The Battle of Principles | Page 8

separate her from her children and her husband, and
she made these men, who were trafficking in human life, realize the
meaning of Christ's words, "Woe unto him that doth offend one of My
little ones; it were better for him that a millstone were placed about his
neck and that he were cast into the depths of the sea."
In this era of industrial education for the coloured race it is interesting
to note that five of the slave States imposed heavy penalties upon any
one who should teach the slaves to read or write. Virginia, however,
permitted the owner to teach his slave in the interest of better
management of the plantation. North Carolina finally consented to
arithmetic. After 1831 and the Nat Turner negro insurrection more
stringent laws were passed to prevent the slaves learning how to read,
lest they chance upon abolition documents. A Georgian planter said
that "The very slightest amount of education impairs their value as
slaves, for it instantly destroys their contentedness; and since you do
not contemplate changing their condition, it is surely doing them an ill
service to destroy their acquiescence in it." In spite of the law, however,
domestic servants were frequently taught to read. Frederick Douglass
found a teacher in his mistress, where he was held as a domestic slave,
and Douglass in turn taught his fellow slaves on the plantation by
stealth. The advertisements of slaves that mention the slave's ability to
read and cipher, as a reason for special value, prove that the more
intelligent slaves had at least the rudiments of knowledge. Olmstead, in
his "Cotton Kingdom," says he visited a plantation in Mississippi,
where one of the negroes had, with the full permission of his master,
taught all his fellows how to read.
An examination of the influence of slavery upon the poorer whites
shows that two-thirds of the white population suffered hardly less than

did the coloured people. The slaveholding class formed an aristocracy,
who dominated and ruled as lords. When the war broke out, there were
about four hundred thousand slave-holders, and nine and a half million
people. But of these four hundred thousand slave-holders, only about
eight thousand owned more than fifty slaves each, and it was this mere
handful who lived in splendid homes, surrounded with luxury, beauty,
and refinement. Travellers who have thrown the veil of romance and
enchantment about the Southern home, with a great house embowered
in magnolia trees, its rooms stored with art treasures, its walls lined
with marbles and bronzes, and its banqueting room at night crowded
with beautiful women and handsome men--these travellers speak of
what was as a matter of fact exceptional. We must remember that these
men represented a small aristocracy; that their mode of life, so
charmingly pictured by many accomplished writers, was the life of a
select group, and that the great slave plantations numbered not more
than eight thousand in that vast area.
From the hour of the organization of the Abolition Society, these
Southern planters assumed an aggressive position. Their editors,
politicians and lawyers began to publish briefs, in support of the
peculiar institution. The usual argument began with ridicule of Thomas
Jefferson's famous statement that all men are born equal. The second
argument was an economic one, based on the value of the slaves. Three
million slaves would average a value of five hundred dollars each, and
this meant a billion five hundred millions of property, that had to be
considered as so much property in ships, factories, engines, reapers,
pastures, meadows, herds and flocks. All planters invoked the words of
Moses, permitting the Hebrews to hold slaves, and therefore exhibiting
slavery as a divine institution. Statesmen justified the Fugitive Slave
Law by triumphantly quoting Paul's letter, sending Onesimus back to
his rich master, Philemon. Jefferson Davis rested his argument upon the
curse that God pronounced upon Canaan, and asserted that slavery was
established by a decree of Almighty God and that through the portal of
slavery alone the descendant of the graceless son of Noah entered the
temple of civilization. Once a year the Southern minister preached from
the text, "Cursed be Canaan, the son of Ham. A servant of servants
shall he be unto his brethren."

A few scholars grounded themselves on the scientific argument. These
men held that the black man was separated from the Saxon by a great
chasm, that if freed he was not equal to self-government, that he was a
mere child when placed in competition with the white man, and that the
strong owed it to the weak, that it was the duty of every superior man to
take charge of the inferior, and impose government from without.
The politician had a stronger argument in defense of slavery. He held
that the nation