A Northern Apologist (1854)

BY REVEREND NEHEMIAH ADAMS

TAKING all the favorable features and all the evils of southern slavery together simply as to their bearing upon the slave, it appears that, leaving out of view the liabilities to separation, to be a slave at the south is an evil or not according to the character or habits of the master. The master or mistress can make the relation of a slave the very best on earth for one who must be dependent. One can not be long at the south, and not see for himself that the perfection of human happiness in a serving class is found among certain slaves. There is nothing that approaches to it except the relation of certain servants and dependants of noble families in Grear Britain; but at the south the relation and the happiness do not depend upon family and wealth; every householder may be a master or mistress to whom it will be a privilege to belong. Instances come to mind of servants in whose condition nothing is wanting to promote happiness in this world and preparation for the next; and the only source of disquietude in such cases you will hear thus expressed: "Master may die, and then I shall have to be free. I have laid up money, and am mentioned in the will, and my free papers are made out." Such servants sometimes select new masters, and prevail on them to buy them, preferring the feeling of protection, the gratification of loving and serving a white person, to abstract liberty.

Then there is another side to this picture. It is in the power of a master or mistress to make the condition of the slave a perpetual sorrow. It would be well if some men, and women too, could be debarred by law from having authority over a human being. One looks with pity even upon the animal that belongs to them. Imperative, fierce, threatening in their tones, petulant and cruel in their dispositions, capricious and contradictory in their orders, and full of scolding, the word and blow coming together, they wear out the patience of their servants. No wonder that the slaves of such men and women run away, that white boys in similar circumstances betake themselves to the sea, and girls elope or go to service, as a refuge from such dispositions and tongues. A certain distinguished slave owner seriously entertains the desire, for which his friends banter him, that every one proposing to be a slaveholder shall bring certificates of good temper, and be examined. To one who was a most thorough lover of the system of slavery I put the question, in a favorable moment, "What, in your view, is the greatest objection that can be made to slavery?" "O," said he, "this irresponsible power. You can not prevent its abuse while human nature is what it is. Good and kind men and women can make a slave happier than he could be any where; but certain masters and mistresses of slaves are the worst of tyrants."

There are some men to whom a negro is merely an ox or an ass. They buy, sell, work, treat, talk about, their "niggers" as about cattle—hard, sharp, vulgar men. . . .

It will generally be expected that punishment by whipping should be mentioned among the revolting features of slavery. In a well-regulated southern household, as in a well-ordered family of children, or a good school, the rod is out of sight. It is seldom alluded to; threatenings are rare; but the knowledge on the part of each servant, child, and pupil, that there is a punishment in reserve for the last resort, will have a salutary effect. Southern ladies, when they meet insolence or disobedience in their slaves, have not our easy means of relief in dismissing them at once, and repairing to the intelligence offices for others. They must have them punished, or they must continue to bear with them, as they often do, with long and exemplary patience, shrinking as we should from subjecting them to punishment; or they must sell them, as incorrigible, to the slave trader, which is far worse than chastisement, however severe. In good hands this power is exercised without abuse.

This power is also in the hands of the cruel and unprincipled, and is fearfully abused. Slaves, however, are not the only subjects of these cruelties, nor masters of slaves the only transgressors. . . .

Passing by a plantation, I saw a white man standing in a field near the road, with his arms folded, and a large whip in his hand. A little farther on, I came to a row of fifteen or twenty negroes, hoeing industriously, without lifting their heads to look at those who were going by. Had I told this overseer how I felt on seeing him, he would probably have replied, that my feelings were northern prejudices; that he never strikes the negroes, and is on good terms with them; that his whip is partly in self-defence in case of need, and partly to enforce, by its bare presence, his orders, in refractory cases, should they occur. But he was a revolting sight.

Many planters do not employ white overseers, but use some of the hands in their stead, paying them for this responsibility. Touching instances of faithfulness are related of these colored head men. The white overseers have it in their power, of course, to perpetrate many tyrannical and cruel acts; but we must not suppose that southern masters are indifferent to wrongs and outrages committed against their slaves. There is a public sentiment to which they are amenable; a cruel, neglectful master is marked and despised; and if cruel or neglectful by proxy, he does not escape reprobation. It was not unusual to hear one say of another, "I have been told that he does not use his people well." This is a brand upon a man which he and his family are made to feel deeply. But this is true only of certain states of society.

Slaveholding, like every relation, is a net which gathers of every kind. There are elements in it, at the south, fitted to promote the highest happiness and welfare, temporal and spiritual, of the negro; and it can make him perfectly miserable. Many things charged against slavery are chargeable to ’construction account’ in human nature.

The most common expression at the south, with regard to slavery, is, "It is a great curse." An intelligent gentleman, a slaveholder, said, in answer to a question, that unquestionably four-fifths of the people of his State, one of the oldest slave States, would be entirely free from it were it possible. . . .

A southern correspondent of the New York Observer thus expresses himself: "Though born and raised among the Green Mountains, I have been more than thirty years at the south, and I hold slaves; yet I think I can do justice to the feelings of north and south. I believe slavery is a curse to the south, and many others believe it, who will not own it, on account of the fanatic efforts of the abolitionists. When I speak of it as a curse, I mean in all its relations of master and servant—the bad influence it has upon our passions, upon our children, destroying that sense of moral responsibility which ought to bear upon us."

Nehemiah Adams, (Boston, 1854), 91–99 passim.