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A DEFENCE OF VIRGINIA,
A DEFENCE OF VIRGINIA,
[AND THROUGH HER, OF THE SOUTH,] IN RECENT AND PENDING CONTESTS AGAINST THE SECTIONAL PARTY. BY PROF. ROBERT L. DABNEY, D.D., OF VIRGINIA, LATE OF THE CONFEDERATE ARMY. NEW YORK: E. J. HALE & SON, 16 MURRAY STREET. 1867. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1867, By E. J. HALE & SON, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York....
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PREFACE.
PREFACE.
To the conquerors of my native State, and perhaps to some of her sons, a large part of the following defence will appear wholly unseasonable. A discussion of a social order totally overthrown, and never to be restored here, will appear as completely out of date to them as the ribs of Noah's ark, bleaching amidst the eternal snows of Ararat, to his posterity, when engaged in building the Tower of Babel. Let me distinctly premise, that I do not dream of affecting the perverted judgments of the gre
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CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY.
CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY.
To the rational historian who, two hundred years hence, shall study the history of the nineteenth century, it will appear one of the most curious vagaries of human opinion, that the Christianity and philanthropy of our day should have given so disproportionate an attention to the evils of African slavery. Such a dispassionate observer will perceive that, while many other gigantic evils were rampant in this age, there prevailed a sort of epidemic fashion of selecting this one upon which to exhaus
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CHAPTER II. THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE.
CHAPTER II. THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE.
This iniquitous traffick, beginning with the importation of negroes into Hispaniola in 1503, was first pursued by the English in 1562, under Sir John Hawkins, who sold a cargo at the same island that year. The news of his success reaching Queen Elizabeth, she became a partner with him in other voyages. Under the Stuart kings, repeated charters were given to noblemen and merchants, to form companies for this trade, in one of which, the Duke of York, afterwards James II., was a partner. The colony
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CHAPTER III. LEGAL STATUS OF SLAVERY IN THE UNITED STATES.
CHAPTER III. LEGAL STATUS OF SLAVERY IN THE UNITED STATES.
It has been a favourite and persistent assertion of Abolitionists, that slavery in America was an exceptional institution, and contrary to the law of nature and nations. They represent it as owing its existence solely to the lex loci of the States where it was legalized by their own legislation; and hence they draw the conclusion, that the moment a slave passed out of one of these States into a free State, or into the territories of the United States, his bondage terminated of itself. Hence, als
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CHAPTER IV. HISTORY OF EMANCIPATION.
CHAPTER IV. HISTORY OF EMANCIPATION.
The motive for introducing the historical facts contained in this chapter is the following: That the credit of Virginia as a slaveholding State is relatively illustrated by the conduct of her partners in the confederation touching the same matter. Virginia never passed a general act of emancipation; on the contrary, she forbade masters to free their slaves within her borders, unless they also provided for their removal to new homes. But what was it which the Northern States actually did? The gen
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§ 2. The Curse upon Canaan.
§ 2. The Curse upon Canaan.
The student of history perceives that, whatever may be the moral character of domestic slavery, it is one of the most hoary institutions of the human race. It has prevailed in every age and continent, and under patriarchal, monarchical, despotic, aristocratic, republican and democratic governments; while secular history gives us no account of its origin. But Sacred Writ informs us, and traces it to the earlier generations of the human family as refounded after the flood. In Genesis, ix. 20 to 27
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§ 3. Abraham a Slaveholder.
§ 3. Abraham a Slaveholder.
The references to the bondsmen of Abraham and his son Isaac are the following: Genesis xiv., 14, "And when Abram heard that his brother," (or relative, viz.: Lot,) "was taken captive, he armed his trained servants, born in his own house, three hundred and eighteen, and pursued them unto Dan. And he divided himself against them, he and his servants, by night," etc. Genesis xvii., 10, etc., "This is my covenant which ye shall keep, between me and you, and thy seed after thee; every man-child among
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§ 4. Hagar remanded to Slavery by God.
§ 4. Hagar remanded to Slavery by God.
Sarah, in a season of desperation at her childless condition, seems to have been tempted to imitate the corrupt expedient which was prevalent among the Canaanites around her, and which still prevails in the East. According to this usage, the chief wife, or wife proper, gives to her husband a concubine from among her slaves, as a sort of substitute for herself; and the offspring of the connexion is regarded as her own child. Abram, misled by evil example, and by the solicitations of his wife—the
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§ 5. Slavery in the Laws of Moses.
§ 5. Slavery in the Laws of Moses.
God, in accordance with his covenant with Abraham, set apart Israel, through the ministry of Moses, to be his peculiar and holy people, his witness in the midst of an apostate world, to keep alive the services and precepts of true morality and true religion, till, in the fulness of time, Jesus Christ should come in the flesh, and begin the Christianizing of all nations. To effect these objects, He renewed his revelation of the eternal and unchangeable moral law, from Sinai, in the Decalogue; and
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§ 6. Slavery in the Decalogue.
§ 6. Slavery in the Decalogue.
Although the Ten Commandments were given along with the civil and ceremonial laws of the Hebrews, we do not include them along with the latter, because the Decalogue was, unlike them, given for all men and all dispensations. It is a solemn repetition of the sum of those duties founded on the natures of man and of God, and on their relations, enjoined on all ages alike. It contains nothing ceremonial, or of merely temporary obligation; (which is binding merely because it is commanded;) but all is
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§ 7. Objections to the Old Testament Argument.
§ 7. Objections to the Old Testament Argument.
To state the arguments from the laws of Moses and the Decalogue has not required a large space, because those conclusions are so plain and sound, that many words were not needed. But the cavils, objections and special pleadings of the Abolitionists teem like the frogs of Egypt, engendered in the mire of ignorance and prejudice, so numerous because so worthless. And when it is seen that we perhaps expend more space in their refutation than we did in the direct argument, the heedless reader may po
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§ 1. Definition of Δουλος.
§ 1. Definition of Δουλος.
The word commonly translated servant in the authorized version of the New Testament is Δουλος, ( doulos ,) which is most probably derived from the verb δεω, ( deo ,) 'I bind.' Hence the most direct meaning of the noun is 'bondsman.' Many Abolitionists, with a reckless violence of criticism which cannot be too sternly reprobated, have endeavoured to evade the crushing testimony of the New Testament against their dogma, by denying that this word there means slave. Some of them would make it mean s
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§ 2. Slavery often mentioned; yet not condemned.
§ 2. Slavery often mentioned; yet not condemned.
The mere absence of a condemnation of slaveholding in the New Testament is proof that it is not unlawful. In showing that there is no such condemnation, we are doing more than we could be held bound to do by any logical obligation: we might very properly throw the burden of proof here upon our accusers, and claim to be held innocent until we can be proved to be guilty by some positive testimony of holy writ. But our cause is so strong, that we can afford to argue ex abundantia ; to assert more t
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§ 3. Christ applauds a Slaveholder.
§ 3. Christ applauds a Slaveholder.
Our Lord has thrown at least a probable light upon his estimation of slaveholders by his treatment of the Centurion of Capernaum, and his slave. The story may be found in Matthew viii. 5 to 13, and Luke vii. 2 to 10. This person, though a Gentile and an officer of the Roman army, was, according to the testimony of his Jewish neighbours, a sincere convert to the religion of the Old Testament, and a truly good man. He had a valued slave very sick, called in Matthew his "boy," (παις,) a common term
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§ 4. The Apostles separate Slavery and its Abuses.
§ 4. The Apostles separate Slavery and its Abuses.
We find the apostles everywhere treating slavery, in one particular, as the Abolitionists refuse to treat it; that is to say, distinguishing between the relation and its incidental abuses. Our accusers now claim a license from the well-known logical rule, that it is not fair to argue from the abuses of a thing to the thing itself. Hence they insist that in estimating slavery, we must take it in the concrete, as it is in these Southern States, with all that bad men or bad legislation may at any t
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§ 5. Slavery no Essential Religious Evil.
§ 5. Slavery no Essential Religious Evil.
The Apostle Paul teaches that the condition of a slave, although not desirable for its own sake, has no essential bearing on the Christian life and progress; and therefore, when speaking as a Christian minister, and with exclusive reference to man's religious interests, he treats it as unimportant. The proof of this statement may be found in such passages as the following: 1 Cor. xii. 13, "For by one Spirit we are all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or
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§ 6. Slaveholders fully Admitted to Church-membership.
§ 6. Slaveholders fully Admitted to Church-membership.
We now proceed, in the sixth place, to a fact of still greater force: that slaveholders were admitted by Christ to full communion and good standing in the Christian church. Let us first establish the fact. In Acts X. 5-17, we learn that the pious Cornelius had at least two household servants, (οικετων, one of the Septuagint words for domestic slave.) There is no hint of his liberating them; but the Apostle Peter tells his brethren, Acts xi. 15-17, that he was obliged to admit him by baptism to t
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§ 7. Relative Duties of Masters and Slaves recognized.
§ 7. Relative Duties of Masters and Slaves recognized.
Another fact equally decisive is, that the apostles frequently enjoin on masters and slaves their relative duties, just as they do upon husbands and wives, parents and children. And these duties they enforce, both on master and servant, by Christian motives. Pursuing the same method as under the last head, we will first establish the fact, and then indicate the use to be made of it. In Ephesians vi. 5 to 9, having addressed the other classes, the Apostle Paul says: "Servants, be obedient to them
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§ 8. Philemon and Onesimus.
§ 8. Philemon and Onesimus.
The Epistle to Philemon is peculiarly instructive and convincing as to the moral character of slavery. This Abolitionists betray, by the distressing wrigglings and contortions of logic, to which they resort, in the vain attempt to evade its inferences. The whole Epistle need not be recited. The apostle, after saluting Philemon as a brother and fellow-minister, and commending him in terms of peculiar beauty, warmth, and affection, for his eminent piety, and his hospitalities and charities to Chri
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§ 8. St. Paul reprobates Abolitionists.
§ 8. St. Paul reprobates Abolitionists.
One passage of the New Testament remains to be noticed. It is that which commands the exclusion of Abolitionist teachers from church communion, 1 Tim. vi. 3-5. St. Paul had just enjoined on this young minister the giving of proper moral instruction to servants. The pulpit was to teach them the duty of subordination to masters, as to rightful authority; and if those masters were also Christians, then the obligation was only the stronger. See v. 1, 2. The apostle then proceeds, v. 3, "If any man t
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§ 9. The Golden Rule Compatible with Slavery.
§ 9. The Golden Rule Compatible with Slavery.
One of these general objections to our New Testament argument is the following. They say, Christ could not have intended to authorize slavery, because the tenour and spirit of His moral teachings are opposed to it. The temper He currently enjoins is one of fraternity, equality, love, and disinterestedness. But holding a fellow-being in bondage is inconsistent with all these. Especially is the great "Golden Rule" incompatible with slavery. This enjoins us to do unto our neighbour as we would that
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§ 10. Was Christ Afraid to Condemn Slavery?
§ 10. Was Christ Afraid to Condemn Slavery?
The other general evasion of the New Testament argument for the lawfulness of slavery, is to say: That Jesus Christ and his apostles did not indeed explicitly condemn slavery; but that they forbore from doing so for prudential reasons. They saw, say these abolitionists, that it was a sin universally prevalent, entwined with the whole fabrick of human society, and sustained by a tremendous weight of sinful prejudice and self-interest. To denounce it categorically would have been to plunge the inf
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§ 2. Misrepresentations Cleared.
§ 2. Misrepresentations Cleared.
But abolitionists, by their audacious assumptions, endeavour to throw the question out of the pale of discussion: they exclaim that it needs no wire-drawn inference, it is self-evident, that a system which dehumanizes a human being, and makes his very person like a brute's body, the property of another creature; which necessitates the entailing of ignorance and vice; which ignores the marital and parental rights; which subjects the chastity of the female to the brute will of her master, and whic
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§ 3. The Rights of Man and Slavery.
§ 3. The Rights of Man and Slavery.
The radical objection to the righteousness of slavery in most minds is, that it violates the natural liberty and equality of man. To clear this matter, it is our purpose to test the common theory held as to the rights of nature, and to show that this ground of opposition to slavery rests upon a radical and disorganizing scheme of human rights, is but Jacobinism in disguise, and involves a denial of all authority whatsoever. The popular theory of man's natural rights, of the origin of governments
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§ 4. Abolitionism is Jacobinism.
§ 4. Abolitionism is Jacobinism.
The promise was made above, to unmask some of the hideous affinities of the anti-slavery theory. This is now easy. If men are by nature sovereign and independent, and mechanically equal in rights, and if allegiance is founded solely on expressed or implied consent, then not only slavery, but every involuntary restraint imposed on a person or a class not convicted of crime, and every difference of franchise among the members of civil society, is a glaring wrong. Such are the premises of abolition
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§ 5. Labour of another may be Property.
§ 5. Labour of another may be Property.
By confounding the master's right to the slave's labour with a pretended property in his conscience, soul, and whole personality, abolitionists have attempted to represent "property in man" as a self-evident wrong. But we shall show that, in the only sense in which we hold it, property in man is recognized by the laws of every commonwealth. The father has property in his child, the master in his apprentice, the husband in his wife, the wife in her husband, and the employer in his hireling. In ev
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§ 6. The Slave Received due Wages.
§ 6. The Slave Received due Wages.
But it is charged that the injustice of our system is apparent in this, that it takes the slave's labour without compensation. It is simply untrue. Southern slaves received, on the average, better and more certain compensation than any labouring people of their capacity in the world. It came to them in the form of that maintenance, which the master was bound by the laws, [91] as well as his own interests, to bestow upon them. During childhood, they were reared at his expense; in sickness they re
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§ 7. Effects of Slavery on Moral Character.
§ 7. Effects of Slavery on Moral Character.
It is argued by abolitionists, that slavery regularly exerts many influences tending to degrade the moral character of both masters and servants. Their charge cannot be better stated than in the Words of Dr. Wayland. ["Moral Science," Personal Liberty, Ch. I., § 2.] "Its effects must be disastrous upon the morals of both parties. By presenting objects on whom passion may be satiated without resistance, and without redress, it tends to cultivate in the master, pride, anger, cruelty, selfishness,
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§ 8. Slavery and the African Slave Trade.
§ 8. Slavery and the African Slave Trade.
It is a plausible ground of opposition to slavery, to charge it with the guilt of the slave trade. It is argued that unless we are willing to justify the capture of free and innocent men, on their own soil, and their reduction from freedom to slavery, with all the enormous injustice and cruelty of the African slave trade, we must acknowledge that the title of the Southern master to his slave at this day is unrighteous; that a system which had its origin in wrong cannot become right by the lapse
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§ 9. The Morality of Slavery Vindicated by its Results.
§ 9. The Morality of Slavery Vindicated by its Results.
To deny the mischievous effects of emancipation upon the Africans themselves, requires an amount of impudence which even abolitionists seldom possess. The experience of Britain has demonstrated, to the satisfaction of all her practical statesmen, that freedom among the whites is ruinous to the blacks. They tell us of the vast decline in the productiveness of their finest colonies, of the lapsing of fruitful plantations into the bush, of the return of the slaves, lately an industrious and useful
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§ 1. Slavery and Republican Government.
§ 1. Slavery and Republican Government.
Intelligent men at the South found something to reconcile them to their condition, in the wholesome influence of their form of labour, upon their republican institutions. The effect of slavery to make the temper of the ruling caste more honourable, self-governed, reflective, courteous, and chivalrous, and to foster in them an intense love of, and pride in, their free institutions, has been already asserted, and substantiated by resistless facts. The testimony of these facts is concurrent with th
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§ 2. Slavery and Malthusianism.
§ 2. Slavery and Malthusianism.
Taking mankind as they are, and not as we may desire them to be, domestic slavery offered the best relation which has yet been found, between labour and capital. It is not asserted that it would be best for a Utopia , where we might imagine the humblest citizen virtuous, intelligent, and provident. But there are no such societies on earth. The business of the legislator, whether human or divine, is with mankind as they are; and while he adapts his institutions to their defects, so as to avoid ma
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§ 3. Comparative productiveness of Slave Labour.
§ 3. Comparative productiveness of Slave Labour.
From the days of Adam Smith, anti-slavery men have been pleased to consider it as a point perfectly settled, that slave labour is comparatively unfavourable to production, and thus, to publick wealth. So settled is this conviction among the enemies, and so often has it been admitted by the apologists of our system, it will probably be hard to secure even a hearing, while we review the grounds on which the common opinion is based. One would think that the fact that those grounds have usually been
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§ 4. Effects of Slavery in the South, compared with those of Free Labour in the North.
§ 4. Effects of Slavery in the South, compared with those of Free Labour in the North.
The citations just made introduce a topic upon which anti-slavery men have usually abounded in sweeping assertion; the actual effects of our system on our industrial concerns. A fair example of these assertions may be seen in Dr. Wayland, Moral Science, p. 210, (Boston, 1838:) "No country, not of great fertility, can long sustain a large slave population. Soils of more than ordinary fertility cannot sustain it long, after the first richness of the soils has been exhausted. Hence, slavery in this
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§ 5. Effects of Slavery on Population, Disease, and Crime.
§ 5. Effects of Slavery on Population, Disease, and Crime.
But our enemies argue that slavery must be an obstacle to national growth and strength; for this is evinced by the very fact that they are nearly nineteen millions, and we only twelve and a quarter; when, at the beginning, the two sections were nearly equal in strength. Let us, therefore, look into this question. The increase of population is usually a sure test of the physical well-being of a people. Hardship and destitution repress population, by obstructing marriages, by breeding diseases, an
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CHAPTER IX. CONCLUSION.
CHAPTER IX. CONCLUSION.
These facts, then, have been established beyond question: That slavery was forced upon Virginia against her protests, by the cupidity of New England, and the tyranny and cupidity of Old England: That the African race being thus placed in the State without her agency, she adopted the remedy of domestic slavery, which is proved by the law of God in the Old and New Testaments to be innocent, and shown by events to be beneficent to the Africans: That, according to history, the laws of nations, and t
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