Your next main argument is substantially this: — The Jewish
nation held slaves, whose condition and treatment were regulated by laws given
them by divine authority, and therefore American slave-holding is sanctioned by
the Bible. In proof of the facts in the case you refer to a few passages, which
we allow are sufficient to test the principle which you maintain, and we
oppose. — We will first look at the passages themselves, and then examine the
argument founded on them. “The Lord himself.” you say, “directed Moses and
Aaron how slaves were to be treated with respect to the passover;” and you
quote Exodus 12:43, 44. “And the Lord said unto Moses and Aaron, This is the
ordinance of the passover: there shall no stranger eat thereof: but every man's
servant that is bought for money, when thou hast circumcised him, then shall he
eat thereof.” Slaves were allowed religious privileges which were not granted
to strangers nor to hired servants; Exodus, 12:45. “A foreigner and a hired
servant shall not eat thereof.” “It was no sin for a priest,” you continue, “to
purchase a slave with his money, and the slave thus purchased was entitled to
peculiar privileges.” Lev. 22: 10, 11. “There shall no stranger eat of the holy
thing, a sojourner of the priest or a hired servant shall not eat of the holy
thing. But if the priest buy any soul with his money he shall eat of it, and he
that is born in his house, they shall eat of his meat.” You add, “The Bible
warrants the purchase of slaves as an inheritance for children forever:” and,
bring for proof, Lev. 25:46, “And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your
children after you, to inherit them for a possession, they shall be your
bond-men forever; but over your brethren the children of Israel, ye shall not
rule one over another with rigor.”
Now against your continual substitution of the term slaves
for servants we earnestly protest, on grounds which have been
already stated. You seem to have forgotten that the original word has any other
meaning. Was Paul a slave of Jesus Christ? Are all the people of God his
slaves? What is it to be a slave in your sense of the expression? The law of
South Carolina answers, “Slaves shall be deemed, held, taken, reputed, and
adjudged in law, to be chattels personal, in the hands of their owners, and
possessors and their executors, administrators and assignees, to ALL INTENTS,
CONSTRUCTIONS, AND PURPOSES WHATSOEVER.” And Judge Stroud in his sketch of the
laws relating to slavery, says, “The cardinal principle that the slave is not
to be ranked among sentient beings, but among things, obtains as
undoubted law in all these states.” — Such is slavery among you. But that the Hebrew
laws ever authorized any such slave-holding, we utterly deny. They do
throughout recognize servants of every order as intelligent beings, who though
in a state of servitude, had personal rights; and secured to them comfortable
support, protection from personal abuse, and, on receiving circumcision,
unqualified admission to all the religious privileges enjoyed by the Hebrew
people, generally. This sort of servitude, we maintain, was radically and most
evidently a very different thing from slavery in your sense of the term. Why
then should you persist in calling it slavery without once intimating
that the term, in this application, is to be taken in any limited sense? It
will not be strange if you should, within a few years, amuse yourselves by
giving to our northern apprentices and hired help the same appellation. You
have indeed already intimated, that you deem the epithet not inappropriate
While the passages to which you refer, say nothing at all of
slavery in your sense of the expression, and of course give it no countenance,
they do, we freely admit, contemplate the fact, that not only the Jewish
people, but priests would buy servants for money; and secure important
religious privileges to those who should be thus purchased. — That what is said
of the exclusion of hired servants from the Passover has respect to those of
foreign extraction only, and is predicated on the supposition that such had not
been circumcised is evident from the exegetical remark which follows in the
same connection, “No uncircumcised person shall eat thereof; one law shall be
to the home-born and to the stranger that sojourneth with you.” It is possible
that the hired Hebrew servants, as well as the foreign servants, of the
same condition, might have been excluded from eating of the holy things in the
families of the priests, in as much as such eating was a family, not a
national, privilege; and the mere circumstance of being hired for
perhaps a few months or days, did not so incorporate them with the family as to
give them a right with the children and permanent domestics to the peculiar
privileges of members. The act that the bought servants, in regard to the
partaking of the holy things, were to be put by the priests on a level with
their own children, while all hired servants and even distinguished visitors in
the family, were to be strictly prohibited, shows, in some measure, how
exceedingly different the condition of such persons was, from that of the
slaves among you.
The passage in Lev. 25: 46, shows that persons procured by
purchase for permanent servitude must not be Hebrews, but be obtained from the
surrounding nations, or families of Gentile extraction residing in Palestine.
These nations and families should be to them a constant scource of supply.
Stress has been laid on the terms bondmen and bondmaids as
expressive of the lowest degree of servitude, or absolute slavery. But you will
see, by looking into your Hebrew Bible, that the simple terms usually
translated man servants and maid servants, without any qualifying adjunct
corresponding with bond, are here employed. The fact that they were bought
with money, determines not that their bodies and souls were by the purchase
converted into things, and held as property; but only that they, by
money paid down to themselves, to their parents, or others who claimed the
right of disposing of them, had been procured to occupy the condition, and
perform the services, and enjoy the privileges which were prescribed to persons
thus situated by the Hebrew laws. It is remarkable that while servants of this
order might be procured only from the Gentiles, Gentile families residing in
Canaan were permitted by law, to buy, with their own consent, poor Hebrews, to
be their servants, from the time of purchase to the year of jubilee; unless
previously redeemed by themselves or friends. Lev. 25: 47–54. From this we may
infer that the Hebrews had at least no power to compel the Gentiles resident
among them to sell either themselves or their children. That it was on the part
of the latter altogether a voluntary transaction.
_______________
Continued from: Reverend
Silas McKeen to Thomas C. Stuart, August 20, 1839
SOURCE: Cyrus P. Grosvenor, Slavery vs. The Bible: A
Correspondence Between the General Conference of Maine, and the Presbytery of
Tombecbee, Mississippi, p. 48-54
No comments:
Post a Comment