St. George Tucker

“ And can the liberties of a nation be ever thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people, that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever: that considering numbers, nature, and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference! ”

“ Whilst America hath been the land of promise to Europeans, and their descendants, it hath been the vale of death to millions of the wretched sons of Africa. The genial light of liberty, which hath here shone with unrivalled lustre on the former, hath yielded no comfort to the latter, but to them hath proved a pillar of darkness, whilst it hath conducted the former to the most enviable state of human existence. ”

“ From this view of our jurisprudence respecting slaves, we are unavoidably led to remark, how frequently the laws of nature have been set aside in favour of institutions, the pure result of prejudice, usurpation, and tyranny. We have found actions, innocent, or indifferent, punishable with a rigour scarcely due to any, but the most atrocious, offences against civil society; justice distributed, by an unequal measure to the master and the slave ”

“ In absolving them from the yoke of slavery, we must not forget the interests of the society. Those interests require the exertions of every individual in some mode or other; and those who have not wherewith to support themselves honestly without corporal labour, whatever be their complexion, ought to be compelled to labour. This is the case in England, where domestic slavery has long been unknown. It must also be the case in every well ordered society; and where the numbers of persons without property increase, there the coertion of the laws becomes more immediately requisite. ”

“ GENERAL COURT, IN VIRGINIA.
Slavery not only violates the Laws of Nature, and of civil Society, it also wounds the best Forms of Government: in a Democracy, where all Men are equal, Slavery is contrary to the Spirit of the Constitution. ”

“ The property of the slave also is absolutely the property of his master, the slave himself being the subject of property, and as such saleable, or transmissible at the will of his master.—A slavery, so malignant as that described, does not leave to its wretched victims the least vestige of any civil right, and even divests them of all their natural rights. ”

“ With us, we have seen that emancipation does not confer the rights of citizenship on the person emancipated; on the contrary, both he and his posterity, of the same complexion with himself, must always labour under many civil incapacities. If he is absolved from personal restraint, or corporal punishment, by a master, yet the laws restrain his actions in many instances, where there is none upon a free white man. If he can maintain a suit, he cannot be a witness, a juror, or a judge in any controversy between one of his own complexion and a white person. ”

“ Should we not have left our gift upon the altar, that we might be first reconciled to our brethren whom we held in bondage? Should we not have loosed their chains, and broken their fetters? Or if the difficulties and dangers of such an experiment prohibited the attempt during the convulsions of a revolution, is it not our duty to embrace the first moment of constitutional health and vigour, to effectuate so desirable an object, and to remove from us a stigma, with which our enemies will never fail to upbraid us, nor our consciences to reproach us? ”

“ That there must be no distinction of rights; that the descendants of Africans, as men, have an equal claim to all civil rights, as the descendants of Europeans; and upon being delivered from the yoke of bondage have a right to be admitted to all the privileges of a citizen.—But have not men when they enter into a state of society, a right to admit, or exclude any description of persons, as they think proper? ”

“ But were we even to admit, that a captive taken in a just war, might by his conqueror be reduced to a state of slavery, this could not justify the claim of Europeans to reduce the natives of Africa to that state: it is a melancholy, though well-known fact, that in order to furnish supplies of these unhappy people for the purposes of the slave trade, the Europeans have constantly, by the most insidious (I had almost said infernal) arts, fomented a kind of perpetual warfare among the ignorant and miserable people of Africa ”

“ To retain them among us, would be nothing more than to throw so many of the human race upon the earth without the means of subsistence: they would soon become idle, profligate, and miserable. Unfit for their new condition, and unwilling to return to their former laborious course, they would become the caterpillars of the earth, and the tigers of the human race. ”

“ To deny that we ought to abolish slavery, without incorporating the Negroes into the state, and admitting them to a full participation of all our civil and social rights, appears to me to rest upon a similar foundation. The experiment so far as it has been already made among us, proves that the emancipated blacks are not ambitious of civil rights. ”

“ From his cradle to his grave he is learning what he sees others do. If a parent had no other motive either in his own philanthropy or his self-love, for restraining the intemperance of passion towards his slave, it should always be a sufficient one that his child is present. But generally it is not sufficient. The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a loose to his worst of passions ”

“ A great part of the property of individuals consists in slaves. The laws have sanctioned this species of property. Can the laws take away the property of an individual without his own consent, or without a just compensation? Will those who do not hold slaves agree to be taxed to make this compensation? Creditors also, who have trusted their debtors upon the faith of this visible property will be defrauded. If justice demands the emancipation of the slave, she also, under these circumstances, seems to plead for the owner, and for his creditor. ”

“ Lastly we are told, that besides these two ways by which slaves are acquired, they may also be hereditary; “servi nascuntur;” the children of acquired slaves are, “jure naturæ,” by a negative kind of birthright, slaves also.—But this, being built on the two former rights, must fall together with them. If neither captivity, nor the sale of one’s self, can by the law of nature and reason reduce the parent to slavery, much less can they reduce the offspring.” ”

“ If ever there was a cause, if ever an occasion, in which all hearts should be united, every nerve strained, and every power exerted, surely the restoration of human nature to its inalienable right is such: Whatever obstacles, therefore, may hitherto have retarded the attempt, he that can appreciate the honour and happiness of his country, will think it time that we should attempt to surmount them. ”

“ The extirpation of slavery from the United States, is a talk equally arduous and momentous. To restore the blessings of liberty to near a million [21] of oppressed individuals, who have groaned under the yoke of bondage, and to their descendants, is an object, which those who trust in Providence, will be convinced would not be unaided by the divine Author of our being, should we invoke his blessing upon our endeavours. ”

“ What else but considerations of this nature could have influenced the merchants of the freest nation, at that time in the world, to embark in so nefarious a traffic, as that of the human race, attended, as the African slave trade has been, with the most atrocious aggravations of cruelty, perfidy, and intrigues, the objects of which have been the perpetual fomentation of predatory and intestine wars? ”

“ This species of slavery also exists whenever there is an inequality of rights, or privileges, between the subjects or citizens of the same state, except such as necessarily result from the exercise of a public office; for the pre-eminence of one class of men must be founded and erected upon the depression of another; and the measure of exaltation in the former, is that of the slavery of the latter. In all governments, however constituted, or by what description soever denominated, wherever the distinction of rank prevails, or is admitted by the constitution, this species of slavery exists. ”

“ Yet human prudence forbids that we should precipitately engage in a work of such hazard as a general and simultaneous emancipation. The mind of man must in some measure be formed for his future condition. The early impressions of obedience and submission, which slaves have received among us, and the no less habitual arrogance and assumption of superiority, among the whites, contribute, equally, to unfit the former for freedom, and the latter for equality. ”

“ The claims of nature, it will be said are stronger than those which arise from social institutions, only. I admit it, but nature also dictates to us to provide for our own safety, and authorizes all necessary measures for that purpose. And we have shewn that our own security, nay, our very existence, might be endangered by the hasty adoption of any measure for the immediate relief of the whole of this unhappy race. ”

“ Slavery, says Hargrave, always imports an obligation of perpetual service, which only the concent of the master can dissolve: it also generally gives to the master an arbitrary power of administring every sort of correction, however inhuman, not immediately affecting life or limb, and even these in some countries, as formerly in Rome, and at this day among the Asiatics and Africans, are left exposed to the arbitrary will of a master, or protected only by fines or other slight punishments. ”

“ Men who will shut their ears against this moral truth, that all men are by nature free, and equal, will not even be convinced that they do not possess a property in an unborn child: they will not distinguish between allowing to unborn generations the absolute and unalienable rights of human nature, and taking away that which they now possess ”

“ To administer medicine without the order or consent of the master, unless it appear not to have been done with on ill intent; to consult, advise, or conspire, to rebel or make insurrection; or to conspire, or plot to murder any person, we have seen, are all capital offences, from which the benefit of clergy is utterly excluded. But a bare intention to commit a felony, is not punishable in the case of a free white man ”

“ And this happens whenever the laws of a state respect the form, or energy of the government, more than the happiness of the citizen; as in Venice, where the most oppressive species of civil slavery exists, extending to every individual in the state, from the poorest gondolier to the members of the senate, and the doge himself. ”

“ The crew of the man of war observing the Africans backward and suspicious, began to laugh at his gentle and dilatory methods of proceeding, and proposed having immediate recourse to force and compulsion—but Hawkins considered it as cruel and unjust, and tried by persuasions, promises and threats, to prevail on them to desist from a purpose so unwarrantable and barbarous. In vain did he urge his authority and instructions from the Queen: the bold and headstrong sailors would hear of no restraints. Drunkenness and avarice are deaf to the voice of humanity. ”

“ But if the voice of reason, justice and humanity be not stifled by sordid avarice, or unfeeling tyranny, it would be easy to convince even those who have entertained such erroneous notions, that the right of one man over another is neither founded in nature, nor in sound policy. ”

“ The whole commerce between master and slave, says he, is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it; for man is am imitative animal. ”

“ But it is not from the want of liberality to the emancipated race of blacks that I apprehend the most serious objections to the plan I have ventured to suggest.—Those slave holders (whose numbers I trust are few) who have been in the habit of considering their fellow creatures as more than cattle, and the rest of the brute creation, will exclaim that they are to be deprived of their property, without compensation. ”

“ To prevent the generation of such an ambition, appears to comport with sound policy; for if it should ever rear its head, its partizans, as well as its opponents, will be enlisted by nature herself, and always ranged in formidable array against each other. We must therefore endeavour to find some middle course, between the tyrannical and iniquitous policy which holds so many human creatures in a state of grievous bondage, and that which world turn loose a numerous, starving, and enraged banditti, upon the innocent descendants of their former oppressors. ”

“ Emancipated Negroes may be sold to pay the debts of their former master contracted before their emancipation; and they may be hired out to satisfy their taxes where no sufficient distress can be had. Their children are to be bound out apprentices by the overseers of the poor. Free Negroes have all the advantages in capital cases, which white men are entitled to, except a trial by a jury of their own complexion: and a slave suing for his freedom shall have the same privilege. Free Negroes residing, or employed to labour in any town must be registered ”