, if they are Christian professors, in a body to with- draw from the churches to which they respectively be- long, as the only public testimony that they can give of their obedience to the apostolic mandate, (1 Corinth- ians, vi. 9 — 11) "not to keep company with forni- cators."
It might be extremely difficult, under existing cir- cumstances, to comply with the former rules ; but the last could be accomplished — and in fact, is the most im- portant of the whole ; or rather, without that, all the
SLAVE-HQLDER3S FEMALE RELATIVES. 103
rest will be ineffectual. We alledge no personal irreg- ularities against the female Christian professors whether married or single, except in those instances of a delu- sive profession, which, alas ! universally occur. That women who are church-members are cruel and most terrific scourgers, no well-informed person will dare to deny ; and that they tacitly sanction the violation of the seventh commandment, by their silence and association with the profligates around them, is equally true.
Ministers of the gospel may not actually commit adultery with their " Nigger ivenches," but it is certain that they perpetrate more flagrant crimes. On Lord's day afternoon, June 4, Mr. Gardner, a Presbyterian colored preacher of Philadelphia publicly declared in his discourse, that in Virginia some time ago, a minis- ter of the gospel sold a girl for one thousand dollars, knowing that she was purchased expressly for unclean- ness. To render his conduct more indescribably fla- gitious, "he refused to take nine hundred and fifty dollars, which had been offered to him by a person who wished to save her from that doom." If this be not the actual fulfillment of the declaration in Psalm 50, then there is no mode of correctly interpreting and suitably applying language : " When thou sawest a thief, then thou consentedst with him, and art a parta- ker with adulterers." That preacher was never ar- raigned, tried and censured, for selling out of his own family, possibly his own daughter, a young woman with no other design than, that the purchasing kidnapper should defile her body and ruin her soul.
One of the grand sources of licentiousness consists in the virtual approbation which refined and chaste wo- men give to debauchees, by associating with them.
104
DUTY OF
What then can be thought of that woman's sense of decorum and of her Christian principles, who holds nominal Christian communion with the man that sells the girl whom he has kidnapped intentionally to be forced into a life of iniquity ? Now admitting that every preacher has not either himself corrupted a young woman, or sold her to another with that base design, yet if he be a slave-holder, or if he be not an advocate for the immediate abolition of slavery, he up- holds the system, and therefore is equally guilty, upon the principle that " the receiver is as bad as the thief."
Women imbued with the grace of God who belong to churches in which the ministers, lay officers and members are slave-holders, do thereby practically avow, that they consider (( pure religion and undefiled " as sanctioning the most abhorrent impurity ; and that per- sons who sell and buy young women for the sole pur- pose of polluting them, and manufacturing light-colored offspring for the human flesh market, are Christians ! Well might Mr. Gardner affirm in his sermon already quoted — "It is folly and wickedness to pretend to pray to God to send down his Holy Spirit on such a church !"
Women, in their present fettered and forlorn condi- tion, may not be able to diffuse anti-slavery papers and pamphlets. They may not be able effectually to decry the present abominations of slavery. To combine their efforts against the odious corruptions which en- circle them, may not be easily practicable. But the grand witness of their detestation of slavery, and of their own personal purity would be given emphatically and irresistibly, if the genuine Christians at once would cease to hold any fellowship with the adherents
slate-holder's female relatives. 105
and supporters of a system, that first kidnaps girls, then rears them for a life of lewdness, and then sells them to the highest bidder, that they may be doomed to a life of constant pollution and hopeless bondage.
As long as women will declare by their actions, by lttending the ministry, and by uniting with them at the Lord's table, that preaching slave-drivers who traffic young women for a life of prostitution, and the man- merchant who buys her for that object, are official ser- vants of the church, and faithful disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, and " good and acceptable members " of Christian communities, so long will the poison spread, and all efforts to arrest that slavery which is woman's direst curse, and most inveterate enemy, will be alto- gether useless. The command of God is this : (2 Corinthians, vi. 14 — 18) u Come out from among them, and be ye separate, and touch not the unclean !"
Women who profess Christianity in the slave-hold- ing States have a peculiar class of duties to perform. Upon them devolves in the most imperative manner the important office of branding the correct title in the cheeks and foreheads of the man-stealing, girl-selling, pimping, and slave-manufacturing preachers. No per- son can force our Christian sisters to become or to continue members of that " synagogue of Satan," of which a kidnapper is preacher and men-stealers are lay officers, and the members are slave-drivers. Every woman who is enrolled as a member of a church by whom slave-holding is sustained, is one of the ungodly confederacy ; and except she is a penitent, and " brings forth works meet for repentance," she may anticipate that she will be rejected at the last day, as a consum- mate hypocrite, who in actual result aided to obliterate
106 DUTY OF, &C.
the command of God from its authority over the un- derstandings, and the hearts, and the consciences of men.
Here then is the duty and the privilege of the Chris- tian women who reside among slave-holders. If they cannot at once emancipate their male relatives from the thraldom of sin, they can place before them a luminous display of pure and inflexible principles. They may not instantly eradicate all the wide-spread contamina- tion with which the southern churches are filled ; but they will powerfully resound the trumpet in Zion ; and by their abstaining " from the appearance of evil," they will start a prolific subject of inquiry, set a holy and influential example, and by their Christian consistency they will soon hurl slavery from its proud and usurped predominance. No woman is guiltless who in that case does not immediately " depart from the iniquity ;" and who does not resolve in the spirit of Joshua, " as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord ;" and in the determination of the people of Israel, who, to Josh- ua's solemn appeal, replied, the Lord our God will we serve, and his voice will we obey."
CHAPTER VL
IMPURITY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCHES.
"Paid hypocrites! who turn Judgment aside, and rob the Holy Book Of those high words of truth, which search and burn
In warning and rebuke.
" How long, O Lord, how long Shall such a priesthood barter truth away, And in thy name, for robbery and wrong,
At thine own altars pray?
" Wo to that priesthood ! wo To those whose hire is with the price of blood — Perverting, darkening, changing as they go,
The truth and law of God." Wkittier.
Could the fact be denied, or rather were it not avowed and justified, alas ! by the servants of the sanctuary, it would not be credited that an almost indis- soluble connection apparently exists between slavery, which is "all filtbiness and superfluity of naughti- ness," and the disciples and churches of Him who was "holy, harmless, undefiled and separate from sinners."
Exclusive, therefore, of all the other arguments which can be urged for the prompt, decisive, and en- tire abrogation of slavery in connection with the churches of Christ, the condition of woman alone is a resistless plea for the excision of slave-dealers from
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" the communion of saints." It is not less preposterous than it is nugatory, in reference to the church of God, to waste time in frivolous disputation and research respect- ing the value of the property which may have been pur- loined, or the quantum of guilt that the criminal may have contracted ; the whole matter is compressed in four monosyllables : "He is a thief." So in its application to slave-holders, it is altogether superfluous to inquire how many slaves he drives, how much or how little he scourges them, whether he leaves them to pine with hunger, and in nakedness, or whether he half-starves and partly clothes them, and whether he abuses and traffics them, or leaves them to wallow in uncleanness, and nurtures them for his own emolument. To all this captious deceitfulness, there is an emphatical and in- fallible retort: "He is a man-stealer." That is de- cisive until it can be demonstrated by the authority of the head of the church or his inspired apostles, that habitual robbers are Christians ; in other words, as the Presbyterians state, until " Sinners of the first rank and guilty of the highest kind of theft," and as the Methodists subjoin, who never had a "sincere desire to fiee from the wrath to come" can be proved to be con- scientiously honest, and Zaccheus-like penitents, wil- ling to restore to the poor what they have "taken by false accusation."
Look at that gross absurdity in another aspect. The preacher, as the case may be, has stolen two, four, seven, ten, or more of his brethren, free-born native American citizens, and in his kidnapping he perse- veres, seizing every child whom, by the execrable " southern institution," with impunity he can grasp. In that boasted republicanism he lives and dies, and
CHRISTIAN CHURCHES. 109
intends to bequeath the human beings, if not his own children, yet his fellow Christians, so called, of his own society, to his heirs. Thus living and resolved to die a kidnapper ; and after he is dead, to continue a man-stealer. Yet no person must venture to question that Doctor's moral philosophy or brotherhood to Jesus of Nazareth, who preached ''deliverance to the cap- tives," and who was expressly sent into the world "to set at liberty them who are bruised."
To emblazon such men as Christians, and especially as preachers, is enough to fill Pandemonium with tri- umph ; but to superadd the abomination that men who encourage all lewdness, that their " negro quarter" may be enlarged and its inhabitants may be multiplied, shall fill all church offices and virtually govern the de- nominations with which they are connected, is one of the most astounding anomalies that exists in the history of the church and the world. Here, then, is the mo- mentous question : How can sincere Christians coa- lesce in fellowship with persons who either commit habitual sins against the seventh commandment, or who encourage or force others into the constant transgres- sion of the laws of purity and the mandate of Je- hovah ?
In any other case but slavery, the proposal of such an inquiry would be deemed utterly revolting and im- pious. To admit the advocates and participants of slavery into the church of Christ, is just as outrageous as to acknowledge the evangelical attributes of per- sons who keep houses open especially for licentious- ness. For, let the most favorable view of the horrific condition of American female slaves be taken, and its utter irreconcilableness with all that "the oracles of
10
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God " inculcate, whether in doctrine, or precept, or menace, or promise, or example, will be instantly dis- cerned.
That it may not be supposed there is any design to represent the state of slavery as more loathsome and criminal and anti-Christian than the reality, we will admit " a marvellous work and a wonder " to be the existing representation of life among slave-holders, al- though well-informed persons in their senses will " in nowise believe it, though a man declare it unto " them. To go as far as the application of the argument can possibly be extended, it shall be adopted as a fact, that all persons of every station and character belonging to the churches of each denomination are personally chaste, and even the supposition that either of them is actually impure shall be excluded from all considera- tion, — which is a specimen of scepticism that would only be ridiculed in Richmond, Raleigh, Charleston, and Savannah. Yet the slave-drivers, in their connec- tion with the church, do not gain one jot in their favor, when their title to be Christians, and to enjoy " the communion of saints," is weighed in the balance of the sanctuary.
They know that all diversified ungodliness is inhe- rent in the system of slavery, and that it cannot be eradicated ; for the predominance of the matrimonial obligation and the consequent extinction of all that pro- miscuous lewdness which is now so universal, would speedily exterminate that iniquitous system. Slavery is the offspring of Mammon and Venus, and about equally partakes of the very worst attributes both of the father and mother, or to adopt the apostle Paul's words which he uses in another application, it is "a mystery of iniquity, and the working of Satan."
CHRISTIAN CHURCHES. Ill
How can such turpitude be allied to that " holiness without which no man can see the Lord ?" To it may aptly be applied the expostulation of Paul : (2 Corinthi- ans, vi. 14 — 18) "Be ye not unequally yoked to- gether with unbelievers. What fellowship hath right- eousness with unrighteousness ? What communion hath li^ht with darkness ? What concord hath Christ with Belial ? What part hath he that believeth with an infidel ? What agreement hath the temple of God with idols ? Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate."
All slave-holders, male and female ivithoitl exception, either tacitly sanction or openly defend the system of slavery, which is only another name for rape, incest, polygamy and all unutterable uncleanness. To multi- ply human cattle, preachers, lay officers, and church members, of almost every name and denomination, for the sake of securing opulence, with its vitiating luxury, not only connive at the lewdness, but actually encour- age it. No pulpit denounces it, for it would be a death- blow of slavery. No evangelical discipline is enforced against their participation in the ungodliness, for that act would at once extinguish il the church !" No wo- men, alas ! C£ cry aloud and spare not ;" so that their matronly protest can be heard reverberating from the river Lawrenee and the lakes to the gulf of Mexico, against the dooming of a million of women to defile- ment and ruin. Until very recently, northern Chris- tians, almost without exception, would permit those partakers with adulterers to chatter in their churches, about the love of God, the conversion of souls, the pursuit of holiness, and the sanctity of heavenly joy.
112 I31PURITY Of THE
Suppose the ministers, officers and members of five hundred churches should all agree together to confeder- ate with hordes of robbers and pimps for the double purpose of covering over with a Christian garb, and of decorating with a Christian name their horrible craft, that they might divide the infernal spoils with impunity ; how long would those accomplices in villany be toler- ated as disciples of the immaculate Redeemer ?
Now we maintain that a member of such a conspiracy would have better pretensions to church membership, than any slave-driver in the southern States. His do- main is one large den of uncleanness, expressly en- couraged by all possible means to augment the stock of merchantable human cattle, and he effects that object by every process which can be invented to whitewash the children's skin, and to render them in external ap- pearance of the European features and figure. If per- sons, whose whole life is one unceasing course of those abominations, can make any justifiable claim to the character and spirit of Christians, then there is no dis- tinction between that " marriage which is honorable in all, and the bed undefiled — and the whoremcngers and adulterers whom God will judge." Hebrews, 13: 4.
A preacher, for example, comes from the south. He is at the head of a college, a D. D. ; and he prates about the " southern institutions." Now that very term itself comprises a great and mischievous lie ! From the most corrupt motives, and for the most ignoble objects. it is intentionally "calling things by wrong names." Countless multitudes of northern citizens have no idea of what is meant by "southern institutions!" They suppose that it refers to their civil government, or to their collegiate establishments, or to their philanthropic
CHRISTIAN CHURCHES. 113
societies. They hear it reiterated, until the term u southern institutions " has become one of the most art- ful contrivances in all the dictionary of imposing false- hoods, to blind and mislead unreflecting citizens. It is resounded, that the fanatics and some Christians at the north are resolved to overthrow " southern institu- tions ;" and the thoughtless portion of the community, by this cheat are induced to believe that it is intended to dissolve the federal compact, and thus to deluge the republic in civil war, bloodshed and desolation.
Let it only be known, that by " southern institutions ," kidnapping is meant, with all its inseparable cruelties and uncleanness, and the bandage, which the slave- driving falsifiers and their dough-faced hirelings have tied over the eyes of the people, is instantly removed ; and it is perceived at once, that the common oracular proverb is exemplified to the letter : They who steal, and they who commit lewdness will lie !
What then are " southern institutions ?" An out- rageous system of man-stealing, woman-defiling and slave-manufacturing atrocities ; the unparalleled wick- edness of which no tongue can describe, and no mind can imagine. Totalk of prolonging such "institutions," which could have been invented only by men who had not " the fear of God before their eyes," and which are prolonged only by persons under " the instigation of the Devil," is not less insulting than it is abominable. But the most outrageous fact in the whole hell-born scheme is this. Those " southern institutions " are now au- thorised by law, and sustained by the scandalous hypo- crites, who call themselves " the church /" — deceivers who solemnly sanction the plunder of the post-office,
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who torture and murder Christians and ministers of the gospel, and who withhold from the colored citizens all terrestrial comfort, and every right and privilege au- thoritatively bestowed upon them by "God the judge of all ;" thus fulfilling Peter's prophecy : " Through covetousness with feigned words, shall they make merchandise of you."
To sustain those " southern institutions " which in- clude every diabolical ingredient that is commingled in " the golden cup full of abominations and fllthiness of fornication," (Revelations, xvii. 4) the northern church- es have long aided. That general mischief has been done in two ways : by acknowledging those merchants in impurity to be " fellow-citizens with the saints and of the household of God," and by accepting the dona- tions of men-stealers to aid the holy cause of Christian benevolence ; which is a flagrant violation of the di- vine injunction, (Deuteronomy xxiii. 18) "thou shaltnot bring the hire of a whore into the house of the Lord thy God for any vow," for it is an "abomination unto the Lord thy God."
A very large proportion of the wealth that is so prod- igally squandered by the slave-holders, is the direct re- sult of that unrestricted licentiousness which is so uni- versally practiced and encouraged. Yet much of that plunder has been cast into the treasury of the Lord. It is not less an ungodly donation, than would be the money obtained from the rent and profits of a regular brothel in any of our large cities, with the additional aggravations of the tortures and stripes and robbery, combined with the forced uncleanness. To which may be added the black incests, which, in ordinary criminal intercourse between the sexes, are unknown. Our phi-
CHRISTIAN CHURCHES. 115
lanthropic societies must unhesitatingly reject those spoils of innocence, or they will be involved in the curse, which, without speedy repentance and amend- ment, if " the signs of the times " can be discerned, ere long will usher in a social catastrophe, that will overwhelm the southern States in indiscriminate ruin, and the effects of which will pass over all the other portions of our country, like " the pestilence that walk- eth in darkness, and the destruction that wasteth at noonday."
The other practical approbation which has been given to the adulterous pollutions of slavery, is the incorpo- ration with the church of the defenders of all that in- curable turpitude. It is not enough to say, that our northern churches do not directly number any slave- drivers in their communion ; the effect is the same ! That preacher who wantonly encourages all inordinate sensuality, who enforces the abrogation of the mar- riage covenant, and who constantly enacts the disrup- tion of all family consociations, is admitted to preach in our pulpits, and to speechify on our platforms, and to pray in our devout assemblies. Is not that the strong- est testimony which can be presented that we do not deem his impious usurpations of the divine prerogative, and his unceasing robberies, with all the wickedness which is connected with his slave-manufacturing ma- chinery, to be inconsistent with the Christian charac- ter ? Is it not declaring that it is the perfection of " pure religion and undefined," when we allow such men to be our advocates in prayer, and our instructers in truth and duty ?
That unpitying shepherd always beholds "the flock of the slaughter," and feels no emotion, while he wit-
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nesses their murderers slay them, and ' ' hold themselves not guilty." He and his accomplices know the slaugh- ter, and permit it to proceed with impunity. He has seen the kidnappers seizing every colored child whom they could grasp without fear, after having devoted all their ingenuity to amplify the methods by which through licentiousness they could be multiplied. He has watch- ed those men-stealers traffic the bodies and souls of men without intermission. He has heard those hypocritical traders, after they have sold the image of God, as im- pressed upon their own concubines and children, the offspring of adultery and incest, blasphemously resound — "blessed be God, for I am rich !" He himself, and the members of his own " synagogue of Satan," have copied their ungodly deeds, have sold the Lord's preach- ers and disciples of their own denomination, who were under their own pastoral care ; and while they were eulogizing the conscientiousness, virtues and fidelity of the sauctified convert, proclaimed his Christian graces for no other purpose than that they might receive one hundred dollars more for his conscience, another hun- dred dollars for his sobriety, another hundred dollars for his veracity, another hundred for his honesty, anoth- er hundred for his "fear of the Lord," another hundred for his faithfulness, and the seventh hundred dollars above the common price, for the commanding influence which he can exercise among his fellow slaves to re- strain them from iniquity. Notwithstanding, that preach- er visits the north ; instead of being banished from all decorous company, he becomes the confidential asso- ciate of our wives, and daughters, and mothers, and sisters, and the expounder of revealed truth to teach us righteousness and purity ! It would not be so inju-
CHRISTIAN CHURCHES. 117
rious to good morals, every Lord's day morning to trans* fer the inmate from the State prison, and the pander from the brothel to the pulpit ; that monstrosity would be com- prehended at once, and the Christian brethren and sis- ters would walk away, and study divine truth and wor- ship God in their own habitations. Their hearts would not be agonized, and their understandings befooled, and their consciences harrowed, by hearing a man who is always causing the violation of the seventh com- mandment prate about purity ; and a sleepless man- thief cant respecting the obligations and claims of in- tegrity and justice !
But if he be not a preacher, he comes from the south with his testimonial, that he is a Christian in reg- ular form, and claims to be received into your com- munion during his summer abode among the puritans. At the Lord's table, he is seated perhaps next to one of our matrons, whose whole life has revealed the instinct- ive delicacy of her feelings, and the refined purity of her heart — or he takes his place by the side of one of our maiden disciples, who would shrink from contam- ination like a sensitive plant. Well is it for them at the time, that their devotional employments are not dis- turbed by the knowledge of their companion's charac- ter, and their hallowed communion destroyed by loath- ing the nearness of the adjoining slave-driver and slave-dealer, who is desecrating the " communion of the body and blood of Christ." It would not be one jot more insulting and unchristian, to go to the watch- house on Lord's day morning, and select the vagabonds and strollers who had been taken out of the street dur- ing the previous night, and bring them in their squal- idness and filth to " the Lord's supper," than to admit
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men-stealers and transgressors of the seventh com- mandment to an evangelical name and its consequent immunities.
A minister of the gospel who is now at the extreme south, after long laboring among the slave-holders in vain, has lately written a letter to his brother, in which he states that " all attempts to preach the gospel and to do good there by its influence, are utterly futile." That as long as slavery exists, the prevalence of religion among that people is altogether impossible ; and that the little benefit which morality and decorum produced among the slave-drivers when he first visited the south, is gradually diminishing. Soon after his arrival among them, he began taexpress his objections to their ini- quitous "southern institutions ;" but his brother preach- ers and other members of the man-stealing banditti, very cavalierly informed him that " he must be silent ; and if he did not like their ways, he could go back to the north." The reason why the corruptions of slavery now are more abhorrent and less disguised than formerly, is this : those kidnappers and land pi- rates frequently discuss the topic, that they may invent perversions of the scripture to justify their abomina- tions, and because, from the operation of their mur- derous Lynch law, they are assured that very few, if any persons from the north, unless they are avowed partizans and accomplices in their iniquity, will have the opportunity to scrutinize them. In all the slave- holding States, preachers, lay officers, and church mem- bers of all denominations are the most infuriated advo- cates of the various jmvations and barbarities which are enacted and enforced under the pretended authority of Judge Lynch, that fictitious substitute of the Neros
CHRISTIAN CHURCHES. 119
and Domitians, who proclaim that man-stealing, evil concupiscence, uncleanness, and cruelty, which are the hearts' blood of the " southern institutions," are essential to "preserve the integrity of the Union."
At present the southern churches are only one vast consociation of hypocrites and sinners. There is scarcely light enough among them to render the tangi- ble darkness visible to themselves, and salt enough to preserve them from putrefaction. But probably the more serious part of the direful criminality and tre- mendous danger which that fact involves, appertains to the northern churches. Either without reflection, or from worldly motives of advantage, they have not only tolerated without a murmur that dreadful delusion, that gangs of men-thieves are consistent members of the church of God, but they have deliberately sanctioned that ab- horrent dogma by their ecclesiastical confederation with them. They have received as holy benevolence, the spoils wrung from the tears, stripes, chastity, and toil of the slaves. They have listened to the hypocrit- ical cant and applauded the chivalric ''sorceries" of ecclesiastical men-stealers. They have received to their communion the slave-manufacturers, who pur- chase and force all lewdness, expressly to multiply the bodies and souls of men for the human flesh-market, that boys may be sold according to their muscular en- ergy, and girls for their prostitution and breeding, and both at a highly increased value if they are attractive in person and animated by the graces of the Holy Spirit. The awful statement of the prophet, delivered nearly twenty-five hundred years ago, is a most graph- ical exhibition of the slave plantation ; and although it may not be minutely applicable to the "negro quar-
120 IMPURITY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCHES.
ter" of preachers and Christians, so far as they are personally considered ; yet they are chargeable with the traitorous guilt of deliberately approving and at- tempting to justify, by the perversion of the scriptures, all the ungodliness which the picture drawn by the prophet of tears includes. (Jeremiah v. 7 — 9 ; and xiii. 27,) "When I had fed them to the full, then they committed adultery, and assembled themselves by troops in the harlots' houses. They were as fed horses in the morning. Every one neighed after his neigh- bor's wife. I have seen thine adulteries, and thy neighings, the lewdness of thy whoredom, and thine abominations on the hills in the fields. Shall I not visit for these things ? saith the Lord. Shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this ? Wo unto thee, O Jerusalem ! wilt thou not be made clean ?"
Christians of New-England ! there is the truth of God. It is for you to make the application of it, and prove that you mix faith with the gospel that you hear,, by bringing "forth fruits meet for repentance," that they who do those deeds "may be taken away from among you," until they " repent of the uncleanness and fornication and lasciviousness which they have committed." May the Lord grant you grace to be faithful for the Redeemer's sake ! Amen.
CHAPTER VII,
DUTY OF NORTHERN CHRISTIAN WOMEN.
O woman ! from thy happy hearth
Extend thy gentle hand, to save
The poor and perishing of earth —
The chained, polluted slave J Ol plead for all the sufferers of thy kind — For the crush'd body, and the darkened mind! Whittier.
Christian sisters! "what shall we say to these things?" "A wonderful and horrible thing is com- mitted in the land. The prophets prophecy falsely ; and the priests bear rule by their means, and the peo- ple love to have it so. What will ye do in the end thereof?"
It is in vain that the slave-drivers attempt to show that women have no concern with slavery — that nor- thern women ought to fix their attention upon their domestic duties, and " let slavery alone" — and that Christian women ought to shut their eyes, and exclude from their hearts all attention to their debased sex, as they are seen, where lust incarnate walks about in open daylight without a blush, and woman's grand shield, matrimony, is basely discarded. The very fact that slave-holders use every artifice, insult, scorn, and ridicule, to hinder Christian women in the northern States from interposing on behalf of their colored sis-
122 DUTY OF NORTHERN CHRISTIAN WOMEN.
ters held in degrading servitude, is self-evident proof of the truth of the position, that they not only dread the influence of the " mothers in Israel," but that to women peculiarly belongs the high duty of testifying against the atrocities, and of endeavoring to abolish the system of slavery. In two ways can they most ef- fectually promote the object.
1. Christian women must loudly denounce that code of laws and that unholy practice which nullifies the matrimonial covenant. Upon that topic, it is emphati- cally the duty of women to speak ; and especially of those who profess to believe that li without holiness, no man shall see the Lord.'' With the few exceptions which may have occurred, the argument has no con- cern ; but it is a self-evident truth, that for men ordi- narily to remain unmarried, and yet pretend to chas- tity, is an insulting imposture.
It is also indubitable, that uncleanness and the illicit connection between the sexes, is proportioned to the number of men who live in celibacy. Hence, licen- tiousness must inevitably predominate in such a state of society as that which prevails where slavery pre- dominates ; especially when sensual indulgence is the prolific source of worldly aggrandizement and wealth. We therefore maintain that Christian women are in their own appropriate sphere, when they "lift up their voices on high, and cry aloud " against that sleepless abomination, which not only debases the immediate victim of the lewd voluptuary, but also imbues his mind with disrespect for female character and virtue, and brands him as the most guilty traitor to his race ; because he actually subverts the appointment of God, and destroys that hallowed relation and that domestic
DUTY OF NORTHERN CHRISTIAN WOMEN. 123
society which are the chief blessings that have sur- vived the fall.
Can it be expected that men without purity and con- science, all whose lives from childhood have been in- ured to the grossest and most indecent familiarities with " Nigger wenches," as they brutally denomi- nate the young colored girls ; that such men should rightly feel their criminality, or that they will aban- don their profligate course, as long as northern Christian women associate with them ; and more, — as long as northern Christian women intermarry with them; and acknowledge slave-drivers as brethrenof "the household of faith?"
2. Christian women must resolutely discard all com- munion with slave-holders as members of the church of God. It is altogether insulting to common-sense, to pretend to talk of a slave-dealing Christian. That soul-destroying infatuation, through the mercy of Je- hovah, is beginning to pass away. Multitudes of per- sons now reject the astounding deceitfulness, that a hardened " stealer of men" can be a follower of Je- sus, who came to "preach deliverance to the captive ;" yet they have not exemplified their own principles, be- cause "it is inexpedient." They are afraid to go too far at once, lest, to use a very silly phrase, "there should be a reaction." A reaction in doing good ! What strong delusion !"
What have Christian women to do with expedi- ency, when the question is concerning the deliver- ance from contamination of a million of their sex ? What have Christian women to do with expediency, when the object to be attained is the rescue of half a million of adult females from promiscuous concubin-
lc24 DUTY OF NORTHERN CHRISTIAN WOMEN.
age ? What have Christian women to do with expedi- ency, when it depends upon them whether the sacred wall of the nuptial obligations shall constitute a barrier for all the colored people in the United States against the lawless incursions of slave-manufacturing debau- chees ? What have Christian women to do with expe- diency, when Jesus, the lord of all, commands them not "to keep company with a fornicator, though he is called a brother, and not to partake with adulterers ?"
How can Christian women say that they are not ap- prised of the exact characters of slaveholders, and therefore know not whether they should not violate the law of charity by refusing to hold communion with them ? They need not investigate all the private life of slave-drivers. They are not required to ascertain how many colored children in their slave-quarters have their "image and superscription." Such a scrutiny would not become a northern matron. All that inquiry is rendered useless by one indisputable reality, which extends from the Potomac to Florida, and from the first morn to the last evening of the year. Slave-holders for- cibly have exterminated marriage ; and they have placed colored women in such a defenceless condition, that they have no safeguard against wanton lust, and every possible inducement to be depraved and impure.
It is altogether a deception to talk of men as Chris- tians, who invent, prolong, palliate, or connive at a s\stem which extirpates the institution of marriage as established by God in the garden of Eden. That crim- inality every slave-driver constantly perpetrates ; be- cause he knows that American slavery and the matri- monial ordinance cannot co-exist. The latter, there- fore, is banished, that the former may be predominant.
DUTY OF NORTHERN CHRISTIAN WOMEN. 125
It only remains, therefore, for Christian women promptly and decisively to build the partition-wall that shall sever them from the advocates and practitioners of that iniquitous system which is a direct prohibition of female chastity, and which debases their sex to the vilest and remediless degradation.
The only effectual mode by which that separation can be effected, is through the church. Christian women must be heard protesting against all fellowship with the nullifiers of the connubial relation. Christian women must be seen withdrawing from the houses of prayer when a slave-driver enters the pulpit, or in any way attempts to lead the devotions, or offers himself as an acceptable communicant at the Lord's supper.
How can a Christian woman quietly hear a man preach who at once would cut short all that she holds precious in this life, her domestic tenderness and en- dearments, were the Lord pleased to change the color of the skin which she and her family display ? How can a Christian woman patiently listen to a preacher who proclaims that her Christian sisters shall be dives- ted of all protection for her purity, and shall be abused as no better than beasts that perish, with impunity, merely because her ancestors were kidnapped from Af- rica by the descendants of felons transported from Eu- rope ? How can a Christian woman take her seat at the communion-table by the side of a man whose plan- tation is a large prison, where fraud, lewdness, and cruelty ever reign ? They must no longer give sanc- tion to that wickedness, by encouraging ''stealers of men " to deceive themselves with the infatuated notion that they can make any pretensions to decorum, much less to the Christian religion.
126 DUTY OF NORTHERN CHRISTIAN WOMEN.
Endeavor to place yourselves in the exact condition of the colored women "who are drawn unto death, and ready to be slain." Fancy yourselves every moment liable to be polluted — and, if you refuse submission, to be lacerated, and then forced by your tyrant to com- ply. Remember that, as a mother, you would be ex- posed to separation, without a moment's warning, from your children, and as a lover, to be sent to an impas- sable distance from him who possessed all your affec- tion. Recollect that the heart-rending anguish of that severance would be the punishment of a resistance to voluntary defilement combining all the most heinous transgressions of the seventh commandment. Add to all that melancholy picture the circumstance, that your compound wretchedness is thus certified without re- dress, and until the termination of your mortal exist- ence.
It is superfluous to inquire, whether the southern slave-driver who sits by your side at the Lord's table, himself has actually perpetrated all that abhorrent in- iquity. It is absurd to ask whether he is the complete personification of that adulterous ravisher and woman- scourger and woman-seller. He sustains the system by his ungodly perversion of the Bible. He upholds the wickedness by being confederated with the slave- traders, and all their unutterable atrocities. He resists all the measures and all the philanthropists who would abolish that infernal system of crime and misery and desolation.
Christian women, therefore, must resolve not to hold the communion of the gospel with slave-drivers, and not to hear slave-holders preach. They must con- stantly insist upon the enforcement of that discipline in
DUTY OF NORTHERN CHRISTIAN WOMEN. 127
the churches with which they are united, that shall ex- clude all the accomplices of the slave-holders from having any admission to their fellowship. Be not de- ceived, Christian sisters ! Every woman belonging to a church that recognizes the profession of religion by a slave-holder, virtually approves and clothes in the garb of godliness the debasement and pollution of her sex, the erasure of marriage, and the extinction of domes- tic relationship, affection and enjoyment. Therefore she is an accessory to all the rapes and lewdness which fill the slave-driver's domains with infamy and despair.
p. s. A friend, who read the preceding pages after they were printed, wrote on the title-page — " No au- thentication of facts." Who will deny them ? To per- sons who understand anything of human nature in its unrestrained overflowing of corruption — and to per- sons who are acquainted with " things as they are" in the slave quarters; an "authentication" of the de- tails, in this illustration of slavery "in its effects upon woman and domestic society," is just as neces- sary as it is to prove the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence, and the existence of sunshine on the fourth of July ! When that evidence is demanded, so that its introduction shall be necessary to aid the cause of freedom, and to decapitate that monster, Slavery, — the witnesses shall be instantly summoned. , *
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Accessions
JlUid
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