SLAVERY. 



525 



master was regarded as bound to supply to the slave 

 the simplest and least costly means of supporting 

 his capacity for labor, in the form of shelter, cloth- 

 ing, aud food, while under no obligation to promote 

 the conditions for the development of those higher 

 powers that are dependent upon mental culture. 

 The means for compelling conformity on the part of 

 the slave with his obligations were abundantly pro- 

 vided by the law, as the master was permitted to ex- 

 ercise the full extent of the coercive aud punitive 

 power required for that purpose. On the other 

 hand, the means afforded by the law for compelling 

 the master to perform the obligations incumbent 

 upon him, as incidental to the relation, were wholly 

 inadequate to satisfy the idea of justice as applied by 

 those systems to all other classes of persons. In the 

 most advanced communities that recognized the 

 system, only the most aggravated disregard of his 

 obligations, on the part of the master, and such acts 

 as shocked the sense of the community, as gross de- 

 partures from what was sanctioned by its common 

 Litbitn Ins, were the subjects of legal inquiry or 

 redress. Taking the life of a slave, or subjecting 

 him to tortures tending to impair his capacity for 

 Libnr, was clearly not means appropriate to secure 

 from the slave the proper application of his powers 

 to the service of his master, and accordingly such 

 acts were discountenanced and frequently punished. 

 Bat, although the law thus intervened for the protec- 

 tion of the slave, the wrongs done to the community 

 were the only ones redressed, the slave receiving no 

 compensation for what was unlawfully denied or in- 

 flicted upon him. Had the systems maintaining 

 such relations between the master and slave regarded 

 the slave as a mere object of property, such as a 

 domestic animal, the absence of any attempt to ex- 

 tend the principles of justice to ameliorate the con- 

 ditions of the slave might be accounted for ; but such 

 was not the case, for slaves were regarded as persons, 

 anil although not entitled to the privileges that were 

 enjoyed by all other persons, were frequently held 

 accountable for their conduct, as bound by the same 

 obligations that affected all others. 



The most striking feature of the slave system is 

 the fact that it removed from the social mass of the 

 slaves the germ from which all institutional forms 

 and organisms spring the family. The uncertain 

 tenure by which the slave family cohered, being 

 liable to dissolution at the caprice of the master, or 

 as his necessities or interests might require, pre- 

 vented that stability in domestic relations without 

 which social development is believed to be impossi- 

 ble. The family may be regarded as the organic 

 unit of society from which all other institutional 

 forms are derived by .litf M-entiation, just as the leaf 

 supplies the same function to vegetal growth, and if 

 the bud, which is the incipient loaf, is suppressed, 

 development is impossible. When slavery theorized 

 at all it regarded the family of the master as includ- 

 ing all the persons subject to his authority, and as 

 displacing all subordinate family groups, referring 

 the idea to the patriarchal practices. The effect of 

 this was to remove the conditions of development 

 from the inferior mass, and to leave only the possibil- 

 ity of advance as an adjunct of the superior system. 



It appears, then, that the characteristic feature of 

 slavery was that it deprived the social mass, repre- 

 sented by the slave, of the capacity of development 

 from its own internal conditions, while at the same 

 time it placed that mass in such imperfect communi- 

 cation with the superior civilization that the benefits 

 possible from such contact could not be realized. 

 It in observed, of all relations between social bodies, 

 that the first step toward interchanging whatever 

 either may possess to the advantage of the other is 

 to establish justice between them, and this is as true 

 of the interchange of ideas and hubitu les as it is of 



merchandise. As, then, the same principles of jus- 

 tice that were recognized in the relations existing 

 between the members of the superior civilization 

 were not extended to the intercourse with the infe- 

 rior, it was against natural tendencies to expect that 

 the relation between the civilization of the master 

 and the unstratified social condition of the slave 

 should produce other than small results for good 

 upon the condition of the latter. 



Slavery as it existed iu America was not a general 

 system such as might be applied equally to all per- 

 sons standing in like conditions, but was what might 

 be called a personal system, being a relation between 

 the white man and a particular race of people, 

 namely, those of African descent. Although the 

 spirit of our laws was dictated by the spirit of lib- 

 erty that all mankind should stand together in the 

 same civil society under laws affecting all alike, who 

 were in like conditions, yet for some reason we have 

 excepted from the benefits of that system the Afiicnn 

 j>eople of this country who were held as slaves, and 

 have given no satisfactory reason for that exception, 

 although, in order to commend that system in the 

 estimation of peoples w ho have not accepted it, it 

 wonld seem to be required that such reasons should 

 be given in a satisfactory form. We can say that 

 certain facts did not afford the reason of such excep- 

 tion. For instance, it was not the fact of difference 

 from our race and color, for other races differing in 

 these respects from us were not excluded from the 

 benefits of onr system of laws. It was not the un- 

 developed condition of the African, for other peo- 

 ples equally undeveloped have been admitted to the 

 privileges of our laws. It was not that the African 

 had thrust himself into onr society unfitted for asso- 

 ciation with us, aud to be isolated as a means of 

 compelling him to withdraw from us, for we had 

 brought him here against his will, and had paid for 

 the privilege of so doing. There is no other mode 

 of accounting for the anomaly but on the ground 

 that the African was procured as a profitable invest- 

 ment of money in a cheap instrument of industry. 



The African slave first came to the soil of the 

 United States from the West Indies, where he had 

 been introduced as an object of traffic. No doubt, 

 when the opportunity presented itself for supplying 

 with labor a country that abounded with natural 

 resources but lacked laborers, a humane as well as 

 a thrifty motive affected the people of our country, 

 prompting them to accept the advantages of the 

 system. The deplorable condition of the African 

 slave, both in his own country and in the West In- 

 dies, appealed to the humane sympathies of our 

 ancestors, who saw an opportunity of getting gain 

 and doing a godly act for the oppressed in getting 

 them better masters, and a chance for attaining to 

 a higher condition of manhood. 



From being a convenience the slave became a ne- 

 cessity, in a semitropical region, especially as con- 

 nected with the rice-culture, that was fatal to the 

 white laborer. By the time that the convention of 

 17H7 was held to frame the Constitution of the 

 United States the sentiment as to the status of the 

 slave had changed somewhat. Where he was not a 

 necessity of industry the old humane feeling pre- 

 vailed, as evidenced in the debates in that conven- 

 tion, but where climatic causes made him a neces- 

 sity the humane sentiment had been largely displaced 

 by economic ideas. This consequence follows 

 wherever thrift and humanity are combined motives 

 to action, the dominant force remaining invariably 

 in the hands of the former. These two motives, the 

 one derived from the force of humane ideas, and 

 the other from economic promptings, were destined 

 to be arrayed against each other in a prolonged 

 struggle in which the higher principle would ulti- 

 mately prevail. 



