FOOTNOTES:

But how much weightier does this argument become, when it is remembered that the opposers of slavery, besides being exceedingly numerous, have, many of them, been eminent,—not merely for a conscientious piety, but for talent, for research, for scholarship, for broad and comprehensive views of things;—and that the list embraces distinguished southern, as well as northern men; and men of celebrity in both church and state. There have been foundin the anti-slavery ranks, presidents and noble men, jurists and legislators, statesmen and divines, scholars and authors, poets and orators. And, still further to enhance the dignity of the cause, it should be remembered that several General Assemblies of the Presbyterian Church of the United States, together with numerous lesser ecclesiastical bodies, have lifted up their voice in opposition to slavery, and proclaimed substantially the same views which this humble Essay has aimed to exhibit. Now if, as we have seen, a deferential regard should be had to the conscience of aggrieved Christian brethren, even when they are few and feeble-minded, how much more, when the aggrieved ones are counted in hundreds of thousands? when theirs is an intelligent piety and an enlightened conscience? and when, too, their remonstrance is backed up by a public sentiment that is wellnigh unanimous through all christendom?

If now, in spite of all these considerations, I still have readers that say in their hearts, slavery must be perpetuated, they will pardon me for lingering no longer in the hope of changing their views. I would be indulged, however, in one parting interrogation. Has it never occurred to you, brethren, that yours is, on some accounts, a very unfavorable stand-point from which toform just and disinterested views of slavery; and that your very position as slave-holders, and your long familiarity with the system and its evils, may have blinded you to the magnitude of those evils, and to the great desirableness of their being removed? May it not be that long use, and self-interest, and the love of power and ease, have conspired to warp your judgment, blunt your sensibilities, and cause you to view slavery through a deceptive medium?

Having, as I hope, the cordial assent of the great mass of my readers, northern and southern, to the foregoing argument against slavery and its perpetuity, we are now prepared to advance to the last great division of our subject, and to inquire: What are the duties, positive and negative, which this subject imposes on American Christians? What does it demand that we, as Christians, should do, and refrain from doing? This question subdivides itself thus: What ought we northern and professedly anti-slavery Christians to do, and not do? And, next, What duties, positive and negative, does the question devolve on professing Christians in the slave-holding States?

I. We are to consider what we, the northern and avowedly anti-slavery section of the American church, ought, in view of this subject, bothto do, and refrain from doing. In reply to the question, What ought we to do? I would say,—

1. It is not only our right, but duty, temperately and with Christian courtesy to continue to discuss this great theme, both orally and with the pen; and especially to endeavor to bring the truth into contact with the mind and heart of our southern brethren,—if, peradventure, we may thus persuade them soon to cease their connection with slavery. Freedom of discussion is one important safeguard of the public weal; and that must be regarded as a bad, untenable cause which will not bear the test of a full and free discussion before the world. Free inquiry, too, has not only preceded all great reformations, but has been an important instrument in bringing them about. That great moral change known as the temperance reformation is but one example among many that might be adduced. If slavery is ever to be numbered in history among the things that are past, it will be by having Bible light and truth made to converge upon it, through the lens of free public discussion. Hence, believing as we do that American slavery is an enormous evil and a gigantic wrong,—a thing with which the church should cease to have connection as speedily as may be,—as Christians we may, we must, employ our tongues and ourpens in behalf of the enslaved, till our world shall cease to contain such a class of men.

2. We ought so to exercise the right of suffrage as to resist the extension of slavery beyond its present limits. I say nothing here of the political question of State rights, or of interfering with slavery in States where it now exists. The question of authorizing by law the extension of slavery into new States and Territories, or of admitting new States with pro-slavery constitutions, is another and very different thing from that of disturbing the compact in relation to slavery entered into by the founders of this republic. The concessions in relation to the slave interest which our fathers made by no means oblige us to make further concessions, by consenting that slavery shall overstep her present geographical limits. I know not what others may think; but, for one, I feel constrained, by a sense of duty to God and my country, so to vote as to have my votes tell against the spread of slavery. I must carry my Christian principles of love and humanity to the ballot-box, as well as elsewhere. Though long identified with one of the political parties, I have of late felt myself bound, as a voter, to ignore the ancient party lines, and even to ignore all other questions, compared with the one great and absorbing one, Shall slavery beallowed to have more territory, in which to breed and expand itself? In my deliberate judgment, all Christian patriots should, so far as their votes can speak, say to the system of bondage existing in our midst, "Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further, and here shall thy proud waves be stayed." This becomes now a moral and a religious duty.

3. In our visits to the throne of grace, we ought, with more frequency and fervor, "to remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them." Assured that all hearts and events are at God's disposal, that he abhors oppression, and that prayer is the Christian's mode of taking hold of God's strength, we must make full proof of this as a weapon with which to effect the subversion of slavery. It may be that importunate, persevering prayer will effect more in behalf of the enslaved than all other instrumentalities. It is, at least, quite certain that other means will prove inefficacious, if this be not superadded.

But the question we are considering has a negative as well as positive side; and we will next inquire, what we anti-slavery Christians ought to refrain from doing.

1. We must not, in our efforts to subvert slavery, indulge in an unchristian spirit, or in language adapted needlessly to anger and alienatethose whom it should be our aim to win. A cause that is intrinsically good may be advocated in a bad spirit, or with improper weapons; and such may have sometimes been the case with ours. Would that all men had ever borne it in mind, that truth and love are the only weapons with which to wage a successful conflict with this or any other deep-seated moral evil.

2. We must not, in our zeal for emancipation, allow mere feeling or benevolent impulses partially to dethrone reason; and thus disqualify ourselves for taking impartial views of the subject, or for accurately discriminating between truth and error. There may have been men in the anti-slavery ranks, with whom sympathy was every thing, and reason—and even the Bible—comparatively nothing. In obeying the injunction to "remember them that are in bonds," they may have neglected to remember any thing else. Slavery seemed to occupy their entire field of vision. Hence, not fully informed in regard to the actual condition of things at the South, they have erroneously supposed that the slave codes prevailing there were the standard by which to judge of the actual condition of the slaves, and that all the Southern church was actually practising the barbarities authorized by those codes. As there was no just appreciationof the actual conduct of masters towards their servants, so there was no allowance made for the circumstances which conspired to render them masters, nor for the obstacles which stand in the way of their ceasing to be masters. It must be admitted, that generally, where unrighteous laws are suffered to exist, the mass of the community will not be better than the laws; but there are exceptions,—men who intend to give heed to a higher law. So much for allowing an amiable but blind sympathy to usurp that throne which reason and revelation were designed conjointly to occupy. It scarcely need be added, that these ultraisms have done much to prejudice the anti-slavery cause, and bring it, in the eyes of some, into unmerited contempt. We must wipe away that reproach, by so conducting our warfare with slavery as to evince that we are neither men of one idea, nor men whose judgment is led captive by their sensibilities.

3. We must not, in opposing slavery, indorse the sentiment, that one cannot in any conceivable circumstances give credible evidence of piety, and yet continue in form to hold slaves; that being a master is, in any and in all circumstances, a disciplinable offence in the church; or that it should, without exception, constitute a barrierto church-membership, or to the communion of saints at Christ's sacramental board. While we believe that all the great principles of God's Word go to subvert slavery, and while we are constrained to regard the holding of slaves as diminishing the evidence of a man's piety, and thus far alienating his claims to a good standing in the Christian church, we may nevertheless make exceptions, and not keep a man out of the church, or discipline him when in it, merely because he sustains temporarily the relation of master, not for selfish ends, but, as in rare cases, for benevolent reasons. But if a man defends the system, and takes away from a fellow man inalienable human rights, then we may and should refuse him admission, or subject him to discipline, as the case may be. But, obvious and important as is this distinction, it is one which some anti-slavery men may have failed to make; and that failure may have prejudiced or retarded the cause of emancipation. A good cause suffers by having a single uncandid statement or untenable argument advanced in its support; and the friends of the enslaved must afford their opponents no room for saying, that their reasonings are illogical or anti-scriptural.

4. We must not, in seeking the extinction ofAmerican slavery, so insist on its immediate abolition as to repudiate the responsibility which a master owes to this dependent and depressed class of his fellow beings; but that that end be kept steadily in view, to be accomplished as speedily as is consistent with the best good of the parties concerned. The immediate and total extinction of southern slavery, if not obviously impossible, is of questionable expediency. The upas of American slavery has struck its roots so deep, and shot its branches so far, and so interlaced itself with all surrounding objects, that, to have it instantaneously and unreservedly uprooted, might prove, in many cases, disastrous; and, at all events, is not to be expected. To say nothing of other obstacles to the immediate abolition of Southern slavery, the highest good of many of the slaves makes it inexpedient. Some, probably many of them, need to pass through an educating process,—a kind of mental and moral apprenticeship,—in order to their profiting largely by the boon of emancipation.[J]

II. We are now to inquire, lastly, what duties, positive and negative, this great question devolves on those Christians among whom American slavery has its seat, or who are personally identified with it. Hoping, brethren, that the sentiments thus far advanced are your sentiments, I shall have your further assent when I say,

1. That the extinction, at the earliest consistent date, of the system of servitude existing among you, is a result at which you ought steadily and strenuously to aim. And, as you see, we base this obligation of yours, not on the assumption of any sinfulness which you may sustain to slavery, but on the acknowledged injustice and woes, past, present, and prospective, of the system as a system,—its contrariety, as a system, to the fundamental principles of Christianity. Did we regard you as necessarily sinners,if in any sense you hold slaves, then the least we could ask of you would be, that with contrition of heart you should instantaneously cease to indulge in this sin, for all sin should be immediately abandoned. As it is, we only ask, that, just as fast as your slaves can be prepared for freedom, and as the providence of God may put it in your power to liberate them, you will do so. We are not so unwise as to expect that the work of extinction can be accomplished in a day. We know, too, that you are not, in your church capacity, the constituted arbiters of the question as a question of State policy. And, so long as your legislatures and their constituencies are resolved on maintaining the system, perhaps you will be unable to effect as much as you desire in the way of promoting its overthrow. And yet, brethren, there is a way in which we think you can, with entire safety and manifest propriety, contribute largely and directly to the extinction of American slavery. Would the entire Southern church cease all personal participation in slavery, and throw her whole weight and influence into the scale of slavery's complete subversion, that "consummation devoutly to be wished" would soon ensue. Slave-holding, no longer practised or justified by the church, but discountenanced, could not long retain its foothold in the State. Now if this beso, our slaveholding brethren will confess that they are imperiously bound, by motives of Christian duty, to liberate their bondmen with all consistent speed. Meantime, and as one important means of qualifying them for freedom, you ought,

2. To see to it that not only your own, but all the bondmen among you,—your entire slave population,—are furnished with the Bible, and qualified to read and comprehend it; and also with stated preaching. They need a written and preached gospel, were it only to fit them to exchange, with advantage, a state of vassalage for the dignity of freemen; for all experience proves that the Bible and the pulpit are of all instruments the best to qualify men safely to exercise the right of self-government. But there is a servitude more dreadful by far than any domestic bondage that men have ever groaned under; and your slaves need the Bible, and the Bible preached, to prove God's instruments of breaking the chains imposed by Satan, and making them Christ's freemen. Before God and in prospect of eternity, the distinctions between the master and his slave dwindle into insignificance. Having souls that are alike impure and alike precious, alike remembered by a dying Saviour and alike in need of theregenerating change, they stand alike in need of God's Word, written and preached, as the Spirit's instrument in renewing and sanctifying the soul. Hence the Bible and preaching are as much the rightful inheritance of the slave as of the master. We rejoice that these truths and the obligations resulting therefrom are, to some extent, recognized by southern Christians; and that, in spite of certain adverse statutes, so much is being done there for the spiritual well-being of the slaves. Go on, brethren, in the good work of evangelizing your slave population; in teaching them the art of reading and the rudiments of knowledge; in putting the Bible into their hands, and affording them stated opportunities to read it, and to hear it expounded by you and by Christ's ministers. Go on, we say, till there be not one southern slave, who, in point of religious privileges, is not on a footing of equality with yourselves. Prosecuting this laudable work in the spirit of love, you will probably encounter no serious opposition. The adverse but dead statutes referred to will not, we hope, be galvanized into life, in order to oppose you.

It only remains that we name a few things, which we trust our Southern brethren will unite with us in saying that they should refrain fromdoing. (1.) You ought not to, and we trust you will not, betray impatience and irritation, whenever we of the North attempt to press the claims of the enslaved on your attention. Your doing this,—as you sometimes have,—seems to indicate, that, in your opinion, we Northern Christians have no responsibility in regard to slavery and its evils; and that when we discuss this theme we make ourselves "busybodies in other men's matters." To the justness of this opinion we cannot subscribe. While we disclaim all right or intention to break our compact with you as States, we feel that American slavery is a question of too great moment to ourselves and to unborn generations for us to have no concern with or responsibility for; and as patriots, as philanthropists, as Christians, we are constrained to do all that we rightfully may for the downfall of this hoary system of wrong and woe. If any of you differ with us in opinion on this theme, we trust you will allow us to discuss it to our heart's content; and that you will listen to our reasonings with Christian meekness and candor. Not to do so will be construed as an evidence of intrinsic weakness in your cause. (2.) You will freely admit, we presume, that certain practices are authorized by your slave laws, in which you must not indulge even solong as by any necessity you hold slaves. Your slave codes, for example, do not recognize the sanctity of family ties and the domestic affections as existing among slaves; but, as Christian masters, you must. You doubtless believe, as do we, that the marriage relation, with all its rights and immunities, was as much designed for the negro as for the white man; that he, as truly as the other, is entitled to "cleave unto his wife," unexposed to the danger of man's putting asunder what God hath so closely joined, that "they are no more twain, but one flesh." You believe, too, that God united husband and wife thus indissolubly, not simply that they might be a help and solace to each other in the toilsome pilgrimage of life, but that the children with which God should bless them might grow up under their supervision, and by them be qualified for a career of usefulness and honor. Thus you believe, and believing thus, you will not, we trust, counteract God's benevolent designs, by countenancing, in your own practice, the separation of husbands and wives, or of parents and their offspring. We feel assured, that, whatever your laws may allow, or non-professing masters around you may do, you will never ignore the conjugal or parental rights of your servants, or indulge in any thing adapted tomar their domestic enjoyment. Were you to do so, we confess we could not extend to you "the right hand of fellowship" as brethren in Christ. Were a church-member of ours to practise thus, we should regard him as amenable to discipline. We should also regard it as disciplinable for a master to overwork, or brutally chastise, or but half feed and clothe his servants; or to hold slaves for mere purposes of gain, or to traffic in them. None of these inhumanities could we reconcile with the obligations of a Christian profession; and we confidently hope that in these views you will heartily concur, and that with them your practice will correspond.

Christian brethren of the North and the South! The question we have been considering is one of vast moment. Upon the right disposition of it are suspended, under God, interests of immeasurable value, and which stretch far out into the unseen future of our country and the world. Coming ages and unborn generations are to be affected; favorably or otherwise, by the decision of this vexed question; and, brethren, unless I misjudge, its right decision is, to a very great extent, lodged in our hands. As decides the American church, so, methinks, will decide the American people. And now,—may I confess it?—I have dared to hope that the sentimentsof this Essay are not only sound, but in unison with the views of the great mass of American Christians. Are we not agreed in this: that American slavery is a system of deep injustice and wrong, not sanctioned by the Word or the providence of God; fraught with incalculable mischief to the interests of both masters, and slaves, and to the social and religious well-being of our whole country; a blot on the escutcheon both of the nation and of the church; a weapon for scepticism to wield, and an obstacle to the introduction of millennial glory; and hence, a system which ought speedily to terminate, and which all good men should unitedly oppose and seek to subvert? If we are thus agreed, let us join hands as well as hearts, and, swerving neither to the extreme of passive indifference on the one hand nor to that of erratic fanaticism on the other, in the majesty of principle let us move calmly onward, a phalanx of Christian philanthropists, attempting naught but what they are assured God would have them attempt, and employing only such means as are warranted by an enlightened conscience. Leaning prayerfully on Him who hears the sighing of the oppressed, let us push vigorously forward, and, though the year of jubilee has not yet fully come, be assured it will come,—that proud day, when not only"throughout all the land," but throughout the civilized world, liberty shall be proclaimed "unto all the inhabitants thereof." Hasten its advent, "O Thou that hearest prayer," and that "delightest in mercy!" Amen and Amen.

FOOTNOTES:[A]An extended passage containing the extract may be found conveniently in Chambers' Cyclopædia of English Literature, vol. 2, p. 246.[B]Genesis, 10th Chapter. Vide, Kitto's Cyclopædia, for views in this connection.[C]Col. 4:1; "Ye masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal." That is, act towards them on the principles of justice and equity. Justice requires that all their rights, as men, as husbands, and as parents, should be regarded. And these rights are not to be determined by the civil law, but by the law of God.... But God concedes nothing to the master beyond what the law of love allows. Paul requires for servants not only what is strictly just, but τὴν ἰσότητα. What is that? Literally, it isequality. This is not only its signification, but its meaning. Servants are to be treated by their masters on the principles of equality. Not that they are to be equal with their masters in authority or station or circumstances; but that they are to be treated as having, as men, as husbands, and as parents, equal rights with their masters. It is just as great a sin to deprive a servant of the just recompense for his labor, or to keep him in ignorance, or to take from him his wife or child, as it is to act thus towards a free man. This is the equality which the law of God demands, and on this principle the final judgment is to be administered. Christ will punish the master for defrauding the servant as severely as he will punish the servant for robbing his master. The same penalty will be inflicted for the violation of the conjugal or parental rights of the one as of the other. For, as the apostle adds, there is no respect of persons with him. At his bar the question will be, "What was done?" not "Who did it?" Paul carries this so far as to apply the principle not only to the acts, but to the temper of masters. They are not only to act towards their servants on the principles of justice and equity, but are toavoid threatening. This includes all manifestation of contempt and ill temper, or undue severity. All this is enforced by the consideration that masters have a Master in heaven, to whom they are responsible for their treatment of their servants.... Believers will act in conformity with the Gospel in this. And the result of such obedience, if it could become general, would be, that first the evils of slavery, and then slavery itself, would pass away naturally, and as healthfully as children cease to be minors.Prof. Hodge's Commentary.[D]See 2 Brevard's Digest, 229; Prince's Digest, 446.[E]Civil Code, Art. 35.[F]Job ch. 32, v. 17-20, Barnes's translation.[G]It is sometimes said that the crime of adultery is neither perpetrated nor encouraged by the breaking up of slave-families, because, generally, the connections formed are not truly marriage, not being solemnized according to forms of law, and hence the marriage obligationcannotbe violated.It may be replied, if this be so, it presents slavery in a worse light still, for it encourages and perpetuates a state of universal concubinage. But it isnotso. When a slave takes a companion, and they consent and engage to live together as husband and wife until death, and they thus declare their intentions before others, whether any legal form is gone through or not, they are as truly "no more twain but one flesh" as were Adam and Eve. It has been thus decided by our courts in regard to white persons.[H]Rev. R. I. Breckenridge, D. D.[I]Mehemet Ali.[J]The publishers understand the writer to mean, that the working of them without wages,—the withholding that which is just and equal,—should be immediately and universally abandoned, and that emancipation should be granted as speedily as the slaves can be prepared to use and enjoy their freedom. The right should be acknowledged, and the needful means for its security immediately used. The writer does not say, that holding men in bondage is not generally sinful, nor that all sin should not be immediately repented of and forsaken, but only that there may be exceptions where for a time, and under very peculiar circumstances, it may not be sinful, and cannot consistently with the greatest good be abandoned, without some previous means of preparation.

[A]An extended passage containing the extract may be found conveniently in Chambers' Cyclopædia of English Literature, vol. 2, p. 246.

[B]Genesis, 10th Chapter. Vide, Kitto's Cyclopædia, for views in this connection.

[C]Col. 4:1; "Ye masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal." That is, act towards them on the principles of justice and equity. Justice requires that all their rights, as men, as husbands, and as parents, should be regarded. And these rights are not to be determined by the civil law, but by the law of God.... But God concedes nothing to the master beyond what the law of love allows. Paul requires for servants not only what is strictly just, but τὴν ἰσότητα. What is that? Literally, it isequality. This is not only its signification, but its meaning. Servants are to be treated by their masters on the principles of equality. Not that they are to be equal with their masters in authority or station or circumstances; but that they are to be treated as having, as men, as husbands, and as parents, equal rights with their masters. It is just as great a sin to deprive a servant of the just recompense for his labor, or to keep him in ignorance, or to take from him his wife or child, as it is to act thus towards a free man. This is the equality which the law of God demands, and on this principle the final judgment is to be administered. Christ will punish the master for defrauding the servant as severely as he will punish the servant for robbing his master. The same penalty will be inflicted for the violation of the conjugal or parental rights of the one as of the other. For, as the apostle adds, there is no respect of persons with him. At his bar the question will be, "What was done?" not "Who did it?" Paul carries this so far as to apply the principle not only to the acts, but to the temper of masters. They are not only to act towards their servants on the principles of justice and equity, but are toavoid threatening. This includes all manifestation of contempt and ill temper, or undue severity. All this is enforced by the consideration that masters have a Master in heaven, to whom they are responsible for their treatment of their servants.... Believers will act in conformity with the Gospel in this. And the result of such obedience, if it could become general, would be, that first the evils of slavery, and then slavery itself, would pass away naturally, and as healthfully as children cease to be minors.Prof. Hodge's Commentary.

Prof. Hodge's Commentary.

[D]See 2 Brevard's Digest, 229; Prince's Digest, 446.

[E]Civil Code, Art. 35.

[F]Job ch. 32, v. 17-20, Barnes's translation.

[G]It is sometimes said that the crime of adultery is neither perpetrated nor encouraged by the breaking up of slave-families, because, generally, the connections formed are not truly marriage, not being solemnized according to forms of law, and hence the marriage obligationcannotbe violated.It may be replied, if this be so, it presents slavery in a worse light still, for it encourages and perpetuates a state of universal concubinage. But it isnotso. When a slave takes a companion, and they consent and engage to live together as husband and wife until death, and they thus declare their intentions before others, whether any legal form is gone through or not, they are as truly "no more twain but one flesh" as were Adam and Eve. It has been thus decided by our courts in regard to white persons.

It may be replied, if this be so, it presents slavery in a worse light still, for it encourages and perpetuates a state of universal concubinage. But it isnotso. When a slave takes a companion, and they consent and engage to live together as husband and wife until death, and they thus declare their intentions before others, whether any legal form is gone through or not, they are as truly "no more twain but one flesh" as were Adam and Eve. It has been thus decided by our courts in regard to white persons.

[H]Rev. R. I. Breckenridge, D. D.

[I]Mehemet Ali.

[J]The publishers understand the writer to mean, that the working of them without wages,—the withholding that which is just and equal,—should be immediately and universally abandoned, and that emancipation should be granted as speedily as the slaves can be prepared to use and enjoy their freedom. The right should be acknowledged, and the needful means for its security immediately used. The writer does not say, that holding men in bondage is not generally sinful, nor that all sin should not be immediately repented of and forsaken, but only that there may be exceptions where for a time, and under very peculiar circumstances, it may not be sinful, and cannot consistently with the greatest good be abandoned, without some previous means of preparation.

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