Slave morality

“ I was never acquainted with a slave who believed that he violated any rule of morality by appropriating to himself any thing that belonged to his master, if it was necessary to his comfort. The master might call it theft, and brand it with the name of crime; but the slave reasoned differently, when he took a portion of his master's goods, [Pg 219] to satisfy his hunger, keep himself warm, or to gratify his passion for luxurious enjoyment. ”

“ What he calls slave morality is to him purely spite-morality; and this spite-morality gave new names to all ideals. Thus impotence, which offers no reprisal, became goodness; craven baseness became humility; submission to him who was feared became obedience; inability to assert one's self became reluctance to assert one's self, became forgiveness, love of one's enemies. Misery became a distinction; ”

“ I say again, I cannot account for my being so contented with bondage. It may be, however, that there is nothing necessarily adverse to happiness in slavery itself, unaccompanied by other evils; and that when the slave is ground by no oppression and goaded by no cruelty, he is not apt to repine or moralize upon his condition, nor to seek for those torments of sentiment which imagination associates with the idea of slavery in the abstract. ”

“ And all this is necessary; it is necessary to resort to these cruelties, in order to make the slave a slave, and to keep him a slave. Why, my experience all goes to prove the truth of what you will call a marvelous proposition, that the better you treat a slave, the more you destroy his value as a slave, and enhance the probability of his eluding the grasp of the slaveholder; the more kindly you treat him, the more wretched you make him, while you keep him in the condition of a slave. ”

“ By the law of nature and of God, the slave, like every other man, is entitled “to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;” he is entitled to his earnings,—to the enjoyment of his social affections,—to the development of his intellectual and moral faculties,—to that cultivation of his religious nature which shall fit him, not merely to feel, but reason of righteousness, temperance, and a judgment to come;—he is entitled to all these rights, of which he has been cruelly despoiled ”

“ Gracious God! to talk, as of herds of cattle, of property in rational creatures, creatures endued with all our faculties, possessing all our qualities but that of color, our brethren both by nature and grace, shocks all the feelings of humanity, and the dictates of common sense! But, alas! what is there, in the infinite abuses of society, which does not shock them? Yet nothing is more certain in itself and apparent to all, than that the infamous traffic for slaves directly infringes both divine and human law. Nature created man free, and grace invites him to assert his freedom. ”

“ If this matter (slavery) be an evil, it is our own; if it be a sin, we can implore the forgiveness of it. To remove it we ask not either their sympathy or assistance. It may be our physical weakness — it is our moral strength. If, like the Greeks and Romans, we cease to be masters, we are slaves. ”

“ It is among the evils of slavery, that it taints the very sources of moral principle. It establishes false estimates of virtue and vice; for what can be more false and more heartless than this doctrine, which makes the first and holiest rights of humanity to depend upon the color of the skin? It perverts human reason, and induces men endowed with logical powers to maintain that slavery is sanctioned by the Christian religion; that slaves are happy and contented in their condition; that between master and slave there are ties of mutual attachment and affection ”

“ Objects in themselves indifferent, which they are forbidden to touch, or even approach, excite in the minds of the unreflecting, ungovernable impulses. The slave, who is taught from infancy, to regard his condition as unchangeable, and his fate as fixed, by the laws of nature, fancies that he sees his master in possession of that happiness which he knows has been denied to himself. ”

“ Some, indeed, are shielded against this influence by natural benevolence, or religious principle; and it is creditable to Ball's candour, that he mentions instances of kindness on the part of the masters; but such instances must necessarily, from the very constitution of our nature, be exceptions to the general rule. The cruelty and detestable injustice of the slave-code in all ages, and in all countries, conclusively establishes the general effect of slavery in paralyzing the moral sense. ”

“ We say to the drunkard, 'You are guilty of a sacrilege, because you reduce that which God made in his own image "into the image of an irrational creature."' Slavery does the very same. But there is not only a degradation committed as regards the slave—there is a degradation also committed against himself by him who makes him a slave, and who retains him in the position of a slave; for is it not one of the most commonplace of truths that we cannot do a wrong to a neighbor without doing a greater wrong to ourselves?—that we cannot injure him without also injuring ourselves yet more? ”

“ That human nature, which, in the person of the poor slave, has been despised and rejected, scoffed and scorned, scourged and tortured, shall in that day be glorified; and it shall appear the most fearful of sins to have made light of the sacredness of humanity, as these laws and institutions of slavery have done. The fact is, that the whole system of slave-law, and the whole practice of the slave system, and the public sentiment that is formed by it, are alike based on the greatest of all heresies, a denial of equal human brotherhood. ”

“ One thing must be said of the leaders of the anti-slavery movement. They asked for nothing but justice; not justice for themselves—they were not Socratic enough to ask that,—but only justice for the slave; and to obtain that, they forsook all that human hearts most love. ”

“ The thought that men are made for other and better uses than slavery, thrives best under the gentle treatment of a kind master. But the grim visage of slavery can assume no smiles which can fascinate the partially enlightened slave, into a forgetfulness of his bondage, nor of the desirableness of liberty. ”

“ They are, therefore, wicked. What then, in its moral character, must be a relation, which, to sustain it, requires the aid of wicked laws?—and, how entirely out of place must it be, when you class it with those just relations of life, that, certainly, require none of the support, which, you admit, is indispensable to the preservation of the relation of slaveholder and slave! ”

“ His slaves were well fed and clothed; they were supported in infancy and old age; they were trained in work according to their capacity, and taught something of morals and religion; in point of physical comfort and security, and of industrial and moral development, they were by no means at the bottom of the scale of humanity. The slave-holder's position, however unjust by an absolute standard, and with great possibilities of abuse, was, in the case of the rightly-disposed man—and such were common—a position which had its grave duties and often onerous burdens to be conscientiously borne. ”

“ Cruel that you are! you make us slaves; you implant in our minds all the vices, which are in some degree, inseparable from that condition; and you then impiously impute to nature, and to God, the origin of those vices, to which you alone have given birth; and punish in us the crimes, of which you are yourselves the authors.
The condition of the slave is in nothing more deplorable, than in its being so unfavorable to the practice of every virtue. The surest foundation of virtue is love of our fellow creatures; and that affection takes its birth, in the social relations of men to one another. ”

“ But some slaveholders have said, "we were never in bondage to any man," and therefore the yoke of bondage would be insufferable to us, but slaves are accustomed to it, their backs are fitted to the burden. Well, I am willing to admit that you who have lived in freedom would find slavery even more oppressive than the poor slave does, but then you may try this question in another form—Am I willing to reduce my little child to slavery? ”

“ The deliberate, solemn conviction of good men through the world, that slavery is a grievous wrong to human nature, will make itself felt. To increase this moral power is every man's duty. To embody and express this great truth is in every man's power; and thus every man can do something to break the chain of the slave. ”

“ Men dead to the operation of moral causes have taken from the poor slave those habits of loyalty and obedience which lightened his servitude by a double operation, beguiling his own labors and disarming his master's suspicions and severity; and now, like true empirics in politics, you propose to trust to the mere physical strength of the shackle that holds him in bondage. ”

“ The slave-holders insist that their humanity is so great, as to render all their ferocious laws perfectly harmless. Are the laws then made on purpose to urge tender-hearted masters to be so much worse than they really desire to be? ”

“ We consider the voluntary enslaving of one part of the human race by another, as a gross violation of the most precious and sacred rights of human nature; as utterly inconsistent with the law of God, which requires us to love our neighbor as ourselves; and as totally irreconcilable with the spirit and principles of the gospel of Christ, which enjoins that 'all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.' Slavery creates a paradox in the moral system ”

“ By accustoming the slave to subject his moral principles to the will of another, it tends to abolish in him all moral distinctions; and thus fosters in him lying, deceit, hypocrisy, dishonesty, and a willingness to yield himself up to the appetites of his master. ”

“ I will tell all these good things to all my black brethren—if I have a right to go, so have THEY—if my master's property is mine, so is it theirs also.—The poor deluded slave is thus set on fire, and thus he inflames the minds of all he knows.—They talk and converse, and dream of these good things—but they cannot easily run off—they become discontented—surly—unruly—idle—disobedient—and he who feeds, clothes, and takes care of them, can get little from them! ”

“ What you shun enduring yourself, attempt not to impose on others. You shun slavery—beware of enslaving others! If you can endure to do that, one would think you had been once upon a time a slave yourself. For Vice has nothing in common with virtue, nor Freedom with slavery. ”

“ The very fact that the slave was a rather [102] scarce article and a good price paid for him in America, made it to the interest of his owner to look after his health and comfort to a certain extent. We are not defending slavery—it is an abomination in the sight of God, whether it exists under the disguise of abnormally low wages or shows itself openly; and slavery is always a greater moral curse to the master than to the oppressed. ”

“ The total indifference of slaveholders to such a cold blooded proposition, their utter unconsciousness of the paralysis of heart, and death of sympathy, and every feeling of common humanity for the slave, which it reveals, is enough, of itself to show that the tendency of the spirit of slaveholding is, to kill in the soul whatever it touches. ”

“ Nay, by the laws of some of the slave states, where master and slave are engaged in a joint act, the slave is indictable, while the master is not.
What rights are more sacred or more dear to us than the conjugal and the parental? No savage nation, however far removed from the frontiers of civilization, has ever yet been discovered, where these rights were unknown or unhonored. The beasts of the forest feel and respect them. It is only in the land of slaves that they are blotted out and annihilated.
Slavery is an unspeakable wrong to the conscience. The word “conscience” conveys a complex idea. ”

“ That morbid and sentimental philanthropy which, at a distance, and in imagination, contemplates the difference between the slave and his master, may soon turn its compassionate eye to more proximate inequalities of life, rank and riches; and demand that the millionaires and others of less fortunes, divide with the children of poverty and want: insisting that as “all men are born free and equal,” it is no more than right, and the will of God, that they also live free and equal. ”

“ Persons who indulge in such remarks seem entirely unacquainted with the views and feelings of slaves, and to suppose that they are utterly incapable of appreciating, even to a small extent, the blessings and enjoyments of freedom. But this is a mistake, and operates powerfully on some minds to prevent wholesome action in favor of the liberation of the slave. It is to be [Pg 56] hoped that all true men and women who are held back from engaging in the cause of the slave by this consideration, will take pains to examine the subject with care, ere they yield to this pernicious opinion. ”

“ The slave, it is true, bears no resentment; he asks for no punishment for his master; he simply claims justice for himself; and it is this feature of his condition that promises more terror to the retribution when it comes. ”

“ If the champions of the slave had but seen how his cause is aided by representing him as he is,—not only revengeful, but selfish and mean,—not only treacherous to his master, but knavish to his countrymen, indolent, conceited, hypocritical, and sensual,—we should have had fewer narratives of slaves more virtuous than a free peasantry, and exposed to the delicate miseries of a refined love of which they are incapable, or of social sensibilities which can never be generated in such a social condition as theirs. ”