Slavery in the United States <br> Chapter 8

Compared with the existing laws of many of the other states of the Union, the code of slavery unquestionably appears severe. The .infliction of stripes, and other corporal punishments, is peculiarly unpalatable to the weak stomach of modern philanthropy, whose sympathies seem almost exclusively on the side of the transgressors of the statutes. It should be remembered, however, that it is within the memory of every citizen of New-York of the age of forty, that stripes for petty offences were inflicted at the discretion of the magistrates, and that the repeal of the law authorizing such punishments, originated in a popular clamour on account of a single instance of undue severity. In the state of Delaware, and, it is believed, in all, or nearly all the old states south of it, corporal punishments of white citizens form a portion of their criminal code, and are not confined to slaves.

This is not the place to inquire into the wisdom or humanity of substituting imprisonment for stripes, or branding, or even mutilation. Thus much, however, may be said on the subject, that beyond doubt the class of offences for which corporal punishments were formerly inflicted has increased to a great extent; that disgrace is no punishment to those who have lost the sense of shame; that trifling imprisonment, accompanied by a liberal allowance of food, comfortable lodgings, and exemption from labour, afford but little security to society from the depredations of those who possess none of these comforts, and to whom idleness is the greatest of all luxuries. It might be well also to bear in mind, that to shut the head of a family from the world, is to make his wife and children, for the most part, dependant on society for support; and that a sickly feeling of commiseration for guilt, when carried into the administration of the laws, is both unjust and dangerous to the innocent, because it removes one of the most effectual barriers to the commission of crime.

In estimating the laws for the government of slaves, it should not be forgotten, that the characteristic most universal in the natives of Africa and their descendants, is laziness. Merely to imprison them, so far from operating as a punishment, would be the most grateful of all indulgences, since it would afford them ample room for the gratification of their natural taste. Like many of the pupils of our court of quarter sessions, they would commit offences solely for the sake of passing a few days, weeks, or months in a comfortable asylum, where they would, as a matter of course, receive board and lodging without the necessity of earning either. In the mean time the master would be losing his services, while under the obligation of maintaining the culprit. Hence a resort is had to corporal punishment, the only effectual mode of reaching the feelings of a race whose situation naturally places them out of the reach of those restraints and inflictions, which operate most effectually on those who have preserved the sense of honour and the safeguard of shame.

In all military systems, corporal punishments of some kind or other have been, and still are found necessary to the preservation of discipline; and if we are not misinformed, in none are they inflicted with more severity than that of England. Both soldiers and sailors may be punished with a certain number of stripes, or by imprisonment for a limited period, and in various other ways, at the discretion of almost any petty officer. Apprentices, children, and school boys and girls, are in like manner subject to reasonable or unreasonable chastisement by stripes; and the acknowledged gallantry of the present age has not yet signalized its devotion to the gentler sex, by a repeal of the old law which authorizes the husband to inflict a moderate chastisement on his better half. Even captains of merchantmen have a discretionary power of punishment over their sailors.

It may, however, be urged, that in these cases we have a security against unnecessary, or wanton, or inhuman punishments, in the character of the officer, the responsibility of the magistrate, the interest of the mechanic in the services of his apprentices, the affection of the parent for his child, the husband for his wife, and the consequences that would result from any gross abuse of his authority by the teacher. So have we similar guaranties for the restraint and punishment of the abuse of the power of the master over his slave. Interchanging, as they do, the labours of the one for the benefits and protection of the other, it cannot but follow that some degree of reciprocal goodwill must grow up between them, and most especially on the part of the master. Men love what belongs to them. The tie of ownership is one of the strongest and most universal that operates on the affections of mankind. Our home is without its greatest attraction, unless it is our own. This sentiment extends to all inanimate property, to our farm, our house and its furniture, for all which we feel an habitual and cordial attachment. It is still stronger towards domestic animals belonging to us, and yet more strong towards domestic slaves. We cherish and value our horses, our dogs, our cattle, and sheep, simply because they administer to our comfort, pride, convenience, amusement, or wealth. It is therefore contrary to the nature of man, unless that nature be radically depraved, or brutified by vicious indulgence, to feel any other than the kindest attachment to his slaves, unless they forfeit it by their own misconduct. It is a libel on human nature, equally at war with all experience of the heart of man, to assume, as a general principle, that he will wantonly abuse his power over that which is his own, or so far lose sight of his interest as to misuse, starve, or mutilate the being so necessary to his comfort and happiness. If he starves him he cannot work; if he maims him he loses his labour, and is obliged to pay the cost of his cure. He would gratify his passions at the expense of his interest. This, it is true, is sometimes done in all the relations of social life, and yet those relations are not to be considered as contrary to the law of God, because they are sometimes abused to bad purposes. There is yet another and equally powerful restraint on the abuse of the power of the master over the slave—the restraint of public opinion, which may be said in this age, and most especially in this country, to be the supreme law of the land. In the present state of that opinion, the man who should be known to inflict wanton and unnecessary punishment on a slave, or to stint him in the ordinary comforts of life, or subject him to rigid or unmerciful restraints in the enjoyment of his hours of freedom, would incur the odium of all his neighbours. He would be shut out from all social intercourse with his equals; his inferiors would despise him; and he would create a solitude around his estate. The whole community would rise up against him as a tyrant who had abused his power over one race, and brought indelible disgrace on another. That there may be solitary examples of individual cruelty presented at rare intervals, is beyond a doubt. To deny it would be equivalent to asserting that men never abuse their power. But that the tales circulated by the abolitionists, equally vague as horrible, and in which neither time, place, nor names are specified, nor any clue given by which their truth may be tested, are true, or if true, in any, the slightest degree characteristic of the general treatment of the slaves of the South, our own experience unequivocally contradicts. In a residence of several years within the District of Columbia, and a pretty extensive course of travel in some of the southern states, we never saw or heard of any such instances of cruelty. We saw no chains and heard no stripes. But we every day and every hour saw and heard the slaves joking, gambolling about, laughing with a hearty exuberance that could only come from the heart, and apparently as happy in their situation as any class of human beings in existence. If, then, Paley is right, when he lays it down as a principle that "there remains a presumption in favour of those conditions of life in which men generally appear most cheerful and contented," assuredly the white men of the United States have as little cause of triumph over the slave, as they have reason to lament his bondage.

This public sentiment to which allusion has been made as a bar to the oppression of the slave, is still more powerful in the South than in the other portions of the Union. They feel that they stand at the bar of the public, charged, however unjustly, with abusing a power which they have inherited in consequence of circumstances beyond their control; and every man is conscious that he is responsible in his conduct, not only for his own, but the reputation of the state to which he belongs. It is in consequence of this, as well as from still more enlarged feelings of humanity, that all the more severe laws have become a dead letter, except in times of high public excitement from the apprehension of insurrection. In fact, they were, in a great measure, devised for these exigencies alone, and are not, nor ever have been, even partially enforced, except on such occasions. It is scarcely necessary to observe, that the real character and operation of all codes depends on the spirit in which they are executed. It is believed there are few systems of laws now in existence, and which have not undergone a revision within the last half century, that do not still contain provisions which would appear barbarous if executed to the letter, and which remain, as it were, in abeyance, only to be revived in extreme cases. Such are many of the slave laws of the South, which, although not repealed because extraordinary circumstances may render it absolutely necessary to the preservation of the property and lives of the free citizens to revive them, are still at all other times a mere dead letter in the statute books.

Admitting, however, that there may be rare and solitary instances in which some brutal master has equally lost sight of his own interests as well as of the common feelings of humanity, and wantonly oppressed his slave. Are there not, in the records of military and naval punishments, numerous instances of a tyrannical exercise of power? Are there not equally numerous cases in our marine courts, in which the captains of merchant vessels are tried and punished for maltreating sailors? Has the sacred seat of justice never been prostituted to the purposes of interest and iniquity? Has the magistrate no passions, prejudices, or moments of irritation, which are sometimes propitiated by the additional punishment of criminals. Are there not thousands of recorded instances of cruelty and oppression practiced by masters on their apprentices and helpless dependants? And, still deeper stain to humanity are not the courts of every civilized nation in Christendom continually polluted by the presence of wretches brought thither for the most outrageous violations of the persons of their wives and children? There, it is true, they occasionally receive their just reward; but it cannot be doubted that thousands and tens of thousands of cases equally flagrant will never be known, and never punished, at least in this world, until "the friends of the entire human race" shall take as much pains to find out and redress the wrongs of the white, as they have those of the black skin. Such examples are incidental to every mode, condition, and relation of human life, and are not the result of any one in particular. They spring from the corruptions of the human heart, like all the crimes and sufferings of this world. To abolish any custom or institution, because it may be, or is abused, would be to make war on all laws, Divine and human; for all laws have been occasionally perverted from their great objects, and made the scourges, instead of the benefactors of mankind.

On the other hand, it will be seen by a reference to the abstract of laws for the government of the slave, that in some cases the law is more favourable to him than to his master. He cannot be convicted of felony, unless by a unanimous decision of his judges, whereas a majority is sufficient to condemn the white citizen. He cannot be executed until at least thirty days after his sentence, unless in time of insurrection or rebellion; and not before the testimony for and against him is placed on record, and a copy transmitted to the governor, who is invested with the power of pardoning and reprieving. The governor is also clothed with a special authority to sell slaves under sentence of death, taking bond that the purchaser shall remove them from the United States; and in various other cases the punishment may be commuted. Those who are resolutely bent on finding selfish motives where those of humanity alone appear, may possibly attempt to trace those humane provisions to a regard for the property of the master, rather than for the life of the slave. But whatever may be the motive, no one will deny that the result is the same, or that the slave receives the benefit of these exceptions in his favour, as well as his master. To us, these laws distinctly exhibit the operation of a humane policy, desirous, as far as may be consistent with the safely of their institutions, to alleviate the condition of bondage by every means in their power. The more severe provisions of the law must be traced to the absolute necessity of the case: the more lenient ones to the influence of humanity. If it should be retorted, that this very necessity shows that the condition of society in which it originates is radically bad, our reply will be found in the following chapter. We have already, if we do not err, shown that the slave of the South is not altogether at the mercy of his master; that he has legal rights which protect him against punishment beyond a reasonable extent, much more effectually than the soldier or sailor; that he is, like every free citizen, under the protection of the law. The next chapter will be devoted to a comparison of the relative condition of the African slave in his own native land, as well as in the southern states, and the hireling white servants, peasants, and day-labourers of various parts of the world. In so wide a range, it must be obvious, that only great and leading points of comparison or contrast can be referred to; but sufficient it is hoped, will be exhibited to enable our readers to draw correct general conclusions.