The second “unprovided-for difficulty” of the Keene
Sentinel, in the way of the anti-slavery movement is, that “slaves are
property.” We deny that they are property, or that they can be made so.
We will not argue this, for it is self-evident. A man cannot be a
subject of human ownership; neither can he be the owner of humanity. There
is a clear and eternal incompetancy on both sides, — on the one to own man, and
on the other to be owned by man. A man cannot alienate his right to liberty and
to himself, — still less can it be taken from him. He cannot part with his duty
to be free — his obligation to liberty, any more than his right. He
is under obligation to God and humanity and his own immortality, to
retain his manhood and to exercise it. He cannot become the property of
another, any more than he can part with his human nature. It would be utterly
repugnant to all the purposes of his creation. He is bound to perform a part,
which is totally incompatible with his being owned by any body but himself;
which requires that he keep himself free. He can't be property, any more than
he can be a horse, or a literal ass. We commend our brethren of the
Sentinel to the eighth Psalm, as a divine authority touching the nature and
destination of man. He can't be property — he can't be appropriated. His mighty
nature cannot be coped by the grasp of ownership. Can the Messrs. Sentinel be appropriated?
We put it sternly to them, in behalf of their, and our own, and the slave's
common nature, — for we feel that it is all outraged by their terrible
allegation. Can the editors of the Sentinel become property? the goods
and chattels, rights and hereditaments of an owner? If they can't, no man can.
If any man can, they can. Can the Hon. Mr. Prentiss, with all his interesting
qualities and relations, by any diabolical jugglery, be converted into a slave,
so as to belong to one of his fallen, depraved fellow-men? Can he
suppose the idea? Is he susceptible of this transmutation? He is, if any body
is. Can he be transferred, by virtue of a few cries and raps of a glib-tongued
auctioneer? Could a pedler sell him, from his tin cart? Could he knock
him off, bag and baggage, to the boldest bidder? Let us try it. No disrespect
to our esteemed senior. — We test his allegation, that a man is property. If
one man can be, any man can — himself, or his stately townsman, Major-General
Wilson, who would most oddly become the auction platform. If a man can be
property, he can be sold. If any man can be, every man can — Mr. Prentiss, Gen.
Wilson, Rev. Mr. Barstow — every man. Let us try to vendue the Sentinel.
Advertise him, if you please, in the Keene paper. On the day, produce him —
bring him on — let his personal symmetries be examined and descanted on — his
sacred person handled by the sacrilegious man-jockey, — let him be ordered to
shift positions, and assume attitudes, and display to the callous multitude his
form and proportions — his points, as the horse-jockey would say. How
would all this comport with the high sense of personal honor, wont to be
entertained by the Sentinel? How would he not encounter a thousand deaths
rather than submit to it? How his proud spirit, instinct with manhood, would
burst and soar away from the scene! Who bids? an able-bodied, capable, fine,
healthy, submissive, contented Boy, about fifty — sound wind and limb — sold
positively for no fault — a field hand — come of real stock, — faithful, can
trust him with gold untold — will nobody start him? — shall we have a bid? — will
nobody bid for the boy? Now
we demand of our respected brother, whose honor is as sacred in our regard as
in his own, what he thinks of the chattelism of a slave, — for we indignantly
lay it down as an immovable principle that the Hon. John Prentiss is as
legitimate a subject of property and of sale, as any the lowest of his race.
We dispose of the position that “slaves are property,” by
utterly and indignantly denying the possibility of it. We will rescue
our brethren of the Sentinel from the imputation of this murderous idea, by
erasing the semicolon after “property,” and making but one sentence of the
second “difficulty,” turning it into an opinion that “slaves are property by
the constitution and the laws;” throwing the infamy on to the old framers of
the constitution, and all of us who have lived under it, with power to amend or
nullify it. It would sink the whole of us. Constitution and laws! Is the
Sentinel of opinion that a constitution could be framed by men, or by
existences in the shape of men, that, instead of protecting human liberty and
rights, should annihilate them? A constitution to enslave men! What
would you say of a British constitution, that enslaved a British subject? Would
you not scout the idea of it — of the British possibility of it? and can
it be done here, and was it done here by revolutionary sages, who
could not brook the restraints of British liberty? A constitution, that
should provide for the enslavement of a man, would be a legal abortion. The
bare engrossing of it would nullify it. It would perish by spontaneous
annulment and nullification. It could not survive its ordination — nor could
its infamous framers. We deny that an enslaved man is property by the
constitution, and we might deny that any man can be enslaved under our
constitution, and consequently, that he could be chattelized, if a slave were
admitted to be property. Things may be appropriated — persons may
not. They are self-evidently not susceptible of appropriation or ownership. By
the constitution every body is spoken of as a person — no mention is
made of human things. If a slave is alluded to, in that instrument, as a
possible existence in point of fact, it is under the name of “person.” “Three fifths
of all other Persons” — “migration
or importation of persons” —
“no person held to service.” These are the only instances in it where
allusion is made to slaves, — and it no more, in those allusions, sanctions
enslaving, than it does “piracies and felonies on the high seas,” which it also
expressly recognizes, as they say of slavery. So it says “person,” where
it solemnly asserts that “no person can be deprived of liberty or property, but
by due process of law.” This clause prohibits the slightest approaches to
enslaving, or holding in slavery, which is continued enslaving. No person's
property can be taken from him; not his life even; infinitely less his Liberty, without due legal process. It
is idle to say, that the framers of the constitution, or. those who adopted it
and acted under it, did not mean to save the colored man from slavery,
by this clause. In law they are to be held to mean so, because they said so.
The intent of the framers is now to be gathered from what they said in the
instrument itself — not their colloquies at the time or before or after — but
what they put down in imperishable black and white. It is what they inscribed
on the parchment for all time, that they legally intended, and there we are to
go to get at their intent. If the words are obscure and ambiguous, we may
gather their intent by aid of concomitant circumstances, &c. But there is
no ambiguity here. The clearest words and best understood and most trimly
defined of any we have, here set forth the essential doctrine, (without which a
community of thieves and pirates could scarcely be kept together,) that life,
liberty and property are sacred. Enslave man and leave him these three, and you
may do it, maugre this clause of the constitution. However, you must leave him,
by virtue of other clauses, a few other incidentals, such as compulsory process
for calling in all witnesses for him, of whatever color; the inviolate right to
be secure in person, house, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches
and seizures; right of trial by jury in all cases over twenty dollars' value;
the free exercise of religion, of speech, of the press, of peaceable assembly and
of petition; the civil rights of republican government, which is guarantied to
him in every state in this Union; the privileges and immunities of citizens in
every state; in short, you must allow him a string of franchises, enumerated
accidentally in that part of the old compact, called the preamble, viz.,
justice, domestic tranquillity, common defence, general welfare,
and, finally, the blessings of liberty to himself and to his posterity; — moreover
you may add, in repetition, — for in securing these breath-of-life sort of
rights, people run a little into superfluity of words — you may add the
unsuspendible privilege of habeas corpus — the old writ of liberty; — and
perfect exemption from all attainder, or enslaving a man's children on his
account. We will mention one more — that is the uninfringible right to keep and
bear arms. All these and many other rights and immunities, "too numerous
to be mentioned,” are secured to him by adamantine provisions in the
constitution, and if you can chattelize him under them, so that Austin Woolfolk
can trade in him, at your capital, or Wade Hampton or the American Board, can
buy him and use him up in their service, or Doctor Ezra Styles Ely speculate in
his soul and body, then your doctrine, Messrs. Sentinel, is sound, that he is
recognized as property by the constitution.
We claim some exceptions, however, in case we cannot
overthrow slavery in the slave states, by force of the national constitution.
We cannot allow you to enslave any body in old Virginia. Look at her law
paramount in our caption, declaring the Birth-Right,
Inalienable Liberty Of All Men. In Maryland the right is constitutionally
set forth a little stronger. You must not enslave a man in Maryland, — and we
can't allow you to lay a finger on his liberties in the district of Columbia,
because the constitutions of Virginia and Maryland are still paramount law
there, by congressional adoption, at the acceptance of the cessions. And if he
runs away from the district or a territory, or either of those two states, we
can't allow you to arrest him and send him back.
We ask our legal friends, who think lightly of this “fanaticism,”
to look into this constitutional and legal matter of slaveholding. We would
like especially, that some of the neighbors of the Sentinel would give some
exposition, during the coming convention, of the lawfulness of enslaving people
in this country. We ask the Keene lawyers how this is. We want “the opinion of
the court.”
For ourselves we venture the opinion, in light of what
glimmerings of law scintillate about our vision, that holding a man in slavery
is a violation of the law of this land, and of every part of it, not excepting
our gory-fingered sister Arkansas, or our carnage-dripping sister Alabama, the
haunt of christian enterprise from New England and the worn-out slave states in
the north. A constitution that can avail to protect republican liberty to a
single member of this community, inviolably secures it to every man, and
condemns and prohibits slavery. It cannot otherwise be. Slavery is a mere
matter of fact — in the face of the constitution — in the face of each state
constitution — in the face of every court of justice which soundly administers
the law of any state — in face of every thing, but a tyrant public sentiment,
and a diabolical American practice.
The enslaved of the country are as much entitled to their
liberty as any of us, by the law as it is. They have a right to throw off all
violation of it by force, if they cannot otherwise. Nay, it is their duty to do
so, if they can, — for it is not injury merely, that they are submitting to — not
wrongs. They are rendered incapable of suffering injury — incompetent to endure
wrong. The accursed system, that preys upon them, makes things of them —
exterminates their very natures. This they may not submit to. They ought
to prevent it, at every expense. They ought to resist it, as the
Christian should the devil, for it wars upon the nature of man, and devours his
immortality. If they could heave off the system by an instantaneous and
universal effort, they ought to do it Individually we wish they could do
it, and that they would do it. We may be wrong in this opinion — but we
entertain it. If our white brethren at the South were slaves, we should wish
them instantaneous deliverance by insurrection, if this would bring it to them.
We wish our colored brethren the same. We do not value the bodily lives of the
present white generation there a straw, compared to the horrible thraldom, in
which they hold the colored people, and we value their lives as highly as we do
the colored people's. But insurrection can't effect it. It must be done by the
abolitionists. They must annihilate the system by force of their principles,
and as fast as possible. And they must increase their speed. Men will have to
groan and pant in absolute brutality, with their high and eternal natures bound
down and strangled amid the folds of this enslaving devil, until we throw it
off. To the work then, and Heaven abandon the tardy! If you wish to save your
white brethren and yourselves, we commend you to this work, in sharp earnest We
tell you, once for all, there is no time to be Inst!
There is no end to the theme — there must be to this
article. We deny the truth and existence of the Sentinel's two difficulties,
and if, in fact, they both existed, our movement “provides for them.” The
people collectively have the power to declare slavery a crime in the slave
states. Congress has the power to do what amounts to the same thing — by direct
action. They can declare it criminal in the capital, and how long would
it be esteemed innocent elsewhere? They can punish enslaving in the
district, and the man-traffic between the states as piracy. Lex talionis would
enslave the perpetrators — but that would be devilish, and ought not to be
inflicted. But if hanging is lawful in any case, it is in this.
If the people collectively and Congress have no legal power
over the slavery of the slave states, abolitionists have the power, ample and
adequate, and they will “provide for the difficulty.”
The constitution and the laws do not recognize the
slaves as property. We call for the proof. The Sentinel avers it. Let them
point us to the spot where. And could they do this, the abolitionists have the
power (consult rule of three for the time it will take) to change and
redeem both the constitution and the laws, and transmute this property back
again to humanity.
SOURCE: Collection from the Miscellaneous Writings
of Nathaniel Peabody Rogers, Second Edition, p. 15-21 which states it was
published in the Herald of Freedom of September 8, 1838.
