Before leaving the subject of Jewish servitude, there are
three considerations of chief importance on which we wish you may fix your
candid attention.
The first is, There is no sufficient proof to warrant
belief, that the Hebrew laws ever authorized, or in any way recognized slavery
in the American sense of that term. The assertion that they did, is
gratuitous, and altogether incapable of establishment. The general tenor of
these laws, fully acknowledging and vigilantly guarding several of the most
important rights of humanity in the case of those in bondage, shows that they
were not considered things, or mere property possession, like cattle; but men,
who had sacred rights with which even those who had purchased them for
permanent servants, might not, in any circumstances, interfere. Full evidence
of this, we think, has already been exhibited; and in the course of our
argument confirmatory facts will be incidentally accumulated.
Secondly, Those who claim authority, in virtue of the
Hebrew laws, to hold slaves, have no right to violate their charter, by
neglecting any thing which it requires, or doing any thing which it prohibits. In
regard to a point so plain, let common sense speak out. Suppose you are all
elected trustees of a college, duly chartered and of long standing: Are you at
liberty, without regard to the original acts of incorporation, to remodel every
thing, and make what disposition of the funds you please ? Is it enough that
the mere name of the institution is preserved, while the original design of its
founders, and of the government in its incorporation, is wholly defeated?
Surely you would feel the necessity either of keeping strictly within your
chartered limits, or of resigning your offices, if you did not approve of the
duties they imposed. Or, suppose the government gives a daring commander letters
of marque and reprisal to go forth on the high seas to capture and
plunder the vessels of a nation with whom they are at war. He and his crew are legally
authorized. But when this commander has been slain, and another has
succeeded to his place, and the crew have undergone so many changes that none
of the original number remain, have the successors authority under the original
license to take more liberty, and proceed to capture and plunder the vessels of
other nations, and to destroy their unoffending crews? The things done would
indeed bear close resemblance to those which the original commission warranted,
but would still be as completely unauthorized and outrageous as if no such
commission had ever been given, and must expose the perpetrators of them to be
executed as pirates. Provided then you claim the right of holding slaves under
the authority of the Levitical laws, consistency requires that you manage
the whole business in strict accordance with them.
The regulation of Hebrew servitude, was a business too
delicate, involving interests too sacred, to be committed to the discretion of
interested masters. Moses of himself was not competent to such legislation. The
sovereign Lawgiver, through him as the interpreter of his will, prescribed the
rules by which both masters and servants were to be governed, and required all
the people to say Amen, to the imprecation, “Cursed be he who confirmeth not
all the words of this law to do them.” And when in a certain case the masters
ventured to act at their own discretion, and through covetousness refused to
release their servants, when the law required them to be set free, they were
most pointedly condemned by the Almighty for their unhallowed temerity. “Ye
have not hearkened unto me in proclaiming liberty every one to his brother, and
every man to his neighbor: behold I proclaim a liberty for you, saith the Lord,
to the sword, to the pestilence, and to the famine, and I will make you to be
removed into all the kingdoms of the earth. Jer. 34:17. Does God give you
greater power over the bodies and souls of your fellow men, than he gives to
Moses and his peculiar people? license even to make void by your own enactments
or customs his laws, while at the same time pleading their authority in vindication
of your slaveholding? If you hold under the Jewish charter, you are bound to
govern yourselves strictly by its provisions and limitations.
Instead of imprisoning colored people who come among you,
and on their failure to substantiate the fact of their freedom or to pay their
jail fees, selling them into hopeless bondage; you must suffer even such as you
may know to be runaway slaves from other countries to enjoy liberty and to
dwell in whatever part of your country they choose. You must in no case restore
them again to their masters. Deut. 23; 15, 16.
Instead of marking your refractory slaves by knocking out
teeth, chopping off fingers, or otherwise maiming them, and then unblushingly
describe them by these marks in your advertisements when they run away, you
must know that all such maimings are to the sufferers irrefragable evidence of
their legal title to the liberty which they have taken. Exod. 21:27.
Southern slaveholders must not under any pretence hold in
involuntary bondage, over six years, any whose complexion proves them to be of
white paternity, especially when they have reason to believe that they may be
very nearly related to themselves. Deut. 15:12–14,
All your slaves must be consecrated to God; be required to
remember the Sabbath and keep it holy, and to rest from their secular labors
one whole year in every seven; and to share fully with you in all other
religious privileges.— Exod. 12:49. Exod. 20:10. Lev. 25:4–6.
On every fiftieth year from the commencement of the practice
of slaveholding in this country, the enslaved should all have been, and should
all hereafter be, set free. As slavery was introduced in the year 1620, there
should have been three Jubilees already. The next should occur in thirty one
years. Then must liberty be proclaimed throughout the land, to all the
inhabitants thereof, and all the millions of your down trodden servants, stand erect
in the complete enjoyment of civil and religious freedom. Lev. 25:10.
In the meanwhile, there must be equal laws, in the
execution of which the rights of servants, as well as those of masters, shall
be duly protected, and impartial justice weighed out in the same balances. “He
that killeth a man, he shall be put to death. Ye shall have one manner of law,
as well for the stranger, as for one of your own country.”— Lev. 2:21, 22. Ye
shall not respect persons in judgment; but ye shall hear the small as well as
the great: ye shall not be afraid of the face of man, for the judgment is
God’s.” Deut. 1:17. See also, Exod. 22:21–24.
Do you object to slavery under such regulations as these?
Then do not refer to Jewish laws, as the foundation of your claim. Either obey
their laws, or do not seek protection under them.
3. Another point of importance is this, That in as much
as the political laws of the Hebrews both permitted and required them to do
various things, which others, undeniably, have no right to do, without similar
express authority, it follows, that even if those laws did authorize the modified
form of slaveholding in that nation which has been described, it is no proof
that you have a right to practice it in this. If the assumed right can be
maintained on the ground of divine authority at all, entirely different evidence
of the fact must be adduced.
The civil laws of the Hebrews permitted and regulated
Polygamy. Exod. 21:10, 11. Deut. 17:17. This license the Jews Understood as
giving countenance to concubinage also, or taking without ceremony secondary
wives, who had no authority in the family and whose children could not inherit
any portion of the father's estate. David, Solomon, and Rehoboam, all had many
wives and concubines; and do not seem to have considered themselves as acting
illegally, or as setting a bad example while so doing. These statutes also
permitted any man without reference to any tribunal whatever, to divorce his
wife, and send her away, whenever he became displeased with her. Deut. 21:14,
24:1. And they required the father and mother who had a rebellious son, who
would not submit to parental discipline, to bring him forth to the elders of
the city, at whose order all the people should stone him to death. Deut. 21:18–21.
A married daughter, whose husband should convict her of having been unchaste in
any instance before marriage must be publicly executed in the same terrible
manner. Deut. 22:21. When the people made war upon any city, if it did not
immediately open its gates and submit, the Hebrews on taking it by seige, were
required by the laws of their country to “smite every male thereof with the
edge of the sword.”— Deut. 20:13. They were commanded in general, respecting
the inhabitants of Canaan, whom they were sent to dispossess, “Thou shalt
consume all the people which the Lord thy God shalt deliver thee; thine eye
shall have no pity upon them.” And having slain a people who had done them no
previous injury, they were to possess their country and enjoy the fruit of their
labors. Deut. 7:16. 8:7, 8.
Will you from these facts infer that men in this country
have scriptural warrant for practising polygamy and concubinage, and to put
away their wives whenever they dislike them?—That American fathers and mothers
must bring forth their rebellious sons and seduced daughters to be stoned to
death? Or that we as a nation are authorized to carry a war of extermination
into the territories of our neighbors who have done us no injury and to take
possession of their houses and lands for ourselves and posterity? You certainly
will not maintain that the judicial statutes of Moses authorized us to do any
of these things. But why not? Because these laws permitted and required the
Hebrews to do things which we undeniably have no right to do without a warrant
from God equally plain. Not the state laws of the Hebrew commonwealth, though
given by divine authority, but those principles and precepts of the Bible which
are evidently designed for men of all nations, are to be received by us as the
proper rules of our conduct. Our ultimate appeal must be to the moral law
written by the finger of God upon the tables of stone, to the gospel of our
Lord Jesus, and those other portions of divine revelation which agree with them
in having not a peculiar but general application. This is as true respecting
slavery as it is in regard to polygamy, divorce or exterminating wars. We are
no more bound or authorized by the mere political laws of the Hebrew
commonwealth, excepting so far as by divine interpretation they are shewn to be
of general application, than the people of Maine are bound b the laws of
Mississippi. Whoever will maintain the contrary sentiment, must, to be
consistent, receive circumcision, abstain from eating swine's flesh, perform
the ablutions and offer the sacrifices required by the Levitical law, and take
without opposition, the yoke of Judaism upon his neck, however heavy it may be
for him to bear.
_______________
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. 65-75
