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THE

RIGHT

AMERICAN SLAVERY.

T. W. HOIT,

OF THE ST. LOUIS LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION.

SOUTHERN AND WESTERN EDITION.

FIRST AND SECOND EDITIONS, 500,000 COPIES.

FOR SALE BY THE PRINCIPAL PUBLISHERS THROUGHOUT THE UNION.

ST. LOUIS, MO.: PUBLISHED BY L. BUSHNELL. 1860.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States in and for the District of Missouri.

BAKER & GODWIN, PRINTERS, Printing-House Square, opposite City Hall, NEW YORK.

PREFACE

TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.

What fatal error is there in our Republican principle? What virus sickens our body politic? What fascination lures us from the shrine of freedom? What infatuation hath seized the American people, that they should put to hazard this priceless inheritance,--the home, and refuge, and hope, of the down-trodden nations?

Our material greatness and vigor seem to forbid the idea of premature decay; but let us not be blind to the delusive dream of an immortality springing from mental imbecility, nor the chimera of a political finality in governmental system which establishes and tolerates INJUSTICE, nor the permanence of a State in the midst of preponderating elements of fluctuating popular delusion.

"That trade's proud empire hastes to swift decay, As ocean sweeps the labored mote away; Whilst self-dependent power can time defy, As rocks resist the billows and the sky."

THE RIGHT OF SLAVERY.

INTRODUCTION.

AFRICAN SLAVERY is, at present, the subject of all-absorbing interest to the American mind; for, our people, almost intoxicated with their own freedom, seem unsatisfied with those manifold blessings acquired by the labors of their sires; and while they are conscious of not excelling them in wisdom, virtue, or valor, they are becoming ideal, and seem willing to sacrifice the practical, safe rules of republican action, for mere idealisms, born in the dizzy sphere of their own over-wrought imaginations. They tremble at the name of Washington, whose purity and moral power shed lustre upon the name of man, and they worship him as a god; but while the REAL WASHINGTON commands the homage of mankind, and stands the intermediate between the race of men and the Infinite, we find the imaginations of men ignoring reason, and embarked upon a voyage aerial, amid the clouds. There they revel high above the mountain tops of Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin, where the atmosphere is pure, where the light is clear, and where the lightnings play; but, alas for human weakness and frailty! they are there only in imagination, though the splendid illusion is to them a reality, and the pleasing dream of ideal beauty, which, by the magic power of transmutation, annihilates or obliterates the reason and memory, destroys those distinctions of great and little, right and wrong, weakness and power, which nature has arbitrarily made, and the experience of mankind recognized as fundamental; upon which all law is based, and all order and civilization sustained and advanced, for the security and elevation of nations and of men.

THE IDEAL AND THE REAL

THE NEGRO EVER A SLAVE.

TWO PHASES OF SLAVERY.

Slavery has two phases; the moral, which involves the RIGHT, and the prudential, which is the expedient. But strictly, the moral is the principal and controlling view of the subject, and that which has made and will continually constitute the criterion of action from which the expediency is deduced, and the anomaly of slavery in our Republic understood, the paradox of a slaveholding democracy explained, and the institution of slavery justified with human equality, by justly discriminating between barbarism and humanity, civilization and savagism, justice and injustice, right and wrong.

THE RIGHT OF SLAVERY.

BARBARISM OF THE AFRICAN RACE.

THE AFRICAN NOT INTENDED FOR FREEDOM.

It is, therefore, in the philosophical aspect of the subject, in which it should be viewed, since philosophy searches down into the deep recesses of nature, and drags to light those hideous deformities of a race of barbarians, whose inherent passions revel in a sphere infinitely beneath the dignity of our domestic animals, and from whose frenzied rage for self-annihilation, enkindled by a morbid desire to devour their kind, the gentler beasts of the forest turn away in disgust, and humanity shrinks back with unmitigated horror!

BARBARISM SHOULD SUBSERVE CIVILIZATION.

To say, then, that it is JUST that barbarism should subserve civilization is a laconical axiom, which decides a plain question of right and wrong. The wrong is, that the African is a barbarian, and devours his kind; the right is, that in his service due and rendered to civilization, he receives its protection, and is compelled to forego the, to him, exquisite pleasure of devouring his kind. It will be observed that this view of the subject justifies, not only the perpetuation, but the inception of slavery, and renders emancipation absurd and cruel, and the inception of slavery just; leaving the continued transfer of barbarians to the midst of civilized communities, a right, the exercise of which could not involve or sacrifice any right of the barbarian, but must depend upon the enlightened decision of civilization, as to the reciprocal benefits to be derived therefrom. The conscience of civilization is the tribunal at which to try barbarism, as well as every other grade of inferior subjective existence. It stands above and controls all below it. The conscience of civilization decides both the right to summon the barbarian, and to hold him subject to its dictates; to weigh the benefits to civilization against the evils resulting from the adoption of the element of this super-animal force as an aid to civilization. Civilization deciding to take and hold the barbarian, it becomes right by the decision of the highest arbiter. The taking of the barbarian, and his employment as an adjunct of civilization, being in consequence of his moral delinquency, and his consequent mental imbecility, is no arrogation of right, because it is just; it is no assumption of right, because the empire of right is universal; it is no violation of right, because the act in itself is the exercise of the prerogative of right, of justice, in civilization, to suppress wrong and compel it to subserve right. In this view emancipation is no less unjust to the African than opposed to the law of right. To seize him and drag him away to barbarism, against his will, is an act in favor of barbarism and in violation of right. It restores to barbarism its victim, and robs the African of his supposed natural prerogative and choice, of service to civilization. The act, of itself, is the abnegation of that same right which it is designed or intended to assert.

THE AFRICAN'S AVERSION TO COLONIZATION.

IMPRACTICABILITY OF COLONIZATION.

The impracticability of African colonization had long since become a foregone conclusion, so far as it could be made applicable to the present or prospective transfer of 4,000,000 of negroes from this republic to Liberia. A mathematical solution of that problem shows the cost of purchase and transportation to be no less a sum than ,400,000,000, or ten times the amount of all the gold and silver coin in the United States. The purchase of these Negroes, alone, would cost ,000,000,000, or eight times the amount of all our coin; and if we add to this the cost of transportation to Central America, the entire cost would not be less than ,200,000,000. It will be seen that one scheme is as practicable as the other; and the alternative remains, of either robbing the people of nearly half the States of the Union of their property, or the Negro must remain a slave. No sane man will say that the purchase of this property is practicable or possible. Fancy, if you please, the Negroes bought and paid for; the estates of all the people of this country involved in the vain chimera of transferring to our Southern States, in remuneration, all the coin in Europe and America, and all that will be added thereto in a hundred years to come, and you have a picture not very suggestive of practicability or expediency.

But, even if the citizens of our Southern States should magnanimously propose the totally improbable act of voluntary and gratuitous manumission of their slaves, for the purpose of elevating them to political equality, what would be the effect upon our country? Three millions and a half of Negroes let loose upon our community, in competition, in the main departments of industry, with free white labor. Or would you, in accordance with the legislation of many of the States, exclude the negro from the Northern, Middle, and Western States, and the Territories, and thus, by confining him to the South, give him political preponderance over the white man in many of the States of the Union? Imagine the pure crystal pillars of this temple of freedom turned to ebony; the radiant eyes of Freedom's Goddess shocked at the gloomy spectacle of symbolic night, and suffused with tears at such a desecration of her shrine!

GRADUAL OR PROSPECTIVE EMANCIPATION.

OF PARTIAL LEGISLATION.

PURPOSES OF BRITISH EMANCIPATION.

Emancipation contemplates the social and political equality of the races. It proposes to mix the pure Anglo-Saxon blood with the dark blood of Ethiopia! It proposes the amalgamation of civilization with barbarism. It proposes the debasement and downfall of this Republic, and the erection upon its ruins of a mighty military despotism. The alienation of that friendly sentiment and brotherly affection which existed among our people in the days of the Revolution, is prophetic of this; and unless reason resume her seat, and the convulsed sea of American mind, now lashed to fury by blind zealots and European emissaries among us, be calmed, and the angry wave of fanaticism be stayed, such will most certainly be the sad and startling consummation.

OF THE RIGHT TO ENSLAVE THE BARBARIAN.

It is pretended by certain sophists and visionary theorists, that the RIGHT does not exist to enslave the barbarian; that to assert such right is fatal to the principle of human equality. To which I answer, that barbarity is not humanity, but its opposite, and the right of the one to control the other is supported by law, founded upon the immutable principles of justice. The experience of mankind has demonstrated, and the judgment of mankind has decided, that certain acts are wrong in themselves; that to kill is an act abhorrent to the soul of man, and as it is also a violation of natural right, the murderer shall die--that in his death an element of chaos and destruction, in him, is annihilated--and the principle or element of murder in the wicked be thereby repressed. Here is an instance wherein the right is asserted, to take, not only the liberty, but the life of an individual. Some deny this right, but they do not deny the right to deprive the murderer of his liberty. All will agree that the murderer shall, at least, be deprived of his liberty. So with other crimes. There is a tolerable agreement in civilized communities, that for certain crimes men shall be deprived of their natural right to freedom. So, the principle is established, that communities have the right to deprive men of their liberties. Laws are established and executed by this principle. Every State, and almost every small community, endorses this principle, and constantly illustrates it by the punishment of offenders against law, who are confined in jails and prisons. And it is folly to deny a right founded upon the universal usage and experience of mankind. So with nations. Did we not repress the wrong exercised against us by Mexico and Algeria? Did we not even deny the right of maritime isolation to Japan, on the score of cruelty or neglected hospitality to our shipwrecked mariners? Suppose she slay our ambassador, or our resident minister; would we not still further force upon her, in a summary manner, those well-known rules of law, and amenities of civilization, and principles of justice, which are proclaimed to be right by the united voice of nations?

VIOLATION OF NATURAL RIGHT.

But it is claimed by some, that the African slave here has ceased to be a barbarian, which I deny. His nature is not essentially changed; his habits are forced; and he would at once fall, as he has fallen, and is falling, in San Domingo, Jamaica, and Canada, but for coercion. It is, therefore, an external power which holds him up, and no innate principle within him.

THE DEBT OF THE BARBARIAN.

But even for argument, admitting the African were civilized, still he is not legally entitled to his freedom. Why? Because on account of his barbarism he became the property of another, who has a vested right in him. His transition from barbarism to civilization was at the expense of civilization, and he owes a just equivalent therefor. His debt is the difference between barbarism and civilization, and will be estimated according as the one in held higher than the other.

THE RIGHT OF THE AFRICAN TO REMAIN A SLAVE.

If the African is entitled to his freedom, he is also entitled to the privilege of remaining in servitude; a privilege which nine tenths of the Negroes in this country are well known to crave. But we deny his right of choice in the premises. His barbarism was the oblivion of his right to choose his own proper position; and the absence of inherent right in him subjects him at once to the dominion of universal or external right in civilization. His right of choice, therefore, has no real validity, and should not even be tolerated to denounce the heinous wrong of his emancipation, and consequent restoration to barbarism. His right to remain a slave is not his own, but the right of civilization; and even his willingness to remain in servitude, though a double evidence of his barbarism and of his appreciation of his partially ameliorated condition as an accessory of civilization, is not available in deciding as to his present or future condition; because the right exercised in his subjection to the rules of civilization is primordial, and sovereign, and all-controlling, as Universal Right, and is in no case subject to the will of barbarism.

THE MELIORATION OF THE AFRICAN.

OF THE DEGRADATION OF LABOR.

Labor degrades no man. Labor is honorable, because the products of labor feed and clothe the world, and thus conduce to the welfare and happiness of mankind. Coerced labor is better than no labor. Coercion itself does not necessarily degrade man; rather may it ennoble and elevate, when it is exercised to summon the barbarian to the lessons of civilization. Coercion degrades not the man whom it compels to do right; it only exposes that degradation which is the result of doing wrong. The man only is degraded who, voluntarily or by coercion, does wrong, or neglects to do right. To talk of the degradation of labor, whether coerced or free, is, therefore, preposterous.

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