That we may proceed intelligently in the discussion of the subject upon which we have entered, it is important to understand precisely what American slavery is. Some learned men have confused this subject by confounding the relation of the slave with other relations from which it essentially differs. An apprentice, a miner, hired laborer, serf or a villein is not a slave. All these relations lack, as we shall see, the distinguishing feature of slavery. The slave is placed in a condition far removed from any other class of human beings in enlightened, civilized, or savage society. He stands in a legal relation below all others.

The American slave code describes the slave and slavery with remarkable precision and horrible distinctness. According to that code a slave is a CHATTEL. He is, body, soul and spirit, to all intents and purposes whatsoever, PROPERTY—the property of the master to whom he belongs; and slavery is that “peculiar institution” which, originating in piracy, systematically despoils human beings of their manhood—of all inborn rights, degrades them to the state of chattelhood, and forcibly detains them in that degradation. Property in a human creature is the essential and peculiar principle of slavery. This is the basis of the system, and all laws, regulations, usages, deprivations, wrongs, sins, sufferings and miseries which belong to the system are built upon this foundation. Numerous and cruel systems of oppression have existed but not one of them has ventured to lay sacrilegious hands upon “the image of God,” and convert it into a thing to be bought, sold, executed for debt, willed, and used as an article of merchandise. Slavery alone has done this. Some authorities will now be cited to prove the correctness of this definition.

“The cardinal principle of slavery, that the slave is not to be ranked among sentient beings but among things, obtains in all these (slave) states.” (Judge Stroud.)

“Slaves shall be claimed, held, taken, reputed, and adjudged in law, to be chattels personal in the hands of their owners and possessors, and their executors, administrators and assigns to all intents and purposes whatsoever.” (Law of South Carolina.)

“A slave is one who is in the power of the master to whom he belongs; the master may sell him, dispose of his person, his industry, and his labor; he can do nothing, possess nothing nor acquire anything but what must belong to his master.” (Law of Louisiana.)

“A slave is in absolute bondage; he has no civil rights, and can hold no property, except at the will and pleasure of his master; a slave is a rational being, endowed with understanding like the rest of mankind; and whatever he lawfully acquires, and gains possession of by finding or otherwise, is the acquirement and possession of his master.” (Wheeler.)

A law of Mississippi reads thus: “When any sheriff or other officer shall serve an attachment upon slaves, horses, or other live stock,” etc. “Being property, slaves may be bought and sold by persons capable of buying and selling other property.” (Hon. J. K. Paulding.)

Henry Clay said—“I know that there is a visionary dogma which holds that negro slaves cannot be the subject of property. I shall not dwell on the speculative abstraction. That is property which the law declares to be property. Two hundred years of legislation have sanctified and sanctioned negro slaves as property.”

Any one who will take up a southern newspaper will soon discover from the manner in which slaves are advertised for sale, that the laws which reduce them to chattels are not dead statutes. An advertisement in the Richmond (Va.) Whig, is headed thus:

“Large sale of negroes, horses mules and cattle.” Among the articles to be sold are, 175 negroes, among whom are some carpenters and blacksmiths, 10 horses, 33 mules, 100 head of cattle, 100 sheep and 200 hogs. “The negroes will be sold for cash, the other property on a credit of nine months.”[3]

Whole volumes of such advertisements might be collected from the most respectable and widely circulated southern journals, and I have seen a few advertisements for the sale of men women and children, hogs, corn and cattle promiscuously, in respectable religious papers, sustained by churches whose leading avowed object is, to “spread scriptural holiness over these lands.”

And slaves are not only advertised but actually sold as property is sold. Raising slaves for the market, selling them, speculating upon them and driving them from one State to another, creates an extensive and lucrative trade. The Virginia Times estimated that in 1836 the number of slaves exported from Virginia alone was forty thousand—worth $24,000,000. The Natchez Courier estimated that in 1836 two hundred and fifty thousand slaves had been imported into Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Arkansas, from the more Northern States. The Baltimore Register said, “Dealing in slaves has become a large business; establishments are made in several places in Md. and Va. at which they are sold like cattle.” Prof. Dew said in 1831; “Virginia is in fact a negro raising State for the other states.” Judge Upshur of Va. said in the Va. Convention, 1831; “The value of slaves as an article of property, depends much on the state of the market abroad. If it should be our lot, as I trust it will be, to acquire the country of Texas, their price will rise again.” “From the single port of Baltimore,” says Mrs. Stowe “in the last two years, a thousand and thirty slaves have been shipped to the southern market.” Slaves now bring a very high price in cash. Only the other day a brick-layer in S. C. sold for $1,905; three others at the same sale brought over $1000 each.

In the prosecution of this traffic the feelings and interests, the parental, connubial and filial relations of slaves are utterly disregarded. They are sold for the benefit of the master, as a horse is sold, and bought to suit the purchaser. To all intents and purposes slaves are daily bought and sold like cattle. Alas, that my pen is compelled to write this fact.

A respectable gentleman (Dr. Elwood) was an eye witness to a sale of slaves in Petersburg, Va., in 1846. He saw some old men and women go upon the auctioneer’s stand to be sold to the highest bidder. The case of a beautiful youth affected him most deeply. “His hair,” said Mr. E. “was brown and straight, his skin exactly the hue of white persons, and no discernible trace of negro features in his countenance. Some vulgar jests were passed on his color, and 00 was bid for him; but the audience remarked that was not enough to begin on for such a likely young negro; some said a white negro was more trouble than he was worth. Before he was sold his mother rushed from the house upon the portico, crying in frantic grief, ‘My son, O! my boy, they will take away my dear’—Here her voice was lost as she was rudely pushed back and the door closed. The sale was not for a moment interrupted, and none of the crowd appeared to be affected by the scene. The poor boy trembled and wiped the tears from his cheeks with his sleeves. He was sold for about 250 dollars.”

After this boy was sold a woman was called upon the stand. She had an infant in her arms, but she dared not take it with her. “She gave it one wild embrace, before leaving it with an old woman, and hastened mechanically to obey the call; but stopped, threw up her arms, screamed and was unable to move!” Those who know a mother’s love can understand the agony which raged in her maternal bosom.

The following is from the pen of an aged preacher, now living in Canada, who escaped from slavery some years since. When the master to whom he belonged died, he, with his fellow slaves, were put up for sale. Said he—

“My brothers and sisters were bid off one by one, while my mother, holding my hand, looked on in an agony of grief, the cause of which I but ill understood at first, but which dawned on my mind with dreadful clearness as the sale proceeded. My mother was then separated from me, and put up in her turn. She was bought by a man named Isaac R——, in Montgomery county, Md., and then I was offered to the assembled purchasers. My mother half distracted with the parting forever from all her children pushed through the crowd, while the bidding for me was going on, to the spot where R. was standing. She fell at his feet and clung to his knees, entreating him in tones that a mother only could command, to buy her baby as well as herself, and spare to her one of her little ones at least.” But this man thus appealed to “disengaged himself from her with such violent kicks and blows as to reduce her to the necessity of creeping out of his reach and mingling the groan of bodily suffering with the sob of a broken heart.”

These cases are presented as examples to show the meaning and intent of the code which declares that a slave is property—and has no rights or interests; and they are not rare and extreme cases brought in here only for effect, but are such as occur daily in all the slave states; and they are perfectly in keeping with the spirit of American slavery. Those persons were sold precisely as other property is sold.

From these authorities and facts it is clear that a slave occupies a relation as far beneath the apprentice, miner, hired laborer, or even the villein of the Feudal Age, or the Russian serf, as mere property is beneath manhood with all its possessions and God-like powers—as far as a brute is below a man “made in the image of God.”

The American slave code is almost an exact copy of the old savage Roman slave code, which was conceived in the dark night of heathenism, and brought forth reeking with blood in the unholy travail of sanguinary wars, before that empire had been enlightened and conquered by the peaceful and just Gospel of Christ. That it may be seen where English and American law-makers obtained the spirit of the American slave code, the following synopsis of the Roman law on slavery is inserted.

“By the Roman civil law, slaves were esteemed merely as chattels of their masters; they had no name but what the master was pleased to give them for convenience. They were not capable of personal injuries cognizable by the law. They could take neither by purchase nor descent, could have no heirs, could make no will. The fruits of their labor and industry belonged to their masters. They could not plead nor be impleaded, and were utterly excluded from all civil concerns. They were incapable of marriage, not being entitled to the considerations thereof. The laws of adultery did not (among themselves) effect them. They might be sold, transferred, mortgaged, pawned. Partus sequitur ventrem was the rule indiscriminately applied to slaves and cattle.” (Harris and McHenry.)[4]

At a glance it will be seen that the Roman and American slave codes are identical in spirit—that the distinguishing principle of both is property in man. Our christian legislators therefore must acknowledge themselves indebted to Pagan Rome for the type of slavery which they have instituted and maintained in Christian America. All the main features of cruelty, injustice and savageness, inherent in that ancient system of oppression, have been faithfully copied, and not in the slightest degree modified or softened.

Let us recapitulate. A slave is property. His bones and sinews, genius, skill, virtue, mind, soul; all he is, all he may be, all he acquires in this life, belongs to his master and is put down in his ledger as worth so many dollars. He is without choice as to what he will do, what amount of labor he will perform, or for whom he shall toil. He can own nothing, inherit nothing, will nothing. He cannot make a contract for himself, nor claim the protection of the laws as a man. He is wholly in the power of his master and totally defenseless against his lusts, avarice, or brutality. I defy human ingenuity, nay, if I may be so bold, I challenge Lucifer himself to invent a system of oppression which leaves a man more completely destitute, defenseless and degraded.