CHAPTER III. RIGHT REVEREND BROTHER: I have already said that I do not know precisely where you stand, in this very serious controversy, but I have been favored with a number of anonymous pamphlets, some of which claim the authorship of ministers in the Protestant Episcopal Church, in which my Bible View of Slavery is attacked with abundance of zeal, not always accompanied either by Christian courtesy or knowledge. It may be well, therefore, to occupy a little space in the examination of some of their arguments, although it is not my custom to pay any attention to anonymous opponents. Through my whole course, I have made it a matter of principle to publish nothing without my name; because I have always held anonymous attacks on individuals to be a sort of stabbing in the dark, belonging, of right, to the art of assassination. The individual assailed has a just claim to know who it is that assails him. The public has a just claim to be informed who it is that undertakes the office of censor. And there is a lack of Christian manliness and honesty in this too common kind of cowardly warfare, which wears a mask when it strikes the blow, and dares to incur the responsibility of the act, while it shrinks from the responsibility of detection. Passing over, as quite unworthy of notice, the bitterness and sarcasm of those writers, I shall state their arguments fairly and candidly, and give them what I deem a satisfactory reply. The first point which I shall notice is the assault made against the application of the prophecy of Noah to the posterity of Ham, on the ground that it was limited to the offspring of Canaan, who were not negroes, and who are now probably extinct. Moreover, it is said that Canaan was not in Africa, and that the negroes are not descended from Canaan, but from Cush, on whom there is no curse recorded. And we have a quotation given from Josephus, to prove the correctness of these positions. In reply to this, I have only to observe that none of these writers pretend to deny what I asserted, namely, that "the Almighty, foreseeing the total degradation of the race, ordained them to servitude under the descendants of Shem and Japheth." Now the whole question in dispute is, whether the Bible authorizes slavery at all, under any circumstances. The ultra-abolitionist denies it, insisting that slaveholding is a sin per se, and pronouncing absolute condemnation upon the act of keeping a man in bondage. I contend, on the contrary, that the Deity pronounced the curse of slavery on the posterity of Ham, "foreseeing their total degradation," and whether that curse included the whole of his posterity or a portion of them only, does not make the slightest difference in the main fact, which remains uncontroverted, namely, that God did authorize slavery for a race, whom he foresaw as being utterly degraded. The old maxim is a sound one: แ Ubi eadem ratio, ibi eadem lex." Where there is the same reason, there is the same law. It is not and it can not be denied, that the reason why the Canaanites were to be enslaved, was the foresight of their total degradation. Let us look, therefore, at the condition of the African race in our own days, as it is described by Malte Brun, one of the most reliable of our modern geographers; and then we shall be enabled to judge whether the same reason which justified the slavery of the one, does not equally justify the slavery of the other. "The slave coast of Africa," saith this writer, "consists of several petty states, which are all under the despotic sway of the King of Dahomey. This barbarian monarch chooses to have women for his body-guard, and his palace is surrounded by one thousand of these Amazons, armed with javelins and muskets, from whom he selects his special military aids and messengers. His ministers, when they come into the royal presence, are obliged to leave their silk robes at the gate of the palace, and approach the throne, walking on all fours, and rolling their heads in the dust. The ferocity of this African despot almost surpasses conception. The road to his residence is strewed with human skulls, and the walls are adorned and almost covered with jaw-bones. On public occasions, the sable monarch walks in solemn pomp, over the bloody heads of vanquished princes, or disgraced ministers. At the festivals of the tribes, to which all the people bring presents for the king, he drenches the tombs of his forefathers with human blood. Fifty dead bodies are thrown around the royal sepulchre, and fifty heads displayed on poles. The blood of these victims is presented to the king, who dips his fingers into it, and licks them. Human blood is mixed with clay, to build temples in honor of deceased monarchs. The royal widows kill one another, till it pleases the new sovereign to put an end to the slaughter. And the crowd assembled at their most joyous festivals applaud such scenes of horror, and delight in tearing the unhappy victims to pieces.' The people, as might be expected, are sunk into the most degraded habits, in all the social relations of life, and especially in all their notions of religion. "They eat the carcass of the elephant," saith our author, “even when full of vermin. The musky eggs and flesh of the crocodile are welcome to their appetite. Monkeys are generally used for food. Animals found dead and putrid give no disgust, and at their greatest feasts, a roasted dog is counted a luxury. Their dwellings are rude huts, consisting of a few trunks of trees, covered with straw or palm leaves. Their furniture is usually confined to a few calabashes. The rich have some fire-arms, obtained from the Europeans; and the sovereigns, who adorn their residence with human skulls and jaw-bones, have stone-ware and carpets of English manufacture. But the mass look for nothing beyond the supply of the simplest wants of nature. Twenty days in the year are enough, in that luxuriant climate, for their labors in husbandry. Their clothing is woven by the women from wild cotton. And their time is given up, for the most part, to dancing at night to the sound of horns and drums, and their days to gaming, of which they are passionately fond. Polygamy is practiced to a greater degree than is found among any other people. As to their religion, it is the lowest kind of idolatry. They adore, and in time of difficulty consult, any object that strikes their fancy—a tree, a rock, a fish-bone, an egg, a horn, a date-stone, or a blade of grass. In Whidah, a serpent is regarded as the god of war, of trade, of agriculture, and of fertility. It is kept in a kind of temple, and attended by an order of priests. A company of young women are consecrated to it, whose business it is to please their deity with wanton dances, and a 'ife of systematic licentiousness. In Benin, a lizard is the object of public worship, and a leopard in Dahomey."+ *Malte Brun's System of Universal Geography. Vol. ii. p. 77. Boston ed. of 1834. +Ib. p. 88-9 Of course, neither liberty nor social comfort can exist, where laws and manners so barbarous prevail. "Two thirds of the negro population," continues our author, "lead lives of hereditary bondage in their own country, and those who are free, are liable to be reduced to slavery at any moment, by the order of their despots. As an instanceof the awful tyranny under which they groan, it is related that, on the death of Freempoong, king of the Akims, the people sacrificed his slaves upon his tomb, to the number of several thousands, together with his prime-minister, and three hundred and sixteen of his women. All these victims were buried alive, their bones having been previously broken. And for several days the crowd performed dances, accompanied with songs, round the spot, where these unfortunate beings suffered lingering and horrible agonies."* Here, then, we have the best testimony, with which every subse-. quent writer agrees,† as to the awful debasement, the groveling idolatry, the flagitious immorality, the total degradation of the posterity of Ham, in the slave-region of Africa. And this testimony is given by the first geographer of the age, who was, himself, a friend to abolition. If my antagonists can show that the Canaanites were in a worse condition than this, I should like to see the evidence. In the Providence of God, the negro slavery of the South has been the means of saving millions of those poor creatures from the horrible state in which they must otherwise have lived and died. It has raised them on the scale of humanity, and brought them toward civilization under the light of religious truth, until a portion of them were enabled to establish, through Southern direction, the Colony of Liberia, and we have reason to hope that many of the rest may be qualified to emulate them, in due time. If any man can seriously contemplate the awful debasement of the native Africans, and candidly compare it with the present condition of the Southern slaves, and then denounce, as a sin, the means which divine Providence has chosen to save them from their former state of wretched barbarism, and deliberately prefer that they should rather have remained in that dark sink of heathen cruelty and abomination, in honor of PHILANTHROPY, I can only say that I am at a loss whether I should be most astonished at the waywardness of his heart, or the blindness of his understanding. But my censors think that they have settled the whole application * Malte Brun's System of Universal Geography. Vol. ii, p. 90. of Noah's prophecy by confining it to the posterity of Canaan, and exclaim against my supposed error in extending it to the posterity of Ham, or the African generally. Let me therefore recall to the memory of my antagonists the language of Bishop Newton, whose well-known work upon the Prophecies is on the list selected by the Church for students in Theology, and must therefore, as I suppose, have been once regarded, by some of themselves, as a safe guide of ministerial opinion. "Ham, the father of Canaan, is mentioned," saith Bishop Newton, "in the preceding part of the story, and how then came the person of a sudden to be changed into Canaan? The Arabic version in these three verses hath the father of Canaan, instead of Canaan. Some copies of the Septuagint likewise have Ham instead of Canaan, as if Canaan was a corruption of the text. Vatablus and others, by Canaan, understand the father of Canaan, which was expressed twice before. And if we regard the metre, this line, Cursed be Canaan, is much shorter than the rest, as if something was deficient. May we not suppose, therefore, that the copyist, by mistake, wrote only Canaan instead of Ham the father of Canaan, and that the whole passage was originally thus? 'Cursed be Ham the father of Canaan, a servant of servants shall he be to his brethren.' "By this reading," continues Bishop Newton, "all the three sons of Noah are included in the prophecy, whereas otherwise Ham, who was the offender, is excluded, or is only punished in one of his children. Ham is characterized as the father of Canaan particularly, for the greater encouragement of the Israelites, who were going to invade the land of Canaan; and when it is said, 'Cursed be Ham, the father of Canaan, a servant of servants shall he be to his brethren,' it is implied that his whole race was devoted to servitude, but particularly the Canaanites. Not that this was to take effect immediately, but was to be fulfilled in process of time, when they should forfeit their liberties by their wickedness. Ham at first subdued some of the posterity of Shem, as Canaan sometimes conquered Japheth. The Carthaginians, who were originally Canaanites, did particularly so in Spain and Italy; but in time they were to be subdued, and to become servants to them and Japheth; and the change of their fortune from good to bad would render the curse still more visible. Egypt was the land of Ham, as it is often called in Scripture, and for many years it was a great and flourishing kingdom; but it was subdued by the |