These pages do not touch on slavery among the Spaniards. Under the Roman republic and empire, Spain shared the lot of the other provinces, as Gaul, etc.; and what has been said in relation to slavery in the Roman world applies to her also. The results of the German invasions, and the establishment of the Goths in Spain, were similar in their bearings to what we have already seen as taking place in Gaul and Italy. Scarcely had the two races begun to fuse on the soil of Spain, and the relations between the conqueror1 and the conquered to be modified and softened2, when the invasions by the Moors3 (whose domination lasted for nearly seven centuries), threw the Spaniards into internal wars. Their protracted4 efforts to expel the invaders5 fostered the preponderance of the men of the sword; and there is every likelihood that the unavoidable sequell? of war contributed to preserve longer in Spain than in any of the other nationalities that arose out of the ruins of the Roman empire, certain of the features of domestic slavery, of bondage6, and the feudal7 tenure8. The final expulsion of the Moors from the Iberian peninsula was almost immediately[Pg 252] followed by the discovery of the continent of America, and by the formation here of a great Spanish empire, and the introduction thereinto of Africans as domestic slaves. To master the various relations of property and villeinage, of bondage and chattelhood in Spain and in the Spanish Main, requires special studies, for which, indeed, we have as yet no sufficient material. At least I had none such within my reach—none that was, to my mind, conclusive10 and satisfactory. The Spanish republics nobly satisfied the hopes of humanity by abolishing all kinds of bondage and all distinctions of race. The Peruvian republic paid to the owners three hundred dollars per head for each slave, of every age and both sexes, and then liberated11 them. It may be emphatically asserted, that the protracted political confusion prevailing12 in the Spanish American States, has its sources not in the act of emancipatory13 justice, but that it is the result of altogether different causes. These, however, do not come within the compass of the present investigation14.
The many analogies between domestic slavery as practised by various nations and races of the past, and as it now exists in our Slave States, have been often enough pointed15 out. These analogies prove beyond doubt that slavery always corrupts16 the slave-holder and the whole community—be the ethnic17 peculiarities18 of the enslaved race what they may.
History shows slavery to have been always most luxuriant in those nations where society was most dis[Pg 253]organized, just as noxious19 animals and plants multiply in putrefaction20 and rottenness. Facts reveal to us how far the disorder21 has already penetrated22 Southern life; and it would progress even more rapidly were it not for the purifying and healing influences (feeble though they now be) coming from the North.
The civilized23 Christian24 world follows with ever-increasing interest the stages of the political struggle in the American union—sympathizing deeply with those who, though they cannot hope to effect an immediate9 cure, yet seek to arrest the growth of the fatal disorder.[21]
Slavery is as fatal to society as are the Southern and tropical swamps to human life. And as material culture drains the marshes25, clears the forests, and renders the soil productive and the air healthy: so in like manner, will moral and social culture yet make the institutions of this republic rich and refulgent—unblighted by the presence of a slave!
The source of many, if not of all, the political and administrative26 disorders27 in these States, is to be found in the struggles occasioned by the arrogant28 and everlasting29 encroachments on liberty and on the union,[Pg 254] by the militant30 worshippers of slavery. To cure these disorders, the growth of the disease—its expansion over yet uninfected territories—must be stopped: such must be the first step in a sanitary31 direction; and the paramount32 duty of self-preservation now commands its adoption33. This whole question of Slavery, too, must be forced back to where it was left by the immortal34 expounders of Southern instinct and intuition on slavery, those noble patriots—Henry, Laurens, Washington, Jefferson, Mason, Randolph, and a host of other great names—now forsworn by their political descendants. To conceal35 the vulture that is devouring36 their vitals, the fanatical upholders of slavery pervert37 and degrade all that humanity, morality, civilization and history have recognized as sacred.
The slave-orators38 and so-called statesmen avouch39 "that no one in the South believes in popular sovereignty." This unbelief is natural enough; for popular sovereignty can only exist in intelligent, orderly and laborious40 communities. It exists in the Free States, and here freemen practically believe in and uphold it. But an ignorant and degraded population of oligarchs, oppressors and slave-breeders never were capable of exercising popular sovereignty, and consequently nowhere could they ever have faith in it: barbarians42 generally mistrust civilization. Universal suffrage43 is not a failure in the villages and townships of the Free States, though it does fail on slave plantations44, or among a so-called free population drilled and led by oligarchs.
[Pg 255]
Human institutions experience ups and downs—they have their luminous45 and their gloomy epochs. Ignorant and debased masses throw a shadow over universal suffrage and self-government; and only genuine freedom goes hand in hand with reason, knowledge and morality. These, too, mutually reproduce each other. It is, therefore, easy to be understood how freedom disappears from the Slave South, and is no more cherished or believed in.
Many consider the American institution of self-government as a new experiment; and European serviles and American slave oligarchs utter fearful forebodings that the experiment is already a failure. But the prophecy only expresses their desires. For this so-called experiment is but the natural, progressive development of man, and for this reason proves itself every day more and more successful in the Free States. The kingdoms and nations of the old world are now diligently46 studying this experiment of freedom, and trying to appropriate its beneficent results. Agents of European governments uninterruptedly investigate the system of free communal47 schools, the manufactures, the inventions, the multifarious industrial and agricultural progress of the Free States. But no government sends its messengers to study out the condition of slave plantations, slave huts, or slave pens; for they know well that by the action of self-government and universal suffrage, qualitative48 and quantitative49 knowledge is more generally spread, and has reached a far higher grade in the American Free[Pg 256] States than among all the militant oligarchs and knight-errants of slavery the world over.
An experiment generally proves successful if made with properly adapted and unadulterated materials. A structure raised on a treacherous50 foundation and built with rotten materials must fall. It is an experiment altogether new to the human race to construct a society and government with chattelhood as an integral element. It is an experiment to attempt to bring down horrified51 humanity on its knees to the worship of chattelhood and the devilish slave traffic. Such an experiment is now being tried by the apostles of slavery; and that too, though morality, civilization and history have unanimously and forever pronounced the sentence of condemnation52 against holding property in man. The civilized and Christian world of both hemispheres and every race unanimously awarded to John Brown the crown of a martyr53, who fell in the cause of human liberty.
One deviation54 from a sound social principle is speedily followed by another; violence ever begets55 violence; and this is the fatal genesis of all oppressions and tyrannies. The oligarchic56 despotism in the Slave States runs rapidly through all the stages with which individual despotism has filled the dark records of history. It has already succeeded in the suppression of free speech and even free thought, violation57 of seal, censorship of the press, and the centring of political control in the hands of officials and lacqueys. If individual tyrants58 dispatch their victims by special[Pg 257] executioners, lynch law and mob law—although often executed by misguided "poor whites"—are as lawless as the murders of the tyrant59, and bear a striking analogy to the executions perpetrated by agents or court-martials. Despotism drills the masses in all kinds of degradation60: thus a part of the population of the Slave States is drilled in ignorance by the slaveholders, and blindly perpetrate their murderous biddings. To these deluded61 men who execute the bloody62 behests of the tyrant, the words of the Christ on Calvary apply: "Forgive them; for they know not what they do."
A society based on a violation of cardinal63 human rights can never be considered free. Freemen are never governed by violent passions. Injustice64 and tyranny cannot recede65; they divorce themselves from mercy, and are guilty of the most remorseless actions: thus fatally, of late, the gallows66 was once more ennobled. Executions and burning at the stake, amid the applaudings of the ignorant and the infuriated, are nothing new in history; and neither is the transmission of the names of the murderers to the maledictions of eternity67.
Human society will perhaps always be subject, in one shape or another, to wrongs and disorders: but humanity specially68 revolts at the hideous69 wrongs which now exist, such as the claim of property in man, and the traffic in man. As long as this claim is found on the legal record, as long as slavery exists as a common fact, futile70 will be all efforts to stifle[Pg 258] the voice of freedom, to crush into oblivion the question of slavery, or to expel it from the chambers71 of legislation or the tribunals of the people. It will and must ever reappear on the surface:—as in bodily disorders, when the virus has eaten its way into the innermost organism, external eruptions72 may be locally, healed or closed up, but again they reappear on another spot, or attack another organ, until a radical73 cure relieves the body from the poison. Until utterly74 destroyed, slavery will always be paramount to all other political questions, to all political complications, and it will forever force its way into them all. To a greater or less degree, diseases assume the characteristics of a prevailing epidemic75. When several diseases are complicated together, the physician first attempts to cure the most virulent76 and dangerous. This question of slavery must have a solution; and it is in vain that the weak-minded deny the existence of the devouring disorder, or attempt to conjure77 it with paltry78 expedients79.
Humanity would gratefully applaud even an intermediate step from absolute chattelhood toward emancipation80, or any public measure foreshadowing an intention on the part of the slaveholding States to become humane81. First of all, let them recognize in the bondman the sacred, imprescriptible, natural rights of man and of family; then let them abandon the slave traffic, and thus avoid separation of man and wife, of parent and child. Even the transformation82 of the slaves into serfs, into adscripti gleb?, would be an alleviation83, and[Pg 259] a cheering sign of progress. Certainly, there are economic impediments which stand in the way of immediate and absolute emancipation. The emancipated84 might be interested in labor41, in the soil, and in freedom, by the possession of homesteads, even if they remained under the control of their masters. The noble examples set by Prussia and Russia in Europe, and by England in her West Indian possessions, might be modified and adapted to circumstances and to special conditions. But the present extollers of human bondage never will listen to the imploring85 voice of humanity, or to the admonishing86 warnings of history; they deliberately87 prepare volcanic88 eruptions for coming generations.
Pro-slavery orators sometimes grow florid, sentimental89, and idyllic90 in their praises and glorification91 of slavery. But gaseous92 speeches emanate93 not from vigorous or healthy minds. Gas generally arises from substances in process of decomposition94. Posterity95 venerates96 only the names of the orators who stand up for a sacred cause or a grand idea, who act under generous impulses, who defend human rights and liberties, and who brand with infamy97 every kind of oppression.
Every day freedom gets a firmer and more enduring foothold in Europe. Every nation of the old continent enjoys greater liberty to-day than it did on the birthday of the American Republic. The disorders which are the accumulation of almost countless98 centuries, slowly, but nevertheless uninterruptedly, melt away[Pg 260] before the breath of the ever-vigorous spirit of humanity. After a protracted experience of sufferings, old Europe, centuries ago, got rid of domestic slavery.
But what civilization and humanity assert to be their greatest afflictions are upheld as blessings99 in this New World by the Young Republic. Sadness and even despair fill the mind when witnessing the loftiest and best social structure ever erected100 by man sapped to its foundations by the sacrilegious champions of human bondage!
The End
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1
conqueror
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| n.征服者，胜利者 | |
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2
softened
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| （使）变软( soften的过去式和过去分词 )； 缓解打击； 缓和； 安慰 | |
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moors
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| v.停泊，系泊（船只）( moor的第三人称单数 ) | |
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protracted
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| adj.拖延的；延长的v.拖延“protract”的过去式和过去分词 | |
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invaders
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| 入侵者，侵略者，侵入物( invader的名词复数 ) | |
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bondage
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| n.奴役，束缚 | |
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feudal
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| adj.封建的，封地的，领地的 | |
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tenure
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| n.终身职位；任期；(土地)保有权，保有期 | |
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immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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conclusive
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| adj.最后的，结论的；确凿的，消除怀疑的 | |
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liberated
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| a.无拘束的，放纵的 | |
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prevailing
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| adj.盛行的；占优势的；主要的 | |
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emancipatory
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| adj.解放的，有助于解放的 | |
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investigation
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| n.调查，调查研究 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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corrupts
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| （使）败坏( corrupt的第三人称单数 )； （使）腐化； 引起（计算机文件等的）错误； 破坏 | |
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ethnic
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| adj.人种的，种族的，异教徒的 | |
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peculiarities
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| n. 特质, 特性, 怪癖, 古怪 | |
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noxious
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| adj.有害的，有毒的；使道德败坏的，讨厌的 | |
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putrefaction
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| n.腐坏，腐败 | |
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disorder
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| n.紊乱，混乱；骚动，骚乱；疾病，失调 | |
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penetrated
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| adj. 击穿的，鞭辟入里的 动词penetrate的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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23
civilized
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| a.有教养的，文雅的 | |
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Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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marshes
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| n.沼泽，湿地( marsh的名词复数 ) | |
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administrative
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| adj.行政的，管理的 | |
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disorders
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| n.混乱( disorder的名词复数 )；凌乱；骚乱；（身心、机能）失调 | |
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arrogant
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| adj.傲慢的，自大的 | |
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everlasting
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| adj.永恒的，持久的，无止境的 | |
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militant
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| adj.激进的，好斗的；n.激进分子，斗士 | |
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sanitary
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| adj.卫生方面的，卫生的，清洁的，卫生的 | |
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paramount
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| a.最重要的，最高权力的 | |
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adoption
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| n.采用，采纳，通过；收养 | |
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immortal
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| adj.不朽的；永生的，不死的；神的 | |
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conceal
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| v.隐藏，隐瞒，隐蔽 | |
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devouring
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| 吞没( devour的现在分词 )； 耗尽； 津津有味地看； 狼吞虎咽地吃光 | |
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pervert
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| n.堕落者，反常者；vt.误用，滥用；使人堕落，使入邪路 | |
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orators
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| n.演说者，演讲家( orator的名词复数 ) | |
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avouch
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| v.确说，断言 | |
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laborious
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| adj.吃力的，努力的，不流畅 | |
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labor
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| n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦 | |
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barbarians
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| n.野蛮人( barbarian的名词复数 )；外国人；粗野的人；无教养的人 | |
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43
suffrage
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| n.投票，选举权，参政权 | |
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44
plantations
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| n.种植园，大农场( plantation的名词复数 ) | |
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45
luminous
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| adj.发光的，发亮的；光明的；明白易懂的；有启发的 | |
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46
diligently
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| ad.industriously;carefully | |
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47
communal
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| adj.公有的，公共的，公社的，公社制的 | |
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48
qualitative
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| adj.性质上的，质的，定性的 | |
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49
quantitative
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| adj.数量的，定量的 | |
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50
treacherous
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| adj.不可靠的，有暗藏的危险的；adj.背叛的，背信弃义的 | |
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51
horrified
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| a.(表现出)恐惧的 | |
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52
condemnation
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| n.谴责; 定罪 | |
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53
martyr
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| n.烈士，殉难者；vt.杀害，折磨，牺牲 | |
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54
deviation
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| n.背离，偏离；偏差，偏向；离题 | |
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55
begets
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| v.为…之生父( beget的第三人称单数 )；产生，引起 | |
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56
oligarchic
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| adj.寡头政治的，主张寡头政治的 | |
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57
violation
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| n.违反(行为)，违背(行为)，侵犯 | |
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58
tyrants
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| 专制统治者( tyrant的名词复数 )； 暴君似的人； （古希腊的）僭主； 严酷的事物 | |
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tyrant
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| n.暴君，专制的君主，残暴的人 | |
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degradation
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| n.降级；低落；退化；陵削；降解；衰变 | |
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61
deluded
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| v.欺骗，哄骗( delude的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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62
bloody
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| adj.非常的的；流血的；残忍的；adv.很；vt.血染 | |
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cardinal
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| n.(天主教的)红衣主教；adj.首要的，基本的 | |
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64
injustice
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| n.非正义，不公正，不公平，侵犯（别人的）权利 | |
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65
recede
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| vi.退(去)，渐渐远去；向后倾斜，缩进 | |
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66
gallows
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| n.绞刑架，绞台 | |
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67
eternity
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| n.不朽，来世；永恒，无穷 | |
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specially
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| adv.特定地；特殊地；明确地 | |
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hideous
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| adj.丑陋的，可憎的，可怕的，恐怖的 | |
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futile
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| adj.无效的，无用的，无希望的 | |
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71
chambers
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| n.房间( chamber的名词复数 )；（议会的）议院；卧室；会议厅 | |
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eruptions
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| n.喷发，爆发( eruption的名词复数 ) | |
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radical
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| n.激进份子，原子团，根号；adj.根本的，激进的，彻底的 | |
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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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epidemic
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| n.流行病；盛行；adj.流行性的，流传极广的 | |
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virulent
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| adj.有毒的，有恶意的，充满敌意的 | |
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conjure
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| v.恳求，祈求；变魔术，变戏法 | |
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paltry
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| adj.无价值的，微不足道的 | |
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expedients
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| n.应急有效的，权宜之计的( expedient的名词复数 ) | |
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emancipation
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| n.（从束缚、支配下）解放 | |
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81
humane
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| adj.人道的，富有同情心的 | |
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82
transformation
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| n.变化；改造；转变 | |
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83
alleviation
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| n. 减轻，缓和，解痛物 | |
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84
emancipated
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| adj.被解放的，不受约束的v.解放某人（尤指摆脱政治、法律或社会的束缚）( emancipate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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85
imploring
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| 恳求的，哀求的 | |
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86
admonishing
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| v.劝告( admonish的现在分词 )；训诫；（温和地）责备；轻责 | |
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87
deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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88
volcanic
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| adj.火山的；象火山的；由火山引起的 | |
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sentimental
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| adj.多愁善感的，感伤的 | |
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90
idyllic
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| adj.质朴宜人的，田园风光的 | |
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glorification
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| n.赞颂 | |
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92
gaseous
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| adj.气体的，气态的 | |
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emanate
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| v.发自，来自，出自 | |
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decomposition
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| n. 分解, 腐烂, 崩溃 | |
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95
posterity
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| n.后裔，子孙，后代 | |
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96
venerates
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| 敬重（某人或某事物），崇敬( venerate的第三人称单数 ) | |
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infamy
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| n.声名狼藉，出丑，恶行 | |
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countless
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| adj.无数的，多得不计其数的 | |
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99
blessings
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| n.（上帝的）祝福( blessing的名词复数 )；好事；福分；因祸得福 | |
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100
ERECTED
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| adj. 直立的，竖立的，笔直的 vt. 使 ... 直立，建立 | |
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