The Slave, being held as a Chattel, is held by a tenure which excludes any legal recognition of his rights as a thinking and religious being.

WE are not now speaking of laws or of usages that directly infringe such rights and prohibit their exercise. There are such laws, and we shall give some specimens of them, when we come to inquire after the condition of the slave in relation to civil society.* At present, we are only unfolding to view “the legal relation of master and slave.” We affirm that a recognition of the validity or lawfulness of that relation is equivalent to a denial of the literary and religious rights of the slave. And if that relation be an innocent one, then the denial and the withholding of those rights, AS RIGHTS, are innocent likewise. The mere bestowal of privileges, with the permission to enjoy them, is not the recognition of rights; it is rather an implied denial of their existence. Men do not grant permission nor confer privileges where

they recognize rights. The power to permit and to confer, carries with it the power to refuse and to withhold. Both the master and the slave understand this, where permissions are most frequently given. It is injurious to confer, as it is degrading to accept as a boon, what belongs to every man AS man, by absolute and inherent RIGHT. The rights of investigation, of free speech, of mental culture, of religious liberty, and of conscience, are of this class. Man may no more affect to confer them or permit their exercise, than he may presume to take them away.

     The statement, then, is not that slave masters do not educate nor permit the education of their slaves, nor allow nor furnish them the benefits of religious instruction and social worship. As a general statement, with particular and local exceptions, it might be made and sustained, as will appear in its allotted place. But we waive and pass by all this, for the present, to affirm distinctly that “the legal relation” of slave ownership, in America, as defined by the code that upholds it, is a relation that cannot and does not consist with the recognition (either in theory or practice) of the intellectual and religious RIGHTS of the slave.

     The slave “is a chattel.” But chattels have no literary or religious rights. He is a chattel “to all intents, constructions, and purposes whatsoever.” He is “in the power of a master, to whom he belongs”—“entirely subject to the will of his master”—“not ranked among sentient beings, but among things.” It would be an absurdity for such a code to

recognize the slave as possessing religious rights. It is free from any such absurdity.

     Except the provisions, in some of the States, for the “baptism” of slaves, and for their “spiritual assistance when sick,” (see Chap. VII., Part II.,) we have found no recognition of their religious wants, their religious natures, or immortal destinies. Even here they seem to be considered passive beings, whose salvation is to be bestowed by their masters. The American Slave Code, from beginning to end, knows no rights of conscience in its subjects. The master is to be implicitly obeyed. His will is to be law. The slave is allowed no self-direction, no sacred marriage, no family relation, no marital rights—none that may not be taken away by his master.

     Religion and its duties are based on human relations, including family relations. These relations, the “relation of slave ownership” and chattelhood abrogates. Religion requires and cherishes self-control; but the “owner’s” authority supersedes and prohibits self-control. Religion implies free agency; but “the slave is not a free agent.” His “condition is merely a passive one.” So says the Slave Code, and so says ecclesiastical law, and therefore releases him from the obligations of the seventh commandment. Witness the decision of the Savannah River Baptist Association, while allowing its slave members, without censure, to take second or third companions, in obedience to their masters, by whom their original connections had been severed!

     Rights of conscience require, and therefore authorize

a man to choose his own place of worship, and not “forsake the assembling together;” nay, to choose and follow the avocation, and select the residence and the associates where, in his own judgment, he can best serve God, fit his own soul for heaven, and lead his fellow-men to the Saviour. It commands and authorizes him to “search the Scriptures,” and train up his family “in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” The master emancipates his slave, and ceases to be his “owner” when he fully accords to him, in practice and in theory, these Heaven-conferred RIGHTS. It is useless to attempt evading this, by adducing the case of children and minors. The slave, at maturity, is entitled to the rights and responsibilities of a man, and without them he is despoiled of his religious rights.

     The slave master may withhold education and the Bible; he may forbid religious instruction, and access to public worship. He may enforce upon the slave and his family a religious worship and a religious teaching which he disapproves. In all this, as completely as in secular matters, he is “entirely subject to the will of a master, to whom he belongs.” The claim of chattelhood extends to the soul as well as to the body, for the body cannot be otherwise held and controlled.

     There is no other religious despotism on the face of the earth so absolute, so irresponsible, so soul-crushing as this. It is not subjection to an ecclesiastical body or functionary of any description; a presbytery, a conference, a bishop, a prelate, a pope,

who may be supposed to be sensible, in some sort, of their sacred and responsible charge! The free white American exults in his exemption from the jurisdiction of these, except during his own free consent. He would freely part with his life’s blood, in martyrdom or in war, rather than relinquish or compromise this right! But he thinks it a light matter (if he thinks of it at all) that three millions of his countrymen are in a worse spiritual thraldom than this, under bishops that regard and treat them as “chattels personal!” a bishopric entailed by descent, or conferred by the hammer of the auctioneer, the writ of the sheriff, or the chances of the billiard-table, and transferable in the same manner! nay, exercised by deputation every day, by the brutal overseer, the ignorant housekeeper, the spoiled child; a bishopric, Christian or infidel, drunken or sober, chaste or lewd, as the chances may happen! Who thinks of it, that the religious RIGHTS of immortal men are thus trampled in the dust in this country; that their religious privileges are in such keeping? How is it that Christian ministers, “sons of the Pilgrims,” can overlook all this, as they do, when they speak of the “innocent legal relation” that involves, of necessity, all this? The absolute power of the Pope, though conferred, as it once was, by the almost unanimous consent of all Christendom, they can denounce as “THE Antichrist,” forgetful of the more absolute power of every “owner” of an American slave! The doom of the former they read in the Apocalypse; the latter they deem Heaven-sanctioned

and approved, blaming only its abuse! Why may not Papal power have the benefit of the same apology? Whence comes it that the absolute religious despotism (for such it is) of the slave owner is so much more sacred and unapproachable than that of the Protestant or Catholic Church?

     A single incident—we hope it is an uncommon one—will illustrate this absolute power of the slaveholder. At a planter’s dinner-table, one day, (perhaps over the wine,) a guest remarked upon the hypocrisy of all religious slaves. The planter dissented. He was the owner of one who would rather die than deny his Redeemer. This was ridiculed. The slave was brought and put to the test. He was ordered to deny his belief in the Lord Jesus Christ. He refused; was terribly whipped; retained his integrity; the whipping was repeated, and “he died in consequence of this severe infliction.” This was in South Carolina. The facts were related to Miss Sarah M. Grimke, daughter of Judge Grimke, of Charleston, by an intimate friend, the wife of a slaveholder. The particulars, over the signature of Miss Grimke, are inserted in Weld’s “Slavery as it is,” p. 24.

     There is no adequate legal protection against such outrages, nor can there be, consistently with the “legal relation” of slave ownership. There was probably no legal investigation of this case. If there had been, and if “white” witnesses had attested the fact, the verdict, in conformity with the laws of the State, would probably have been, “death

by moderate correction!” Into the causes or reasons of chastisement, the Slave Code does not inquire! It is sufficient that the slave disobeys his “owner,” “overseer, or agent!”

     We have made no quotations from the statutes or judicial decisions of the slave States, on the subject of this chapter directly, because we have found none! Neither Stroud nor Wheeler, nor any other compiler of slave laws and decisions that we know of, appear to have discovered any provisions for the education and religious liberties of slaves! The eloquent silence of these significant blanks in the statute book and judicial reports of the slave States, is sufficient to certify the facts of the case. Whoever has read the preceding enactments and decisions well knows how to interpret such silence.