FullReads

Slavery is characterized as “a demoralizing and cruel system, which it would be an insult to God to imagine that he does not abhor; a system which exhibits power without responsibility, toil without recompense, life without liberty, law without justice, wrongs without redress, infamy without crime, punishment without guilt, and families without marriage; a system which will not only make victims of the present unhappy generation, inflicting upon them the degradation, the contempt, the lassitude, and the anguish of hopeless oppression; but which even aims at transmitting this heritage of injury and woe to their children and their children’s children, down to their latest posterity. Can any Christian contemplate, without trembling, his own agency in the perpetuation of such a system?”

Coincident with the judgment of these two most respectable and revered ecclesiastical bodies is the testimony of one of the most prominent and honored sons of the southern church, the Rev. Dr. R. L Breckenridge. Says he:–

“What then is slavery? for the question relates to the action of certain principles of it, and to its probable and proper results; what is slavery as it exists among us? We reply, it is that condition enforced by the laws of one half of the States of this confederacy, in which one portion of the community, called masters, are allowed such power over another portion called slaves, as—-

“1. To deprive them of the entire earnings of their own labor, except so much as is necessary to continue labor itself by continuing healthful existence: thus committing clear robbery.

“2. To reduce them to the necessity of universal concubinage, by denying to them the civil rights of marriage, thus breaking up the dearest relations of life, and encouraging universal prostitution.

“3. To deprive them of the means and opportunities of moral and intellectual culture, in many States making it a high penal offence to teach them to read, thus perpetuating whatever of evil there is that proceeds from ignorance.

“4. To set up between parents and their children an authority higher than the impulse of nature and the laws of God, which breaks up the authority of the father over his own offspring, and at pleasure separates the mother at a returnless distance from her child, thus abrogating the clearest laws of nature, thus outraging all decency and justice, and degrading and oppressing thousands upon thousands of beings, created like themselves in the image of the most high God! This is slavery as it is daily exhibited in every slave State.”

Yes, such is the nature and character of an institution in this enlightened Christian republic, claiming to be the freest nation on earth, calling itself “an asylum for the oppressed,” inviting the downtrodden subjects of all the despots of the old world to come to this happy land, and place themselves under the protection of the American eagle, and in this “eyrie of the free” taste and enjoy the sweets of liberty!

The views presented in the above extracts may be taken, it is to be presumed, as an exponent of the southern Christian sentiment on domestic slavery. There are, indeed, exceptions. It is painful to notice that within a few years some men of reputed piety and worth have been attempting to maintain that American slavery is a “divine and patriarchal institution,” “sanctioned by the Bible,”–is “necessary to the highest state of society,” and is “to be perpetuated;” but I am happy to believe that the number of those who hold such views, repudiating those of the Presbyterian church, and at the same time call themselves disciples of Him who said, “whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them,” is comparatively small.

I close this long letter by subscribing myself, as ever,

Your affectionate

Friend and Brother.

LETTER VIII.

THREE QUESTIONS SUGGESTED.–1. MUST SLAVERY BE PERPETUAL?–2. DOES THE CHURCH OF CHRIST SUSTAIN ANY RESPONSIBILITY IN THIS MATTER?–3. WHAT SHALL WE DO?

MY DEAR CHRISTIAN FRIEND,–I fear I shall make myself tedious to you by dwelling so long upon this, to me, painful subject,–slavery. I will, therefore, in the present letter, finish what I have to say for the present, hoping that our future correspondence may be on more grateful themes.