E 449 
 .R72 
 Copy 1 
 
LETTERS 
 
 S L A Y E R Y, 
 
 ADDRESSED TO THE 
 
 PRO-SLAVERY MEN OF AMERICA; 
 
 SnOWIXG ITS 
 
 |lle§aiiti) iii all %pB m^n |Iiittons 
 
 ITS 
 
 DESTRUCTIVE WAR UPON SOCIETY AND GOVERNMENT, 
 MORALS AND RELIGION. 
 
 •z 
 
 By 0. S. FREEMAN. 
 
 " Whatever dishonors human nature, dishonors the policy of a government 
 that permits it."— Lord Lyttleton's History of Henry II. 
 
 .^^ 
 
 hS 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 
 BELA MARSH, 15 FRANKLIN STRETT 
 
 1855. 
 
[From the Christian Freeman.] 
 It has no waste words. Every family in the United 
 States should read it ; and all professional men, and men 
 taking an active interest in the subject, should possess it 
 as a l)ook of reference. 
 
 [From the South Boston Gazette.] 
 This is a remarkable pamphlet. It is remarkable for 
 the condeii.-^ation of a mass of truths in a small compass, 
 which might reasonably be spread over a much larger 
 space. Malf.7/m in parvo might approfiriately be stamped 
 upon its title-}>age. Friends of the rights of man, and be- 
 lievers in the Higher-law doctrine, should read this pam- 
 phlet, and give it an extensive circulation. 
 
 I From tlie Cambridge Chronicle.] 
 The Jwork deserves to be read by all who are interested 
 in a subject of such vital importance. 
 
 [From Zioii's Heraid and .Journal.] 
 
 This pamphlet is elaborately written, and must have 
 cost its wiiter immense pains. AYe commend it to the 
 attention nt' pro-slavery men both in church and state. 
 [From the New England Spiritualist.] 
 
 The work displays gieat erudition and vast research ; its 
 style, is exceedingly condensed, and it will form an armory 
 ot weapons for the use of all wno are battling for human 
 freedom, whether physical, mentul, or spiritual. 
 
 I From tiie Li'nerator. | 
 
 It eulbodic^^ much historical intelligence on the subject 
 of slavery, a strong array of authorities against the folly 
 and wickedness of attempting through legislation and com- 
 pacts to nullily the 'higher law,' and a lucid argument to 
 show that the ]»ro-slavery spirit of tlie day is identical with 
 ancient toryism. in its impudent assumptions, its method 
 of reasoning, and its denial of human (Mjuality. It indi- 
 cates laborious research, and a diligent examination of the 
 whole subject. We commend it to the attention of all. 
 
 [From Hon. <ierrit Smith, to the Auth<)r.] 
 Sir : — " I have this moment finished reading your ' Let- 
 ters on Slavery.' It is the best book I ever saw in proof 
 of the impossibility of legaliza)g slavery. The friends of 
 freedom and of true civil government owe you a great 
 debt." 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The original plan of the author was the preparation of a 
 larger work than the present, on the subject-matter in 
 hand. The vast accumulation of materials, after a long 
 course of investigation, convinced him that that would be 
 very cumbersome, and satisfy but a few. The state of the 
 public mind demanded something that any man could buy 
 and read of an evening. And yet, the subject demanded 
 that critical minds should be supplied with sufficient au- 
 thorities on the points handled. Not only the common 
 reader, then, was to be supplied, but lawyers, clergymen, 
 statesmen, politicians, and reformers. 
 
 To effect this, the author has reduced a work of more 
 than one thousand pages to the present form, which every 
 man, however poor, can purchase, and which the states- 
 man may carry in his pocket. 
 
 This volume, then, is for the whole people, though ad- 
 dressed as letters to a particular class. The author has 
 chosen this method — that of letters addressed to pro-slave- 
 ry men — for reasons which will appear obvious to the 
 reader as ho passes along. 
 
 The time has come when every lover of his country and 
 of humanity should understand the true basis of civil asso- 
 ciation and government. He should know what slavery 
 has done, and is doing, by an inevitable law of nature, to 
 destroy free institutions, and convert society into a chaos. 
 
IV PREFACE. 
 
 He sliould be able to see at a glance the tendency of every 
 measure of government that is suicidal to the State. His 
 soul should be aroused by the example of past times ; his mind 
 fortified with those absolute principles of right which the 
 Almighty has developed in the history of all nations. And, 
 feeling the ground of righteous law to be indeed the rock 
 of eternal ages, he should stand upon that, fearless and firm, 
 making no compromise with wrong ; but openly, honorably, 
 fearlessly, and with well-directed power, strike down the 
 evils that make war upon the " rights of human nature." 
 
 To furnish every American — every man, indeed, who 
 cares for the right — with a good armory and a well-stored 
 magazine, accumulated from the good and great of all na- 
 tions and ages, that every one may choose what best fits 
 him in the great contest upon which we have now entered, 
 is the purpose of this volume. 
 
 The author has endeavored to furnish in marginal refer- 
 ences all that the most inquisitive could desire, or the 
 greatest sticklers for authority could wish. Errors may 
 have crept into this department, in the typographical exe- 
 cution, which future editions will correct. The true critic 
 will have charity. 
 
LETTERS ON SLAVERY. 
 
 LETTER I. 
 
 Man is the same in every age, in every clime. He may 
 differ in certain phenomenal respects, under the physical 
 influences of locality, and the modifying phiy of native in- 
 stitutions; yet, in no respect, are the fundamental principles 
 which constitute him man, altered or annuled. All that he 
 has been, all that he is, all that he can be, lie infolded as 
 capacity, as capability, as potential power, as much in one 
 man as in another. Not that all are equal poets, or phi- 
 losophers, or mechanics. But all possess the essential ele- 
 ments of humoMiy, so that no one can be declared, a priori. 
 incapable of any particular human development. One 
 specimen of a man among the Africans is enough to prove 
 the title of his race to manhood ; otherwise idiots and fools 
 in other races might overbalance the evidence in their 
 favor. 
 
 All that any member of humanity may be, as a man, he 
 has the right to become. All that the most favorable cir- 
 cumstances can aid him in becoming' as a man, he has the 
 rights as a man, to seek and appropriate, providing he 
 pushes no of uelse from his equal right. To suppose God 
 has created afty rational capacity, without giving the right 
 of its proper development, is equivalent to the suppositicn 
 there is no God. There is no God who is not consistent WxtL 
 himself. You must either deny that Jehovah has created 
 those you enslave, men, or you must allow them the rights 
 of men, else you deny the supreme right of Divinity to 
 command you to deal justly. Your position involves athe- 
 ism — a crime against reason, justice, JDivinity. 
 1* 
 
O LETTERS TO 
 
 All that is righteous within reach of any human being, 
 by virtue of .power conferred by the Almighty, any man 
 has a Divine charter of rights for attaining, without asking 
 consent of any human corporation. Nor has any body of 
 men, be they King, Lords and Commons, or President, 
 Congress, or the nation, the right, or authority to push him 
 aside, much less to make him a slave. His Divine title 
 holds good against all the powers of earth and hell. Their 
 attempt to defeat him is war de facto against Eternal Jus- 
 tice. Nor is this all. The war against the just right of 
 one man is waged against the equal right of all. Claim 
 the right to make a slave of one man, you deny your own 
 right to freedom. If you may make a beast of him, he 
 may make a beast of you. In making a beast of him you 
 make a beast of yourself. 
 
 Man was made before society. Society can have no 
 right that man has not allowed it. He cannot delegate to 
 society what he has no right to allow to himself. He lias no 
 right to enslave another ; society can have no such right ; 
 society cannot guarantee a right that is wrong. The rights 
 of society are the aggregation of individual rights. Every 
 man may protect the just claims of himself and his brother. 
 Society has the right to protect the just claims of all. 
 Nay, further : Men associate and organize for rational pur- 
 poses. The principal purpose, the grand aim, is protection 
 of human rights. Power is conferred upon government for 
 this sole purpose. No man enters society to be a slave, 
 but that he may have his just claims protected, by the su- 
 preme power of it, in case any member, or body of its 
 members, attempt to rob him. Can the supreme power 
 side with the robbers ? Not by any riyht it possesses ; not 
 without opposing its own right of authority. ts authority 
 was given to do justice, and that alone. To side with the 
 aggressive power, with the robber, the oppressor, is abro- 
 gation of its authority, an abandonment of government, an 
 assumption of despotism. From a protector of human 
 rights it becomes their sworn enemy. It turns its sword 
 upon society and hews it in pieces. 
 
 Justice existed before the forvis of government. It is 
 .the law of one man, the law of every man, the law of 
 
ike govCTiuftents. sad scci^nemiiieiiis mie ifar scistitj b j aa- 
 ifcifrfty of the . Th^ ls hgc zrnrermzLtsic 
 
 £sir for mas. that is oisfe as gjaod. &r ine aa^ S}r anii&or. 
 
 Cr " rt is 
 
 ¥j - - - _ - ^ jftTHia 
 
 if' any- laaa,'^ it is "-a taror to erz? -ioers^"' hoc ta ^ tkase 
 
 ■EL : :__^J I JLOBSaB. 
 
 senses, but by its "j^-e -itiinK cc fcacws no liifersBee 
 
 l^ .' " . - ^ 
 
 _ _ _ ^ -_ _: :-3 mii 
 
 : isaes Iiave- always - : i chfi -3p 
 
 _:5v iave ieaieii Z!i^v hanre 
 
 Where is tke aaEMa wiiose buscary : gfiaT tiiac fts 
 
 finudaixLaitai law is ■ - ' jz 
 
 ksw Rodees db[& aatiozE^ ss ux lii7~ is t^ 
 
 ■■ML For w&fseiner ia^ its 
 
 lutve b«eiE at- -iniples 
 
 soctetj. Tker toilowed cae >" imads. aectLeti wici sofi 
 
 TOO stole 
 - - - ^ :^ce of difi 
 
 fK^'oets «t' bjs tQiIs. Wiiea men a^seiiiDied m lilies, ihn 
 ^bSbi ' - ^ II m — ptoteetrr. - -« -jji ia^ 
 
 ■aa -.':a die ^oiL? .^:n. rf^blB. 
 
 S<K was :se iiL«:aicer5 diia.bed into : - .c sot- 
 
 •cmffient ^ ^ " fered to pr:ce'- 
 
 nfebery. - -'in llis jt:jj.:zi:u- 
 
 kii birtiu V : : :s kjpoerisT. ami wiicse 
 
8 LETTERS TO 
 
 government being impossible, they can only expect a little 
 right and a great deal of wrong. But, say they, "As we 
 are the friends of right, we will very cheerfully aid the 
 dear people as well as circumstances will allow." 
 " We are pi'octical men," say these demagog-ues ; " we do, 
 while others think, and dream, and philosophise." Yes, 
 gentlemen, you do, for ever do for yourselves, while the 
 dear people delegate you to act for them. They send you 
 to restore right, to root up the poisonous weeds of the civil 
 garden. You return to them, having plucked the flowers 
 for the adornment of your own persons. 
 
 We have boasted that the American governments are 
 founded upon principles new to the world. It has become 
 a fashionable saying with some that the good whig fathers 
 were the first who said, ^'- oilmen are horn free and equal ;^'' 
 as if mankind had lived thousands of years in ignorance of 
 a self evident principle of their own natui*e. The truth is, 
 it was known and declared more than a thousand years be- 
 fore America was dreamed of by its discoverer. Nor is 
 this all. The same fundamental principles of the Ameri- 
 can constitutions were ever recognized as the only legiti- 
 mate principles of government. We have only a variation 
 of form. While the form has changed in every age, the 
 principles of society have ever been permanent. 
 
 It would be an easy, and, withal, a profitable task, to 
 show the exact likeness — the identity of the primary prin- 
 ciples — of American state constitutions with those of all 
 nations. Easy, I say, in respect to the fact, aside from 
 the labor of collecting the materials necessary to its elu- 
 cidation. The evidence on this head demonstrates that 
 slavery cannot, by any possibility, be recognized by legiti- 
 mate, but only by a bastard government, a system of tyr- 
 anny. Let us try this in a small way, for I cannot expa- 
 tiate at large. 
 
 Seneca atfirms that " the strength which individual man 
 wants without society, he finds when united with his fellows 
 as equals.''^ Upon what principle could slavery enter into 
 such a social compact ? Upon what principle could any 
 
 * 1 Senec. de Benef., 1. 4. c. 18. 
 
FBOSLATERT ME^. 9 
 
 member claim that superiority •which woald entitle him to 
 be the arbitrary lord of others ? In what way could he 
 appropriate the fniits of any other's labors, without his 
 consent, and without a fair equivalent, to say nothing of 
 making his brother a chattel ? Yet you. sirs, contciid thai 
 the slaves of America stre " member? of society,'' and, in 
 the same breath, that the members of society, in respect to 
 their rights, are not equal ; you therefore oppose the foi>- 
 damental principles of legitimate society, and introduce z 
 l^astard system, that will allow of lordship, kingship, mas- 
 tership, slavery. 
 
 Even Aristotle, though a Grecian aristocrat, a despiser 
 of the humanity of all other nations as barbarous, fit only 
 to be enslaved by the lordly Greeks, yet acknowledged 
 that the law of human equality was the only legitimate ba- 
 sis of society, rendering slavery unjust and inadmissable. 
 " It is neither for the good, nor is it just," says he, •' see- 
 ing all men are by Tiature alike and equal, that one should 
 be lord and master over others where there is no law. nor 
 is it for the public good, nor just that one man should be 
 a law to the rest, where there are laws ; nor that any one. 
 liiough a good man, should be lord over other good men, 
 nor a bad man over bad men,''*= 
 
 Could the fundamental principle of every &ee American 
 constitution be more clearly ez '\. It was not for the 
 
 good of Greece that her auth'i . .Ijwai a large portion 
 
 of the community to be excluded from her protection, and, 
 contrary to the law of social organization, be held the ab- 
 solute slaves of a privileged order. This was allowing a 
 state of war de jure in the body politic, wtd:-h could not be 
 prevented firom becoming a war de facto to the destruction 
 of the commonwealth. It was allowing zs paramount the 
 partial and unjust claims of a select class in a commu- 
 nity that c-ould have no stability, no existence, in fact, 
 without the actual, the decided recognition of that uniyer- 
 sal law, that guarantees to all men equal rights and denies 
 to any, counter claims. It was allowing pirates and rob- 
 bers a licen,5e to trample upon those fandamenral and 
 
 Pol., lib. 3. See Miltoa's Defence of th.e People of Englini. 
 
10 LETTERS TO 
 
 eternal principles, the sacred regard of which, alone, on the 
 part of government, preserves society from becoming the 
 certain prey of impious men. It vras breaking down the 
 only guards and fences which the Almighty has placed 
 around freedom, and allowing the wolves and bears of so- 
 ciety to enter and devour the weak and the defenceless. It 
 was casting the social superstructure from the immoviible 
 rock of absolute justice, and founding it upon the quick- 
 sands of passion and lust — the sensuous power of lawless 
 tyrants. It was entering into a war de jure et de factp 
 against the ordinances of nature and the judgment of 
 heaven, and was certain to be rigorously punished with 
 the total ruin of the state. 
 
 The best minds and hearts of Greece saw and felt this ; 
 and they raised their voice against slavery. They denied 
 the justice of the claim of any, upon the involuntary and 
 unrequited services of unfortunate men. " Equal law was 
 the decree of the gods. Jove created none to tyrannize 
 over others. All men had descended from the gods with 
 the same natures, the same liberties, the same rights. They 
 had sent heroes to exterminate tyrants and monsters who 
 preyed upon human society." They delighted in the lib- 
 erty of mankind : they had given freedom as a sacred 
 birth-right of all — had written it upon the soul of the 
 poorest and the weakest as a divine diploma which no ty- 
 rants could efface.^ " Tyranny," said Aristotle, <' is 
 against the law of nature."! Euripides, in his play called 
 " The Suppliant," introduces Theseus, King of Athens, as 
 saying, " I have advanced the people themselves into the 
 throne, having freed the city from slavery, and admitted 
 the people to a share in the government, by giving them an 
 equal right of suffrage. ""X 
 
 So slavery was declared to be contrary to the Grecian 
 constitution, by some of the most eminent among the 
 Greeks.^ Nor could it be regarded by Socrates in any 
 
 * Arist. Tol., 1. 1, c. 3.— Plato. De Leg., ]. 9, p. G60.— Cudworth, b. 
 1, c. 5.— Plato in his Eighth Epist. — Isocrat. Orat. de Permutat. 
 t Pol., 1. 3, c. 12. 
 
 \ As quoted by Milton, in his Defence of the People of England. 
 k Thucyd., I. 4. c 80. 
 
PRO-SLAVERY MEN. 11 
 
 other light than as a system of robbery.^ It was at war 
 with society. It could not be sustained without force, 
 contrary to right. It was acknowledged that before men 
 made war upon one another shwery had no existence ; that, 
 rightfully, every man was by nature free, and had a right 
 to defend his freedom against all force to subject him to 
 bondage.! Indeed, this was honorable, said the Greeks ; 
 " it is noble," said Cjtus, " to fight, in order not to be 
 made a slave."t Nor can there be found a singrle dissent- 
 ing voice among the best Greek authors on this point. 
 
 Yet it was held the moment a man was conquered by 
 another he lost his title to manhood and became the abso- 
 lute slave of the conqueror. It mattered not how distin- 
 guished the captive had been, nor how honorable. The 
 slavery of the captive was the reward of valor, prowess, 
 and strategem — thus wholly excluding the law of absolute 
 right, the law of society. Force without law begat slave- 
 ry, and only force without law could sustain it. But force 
 without law was at irreconcilable warfare with the rights 
 of mankind and the principles of society. Therefore, slav- 
 ery could never be incorporated into society. It could 
 only be introduced as its enomy. It could only be at- 
 tached to society as a sinking weight that would drao- it 
 under the waves. The captive, the slave, was the natural 
 enemy of his oppressor, and of all who took sides with the 
 tyrant against him. Greece was in almost a constant state 
 of civil warfare after the establishment of slavery. The 
 principles of the constitution were disregarded. One state 
 made war upon another as a band of robbers. Greek en- 
 slaved Greek. Justice and equity fled. Policy and 
 stratagem, bribery and corruption, force and slavery, an- 
 archy and dissolution, took the place of humanity, justice, 
 virtue, unity, and peace. 
 
 * Xen. Mem., 1. 4, c. 2. 
 
 t Xen. Cyrop., 1. 3, § 2. 
 
 i Ibid. '• Ai the second period the Athenian citizens were 21,000," 
 " while the slaves numbered 400,000." [Mitford, vol. 1, pp. 354, 355.] 
 Who cm wonder that Greece fell. 
 
 Tradition, in the age of Herodotus, presei^ved the memory of a time 
 when slavery was unknown in Gre^ce. Herodot , 1. 6, p 137 Sparta, 
 as a band of robbers, made war upon Helos, and reductd all tiie people 
 to perpetual slavery. 
 
12 LETTERS TO 
 
 Yet you, sirs, advocate this as a worthy example for 
 America to follow. You would have us all slaveholders. 
 You would have us turn robbers, pirates, tyrants. You 
 would drive justice from the laud, liberty from the state, 
 religion from the temple, and God from our souls. An- 
 tiquity enroled Hercules amongst the gods, because he 
 punished Busiris, Diomedes, and other tyrants — the pests 
 of mankind and monsters of the world. ^ '• We have all 
 our beast within us," .said Aristotle,! '• and whoever is gov- 
 erne<i by a man without justice and law, is governed by a 
 man and by a beast.'' 
 
 It was seen by Plato that slavery segregated and de- 
 stroyed Grecian society. It was partial to the claims of 
 injustice as right ;% favored the few in the robbery of the 
 many ; destroyed the honor of free labor ; drove the virtue 
 of humanity out of the hearts of the people ; made them 
 venal, sensuous, fraudulent ; while it exalted the power of 
 unprincipled slaveholders, made them over-reaching, proud, 
 domineering, the sworn enemies of society, and the found- 
 ers of the most despicable of all tyrannies — an oligarchal 
 despotism in the name of democracy. 
 
 Yet you point to the ancients, and say, •' Slavery always 
 existed. It was recognized in the republics of Greece." 
 Ah, yes ! Always recognized by tyrants, and by those 
 whom slavery had so much degraded as to render unfit and 
 despicable as the interpreters of law. Remember, sirs, 
 who trampled upon the liberties of Greece ; who were left 
 to wander amid her ruins ; whose careless feet kicked the 
 bleached skulls of tyrants and slavemasters. Go, sirs, 
 and interrogate those classic remains ! Call up the spirits 
 of the ancient dead I Ask, why these solemn ruins ? Why 
 this lonely desolation ? Why has fled society, and left the 
 owl and the bat, the serpent and the wolf, to people the 
 palaces and temples of the classic land ? From out the 
 depth of old ruins shall come the answer, These are the 
 works of masters and of slaves. 
 
 There \< but one foundation for society, that is, absolute 
 
 * Judsrr.en- of Whole Kiagdom.? and Nations, par. 32. 
 t PoL, 1 3, c. 11. 
 t Plato de Leg., 1. 9. 
 
right — as solid and fmmoT-/ ' ^ - -^— •--- ~^ -^ t - - -- --- - -^ 
 
 for all hf^-ll can't ^•rsvail a_ . rr 
 
 fo': '" Drefer m . •:- 
 
 the or. 
 
 of their owri Slavery. To — moa 
 
 to ■'"' "-^ "1 are not the fiiii-^_^-^:^± j_- -- is 
 
 in. Yet ynrr. «ir«. are forced " 
 
 seLve* ia that m: ama, of ei" j that 
 
 society has im- — — ^^ , - - - . . .-. .^.^ 
 
 L3 equal law c : _ . ~- 
 
 emment and reguiatioa or meiLa iives m : ' ;■ one 
 
 another as brethren, or yon musty in j--' • ^ — . i 
 
 slavery, a'linit that yon have tLLmeii r . :i 
 
 Justice, and have joined the enemy of aii manid- 
 jec"' "" :: '/^^anity to beastly servitude. Ti — -...in. 
 
 is -. i in the extreme. Open reb-;.. . •: -he 
 
 govermiien: of Heaven is more than any ham . -• 
 
 d&c Christian light, would be willing to dr.— .-. j.':«i 
 mast then, c-onfess yotirselves hung npon the other horn. 
 YotL mtist confess that jou wholly deny that the Almighty 
 is infinitely just, and has establishes! '•: -• ■ - ^ -' :-cnial 
 mle of society : that, there being no - r' .lal 
 
 reguLition of the c-ondact of men in respect to e. ?. 
 
 there is no wrong in one in:'ii robbing and >-_:-^-.:j.g 
 another. 
 
 This was the position which the pre- :i 
 
 Greece were force^i to take.* For it was _ _- . ^ .^e 
 
 sight of the Grecians to declare war with :eme 
 
 Deity as it wotild be now. It was e • - and 
 
 robbers then, as now, to create donbt : _..r .. inany 
 
 that the eternal jtLstic-e was the imm . ir of society. 
 
 It was ' J to the seli nien. 
 
 to sop !-^:. ....... .^. -...:..i and drow^^ :_-. .--.. .: con- 
 
 seienc-e, and uDon the rains of fiith in right boild a system 
 of rubber" ' '^m. 
 
 These Lt. _ : . _. ^sts who snpportai slavery said, as 
 
 an 
 so. 
 
14 LETTERS TO 
 
 you sa}^, " Slavery has always existed somev/liere ; nothing 
 is that the gods have not created ; therefore slavery is a 
 divine institution." So every open robber and pirate reas- 
 oned. The filthy debauchee used the same arguments. 
 
 Thus the same arguments you are forced to use in sup- 
 port of slavery and robbery, the corrupting sophists of 
 Greece resorted to in justification, not only of slavery, but 
 of all the crimes in the calendar. Is it a wonder, then 
 that Greece fell ? Once destroy faith in the principle by 
 which one criminal action is made to be criminal, and you 
 have mined away the whole foundation of moral rectitude. 
 Then you may enact that virtue itself shall be a crime. 
 
PRO-SLAYERY MEN. 15 
 
 LETTEE II. 
 
 What nation was ever destroyed by the equity and jus- 
 tice of its laws ? What nation of antiquity, whose ruins 
 remain to tell the tale of long-gone woes, fell not by the 
 hands of both tyrants and slaves ? 
 
 There was a time when ancient Rome recognized the 
 equality of all men in her fundamental principles of social 
 compact. Had she held by these, and maintained them by 
 rigid virtue — even had the penalties been as severe as they 
 are said to have been — Rome would have remained firm 
 and unshaken thi-ough all the fierce onsets of barbar- 
 ous tribes. But a few ambitious men blew the trump 
 of conquest, marshaled the spirits of the people from peace- 
 ful labors into freebooting bands, and on they rushed upon 
 the nations. The conqueror returned with spoils, with long 
 processions of miserable captives, and these were sold into 
 perpetual bondage. Every new conquest crowded the 
 markets with thousands of slaves. So numerous at one 
 time had they become, that men were sold for less than a 
 dollar per head. 
 
 It is awful as well as instructive to mark the results of 
 this horrid system of barbarity — to observe how the Al- 
 mighty Judge, by an inevitable law, turned the whole 
 weight of this curse, the Romans were heaping upon 
 wretched foreigners, upon their own heads. As the slaves 
 increased, free labor was destroyed and became a disgrace. 
 Every Roman citizen who had the means, purchased the 
 right of becoming a tyrant by purchasing a slave. Effemi- 
 nacy seized upon the once virtuous and industrious work- 
 ers. Those who had been most successful in foreign rob- 
 bery, and were the most artful, now commenced a system 
 of robbery at home. The wealthier citizens secured a su- 
 premacy of power. The great body of the citizens who 
 had cultivated their own plots of ground were unable to 
 
16 LETTERS TO 
 
 bear up under the burthen of playing gentlemen and hav- 
 ing their small patches cultivated by slaves. What every 
 man had once effected by his own industry, it now required 
 two or three slaves to effect. To work himself was to 
 place himself in the condition of a slave. For honor he 
 was therefore obliged to sell both his lands and his slaves, 
 which the rich manao;ed to obtain for a son^. As the 
 poorer citizen turned hiS' energies to other sources for a 
 livelihood where there was less disgrace, alas ! he was soon 
 met with the same dread images of slavery and death. 
 Slaves ! slaves ! ! slaves ! ! ! he saw everywhere, and 
 dreaded everywhere. Every where and every moment they 
 haunted his visions. They were always devouring the last 
 crumbs of his famishing children. Thousands of these 
 once industrious citizens became beo;2;ared : thousands be- 
 
 DO -^ 
 
 came petty criminals of all shades. There was no honor- 
 able calling but in the army or in civil offices, and these 
 were controled by the wealthy nabobs. The beggared Ro- 
 man still boasted of his freedom, though robbed of all but 
 the name. Equality was destroyed, and liberty had be- 
 come a mockery. 
 
 What a tale does Tacitus tell in these few lines : "After 
 the conquest of Asia the whole state of our affairs was 
 turned upside down ; nothing of the ancient integrity of our 
 fathers was left amongst us ; all men cast away that former 
 equality which had been observed."* And this he repeats 
 with mournful emphasis. Montesquieu, who devoted his 
 life to the study of the laws of all nations, and a great por- 
 tion of it to the study of the Roman system, attributes the 
 downfall of the Republic to the influence of slavery ;t and, 
 in his learned work on the Spirit of Laws, with his eyes 
 upon sad examples of slavery in the Grecian and Roman 
 Republics, he says : "In democracies, where they are all 
 upon an equality^ # # -^ slavery is contrary to the spirit of 
 the constitution; it only contributes to give a power and 
 luxury to [some of] the citizens which they ought not to 
 have."| And again, alluding directly to the system of 
 
 * Tacit. Ann., lib. 3. 
 
 t See Montesquieu's Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire. 
 
 t Spirit of Laws, b. 15, c. 1. 
 
PRO-SLAVERY MEN. 17 
 
 Roman .iiespotism wliicli came to exist in consequence of 
 the slavery, and which was exercised in the name of law 
 and order, as you now carry it out in the Republic of 
 America, he says : " No tyranny can have a severer effect 
 than that which is exercised under the appearance of laws 
 and with the phiusible colors of justice."^ Phato had 
 made almost the same expression in respect to the tyranni- 
 cal course of civil power in the name of law and order. 
 " The most complete injustice," said he, " is to seem just, 
 not being &o."t It is hence that Montesquieu, speaking of 
 the " law" or act *' of slavery," says, "J? is contrary to the 
 fundamental principle of all societies. ^^X 
 
 Home, like Greece, violated the great social law in al- 
 lowing slavery. She made war upon the spirit of her own 
 constitution as a republic — as a democracy. The citizens 
 became petty tyrants. Wealth seized the supreme control. 
 Free labor was annihilated. The whole nation became en- 
 slaved. And when all had become mendicant freemen, 
 bloated tyrants, and miserable slaves, Caesar found no ob- 
 structions in establishing a despot's throne. " The coun- 
 try," says Plutarch, " swarmed with a numerous company 
 of barbarous slaves, whom the rich men employed in culti- 
 vating their ground which they had acquired by dispossess- 
 ing the citizens." This infamous double robber crushed 
 the hearts of the citizens. Poor and despised, they re- 
 fused to enlist in the armies to defend their robbers and 
 themselves ; " nor did they," says Plutarch, " take any 
 care of the education of their children." Thus ignorance, 
 imbecility, vagabondism, loathsome vice, and universal 
 ruin, followed in the train of Roman slavery. Yet you 
 point to the Romans in justification of this mother of deso- 
 lation — refer to it as a blessing to be fostered by the Re- 
 public of America. If you had gone to Polybius, he vv'ould 
 have told you that " none but unprincipled and beastly 
 men in society assume the mastery over their fellows, as it 
 is among bulls, bears, and cocks. "'i* Had you gone to 
 
 * Montesquieu's Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, ch. 14. 
 
 t Repub., 1. 2. 
 
 f Spirit of Laws, b. 15, cli. 2. 
 
 § Tolj'b., lib. 4. 
 
 2* 
 
18 LETTERS TO 
 
 Cicero, and the most eminent of the Roman lawyers, they 
 would have told you that slavery was at war with the fun- 
 damental principles of the Roman nation and the grand 
 " law of nature, by which all men are horn freeT They 
 would have told you that the " Law of Nature," which is 
 " the law of all nations, forbids one man to pursue his ad- 
 vantage at the expense of another.''"^ And Cicero would 
 have told you in particular, heathen as you may call him, 
 that this " law of nature " — this fundamental principle of 
 all societies of men as well as of every individual man — " is 
 universally binding upon all men ;" that you are " not al- 
 lowed to retrench it in any part, nor to alter it, much less 
 to abolish it ;" that it was " obligatory upon Rome and 
 upon Athens :" that it " is the same to-day, tomorrow, and 
 is eternal and invariable, because God, who is its author, 
 and has published it himself, is always the sole master and 
 sovereign of mankind ;" that " whoever violates it, re- 
 nounces his own nature, divests himself of humanity, and 
 will be rigorously punished for his disobedience."! 
 
 Thus, in Rome, the " Higher Law," which you affect to 
 despise, and call in ridicule " Babel-building," was regard- 
 ed as the fundamental and absolute law of the nation by 
 the highest legal authorities. JS^or was it allowed by the 
 best Roman minds that any decree of the Senate counter 
 to this Higher Law was obligatory upon the people. There 
 was a class of pettifoggers in that age, as there is now, 
 who sophisticated the subject of law, and tried to' make un- 
 righteous legislation reasonable and acceptable. The 
 " Higher Law" school, at the head of which stood Cicero, 
 advocated that unjust ordinances and decrees were equiva- 
 lent to an attempt to " create law," which was in its^elf im- 
 possible. t It was contended by these noble civilians that 
 that is not law, and, therefore, not obligatory, which is not 
 in itself just. Nor could the people alter any thing in 
 this respect. They were bound by the eternal law as much 
 
 * De Omc, ]. 3, c. 5. Ibid. Also 9tli Law Die;, et Justit et Jure, 1. 
 1, tit. 1. 
 
 t De Eepiib., 1. 3. Apud Soct. Inst. Div., 1. G, c. 8. See also Marcus 
 TuUus Onit. de lege Agra. Also Theophilus de Jure, Nature et gent., 
 § 6. Also Soto. De'Justl^ et Jure, 1. 4. 
 
 t See Cicero De Leg., 1. 1. 
 
PRO-SLAYER Y MEN. 19 
 
 as the Senate. They had no power to make injustice right, 
 nor to bind any man to the performance of an unjust act. 
 " If laws," said he, " could be created by the ordinances of 
 the people, the decrees of princes, or the sentences of the 
 judges," as was the doctrine of some, then " robbery might 
 be lawful, adultery might be lawful, setting up forged wills 
 might be lawful, if these should be approved by the votes 
 or the ordinances of the multitude."^ 
 
 The same corrupting and destructive sophistry was then 
 stealing its way into Roman society, under the influence 
 of slaveholders, which is now so alarmingly prevalent in 
 portions of American society, namely : that whatever the 
 supreme power decrees in a nation is right, and, therefore, 
 binding. Cicero saw the fatal consequences of this sophis- 
 try, and met it as it deserves to be met in America. '' If," 
 said he, " there be such a power in the decrees and com- 
 mands of fools, that the nature of things is changed by 
 their votes, why do they not decree that what is bad and 
 pernicious shall be regarded as good and wholesome ? or 
 why, if the law can make wrong right, can it not make bad 
 good ?"t 
 
 Natural law — equal and eternal justice — is the basis of 
 all human law, said Cicero, t and this was according to the 
 arguments of all wise men who had preceded him.s^ " I 
 see this," says he, " to have been the opinion of the wisest 
 men, that law is not something wrought out by man's inge- 
 nuity, nor is it a decree of the people, but it is somethino- 
 eternal, governing the world by the wisdom of its com- 
 mands and prohibitions." Hence he declared that " those 
 who had made pernicious and unjust decrees =^ ^ ^ had 
 made any thing rather than laws." 
 
 It was all to no purpose, however, that Cicero attempted 
 to beat back the flood of legal corruption that was over- 
 whelming the nation. The supporters of injustice — the 
 aristocracy, the slaveholders — who had already gone far 
 in robbing the people, in crushing free labor, in making the 
 
 t Ibid. 
 
 X Ibkl, 1. 2. 
 
 S Ibid, 1. 4. 
 
20 LETTERS TO 
 
 people the infamous tools of their own ruin, in corrupting 
 the Senate, the judges, and every possible source of right, 
 had too firmly established themselves for Cicero to succeed 
 in restoring the nation to first principles. When the 
 sources of legislation become so corrupt that tliere is not 
 moral energy enough to recover first principles, the ruin of 
 the civil state, the destruction of society, is as inevitable 
 as if the avenging angel dashed his exterminating thun- 
 ders upon the nation in one awful blaze. Roman slave- 
 holders triumphed ; they warred against God and his law 
 of nations; they destroyed free labor, common education, 
 robbed the people of their lands, covered them with slaves ; 
 and Rome the Republic fell, and Caesar ascended the 
 throne. 
 
 Ah, sirs, once break down the law of right — let a nation 
 once concede that one man may without crime hold another 
 in slavery, and rob him of his rights — once let the people 
 join with the slaveholder and say there is no higher law 
 than the decrees of the slave power — once compromise jus- 
 tice for the sake of union and peace — and every pillar of 
 the civil temple has become rotten, cankered, and eaten by 
 worms ; then but a footfall, the jar of the passing train, a 
 single human voice, may throw the pile of ages into a heap 
 of desolate ruins. 
 
 Society from everlasting is built upon the same prin- 
 ciples. Those principles are God's, not man's. They are 
 for the safety of no class to the exclusion of others. They 
 are for the equal safety of all. Lay your impious hands 
 upon them for their destruction, and your own ruin is cer- 
 tain. Break down the fences and guards around freedom, 
 and you shall be the first to be made a slave when the 
 master-tyrant comes. Open the vray for despots, and you 
 shall be the first to be crushed under his iron heel. 
 
 What did Caesar do when he had conquered the coward 
 slavemasters by the sound of his name ? He saw the 
 shameful degradation of the people, the despotism of the 
 petty tyrants, the land crowded with slaves and all in 
 ruins. He called to him the wisest of the Romans. ^Vere 
 these the friends of slavery ? Far from that. Of Agrippa 
 and Msecenas he asked what was best to be done. The 
 
PRO-SLAYERY MEN. 21 
 
 power, said he, is now in my hands ; what shall I do with 
 it ? Shall I re-build the lost Republic ? or shall I hold 
 the power as the supreme head, and make mj decrees abso- 
 lute? And Agrippa replied: "Restore the Republic to 
 her ancient lav/s of freedom and equality, for they who are 
 born in the same state desire equality, of which being pos- 
 sessed, they rejoice, and grieve when deprived of it ; and 
 all men, as they are descended from the gods, and are to 
 return unto them, look upwards, and will neither be ever 
 under the dominion of one, nor patiently bear to be par- 
 takers of labors, dangers, and expenses, and be deprived of 
 the communication of better things." But this did not so 
 well please Ca3sar. There was no virtue to cement a new 
 Republic. There were few but masters and slaves. These 
 could make no Republic. Then Mascenas advised that Csesar 
 should retain the supreme power, and, as the saviour of his 
 country, restore freedom and equality to the people, and force 
 the robbers to give back the stolen lands to the rightful own- 
 ers, and revive the honor of free labor. But Csesar the 
 conqueror was himself a slave, and he feared to restore 
 justice, lest justice should restore him. 
 
 Other emperors succeeded. Some recorded their acts in 
 blood and the tears of widows and orphans and wretched 
 men ; others, with noble deeds, gave their names to the 
 pleasant memories of all fature ages. There were three 
 who would have restored all men to freedom and their 
 equal rights, but had too little faith in the power of the 
 people to sustain them in the immediate and entire eman- 
 cipation of the slaves, and the full restoration of free labor 
 to its honor and lost rights. Besides, the wealthy citizens, 
 who were the slaveholders, held many of the oiEces of gov- 
 ernment, and those who held no office had the power of 
 corrupting those who had. Antoninus Pius, Theodosius the 
 Younger, and Justinian, (the three emperors referred to) 
 found themselves obliged to resort to more indirect meth- 
 ods to destroy slavery and restore the sinking power of the 
 nation. Their first step was to encourage manumissions, 
 and to confer Roman citizenship upon those manumitted. 
 The learned Gothofred, referring to the three noble edicts 
 of these emperors for conferring citizenship upon the manu- 
 
22 LETTEES TO 
 
 mitted slaves, says, " Thus good princes are usually wont 
 to surpass each other in governing their subjects with equal 
 right. ''''^ 
 
 Another indirect means was to restore, in form at least, 
 the grand fundamental law of society and government. 
 The most eminent jurists were employed to look into the 
 laws of all nations — to digest their principles and develop 
 them in form. The ancient laws of Rome were to be espe- 
 cially regarded. In the results of this immense labor, of 
 the wisest lawyers under the wisest of the emperors, we 
 have developed what I have asserted, namely, that the fun- 
 damental laws of all societies and governments are the 
 same, and those are " the laios of nature,''^ which in their 
 legitimate action render slavery impossible. The Roman 
 jurists found that the basis of law in every nation was 
 " common impartial justice" — " equal right" — " equity" — a 
 recognition of the " natural right to freedom of every man." 
 " All nations governed by laws and customs," said they, 
 " make use partly of their own law and partly of the law 
 common to all men."t This latter Cicero had observed, 
 and said of it, " The law of all nations forbids one man to 
 pursue his advantage at the expense of another."! And 
 the Digest declared, as well as the Institutes, that *' the 
 natural law, equally recognized among all nations, being 
 created by Divine Providence, always remains firm and 
 immutable ;"^ and that " the law which natural reason has 
 established among all men, is equally held by all, and is 
 called the Law of Nature, as a law which all nations use ;"ll 
 and then, that " Jure Naturale omnes libei'i nascuntur''^ — 
 that " lij the Laiv of Nature all men are hornfree.^'' 
 
 Thus the fundamental law of all nations, in the time of 
 the Romans, declared the equal freedom of all men, and 
 this law, " being created by Divine Providence," said the 
 Roman jurists, " always remains firm and immutable." 
 " Nor can it be altered nor amended," said Cicero, " much 
 less abolished." 
 
 * BolUn Coiit. Con-., p. 60. 
 
 t Dig.. 1. 1, tit. 1. See also Inst., 1. 1, tit. 2, § 1. 
 
 X De Off., 1. 3, c. 5. 
 
 \ Dio-., 1. 1. Inst., 1. 1. tit. 2. 
 
 II Instit., 1. 1. tit 2, \ 1.' 
 
PRO-SLAVERY MEN. 23 
 
 This immutable principle Wiis affirmed and re-affirmed 
 by tbe best of the Roman emperors ; but, joined with all 
 their wisest statesmen and jurists, they were impotent to 
 save Rome. The slavemaster had struck the parricidal 
 blow which no physician could heal. The last drops of 
 virtuous blood were ebbing quite away, and only the black 
 blood of vice remained. Thus Rome died the victim of 
 slavery. 
 
24 LETTERS TO 
 
 LETTEE III. 
 
 Is it not as absurd to suppose that society organizes with- 
 out its " natural law^'' as that crystalizatiou or germination 
 and growth occur without their definite and invariable 
 laws ? Is not association as natural to man as it is to the 
 bee and the beaver ? Does not human society spring spon- 
 taneously from the soul and sentiment of human nature, the 
 roots of which shoot down into the moral element of the 
 universe ? 
 
 How orderly, how regular is crystalizatiou ! How ad- 
 mirable is the formation of organic being ! ' Not, however, 
 unless their fundamental laws are dominant. Let other 
 and foreign forces enter, and how ugly every thing becomes ! 
 In all the orderly processes of nature, every part that en- 
 ters to make up the great whole has a common interest. 
 It has its state and place, but its relation is equal. The 
 sublime law that guides it to its place has no respect to 
 parts. They are all divine, and have a sacred mission. 
 
 So in the orderly processes of legitimate society. The 
 law of their occurrence is common, universal. Every indi- 
 vidual part, every man, has his equal right with every 
 other. lie has his state and place determined him, not by 
 the arbitr^^-y will of a few, but by that common law — 
 God's enactment — that determines the state and place of 
 every man as he freely moves in the Maelstrom of the 
 world. 
 
 The moment one part, or one man, assumes to himself 
 what is not common to all, disturbance enters the mass, 
 distraction seizes other members ; orderly arrangement, 
 then, is impossible. Yet the law that struggles for this 
 will still be seen, but the result is an irregular formation, 
 as much difierent from legitimate society as a rough lump 
 of dingy quartz is unlike the transparent and geometrical 
 crystal. Hence Plato : " That which is of a common or 
 
PRO-SLAVERY MEN. 25 
 
 public nature unites, while private interest segregates and 
 dissociates."^ 
 
 It was the latter that ruined Greece — the private inter- 
 est of sla\'^holders. The same destroyed Rome. The 
 common law of association — the equal right of all — was 
 forced aside. It was denied its action. Partial legisla- 
 tion was allowed. Ah, sirs, how ruinous to all govern- 
 ment is that ! It licenses rights (wrongs) to a few it 
 would be impossible for all to exercise ! How has govern- 
 ment the authority to do for the few what it cainiot do for all ? 
 All associate and appoint government for the common ben- 
 efit of aU. There is no legitimate right short of that. The 
 assumed rio;ht of the slaveholder is not the common right 
 of all, else all would have the right to enslave all. That 
 is impossible. 
 
 Common right is universal, equal, opposed to the as- 
 sumed right of the few. Government, then, cannot allow 
 it, as it is built on common law, common right, justice. 
 Government cannot, then, sanction slaveholding — that 
 would be justice sanctioning injustice. It would be favor- 
 ing assianed partial right in its warfare against common 
 right — against the fundamental principle of government. 
 Not government, then, but arbitrary power, sanctions slav- 
 ery. For common-right law is fundamental — the first, 
 prime, sole law of social organization — the primal law of 
 human relations. It is absolute. Would you go behind 
 that ? you shall meet flice to face the Eternal God. Would 
 you pierce beneath it ? you shall meet the impenetrable 
 rock of Divine Justice. Would you soar above it? 
 then you shall pass into the heavens of Infinite Love ! 
 
 America is following Greece and Rome. She has re- 
 belled against her law of laws. She has abandoned com- 
 mon right. She legislates for slaveholders. Had Rome 
 gone so fiir towards ruin three hundred years from her 
 foundation ? How old is America ? Where is her na- 
 tionality ? AVhat is her name abroad ? 
 
 When Rome had become rotten with this sin, the barba- 
 rians came forth and dragged her carcase to the pit. Yet 
 
 * De Leg., 1. ix, p. C60. 
 3 
 
26 LETTERS TO 
 
 you quote Kome. " The Romans held slaves," say you, 
 " and, therefore, Americans may hold slaves." Why not 
 say, *' America has a right to rebel against Heaven, and 
 defy Eternal Justice — commit suicide ? " 
 
 I have shown that the fundamental 25rinciples of Roman 
 law, as well as those of all other nations, recognized the 
 common right of all men, and were, therefore, opposed to 
 slavery. When the Barbarians overran the Roman Em- 
 pire, and, at length, began to organize into associations, the 
 same law of common right was developed as the basis of 
 government. Normans, Saxons, Franks, Visigoths, Ostro- 
 goths, Lombards, all recognized this primal principle as 
 the sacred basis of their civil societies. There is a uni- 
 versal concurrence among all the best writers on this^ 
 point. The fundamental law of human rights was also dis- 
 tinctly developed in the civil constitutions of Sweden,! 
 Denmark,! Hungary,^^ Arragon and Navarre,!! Spain and 
 Portugal.lT 
 
 This was by no mere voluntary choice. It was a matter 
 of absolute necessit3^ The law^ of nature obliged it, as it 
 obliges the crystalic energy to fulfil its definite action to 
 produce a crystal. Men may choose to associate, but they 
 cannot associate in organic form without acting according to 
 the common law of social organization. Hence slavery is at 
 war with legitimate government, and, therefore, legitimate 
 government is at war with it. When slavery triumphs, 
 government is overthrown. When slavery takes the place 
 of government, society is overthrown ; for society can be 
 protected only by legitimate governme7it, either internally, 
 from the righteousness of every man ; or externally, by the 
 dread mandates of justice, in the forms of outw^ard law, 
 prohibiting wrong and affixing penalties to the infringement 
 of common rights. 
 
 * See Hale's Hist. Com. Law. Stuart's Constit. of Eug. Eapin's 
 Origin and Nature of Eng. Com. Law. Hallam's Mid. Ages. Hume'.-^ 
 Eng. Dunhams Mid. Ages. 
 
 t Jolvan Magnus Hist., L 15 & 29. Crantzivis, 1. 5. 
 
 i Pontanus, L 8. 
 
 k Donsinius, Decad 4, 1. 9. 
 
 fl Chalcondile, 1. 5. 
 
 *[ Molina, de Hist. Primog.. c. 2, n. 13. Greg of Tours, 1. 2. Linden- 
 burg, 1. 2, tit. 2. 17 tit. Ord. Portugal, I. 2, § 2, 3, et seg. Al^o Lind., 1. 1, 
 tit. 7. 
 
PRO-SLAVERY MEN. 27 
 
 While society in the Roman Empire was becoming a 
 chaos of corruption, under the disorganizing influence of 
 shivery, Christ was born within it as a new germinating 
 and organizing energy. Only masters and slaves were to 
 be found. Those who boasted of their freemanship were 
 the oppressors of those called slaves. All the common of- 
 fices of life had become degraded. Common charity had 
 grown into a monstrous hypocrisy. Justice had fled, and 
 left tyranny with its scepter of iron to rule in the name of 
 law. Public virtue, there was none ; and the common 
 rights of humanity were as if they had never been. The 
 indolent proud lived upon the toils of those they had de- 
 graded into beasts of burden, and looked with sanctimo- 
 nious contempt upon the sons of labor, whom they called 
 slaves ; as if labor had been designed by the Creator a deg- 
 radation, and those were to be scorned and crushed under 
 the iron heel of tyranny who performed the most useful, 
 indispensable offices of life. 
 
 Christ broke in upon this monstrous system, by taking 
 upon himself the form of a slave, and acting in the service of 
 humanity, without regard to the conventional rules of 
 Scribes, Pharasees, slave-masters. He washed his disciples' 
 feet, and said, " If I whom you call Lord and Master, have 
 washed your feet, ye ought also to wash one anothers feet." 
 There shall be, henceforth, no degradation in the offices of 
 life. Ye shall have no slaves to serve you. Service, labor, 
 usefulness, is henceforth to be viewed by you as holy. 
 " All ye are brethren.'"^ " Call no man master, neither be 
 ye called master."'^ " Ye know that they which are ac- 
 counted to rule over the Gentiles exercise lordship over 
 them ; and their great 07ies exercise authority upon them ; 
 but so it shall not be among you ; but whosoever will be 
 greatest among you, shall be your mi?iister, and whosoever 
 of you will be chiefest shall be the servaiit of all. For even 
 the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to min- 
 ister."! " Be not like the Scribes and Pharasees." " They 
 bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay 
 
 * Miitt. 23: 8—11. 
 t Matt. 10 : 42—45. 
 
28 LETTERS TO 
 
 them on men's shoulders, while they themselves will not 
 move them with one of their fingers." They boast of their 
 regard for the iav>', but " omit its weightier matters," 
 "judgment, mercy and faith." They make " long prayers," 
 but " devour widows' houses." They are "full of extortion 
 and excess," and " like whited sepulchres, beautiful with- 
 out, but within full of dead men's bones and all unclean- 
 ness." They build tombs for the ancient prophets, but 
 " murder those who are sent to teach them." " Be not like 
 the Scribes and Pharasees." But " all things whatsoever 
 ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to 
 them ; for this is the law and the prophets." If ye would 
 that men should slave for you, ye must likewise slave for 
 them. Life is a ministry. All labor is holy, that minis- 
 ters to the benefit of man. None shall be masters, none 
 slaves, but all ministers of good, God's freemen ; above none, 
 beneath none. "Brethren," says Paul, "ye have been 
 called unto liberty," " not " that liberty " vv^hich is an oc- 
 casion " or license " to the flesh ;" but that liberty in 
 which, " by love we slave for one another." It is that state 
 wherein freedom and slavery meet; that is, — the labor 
 which those who boast of being free, leave in their pride to be 
 performed by crushed humanity ; Christians shall do for 
 each other and for the world as God's freemen, so that there 
 shall be in the church no worldly distinctions of bond and 
 free, Greek and Jew, but all shall be equal, all ministers. 
 Such was the grand idea of Christian life. It was 
 wholly at war with slavery. Hence the purest of the 
 church fathers labored against slavery. The Christians in 
 Asia Minor at a very early period " decried the lawfulness of 
 it, denounced slaveholding as a sin, a violation of the law 
 of nature and religion. They gave fugitive slaves asylum, 
 and openly offered them protection. ""^ Maximus preached 
 and wrote against it.t Those who entered upon a religious 
 life gave freedom to their slaves. t Theodorus Studita, gave 
 particular directions, " not to employ those beings, created 
 in the image of God, as slaves."*i> Polycarp and Ignatious 
 
 * Fletclicv's Lessons on Slavery. 
 t Maximus Exposit Dom. I., f. 356. Neander. 
 t Actis Sanct. Apr. T. I , append, f. 47, § 8. 
 ^ Ibid L. L, ep. 10. See Leander. 
 
PRO-SLATERY MEN. 29 
 
 manumitted their slaves on realizing the equality of the 
 Christian law. Constantine gave authority to the bishops 
 to manumit slaves,^ and granted Roman citizenship to 
 many of those set free.t St. Augustine speaks of the free- 
 dom of slaves as a great religious virtue,! and declares the 
 Christian law against regarding God's rational creation as 
 property.^ 
 
 Nor could the corrupting influence which heathenism 
 and barbarism exerted upon the church, entirely destroy 
 this particular mission of the gospel. Neander speaking of 
 the early oriental Christians, says, " they declared them- 
 selves opposed to the whole relation of slavery as repug- 
 nant to the dignity of the image of God in all men."il " I 
 can hardly credit," said Isidore, " that a friend of Christ, 
 who has experienced that grace, which bestowed freedom 
 on all, would still own slaves."1F This was the spirit that 
 animated the purest men of the church. By their influence, 
 laws and charters of freedom were obtained, by means of 
 which immense numbers of slaves were made free."^^ They 
 united their exertions to enlist even the barbarian princes 
 in the cause of the slave. Remigius thus wrote to Clovis, 
 " Let the gate of your palace be open to all, that every 
 one may have recourse to you for justice. Employ your 
 great revenues in redeeming slaves. ''ji Johannes Eleemos- 
 ynarius, patriarch of Alexandria, addressing himself to a 
 slaveholder, said, " Tell me what price can man pay to 
 purchase a man, who was created in the image of God ? 
 Hast thou a difi"erent soul ? Is he not in all things thy 
 equal ? There is neither bond nor free ; all are one in 
 Christ. We are all equal before Christ. What then is the 
 gold you have paid for a child of God ?"|| So Lingard 
 
 * Sozomen, 1. 1 , c. 9 —Cod. Theod., 1. 1., c. De nis qui in eccl man- 
 umit. 
 t Ibid 1. 2. 
 j Ser. de diversis, 50. 
 
 I Ser. de ch. mo 1. 1. 
 
 II Neander, Hist. Chris. Ee. and Cli. vol. 3, p. 99. 
 Tl Ibid. 
 
 ** Murat Antiq. Ital , v. 1, p. 84. 
 ft See Life of St. Remigius. 
 
 It Life of Johannes Eleemosyn., by Leontius. Trans., by Anastasius 
 in Actis. 
 
 3* 
 
30 LETTERS TO 
 
 refers to the divine influence of tlie Christian church in 
 destroying slavery.-'^ 
 
 I have already referred, in the preceding letter, to the 
 efforts of Justinian to restore the fundamental lav>^ of soci- 
 ety, by v/hich all men are pronounced free. In 539 he 
 determined by an edict that masters had no power to 
 separate families in the sak of slaves, and that it was a 
 crime.! And Gregory the Great pronounced it " a cruel 
 evil," " a great crime," and declared a severe punishment 
 upon the bishops who allowed it in their bishopries.! 
 Charlemagne issued a decree against it.§ And Constan- 
 tino and Constantinus, both made the subjection of females 
 to slavery a capital crime. II 
 
 Gregory the Great was born in Rome, among the nobil- 
 ity, about 545. He filled for a time the office of praetor, 
 and held numerous slaves. After his conversion, he aban- 
 doned his civil office, and devoted himself to the church. 
 On the death of Pelagius II, he was chosen bishop of Eome. 
 .His heathenism and pride of superiority clung to him with 
 ,great tenacity, notwithstanding he acknowledged the equal 
 rights of mankind as recognized not only by the fundamen- 
 tal principles of the state, but by the Christian religion. 
 On granting freedom to his slaves, he gave as his reason 
 the consideration of what Christ had done, " that he might 
 free us by his grace from the chains of bondage in which 
 we were enthralled, and restore us to our original freedom. 
 .So a good and salutary thing is done," said he, " when men, 
 .whom nature from the begimiiyig created free, and whom the 
 customs of nations had subjected to the yoke of servitude, 
 are presented again with the freedom in which they were 
 borny'^ He also admonished slaveholders that those they 
 held in bondage were " their equals,'" that " by nature they 
 .were created upon a level with their slaves."^^ Still he 
 favored making chattels of the heathenM 
 
 * See liis Ant. Anglo Saxou church, c. 1. 
 
 t Novell, 162, c. 3. 
 
 i Greg. 1. 3, ind. 3, ch. 12. 
 
 4 Council of Chalons, Can. 30. 
 
 II Cod. Theod , 1. 9, tit. 29, leg. 1, 5. 
 
 T[ Greg. Magn. op. Polguss., 1. 4, c. 1, § 3. 
 
 ** Postorulis Curae, 3, c 1, admon. 6. 
 
 tt See Greg. Mag., F. E. i\, 1. 10, ep. 52, 
 
 ep. 34. 
 
 and 1. 2, ep. 39, and 1. 5, 
 
PRO-SLAVEllY MEN. 31 
 
 About tlie eiglith century the old Ptoman slavery had 
 been quite overthrown, but a new form had also been ri- 
 sing to take its place — that, consequent upon the wars of 
 the " Barbarians." The good men of the church had this 
 to contend with. I have already referred to the letter of 
 St. Remigius to Clovis to induce him to exert his power 
 and bestow his wealth in the cause of suffering captives. 
 Nor did Clovis disregard alto2;ether such admonitions : for 
 he sent a circular letter to all the bishops in his dominions, 
 in which he allowed them to give liberty to any of the cap- 
 tives he had taken, and thus save them from slavery .=^ A 
 volume might be filled with the most interesting incidents, 
 showing the noble exertions of the purest and best men of 
 the church in that fearful period, agiiinst the barbarous in- 
 stitution. 
 
 "What a beautiful example we have in the life of Cesarius 
 in the sixth century ! When the Franks and Burgundians 
 laid seige to Arls, and a great many captives were brought 
 into the city to be sold, this good christian hastened to 
 the church, stripped all the silver ornaments from the pil- 
 lars and railings, took the sacred vessels, the silver cen- 
 sers, chalices and all, for the relief of the captives and 
 the freedom of those in bonds, saying, — " Our Lord cele- 
 brated his last supper in mean earthern dishes, not in plate, 
 and we need not scruple to part with his vessels to ransom 
 those he has redeemed with his life."! 
 
 There were Pharasees then, as now, who regarded such*an 
 act as a great sacrilege. The good man replied " I would 
 fain know if those who censure what we do, would not be 
 glad to be ransomed themselves in like manner, were the 
 same misfortune to befall them."t The wiser and better 
 men of the church always commended this. Lactantius 
 said of it : " It is justice which the free owe to those in 
 bonds."^ And again he says : " Justice teaches men to 
 know God and to love men, to love and assist one another, 
 heiiig all equally the children of Go.'?. "II 
 
 *Life of St. Eemigius. 
 
 fLife of St. Cesarius. 
 
 tibid. 
 
 ^Lactant, Div. Just. p. 587. 
 
 Ijlbid. 
 
32 LETTERS TO 
 
 This had been a frequent practice in the church. St. 
 Ambrose ordered the priests to sell all the sacred vases in 
 order to redeem slaves and set them free. " The Lord" 
 said he " will say to us, ' why are so many unfortunate be- 
 ings subject to slavery, even death, for want of being re- 
 deemed ? Men are better worth preserving than metals.' 
 What have you to reply ? Must we deprive the temples 
 of their ornaments ? But the Lord will say — 'It is not 
 necessary that the sacred things be clothed in gold.' "^ 
 St. Augustine also practised the like thing repeatedly, and 
 justified it as a duty the free owed to those in slavery.! 
 If Christ could lay down his life for the redemption of 
 mankind, how could the church refuse its treasures for the 
 redemption of captives. Christ came to break the bonds 
 in sunder and to let the captive go free. Nor did Augus- 
 tine shun to rebuke the oppressors and enslavers of man- 
 kind. " Those are not societies'^'' said he, " whose supreme 
 law is not justice, they are only marjna latrociiiia^ great 
 confederacies of thieves or robbers. Society cannot co?isist 
 without justice yX 
 
 There were christians in those days of peril, who did 
 not fear to meet tyrants face to face. Death was no terror 
 to them. They were ready to die for the oppressed. Many 
 went so far as to enslave themselves for the freedom of 
 others. They conferred not with flesh and blood. They 
 took their lives in their hands and went out amid the bar- 
 barians to save humanity from degradation and miserable 
 thraldom. Heaven was the only reward they expected. 
 By their energy, countless slaves were made free. In the 
 name of God and Christ and humanity they accosted the 
 slave masters. St. Cyprian said to Demetrius the tryant, 
 " You, man of a day, expect from your slav^e obedience. 
 Is he less a man than you? By birth he is your equal. 
 He is endowed with the same organs, with the same rea- 
 
 *St. Amb. Trent, de Offic, p. 103. 
 
 tLife of St. Aiigustine — Possid, vit. Aug. capiat 2-i. — Cyril of Jeru- 
 salem taught the same. Vide. Iheodoret,!. ii. c 27. Also, Acacius of 
 Amida. Vid. Socrat, 1. 7. c. 24. — So also Deigratias of Carthage. Vid. — 
 Vict, de Persec. Vandal, 1. i. 
 
 tAugust, de Civit, Dei. 1. 4. c. 4. 
 
PRO-SLAVERY MEN. 33 
 
 soiling soul, called to the same hopes, subject to the same 
 laws of life in this and in the world to come. You subject 
 him to your dominion. If he, as a man, disregard or for- 
 get your claim, what miseries you heap upon him. Im- 
 pious master, pitiless despot ! You spare neither blows 
 nor whips, nor privations ; you chastise him with hunger 
 and thft'st, you load him with chains, you incarcerate him 
 within black walls ; miserable man ! While you thus main- 
 tain your despotism over a man, you are not willing to re- 
 cognize the Master and Lord of all men."^ 
 
 How does this compare with the " South side view of 
 slavery," with the letter of a " northern presbyter," with 
 the reasonino; of Dr. Blasfdeu. " Both relio;ion and hu- 
 manity" said Cyprian, " make it a duty for us to work for 
 the deliverance of the captive. It is Christ himself whom 
 we ought to consider in our captive brothers."! Not so ! 
 Not so ! cry our new light doctors of divinity. " Religion 
 makes it our duty to aid the oppressor, to return the cap- 
 tive to bonds and stripes ; and as for humanity, that is on- 
 ly the foam and froth in the boiling pot of society. So 
 these fine doctors of to day, advocate the superiority of 
 barbarism, repeat the creed of old tyrants, take the side 
 of heathenism and atheism against Christianity, while yet 
 they pretend to be christians. They would send their 
 mothers into slavery if they had been born under a task- 
 master and the tyrant demanded the sacrifice; for " this" 
 say they, " is law and order." Such law and order, gentle- 
 men, as sunk Greece, buried Rome, plunged mankind into 
 palpable night, extinguishing the last taper of science and 
 the last star of hope. 
 
 *St. Cyp. t. V. Dernet. 
 
 fSt. Cyprian to the Bisliop of XumiJia. 
 
34 LETTERS TO 
 
 LETTER IV. 
 
 Feudalism onginatecl as a protective system. The equal 
 riglits of the jDOople \Yere to be sacredly regarded. Justice 
 was recognized as the basis. The people entrusted their 
 rights in the hands of chieftains. They, in turn, solemnly 
 pledged themselves to protect those rights with the aid of 
 the people themselves. The leaders took advantage of the 
 power they found in their hands to enslave their subjects. 
 What had been a mere conditional trust they gradually 
 assumed as an unconditional rifrht. Instead of beino; 
 magistrates and protectors, they became oppressive robbers, 
 cruel task-masters. The people degenerated into slaves. 
 As this dreadful state of things progressed over Europe, 
 the blackness of night settled down upon all nations. The 
 elements of society were dissolved. Even those who flat- 
 tered themselves with the name of freemen were, like the 
 free blacks of the Southern States, but a slight remove from 
 absolute slavery. Knowledge fled. Master and slave were 
 alike benighted and beastly. The tenant could not dispose 
 of the effects of his own industry ,"5^ and he buried his tal- 
 ents and turned his hands to villany. He was forbidden 
 to marry without purchasing the consent of his petty 
 tyrantjt and he stole connections without regard to primal 
 law. He was forbidden to marry beyond the limits of his 
 nabob's dominions.l He was thus degraded in all respects 
 as a man. 
 
 Black and revolting as feudal slavery was, however, it 
 was a virtuous institution compared with the slavery of the 
 Southern States of America. Not, indeed, in all history — 
 not in the darkest days of ancient barbarism, can be found 
 
 * Duchcrii SpiceL torn. xi. 374, 375. 
 
 t Miirat, Ant. Ital. vol. 4, p. 20. Orel, des Eois de France, torn. i. p. 
 22. Tom. iii. p. 203. 
 I Hist, de Daupliine, torn. i. p. 81. 
 
PRO-SLAVERY MEN. 35 
 
 a system of despotism so utterl}' destitute of one redeeming 
 quality as that of American bondage. Even in the worst 
 days of Roman and European slavery, the miserable 
 wretches were not forbidden to acquire knowledge. Some 
 Roman slaves were eminently learned. No special meas- 
 ures were instituted to prevent bondmen from becoming 
 noble specimens of humanity. Thus heathen barbarism 
 was more Christian in its system of slavery than the Christ- 
 ian barbarism in America. You, sirs, resort to the most 
 diabolical measures to crush the minds out of the human 
 beings you enslave. Where was despotism ever found 
 equal to the present educational laws of Virginia !=^ 
 
 In the European slavery in its worst days, a slave on 
 taking holy orders became free.t American slaves, on 
 becoming ministers of Christ, are still held slaves. So on 
 any agreeable event, European princes used to testify their 
 gratitude by enfranchising great numbers of slaves.1^ But 
 when to you has ever come the occasion that brought with 
 it such gratitude to God ? So the Christian Church, as I 
 have already shown, regarded it as a mark of the purest 
 religious fervor for a master to manumit his slaves ^ with- 
 out pecuniary considerations ; while 3'our church makes 
 slavery a virtue — a divine right, and freeing men from 
 bondage, a vice — a sin. 
 
 In the darkest period of European history, there were 
 some men who violentlj^ opposed freeing slaves. " It is 
 dangerous^'^ said they. 1| Fools! dangerous to whom ? to 
 society? As if a band of robbers were a society ! Does 
 the existence of society depend upon the smallest possible 
 amount of freedom, and the greatest possible amount of 
 slavery ? 
 
 This, sirs, is your cry — " danger to society!" This is 
 your plea for not favoring manumissions. As if freedom 
 were a greater evil to society than slavery ; as if society 
 could be preserved by slavery, and annihilated by every 
 
 * See Educational Laws of Virginia. Boston : Jewett & Co. 
 t Murat, Ant. p. 842. 
 
 I Marculsi Form, 1. 1, c. 39. 
 § Ibid, 1. 2, c. 23, 33, 34. 
 
 II Potgiess, 1. iv. 2, 2, § 6. Morice, Mem. pour serv. preuves a Pliist. 
 de Bret. torn. ii. p. 100, 
 
36 LETTERS TO 
 
 man enjoying his absolute rights ; — as if the fundamental 
 principles of society are not in reality identical with the 
 primal rights of all men. 
 
 The fundamental law of society — equal human rights — 
 was urged in Spain against slavery in the eighth century 
 with much energy and effect,^ and by the fourteenth cen- 
 tury nearly every civil society in Europe had gone far to- 
 wards universal emancipation. Kings were not unwilling 
 to declare the equal rights of their enslaved subjects, and 
 to exert themselves for the overthrow of domestic bondage. 
 The school-men every where discussed the natural and 
 inherent rights of the people, and the light which they 
 shed upon this subject had no inconsiderable influence in 
 preparing even the minds of princes for the great change. 
 
 In the year 1315, Louis X. of France, issued an edict 
 for the abolition of slavery and the enfranchisement of the 
 people. This noble document is a standing reproach to 
 republican despots. " As all men are hy nature free born,'''' 
 said the French King, " and as this kingdom is called the 
 Kingdom of Franks, [freemen] it shall be so in reality. It 
 is therefore decreed that enfranchisements shall be granted 
 throughout the whole kingdom upon just and reasonable 
 conditions."! Three years after, Philip, the brother of 
 Louis, confirmed the same edict. I 
 
 Ah, sirs ! when a long inactive law of nature springs 
 into energy in the midst of confusion and disorder, how 
 admirable is it to see order and beauty spring up with it I 
 The enslaved people of France, without a center of action, 
 had lived without unity, without public spirit, in factional 
 divisions, without society, degraded. 
 
 The revival of this fundamental law quickened, as by 
 an electric flash, the central energies of the nation. The 
 heart of France beat with new life ; the dissociated ele- 
 ments began to coalesce in crystaline order. New organic 
 parts st^irted into form. Sirs ! when has not liberty 
 been the greatest boon to a people ? When has not sla- 
 very been their greatest ciu'se ? 
 
 * Bodin de Repub., c. 5. 
 t Ordon, torn. i. p. 583. 
 t Ibid, p. 653. 
 
PRO-SLAVERY MEN. 37 
 
 Louis X. and his brotker Philip are not the only 
 princes who have acknowledged the natural liberty and 
 equality of all men. Frederic II. was one of those honest 
 and true noblemen, who, scoffing at the arrogance of bloated 
 aristocracy, and the bigoted pride of kings, confessed the 
 grand law that mankind were created equal and free.=^ 
 
 How important the fact, that the best minds in all ages 
 have recognized this principle of nature ! How significant 
 that despotism has ever denied it, and has ever been at 
 war with it ! — that only tyrants, and robbers should have 
 the disposition to oppose this self-evident truth ! What a 
 lesson ! that tyrants in Grreece triumphed over it, and sunk 
 the nation into barbarism ! — that slaveholders trampled 
 upon it in Rome, and drove liberty and virtue forever from 
 the eternal city. How impressive, that the lords of Eu- 
 rope waged war against it, and converted all that had been 
 called society into a mass of moral putridity — black and 
 loathsome ! How beautiful, that while the church fostered 
 and preserved it as a divine principle, it in turn preserved 
 her, and gave her the love and reverence of humanity ! 
 
 When it was once more revived in the hearts of the na- 
 tions — when it had roused and quickened the consciences 
 of kings — when it had become enthroned in the courts of 
 judicature, and was felt as the law of the twelve peers — 
 how soon did slavery and anarchy and disorder vanish, and 
 the new light of civilization arise ! 
 
 In France, all the noted writers on law, at an early pe- 
 riod, decided that slavery was contrary to the common 
 law,t and that no slave could touch French soil without 
 instantly becoming a freeman. Even a foreign ambassador 
 was not allowed to hold a man in involuntary servitude. 
 The slave of a Spanish minister was pronounced a freeman 
 by the French judges. Nor could the distinguished posi- 
 tion of the claimant have any influence upon the court to 
 allow his claim. I Some complained of this want of re- 
 spect to his office and rank,^ though the correctness of the 
 
 * See Bancroft's Hist. U. S., vol. v. p. 7. 
 t Hargi-ave, in the case of Somerset, 
 j See Badin de Repub., 1. 1, c. 5. 
 
 § Kircher, de Legat., 1. 2, c. 1, n. 233. Binkershock Juge compet. 
 des. Amb., ed. par Barbyr, c. 15, s. 3. 
 
 4 
 
38 LETTERS TO 
 
 principle was universally conceded. The Dutch States, in 
 a similar case, allowed this law of society to be trampled 
 upon, out of respect to the minister of a foreign court,"^ 
 and received hisses for their pusillanimity. 
 
 That policy creates only contempt which tamely allows 
 injustice out of respect to empty titles or any other matter 
 of accident. France respected herself, and sustained her 
 law of personal rights ; and she had the respect of the 
 world. The Northern States of the American Union are 
 bound to maintain as sacred the same eternal law. It is 
 the fLmdamental principle of their constitutions. But they 
 have deserted that, for the defence and perpetuity of which 
 Whig fathers labored, suffered, and died. This law has 
 been deserted by the North, not out of respect to the claims 
 of foreign ministers, but to satisfy the demands of petty 
 tyrants — plantation masters ; and at how great a cost ! 
 
 In England the battle against slavery was long and ar- 
 duous, sometimes extremely bloody ; for the pro-slaver}' 
 party was always active, and consisted of the most unprin- 
 cipled men of the kingdom. They fought against the fun- 
 damental law of society, in order to maintain their own 
 unjust assumptions. The friends of justice and freedom 
 improved every advantage to give su]3remacy to this law 
 and to overthrow slavery. No man was allowed to be tried 
 on a question involving his personal rights without a jury 
 of twelve men. No claimant of a slave could touch the 
 man till twelve peers had set in judgment upon the case ; 
 and they were always, when fairly chosen, on the side of 
 freedom. It was by the institution of jury trial that slav- 
 ery was completely annihilated. Laws, too, were enacted 
 by Parliament for increasing the advantages in favor of 
 freedom,! though not without the most strenuous opposi- 
 tion of the slavemasters. Many were manumitted by pos- 
 itive enactments in the days of Edward I.t Every possi- 
 ble legal obstruction was thrown in the way of the claim- 
 ant, whilst all possible advantage was given to the alleged 
 
 * \Vicqi;efort's Ambass., p. 268. 
 
 t Co. Litt. 139.— Fitzli. Nat. Br. 78, C. D. 13th Edw. 2, 408. Litt. s. 
 20—209, & 2 Ro. Abr. 735-737. 
 
 j Britt. Cap. 31, — Wirror of Justice, c 2, s. 38. 
 
PRO-SLAVERY MEN. 39 
 
 slave.^ If the nabob failed to prove his claim clearly, de- 
 cidedly, agaiust all possible doubts thrown in on the side 
 of liberty, he was amerced.t How different is that from 
 the manner in which slavery is treated in this boasting 
 land of freedom. Shame on this boast ! Ye are worse 
 than barbarians. 
 
 Even as early as 1102, shortly after the accession of 
 Henry I. of England, the anti-slavery spirit was so strong 
 in that nation, that, in a national ecclesiastical council, held 
 at Westminster, under Anselm, " it was forbidden to sell 
 men like cattle, which had been too generally practised in 
 England, "$ especially since the conquest of William of 
 Normandy. Here it is important to remark, that this con- 
 queror, or robber, on gaining possession of England, at- 
 tempted a regular system of slavery. He was prevented 
 from fully carrying out his purpose only by the resolute 
 resistance of the Saxons. He attempted, by overthrowing 
 the fundamental principles of government, and by setting 
 up an arbitrary and despotic system, to reduce the Saxons 
 to the condition of abject servitude to liimself and to his 
 Norman lords. Henry I., on taking the throne, promised 
 the people their natural rights. To make sure of that, they re- 
 quired him to give them a charter of those rights and his 
 solemn oath to maintain it. He complied. This charter 
 of En owlish liberties was reorarded as the law of the land. 
 It recognized the great primal law of nature, giiaranteed 
 justice and right to every man, and prepared the way for 
 the total abolition of slavery in the kingdom. 
 
 Seventy years after, the great synod of Ireland de- 
 nounced the " slave trade in which the Irish had made 
 bond slaves of the English, contrary to the right of Chris- 
 tian freedom ;" declaring, also, that " they had purchased 
 of robbers and pirates, as well as of merchants — a crime 
 for which God took vengeance upon the nation by deliver- 
 ing them into like bondage ;" and therefore '' uiumimously 
 decreed and ordained, that all the English throughout Ire- 
 
 ■* Bi-itt., Wing ed., c. 31, p. 78.— Rust. ent. tit. Homine Ecplegiando, 
 373. Lib. Inst. 56. 
 
 t Fitzh. Arb. Villen. 38. 
 
 t Vid. Butler's Lives. — A7iselm. 
 
40 LETTERS TO 
 
 land^ in a state of slavery, should he restored to their natu- 
 ral freedom.''''^ Thus Ireland has the honor of the first 
 general emancipation act known in history. 
 
 There is nothing more marked in the history of English 
 jurisprudence than the fact, that, up to the time of the 
 bloody Stuarts, the courts of justice presumed in favor of 
 liberty in the trial of the claims of slavemasters.t A fu- 
 gitive claimed by the master had the right of Habeas Cor- 
 pus and Homine Replegiando.X The latter gave great ad- 
 vantage to freedom. 
 
 How much different is all that from the course pursued 
 in this boasting land of democracy ! Here, slave-masters 
 rule the courts, and convert the temples of justice into 
 slave-pens. Every advantage is given to the claims of the 
 petty tyrant. Instead of a jury of twelve men, a commis- 
 sioner is appointed, in mockery of justice, and he is paid a 
 premium for deciding in favor of slavery. Ah, sirs, what 
 a difference is that ! How infamous ! How barbarous ! 
 The English law said, " Impious and cruel is he to be es- 
 teemed who favors not liberty."<i> But you make Ameri- 
 can law to say, " Impious and accursed shall he be es- 
 teemed who favors not slavery." " Justice must be done 
 to every man," says the English lawJI " Not so," say you ; 
 "justice shall not be done to every man. Four millions of 
 men, women and children shall be denied justice. They 
 shall be held in eternal bondage, though innocent of crime." 
 " A bad custom or usage is to be abolished," said the Eng- 
 lish law ;1[ and away went slavery. " Not so," say you ; 
 " that principle would ruin America. Bad customs are to 
 be fostered and nursed," as Greece and Home nursed slav- 
 ery till it had destroyed both. 
 
 Slavery originated in the barbarism of war and piracy. 
 It exists by no other claim than that of the freebooter. 
 
 * Vid. jMoore's Hist. Ireland, vol. 2, p. 232. Chronica Hibernio?. 
 Cott. Lib Dom. A. 18. Stephens' West Ind. Slav., vol. 1, p. 6. 
 
 t Vid. Lib. Listrut., 176 a 177, b. & Bro. Arb. Vil. 66.-47, Hen. 3. 
 St. Dev. Fitz. Arb., vil. 39. 
 
 t Ibid. Also Fitzh. N.Br. 66, & Lib. Instrut. 176 a. 177-6. 
 
 § Cod. Lit., 124. 
 
 jl Jeuk Cent., 93. 
 
 *if Cod. Lit., 141. 
 
PRO-SLAVERY MEN. 41 
 
 The laws of all Christendom denounce that a capital crime. 
 The laws of the United States so regard the first act of en- 
 slaving men. They pronounce it piracy ; why ? Mani- 
 festly because it is impossible to regard it in any other 
 light, for the plain reason that the law of nature — the laws 
 of all nations — regard every man as possessing absolute 
 rights, of which, to attempt to deprive him by force, is rob- 
 bery and murder — a crime against society and against God. 
 The primal law of society, then, is supreme. It is the 
 highest law, and its violation is the highest crime against 
 society. Nothing can be lawful and right that makes war 
 upon that. All enactments, to be law, must harmonize 
 with it. To enforce an opposing enactment is suicidal, de- 
 structive of all government. Hence slavery can never be 
 sanctioned by society. It can be supported, not by gov- 
 ernment, but only by a band of robbers in the name of 
 government. Human rights are divine. That which is at 
 war with those rights is not of God, but of the Devil. It 
 was legitimate law which overthrew European slavery ; 
 while bastard law, diabolical edicts, sham legislation, at- 
 tempted to sustain it. God and the people were against 
 the Devil and the tyrants. The latter were defeated. But 
 here you are, sirs, in the nineteenth century, defending p- 
 rates, robbers, despots, and the Devil ; making war against 
 the Almighty and the people's rights. Do 3'ou expect to 
 triumph ? " The day cometh that shall burn as an oven." 
 
42 LETTERS TO 
 
 LETTER V. 
 
 It has been seen that just when the old Roman slavery 
 was being destroyed, the feudal slavery of the middle ages 
 arose. Alas ! that just when this latter was expiring 
 throughout Europe, under the powerful influence of the 
 natural law of society, another and a still more horrid form 
 of this monster should arise — the bondage of the African. 
 
 But little more than a century had passed after Louis X. 
 and his brother Philip, of France, had decreed that " as 
 all men are by nature free born," enfranchisements should 
 be granted throughout the whole kingdom upon just and 
 reasonable conditions ; when popes Martin V., Eugene 
 lY., Nicholas V., Calixtus III., and Sextus IV.,^ assumed 
 the right in the name of God and Christ to grant power to 
 the kings and princes of Portugal to enslave the poor Afri- 
 cans. 
 
 This was not the first attempt of the popes to give an 
 open and direct sanction to involuntary bondage. It would 
 not have answered for them to have made even this attempt 
 oT enslaving the Africans, without the specious pretext that 
 their purpose was the conversion of these heathen. The 
 bulls however expressly granted the right of robbery and 
 murder thus : — '■'•to appropriate the kingdoms, goods, and 
 possessions of all infidels or heathen in Africa, or whereso- 
 ever found," to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery, or 
 to destroy them from the earth," — " to take any of the 
 Guiiieans, or other negroes, by force or by barter."! 
 
 Thus modern negro slavery had its origin in the bulls of 
 five Roman popes, in the most corrupt age of the church. 
 Such, then, gentlemen, is the origin of your beautiful, your 
 
 * The following are the dates of these bulls, 1430, 1438, 1454, 1458, 
 1484. Vid. Colonize AnglicaijB Illustratse. By Wm. Bollan, Lond. 
 1762. Part I, pp. 115—141. 
 
 t Ibid. 
 
PRO-SLAVERY MEN. 48 
 
 virtuous, your " peculiar institution " at the South. How 
 charmingly you and the popes have met together, and I 
 shall soon show how you and the Tories kiss each other. 
 
 It is a notorious fact that the popes generally, from a 
 very early period, had been on the side of slavery. Leo 
 IX., in 1051, condemned the mistresses of the priests to a 
 state of absolute slavery.^ So Gregory XL, in his bull 
 against the Florentines in 13T(), declared their property to 
 be at the mercy of any who wished to rob them, and exhorted 
 the world to seize their person wherever found, and reduce 
 them to absolute slavery.! 
 
 Between the bull of Calixtus III., in 1458, and that of 
 Sextus IV., in 1484, granting the right to enslave the 
 Africans, a bull was issued by Pius IL, in 1462 in which 
 this pope remonstrated against the Portuguese enslaving 
 the Christians. But not one word does he utter asrainst 
 enslaving the poor heathen in Africa. 
 
 The first pope who took any direct steps to suppress 
 African slavery in the Bomish church, was Gregory XVI., 
 in 1839. And though he quotes the precedence of other 
 popes, yet I find none of them he refers to, issued any bull 
 against African slavery. He refers to Pius VIL, as oppo- 
 sing the slave trade, but it was not the African slave trade. 
 He refers to Paul III. But Paul III. only condemned 
 the slavery of the Indians. Though it is due to say that 
 some declare he imprecated a curse on those who should 
 enslave any class of men.X So Urban VIIL, in 1639, is 
 referred to.*^ But his bull was only against enslaving the 
 western and southern Indians. Likewise Benedict XIV. 
 is cited. II But his bull was intended for the suppression of 
 Indian slavery in Brazil, Paragua, &c. 
 
 All these popes denounce the slavery of the poor Amer- 
 ican Indians in no measured terms. Why ? Slavery was 
 complained of by the Jesuits as a monstrous barrier to the 
 
 * Bower, vol. 1, p. 183. Also Herman, ad an, 1051. 
 t Ibid., vol. 7, p. 23. 
 
 } Vid. Remusal. Hist, de Chippa fl. 3, c. 16. 
 
 \ Bullarura. Pan. Diplo. Rom. Col. Tom. VI. P. I. and 11., p. 183, 
 DCIV. 
 11 Sanct. Dom. Nos. Ben. Pap. 14, Bull. Tom. 1, p. 44, XXXVII. 
 
44 
 
 LETTERS TO 
 
 conversion of tlie Indians to the church. It was found 
 that if the church allowed the Indians to be enslaved by 
 those of her own communion, the Indians would despise 
 the church, and close their ears to her teacher-. There- 
 fore the popes issued their bulls against their being made 
 slaves. But not one specific bull was aimed at African 
 slavery until that of Gregory XVI., in 1839. True, Ban- 
 croft says, " Leo X. declared that not only the Christian 
 religion, but nature herself cried out against the state of 
 slavery."^ But why did not this pope with others exert 
 the same efficient power in the suppression of African as of 
 Indian slavery ? Why was the church allowed to buy and 
 sell Africans, while it was not allowed to buy and sell 
 Christians and Indians ? Why should five popes say to 
 the barbarous Portuguese, " You, gentlemen princes of the 
 church, may make war upon the unofi'endiug Africans; 
 you may appropriate their kingdoms^ goods, and possessions ; 
 you may reduce their persons to perpetual slavery, or 
 destroy them from the earth ; you may take any of the 
 Guineans or other negroes by force or by barter ?" Was 
 it not because the church had become corrupt ? Was it 
 not that popes had become presumptuous despots, assuming 
 to dispose of rights that belonged solely to Almighty God? 
 Such, sir, is the origin of negro slavery. The bulls of 
 five pontifical desi3ots, assuming to annihilate eternal justice, 
 and to break the moral bonds which bind the human race 
 together in one brotherhood. This is the origin of your 
 darling institution of negro slavery, — five bulls of five 
 popes. Such is the basis — the primary foundation of your 
 peculiar institution, you can find no authority beyond those 
 bulls. You go to the bible, it is true, but not to support 
 n£gro slavery. That knows no difference between the Ethe- 
 opian and the Caucasian. If it sanctions any slavery, it 
 sanctions the slavery of the white, — of native white Amer- 
 icans, as much as the native black Americans. It is solely 
 the authority of five despotic, corrupt popes, in the worst 
 age of the church, that furnishes you specific rights to en- 
 slave the children of Africa. It is authority granted in 
 an age when the church had become a mass of corruption 
 
 * Bancroft's Hist. U. S., vol. 1, p. 172. 
 
PRO-SLAVERY MTN. 45 
 
 you must rely upon that for the support of your southern in- 
 stitution. Abandon that and you have no other, but the 
 second hand authority of the tory despotism of the Stuarts. 
 Abandon that and you have no alternative but to confess 
 yourselves, original tyrants, though humble imitators of in- 
 famous popes and impious tories. 
 
 But you cannot escape the odium that comes by the 
 knowledge of the fact, that, negro slavery has no other spec- 
 ific sanction but the bulls of five wicked popes, and the 
 Stuart despots. 
 
 Besides, sirs, reflect, that the same corruptions of the 
 Romish church that allowed and sanctioned the slavery of 
 the Africans, sanctioned other crimes, and that these forced 
 the Protestant reformation. Reflect, that in justifying 
 African slavery you are obliged to make use of popish so- 
 phistries, against protestant principles. Protestantism is, 
 legitimately, the declaration of human rights against popish 
 despotism. Popish despotism established negro slavery. 
 Protestantism, in denying the despotism of the popes de- 
 nounces negro slavery. No man then, is a legitimate pro- 
 testant who lends his sanction to this infomous system. 
 
 When the reformation broke out, the protestants renounc- 
 ing the rights of popish despotism, openly and boldly as- 
 serted, what good men of the church had always asserted — the 
 rights of human nature, and they denounced slavery. The 
 same vicious power which had set up the institution of negro 
 slavery had developed itself in those other forms of dis- 
 gusting oppression which necessitated a revolution. Hence 
 negro slavery in America is one of those putrescent remains 
 of popish assumption which drove, with disgTist, the best 
 men of the church to hurl their protests at the Vatican. 
 
 The reformers, planting themselves upon the unchange- 
 able law of right, denounced the injustice of oppression in 
 words that shook the eternal city, and every despot's throne 
 in Europe. The popes justified the tyrannical ordinances 
 of the civil power. But Luther declared that " unjust vio- 
 lence is by no means the ordinance of God, and therefore 
 could bind no one in conscience and right to obey, whether 
 the command came from pope, emperor, king or master."^ 
 
 *Selden, com. 1. 18. 
 
46 LETTERS TO 
 
 So was slavery denounced by Zumglius, the bold Switz. 
 He considered that St. Paul oj^posed slavery in saying, — 
 " but if thou mayest be free, use it rather."^ This noble 
 Switz had a singular idea of the divine purpose of slavery. 
 He looked upon it as the worst of punishments infiicted upon 
 those who were so sinful as to allow themselves to he oppress- 
 ed.i Sir Kobert Filmer, the arch tory, in the reign of 
 Charles I. says, " Calvin squintecV'X so strongly towards 
 the doctrine of the absolute equality of all men as to be one 
 of the heretical founders of Genevan Republicanism. 
 Bishop Jewell represents Luther and Melancthon as teach- 
 ing the natural and equal rights of mankind, and the right 
 to defend ones self by all righteous means against oppres- 
 sion, as did David against Saul ; — that is " by avoiding the 
 power of the tyrant,"^ and St, Augustine was quoted to the 
 same purpose.ll Thus Protestantism would help the slave 
 to regain his liberty by encouraging him to fly from his ty- 
 rant. It can offer no aid to the oppressor. 
 
 According to Selden (if I mistake not) Luther at one 
 time was impressed that the gospel was opposed to civil 
 government, as the latter appeared to be the enemy of hu- 
 man rights and equal justice, and to be in a constant 
 " struggle against doing justice to the subjects," and seemed 
 " to labor wholly to amass power for enslaving mankind." 
 Many other good men have been forced to the same con- 
 clusion, from the same circumstances. Luther lived to cor- 
 rect his mistake. He saw that tyranny is not government, 
 but the assumption of the powers of it without its spirit — 
 equal justice. He saw, as every good and wise man will, 
 that legitimate government, is ordained of God for the 
 sole purpose of protecting the absolute and common rights 
 of mankind, and that whatever sets itself u|) in the name of 
 civil government under whatever form, without this one 
 grand purpose, is not a legitimate outberth from the deity 
 
 *See Judgment of Whole Kingdoms and Nations, by John Lord So 
 mors, PhiL ed. p. 134. 
 
 fOpu^ Articulorum Art. 40 42. 
 
 tSee Filmer's '• Patriarcha," 16S5, p. 5. 
 
 ^See Jewell's " Defence of the Apology," p. 16. 
 
 1 August, in Ps. 124. 
 
PrvO-SLATERY MEN. 47 
 
 through the people, but the bastard of Satan begotten up- 
 on fear. 
 
 The crime of enslaving the Africans was pursued bj the 
 Portugues in their African dominions for about three quar- 
 ters of a century before they commenced the importation 
 of slaves to America to supply the Spaniards in Hispaniola. 
 This infamous work commenced in 1508.=^ The soul of 
 Charles V. revolted at the idea of reducing the " image of 
 God" to the condition of a brute, and in 1540, under a no- 
 ble incitement, ordered all the slaves in the American Isles 
 to he set free. Lagasea the governor, obeyed, but soon re- 
 turned to Spain with such a tale for the Emperor as in- 
 duced him to consent to the re-establishment of this crime.! 
 Gold is an argument which princes seldom oppose long. 
 The French king shed some tears when some of his unprin- 
 cipled aristocracy joined the Spaniards and Portugues in 
 the barter of human flesh. He had the principle of man in 
 him and it revolted at the thought of such a crime, but he 
 gave way to other influences. 
 
 , And here let me link two parts of the French chain in 
 the matter of slavery, and show you at the same time the 
 primal law of society in its warflire against this crime of 
 crimes. I have shown that the principle that " all men 
 are bornfree,''^ was that by which slavery in France was 
 abolished. Now, it so happened that at the time negro 
 slavery was introduced and established in the French colo- 
 nies, contrary to the primary law of the French nation, 
 she had quite sunk into a state of despotism. The kings 
 had abandoned justice as the rule of civil power. They 
 issued edicts permitting and sanctioning the trade in human 
 flesh. They laid down their regulations with regard to 
 this " property in man. "I This was at the moment when 
 the infamous house of Stuart was crushing the liberties of 
 England, and laboring to re-establish slavery through the 
 British dominions. Contrary to the fundamental law of 
 France, her kings, instigated by their corrupt lords, granted 
 
 *Ander. Hist, comra. 6, p. 336. 
 fBodin de repub. 1. 1, c. 5. 
 
 X Two edicts to this effect in 1615, 16S5. Vid. Decis. Nouv. par. M. 
 Denisart, Tit. Xegroes. 
 
48 LETTERS TO 
 
 permission for the introduction of slavery into France 
 from her American islands.^ 
 
 The parliament of Paris had not lost all sense of right 
 and propriety. It had the soul to make some resistance to 
 this despotism, but not by very open measures. " They 
 did consider," says Denisart, " that the edicts of the king 
 for the introduction of slavery," " was opposed to the com- 
 man law of the kingdom^'^ and therefore they ^^ refused to 
 allow the edicts to be recorded.''^] 
 
 Thus was it declared by the parliament of Paris, some 
 four hundred years after Louis X. proclaimed that " all 
 men are by nature born free," and therefore that slavery 
 is unlawful — that involuntary bondage " was opposed to 
 the common law of the kingdom." In spite of this, how- 
 ever, the base and infamous men of the nation were deter- 
 mined, under the sanction of the king's edicts, to bring in 
 negro slavery. The friends of justice were, on the other 
 hand, too vigilant and determined to allow it. Every case 
 of a slave they could find, was brought to trial, and the 
 judges decided in favor of the common law of society, the 
 universal right to personal freedom! Tlius you see once 
 more, sirs, that the personal right of every man to free- 
 dom is the fundamental law of society — that slavery is 
 opposed to the common law, and has been pronounced to 
 be so by the highest authorities. 
 
 I have already shown that the same law acted in England 
 to the overthrow of slavery. The last cases of slavery 
 were decided in the reign of Elizabeth^ and James I. II There 
 were men who were now determined in England to set up 
 the new slavery at all hazards. In order to eifect this, 
 they found it necessary to overthrow the constitution, and 
 to make a clean sweep of the fundamental principles of 
 society. It had been attempted in the reign of Elizabeth 
 to introduce slaves from Russia. H A lucky circumstance 
 
 * This edict in 1716, another in 1778. Ibid, § 27. 
 
 t See ]\I. Denisart, as aheady cited. 
 
 X See Causes Celebres, Vol. 13, p. 492. Also Nouvelles Decis., par 
 M. Denisart, Neg. 
 
 § See Sir Thomas Smith's Commonwealth, B. 2, c. 10. Dyre, 266, 
 pi. 11.— 283, pi. 32. 
 
 II Co Entr. 406, 6. Hughes' Abridgment, tit. Villen. pi. 23. 
 
 i[ Rushworth's Hist. Coll., vol. 2, p. 468. 
 
PRO-SLAVERY MEN. 49 
 
 brought the case to light in a manner which gave triumph 
 to freedom. 
 
 A change, however, was coming over the English nation. 
 The friends of tyranny at court sanctioned the introduction 
 of slavery into the colonies; and under Charles I., a system 
 of tyranny was developing itself for the absolute slavery ol 
 the nation. The people were roused, and Charles lost his 
 head for his despotism. This was but a momentary triumph. 
 The means used by the Protector for preserving what had 
 been gained, introduced another form of despotism. The 
 friends of absolute slavery took advantage of it for regain- 
 ing their lost power. They restored Charles II. to the 
 throne, secured themselves in places of the government, 
 and trampling upon the fundamental law of the realm, 
 decided in the court of the king's bench in favor of negro 
 slavery, the right of holding property in man.^ The infa- 
 mous Jeffries was the leading spirit of this tory court. 
 Hence this court of king's bench decided, " that negroes, 
 being usually bought and sold amongst merchants, and 
 being infidels,! there might be a property in them sufiicient 
 to maintain the action, and judgment, nisi, was given in 
 faVor of holdino: negro slaves in Eno-land. 
 
 Thus under the worst despotism England ever knew, 
 the same brutal power that set at defiance the rights of the 
 English people, that trampled upon the liberties and laws 
 of the nation, that murdered in cool blood the friends of 
 freedom, was the first that attempted to legalize the new 
 slavery in the British Kingdom, the first of the English 
 nation to side with the popes in the sanction of the trade 
 in human flesh. 
 
 The English party of despotism received the name of 
 tory, while that of France was called jacobin. Both were 
 in secret league with the pope, and controled by the worst 
 characters among the Jesuits. On the settlement of the 
 southern colonies this school had the ascendency in Eng- 
 land, except during the control of Parliament and the pro- 
 
 * 2 Lev. 201, and 3 Keb. 785. Vide Hill. 29 Cha. II. B. E. Rot. 1116. 
 This was an action of trover for 10 negroes. 
 
 t This like the same in bulls of the popes was to hoodwink Christian 
 people. 
 
 5 
 
50 LETTEES TO 
 
 tectorsliip of Cromwell, at which time great numbers of 
 the tories came to America, and settled in \' irginia. Hence 
 I find on comparing the present doctrines of your school 
 with those held by the tories of that period respecting gov- 
 ernment, the rights of man and slavery, that you occupy 
 their ground. 
 
 In the next letter I shall make this matter a little 
 plainer. 
 
PRO-SLAVERY MEN. 51 
 
 LETTER YI. 
 
 How terrible has been the contest between principle and 
 lust in all ages of the world ! Yicious men, reckless of 
 the laws of God, supremely devoted to their own passions, 
 have rapaciously seized upon the rights of mankind, and 
 plundered society of its unity and peace. To preserve any 
 part of its existence, the civil organism has been forced to 
 a bloody warfare, which has always ended in the death of 
 the old form. 
 
 Strange that, in the nineteenth century, when every man 
 has the history of the world before his eyes, and a thou- 
 sand travelers in the orient tell the same melancholy tale 
 of the ruins of ancient nations, destroyed by despotism, 
 and whose desolations forewarn America of the deadly 
 effects of slavery — strange, in view of this, that there should 
 be a party in this new world so corrupt, so base, as to 
 plunge the people into that terrible contest so often and 
 so fatally repeated in the old world ! 
 
 Upon whom rests the fearful respsibility of the war 
 upon which America has now entered ? Who is the 
 aggressor ? Society is bound to preserve itself It can 
 exist only by virtue of the " Higher Law." That law you 
 scorn and trample upon. You make war upon legitimate 
 government, dethrone justice uproot the fundamental prin- 
 ciples of sociy, and overthrow the defences and super- 
 structures of freedom. Why this onslaught? What is 
 your purpose ? Is it not that you may enslave the nation ? 
 Is it not that you may preserve an accursed system of bon- 
 dage in which you already pride yourselves as masters ? 
 Is it not that you may extend to infinity the despotic power 
 you already find yourseves in possession of? 
 
 I have shown the pro-slavery school of every age to 
 have been at wdr with society, and I have shown so far. 
 
52 LETTERS TO 
 
 the filial results of their triumph. It has been seen that 
 whenever and wherever your principles have prevailed, 
 civilization has been destroyed, and anarchy, corruption, 
 civil war and barbarism have followed. Liberty, sirs, is 
 the sister of virtue, the banishment of the one is the loss 
 of the other. 
 
 It is self-evident that justice is the basis of all legitimate 
 governments, whatever be their form. This is recognized 
 even in the government of the Hindoos. " When justice," 
 says the laws of Manu,^ " having been wounded by 
 iniquity, approaches the court and the judges extract not 
 the dart, they shall be wounded by it." " When justice is 
 destroyed by iniquity, and truth by false evidence, the 
 judges who basely look on without giving redress, shall 
 also be destroyed." " Justice being destroyed will destroy ; 
 being preserved will preserve. Beware, judge ! lest 
 justice being overturned, overturn hath us and thyself." 
 " A king who inflicts punishment on such as deserve it 
 not, and inflicts no punishment on such as deserve it, brings 
 infamy on himself, while he lives, and shall sink when he 
 dies, to a region of torment." 
 
 According to the fundamental law of the Hindoo people, 
 slavery could have no legal existence among them. The 
 learned commentator on the voyage of Nearchus, has con- 
 cluded, that among the East Indians there was no slavery 
 properly so called, though the people were divided into 
 castes.t Alexander, the Great Robber, was the first to 
 institute slavery in India. He condemned whole commu- 
 nities of people to perpetual bondage. t 
 
 All noted writers on China agree that slavery had no 
 existence among that people till a modern date, and that it 
 is even now mostly of a voluntary character ; involuntary 
 servitude being a violation of the fundamental law of the 
 empire. 
 
 The primal law of India declared that " what is given 
 hy force ^ and all other things done by force, or against free 
 consent, is pronounced void.^^§ This was an eternal prohi- 
 
 * Sir William Jones' Works, vol. 3, p. 299. Inst. Hindoo Law. 
 
 t See Mitford's Greece, vol. 8, p. 426. 
 
 I Ibid. 
 
 § Sir William Jones' Works, vol. 3. Inst. Hindoo Law, § 168. 
 
PRO-SLAVERY MEN. 53 
 
 bition of involuntary bondage. This law is of very ancient 
 origin. The nearer we approach the primitive period of a 
 nation, the less evidence do we find of slavery. Tradition 
 in the age of Herodotus preserved the memory of a time 
 when slavery was unknown in Greece.^^ Sparta broke 
 loose from law, and as a baud of rol)bers enslaved the 
 Helots; and Pliny says of them, "they were the first to 
 invent slavery in Greece.! 
 
 The universally acknowledged right of self-defence, is a 
 universal acknowledmient of the unrighteousness of sla- 
 very. St. Germain said, " Every man hath right and title 
 to have what he hath righteously, and of the right-wise 
 judgment of the first reason ivhich is the eternal law"t 
 Against this law, prescription, statutes and customs may 
 not prevail, and if any be brought in against it, they be 
 not prescriptions, statutes nor customs, but things void and 
 against justice. And all other laws, as well the laws of 
 God in regard to the acts of men, as others, be grounded 
 thereupon."^ 
 
 So St. Augustine said, " In temporal laws nothing is 
 righteous nor lawful, but that the people have derived to 
 themselves out of the Law Eter)ial.''\\ 
 
 But the pro-slavery school in every age of the world 
 have been at war with this " Law Eternal." You, sirs, 
 have set up this infimous claim in America — that you 
 have a right to establish a legislation in defiance of justice, 
 at war with human rights, destructive of liberty, and over- 
 whelming the nation with beastly servitude. You claim 
 the right to drag America from freedom, justice and broth- 
 erhood into slaver}^, anarchy, and civil strife ; from civili- 
 zation and Christianity into barbarism and the blackest 
 heathenism. " Every good law," says St. Bridget,ir " is 
 ordained to the health of the soul, and to the fulfilling of 
 the laws of God." But you would curse the land with 
 despotism, and slavery in the name of law. You would 
 
 * Herodot. lib. 6, p. 137. 
 
 t Nat. Hist. lib. 7, c. 57. 
 
 i Doct. et Stud. D. 1, c. 
 
 § Ibid. 
 
 II Free Arbit. 1. 1. 
 
 ^ Lib. 4, c. 129. 
 
 5=* 
 
54 LETTERS TO 
 
 set up Satau as the god of America, and enact vice into 
 virtue, and establish iniquity by statute. " Every man's 
 law," says Canerer,^^ " must be consonant to the law of 
 God. And therefore neither the laws of princes, the com- 
 mands of prelates, the statutes of commonalities, nor the 
 ordinances of the church, can be righteous or obligatory, 
 unless they be consonant to the law of God." 
 
 Had the pro-slavery school in England prevailed as the 
 same school prevailed in Greece and Rome, that nation 
 would long before this have been plunged into loathsome 
 barbarism. The law of nature by which all men are born 
 free, was not only recognized in the common law of the 
 English realm, but it ever had a strong party to sustain it ; 
 men who were ready to die in its defence. How many 
 martyrs sacrificed their lives to sustain it ? " This law of 
 nature,''^ said the highest judges of England, " is a part of 
 the law of England."! And " whatever is necessary and 
 profitable for the preservation of the society of man is due 
 by the law of naturey% 
 
 In the fifth year of the reign of Edward YL, of England, 
 an attempt was made by the corrupt aristocracy, to create 
 slavery by legislation. Parliament went so far in this 
 path of infamy, as to pass an act enslaving vagabonds for a 
 term of years,§ and as a penalty for acts of violence in 
 resisting, or in revenge, the miserable creatures were to be 
 reduced to perpetual slavery, or murdered. II This barbar- 
 ous enactment created a powerful excitement throughout 
 the whole kingdom. It was a violation of the natural law 
 of the realm. It trampled upon the common law of society. 
 Nor would the people allow its execution. The judges 
 knew they could not sustain its execution. Not an impar- 
 tial jury could be found that would not pronounce against 
 it. Nor would the people allow it to remain on the statute 
 book. Two years after its enactment, the king prorogued 
 parliament, and they, acting under the special instructions 
 
 * As quoted by St. Geiinain. Vid. Doct. et Stud. D. 1, c. 4. 
 
 t See Coke's 7 Eep. p. 12. 
 
 J Ibid., p. 13. 
 
 § Vid. Statutes at Lame. vol. 9. Ap. p. 143-4. 
 
 11 Ibid. 
 
PRO-SLAYERY MEN. 55 
 
 of their constiiuents, declared that " the act concerning 
 idle persons and vagabonds, in certain cases, to be made 
 slaves of, &c., shall be from henceforth utterly re- 
 pealed, made frustrate, void, and of none etFect.""^ 
 
 It was thus that the English people beat back the 
 attempts of the bloated aristocracy to re-establish domestic 
 slavery among them. They would not have even vagabonds 
 made slaves of. " It could not have been compassion for 
 the culprits that excited this aversion to the law," said 
 Hon. Wm. Pinkney in the House of Delegates of Mary- 
 land, in 1789, alluding to this odious enactment, in his 
 masterly speech against southern slavery. " The spirit of 
 the people," he adds, "could not brook the idea of bondage, 
 even as a penalty judicially inflicted. They dreaded its 
 consequences ; they abhored its example ; in a word, they 
 reverenced public liberty, and hence detested every species 
 of slavery." "The general voice of the nation demanded 
 the repeal of this slave statute of Edward YI."t and it was 
 repealed. 
 
 England always had two opposite political schools, the 
 one pro-slavery ; the other, the " Higher Law," or liberty 
 school. The former opposed the charter of rights, and 
 embraced every opportunity to trample it in the dust. They 
 consisted of the most corrupt and unprinci]. ad, proud and 
 overbearing men of the nation. This party gained the con- 
 trol under the bloody Stuarts. They were determined, as 
 already shown, to establish slavery. Under Charles IL, 
 they had gained a decision from the judges on the king's 
 bench, in favor of chattel slavery. They advocated the 
 d(^spotism of the king. Speaking of them, John Locke 
 said : " In this last age, a generation of men has sprung up 
 amongst us, that would flatter princes with an opinion that 
 they have a divine right to absolute power. To make way 
 for this doctrine, they have denied mankind a right to natu- 
 ral freedom, whereby they have as much as in them lies, 
 
 * Ibid,, p. 155. 
 
 t See the speech of Hon. William Pinknej, in the ^Maryland House 
 of Delegates, in its session in November,' 1789. In this speech the 
 spirit of whig fathers against slavery is seen. 
 
56 LETTERS TO 
 
 exposed all subjects to the utmost misery of tyranny and 
 opj^ression.""^ 
 
 These men were at first called Cavaliers, and then re- 
 ceived the name of Tories — an appellation by which a band 
 of robbers in Ireland vrere known at that time. It was 
 applied to the cavaliers, as they advocated pro-slavery doc- 
 trine — the right of their party to rob and enslave their 
 fellow-men. Our good whig fathers gave the same dis- 
 tinguishing title to the pro-slavery school during the Kevo- 
 lution. 
 
 The English tories published several works in support of 
 their pro-slavery principles ; to which you seem to be 
 largely indebted, sirs, for your political doctrines. The 
 most notorious of these works were those of Sir Robert 
 Filmer — such as his " Anarchy of a Limited and Mixed 
 Monarchy," and his " Petriarcha." The latter was for 
 some time circulated in manuscript, and was carefully ex- 
 cluded from the eyes of the opposite party on account of 
 the execrable character of its doctrines. It was finally 
 discovered by one of the noblest among the friends of free- 
 dom — Algenon Sidney,! who immediately set himself to 
 work to expose its infamous libels upon human nature. 
 For this labor the noble Sidney was condemned by the 
 same judges who sanctioned the trade in Africans, and was 
 cruelly murdered upon the block. | 
 
 This tory " Patriarcha " of Filmer, commences by 
 denying the grand principle I have all along shown to 
 have been recognized in every nation and in every age of 
 European history, as the fundamental law of legitimate 
 society and government, namely ; that " all men are by 
 nature free born," and " have an inalienable right to their 
 inheritance." " Since the time that school divinity began 
 to flourish," says rilmer,*^' " there hath been a common 
 opinion maintained as well b}' divines, as by divers other 
 learned men, which affirms that mankind are naturally en- 
 
 * Locke's Works, vol. 5, p, 214. 
 t See the Life of Sidney, and his Works. 
 X Trial of Sidney. See his Life. 
 
 § See " Patriarcha," or the Natural Power of Kings, by Sir Robert 
 Filmer, Bart. 2d, Lond. 1685, c. 1. 
 
PRO-SLAVERT MEN. 57 
 
 dowed and born with freedom from all subjection, and at 
 liberty to choose what form of government they please, and 
 that the power which any one man hath over another was 
 at first bestowed according to the discretion of the multi- 
 tude," and that " the people have power to punish, or de- 
 prive the prince of all regal power if he transgress the 
 laws of the kingdom." 
 
 The latter principle had been sworn to by all the kino's 
 of England, down to the reign of the Stuarts.^ The Enc- 
 lish constitution embraced it.t It regarded every man as 
 having the absolute rights of man. It was the basis of 
 English association. Its grand aim was '• the protection of 
 every individual in the enjoyment of those absolute rights 
 which were vested in them by the immutable laws of na- 
 ture."! 
 
 The pro-slavery, or tory school, found this natural sys- 
 tem in their way. They could not establish despotism by 
 these fundamental principles. Xor had they any hopes of 
 establishing a system of slavery that would remain perma- 
 nent, so long as the minds of the people were possessed of 
 the idea that all men were inheritors of equal rights and 
 liberties, and that no one portion were born to rule over 
 the rest. It was necessary, therefore, to strike down this 
 principle of natural liberty and equality. Hence says the 
 arch-tory, Filmer, " The desperate assertion whereby 
 kings are made subject to censures and deprivations of 
 their subjects, follows as a necessary consequence of that 
 former position, of the supposed natural equality and. free- 
 dom of mankind^ and liberty to choose what form of gov- 
 ernment it please. § 
 
 Many writers before him " had," he said, " bravely vin- 
 dicated the rights of kings in most points," but none had 
 gone so far as to make war upon the fundamental laws of 
 society in order to maintain their position. "All of them," 
 says Filmer, " when they came to the argument drawn 
 
 * •• Statute? of the Realm " of England, vol. 1, p. 16S. Kelhara Prel. 
 Dis. Laws Wm. Con£;.— Hale's Hist. C. Law.— Crab's Hist. Eng. Law. 
 — Ecliard's Hist, of England. 20 Edwd. 3d. 
 
 t See Blackstone's Commentaries on the Eng. Constitution, b. 1, c. 1. 
 
 1 Ibid. 
 
 ^ Filmer's Patriarcha, ch. 1, § 5. 
 
58 LETTERS TO 
 
 from the natural liberty and equality of viajikind, with one 
 consent admitted it for a truth unquestionable^ not so much 
 as once denybirj or opjjosing it ; whereas," said he, " if 
 
 THEY HAD BUT CONFUTED THIS FIRST ERRONEOUS PRINCIPLE, 
 
 the luhole fabric of this vast engine of popular sedition would 
 have dropped down of itself .''■^ 
 
 In what manner did the arch-tory now attempt to " con- 
 fute" this first principle of society ? Why, he first calls it 
 " erroneous," and then asserts that it sprang from the Devil 
 in the Garden of Eden, when he tempted ouf first parents. 
 Then he asserts that God made the mass of mankind 
 slaves, and ordained the cavaliers or tories to be their 
 masters, and the king the supreme, absolute master. This 
 is the sum of his argument to overthrow the eternal law of 
 equal right. Still he displays a great deal of tact and ap- 
 parent learning. He, like all tyrants and abettors of legal 
 robbery, makes great use of the " Sacred Book,''^ and would 
 make appear that God took immense pains to write the Bi- 
 ble, on purpose to sanction the despotism of kings and 
 slavemasters. 
 
 This work of Filmer contains all the arguments which 
 are now advanced by your school in support of the 
 RIGHTS (?) of slavemasters. Nor is it possible to support 
 slavery without denying those fundamental principles of 
 government which the tories denied, and without asserting 
 the same doctrines of despotism which they asserted. The 
 same positions which sustain the assumed rights of the 
 slavemaster, sustain the assumed rights of tory lords, and 
 tyrant kings, and corrupt popes. 
 
 Nor did these tories fail to receive the aid of doctors of 
 divinity in promulgating their new political creed. There 
 was Dr. Laud, who answers to your Dr. Lord. And then 
 there was Dr. Sibthorp, who sits well beside your Dr. South - 
 side-view. And then there was Dr. Manwarring, who is an- 
 swered by Dr. Man-stealer. Dr. Man-war-ing, by the way, 
 was a notorious character under Charles I. He had the 
 honor of preaching before the king, and of supporting this ty- 
 rant by libeling human nature. His sermons were published. 
 
 * Filmer's Patriarclia, ch. 1, § 6. 
 
PRO-SLAVERY MEN. 59 
 
 wlierein lie declared " that tlie king is not bound to ob- 
 serve the laws of the realm concerning the suhjecfs rights and 
 liberties^ but that his royal will and command, in imposing 
 loans and taxes, without common consent in Parliament, 
 obliged the subject's conscience, upon pain of eternal dam- 
 nation ;" that " they rebelled against the laws of God, if 
 they refused to comply, and were guilty of impiety, disloy- 
 alty and rebellion."^ The Doctor, in taking this position, 
 was not cunning ; he was really committing treason against 
 the constitution and government of the realm, and exposed 
 himself to the penalty of the law. The Commons, there- 
 fore, called him to account under the charge of attempting 
 to overthrow the government, by asserting the right of the 
 king to enslave the people and rob them of their property. 
 On his being proved guilty, the Commons published a de- 
 claration against him, in which they re-assert the inherent 
 rights and liberties of the subjects of the realm, as an estab- 
 lished law of the kingdom, which no king had right to over- 
 throw.! The foolish Doctor, for attempting to subvert this 
 fundamental law, was sentenced to the fine of a thousand 
 pounds, imprisonment, suspension and disgrace as a doctor 
 of divinity and as a preacher of Christ, and to the burning 
 of his sermons by the common hangman. This was a very 
 mild penalty. It was sufficient, however, to bring the un- 
 fortunate man to his senses. He confessed his crimet be- 
 fore Parliament, and was finally pardoned. <j> 
 
 The tories, in pushing forward their purposes of enslav- 
 ing the people, roused the latter to take up arms in self- 
 defence. The nation was plunged into a civil war. The 
 king and his party were defeated. The former lost his 
 head, and great numbers of the latter emigrated to Ameri- 
 ca, and settled in Yirejinia. These tories brought with 
 them to A^irginia all their love of monarchy, of Filmerism, 
 of mastership. They despised labor, looked with contempt 
 upon the laborer, and, what was a very natural result, they 
 sought to make others their slaves, in order to find support. 
 
 * See Rushworth's Hist. CoU., vol. 1, p. 423. 
 t Ibid, p. 593. 
 X Ibid, p. 605. 
 ^Ibid, p. 636. 
 
60 LETTERS TO 
 
 Men of the same school had already set up slavery in the 
 colony under the flivorable regards of the Stuart despotism, 
 notwithstandino; it was in violation of the laws of the moth- 
 er country, and a palpable breach of the law of nature — 
 the rights of man. 
 
 The South, from the beginning, represented toryism, be- 
 ing settled by tories, and ruled by tories at " home" and 
 in the colonies. Hence the doctrines now held by the rul- 
 ing men of the Southern States are identical with those ad- 
 vocated by Filmer, the arch-tory, and the real founder of 
 the tory school. 
 
 You are thus forced, like the worst school of English 
 tories, to wage war upon the legitimate principles of soci- 
 ety and government. You, as they, pretend that a " com- 
 pact" — a bargain — is binding, which requires as a condi- 
 tion the rebellion of the people against Eternal Justice. 
 You pretend that you have derived power by a compact to 
 make slaves, not only of Africans, but of the whole people 
 of the United States. Did the tories of England, in the 
 worst days of tyranny, ever pretend to a more dangerous 
 power over that nation? 
 
 As your doctrine with regard to the rio;ht of .enslaving 
 men is the same with that put forth by your progenitors in 
 England, I shall, in the next letter, answer you with the 
 arguments of the old English whigs. 
 
PRO-SLAVEKY MEN. 61 
 
 LETTEE YII, 
 
 I KNOW not by what principle the legislative power of one 
 nation has better right to enact injustice than that of 
 another. The fundamental law of all nations forbids such 
 claim. Our fathers in the revolution denied it to parlia- 
 ment. Are we not bound to deny it to Congress ? It 
 was always affirmed that parliament had no right to make 
 slaves by enactment, or to sanction slavery. Can you tell 
 from what god or demigod Congress has derived such 
 authority? " If there be such a power in the decrees and 
 commands of fools," said Cicero, " that the nature of 
 things is changed by their votes, why do they not decree 
 that what is bad and pernicious shall be regarded as good 
 and wholesome ? Or why, if law can make wrong right, 
 can it not make bad good ?"^ " Those who have made 
 pernicious and unjust decrees, have made any thing rather 
 than laws."t 
 
 The slaveholders of Rome opposed this primal principle 
 of all nations. They labored to legalize slavery. The 
 tories of England, under the Stuarts, exerted themselves 
 to the same infamous purpose. They contended it was in 
 the power of government to enforce oppressive measures. 
 Milton met and overthrew their execrable assumptions. 
 He exhibited the fundamental law of the nation ; showed 
 that it had been sacredly held even by the early Saxons. 
 
 " Our ancestors," said he, "have conveyed this doctrine 
 down to posterity, as the foundatmi of all laws, which like- 
 wise our lawyers [not the pettifoggers] admit, that if any 
 law, or custom, be contrary to the law of God, of nature, or 
 of reason, it ought to be looked upon as null and void."t 
 
 * De Leg. 1, 17. f Ibid. 
 
 X Miltons Prose Work?, vol. 3, p. 307. " Bracton and FIe4-a," says 
 Milton, " both refer to this tnily royal law of King Edward" the Con- 
 fissor. 
 
 6 
 
62 LETTERS TO 
 
 This " law of laws " — this " Higher Law," it is impos- 
 sible to abolish. It is coeval with society and government. 
 You can rebel against, and you can subvert government by 
 doing so. In this war upon society and the rights of man, 
 you take sides with all the tyrants of antiquity — you iden- 
 tify yourselves with the jacobins, the tories, under the 
 Stuarts, and under George III. 
 
 How can government be founded in justice, and yet 
 have the right to enact measures against justice ? This is 
 like asking how a man can be a Christian, and have the 
 right to overthrow Christianity. Has the Almighty given 
 a title to Congress to enact injustice, when He has denied it 
 to the parliament of England, " What the parliament doth 
 shaU be holden for nought, whenever it shall enact that 
 which is contrary to the rights of 7iatureJ'^ That, sirs, is 
 what Lord Coke acknowledges to be the fundamental law 
 of government — the constitutional principle — the safe- 
 guard against injustice — tyrinny, slavery. But your 
 school would hiss it into contempt. You sneer at it — 
 you call it " Babel-building. "t 
 
 Does not every well-informed lawyer know, that " there 
 is no necessity to obey, where there is no authority to or- 
 dain."! There is no power in Congress to ordain unjust 
 measures under any pretext. Law, to be law, must be 
 just. Injustice is opposed to law, destructive of law, and 
 " whatever is destructive of law, cannot itself be law, for 
 then the law would be sole de se.""^ " The legislative power 
 is limited by, and subordinated to, the law of natural jus- 
 tice. If it exceed its limits its acts are no more, as to 
 right and authority, than if the same were by a private 
 society against the will of the whole community ; as to 
 honor and good faith, it is much worse. "II " Against the 
 law of reason, neither prescription nor statute, nor custom. 
 
 * See Proeme to 2(i Inst. Also, Sharp's People's Eiglits, p. 236. 
 Also, Leg. Riv. Vin. G2. 
 
 t This is the language of that sage man, Mr. Wise, of Virginia, in his 
 letter to Dr. Adams, of Boston, and the Dr. in his " South side view," 
 favors it. 
 
 X Dav. 69, and 10 Co. 76. 
 
 § Judge Atkins, 221. 
 
 y Lord Abingdon's Thoughts. See also Loft's Elements of Universal 
 Law, 173. 
 
TRO-SLAYERY MEN. 63 
 
 can prevail ; if any such are hroiight against it, they are not 
 prescriptions^ statutes, or customs, but things void and against 
 justice J^^ 
 
 These, sirs, are not tlie declarations of wild and ignorant 
 enthusiasts, but of profound and learned civilians — men 
 who had made law and government the diligent study of 
 life. They are the declarations of government itself, the 
 decision of judges. 
 
 The old whigs, both of England and America, at the 
 period of the American Revolution, opposed the tones 
 with the like authorities against the usurpations of parlia- 
 ment. The Massachusetts General Assembly, in the year 
 1764, in their petition to the king, took this position against 
 the oppressive acts of parliament, and sustained it with 
 numerous citations of authority.! Thus Judge Hobart 
 had decided that " An act of parliament made against 
 natural equity, would be void; for jure nature sunt immu- 
 tabilia,"! — the law of nature is immutable. This was pro- 
 nouncing the Law of Nature, to be the fundamental law of 
 the land, against which no statutes could be allowed. The 
 petition of our whig fathers gives an overwhelming amount 
 of other authorities to the same purpose, and instances 
 where this primal law had been formally recognized by 
 parliament.^ 
 
 And Otis himself in his masterly work multiplied other 
 authorities in abundance, and gave cases wherein " the 
 common law controled the acts of parliament, and some- 
 times adjudged them to be utterly void. "II Thus when an 
 act of parliament is against common right and reason, or 
 repugnant or impossible to be performed, the common law 
 shall control it and adjudge it to be void."*I[ " This doc- 
 trine,''' says the Massachusetts Memorial to the king, " is 
 
 * Doct. et Stud, edition, 1668, p. 6. See also Cod. Lit. 96. 
 
 t See Appendix to Otis' rights of the British Col. 
 
 ± Hob. 87. 
 
 § Tren. 12. Jac. Day, v. Savage, S. C. and P. cited Arg. 10, Mod. 
 115; Hill. 11; Ann C. B. Halt. c. 9, 12; Mod. 687, 688: Hill. 13, W. 3, 
 B. R. in c. of cit. Lond. v. Wood. 
 
 II See Rights of the British Colonists, p. 73. 
 
 i[ And tiierefore 8 E. 3, 30. T. Tregor's case, W. 2, cap. 28, and Art. 
 Sup. Chart. 9, Sec. 8 Kep. 118, Hill. 7, Dr. Bonhain's case. 
 
64 LETTERS TO 
 
 agreeable to the Law of Nature and Natio?is, and to the 
 divine dictates of Natural and Revealed Religion.''''^ 
 
 This is what jou impiously call " Babel-building," as if 
 government is not bound by the eternal law of right. 
 George III. sneered at it, and his tory ministry, and the 
 tories in parliament, but every whig knew that the -' Higher 
 Law" was none the less binding for all that. Nor did 
 they flinch when the hour came to maintain it with more 
 than mere words. 
 
 Now, sirs, it is a principle universally acknowledged 
 among all authoritative writers on law, that slaver^t is con- 
 trary to natural law, and cannot by any possible form of 
 legislation be legalized. It is certain that if " by the law 
 of nature all men are born free," which even the civil as 
 well as the common law maintains, you may not attempt 
 to legislate in favor of slavery without committing treason 
 against government. 
 
 Montesquieu, than whom there never was one better ac- 
 quainted with the laws of all nations, after showing that 
 slavery is opposed to the law of nature, says, ' ' Nor is sla- 
 very less opposite to the civil law than to that of nature."! 
 Why ? Because, sirs, the civil law of all nations assumes 
 that justice alone is the basis of law. And therefore that 
 whatever is unjust is unlawful, and, because civil law to 
 bind ail, must be be assented to by all. All men are pre- 
 sumed to assent to be governed by justice, but no man can 
 be presumed to assent to be governed by injustice. Hence 
 the civil law has no power to bind a slave. " What civil 
 law," asks Montesquieu, " can restrain a slave from running 
 away, since he is not a member of society."1^ 
 
 As " every man is born with a right to freedom to his 
 person, which no other man has a power over,"'^ and as 
 " the principal aim of society is to protect individuals in 
 the enjoyment of those absolute rights, which are vested 
 in them by the immutable laws of nature,"ll it is impossi- 
 ble for any civil society to attempt to protect a few men 
 
 * See Appendix, as before, p. 73. 
 
 t Spirit of Laws, b. 15, c. 2. 
 
 X Ibid. 
 
 § See Locke on Civil Government, b. 2, c. 16, § 190. 
 
 Jl Blackstone's Com. b. 1, c. 1. 
 
FRO-SLAVERY MEN. 65 
 
 in robbing others of the enjoyment of their absolute rio-ht 
 of freedom, without abrogating its own authority, and 
 committing suicide. To attempt it would be assuming 
 "absolute arbitrary power," and "absolute arbitrary power 
 cannot consist with the ends of society and gOTernmeut."^ 
 
 These are established principles never denied in any 
 civil society, but by robbers, assassins, and the general 
 enemies of society, that "justice must be denied to no 
 man ;"'t that "justice must be done to e}:erij man," and 
 " neither denied, nor dela3'ed, not sold to any man;"l that 
 "it is better to endure all adversities than to assent to one 
 evil measure ;'"^ that though " property is valuable to a 
 man, it doth not constitute the value of a man;"il that "a 
 bad custom or usaoje is to be abolished.''^ 
 
 It is true, the Algerines were governed by no such prin- 
 ciples as these, but every one knows that Algiers was not a 
 civil state, but a band of robbers. They opposed the legi- 
 timate principles of civil society, for the same reason you 
 oppose them, and for no other. Men who do not live by 
 robbery, are not afraid of justice; they have no cause for 
 that. The tories under the Stuarts opposed these princi- 
 ples, but every one knows for what reason : they were the 
 friends of kingship, lordship, mastership, tyranny, sla- 
 very robbery. They sought to overthrow the fundamental 
 principles of the civil state, and to build up an absolute 
 despotism ; they made it their chief aim to restore the 
 old feudal slavery. That was what caused the civil war, 
 under Charles I. When they had secured the control 
 under James II., how clearly was it seen that they had 
 doom-d the nation to the most dissjraceful and insufferable 
 bondage. But your principles are identical with theirs. 
 True, you advocate the divine rights of no single tyrant; 
 you do worse than that, you labor to sustain the tyranny of 
 fifty thousand tyrants. You do not, it is true, endeavor to 
 impose upon us a living despot, under the title of king, but 
 
 * Locke as above, ch. 11, § 137. 
 t Jeiik. Cent. 176. Priii. Leg. ct. Jlquit. 47. 
 i .Jeiik. Cent. 93. 
 § 3d Inst. 23. 
 II Cod. Lit. 124. 
 il Leg. Ri. Viu. 32, 33, 160. 
 0* 
 
66 LETTERS TO 
 
 you labor to impose upon us what will be more disgraceful 
 and impious for us to submit to — a dead despot, galvan- 
 ized, under the name of " the Federal Constitution." 
 
 It is natural, sirs, you should desire a king after your 
 own liking. Were you certain of establishing a live one, 
 whose despotism would sustain the claims of slaveholders, 
 you would, if possible, effect that impious work tomorrow. 
 Nor would you be obliged to change your principles to 
 accommodate yourselves to the new form of despotism. 
 All you assert now, is the same that Filmer, the arch-tory, 
 concocted for the support of the Stuart despotism, in Eng- 
 land. And the same arguments the best whig writers in 
 those times advanced against your school in England, can 
 be urged with equal power against your present school in 
 America. 
 
 You assert that the Federal covenant or compact, guar- 
 antees slavery, sanctions property in man. Locke answers 
 you, " This is a power which neither nature gives, for it 
 has made no such distinction between one man and another, 
 Tvor compact can convey^^ So the eminent Cudworth, 
 " Covenants without natural justice, are nothing but mere 
 words and breath, and therefore can they have no force to 
 oblige;'"! for "none can be obliged in duty to obey, but 
 by natural justice."! Is it not self-evident that ''what- 
 ever is iniquitous, can never be made lawful by any author- 
 ity on earth ; not even by the united authority of kings, 
 lords, and commons ? for that would be contrary to the 
 eternal laws of God, which are supreme. "*i> 
 
 But you reply that " slavery is not iniquitous," that it 
 is " a divine institution," and therefore may be legalized. 
 So said the English tories. But Locke answered, " He 
 who attempts to get another man into his absolute power, 
 does thereby put himself into a state of war with him," and 
 thus " bein2; the ao;ressor, forfeits his own freedom ;" " for 
 having quitted reason, which God hath given to be the 
 
 * Locke on Civil Government, b. 2, cli. 15, § 172. 
 t Cud. Int. Syst. Uni.,2 ed. v. 2, p. 894. 
 X Ibid, p. 896. 
 
 § Decliriition of the Peoples' nat. riglits, a fundamental principle of 
 the British Constitution, &c., p. 10. 
 
PRO-SLAVERY MEN. 67 
 
 rule between man and man, and the common bond whereby 
 human kind become united into one fellowship and society, 
 and having renounced the way of peace which that teaches, 
 and made use of the force of war, to compass his unjust 
 ends upon another, he revolts from his own kind to that of 
 leasts by making force, which is theirs, to be his rule of 
 right ; he renders himself liable to be destroyed by the 
 injured person, and by the rest of mankind, who will join 
 with him in the execution of justice, as upon any other 
 wild beast, or noxious brute, with whom mankind can have 
 neither society nor security."^^ 
 
 Thus the slaveholder is set forth as a criminal, as even 
 a " wild beast,"" a " noxious brute'' — as one who declares 
 war against the common law of mankind, and instead of 
 being protected in his dangerous warfare by government, 
 is one " with whom mankind can have neither society nor 
 securi9i/.-^ 
 
 So the excellent Sidney, who was murdered for having 
 written a book refuting your impious doctrines, said, " that 
 all mankind are created equally free, is a truth planted in 
 the hearts of men, and acknowledged so to be by all that 
 have hearkened to the voice of nature, and disapproved by 
 none, but such as, through wickedness, stupidity, or base- 
 ness of spirit, seem to have degenerated into the worst of 
 beasts, and to have retained nothing of men but the outward 
 shape, or the ability of doing those mischiefs which they 
 have learnt from their master, the devil. "t 
 
 Nor did they consider that the slaveholder alone was 
 criminal in this case ; but the magistrate who attempted 
 to enforce oppressive laws in the name of government, was 
 a criminal, and placed himself on the side of the devil in 
 rebellion against God and society, and was to be resisted." 
 " Though I am unwilling to advance a proposition," says 
 the excellent Lord Somers, " that may sound harshly to 
 tender years, I am inclined to believe, the same rule which 
 requires us to yield obedience to the good magistrate, who 
 is the minister of God, and assures us that in obeying him 
 
 * Locke, Civ. Gov. b. 2, ch. 15, § 172. 
 
 t bidney oa Government, vol. 1, ch. 2, sec. 1, T[ 1. 
 
we obej God, does equallj oblige us noi to oh^j \\xo@e 
 
 "■femake ih: ^/ ^ " , ' " - ' -7; le;<t m obey- 
 
 lag them we . _ -. .- :j do,"* 
 
 This* yiaii "will say, pertiapev applies oaly to a magistrate 
 "^^ — - " ' law and the constitii- 
 :_--.- ... . . -- aoB refer to a siave- 
 sanctiODing o&eer and execiitor, or ooe appointed to ex©- 
 c ' ' ^" -' ' - . : is sar ' by 
 i^ . - - , " -It mock ^:ab- 
 Hshed tiie preseau lorm of federal gOTenmieat granted 
 powers t "' ^ ' " "' - :t the part of ty- 
 rants, an . ^ . - .e. You say that 
 
 our fathers, in other words, created a eoastitution irhidi 
 
 I : ? . -^ what Locke and Cud worth 
 
 say of saeh an instrument of compact, and I will add 
 L'. ^ -^ ■>" words : "-^ It is not in the choice ; •* : of 
 
 a-/ ^ :/. " says he, -'at their erecting tJi. ...^i of 
 
 ^Temmeat, to enlarge and extend the rower of thoee^ 
 v': ."■'.■'-- '■ ".ts and 
 
 !:•- r -^ :_ ;:„:._- .._.. . . _^ . magis^ 
 
 trates in the charter of Nature and Kerelation."! 
 
 T: ' ' ' ' . '^ - -" T a^re bom 
 
 jree, : : ._ . .: - ■_,--- .- : ^ .:r« equal f 
 
 l^t "justice shall be done to etery man;^ that justice 
 5'- " ' - \ ' ' - "" : is there to be found any 
 1^_.. _. .-• : -J of society, whose funda- 
 mental laws do not recognize these self^vident principles. 
 Itw-- ■ -/' V -■ ■ r-rplein 17>*T-^, 
 
 to e^-- r_ - -;.;:-_ -- _- : j at war with 
 
 sjOTemment itself. They could bind the nation by no sa^ 
 compact -' " - " - '. ' ' - - .:i€» 
 
 to be ! — :.- ^ .... -.. ..._ _..: by 
 
 natural justiee.^f 
 
 I: ' - " ' .- "' :: assert, as yoii do, 
 
 diat . ._ .^: : ... ; :. .. ..::^._: :_e very governnient 
 
 whi;!h they labored to establish ; that they bound us to 
 
 * JodgmffEj: of Wljcie KiEgdi3nas and Saiiaiis, •f 111. 
 
 t Iblji. *5" 1* 
 
 T Cuidvrcirdi loi. SyaL Ijaiv^ toL 2, p. S96. 
 

 HE 
 
 
 
70 LETTERS TO 
 
 " If our fathers promised for themselves to become 
 slaves, thej could make no such promise for us," said Mil- 
 ton to the Jacobite Salmatius ; " we shall always retain 
 the same right of delivering ourselves out of slavery, that 
 they had of enslaving themselves to any whomsoever.'"^ 
 " That right which nature has given the people for their 
 own preservation, how can you affirm has been given to ty- 
 rants for the people's ruin and destruction ?"t " Since 
 therefore the law is chiefly right reason, if we are bound to 
 obey a magistrate as a minister of God, by the very same 
 reason and the very same law, we ought to resist a tyrant, 
 and a minister of the devil. "I 
 
 To what purpose, then, do you declare that the people 
 of the American States, in 1787-8, bound themselves by 
 a covenant to sustain slavery — to dispose of the absolute 
 right of their brethren in a manner wholly at war with 
 government and society ? Every one knows, who has any 
 understanding of the principles upon which civil society is 
 based, that the people had no such power. If they at- 
 tempted it, they assumed to themselves rights which it 
 would be impossible to suppose any but God himself could 
 claim. " The people," says Chancellor Somers, " can no- 
 wise interpose in the disposal of the rights which belong 
 unto God, and which he hath incommunicably reserved to 
 himself; nor can they confer those measures and degrees 
 of authority upon those whom they elect and advance to 
 magistracy, which God hath antecedently precluded, the 
 one from bestowinsr and the other from receivino;."9 
 
 As civil society is based upon the law of nature, it is 
 clear, as already shown, that " no human law is binding 
 which is contrary to the laws of nature."ll To suppose it 
 would be a palpable contradiction. Hence, as all authori- 
 ties concur, and the judicious Hooker emphatically affirms, 
 " Human laws must be made according to the general laws 
 of nature. "IF 
 
 *^ IMilton's Defence of the People of England. 
 
 t Ibid. Milton's Works, vol. 3, p. 216. 
 
 tlbid, p. 275 
 
 § Judo-inent of "Whole Kingdoms, "J 1. 
 
 II Ibid, II 14. 
 
 ^ Hooker's Eccl. Pol , 1. 3, sec. 9. 
 
PRO-SLAVERY MEN. 71 
 
 To admit your monstrous assumption, that our fathers 
 attempted to bind their children by a system of injustice 
 to become man-thieves, robbers, pirates, " brute beasts," 
 " blood hounds " — would be bad enough ; but for us to ad- 
 mit that they could thus bind us, is impious — blasphemous ; 
 for it is to suppose that the Infinite God is so tyrannical 
 and unjust as to hold posterity bound to perform the un- 
 just oaths of their progenitors. To admit that we are thus 
 bound, is to admit that we can be and are, legal slaves to 
 plantation masters. 
 
 Your system thus makes us blasphemous slaves, if we 
 submit to it. It renders justice impossible to be support- 
 ed. Your government is not legitimate, then, but a bas- 
 tard, a tyranny, which we are bound to reject and over- 
 throw. This is just, it is right, it is a solemn duty ; for, 
 as Lord Somers says, " that is just which doth destroy ty- 
 rannical government ; that is unjust which would abolish 
 just government. '-"^ You, as the tories in England, abol- 
 ish just government, and set up an oligarchal despotism, 
 which denies human rights and crushes the soul out of the 
 nation. 
 
 Government, as it is ordained of God, has its bounds, 
 its unalterable and eternal principles. It can have no 
 right to do wrong, even if all the people and their rulers 
 should resolve they had, and should swear to maintain so 
 contradictory and diabolical a position. " These," says 
 Locke, " are the bounds which the law of God and nature 
 have set to the legislative power of every commonwealth, 
 in all forms of government : they are to govern by proinul- 
 gated established laws, not to be varied in particular cases, 
 but to have one rule for rich and poor — for the favorite at 
 court and the countryman at plough ; they are to act for 
 the good of the whole people."! Hence, as " every man 
 is born with a right to the freedom of his person, which 
 no other man has a power over,"| it would be the absolute 
 destruction of civil society, and the assumption of the right 
 of a band of robbers, to attempt to sanction one portion of 
 
 * Judgment of ^^^lole Kingdoms and Nations, T 35. 
 t Locke on Government, b. 2, ch. 11, ^ 142. 
 X Ibid, cli. 16, § 190. 
 
79 
 
 LETTERS TO 
 
 tlie nation in depriving others of their just right ; for, as 
 Cud worth sajs, " the bond of bodies politic can be none 
 other than natural justice — something of a common and yuh- 
 lic, of a cementing and coagulating nature in all rational 
 beings.""^ Injustice segregates, dissociates, completely 
 breaks up a nation ; destroys government, barbarizes man- 
 kind, and renders society impossible. The interest of the 
 slaveholder is partial, selfish, and at war with the rights of 
 mankind, at war with justice; hence, at war with legiti- 
 mate government and society. How impossible is it, then, 
 for a people to favor such a class of men without precipitat- 
 ing their own ruin, without allowing that humanity have no 
 absolute rights ; and thus allowing themselves no absolute 
 defence against themselves being made slaves. 
 
 Salmatius, the French Jacobite, who wrote in defence of 
 the tyranny of Charles I., asserted that the constitutional 
 principles of England gave despotic powers to the king. 
 This is like what you assert of the American Constitution. 
 Milton's answer to Salmatius is an answer to you. 
 " Though it were possible for you," said Milton, " to dis- 
 cover any statute, or other public sanction, which ascribes 
 to the king a tyrannical power, since that would be repug- 
 nant to the will of God, to nature, and to right reason, you 
 may learn from that general and primary law of ours, that 
 it will be null and void. But no such right of kings has 
 the least foundation in our law."t Nor is there any law 
 of the American nation by which slaveholders have the 
 right they claim for themselves in the constitution. There 
 is no American law by which the Legislature can enact in 
 favor of slavery, no more than in favor of adultery, rape, 
 forgery. 
 
 The power of legislators is limited by the laws of na- 
 ture. Hence Milton, speaking of the law by which the 
 representatives of the people are bound, says, " They are 
 limited by the law of nature only, which is the only law 
 of laws truly and properly to all mankind fundamental ; 
 the beginning and end of all government ; to which no par- 
 
 * Int. Syst. Univ., b. 1, ch. 5. 
 
 t Milton's Prose Works, vol. 3, p. 268, 
 
PRO-SLAVERY MEN. 73 
 
 liament or people that will thoroughly reform but may 
 and must have recourse."^ 
 
 The basis o^ public liberty is the same as that of the ^r- 
 sonal liberty of every man. That basis is Natural Law. 
 Your doctrine of the constitution strikes at this and un- 
 dermines the whole foundation of civil freedom. You de- 
 ny all guarantee to the rights of the nation, and claim to 
 yourselves the sole mastership, and the absolute slavery of 
 the people to your oligarchy of slaveholding aristocrats. 
 " He that oj^pugns the public liberty," says Sidney, " over- 
 throws his own, and is guilty of the most brutish of all fol- 
 lies, while he arrogates to himself that which he denies to 
 all men."t 
 
 I have shown, in former letters, that it had ever been 
 recognized by all legitimate forms of society and govern- 
 ment, that " by the Law of Nature all men are horn free" 
 and that this law constituted the fundamental basis of all 
 legal organizations of men from the earliest periods. " This 
 law," says Cicero, " is the same eternal and invariable law, 
 given at all times and in all places, to all nations ; because 
 God, who is the author thereof, and has published it himself^ 
 is always the sole master and sovereign of mankind. Who- 
 ever violates it, renounces his own nature, divests himself 
 of humanity, and will be rigorously chastised for his diso- 
 bedience, though he were to escape what is commonly dis- 
 tinguished by the name of punishment."? Have you not 
 seen the punishments Eternal Justice brought upon Rome 
 for slaveholding ? The same unbending law of the Al- 
 mighty holds amenable at the dread bar the acts of the 
 American people in respect to the just rights of three and 
 a half millions of their own brethren. The liberties and 
 rights of the whole people of America, black and white, 
 are indissolubly united. That which sinks and destroys 
 the one part, sinks and destroys the whole ; that which ex- 
 alts and secures one, preserves and ennobles all. 
 
 Greece, I have shown, had her noble sons who exposed 
 
 * Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth. — Mil- 
 ton's Prose Works, vul. 3,' p. 403. 
 
 t Discourses on Government, vol. 1, p. 330. 
 
 X De Repub., lib. 3, apud Lactant, Inst. Div., lib. 6, cap. 8. 
 
 7 
 
74 LETTERS TO 
 
 the injustice of slavery, and warred against its direful re- 
 sults. Isocrates took the side of right, and maintained the 
 paramount obligations of the " Higher Law." The so- 
 phists sneered at him, but he stood firm, and declared to 
 the slaveholders, and all other classes of Grecian robbers, 
 " He who prefers injustice to justice, and makes his sover- 
 eign interest consist in depriving other men of their right- 
 ful claims, is like to those brute creatures that are caught 
 by the bait ; the unjust acquisition flatters his sense at 
 first, but he shall find himself involved in very great 
 evil."=^ Ah, sirs ! how great, how immense was the evil 
 that afterwards involved Greece for this one sin of slave- 
 holding — this greatest of all national curses ! 
 
 . * Isoc. Orat. de Perrautat, 
 
PRO-SLAVERY MEN. 75 
 
 LETTER VIII. 
 
 You oppose the doctrine of the preceding letter in regard 
 to legislative power. So did the tories of England. The 
 doctrine is based on the Law of Nature, and cannot be 
 abrogated. The tories made war upon it, and labored to 
 overthrow society in England in the time of the Stuarts. 
 In the reign of George III., the same impious school gained 
 the control in the councils of the British nation, and at 
 once commenced a crusade against liberty and right. The 
 first purpose was to enslave the whig colony of Massachu- 
 setts, to break down her independent spirit, and cripple 
 and stultify her energies. They had no idea that the 
 Southern colonies w^ould join with the North on whig 
 grounds to oppose tory despotism, as the Southern colonies 
 had been made up mostly of tory elements under the Stu- 
 arts. They knew that the Virginia House of Burgesses 
 had been extremely strong in its tory principles under the 
 Stuarts, and had passed resolutions in favor of that execra- 
 ble despot, Charles I., and had secretly acknowledged the 
 sovereignty of his banished son, (afterwards Charles 11.) 
 They knew that the tory settlers of Virginia had always 
 hated the colony of Massachusetts on account of her lib- 
 eral principles and her free institutions. 
 
 Massachusetts had opposed slavery as "a vile and odious 
 course." True, in 1637, in the reign of the tyrant, Charles 
 I., Massachusetts authorities were over persuaded to dispose 
 of some captive " savages " by sending them to the West 
 Indies. These were exchanged for " negroes and other 
 merchandise,^^ which were brought into the colony. They 
 were the first slaves in New England.^ One of these was 
 a captive African princess. This fact became known 
 through the colony. It excited great disgust when it was 
 
 * Winthrop's Joiirnal. See Col. Amer. Stat. Assoc, vol. 1, p. 200. 
 
76 LETTERS TO 
 
 heard bow the brutal man who bought her treated her 
 virtue. The people were aroused against the infamous 
 institution. The whig friends of Massachusetts in the 
 mother country protested^ against the introduction of sla- 
 very into the puritan colony. The Legislature of the col- 
 ony then took in hand the abolition of the iniquity they 
 had introduced, and passed laws forbidding any species of 
 involuntary servitude.! 
 
 Shortly after this, a number of African captives were 
 landed in the colony and sold. The fact was brought to 
 the knowledge of the general court, whereupon they re- 
 solved that, " conceiving themselves bound by the first 
 opportunity to bear witness against the heinous and crying 
 sin of man-stealing, as also to prescribe such timely redress 
 for what is past, and such a law for the future as may 
 sufficiently deter others belonging to us, to have to do in 
 such vile and most odious courses, justly abhorred of all 
 good and just men, do order that the negro interpreter, 
 with others unlawfully taken, be, by the first opportunity, 
 at the charge of the country, for the present, sent to his 
 native country of Guinnea, and a letter with him of the 
 indignation of the court thereabouts, and justice thereof"! 
 Shortly after. Providence plantations and Warwick, passed 
 acts against slavery.^ 
 
 Thus while anti-slavery principles — the fundamental 
 principles of society — were being carried out in the North- 
 ern colonies by English whig settlers, the Southern colo- 
 nies, settled mostly by tories, were fastening upon the 
 South that detestable system of robbery and oppression 
 which is now sinking it beyond recovery. Almost at the 
 instant that the people of Massachusetts, through the gen- 
 eral court, abolished the slavery which had but just been 
 introduced, the tory lords of England established a consti- 
 tution for the province of Carolina, in which they impiously 
 declare that every free man of the colony shall possess 
 " absolute power and authority over his negro slaves, of 
 
 * Muss. Hist. Coll., 3d Series, v. 9, p. 2. 
 
 t Coll. Amcr. Stat. Assoc, vol. 1, p. 200. 
 
 j Ibid, vol. 1, p. 201. 
 
 § See Updike's Hist. Narraganset Church, p. 170—174. 
 
PRO-SLAVERY MEN. 77 
 
 whatever opinion or religion,"''^^ whether heathen or Christ- 
 ian. At this time Sir John Yeamans, a tory, with his 
 tory followers, settled in Carolina with a body of African 
 slaves."! 
 
 Shortly before this, and under the special favor of the 
 Stuart despotism, slavery had been introduced into the 
 Catholic colony of Maryland, and under tory influence the 
 Maryland Assembly enacted, consonous with the arbitrary 
 and unjust rule at home, that " the people of the colony 
 consisted in all the Christian inhabitants excepting the 
 slaves.''''^ These were not considered people^ even though 
 they might be Christians. They were a new species of 
 animals — i?7<;/e-Christians, not Christian people. 
 
 The professed purpose of the tory lords in establishing 
 the colony of Carolina was " the propagation of the gospel 
 among the heathen."! They were very zealous for religion. 
 They had filled the prisons of England with such heretics 
 as Richard Baxter, who had denounced slavery,! and John 
 Bunyan and Alleine. The first act of missionary labor in 
 Carolina was the introduction of negro slavery ; the sec- 
 ond was by King Charles himself — a gift to the knightly 
 slavemaster-missionaries, of twelve pieces of cannon and 
 military stores.^ Tories from England flocked to this 
 colony. They " fomented the spirit of discord among the 
 Indian tribes, and promoted their mutual wars, for the pur- 
 pose of obtaining slaves, by purchasing the captive Indians,!! 
 and bartering; them in the West Indies for Africans. 
 
 Thus was the gospel promoted by the tories among the 
 heathen. 
 
 The pirates, too, came in for a share. This tory colony 
 became a house of refuge to them, and a shelter from the 
 storm. These high sea murderers and robbers were spe- 
 cially flivored by the robber king. Patronized in the 
 beginning, by him, knighted indeed, and honored for their 
 
 * (iraliam's Hist of the United States. 
 t Bovtmin, Oldmixon, Chalmers. 
 
 * Gniham's Hist. U. S. 
 t Ibiil. Also Bacon. 
 
 X Clarksoirs Hist, of tlie Abolition of the Slave Trade, vol. 1. 
 \ Graham. 
 II Ibid. 
 
 r* 
 
78 LETTERS TO 
 
 episcopal robberies, they were recommended by the royal 
 favor to the kind regards of the favorite tories of Carolina. 
 The ports of the province were thrown open to them. 
 They were furnished with supplies of provisions in exchange 
 for their golden spoils. The tory governor and all the tory 
 inhabitants — who were indeed the principal inhabitants, 
 were in full fellowship with these pirates. And this " mis- 
 sionary christianizatiou of heathen " was carried on for a 
 great many years.=^ 
 
 The gospel of Christ, however, was scarcely at all 
 preached in the colony till after the year 1695. The first 
 time the ordinances of religion were administered, was in 
 1696, by seme puritan missionaries sent into Carolina from 
 Massachusetts.! There were no school-houses, no meeting- 
 houses — no legitimate society, no government of impartial 
 justice. Everywhere was robbery, murder, ignorance, 
 yulgarity, toryism, slavery. 
 
 It is hardly to be wondered at then, that the tory lords 
 under George III., had no expectation of rousing the oppo- 
 sition of the southern colonies when they, in connection 
 with the king, struck at the old whig liberty of Massa- 
 chusetts. 
 
 The contest commenced in 1761, in the town of Boston, 
 in the old court-house, in the masterly speech of James 
 Otis against the Writ of Assistance. " Then and there," 
 says John Adams, " American Independence was born."| 
 In opposition to troy despotism, both that of the lords of 
 England, and that of the slavemasters, he proclaimed the 
 natural freedom and equality of mankind. He boldly 
 asserted the rights, not only of the white, but of the black 
 man. He denounced African slavery, and urged such 
 high-toned principles, as made Mr. Adams tremble when 
 he thought of them.^ 
 
 Slavery hnd stolen in upon the puritan colony by eva- 
 sion of the law, and by the aid of tory influence, so that at 
 the moment Otis was speaking, slaves were advertized for 
 
 * See Graham. 
 
 t Ibid. 
 
 j See Tudor's Life of Otis. 
 
 § Ibid. 
 
PRO-SLAVERY MEN. 79 
 
 sale in the Boston newspapers. Otis denounced the sys- 
 tem as wholly illegal and iniquitous. It was contrary to 
 the English law ; and no court could side in its favor. The 
 blow struck by this fearless patriot, roused the minds of 
 others. 
 
 Then came the news of the stamp act. The spirit of 
 alarm and of earnest inquiry flew abroad. It was seen 
 that a regular system of oppression had been determined 
 on by the tory power of the mother country. The question 
 arose, how shall we remonstrate ? What shall we say ? 
 We must declare that the supreme power has no right to 
 make slaves of us. We have the right of British subjects. 
 We are under the protection of the laws of the realm. 
 But it ia impossible to assert the rights of any class to the 
 exclusion of others. Our colonial charters make no differ- 
 ence between black and white colonists. If we appeal to 
 the protection of the just laws of our ancestors, we cannot 
 deny the protection of the same laws to all who are born 
 under them. English law cannot be allowed to protect the 
 white, unless it be allowed to protect the black ; for the 
 law knows no color. All who are born in the Eno;lish 
 colonies, are born under the obedience, power, faith, liege- 
 alty, or liegeance of the king, and are natural subjects and 
 not aliens, they are free born, and not slaves de jure^ and 
 if slaves de facto, it is contrary to law. 
 
 " The king is bound to protect the liberties and rights 
 of his subjects, [black or white,] as much out of therealmof 
 England as within it ;t and his protection and government 
 is general over all his dominions and kingdoms as well in 
 time of peace, by justice, as in time of war, by the sword. I 
 Allegiance and protection are inseparable. There is a 
 mutual bond of obligation.'^* ' By the law of nature all 
 men are bora free.' The judges of England have declared 
 * the law of nature to be a part of the law of the realm. 'il 
 The king is bound to protect all his subjects in their birth- 
 rights. In declaring, then, that the colonists are free 
 
 * Coke's 7th Rep. Calvin's case, pp. 5, 6. 
 
 t Ibid, p 8. Also Regist. fol. 25, b. 26. 44, E. 3. 
 
 % Colve's 7 Rep., p. 9. 
 
 k Ibid, p. 5. 
 
 U Ibid. 
 
80 LETTERS TO 
 
 Britisli subjects, entitled to all the rights of any other of 
 the king's subjects, slavery is declared illegal. For the 
 law of nature is paramount. ' It was before any judicial 
 or municipal law in the world ;"^ it was before slavery, 
 and slavery was opposed to it. ' But the law of nature is 
 immutable,' and, as the law of the British realm, it unal- 
 terably requires the protection of all the natural rights of 
 British subjects."! 
 
 These legitimate principles of the English government 
 were now to be trampled upon once more by the tory lords 
 and the foolish king, they had secured to their interests. 
 Blind and fool-hardy, they pressed their measures of des- 
 potism, as you, sirs, are at the present moment pressing 
 your odious plans of tyranny, upon the American people. 
 
 In 1764, Massachusetts passed resolutions in which the 
 rights of all the colonists were declared, without respect 
 to rank or color. And James Otis, under the sanction of 
 the- Massachusetts House of Kepresentatives, published his 
 work on the Bights of the British Colonies, in which it 
 was declared that "the colonists are by the 'taw of nature'' 
 free born, as indeed all men are, white or black. "I " Nor 
 can any logical inference in favor of slavery," said Otis, 
 " be drawn from a flat nose, or a long or short face."§ 
 Speaking of a certain class of slaveholders, he says, 
 " They can, in general, form no idea of government, but 
 that which, in 2)erson, or by an overseer, the joint and sev- 
 eral proper representatives of a Creole and of the devil, is 
 exercised over ten thousands of their fellow-men, born 
 with the same right to freedom, and the sweet enjoyments 
 of liberty and life as the unrelenting task-masters, overseers, 
 
 and planters The law of nature was not of man's 
 
 making, nor is it in his power to mend or alter its course. 
 Its disobedience can never be with impunity even in this 
 life."ll 
 
 * Coke's 7 Eep., p. 9. 
 
 t 20 H. 7, 8. Fortesque, c. 13. Acts of Pari. 10, E. c. 5, and 11. R. 
 2, c. 1. 14 H. 8, c. 2, &c. 
 % See this work referred to, p. 29.j 
 \ Ibid. 
 II ibid, pp. 29—31. 
 
PROSLAYERY MEN. 81 
 
 There was not an intelligent lawyer in the colonies, who 
 did not at once perceive that, in advocating the rights of 
 the British subjects in America against the claims of the 
 tories of England, the equal rights of every native-born 
 colored man, though held a slave, was also declared. The 
 Rhode Island whigs, and those of all the northern colo- 
 nies, in taking part with Massachusetts in 1764, assumed 
 this ground. In Connecticut they declared^ '^ all the in- 
 habitants," " all the people of the colonies and plantations 
 in America, are really, truly, and in every respect under 
 the protection of the British constitution;" that "protec- 
 tion and subjection go together;" "that no man owes 
 allegiance to a power that will not regard his inherent and 
 inalienable rights ;" that "as all the subjects of the king 
 ["black and white] are bound to obey, so all the king's sub- 
 jects are to be protected in the natural rights that belong to 
 them ;" that " as all the people of the colonies are the sub- 
 jects of the British government, so the British constitution 
 an^ laws guarantees the protection of the lives, liberties, aiid 
 properties of all Nor can any class or the inhab- 
 itants OF TUE COLONIES BE EXCLUDED, as the charters granted 
 not liberty to one, and doomed others to be slaves, but 
 declared that ' all the subjects shall have and enjoy all the 
 liberties and immunities of free and natural subjects equal 
 with those within any of the dominions of us, [the king,] 
 our heir or successors, to all intents, constructions and 
 purposes whatsoever, as if they and every one of them were 
 born within the Realm of England J^ ' 
 
 This made it illegal for any person born in the colonies, 
 or within the realm of England, to be held a slave by the 
 colonists, no matter what was his color, for the law had no 
 knowledge of color or the shape of the nose. Hence the 
 town of Boston, in their resolutions passed in 1764, de- 
 clared that all the natural rights, guaranteed to the sub- 
 jects in the kingdom were guaranteed to the colonists, 
 without respect to color, by the colonial charters. Hence 
 James Otis, in behalf of Massachusetts, declared that " the 
 
 * See " Reasons why the British Colonies in America should not be 
 charged Avith Internal Taxes, &c. New Haven, 1764." 
 
82 LETTERS TO 
 
 same right that allows of the slavery of one, sanctions the 
 slavery of all, seeing that the rights of all are equal. "^ 
 And furthermore said he, 'that the colonists, black and 
 white, born here^ are free-born British subjects, and enti' 
 tied to all the essential civil rights of such, is a truth, not 
 only manifest from the provincial charters, from the prin- 
 ciples of the common law and acts of Parliament, but from 
 the British Constitution, which was reestablished at the 
 revolution [that overthrew the despotic Stuarts in 1688] 
 with a professed design to secure the liberties of all the 
 subjects in all generations."! 
 
 Now the revolution in England, in 1688, in overthrow- 
 ing the tory despotism of the 6tuarts, ought to have been 
 followed in the colonies with a revolution overthrowing 
 slavery, inasmuch as slavery had been introduced into the 
 colonies by the tories, under the tyrannical Stuarts, 
 against English law. 
 
 But, as already shown, the tories had settled the South- 
 ern colonies, and slavery was their darling offspring, which 
 they would cherish, though it destroyed them, because 
 they would rather die than labor for an honest livelihood. 
 
 The tories under George III,, in forcing upon the colo- 
 nies oppressive measures, forced the true men of America 
 to look into the fundamental principles of the nation. 
 There they found the old law of nature as the eternal basis 
 of legitimate government. There they found that " by this 
 immutable law all men are born free," and have an equal 
 title to the protection of the civil power. There they found 
 that slavery was at war with the charters of rights, and 
 that they cuuld lay no claim to the protection of the Eng- 
 lish constitution without allowing the equal and inalien- 
 able rights of those held as slaves. 
 
 Hence, St. George Tucker, a Virginia professor of law, 
 and a judge in the General Court, declared that " slavery in 
 the colonies was a departure from the principles of the 
 common law " — " a measure not to be reconciled to the prin- 
 ciples of the Law of Nature, nor even to the most arbitrary 
 
 * Rights of the British Colonists, p. 33. 
 t Ibid, p. 37. 
 
PRO-SLAYER Y MEN. 83 
 
 establishments in the English government at the period" of 
 the Stuarts, when it was introduced ; for " absolute slave- 
 ry, if it ever had existence in England," said Judge Tuck- 
 er, " had been abolished long before. ""^ 
 
 So Judge Wilson, of Pennsylvania, a revolutionary pa- 
 triot, declared " slavery" to be " unauthorized by the Eng- 
 lish common law ;" and that " it is repugnant to the prin- 
 ciples of Natural Law, that such a state should subsist in 
 any social system ;" that, " in the enjoyment of their per- 
 sons and their property, the common law 'protects aTl.^^\ 
 
 This was tested in Massachusetts, according to Dr. Bel- 
 knap, t a cotemporary. Several cases were tried, accord- 
 ing to this writer, and, " on the part of the blacks, it was 
 pleaded, that the royal charter expressly declared all per- 
 sons horn or residing in the Province to be as free as the 
 king's subjects in Great Britain ; that by the laws of Eng- 
 land no man could be deprived of his liberty but by judg- 
 ment of his peers." The latter, however, referred to ques- 
 tions of crime, and not to the trial of question of property 
 in man. Judgment was rendered in favor of freedom. 
 
 Shortly after the favorable decision of the j&rst case in 
 Massachusetts, in 1769, the same question came up in the 
 case of Sommerset, in England. When it was decided that, 
 according to English law, negro slavery was illegal, and 
 that it had no respect to the color of a man ; that a slave, 
 in short, could not legally exist under the British Consti- 
 tution. 
 
 In view of all this, South Carolina, in 1774, " resolved 
 that His Majesty's subjects in North America [without re- 
 spect to color or other accidents] are entitled to all the in- 
 herent rights and liberties of his natural born subjects 
 within the kingdom of Great Britain ;" " that it is their 
 fundamental rights that no man should suffer hi his person 
 or property icithout a fair trial, and judgment given by his 
 peers, or by the law of the land." Furthermore, " that no 
 power had right to take the rightful property of another, 
 
 * See Examination of the Question on the Common Law, by St. G. 
 Tucker. 
 
 t See Judge Wilson's Works on Law, vol. 2, p. 488. 
 j See Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. 4. 
 
84 LETTERS TO 
 
 without his consent gi\^en personally, or by his representa- 
 tives.'"^ 
 
 The same resolutions had been passed over and over 
 again in all the other colonies, North and South. This 
 was, up to the year 1776, common whig ground of union 
 between the colonies and the mother country : the author- 
 ity of Magna Charta, the English common law, the Natural 
 Law as the basis and fundamental law of the British realm, 
 and the natural rights of the colonists, as acknowledged 
 and guaranteed in the colonial charters. 
 
 All of these, however, toryism (both in the mother 
 country and in the colonies) trampled upon and kicked 
 aside. For the tory denied the authority of justice and 
 the Natural Law, and scouted the doctrine, that " by the 
 law of nature all men are born free." 
 
 The Southern colonies, in uniting with the North on 
 fundamental principles of English law, declared the ille- 
 gality of slavery. When the colonies were forced to 
 abandon the protection of English law, being driven to this 
 by the tories, who denied its authority and trampled upon 
 the constitution, they were forced to plant themselves sole- 
 ly upon the Law of Nature, and declare themselves free 
 and independent. A 
 
 In assuming this independent position, it was impossible 
 to avoid adopting the Law of Nature as the fundamental 
 basis of the nation. America could have effected nothing 
 for herself on the platform of tory principles. It was 
 toryism — pro^slaveryism — that was at war with America, 
 and demanded her unconditional surrender. There was no 
 alternative, but to surrender to slavery — to pro-slavery 
 power, or to take anti-slavery ground — the law of human 
 rights — and defend their position as best they could. 
 
 Taking this ground of Natural Law, Southern slavehold- 
 ers, who were sincere, would not only be ready to acknowl- 
 edge the illegality and unrighteousness of slavery, but 
 would condemn it, and be willing to adopt some certain 
 method for its overthrow. 
 
 * See Hist. Revolu. South Carolina from a British Province to au 
 Independent State. By D. Ramsay, M. D. 1785. Vol. 1, pp. 18, 19. 
 
PRO-SLAVERY MEN^ 85 
 
 Hence, we find that, through the whole period of the 
 revolution, and for several years after, not an instance can 
 be found of a whig patriot justifying slavery. On the 
 contrary, every one of them took occasion, in one form or 
 another, to condemn this institution. 
 
 In a political work, published in Charleston, South Car- 
 olina, in 1784, the writer, in the very outset, declares that 
 " such is the fatal influence of slavery on the human mind, 
 that it almost wholly effaces from it even the boasted char - 
 acteristic of rationality. "=^ This noble whig writer advo- 
 cated " that the Constitution [of South Carolina] should be 
 framed on principles of equal freedom., in order that oligar- 
 chal despotism might be prevented from assuming the eon- 
 trol.t 
 
 The tories however bore rule in that state. They were 
 determined to perpetuate slavery. The few whigs who 
 were true to principle were overwhelmed by the arts, cor- 
 ruptions, and despotism of wealthy nabobs who had secured 
 the power in their own hands. Licentiousness, ignorance, 
 tyranny, and degrading bondage were the characteristics to 
 be seen everywhere. 
 
 Alluding to the unhappy state of things in that day, 
 this writer says : " No man can be said to enjoy even the 
 shadow of freedom in a state whose laws and police do not 
 protect him from insult and injury. Licentiousness is a 
 tyranny as inconsistent with freedom, and destructive of the 
 common rights of mankind, as is the arbitrary way of an 
 enthroned despot."! 
 
 You, sirs, would do well to learn from this whig writer 
 of South Carolina, the great mission of the American States. 
 You will recollect that he spoke the sentiments of the true 
 whigs of tfie Pvcvolution. " It has been too common with 
 us " [of S. Carolina] said he, " to search the records of other 
 nations, to find precedents that may give sanction to our 
 own errors, and lead us unwarily into confusion and ruin. 
 It is our business to consult their histories, not with a view 
 
 * See Conciliatory Hints, &c., submitted to the Consideration of tlio 
 Citizens of South Ci\rolina, by Philodemus, p. 5. 
 t Ibid, p 27. 
 Ilbid p. 32. 
 
 8 
 
86 LETTERS TO 
 
 to tread riglit or wrong in their steps, but in order to in- 
 vestigate the real sources of the mischiefs that have befal- 
 len them, and to endeavor to escape the rocks which they 
 have all unfortunately split upon. It is paying ourselves 
 but a poor compliment, to say that we are incapable of 
 profiting by others, and that, with all the information 
 which is to be derived from their fatal experience, it is in 
 vain for us to attempt to excel them." 
 
 The tories then pointed to Grecian and Koman slavery 
 in justification of slavery in the American Bepublics. This 
 southern whig would have them see that, slavery was the 
 great rock on which those ancient Republics split. He 
 would have them remember that the lessons of the past 
 give a terrible warning to slave-holding despotisms. " If" 
 said he " with all those advantages, together with the pecu- 
 liar happiness of our present free, uncontroled, and, as it 
 were, unconnected situation (such as no nation before us 
 ever did, and probably none after us ever can enjoy); if 
 with all these," said he, " we are incapable of surpassing our 
 predecessors, we must be a degenerate race indeed, and 
 quite unworthy of those singular bounties of Heaven, which 
 we are so unskilled or undesirous to turn to our benefit." 
 
 This was the great fact that was pressed horn A o the hearts 
 of the true patriots of those times. They felt that in break- 
 ing loose from all connection with European institutions — 
 in becoming independent of the English government — in 
 establishing civil institutions properly and truly American, 
 every improvement should be made that the advantage of 
 circumstances could allow. " The superiority of our condi- 
 tion over that of other nations," said they, " is truly amazing. 
 It seems as if the Almighty had intended the various revo- 
 lutions and misfortunes of all other states for our particu- 
 lar instruction, and then placed us in the only possible 
 situation in which we could practically profit by it. Be- 
 bre us, no people were ever so entirely relieved from the 
 control of hereditary rulers and military force. Before us, 
 none have ever been so free to associate upon terms of 
 equality. All before us have been surrounded with 
 neighbors who would have been ready to support the first 
 usurper that should seize upon the reins of government. 
 
PRO-SLAVERY MEN. 87 
 
 In order to render such a condition of real utility to tlie 
 people, it was necessary to provide for them a new world, 
 out of reach of the interference of the rest of mankind. It 
 is on us, and us only, that the great Ruler of the Universe 
 has bestowed this great and wonderful blessing. To show 
 our grateful sense of his beneficence, we should improve 
 these happy circumstances to our own and the welfare of 
 our posterity. We should set an example of prudence, 
 justice, and generosity, becoming the characters of men 
 who have made the noblest strufrorle in the cause of free- 
 
 CO 
 
 dom.'"^ 
 
 The tories, or pro-slavery men, had no fellowship for these 
 rational views. They lived only for themselves, and sought 
 to turn government to their own account. Slavery was 
 their darling institution ; and though it resulted in the en- 
 tire destruction of society, the total subversion of govern- 
 ment, and the overthrow of morals and religion they cared 
 not, so long as it supported their luxuries. 
 
 * See work above cited p. 33. 
 
88 . LETTERS TO 
 
 LETTER IX. 
 
 Two months and ten days after the Congress of 1776 
 had declared it to be a " self-evident truth, that all men are 
 created equal, and endowed by their Creator with the 
 inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of hap- 
 piness," the Massachusetts House of Kepresentatives 
 " Kesolved, that the selling and enslaving the human 
 species is a »direct violation of the natural rights, alike 
 vested in all men by their Creator, and utterly inconsistent 
 with the avowed principles on which this and the other 
 United States have carried their struggle for liberty even 
 to the last appeal."^ 
 
 This was the whig spirit of the revolution — it was 
 the manner in which the whigs understood the grand 
 movement of the nation. The tories who had stolen the 
 livery of the whigs — who, in other word|| had assumed 
 the name of whiggery, secretly favored slavery, and made 
 use of every possible stratagem to defeat and overthrow 
 the liberal policy and principles of the revolution. 
 
 Hence, while the true whigs — the sons of Freedom — 
 were laboring to destroy the institution of slaver}^ through- 
 out the American States, the impious tories under the guise 
 of moderate whigs, labored to preserve and establish this 
 system of robber3^ It was through the influence of these 
 false men, in the council of the Massachusetts General 
 Court, that the above noble resolution was prevented from 
 going before the world. 
 
 Congress, in 1774, had made a unanimous and solemn 
 agreement, upon sacred honor, " that they would neither 
 import, nor purchase any slave imported, after the first day 
 of December ; after which time " they agreed " wholly to 
 discontinue the slave trade, and would neither be concerned 
 in it themselves, nor would hire their vessels, nor sell their 
 
 * See Coll. Amer. Statist. Assoc, vol. 1, p. 205. 
 
PRO-SLAVERY MEN. 
 
 89 
 
 commodities or manufactures to those wlio should be con- 
 cerned in it.""^ 
 
 The tories of the Northern States united with those of 
 South Carolina and Georgia to defeat this effort to suppress 
 the slave-trade. Jefferson complained of this shameful 
 disregard of the congressional agreement, and declared that 
 South Carolina and Georgia " never attempted to restrain 
 the importation of slaves," and refers also to " Northern 
 brethren " who " had been pretty considerable carriers of 
 slaves."! 
 
 The tories in the North were anxious, as already ob- 
 served, to preserve the institution of slavery. The men of 
 this stamp in Massachusetts endeavored to prevent the 
 introduction of that clause in the constitution, which de- 
 clares the equal rights and liberties of humaiiity, because 
 they knew that the whigs would make use of it for the 
 abolition of slavery in the Bay State. 
 
 A Constitution was framed and sent to the people in 
 1778. This instrument, by the artful management of cer- 
 tain influential tories, bearing the name of " moderate 
 whigs," carefully left out the declaration of equal human 
 rights, — the fundamental basis of civil association. The 
 true whigs in the county conventions, exposed this trick, 
 and the people rejected with scorn the miserable mockery 
 which had been offered as a constitution. 
 
 Other conventions were called, and at last, in 1780, a 
 form of constitution was framed and adopted, that gave 
 freedom to the slaves in Massachusetts. It is worthy of 
 remark, that the same principle upon which the slaves 
 became free in this state, was the same, almost in the very 
 expression, with that declared by Louis X. of France, in 
 1315, when he abolished slavery throughout his kingdom; 
 namely, " All men are by nature free born" — "All men 
 are born free and equal." 
 
 But you would have it, sirs, that "Jack Frost abolished 
 slavery in Massachusetts," and not the constitution, not the 
 fundamental law of civil society. That will answer now 
 for tories to say. Dr. Belknap, of Massachusetts, was 
 written to in 1795 by Judge Tucker, of Virginia, inquiring 
 
 * Am. Arch. 4 se., vol. 1. 
 t Madison Papers. 
 
90 LETTERS TO 
 
 in what manner slavery was abolished in the Bay State. 
 Dr. Belknap answered, that it had been abolished by that 
 article in the constitution which declared the liberty and 
 equality of mankind, and that this very clause was incor- 
 porated into the bill of rights for this express purpose."^ 
 Furthermore, that the like clause incorporated into the 
 New Hampshire constitution, three years after, was with 
 the understanding, that all who were born of slave parents 
 fi'om the time of the adoption of the constitution were born 
 free."t 
 
 Thus without legislation, but by the fundamental law 
 of society, acknowledged and adopted by the people of 
 these two JSorthern states, slavery was abolished. 
 
 The same primal law was incorporated into every other 
 American constitution, except into that of South Carolina. 
 She was too essentially toryistic, or Filmerean to take this 
 step. She adopted, through her delegates, however, the 
 principles of the Declaration of Independence. And, 
 moreover, on adopting a constitution, she did not, as she 
 could not legally, incorporate any clause or word recog- 
 nizing slavery, or the right of property in man. Such a 
 step would have been too infamous in those days. 
 
 I have said that the whigs of the revolution not only in 
 declaring the principles of human rigi:^ in opposition to 
 the infamous claims of the tories, but a^o in establishing 
 the state governments, took great pains to develop and 
 unfold, as the eternal foundation of civil institutions, the 
 grand Law of Nature. All the writers on government 
 trom the earliest periods, were ransacked, and all the 
 writers on Natural Law. It was found that on no other 
 point was there so universal an agreement as on this one — 
 " that by the Law of Nature all men are born free," and 
 that " by the Law of Nature all men are entitled to equal 
 absolute rights." 
 
 There was found a diversity of expression, it is true; 
 but in the one fundamental law of liberty there was no 
 variation. The tory writers under the Stuarts, and those 
 of that period who favored the despotism of George III. 
 constituted the only school that denied this law. 
 
 * See Mass. Hist. Coll., 1st Series, vol. 4, p. 204. 
 tibid. 
 
PRO-SLATEKY MEN. 91 
 
 Biirlaniaqui had declared that '' Moral or natural lib- 
 erty is the right which nature gives to all viank'md of dis- 
 posing of their persons and property after the manner they 
 judge most consonant to their happiness, on condition of 
 their acting within the limits of the law of nature, and 
 that they do not any way abuse it to the prejudice of any 
 other man."^ 
 
 The same was declared by Chief Justice Blackstone.t 
 So PufFendorf affirmed that " the Law of Nature obliges 
 us to hold all men equal with ourselves ;" and that " the 
 Law of Nature is none other than the great rule prescribed 
 by Christ himself of ' doing unto others as we would have 
 them do unto us.' "1^ The "judicious Hooker" also de- 
 clared the same principle in his " Ecclesiastical Polity'N^ in 
 almost the exact words quoted above. The " learned Gro- 
 tius" also, in his work on " Peace and War,"ll not only re- 
 cognized the same principle as fundamental in civil associ- 
 ation, but as absolute in morals, being a part and parcel of 
 the immutable Law of Nature. This Higher Law — the 
 foundation of all civil states — he found to have been uni- 
 versally acknowledged by poets, orators, historians, philos- 
 ophers and jurists in all ages. These he quoted, he said, 
 " as witnesses whose conspiring testimony mightily 
 strengthened and confirmed this point, since their discord- 
 ance on almost every other subject showed that their unan- 
 imity on the Law of Nature " — the Higher Law — " was by 
 the influence of that Higher Law itself." It was this uni- 
 versal agreement which established it as a Law of Nature 
 in all intelligent minds. " When," says he, " several per- 
 sons of diflerent times, in various places, maintain the same 
 thins; as certain, such coincidence of sentiment must be at- 
 tributed to some general cause." 
 
 Then, referring to the numerous quotations he had made 
 
 * Burlamaqiii's Natural and Political Law, vol. 1, c. 3, sec. 15. 
 
 t Commen., vol. 1, p. 125. 
 
 X See Pufteiulorf s Law of Nature and Nation?, Oxford cd., 1710, p. 
 109. Puffendorf was a learned German civilian and historian, born m 
 1631. Burhunaqui was a German civilian, born in 1694. 
 
 § Hooker was born in 1554:. 
 
 II De Jure Belli et Piicis. Grotius was born in Holland in 1583 ; was 
 one of the profoundest men of the age. 
 
92 LETTERS TO 
 
 from writers of various times and nations on this point, he 
 says, " Now, in the quotations before us, that cause [before 
 referred to] must necessarily be one or the other of these 
 two — either a just consequence drawn from natural princi- 
 ples, or a universal consent. The former discovers to us 
 the law of nature, and the latter the law of nations, ""^ 
 
 So Home, in his Mirror of Justice, written about the 
 year 1275, says "According to the Law of Nature all 
 creatures ought to be free."t And Hughes, in his edition 
 of the Mirror of Justice says, " Sure I am that every law, 
 custom, usage, privilege, prescription, act of Parliament, or 
 prerogative, which doth exalt itself above or beyond the 
 .... Law of Nature, hath ever by the worthy sages of 
 our laws been declared to be void. "I 
 
 So the learned St. German, in the early part of the 16th. 
 century, declared that this " Law of Nature, which is or- 
 dained of God, may be called God's law united unto man's 
 nature ; for what was the image of God in man .... but 
 — lex primordialis — a primordial law exactly requiring and 
 absolutely enabling the performance of duties of piety unto 
 God, and of equity to men both in habit and art. Hence, 
 according unto the opinion of most learned divines and le- 
 gists : " Lex nature nihil aliud est quam participatio legis 
 ceterna creatura ;" and according to others : " Lex natures 
 est lumen ac dictum illud ratio7iis, quomnter bonum et ma- 
 lum discernimusy^ 
 
 In " America's Appeal to the Impartial World," pub- 
 lished in Hartford in 1775, the Law of Nature is thus de- 
 clared : '• Man hath an absolute property in, and right of 
 dominion over, himself, his powers, and faculties ;" by that 
 law he is " independent of, and uncontrolable by, any but 
 Him who created and gave him his powers. And what- 
 ever is acquired by the use and application of man's facul- 
 ties, is equally the property of that man, as the faculties 
 by which the acquisitions are made ; and that which is ab- 
 solutely the property of a man he cannot be divested of but 
 
 * De Jure Belli et Pacis, b. 1, c. 1. Barbeyrac ; Prel. Dis, § 14. 
 t See Mirror of Justice, c. 2, sec. 28. 
 
 X See Hughes' ed. of Home's Mirror of Justice, 1768. Address to the 
 Header. 
 § Doct. et Stud. 
 
PRO-SLAVERY MEN. 93 
 
 by his own voluntary act.''=^ " Either all is our's, and 
 nothing can be taken from us but by our consent ; or noth- 
 ing is ours, and all may be taken without our consent. The 
 right of dominion over the persons and property of others 
 is not natural, but derived ; and there are but two sources 
 from whence it can be derived : from the Almighty, who 
 is the absolute proprietor of all, and from our 0Y;n free 
 consent."! 
 
 Neither the slaveholder nor the tory lords of England 
 could show credentials for the first, nor could they show 
 that they had derived any right to rob and enslave by the 
 consent of those they were disposed to victimize. 
 
 Nothing is more evident in American history than the 
 fact, that, in establishing the nationality of America, the 
 great and good men who took the leading part, recognized 
 as the sole basis of the civil organization, the grand Law of 
 Nature by which all men are entitled to freedom and equal 
 rights — impartial justice. This appears in almost every 
 act of Congress during the revolution, and in every State 
 Constitution, from the extreme North to the borders of 
 South Carolina. 
 
 The patriots, in writing and speaking of the purpose of 
 the great contest, referred to it, not as a defence of the 
 rights of slaveholders, as you do now, but the " rights of 
 Human Nature." When Gen. Washington and Gen. 
 Charles Lee came to Cambridge, in July, 1775, the peo- 
 ple's delegates congratulated them as " the defenders of the 
 rights of human nature ; and they, in reply, acknowledge 
 the compliment in the same terms. 
 
 To Gen. Washington they said, " While we applaud that 
 attention to the public good, manifested in your appoint- 
 ment, we equally admire that disinterested virtue, &c., 
 which can afford to hazard life, and to endure the fatigues 
 of war, in defence of the rif/hts of manhind, and the good 
 of our country." 
 
 To this Washington replied : " In exchanging the en- 
 joyments of domestic life for the duties of my present hon- 
 orable but arduous station, I only emulate the virtue and 
 
 * Page 5. 
 
 t See the above noble work for mucli more besides. 
 
94 
 
 LETTERS TO 
 
 public spirit of tlie whole Province of Massacliusetts Bay, 
 which, with a firmness and patriotism without example in 
 modern history, has sacrificed all the comforts of social and 
 political life in support of the rights of ma7ikind, and the 
 welfare of our common country. My highest ambition is, 
 to be the happy instrument of viTjdicating those rights. 
 
 To the Hon. Charles Lee, the Massachusetts Congress 
 thus addressed themselves : " Sir — The Congress of the 
 Massachusetts Colony, possessed of the fullest evidence of 
 your attachment to the rights of mankind, &c., do with 
 pleasure embrace this opportunity to express, &c. We ad- 
 mire and respect of a man who . . . engages in the cause 
 of mankind, in defence of the injured and relief of the op- 
 pressed." To which Gen. Lee replied : " Nothing can be 
 BO flattering to me as the good opinion and approbation of 
 the Delegates of a free and uncorrupt people. / was edu- 
 cated in the highest reverence for the rights of mankind. 
 ... I thank you, gentlemen, for an address which does 
 me so much honor, and shall labor to deserve it." 
 
 In almost immediate connection with these addresses, we 
 have an address of the General Congress to the army, in 
 which the principles of pro-slavery men are held in detes- 
 tation, and identifying the claims of the tory slaveholder 
 with those of the tory ministry in England. " If," said 
 they, " it were possible for men who exercise their reason, 
 to believe [as none indeed but tori^ could] that the Di- 
 vine Author of our existence intended a part of the human 
 race to hold absolute property in, and an unbounded pow- 
 er over, others, marked out by his infinite goodness and 
 wisdom, as subjects of legal domination, never righteously 
 resistable, however severe and oppressive, [which was the 
 Filmerian or tory doctrine] the inhabitants of these colo- 
 nies might at least require from the Parliament of Great 
 Britain some evidence that this dreadful authority over 
 them has been granted to that body. But a reverence for 
 our Great Creator's principles of humanity, and the dic- 
 tates of common sense, must convince all those who reflect 
 upon the subject, that government was instituted to pre- 
 serve the welfare of mankind, and ought to be adminis- 
 tered for the attainment of that end." 
 
 This is exactly the principle 1 have all along shown to 
 
PRO-SLAVERY MEN. 9§- 
 
 have been recognized in every age as the fundamental prin- 
 ciple of civil society, and which renders slavery impossi- 
 ble in a legitimate society ; which renders it absolutely im- 
 possible for legitimate government to sanction slavery, but 
 rather makes it obligatory on government to abolish it, as 
 at war with civil government, like mui'der, robbery, rape, 
 and every other vice. 
 
 The General Congress, also, in its address to the people 
 of Ireland, recognized the grand principle of the American 
 revolution as that of the " right of human nature." So in 
 the address to the inhabitants of Great Britain, the same 
 is brought to view ; and in the address to the inhabitants 
 of Canada, Congress said : " When hardy attempts are 
 made to deprive men of rights bestowed by the Almighty, 
 when avenues are cut through the most solemn compacts for 
 the admission of despotism ; when the plighted faith of 
 government ceases to give security to loyal and dutiful 
 subjects ; and when the insidious stratagems and manoeu- 
 vers of peace [law and order, gentlemen,] became more 
 terrible than the most sanguine operations of war, it is 
 high time for them to assert those rights, and, with honest 
 indignation, oppose the torrent of oppression rushing in 
 
 upon them We, for our part, are determined to 
 
 live free, or not at all, and are resolved that posterity 
 shall never reproach us with having brought slaves into 
 the world." 
 
 Pennsylvania declared, through her delegates, that 
 " mankind are, in their own nature, as independent of one 
 another as they are dependent upon God ;" that " this lib- 
 erty and independence is, therefore, a right naturally 
 belonging to man, of which it would be unjust to deprive 
 him against his will.""^ 
 
 This language they adopted from Burlamaqui ; and fur- 
 thermore, that, " upon considering the primitive state of 
 man, it appears most certain, that the appellations of sov- 
 ereign and subject, master and slave, are unknown to na- 
 ture. Nature has made us all of the same species, all 
 
 * See an Essay on the Constitntional PoAvers of Great Britain over 
 the Colonies in America : with tlie Resolves of the Committee for the 
 Province of Pennsylvania, and their Instructions to their Representa- 
 tives in Assembly, Phil., 1774. Burlaraaqui's Principles of Pol. Law, 
 vol. 2, p. 38. 
 
96 LETTERS TO 
 
 equal, all free and independent of each other ; and was 
 willing that those on whom she bestowed the same facul- 
 ties should all have the same rio-hts.""^ 
 
 The most abundant testimonies were cited by the whigs 
 of the revolution on this point, against the tory doctrine 
 of oppression. Thus Locke : " Though the earth, and all 
 inferior creatures, be common to all men, yet every man 
 has a property in his own person ; this nobody has any 
 right to but himself. The labor of his body and the work 
 of his hands, we may say, are properly nis."t 
 
 So Lord Camden, in defending the rights of the Colo- 
 nies, declared, " It is the Law of Nature that whatever is 
 a man's own, is absolutely his own ; no man has a right to 
 take it from him without his consent either expressed by 
 himself or representative. Whoever attempts to do it, at- 
 tempts an injury ; whoever does it, commits a robbery ; he 
 throws down and destroys the distinction between liberty 
 and slavery." 
 
 Yet you, sirs, in this age, attempt to make us believe 
 that our fathers intended to establish slavery and not lib- 
 erty. You trample upon the sacred principles for which 
 our fathers suffered. You scout and kick aside with con- 
 tempt our free State Constitutions, and convert the Federal 
 Government into a ruinous despotism. You mock at our 
 fathers ; jo\x libel our institutions ; you overthrow trial by 
 jury ', you chain our court-houses, and convert them into 
 slave-pens ; and then, in derision, ^\x call us " degenerate 
 Grreeks." You deny, with the oppressors of Europe, that 
 all men are, by the Law of Nature, born free, and created 
 equal ; and to support your system of robbery, you have 
 converted the Federal Union into a slaveholding oligarchy. 
 The people have felt your iron hand. It is enough. They 
 are convinced that you, sirs, are their sworn enemies. You 
 have roused them to battle for the right. They will know 
 the truth, and the truth shall make them free. 
 
 ^ Ibid. This had been declared by Burlamaqui, of Geneva, in the 
 forepart of the 18th century. 
 
 t Locke on Civil Government, part 2, c. 5, § 27. 
 
PRO-SLAVERY MEN. 97 
 
 LETTER X. 
 
 Your political school — the pro-slavery school of Amer- 
 ica — is identical in doctrine with the worst school of Eno"- 
 lish tories. The time was, when, in this country, there 
 was no respectable man who dared openly advocate your 
 execrable theory, unless it might be in South Carolina. 
 The principles of the American Revolution were directly 
 opposed to the doctrines you now maintain. This I have 
 already shown. What the tories of the m.other country 
 advocated you now advocate. True, you do not claim the 
 right to tax colonies at a distance, but you do assert the 
 right to impose odious and oppressive measures upon the 
 free states ; you do claim the right, through the general 
 government, to trample out and annihilate our free institu- 
 tions ; you do pretend that whatever you can effect through 
 the halls of legislation for strengthening the slave power at 
 the expense of human rights, you have a right to effect ;; 
 and we, miserable wretches ! " degenerate Greeks !" as 
 you call us, are bound to submit. In short, there is not a 
 fdndamental principle of the constitutions of the free states, 
 you do not as a political school attempt to annihilate. 
 
 Not only in your measures, but m your openly declared 
 doctrines, you strike at the root of all free government. 
 There is not a constitution north of Virginia, whose funda- 
 mental principle is not the equal, absolute rights of human 
 nature. But you deny the truth of this principle in toto. 
 You call it a " chimera."^ You assert that mankind 
 " never were equal " " nor was it intended," you say, " they 
 ever should be."t You declare that the doctrine of the 
 " natural liberty and equality of mankind," is a " general 
 and radical error among political and moral theorists."t 
 Calhoun in 1849 called this great truth, a lie. 
 
 * Fletcher's Studies on Slavery, p. 407. f Ibid. 
 
 J See letter from Henry A. Wise of Virginia to Dr. Adams of Boston 
 The like repi-oach is cast upon this constitutional principle by Drs. Lord. 
 Blagden and other pro-slavery or tory writers. 
 9 
 
98 LETTERS TO 
 
 In short, sirs, it is absolutely impossible for you tomain- 
 tain pro-slavery principles without taking the impious 
 course of the arch-tory, Sir Robert Filmer, and deny this 
 fundamental principle of all legitimate society. It was a 
 necessity for him. Why ? He could not support the de- 
 spotism of the Stuarts without denying that grand doc- 
 trine, which had always been held as the first principle of 
 leo^itimate society, and which opposed itself as a barrier to 
 tyranny and slavery. 
 
 Filmer found, on hunting among old wi'iters, that this 
 primal principle was advocated by the school-men, and this 
 he brought up as a reproach against it. The whig Sidney 
 thus answered him : — " He absurdly imputes to the school 
 divines that which was taken up by them as a common no- 
 tion^ written in the heart of every man, denied by none. 
 " The school men were not fools. They could not but see 
 that which all men saw, nor lay more approved foundations 
 than that man is naturally equal, that he cannot be justly 
 deprived of his liberty without cause."^ It is not strange 
 that the man who was thus opposed to the tyranny of the 
 tory party should be murdered for his defence of freedom. 
 Your party, when in fall power, has in all ages murdered 
 those advocates of freedom and equality who were honest 
 and bold enough to oppose your infamous libels upon hu- 
 man nature. 
 
 If you will examine Algernon Sidney's and John Lock's 
 criticisms upon Filmer's " Patriarc%i " you will see with 
 what detestation those tory doctrines you advocate were 
 then looked upon by the good and wise men of England. 
 Think, sirs, whose company you are keeping in occupying 
 the ground you do in opposition to the fiindamental law of 
 society, and all legitimate government. You are with 
 Charles I. and II. and James II. and George III. and the 
 Duke of Buckingham and the detestable Archbishop Laud, 
 the bloody Jeffries and Sir Robert Filmer ; nay, indeed, 
 with all the execrable tories and tyrants of those periods of 
 civil war, and robbery and murder. 
 
 "Mankind," they declared, " were not created equal and 
 free. The masses of the people were created slaves, and 
 the remainder to rule over them."t So the tories under 
 
 * Sidney's Discourses on Govei-nment, vcl. 1. p. 43. 
 t See Lock od Civil Government, B. 1. c. 1. 
 
PEO-SLAVEEY MEN. 99 
 
 George III. denied the eqnal rights of mankind, and argued 
 a richt to act as the masters of the colonists. The whig 
 fathers of the revolution, taking the ground of ^Satural La.v, 
 asserted the natural freedom and equality of mankind. 
 Nor could they take any other position against the British 
 tyrants. They were forced to assert the first law of society — 
 the self-evident truth that all men are created free and 
 equal before God and in the eyes of just law. 
 
 Understand, sirs, what it is that renders revolution 
 necessary. Is it not " a long train of abuses *' on the part 
 of the power that rules in the name of law? Is it not in 
 consequence of the oppressive measures at war with society, 
 forced upon the nation, and which must, if not resolutely 
 resisted, result in the entire overthrow of the social state ? 
 
 There never was a rebellion, says an ancient writer, 
 unless tyranny was the cause of it. None but tyrants, 
 robbers, and base men can deny the equal rights of man- 
 kind, for only such can have hearts base enough to allow 
 themselves to declare war against the constitutional law of 
 society. Our fathers, who were forced to resist the tory 
 power of Great Britain, had all the old whig works in 
 their hands, — those grand and masterly productions which 
 the greatest and best minds of England had delivered on 
 the subject of human rights — works written against those 
 innovating despots and tyrants, who were determined to 
 turn society upside down, and establish absolute and per- 
 petual slavery. 
 
 They quoted John Lock who said, when battling against 
 the infamous Filmer, " a state of equality wherein all the 
 power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more 
 than another ... is the natural state of mankind . . . there 
 beincr nothing more evident than that creatures of the same 
 species and rank, promiscuously born to all the same 
 advantages of nature, and the use of the same faculties, 
 should also be equal one amongst another without subordi- 
 nation or subjection." In 177-i, the Hon. 3Ir. Wilson, of 
 Pennsylvania, published his noble work in defence of the 
 colonies, in which he declares, " all men are, by nature, 
 equal and free," and that " no one has a right to any 
 
 * See his Works on Law, «S:c., vol. 3, pp. 205, 20€. 
 
100 LETTERS TO 
 
 authority over another without his consent."^ So De Witt 
 Clinton, referring to the torj despotisms of the mother 
 country, and the existence of slavery in the new world, 
 asks :— " Have not prescription and precedent — patriarchal 
 dominion — [which had been specially advocated by Filmer 
 under the Stuarts, as well as the] divine right of kings and 
 masters, been alternately called in to sanction the slavery 
 of nations? And would not all the despotisms of the 
 ancient and modern world have vanished into air, if the 
 natural equality of mankind had been properly understood 
 and practiced. . . . This declares that the same measure of 
 justice ought to be measured out to all men, v^ ithout regard 
 to adventitious inequalities, and the intellectual and phys- 
 ical disparities which proceed from inexplicable causes.""^ 
 
 Alexander Hamilton, in 1774, in defending the action of 
 Congress of that year against the outrageous charges of an 
 American tory, said to him, " the fundamental source of 
 all your errors, sophisms, and false reasonings, is a total 
 ignorance of the natural rights of mankind. Were you 
 once to become acquainted with these, you could never 
 entertain a thought, that all men are 7iot, by nature, entitled 
 to equal privileges. You would be convinced that natural 
 liberty is the gift of the beneficent Creator to the whole 
 human race ; and that civil liberty is founded on thatj^^ 
 
 But you, sirs, scout this great truth, and take sides with 
 the impious tories of the revolution. 31ust not every 
 thinking American of the present «y see, that to allow 
 your school to control the nation, must inevitably result in 
 its total ruin. If your doctrine subvert the fundamental 
 law of all societies of men, how can American society en- 
 dure under your crushing administration ? 
 
 The law of human equality is written by the Almighty 
 in the constitution of man. So said Hamilton, so said 
 Franklin, so said Jay, so said Hancock, the Adamses, the 
 noble Warren, and all the true whig patriots of the revolu- 
 tion. But you deny this doctrine, and take sides with the 
 enemies of America, against the fathers of the revolution. 
 " The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for 
 among old parchments or musty records," said Hamilton. 
 
 * uSee liis Address, Dec. 24, 1797. 
 
 t See Hamiltou's Works, vol. 2, p. 61. 
 
PRO-SLAVERY MEN. 101 
 
 *' they are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole vol- 
 ume of human nature, by the hand of the Divinity itself; 
 and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power. "^ 
 
 The House of Burgesses of Virginia, so early as 1765, 
 acknowledged this fundamental law, in asserting the rights 
 of the colonies, and it was afterwards incorporated into her 
 constitution as the prime basis of civil association and gov- 
 ernment. Was that all mockery ? It was effected in 
 opposition to tory influence. 
 
 Pennsylvania, also, in 1765, " Resolved that the constitu- 
 tion of government in that province was founded on the 
 natural rights of mankind .... and therefore is and ought 
 to be perfectly free." Massachusetts in the same year 
 passed like resolutions, and indeed every other colony north 
 of Virginia. So also the committees from the several 
 colonial assemblies, which met in New York on the 19th 
 October of that year, (1765,) recognized the same eternal 
 fundamental " law of liberty and equality." 
 
 Indeed, sirs, how can you escape the infamy which must 
 attach to you from the fact that the doctrines you uphold, 
 and the measures you urge are identical in spirit with those 
 detestable princples and measures of the tories of our 
 fathers' days. 
 
 You claim that a part of mankind were born to be the 
 slaves of a privileged class. You assert that you have a 
 right to appropriate the hard earnings of unfortunate men 
 to your own use. In other words, you, as the tories, claim 
 the power of taxing certain classes of men without their 
 consent, and without allowing them any honest representa- 
 tion in your councils. This is toryism complete. " That 
 personal freedom is the natural right of every man," said 
 the immortal Warren, " and that property, or an exclusive 
 right to dispose of what he has honestly acquired by his 
 own labor, necessarily arises therefrom, are truths that 
 common sense has placed beyond the reach of contradic- 
 tion. And no man, or body of men, can, without being 
 guilty of flagrant injustice, claim a right to dispose of the 
 persons or acquisitions of any other man or body of men, 
 unless it can be proved that such a right has arisen from 
 some compact between the parties^ in which it has been 
 
 * See Hamilton's Work?, vol. 2, p. 80. 
 9* 
 
102 LETTERS TO 
 
 explicitly and freely granted." One hundred and nine 
 days after Warren had uttered that declaration against 
 slavery, he fell a noble martyr in its defence on Bunker 
 Hill. Yet some of you boast that you will one day stand 
 upon that spot with your slaves. 
 
 It was a whig principle, adopted from the fundamental 
 law of human rights, that " he who detains another by 
 force in slavery, is always bound to prove his title." " The 
 slave, or person claimed as a slave, must not be obliged to 
 prove a negative, namely, that he never forfeited his lib- 
 erty. But the violent possessor was bound to prove in all 
 cases his title, against the original claims of the old pro- 
 prietor — that is, the man himself. Each man is the origi- 
 nal proprietor of his own liberty. The proof of his losing 
 it is incumbent on the claimant."^^' " Without satisfaction 
 given, permanent power assumed by force over the fortunes 
 of others, must generally tend to the misery of the whole. 
 .. . . . AVe must therefore conclude, that no endowments, 
 natural or acquired, can give perfect right to assume power 
 over others without their consent."! " All men," said the 
 noble whig, Harrington, in the days of the Stuarts, " all 
 men, naturally, are equal ; for though nature with a noble 
 variety has made difi'erent features and lineaments of men, 
 yet as to freedom, she has made every one alike, and given 
 them the same desires."! 
 
 The constitutional convention held in Ipswich, 29th 
 April, 1778, declared that the benefi|s of government are 
 greater or less, " according as government is more or less 
 conformable to those principles of equal and impartial lib- 
 erty which is the property of all men from their birth as 
 the gift of the creation." " We are contending for free- 
 dom," said these upright whig fathers ; " let us all be 
 equally free. It is possible, it is just. Our interests 
 [those of the blacks and whites] when candidly considered, 
 are one. Let us have a constitution founded, not upon 
 party prejudices — not one for to-daj", or tomorrow — but 
 for posterity. Let Esto perpetua be its motto. If it be 
 
 * Hutchinson's System of Moral Philosophy, Lond. 1755, vol. 2, B. 3, 
 c. 3, sec. 6. See, also, " A short introduction to Moral Philusophy, in 
 3 Books, by Francis Hutchinson, LL. D., vol. 2, book 3, ch. 3, sec. Q. 
 
 t Ibid, B 2, c. 5 
 
 I Harrington's Woiks, 3d ed., Lond. p. 11. 
 
PKO-SLAVERY MEN. 103 
 
 founded in gnod policy, it will be founded in justice and 
 honesty. Let equal justice be done to all the members of 
 community ; and we thereby imitate our common father. 
 All men are born equally free ; the rights they possess at 
 their births are equal, and of the same kind. Some of 
 these rights are alienable, others inalienable, and can have 
 no equivalent The slave receives no equivalent. Com- 
 mon equity is opposed to his condition. These rights are 
 to be clearly defined in a bill of rights previous to the rat- 
 ification of any constitution. ''=^ 
 
 When the Massachusetts constitution was adopted in 
 1780, as already hinted, the declaration that all men are 
 born free and equal, was incorporated, " not merely," says 
 Dr. Belknap, "as a moral or political truth, but with a par- 
 ticular view to establish the liberation of the negroes on 
 the general principle, and so it was understood by the 
 people at large."! 
 
 Thus was it recognized in Massachusetts on the adoption 
 of her constitution that " Government de jure is a civil 
 society of men, instituted and preserved upon the founda- 
 tion of common right.'''X Harrington, who uttered the 
 above, represents an illegitimate or bastard government, to 
 be " an art whereby some few men, subject a city or 
 nation, and rule it according to his or their private inter- 
 ests^ Such a system was not to be permitted ; the people 
 were bound to resist it, and overthrow it. And what other 
 is your pretended government, but just this system of 
 bastardy ; an oligarchy of slaveholders, which the Ameri- 
 can people in the name of equal justice, and the rights of 
 humanity, are bound to overthrow. There is not a free 
 state constitution you have not trampled upon. 
 
 The people are therefore bound to rout your whole 
 force ; for " whatever alteration mankind may have made 
 in regard to their original state, they cannot, without vio- 
 lating their duty, break in upon that state of peace and 
 society, in which nature has placed them, and which, by 
 her laws, she has strongly recommended to their obser- 
 
 * Keport of the committee of the Essex Co. Convent. Massachu- 
 setts, 1778. 
 
 t ]\h\ssachiisetts Hist. Coll., 1st Series, vol. 4, p. 203. 
 
 j Harrington's Oceana, bee his Works, 3d Ed. 1767, p. 37. 
 
 § Ibid, pp. 517, 520. 
 
104 LETTERS TO 
 
 vance."'^ In allowing you to carry out your pernicious 
 principles, the people would be, subverting their own insti- 
 tutions of freedom and justice, and submitting to be your 
 slaves. 
 
 I have already shown that your system of slavery is 
 worse than that of the barbarians of Europe in the early 
 periods of the Christian Era. Guizot says, " the principle 
 that all men's lives are of equal worth in the eyes of the 
 law, was established by the code of the Visigoths."! But 
 your despotism denies this principle, and makes the life of 
 those you hold as slaves, and of those who oppose slavery, 
 of little more worth than the life of a dog. 
 
 You traduce and villify those, who, like the true whigs 
 of '76, are the firm friends of freedom, and the advocates 
 of equal human rights. This is to be expected. But that 
 you should be permitted to impose the most odious enact- 
 ments upon the people in the name of law, in order to sup- 
 port a system of oppression which is contrary to law, and 
 justice, is a degradation to which the people of America 
 cannot submit without overwhelming their own institutions 
 with floods of corruption and disgrace. 
 
 That " slavery is condemned by reason and the law of 
 nature " has been decided even by the Supreme Court of 
 Mississippi.! " Allegiance to that power which gives us 
 the forms of men," said the eloquent Sheridan, commands 
 us to maintain the rights of men ; and never yet was this 
 truth dismissed from the human h^rt ; never, in any time, 
 in any age ; never in any clime wnere rude man ever had 
 any social feelings; never was this unextinguishable truth 
 destroyed from the heart of man, placed as it is in the core 
 and center of it by his Maker, that man was not made the 
 property of man.^^\ 
 
 The whigs of the American revolution, as already shown, 
 
 * Burlamaqui, part 4, c. 1, § 4. 
 
 t Guizot's riist. Europe, Civil, p. 81. Amer. ed., 1838. 
 
 \ This declaration was given in 1818. See Walker's reports of cases 
 &c., p. 42. Fletci er, the tory advocate of the South, a renegade North 
 erner, says of this decision of the Mississippi court, it is " a false and sui 
 cidal assertion, most unnecessarily and irrelevantly iiitroduced. See 
 Fletc er's Le sons on Slavery, p. 392. 
 
 ^ Sheridan before the Mouse of Lords in 1787, in the trial of Sir War- 
 ren Hastings. Baron de Wolf advances the same principle. See Ob 
 servat. sur le Traite du Droit de la Nat. de m. 1763. 
 
PRO-SLATERY MEN. 105 
 
 were opposed to slavery from the very nature of their 
 principles, they based their political system on " Natural 
 Law " — the " Higher Law " — the fundamental law of all 
 legitimate society and government. I find this inculcated 
 in hundreds of works published between ITGl and 1800, 
 on the subject of government and human rights, great 
 numbers of which directly attacked slavery. In short 
 anti-slavery was the spirit of that period. Nor were there 
 any who ventured to defend slavery in public. 
 
 The distinct and emphatic manner in which the doctrine 
 of ec(ual human rights was stated in its opposition to slav- 
 ery, at that period, has already been shown. And here I 
 may add the words of one of the leading whigs of Connecti- 
 cut in that era : " That freedom is the sacred right of 
 every man, whatever he his color ^ who has not forfeited it 
 by some violation of municipal law, is a truth established 
 by God himself in the very creation of human beings. No 
 
 TIME, NO CIRCUMSTANCE, NO nUMAN POWER OR POLICY Can 
 
 change the nature of this truth, nor repeal the fundamental 
 laivs of society by ichich every mans right to liberty is 
 guaranteed. The act therefore of enslaving men is always 
 a violation of those great primary laws of society, by which 
 alone the master himself holds every particle of liis own 
 freedom."^ 
 
 The same author speaking of the state of the public mind 
 on the subject of slavery at that period says : — " The injus- 
 tice of enslaving any part of the human race has been the 
 subject of so much public discussion, and so generally ad- 
 mitted by the inhabitants of Connecticut [he was at this 
 time addressing them] that any attempt to prove it, would 
 be a very ill compliment to the understanding of my fel- 
 low-citizens. Nor could any efibrts of mine add novelty to 
 the subject ; so numerous, elaborate and diffuse have been 
 the essaj^s, and so powerful the eloquence employed in 
 vindicating the violated rights of humanity, that language 
 and rhetoric are exhausted."! 
 
 Thus, it is seen by a cotemporary writer and one of the 
 most learned men of New England, that in the year 1783, 
 
 * See Effects of Slavery on Morals and Industry. By Noah Webster, 
 17S3. 
 
 t Ibid p. 5. 
 
106 LETTERS TO 
 
 some four years after the adoption of the present Federal 
 Constitution, the subject of slavery had been so thoroughly 
 discussed, so openly denounced, and so generally admitted 
 to be a gross yiolation of justice, the fundamental law of 
 human society, that it had become quite common-place. 
 
 From what I have shown, then, it is evident that slavery 
 is whollv illeoral. It has always been illeo;al. It was con- 
 trar}^ to law in Greece, in Rome, in all the nations of Europe 
 duriuor the middle ases. It was abolished as illegal — as a 
 monstrous sin — as at war with legitimate society and gov- 
 ernment. Xegro slavery was set up by a corrupt papal 
 power. It was sanctioned only by the despots of Europe 
 in opposition to the law of civil society. It was introduced 
 into the South, solely under the favor of tory despotism. 
 The English law condemned it. Positive law could never 
 be made to sanction it. It exists at the present moment 
 in the South against law. The civil power of the Southern 
 states — what civil power there is — has never been able to 
 establish this infamous institution. 
 
 This has been acknowledged by Senator Mason, of Vir- 
 ginia. " If it be required" said he " that proof shall be 
 brought, that slavery is established by existing laws, it is 
 impossible to comply with the requisition, for no such 
 proof can be produced, I apprehend, in any of the slave 
 states. I am not aware that there is a single state in 
 which the institution is established by positive law.'""^ 
 
 Yet you pretend that slavery is sanctioned by the Feder- 
 al Constitution. You say that our fathers in adopting that 
 instrument, established slavery, and bound themselves and 
 their children, and their children's children to support it. 
 Infamous libel ! — Has it not been shown that that is not 
 law, that is not just? That that cannot bind that does not 
 justly oblige ? — that government, as ordained of God and 
 instituted by the people, is for the protection of the abso- 
 lute rights of human nature? — that, for government to at- 
 tempt to establish slavery, is to abrogate itself, and to com- 
 mit suicide ? 
 
 Your theory then abolishes government, overthrows so- 
 ciety, makes war upon the people, sets up despotism, crushes 
 
 * See Mason's Speech in the U. S. Senate 19th Ang. 1850. 
 
las. 1(#7 
 
 tkn to -. ri I JJiej i^iiiie tisTerj ? L>:i 
 
 jj. 
 
 assert, : Eiaray, it is 
 
 1 : 1. 
 
 in X - - . -i4<r lis aic-ms lo liie irmas- 
 
 ..^es "ira: 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 ■- 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 iiaTeiT. 
 
 
 =1^10 
 
 it 
 
 15 
 
 
 
 
 ^ ■«■ '» 
 
 
 
 - 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Tt ;= 
 
108 LETTERS TO 
 
 Your theory makes civil power at war with human rights, 
 whereas civil power is bound by the law of its existence to 
 preserve human rights. That is not civil power that re- 
 quires the rendition of an innocent man to slavery, but a 
 power at war with civil government, at war with society, 
 which mankind are bound to resist, as they are bound by 
 the law of nature to preserve the rights of nature — the in- 
 stitutions of society — the liberties of mankind. 
 
 Your theory is at war with the fundamental laws of all 
 the free states. Every pro-slavery advocate in the free 
 states, as much commits treason against the states govern- 
 ments of the North, by advocating his theory, as the silly 
 Dr. Manwarring did against the government of England 
 when he advocated the divine right of Charles I. to tax the 
 English people without their consent. Every state — the 
 people of every commonwealth, are bound to preserve their 
 own constitution. There can be no legal power in the gen- 
 eral government that can abrogate ihQ fundamental laws of 
 the states. For it is only hy virtue of those fundamental 
 laws that every state is a free commonwealth. 
 
 The rights of human nature constitute the fundamental 
 principle of every legitimate civil society. The people 
 have no power — no right to abandon this law under any 
 circumstances. They are bound to resist every invading 
 power that comes in to destroy or to trample upon it. To 
 allow of such invasion is infamous treachery to society. It 
 is a degradation to which only degenerate men — beastly 
 cowards, and traitors can be supposed willing to submit to. 
 The only salvation for our free institutions is in the union of 
 all the true sons of freedom on the fundamental law of so- 
 ciety, and a manly and determined resistance to your infa- 
 mous despotism. 
 
\ 
 
LIBRPRY OF CONGRESS 
 
 011 899 709 8