William A. Smith

“ To affirm that he could make the right to be the wrong, is as false as it would be impious to affirm that he would do it, if he could—false, because, if he can, he has not deposited the truth in that great master-work of his hand, the mind of man; for, by the power of the intuition he has given us, we are assured that the idea is in itself a gross absurdity. And if this be not decisive of the question, then neither intuition nor the deductions of intuition are of any authority. Man is the victim of a false guide within! ”

“ As before stated, the conventional usages of society have denied them the social rights and privileges of free citizens! They have proscribed them as an inferior and degraded race.
The usage which forbids intermarriage is at once a bar to all social equality. The road to offices of trust, honor, and profit, is closed against them—nay, even the means of subsistence beyond a scanty supply of the necessaries of life. These facts are undeniable. Now, to talk of liberty when we effectually deny to a people all that essentially constitutes it, is idle in the extreme. ”

“ We are constrained to acknowledge that it is better to be oppressed by one, or by a few tyrants, than by a multitude of tyrants. It is not this or that kind of government that makes the subject essentially free. But it is the fact that the controlling power, whether wielded by one or by many, secures each man in the enjoyment of his natural rights—affords him that system of appliances which develops and matures the self-acting power of his will—discourages all abuse of this power, and fully protects him in the proper exercise of it in the pursuit of the essential good. ”

“ If the government were based upon the principle of freedom alone, allowing every man the unrestricted liberty of self-control, the wildest anarchy would result: if to avoid this the opposite principle should be adopted, allowing no liberty of self-control, but subjecting all to control by the will of another, it would be found as impracticable as the other was disastrous, and, as far as successful, only appropriate to idiots and infants. A good government is such a harmonious union of these opposing elements, as adapts it to the wants of the people. ”

“ The abstract opinions and sentiments in question, pervading our literature, our politics, and our theology, have been adopted by so many of our citizens as to entitle the doctrine to be regarded as a kind of national belief—the sentiment a kind of national feeling. We are told that all men believe slavery to be wrong in principle; that is, wrong in itself! and that all men feel that it is wrong! And certain it is, there is more truth than fiction in all this! It is strictly true, as to the citizens of the so-called free States. The same doctrine is not without advocates at the South ”

“ In these circumstances, it is obvious that there would be no volunteers in this work but men of the right stamp. Those only whose intellects furnished the flint and steel from which the spark of liberty could be struck, and upon the altar of whose hearts the fires of freedom could be kindled, to light their pathway to that far-off and inhospitable land, would embark in this great work. Those who were in the condition of freedom—whose hearts throbbed with the pulsations of liberty—were the first to embark in the cause of African civilization. ”

“ Those masters whose policy renders this custom in a good degree necessary should revise their system, and they must revise their system unless they would continue to outrage the moral sense of their fellow-citizens. For myself, I do not feel at liberty—and I speak as a citizen—to treat the marriage relation among slaves other than as a most sacred relation. Those marriages which are maintained in good faith, no master should feel himself at liberty to violate. ”

“ Essential freedom is inseparably interlaced with social equality. Without the latter, the former cannot possibly exist. The Northern States have long since conferred the forms of civil freedom upon the African portion of their population, but to the present hour they have denied them social equality. Herein, they extinguish all the lights and comforts of essential freedom. They settle upon them a suffocative anhelation, which is truly the most oppressive form of slavery. The social inequality of the races, it is well known, exists in a much more modified form at the South than at the North. ”

“ Subjection is the being put under the control of another. Submission is the delivery of one’s self to the control of another. The one implies the consent of the will, and the other does not. That subjection is an idea which fulfils the condition of slavery will not be disputed by any. Hence our definition is sufficiently wide to embrace that which is conceded by all. But our definition gives much greater breadth to the principle. ”

“ Perpetually chafed by the chains which fetter all his attempts to rise in the scale of social equality, he is the subject of a constant and painful irritation. Every failure in an enterprise which promised to elevate him to social equality with those around him, is a new cause of heart-burning and jealousy of all about him, and often an overwhelming source of temptation, not only to distrust the providence of God, but to employ the political franchise to unsettle the foundations of society, by levelling down the whole to a common platform. ”

“ Every right-minded master contemplates the physique of his servants with emotions of pride and pleasure. Their looks reflect his character. A gang of half-starved, meanly-clad, overworked slaves, with no heart to laugh or sing, and even without that attachment for their owners which the ox and the ass have for theirs, is a disgusting spectacle, and as revolting to every feeling of humanity as it is in violation of every principle of economy. ”

“ That providence of God, by which so large a number of the States of this Union have been supplied with a population who cannot be absorbed by the body politic, but must exist among us, and for so long a time, in a distinct and menial position, provided the means of safety to the whole Union in the coming conflict which is already awakening the fears of the country. If we do not greatly mistake the signs of the times, it is to these States that all eyes and all hopes will be turned as the great bulwarks of American liberty. ”

“ To injure our neighbor by speaking the truth when no claim of paramount justice demanded it, and the claims of charity or kindness forbade it, would be a wicked act. For a child in a similar way to injure a parent would be the conduct of a demon. All such acts, though they envelop a right principle—truth—do at the same time envelop a wrong principle—malevolence; and it is the nature of wrong principle to stamp every act into which it enters with the character of guilt—it is wrong. ”

“ Deity has yet explained himself, he has in no instance enjoined upon man the observance of any principle as his duty, which he may be compelled, in the order of his providence, to violate. It is equally false in fact, for it is not true that we are absolutely compelled to be slaveholders. If government be, as it undoubtedly is, the agent of the people, and the people choose, they are certainly competent by this agent to free themselves from this institution. True, the immense cost of such an enterprise would be the least in the catalogue of evils resulting from it ”

“ Great and good men, who abhor the folly of socialism, do not scruple to assert that the true theory of all governments is, that they are an abridgment of original and natural rights; forgetful of the fact that it is from the fountain of socialism that they draw their original supply of ideas. Those of the republican type maintain that the government should be founded upon the concessions of the majority, and that any thing else is tyranny. ”

“ The custom of separating man and wife is the remnant of a barbarous age: any gentleman should be ashamed of it. The civilization of the age may not be expected to countenance it. Those who think to maintain the institution of slavery under so palpable a violation of the laws of morality, may expect to meet the unqualified censure of the civilized world. No: the marriage relation must be maintained. ”

“ Christian Sabbath—is the great civilizer of men. The clean skin, the Sunday suit, the companionship of friends, all unite with the sound instruction of the pulpit, and the warm-hearted reception of the truth, to raise man in the scale of being, to make him a better servant, and a better citizen—an heir, together with the master, of the inheritance of the saints in light. ”

“ It is true, that both rectitude and duty, together with liberty, are resolvable into the essential good. Or, in other words, freedom, rectitude, and duty are the modes of thought in which we conceive of the good as existing in the soul of man, and that they are, each of them, in their distinct nature and harmonious union, the true ideal of the good—the modes of thought, also, in which the intuition of man perceives the good in the case of every moral action which is good. ”

“ It is fortunate for Europe that this enfeebling process is rapidly going forward; but it is most unfortunate for us that we are destined soon to concentrate a power which Europe is so happily expanding. We are destined, ere long, to become a great manufacturing, as well as commercial and agricultural people. Our condition is soon to condense millions into cities and manufacturing districts, where, as in Europe, from the class of population flowing in upon us, a distinct class of menial poverty will be formed, “imbecile of mind, and inapt but for one employment.” ”

“ In this way, we cannot hesitate to believe that the accumulation of free colored population would be so great as to induce their extermination at no distant day. This calamity could be averted only by a sale of the slaves into some other State in anticipation of the law providing for their manumission.
Now, whatever of mere selfishness there may be in the proposed measure, nothing is more certain than that it is entirely destitute of all humanity for the slave, and of all just regard to his progress in civilization, and his more speedy elevation to moral fitness for freedom. ”

“ On the other hand, the principle of slavery, which is the great practical force of the government, enfeebled as it is by a prevailing popular enthusiasm for the widest freedom, and deriving no present aid from interest, finds this deficiency so fully supplied by the fact that its impersonation is the will of the majority, that it is competent to resist the most violent shocks which may come up from the misguided self-control of the masses. ”