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Slavery Ordained of God

R >> Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D. >> Slavery Ordained of God




His self-control, in all these particulars, _from the beginning_, was
subordinate to the good of the family,--the empire. The command to Noah
was,--"Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed."
(Gen. ix. 6.)

This command to shed blood was, and is, in perfect harmony with the
law,--"Thou shalt not kill." There is nothing right or wrong in _the
taking of life_, per se, or in itself considered. It may or it may not be
a natural good or evil. As a _general fact_, the taking of life is a
natural evil. Hence, "Thou shalt not kill" is the general rule, to
preserve the good there is in life. To take life under the forbidden
conditions is sin, simply because God forbids it under those conditions.
The sin is not in taking life, but in transgressing God's law.

But _sometimes_ the taking of life will secure a greater good. God, then,
commands that life be taken. Not to take life, under the commanded
conditions, is sin,--solely because God then commands it.

This power over life, for the good of the one great family of man, God
_delegated_ to Noah, and through him to the tribe, the clan, the kingdom,
the empire, the democracy, the republic, as they may be governed by chief,
king, emperor, parliament, or congress. Had Ham killed Shem, Noah would
have commanded Japheth to slay him. So much for the origin of the power
over life: now for the power over liberty.

The right to take life included the right over liberty. But God intended
the rule of the superior over the inferior, in relations of service,
should _exemplify human depravity, his curse and his overruling blessing_.

The rule and the subordination which is essential to the existence of the
family, God made commensurate with mankind; for _mankind is only the
congeries of families_. When Ham, in his antediluvian recklessness,
laughed at his father, God took occasion to give to the world the rule of
the superior over the inferior. _He cursed him. He cursed him because he
left him unblessed_. The withholding of the father's blessing, in the
Bible, was curse. Hence Abraham prayed God, when Isaac was blessed, that
Ishmael might not be passed by. Hence Esau prayed his father, when Jacob
was blessed, that he might not be left untouched by his holy hands. Ham
was cursed to render service, forever, to Shem and Japheth. The _special_
curse on Canaan made the general curse on Ham conspicuous, historic, and
explanatory, simply because his descendants were to be brought under the
control of God's peculiar people. Shem was blessed to rule over Ham.
Japheth was blessed to rule over both. God sent Ham to Africa, Shem to
Asia, Japheth to Europe. Mr. Moderator, you have read Guyot's "_Earth and
Man_." That admirable book is a commentary upon this part of Genesis. It
is the philosophy of geography. And it is the philosophy of the rule of
the higher races over the inferior, written on the very face of the earth.
He tells you why the continents are shaped as they are shaped; why the
mountains stand where they stand; why the rivers run where they run; why
the currents of the sea and the air flow as they flow. And he tells you
that the earth south of the Equator makes the inferior man. That the
oceanic climate makes the inferior man in the Pacific Islands. That South
America makes the inferior man. That the solid, unindented Southern Africa
makes the inferior man. That the huge, heavy, massive, magnificent Asia
makes the huge, heavy, massive, magnificent man. That Europe, indented by
the sea on every side, with its varied scenery, and climate, and Northern
influences, makes the varied intellect, the versatile power and life and
action, of the master-man of the world. And it is so. Africa, with here
and there an exception, has never produced men to compare with the men of
Asia. For six thousand years, save the unintelligible stones of Egypt, she
has had no history. Asia has had her great men and her name. But Europe
has ever shown, and now, her nobler men and higher destiny. Japheth has
now come to North America, to give us his past greatness and his
transcendent glory. (Applause.) And, sir, I thank God our mountains stand
where they stand; and that our rivers run where they run. Thank God they
run not across longitudes, but across latitudes, from north to south. If
they crossed longitudes, we might fear for the Union. But I hail the
Union,--made by God, strong as the strength of our hills, and ever to live
and expand,--like the flow and swell of the current of our streams.
(Applause.)

These two theories of Right and Wrong,--these two ideas of human
liberty,--the right, in the nature of things, or the right as made by
God,--the liberty of the individual man, of Atheism, of Red Republicanism,
of the devil,--or the liberty of man, in the family, in the State, the
liberty from God,--these two theories now make the conflict of the world.
This anti-slavery battle is only part of the great struggle: God will be
victorious,--and we, in his might.

I now come to particular illustrations of the world-wide law that service
shall be rendered by the inferior to the superior. The relations in which
such service obtains are very many. Some of them are these:--husband and
wife; parent and child; teacher and scholar; commander and
soldier,--sailor; master and apprentice; master and hireling; master and
slave. Now, sir, all these relations are ordained of God. They are all
directly commanded, or they are the irresistible law of his providence, in
conditions which must come up in the progress of depraved nature. The
relations themselves are all good in certain conditions. And there may be
no more of evil in the lowest than in the highest. And there may be in the
lowest, as really as in the highest, the fulfilment of the commandment to
love thy neighbor as thyself, and of doing unto him whatsoever thou
wouldst have him to do unto thee.

Why, sir, the wife everywhere, except where Christianity has given her
elevation, is _the slave_. And, sir, I say, without fear of saying too
strongly, that for every sigh, every groan, every tear, every agony of
stripe or death, which has gone up to God from the relation of master and
slave, there have been more sighs, more groans, more tears, and more agony
in the rule of the husband over the wife. Sir, I have admitted, and do
again admit, without qualification, that every fact in Uncle Tom's Cabin
has occurred in the South. But, in reply, I say deliberately, what one of
your first men told me, that he who will make the horrid examination will
discover in New York City, in any number of years past, more cruelty from
husband to wife, parent to child, _than in all the South from master to
slave_ in the same time. I dare the investigation. And you may extend it
further, if you choose,--to all the results of honor and purity. I fear
nothing on this subject. I stand on rock,--the Bible,--and therefore, just
before I bring the Bible, to which all I have said is introductory, I will
run a parallel between the relation of master and slave and that of
husband and wife. I will say nothing of the grinding oppression of capital
upon labor, in the power of the master over the hireling--the crushed
peasant--the chain-harnessed coal-pit woman, a thousand feet under ground,
working in darkness, her child toiling by her side, and another child not
born; I will say nothing of the press-gang which fills the navy of
Britain--the conscription which makes the army of France--the terrible
floggings--the awful court-martial--the quick sentence--the
lightning-shot--the chain, and ball, and every-day lash--the punishment of
the soldier, sailor, slave, who had run away. I pass all this by: I will
run the parallel between the slave and wife.

Do you say, The slave is held to _involuntary service?_ So is the wife.
Her relation to her husband, in the immense majority of cases, is made for
her, and not by her. And when she makes it for herself, how often, and how
soon, does it become involuntary! How often, and how soon, would she
throw off the yoke if she could! O ye wives, I know how superior you are
to your husbands in many respects,--not only in personal attraction,
(although in that particular, comparison is out of place,) in grace, in
refined thought, in passive fortitude, in enduring love, and in a heart to
be filled with the spirit of heaven. Oh, I know all this. Nay, I know you
may surpass him in his own sphere of boasted prudence and worldly wisdom
about dollars and cents. Nevertheless, he has authority, from God, to rule
over you. You are under service to him. You are bound to obey him _in all
things_. Your service is very, very, very often involuntary from the
first, and, if voluntary at first, becomes hopeless necessity afterwards.
I know God has laid upon the husband to love you as Christ loved the
church, and in that sublime obligation has placed you in the light and
under the shadow of a love infinitely higher, and purer, and holier than
all talked about in the romances of chivalry. But the husband may not so
love you. He may rule you with the rod of iron. What can you do? Be
divorced? God forbids it, save for crime. Will you say that you are
free,--that you will go where you please, do as you please? Why, ye dear
wives, your husbands may forbid. And listen, you cannot leave New York,
nor your palaces, any more than your shanties. No; you cannot leave your
parlor, nor your bedchamber, nor your couch, if your husband commands you
to stay there! What can you do? Will you run away, with your stick and
your bundle? He can advertise you!! What can you do? You can, and I fear
some of you do, wish him, from the bottom of your hearts, at the bottom of
the Hudson. Or, in your self-will, you will do just as you please. (Great
laughter.)

[A word on the subject of divorce. One of your standing denunciations on
the South is the terrible laxity of the marriage vow among the slaves.
Well, sir, what does your Boston Dr. Nehemiah Adams say? He says, after
giving eighty, sixty, and the like number of applications for divorce, and
nearly all granted at individual quarterly courts in New England,--he says
he is not sure but that the marriage relation is as enduring among _the
slaves in the South_ as it is among white people in New England. I only
give what Dr. Adams says. I would fain vindicate the marriage relation
from this rebuke. But one thing I will say: you seldom hear of a divorce
in Virginia or South Carolina.]

But to proceed:--

Do you say the slave is _sold and bought?_ So is the wife the world over.
Everywhere, always, and now as the general fact, however done away or
modified by Christianity. The savage buys her. The barbarian buys her. The
Turk buys her. The Jew buys her. The Christian buys her,--Greek, Armenian,
Nestorian, Roman Catholic, Protestant. The Portuguese, the Spaniard, the
Italian, the German, the Russian, the Frenchman, the Englishman, the New
England man, the New Yorker,--especially the upper ten,--_buy the
wife_--in many, very many cases. She is seldom bought in the South, and
never among the slaves themselves; for they always marry for love.
(Continued laughter.) Sir, I say the wife is bought in the highest
circles, too often, as really as the slave is bought. Oh, she is not sold
and purchased in the public market. But come, sir, with me, and let us
take the privilege of spirits out of the body to glide into that gilded
saloon, or into that richly comfortable family room, of cabinets, and
pictures, and statuary: see the parties, there, to sell and buy that human
body and soul, and make her a chattel! See how they sit, and bend towards
each other, in earnest colloquy, on sofa of rosewood and satin,--_Turkey_
carpet (how befitting!) under feet, sunlight over head, softened through
stained windows: or it is night, and the gas is turned nearly off, and the
burners gleam like stars through the shadow from which the whisper is
heard, in which that old ugly brute, with gray goatee--how fragrant!--bids
one, two, five, ten hundred thousand dollars, and _she_ is knocked off to
him,--that beautiful young girl asleep up there, amid flowers, and
innocent that she is sold and bought. Sir, that young girl would as soon
permit a baboon to embrace her, as that old, ignorant, gross, disgusting
wretch to approach her. Ah, has she not been sold and bought for money?
But--But what? But, you say, she freely, and without parental authority,
accepted him. Then she sold herself for money, and was guilty of _that_
which is nothing better than legal prostitution. I know what I say; you
know what I say. Up there in the gallery you know: you nod to one another.
Ah! you know the parties. Yes, you say: All true, true, true. (Laughter.)

Now, Mr. Moderator, I will clinch all I have said by nails sure, and
fastened from the word of God.

There is King James's English Bible, with its magnificent dedication. I
bring the English acknowledged translation. And just one word more to
push gently aside--for I am a kind man to those poor, deluded anti-slavery
people--their last argument. It is _that_ this English Bible, in those
parts which treat of slavery, don't give the ideas which are found in the
original Hebrew and Greek. Alas for the common people!--alas for this good
old translation! Are its days numbered? No, sir; no, sir. The Unitarian,
the Universalist, the Arminian, the Baptist, when pressed by this
translation, have tried to find shelter for their false isms by making or
asking for a new rendering. And now the anti-slavery men are driving hard
at the same thing. (Laughter.) Sir, shall we permit our people everywhere
to have their confidence in this noble translation undermined and
destroyed by the isms and whims of every or any man in our pulpits? I
affirm, whatever be our perfect liberty of examination into God's meaning
in all the light of the original languages, that there is a respect due to
this received version, and that great caution should be used, lest we
teach the people to doubt its true rendering from the original word of
God. I protest, sir, against having a Doctor-of-Divinity _priest_, Hebrew
or Greek, to tell the people what God has spoken on the subject of
slavery or any other subject. (Laughter.) I would as soon have a Latin
priest,--I would as soon have Archbishop Hughes,--I would as soon go to
Rome as to Jerusalem or Athens,--I would as soon have the Pope at once in
his fallible infallibility,--as ten or twenty, little or big, anti-slavery
Doctor-of-Divinity priests, each claiming to give his infallible
rendering, however differing from his peer. (Laughter.) I never yet
produced this Bible, in its plain unanswerable authority, for the relation
of master and slave, but the anti-slavery man ran away into the fog of
_his_ Hebrew or Greek, (laughter,) or he jabbered the nonsense that God
permitted the _sin_ of slaveholding among the Jews, but that he don't do
it now! Sir, God sanctioned slavery then, and sanctions it now. He made it
right, they know, then and now. Having thus taken the last puff of wind
out of the sails of the anti-slavery phantom ship, turn to the
twenty-first chapter of Exodus, vs. 2-5. God, in these verses, gave the
Israelites his command how they should buy and hold the Hebrew
servant,--how, under certain conditions, he went free,--how, under other
circumstances, he might be held to service forever, with his wife and her
children. There it is. Don't run into the Hebrew. (Laughter.)

But what have we here?--vs. 7-11:--"And if a man sell his daughter to be a
maid-servant, she shall not go out as the men-servants do. If she please
not her master, who hath betrothed her to himself, then shall he let her
be redeemed: to sell her unto a strange nation he shall have no power,
seeing he hath dealt deceitfully with her. And if he hath betrothed her
unto his son, he shall deal with her after the manner of daughters. If he
take him another wife, her food, her raiment, and her duty of marriage
shall he not diminish. And if he do not these three unto her, then shall
she go out free without money." Now, sir, the wit of man can't dodge that
passage, unless he runs away into the Hebrew. (Great laughter.) For what
does God say? Why, this:--that an Israelite might sell his own daughter,
not only into servitude, but into polygamy,--that the buyer might, if he
pleased, give her to his son for a wife, or take her to himself. If he
took her to himself, and she did not please him, he should not sell her
unto a strange nation, but should allow her to be redeemed by her family.
But, if he took him another wife before he allowed the first one to be
redeemed, he should continue to give the first one _food_, her _raiment_,
and her _duty of marriage_; that is to say, _her right to his bed_. If he
did not do _these three things_, she should go out free; _i.e._ cease to
be his slave, without his receiving any money for her. There, sir, God
sanctioned the Israelite father in selling his daughter, and the Israelite
man to buy her, into slavery and into polygamy. And it was then right,
because God made it right. In verses 20 and 21, you have these
words:--"And if a man smite his servant or his maid with a rod, and he die
under his hand, he shall be surely punished; notwithstanding, if he
continue a day or two, he shall not be punished: for he is his money."
What does this passage mean? Surely this:--if the master gave his slave a
hasty blow with a rod, and he died under his hand, he should be punished.
But, if the slave lived a day or two, it would so extenuate the act of the
master he should not be punished, inasmuch as he would be in that case
sufficiently punished in losing his money in his slave. Now, sir, I affirm
that God was more lenient to the degraded Hebrew master than Southern laws
are to the higher Southern master in like cases. But there you have what
was the divine will. Find fault with God, ye anti-slavery men, if you
dare. In Leviticus, xxv. 44-46, "Both thy bondmen and thy bondmaids, which
thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them
shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids. Moreover, of the children of the
strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their
families that are with you, which they beget in your land: and they shall
be your possession. And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your
children after you, to inherit them for a possession; they shall be your
bondmen forever."

Sir, I do not see how God could tell us more plainly that he did command
his people to buy slaves from the heathen round about them, and from the
stranger, and of their families sojourning among them. The passage has no
other meaning. Did God merely permit sin?--did he merely tolerate a
dreadful evil? God does not say so anywhere. He gives his people law to
buy and hold slaves of the heathen forever, on certain conditions, and to
buy and hold Hebrew slaves in variously-modified particulars. Well, how
did the heathen, then, get slaves to sell? Did they capture them in
war?--did they sell their own children? Wherever they got them, they sold
them; and God's law gave his people the right to buy them.

God in the New Testament made no law prohibiting the relation of master
and slave. But he made law regulating the relation under Greek and Roman
slavery, which was the most oppressive in the world.

God saw that these regulations would ultimately remove the evils in the
Greek and Roman systems, and do it away entirely from the fitness of
things, as there existing; for Greek and Roman slaves, for the most part,
were the equals in all respects of their masters. Æsop was a slave;
Terence was a slave. The precepts in Colossians iv. 18, 23, 1 Tim. vi.
1-6, and other places, show, unanswerably, that God as really sanctioned
the relation of master and slave as those of husband and wife, and parent
and child; and that all the obligations of the moral law, and Christ's law
of love, might and must be as truly fulfilled in the one relation as in
the other. The fact that he has made the one set of relations permanent,
and the other more or less dependent on conditions of mankind, or to pass
away in the advancement of human progress, does not touch the question. He
sanctioned it under the Old Testament and the New, and ordains it now
while he sees it best to continue it, and he now, as heretofore, proclaims
the duty of the master and the slave. Dr. Parker's admirable explanation
of Colossians, and other New Testament passages, saves me the necessity of
saying any thing more on the Scripture argument.

One word on the Detroit resolutions, and I conclude. Those resolutions of
the Assembly of 1850 decide that slavery is sin, unless the master holds
his slave as a guardian, or under the claims of humanity.

Mr. Moderator, I think we had on this floor, yesterday, proof conclusive
that those resolutions mean any thing or nothing; that they are a fine
specimen of Northern skill in platform-making; that it put in a plank
here, to please this man,--a plank there, to please that man,--a plank for
the North, a broad board for the South. It is Jackson's judicious tariff.
It is a gum-elastic conscience, stretched now to a charity covering all
the multitude of our Southern sins, contracted now, giving us hardly a
fig-leaf of righteousness. It is a bowl of punch,--

A little sugar to make it sweet,
A little lemon to make it sour,
A little water to make it weak,
A little brandy to give it power. (Laughter.)

As a Northern argument against us, it is a mass of lead so heavy that it
weighed down even the strong shoulders of Judge Jessup. For, sir, when he
closed his speech, I asked him a single question I had made ready for him.
It was this:--"Do you allow that Mr. Aiken, of South Carolina, may, under
the claims of humanity, hold three thousand slaves, or must he emancipate
them?" The Judge staggered, and stammered, and said, "No man could rightly
hold so many." I then asked, "How many may he hold, in humanity?" The
Judge saw his fatal dilemma. He recovered himself handsomely, and fairly
said, "Mr. Aiken might hold three thousand slaves, in harmony with the
Detroit action." I replied, "Then, sir, you have surrendered the whole
question of Southern slavery." And, sir, the Judge looked as if he felt he
had surrendered it. And every man in this house, capable of understanding
the force of that question, felt it had shivered the whole anti-slavery
argument, on those resolutions, to atoms. Why, sir, if a man can hold
three slaves, with a right heart and the approbation of God, he may hold
thirty, three hundred, three thousand, or thirty thousand. It is a mere
question of heart, and capacity to govern. The Emperor of Russia holds
sixty millions of slaves: and is there a man in this house so much of a
fool as to say that God regards the Emperor of Russia a sinner because he
is the master of sixty millions of slaves? Sir, that Emperor has certainly
a high and awful responsibility upon him. But, if he is good as he is
great, he is a god of benevolence on earth. And so is every Southern
master. His obligation is high, and great, and glorious. It is the same
obligation, in kind, he is under to his wife and children, and in some
respects immensely higher, by reason of the number and the tremendous
interests involved for time and eternity in connection with this great
country, Africa, and the world. Yes, sir, _I know_, whether Southern
masters fully know it or not, that _they hold from God_, individually and
collectively, _the highest and the noblest responsibility ever given by
Him to individual private men on all the face of the earth._ For God has
intrusted to them to train millions of the most degraded in form and
intellect, but, at the same time, the most gentle, the most amiable, the
most affectionate, the most imitative, the most susceptible of social and
religious love, of all the races of mankind,--to train them, and to give
them civilization, and the light and the life of the gospel of Jesus
Christ. And I thank God he has given this great work to that type of the
noble family of Japheth best qualified to do it,--to the Cavalier
stock,--the gentleman and the lady of England and France, born to command,
and softened and refined under our Southern sky. May they know and feel
and fulfil their destiny! Oh, may they "know that they also have a Master
in heaven."




Letter from Dr. Ross.



I need only say, in reference to this letter, that my friends
having questioned my position as to the good of the agitation, I
wrote the following letter to vindicate that point, as given, in
the New York speech:--

HUNTSVILLE, ALA., July 14, 1856.

_Brother Blackburn_:--I affirmed, in my New York speech, that the Slavery
agitation has done, and will accomplish, good.

Your very kind and courteous disagreement on that point I will make the
occasion to say something more thereon, without wishing you, my dear
friend, to regard what I write as inviting any discussion.

I said _that_ agitation has brought out, and would reveal still more
fully, the Bible, in its relation to slavery and liberty,--also the
infidelity which long has been, and is now, leavening with death the whole
Northern mind. And that it would result in the triumph of the _true_
Southern interpretation of the Bible; to the honor of God, and to the
good of the master, the slave, the stability of the Union, and be a
blessing to the world. To accomplish this, the sin _per se_ doctrine will
be utterly demolished. That doctrine is the difficulty in every _Northern
mind,_ (where there is any difficulty about slavery,) whether they confess
it or not. Yes, the difficulty with every Northern man is, that _the
relation of_ master and slave is felt _to be_ sin. I know that to be the
fact. I have talked with all grades of Northern men, and come in contact
with all varieties of Northern mind on this subject. And I know that the
man who says and tries to believe, and does, partially in sober judgment,
believe, that slavery is not sin, yet, _in his feelings, in his educated
prejudices_, he feels that slavery is sin.

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