The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1856-06-12

possession of by finding Otherwise is the acquremen
and possession of the slave cannot take prop
| cry by descent or purchase
4. Their persons are without the laws protec-
tlon; and they are in general subjected to any
treatment dictated by the interests or passions
of the possessor. This subsection has been Of
late modified by enactments against willful muir
der, Assault with intent to murder, and in some
States are found regulations as to food and gross
abuse But the legal disabilities of the slave are
such, that these provisions of necessity at the
masters discretion and the essential character OF
| Slavery justifes the master, or temporary pos
SCISSOR, in the of any force he may deem
necessary to induce absolute subsection, even
though life be taken. The case is clearly put by
Judge Rufin, of North Carolina, in the State rs.
Mann, Devereux, 263, when he decided that
the hirer of save-woman who refused to sub
| NIT to fogging might lawfully shoot at and
| wound her; and the court declared that the power
of the master must be absolute; that, though con-
| trary to moral right, this discipline belongs to a
state of Slavery, and is inherent in the relation
of master and slave and adds
/ ave cannot allow the right of n master to be brought
into disc in a justice The slave remain
a slave be made sensible that there is appeal
from his MASTER that his person is IN no instance usurp
| ed" &c.
speak not of those refnements of American
Slavery-forbidding letters forbidding honorable
| employment, forbidding assemblies, forbidding
locomotion, forbidding emancipation and for
bidding even to the dominant class freedom OF
speech; they but its incidents and tributes to
the rebellion of nature against its enormities.
| INFLUENCE SLAVERY.
But perhaps the influence of these provisions,
| at least upon the dominant class, is benign per-
| haps laws have ceased to react upon character (;
perhaps human nature is changed that the
denial of the sanctions of marriage to servants,
| though a majority of the people, while character
/ is to them valueess, and sef-defence denied
guards the decencies of life perhaps, for the
commerce Of civilized nations, the substitution of
traffic in their sons and daughters develops the
resources and increases the industry and dignity
of States; perhaps absolute power generates the
milder virtues, exalts the sense of justice, and
promotes habits of self-control Let US see.
Such is the natural aptitude of the negro to
improvement, that, unless in the heavy planting
regions, in spite of the laws, he may make some
progress. But Slavery brings him into an unnat-
ural contact with the white man, and how does
that contact affect the latter? We sometimes
hear of the tendencies of nature towards an equi-
librum are the negros wrongs avenged by this
tendency? | would not intimate that the white
race is necessarily degraded by contact with the
black; that would depend entirely upon the
character of the contact-upon the sentiments or
passions developed by it. He who seeks the
elevation of the low, himself is elevated; while
he who would keep them down, himself sinks.
Sucn Is universal law anu the now
is, whether that law is suspended in favor of Sla-
very; whether the general influence upon the
dominant race, of class oppression vindicates
justice? We are told, that what a man soweth,
that shall he reap;" and Jefferson, speaking of
the surroundings of Slavery, from its midst says:
"The man must be a prodigy who retain his
manners and morals undepraved by such circum-
stances" Whatever elevation or excellence Of
individual character there may be, and no man
mo those
than do 1, the general influence of Slavery upon
the country and the white masses is visible to
the most superficial observer. 1t is seen in the
perverson of Christianity; in the degradation OF
labor; in the blighting of the soil in the thrift
less Incidence of the masses, and their consequent
ignorance and poverty; in their subsection to the
adverse interests of privileged class; in the
part-coored complexion of the denizens of kitch-
en-, plantation, and slave pen; in the supremacy
of force over law; in the reckessness of life; in
the almost total subversion OF that freedom of
thought and freedom of speech and the press,
the essential attendant, and among the chief ends
all free Governments and in that lowest of all
results of wrongdoing, such a loss of the moral
sense as to blind the wrong-doer to the charac-
ter Of his acts; all which are witnessed in such
large portions of the country, and in proportion
to the predominance of Slavery and the slave
spirit. ] am happy to know that these influences
not yet universal and complete, for in no
State is free labor yet entirely supplanted
These illusions to the character and influence
Of slave laws are necessarily very brief-full
fidelity would require volumes-yet they ex-
ceedingly painful. would gladly forget that our
country is so dishonored and worst of all, that
men will glory in their shame. But the extern
sionists and their President have forced the dis
cuSsion upon us, and have never learned to let
squeamishness stand in the way of duty.
ORIGIN OF SLAVERY.
But perhaps the origin Of the slave code will
inspire reverence. Whence, then, came the anom-
ally? Did the grim form spring, full grown and
armed, from the western wave2 Or did it skulk
in the hold the coonist left the homeland, and
follow him with his other household gods? Or is
the homogeneous thing an exotic? 1t may seem
idle to look back in our struggles with the present;
but to me, in the onward traverse, ever looking
back, but for line, having more faith in syllo-
gisms merely, in law and politics, than in philos-
ophy, guiding my feet alone by the instincts of
justice and the clamp of experience" the origin
of system OF government, or system of laws,
and its effect where indigenous, possesses great
signiicance and, besides, have become sick of
hearing the antiquity of Slavery of the slavehold-
ing habits of patriarchs and philosophers. Ihave
no doubt that the saveholding spirit is as old as
sin, and that Cain. would have enslaved Abel if
that would have better gratfed his passions; but
do not mean that African Slavery, ancient though
Il
stolen crest
Not from the Common Lac
The American slave code was not derived from
the English common law. 1t is wholly unlike
| common-law villanage-the only English servi-
tude. The marriage of villain was as valid as
that Of his lord, and both were consecrated by
| the same sacrament. Like other hereditary con-
ditions, that of the father followed the offspring
| contracts with villains were lawful and caused
| their liberation; the bastard was presumed to be
begotten by freeman, and was free. Villains
regardent were attached to the SOIL and protected
in their homesteads as in their family relations
The number of villains in gross was always
small, and no evidence is found of their existence
in England for centuries before the settlement of
Virginia; and even the mildest form of serfdom
had faded before the progress of the common law
| and the influence of religion. not yet the ally of
oppression Besides, the courts OF Westminster
have often decided that colonial slavery was
never lawful in England. The celebrated Som
| ersett case, and the case of Forbes rs Chochean
| q Barn & Cres., 1867 conclusive. But in
| the absence of these decisions where is the evil
| dence that chattel slavery was ever lawful in
| England? Dig up the records and give us the
proof Surely such custom could not have
| existed for centuries, " from the time when the
memory of man runneth not to The contrary there
| OF, and baron and peasant, and bench and bar
| be Ignorant OF Its existence. And besides every
maxim of the common law breathes Justice and
| its whole machinery is contrived to guard rights
not to intensity wrongs. 1t had excrescences,
but none like Slavery. Whatever of political
privilege or personal security the Briton enjoys
beyond the Russian, the citizen of Ohio beyond
| the Mexican, they owe to the successful contests
| of the Anglo-Saxon with the enemies of the COM
mon law. Let it never be cited in favor of any
form of oppression.
The gentleman from Georgia labors with some
plausibity to trace the right to property in man