Viewing page 8 of 17

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

MAY, 1861       DOUGLASS' MONTHLY.         455

DOES THE BIBLE SANCTION AMERICAN SLAVERY---REPLY TO BISHOP HOPKINS, OF VERMONT.

To the Editor of the Rochester Union:
  SIR :—A friend has handed me a copy of the Union of Feb. 12th, 1861, containing the letter of Bishop HOPKINS, on slavery. By his request, I have been induced to write the following reply:
  The Bishop commences with the admission that 'the word slave occurs but twice in our English Bible.' Had he quoted the two passages in which that word occurs, every reader would have been convinced that these two passages, so far from lending sanction to, do by implication strongly condemn slavery. I will supply his very important omission, and quote these two passages. The first one occurs in Jeremiah ii., 14, and is as follows :— 'Is Israel a servant? Is he a home-born slave? Why is he spoiled?' Here the word slave is in italics, to show that it was supplied by the translator, and not translated from the original–so that there is confessedly no divine sanction for the use of the word in this passage. It is clear from the context that it was used as indicating the shameful and wicked condition to which the sins of the Jews have reduced them, and as the strongest condemnation of that condition.
  The other passage occurs in describing the corrupt and wicked commerce through which Babylon had gained her great wealth, and corrupted the merchants and kings of the earth, and brought down God's vengeance to punish her sins. Among these articles of a world-corrupting commerce in which she is charged with dealing, is, 'slaves and souls of men.' (Rev. XVIII., 13.) Here it appears that being engaged in the slave trade was one of the high crimes for which Babylon was destroyed. There is no other passage from the title page to the end of the Bible in which the word slave or its literal equivalent occurs, and every shadow of a sanction for slavery found in the Bible, is manufactured by stretching words, all innocent of such meaning or intention, to cover the huge enormities of the chattel system. I shall make this plain as I proceed.
  The next point in the letter of Bishop HOPKINS to which I shall take exceptions, is his definition of slavery. He says, 'slavery may be defined as servitude for life, descending to offspring.'
  This definition is the key stone of the arch of his argument, and if it fails to fit the spot for which he intended it, his whole argument must fall upon his head. I will throw the argument into form, in order to show its fallacy.
  1. The Bible sanctions a system of servitude for life, descending to offspring.
  2. Slavery is a system of servitude for life, descending to offspring.
  3. Therefore, the Bible sanctions slavery.
  Now, the fact is that American slavery is infinitely more and infinitely worse than a mere hereditary system of servitude for life, and the premises are infinitely less broad than the conclusion. The Bible might sanction a dozen systems of hereditary servitude, and if no one of the dozen systems was based on the principles that a man might be reduced to a chattel—a thing, a piece of property–it would not lend the shadow of a sanction to American slavery. The fallacy here may be illustrated thus:
  1. A tiger is an animal having four legs, two ears and a tail.
  2. Most of the animals in the known world have four legs, two ears and a tail.
  3. Therefore, most of the animals in the known world are tigers.
  Now, what is here said of the tiger is true, but it comes infinitely short of the whole truth a[s] to the essential characteristics of the tiger, and therefore makes the inference utterly false. To describe the tiger you must add to the four legs, two ears and a tail, the sharp claws, murderous fangs, and fiendish lust for blood. So in order to describe American slavery, you must add to the Bishop's 'system of servitude,' the chattelization of God's image, the annihilation of manhood, and the reduction of souls to things.
  The only authoritative definition of American slavery is to be found in the laws of the slave code of the South, and from it I quote. The law of South Carolina says:–'Slaves shall be deemed held, taken, reputed and adjudged in law to be chattels personal in the hands of their owners and possessors, and their executors, administrators and assignees, to all intents, constructions and purposes whatsoever. (Prince's Digest, 446.)
 Judge RUFFIN, of North Carolina, says:– 'A slave is one doomed in his own person and his posterity to live without knowledge, and without the capacity to make any thing his own, and to toil that another may reap the fruits.' (Wheeler's Law of Slavery, page 246.)
  The contrast between this definition of American slavery and that system of servitude recognized in the Bible, is so great and radical that in all essential features they are antagonisms. The chattel principle is the very soul of the American slave system, while in the Bible system this principle does not obtain at all. Without that principle as a basis, slavery in this country could not exist a year.
  Bishop HOPKIN'S next assumption is that the word servant ought to have been rendered slave. If this assumption fails, his entire argument is again broken down. The learned commissioners who translated the Bible all differed with him on this point, for our authorized version proves that after a most careful examination of the question, they decided that the original meant servant, a word which described the condition of two-thirds of the English people when our translation was made. Now Bishop HOPKINS must bear with me while I express the belief that the united learning of the seventy or more (I forget the precise number) high church men, selected out of the whole realm of Great Britain, by King JAMES, for the learning, must have more weight than his single opinion. They decided that servant and not slave was the right word. Nor is it possible to believe that these men used the word servant as meaning 'goods and chattels.' As then used in England, the word servant had no such meaning. The word villain, as then used in England, would have come much nearer a description of the condition of the American slave. A few centuries before, villanage had been common in England, and had the Jewish system of servitude, in the judgement of our translators, been anything akin to American slavery, that would have been nearer the word by which to describe it. But that word was too strong, and in the judgment of the translators, the English word servant was the only one which properly translated the original, or else their translation is dishonest. Here I might rest the argument on this point, but I have more modern authority.
  Rev. Albert BARNES says: 'From this examination of the terms used to denote servitude among the Hebrews, it follows that nothing can be inferred from the mere use of the word in regard to the kind of servitude which existed in the days of the patriarchs. * * * * * The Hebrew words, ebedh, abodha, abudda, rendered commonly servant, service, and servants, are derived from abadh, meaning to labor, to work, to do work. It occurs in the Hebrew scriptures some hundreds of times in various forms of the word, and is never rendered slaves, but commonly servants and serve.'
  I think that the above testimony will be regarded as quite sufficient to break down the naked assertion of Bishop HOPKINS, that servant means slave; and I have taken some pains to break down that assertion, because his entire argument rests upon that assumption. If servant does not mean slave, then not one of the passages which he quotes touches the point, for all their force on his side consists in reading them as if servant meant a chattel slave, a piece of goods.
  I will now turn my attention to the proof texts. The first quotation the Bishop makes is prom Gen. ix., 25, being Noah's curse pronounced upon the descendants of Ham.
  I proceed to an analysis of this case. Noah got drunk, and so exposed his person in his tent, that his son Ham accidentally saw his nakedness. This was Ham's crime, for which Noah cursed his son Canaan, and according to Bishop HOPKINS, doomed every slave in the South to perpetual bondage. Noah's curse was pronounced while just getting sober enough to have his senses. He undoubtedly felt cross, as is common under such circumstances. Did he speak by the inspiration of the spirit of God, or the spirit of wine, which the Bible says is a 'mocker?' Can any one show the slightest evidence that God sanctioned his drunken malediction, or pledged himself to carry it out? There is no shadow of such evidence in the Bible. But should we admit that God was bound to carry out Noah's drunken curse, it would not help the case for slavery, because the curse was confined to the person of Canaan, and did not extend to his posterity. But if we admit that Noah's drunken curse had the force of God's law, which is blasphemous nonsense, and that it applied to Canaan's posterity, which is a cruel falsehood, the case is still fatal to the Bishop's theory, for the Canaanites were not negroes, but the inhabitants of the land of Canaan, who were conquered by the Jews when they took possession of the Promised Land. The only argument used to prove that Canaan's descendants were negroes, is that Ham, Canaan's father, was black, because Ham means black. In the first place, this is false. In the next place, if Ham does mean black, it no more proves that Ham was black than his name proves that my neighbor White is the only white man in town, or my neighbor Green is a green man, or my neighbor Gray is gray in color.
     [TO BE CONTINUED.]