free, they would be delivered from the power of their masters, who now compel the female slaves to become their prostitutes when they please. The facts in the case are plainly these. In the free states there is very little mixture of color. The colored people principally marry among themselves. And in proportion as marriage obtains, these mixtures decrease. It is, therefore, a shameless hypocrisy for slaveholders and their defenders to cry out against amalgamation, when this is a thing that either wholly or principally concerns themselves. And more especially is it shameful, because all the colored people, both among the slaves and free people of color, are nearly akin to the slaveholders; they are their bone and their flesh. The greatest families in the south have the larger number of their own blood relations among the colored people. There are to be found their brothers and sisters, their children and grandchildren, their uncles and aunts, their cousins, back through many grades. Their fathers, grandfathers, great grandfathers, great great grandfathers, etc., had their relatives, too, among the colored people. Many of all the great southern families, then, are the blood relatives of the colored people. It is, therefore, a burning shame, to say nothing of the sin, for them to act toward their bone and their flesh as they continually do. 6. This element of slavery, whereof we are now treating, degrades woman in the most shameful manner. A woman, under the control of slavery, her purity and honor in the hands of her master, exposed to the whip, liable to be sold at any time, can not be loved and honored as a woman should be. So it is in all slave countries. Woman is degraded, just as in heathen countries. The sacred names of mother and wife, in their pure and dignified imports, will not apply to slave women. The public advertisements, under the sanction of law, to be met with in all southern papers, are among the mos disgraceful, wicked, barbarous, and heathen customs that can be found on the face of the earth. Here are a few specimens of the expressions: “Twenty dollars reward.—Ran away from the subscriber, a negro woman and two children; the woman is tall and black; and a few days before she went off I burned her with a hot iron on the left side of her face; I tried to make the letter M; and she kept a cloth over her head and face, and a fly bonnet on her head, so as to cover the burn. Her children are both boys; the eldest is in his seventh year; he is a mulatto, and has blue eyes; the youngest is black, and is in his fifth year." Another reads: "Mary has a small scar over her eye; a good many teeth missing; the letter A is branded on her forehead." These are mere specimens of the thousands of such advertisements which are constantly issued. So the degradation of woman has progressed. It began in particular instances, but it has progressed to become a system, and is now incorporated as part and parcel of American slavery. Take the following as an example, from the Brunswick (Georgia) Advocate: "Wanted to hire.-The undersigned wish to hire one thousand negroes to work on the Brunswick canal, of whom one-third may be women. Sixteen dollars per month will be paid for steady, prime men, and $13 for women. "Brunswick, Jan. 25, 1839.” F. & A. PRATT, P. M. NIGHtingale. 7. The Bible is in direct opposition to this feature of slavery. Marriage is honorable in all;" "For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and they shall be one flesh;" "What God hath joined together let no 'man put asunder." A man may leave his father and: mother, who have a better right to him than any other can have, and cleave to his wife; but he can not leave his master and cleave to his wife. The institution of marriage allows parents no right to hold their own children beyond mature age; and, of course, they can have no right to sell them to others beyond that period. Hence, the Bible is against slavery. Moreover, all the denunciations in Scripture leveled against adultery, fornication, and the like, will apply to the violation of the marriage covenant authorized and protected by the laws of slavery, and very generally practiced in slave states. 8. And here it is just to mention, that many slaveholders hold all these things in as great abhorrence as any others do. This proves the very thing for which we contend-the sinfulness of the slave system. Wherever there is an enlighted judgment and a pure conscience, we find the most decided condemnation of these violations of the marriage covenant. And when some slaveholders say they condemn all these things, and they are wrong, we believe them; and this only shows that conscience is on our side of the question, and against the whole system. And the crimes. against marriage, which we charge on slavery, are not abuses of the system, but its legitimate operation. Its leading element, "the child follows the condition of the mother," because the mother is property, lies at the foundation of this sinful system of slavery. 9. As examples of incests and the absence of parental natural affection, necessarily flowing from slavery, take the following: Some forty years ago, a gentleman from old Virginia. settled near Lexington, Kentucky. He soon found his need of help to cultivate his farm, and proceeded to eastern Virginia to purchase slaves. On inquiring from a slavebreeder the price and qualities of his boys, he was directed to visit the negro quarters in reference to the age and quali ties of two young men who seemed fitted for his purpose. On asking their mother who their father was, he received the following answer: "My master is the father of this one, and my master's son is the father of the other." The gentleman returned to the owner of the slaves, and informed him there was no need of a hell unless he would be sent there. The Kentucky gentleman determined from that moment that he would never own a slave. Accordingly, he made no purchase, returned home, resolved he would never raise a family in a slave state, sold his possessions in Kentucky, removed to Ohio, and his descendants are now among the most influential, wealthy, and religious families in the state of Ohio. A quadroon and his wife, by the name of Harris, now reside in Springfield, Ohio, and their four children. The man paid $1,400 to his own father for his wife and three children, born in slavery. Thus the father exacted from his own son the sum of $1,400, for his own son's wife and his own three grandchildren. And all this according to the legitimate laws and the true spirit of the slave system. CHAPTER V. DEPRIVATION OF RIGHTS-CIVIL DISABILITIES OF SLAVERY IN- SLAVERY deprives men of many civil rights, thus involving great injustice, and preparing the way for the infliction of many and great injuries or wrongs. The most weighty of these are embraced in the following list: 1. A slave can not be a witness against a white person, either in a civil or criminal case. 2. A slave can not be party to a civil suit. 3. A slave can not be a party before a judicial tribunal, in any species of action, against his master, no matter how atrocious may have been the injury which he has received from him. 4. Submission is required of the slave, not to the will of the master only, but to the will of all other white persons. 5. A third person may injure the slave; or slaves being objects of property, if injured by third persons, their owners may bring suit and recover damages for the injury. 6. Slaves can make no contracts. 7. Slaves can not redeem themselves, nor obtain a change of masters, though cruel treatment may have rendered such change necessary for their personal safety. 8. The laws of the states prohibiting emancipation are cruel to the slave, interfere with the rights of conscience of those well-disposed masters who desire to give freedom to their slaves, and encourage and exculpate the wicked in their sins of oppression. 9. Laws of the United States in regard to slavery are unjust, cruel, inconsistent with the Constitution of the United States, at variance with the principles of liberty, and contrary to holy Scripture. - |