How, At Least, Could The
South Have Escaped Slavery Any Time During These Last Thirty Years?
And Is It, Moreover, So Certain That Slavery Is An Unmitigated Evil,
Opposed To God's Will, And Producing All The Sorrows Which Have Ever
Been Produced By Tyranny And Wrong?
It is here, after all, that one
comes to the difficult question.
Here is the knot which the fingers
of men cannot open, and which admits of no sudden cutting with the
knife. I have likened the slaveholding States to the drunken
husband, and in so doing have pronounced judgment against them. As
regards the state of the drunken man, his unfitness for partnership
with any decent, diligent, well-to-do wife, his ruined condition,
and shattered prospects, the simile, I think, holds good. But I
refrain from saying that as the fault was originally with the
drunkard in that he became such, so also has the fault been with the
slave States. At any rate I refrain from so saying here, on this
page. That the position of a slaveowner is terribly prejudicial,
not to the slave, of whom I do not here speak, but to the owner; of
so much at any rate I feel assured. That the position is therefore
criminal and damnable, I am not now disposed to take upon myself to
assert.
The question of slavery in America cannot be handled fully and
fairly by any one who is afraid to go back upon the subject, and
take its whole history since one man first claimed and exercised the
right of forcing labor from another man. I certainly am afraid of
any such task; but I believe that there has been no period yet,
since the world's work began, when such a practice has not prevailed
in a large portion, probably in the largest portion, of the world's
work fields. As civilization has made its progress, it has been the
duty and delight, as it has also been the interest of the men at the
top of affairs, not to lighten the work of the men below, but so to
teach them that they should recognize the necessity of working
without coercion. Emancipation of serfs and thrals, of bondsmen and
slaves, has always meant this - that men having been so taught,
should then work without coercion.
In talking or writing of slaves, we always now think of the negro
slave. Of us Englishmen it must at any rate be acknowledged that we
have done what in us lay to induce him to recognize this necessity
for labor. At any rate we acted on the presumption that he would do
so, and gave him his liberty throughout all our lands at a cost
which has never yet been reckoned up in pounds, shillings, and
pence. The cost never can be reckoned up, nor can the gain which we
achieved in purging ourselves from the degradation and
demoralization of such employment. We come into court with clean
hands, having done all that lay with us to do to put down slavery
both at home and abroad.
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