Summary Review of the Slave Code—its Character and Effects—Inquiries concerning the Duties of Christians, Churches, and Ministers—the Responsibilities of Citizens, of Society, of Civil Government, of Legislators and Magistrates—Scrutiny of the Legality of American Slavery—The Heaven-prescribed Remedy—The Worthlessness of Temporizing Substitutes—Closing Appeal.

     IF the reader has attentively considered the preceding pages, he will now be able to pass an intelligent judgment upon the character of the Slave Code, and of the practice of slaveholding, protected and defined by it. The so-called “legal relation of waster and slave” he will have found to be the relation of an owner to a human chattel, body and soul. The verity and the efficacy of this monstrous claim he will have traced in each successive chapter and topic of the entire treatise. He will have witnessed the legitimate workings of this claim in the connected incidents of slave traffic, seizure of slave property for debt, inheritance and division of slave property, and uses of slave property. He will have seen that in the presence of this claim slaves can possess nothing, can make no contract, can neither enter into the marriage relation, nor discharge the duties, nor claim the rights, nor share the sanctities of the

family relation. He will have observed how this claim of absolute proprietorship in the slave involves the claim and virtually secures the exercise of unlimited and irresponsible authority on the part of the “owner;” the enforcement of his labor without wages; the direction of his food, clothing and shelter; the infliction of discretionary punishment upon him, virtually amounting (in consequence of the incompetency of colored witnesses) to the power of life and death over him. This despotic power of the “owners” he will have seen delegated to overseers or agents, and shared by the members of their families. The same relation of slave ownership he will have seen substituting the legal protection of slave property for the personal protection of the slaves, leaving them exposed to the most frightful barbarities, without the right of self-protection, or the means of redress by a suit against the “owner;” without power of self-redemption, or even a change of masters. This “relation,” hereditary and perpetual, he has found to include the most crushing spiritual despotism over the rights of conscience ever claimed by man on the face of the earth; and he has seen it hunting its fugitive victims as if they were brute beasts. This “relation,” as thus developed and systematized, he has found to have been originated by the piratical African slave-trade, as commenced by the infamous John Hawkins, yet extending itself over Indians and white persons, and fostering in the heart of our boasted republic a slave-trade more demoralizing than that on the African coast.

     This so-called “legal relation,” as thus defined and described, he will have found to be the very same that is daily declared to be a blameless and innocent one, involving no built in those who “hold” and “sustain” it.

     The attentive reader has further seen how this “relation” of slave ownership has shaped and determined the “relation” of the slave to society and to civil government; how it bars his access to the judiciary, denying his capacity to be a party to a civil suit; how it bids the Courts reject the testimony not only of slaves, but of free colored persons; how it enforces the subjection of slaves not only to their “owners’’ and overseers, but to all other white persons; how it frames and executes unjust and inhuman penal enactments against the slaves; how it forbids their education, their religious instruction and free social worship; and, finally, how it interposes obstacles to manumissions by the master, and to acts of emancipation by the State.

     The same “relation” of slave ownership he has found waging successful warfare upon the liberties of the free, degrading the free people of color, and dragging them back into chattelhood; despoiling the free whites of the South, not excepting slaveholders themselves, of some of the essential rights of humanity, freedom of speech and of the press, the right of propagating true religion, and of reducing it to practice by deeds of justice and mercy to the oppressed; extending the same iron sway over the free citizens of the North, and bidding the

sons of the Pilgrims dishonor their sires, by joining in the hunt after fugitive slaves.

     All this the attentive readers of the preceding pages have witnessed. The writer will not insult them by asking them whether they consider such a “relation,” with such a paternity, with such a character, and with such fruits, an innocent one, reposing upon the foundation of apostles and patriarchs, the Bible its charter, the rounder of Christianity its chief corner-stone! But he wishes to propound to them, for their consideration and decision, a few plain and important practical questions.

     Is it not high time that the churches of this country, of all sects, their members and ministry, were purged from the sin of slaveholding, and from the taint of religious fraternity with slaveholders?

     If this system and sum of abominations is to be tolerated in the Church, what description of practices, what crimes should be excluded from her pale and debarred from her communion? Is it theft? Is it robbery? Is it cruelty? Is it murder? Is it man-stealing? Is it extortion? Is it adultery? Is it bloody persecution? Is it using a neighbor’s service without wages, and giving him naught for his work? Is it violence? Is it fraud? Is it despising the poor? Is it taking away the key of knowledge? Is it proscribing Bibles, and forbidding free religious worship? Is it upholding, abetting, and sustaining all these combined?

     If these are to be excluded from religious communion and fellowship, must not the so-called “legal

relation of master and slave” be excluded likewise, by excluding those who resolutely persist in sustaining it? Can the former be done without doing the latter? And if it be left undone, what must become of the Church? Will not the salt lose its savor? And what will it then be good for, but to be cast out and trodden under foot of men? Is there nothing in the signs of the times that gives significance to these questions? How long shall infidelity be armed with the most powerful of all weapons against the Bible and Christianity, against the Ministry and the Church?

     If the reader be a Christian, will not his regard for Christianity suggest to him the proper answer to these inquiries? And if he be not a Christian, would he not, nevertheless, desire to see the most potent of all social influences—that of the prevailing religion of the country—arrayed against this stupendous system of inhumanity and wrong?

     If the Saviour of men was manifested “that he might destroy the works” of the Devil, and “proclaim deliverance to the captives;” if his disciples are his witnesses, and engaged in the prosecution of his work, are they not bound to “have no fellowship with the works of darkness, but rather reprove them?” Especially, are not his ministers bound to “cry aloud and spare not; to lift up their voice like a trumpet; to show the people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sin?” If such an iniquity as the holding of humanity in chattelhood may escape their rebukes, what form of wickedness may not claim

equal exemption? What commandment of the law, what precept of the gospel, what principle of the Christian theology is not set at naught by the enslaver? What meaning can there be in the words justice or mercy, what significance in the doctrine of human brotherhood, or what force in the precepts, “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” “Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them,” and “Go teach all nations,” if the practice of enslaving immortal men, for whom Christ died, and of whose nature he is partaker, is not to be condemned; if the cause of the slave is not to be vindicated; if the oppressor is not to be called to repentance; if his victim is not to be taught and disenthralled?

     Is it not mockery to pray, “Thy kingdom come,” and yet neglect engaging in labors like these? If the work of elevating depressed humanity be Christ’s work, should not the “undoing of the heavy burthens,” and “letting the oppressed go free,” be the work of Christians, the mission of the Church of Christ?

     Turning next to the responsibilities of citizens, of society, of civil government, of legislators, and of magistrates, we demand whether the crime of enslaving and embruting a human being ought not to be promptly and vigorously suppressed by the strong arm of penal law? If not, what crime or what outrage against humanity ought to be thus suppressed? Shall a man be punished for stealing an ox, or for knowingly receiving, appropriating, and using a stolen ox, and yet be suffered with impunity to steal

or receive, appropriate and use a stolen man? Will the law pretend to protect my rights of property, and yet refuse to protect my personal right to myself? By what authority, by what rule, on what principle, with what consistency, and with what ultimate success, will the law, or the administrators and expounders of law, attempt to maintain, by the sanctions of penal infliction, the rights of WHITE men, while they refuse thus to maintain the rights of BLACK, or YELLOW, or SWARTHY, or BROWN Men? Upon what maxims of civil law or of the science of jurisprudence will they proceed in doing this? Or will they proclaim to the world that there is no such thing as “LEGAL SCIENCE;” that the pretense of it is a cheat; that the belief in it is a delusion; that jurisprudence is a game of chance; that law rests upon caprice, and interposes no obstacle to aggression, no protection from brute force, no guaranties against despotic power? If this be the decision of grave jurists, who will care to have jurists? Who will be grateful for the institution of civil government? Who will respect the magistracy? Who will venerate LAW? How shall civil government, jurisprudence, and law be vindicated from aspersion and shielded from execration and contempt, but by wielding them for their high and holy ends? How, indeed, shall this be done but by denying to the American Slave Code (instinct, as it is, with all the elements of inherent lawlessness) any just claim to the honors or the authority of valid law? What, after all, becomes of the boasted legality of slave ownership, and where is the legal validity

of the American Slave Code in the presence of such legal decisions and common law maxims as the following?

     “Statutes against fundamental morality are void.” (Judge McLean, Supreme Court of the United States.)

     Is not the Slave Code “against fundamental morality?” If it is not, what existing or conceivable statute could come under that description, or of what use is the maxim? But if the Slave Code is “against fundamental morality,” have not the people a claim upon Judge McLean and the United States Supreme Court for a decision affirming the illegality of slave ownership, whenever a suitable case shall be presented for their consideration and action?

     “If it be found that a former decision is manifestly absurd and unjust, it is declared, NOT that such a sentence was BAD law but that it was NOT law.” (Littleton.)

     Are not the “decisions” in support of slavery, as cited in this volume, “manifestly absurd and unjust?” If not, what recorded or conceivable decisions could be thus characterized? But if they are of that character, does not the maxim of Littleton call for judicial decisions declaring “NOT that such sentence was BAD law, but that it was NOT law?”

     Will it be said that time and precedent have so settled the law on this subject that it must not or cannot be disturbed?

     “Where the foundation is weak, the structure falls.” “What is invalid from the beginning cannot be made valid by length of time.” (Noyes’ Maxims.)

     Will it be said that statutes and judicial decisions set aside or modify natural or common law? It is of the very nature of natural or common law to contradict this plea! Hear it:

     “The law of nature being coeval with mankind, and dictated by God himself, is, of course, superior in obligation to every other. It is binding all over the globe, in all countries, and at all times. No human laws have ANY VALIDITY if contrary to THIS; and such of them as are valid derive all their force, mediately or immediately, from this original.” (Forteseue.)

     “The inferior must give place to the superior; man’s laws to God’s laws. If, therefore, any statute be enacted contrary to these, it ought to be considered of NO AUTHORITY in the laws of England.” (Noyes.)

     ’’If any human law shall allow or require us to commit crime, we are bound to transgress that human law, or else we must offend against both the natural and the divine.” (Blackstone.)

     “When an Act of Parliament is against common right or reason, or repugnant, or impossible to be performed, the common law will control it, and adjudge such act to be VOID.” (Coke.)

     Will it be said that common or natural law may possibly allow the practice of slaveholding?

     Those rights which God and nature have established, and which are therefore called natural rights, such as life and liberty, need not the aid of human laws to be more effectually vested in every man than they are, neither do they receive any additional

strength when declared by the municipal law to be inviolable. On the contrary, no human legislation has power to abridge or destroy them, unless the owner himself has committed some act that amounts to a forfeiture.” (Fortescue.)

     The law, therefore, which supports slavery and opposes liberty, must necessarily be condemned as cruel, for every feeling of human nature advocates liberty. Slavery is introduced by human wickedness, but God advocates liberty by the nature which he has given to man.” (Fortescue.)

     Much more might be quoted from the great luminaries of common law to the same point. Can there be any doubt on the question of the legality of slavery? If so, the common law rule of decision is simple:

     “Whenever the question of liberty seems doubtful, the decision must be in favor of liberty.” (Digest.)

     THE REMEDY for slavery and its untold abominations and horrors is simple. It is so simple, that worldly wisdom (which is foolishness with God, and which bewilders itself in its own never-ending labyrinths) thinks it complete and difficult. It is merely to cease doing evil, and to commence doing right. It is for the Government to “break every yoke and let the oppressed go free”—to “proclaim liberty throughout the land to all the inhabitants thereof”—to “execute judgment between a man and his neighbor,” and “deliver the spoiled out of the hands of the oppressor.” It is for the citizens to “bring the poor that are cast out to their own house, and not

hide themselves from their own flesh;” to welcome them to a residence “among” them “where they shall choose,” “where it liketh them best.” It is for the “masters” to “render unto their servants that which is just and equal,” “for the laborer is worthy of his reward.” It is for the voters, who are the sovereign people, to choose “judges and officers” who shall “judge the people with just judgment,” remembering that “he that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God.” If the tenure of slave property be illegal, let the Courts thus decide. If not, or if the judges decline doing their duty, let the legislators abolish slavery by statute. In either case, let them repeal their own unrighteous enactments. Let those who need the labor of the colored people employ them for honest wages, and leave off living by plunder.

     This is God’s own remedy for slavery. Experiment has fully tested its safety and its benefits, till those who had not learned to confide in God and walk by faith have been compelled to recognize historical facts, and may, at least, walk by sight.

     A moderate measure of historical information and common sense, one would think, might suffice (with the single eye that causes the whole body to be full of light) to detect the folly, the absurdity, and the inefficiency of all those schemes by which, on this particular subject, men have sought to reach the ends or results of justice and honesty without the task of their self-denying exercise. The attempt to kill the poisonous tree of slavery by lopping off a

few of its more unsightly branches—the subtle but short-sighted diplomacy that seeks to outwit the arch-enemy of humanity and fritter away his power by temporizing expedients and conciliatory compromises—the policy of conceding the innocency of the so-called legal relation while raising an outcry against its component parts, the particulars in which it consists, the incidents by which it is defined—the inveterate day-dream of suppressing the traffic in human beings without overturning human chattelhood, or of preventing the extension of slavery so long as it is suffered to exist—the delusion that the circumscribing of its boundaries (if it were practicable) would be equivalent to its abolition or secure its termination—the notion that national neutrality can uproot a national sin, or excuse from its abandonment; or that there can be such a thing as a republican Government maintaining neutrality concerning the chattelhood of its citizens—above all, the expedient of exporting the oppressed, instead of ceasing from and overturning oppression—these are some of the fallacies of our times which, in generations to come, will be cited as exemplifications of the bewilderment introduced by the presence of slavery.

     In conclusion, the writer would urge on all classes of his readers the claims of the enslaved. What portion of the community, or what description of human beings should be exempted from the appeal, or excused from earnest efforts in their favor?

     Lives there the man who could justify himself in the retirement of his own heart, should his own conscience

convict him of coldness and indifference concerning the chattelhood of man? Could he help despising himself, and sinking, in his own estimate of himself, to the level of the servile slave, or the dulness of the unthinking brute? Lives there the woman, with a woman’s heart and a woman’s love, whose inmost soul does not bleed at the wrongs of the slave? How could the woman be lovely or attract virtuous love who should fail to do this? How could she respect herself, how could a wise and manly husband confide in her, or how could she claim for herself the respect due to a woman, should she be justly charged or suspected of indifference when woman shrieks under the lash, when woman’s affections are outraged, when woman is torn from husband and child, when woman is crushed and polluted by lawless and domineering lust, when woman is transformed to a beast? Is there the circumspect and self-respecting woman who would bestow her affections and repose her confiding hopes upon the man who should betray an indifference to such wrongs inflicted upon woman?

     Is there a patriot, a lover of his country, who can be indifferent to the existence and the sway of the Slave Code; who does not blush at the national disgrace, and tremble, as did Jefferson, in view of impending judgments incurred by the national sin?

     Is there a wise statesman who fails to foresee the ruin of his country and the wreck of its free institutions, unless the leprosy can be healed?

     Can the political economist be unconcerned, when

he witnesses this incubus upon the pecuniary prosperity of the republic—this paralysis of the nation’s strength.

     Can the friend of education, the patron of intellectual progress, neglect to protest against the enforcement of ignorance, the proscription of letters, the closing of every avenue to the intellects of increasing millions of his countrymen? Can he do otherwise than deplore and condemn the code that prevents the establishment and prosperity of schools and colleges for whites, while it forbids the elements of literature and science to the people of color?

     Is there the wise legislator, civilian, or jurist, who does not see and condemn, in the Slave Code, the opprobrium of legislation, the disgrace of jurisprudence, the subversion of equity, the promotion of lawlessness, the element of social insecurity, and the seeds of every crime which legislation and jurisprudence should suppress or restrain?

     Can the moralist look with unconcern upon a system that fosters every vice, and represses every virtue; that opens the flood-gates of immorality, and shuts up every fountain of enlightenment and reformation?

     Can the patrons of Christian missions do less than condemn time code that closes the avenues of missionary enterprise against millions of their own countrymen? Can distributors of Bibles and religious tracts fail to remonstrate with the supporters of a system that forbids the distribution and the reading of them? Can Christians, can Christian ministers

and churches be silent witnesses of all this enforced heathenism in our midst? Can they regard with apathy or disfavor the effort to relieve from the condition of chattelhood so many millions of precious souls for whom Christ died?

     Every dictate of our common humanity, every impulse of unperverted human sympathy, every deduction of unsophisticated reason, every monition of enlightened conscience, every maxim of sound political wisdom, every conclusion of a far-reaching and prophetic prudence, every principle and precept of our holy religion, every aspiration after a likeness to the blessed Redeemer and the Universal Father, every desire and hope of the onward progress and elevation of our country and our species, unitedly impel us to espouse, earnestly and courageously, the cause of the enslaved.

     Let each reader be persuaded to do this, by considerations derived from all that is precious in human nature, or sacred in impartial justice; by all that is binding in moral obligation and law, or ennobling and God-like in mercy; by all that is attractive in human virtue, and inestimable in human freedom; by all that is momentous in a state of earthly probation, and solemn in the final judgment, when it will be said to those who withhold needed kindness, “Inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of the least of these, my brethren, ye did it not unto me.”