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February 19 - March 2, 2022
The struggle, too, in the judge's own breast, between the feelings of the man and the duty of the magistrate, is a severe one, presenting strong temptation to put aside such questions, if it be possible. It is useless, however, to complain of things inherent in our political state.
The difference is that which exists between freedom and slavery; and a greater cannot be imagined. In
What moral considerations shall be addressed to such a being, to convince him what it is impossible but that the most stupid must feel and know can never be true,—that he is thus to labor upon a principle of natural duty, or for the sake of his own personal happiness?
Such obedience is the consequence only of uncontrolled authority over the body.
deliberate barbarity, where in conscience the law might properly interfere, is most probable. The difficulty is to determine where a court may properly begin. Merely in the abstract, it may well be asked which power of the master accords with right. The answer will probably sweep away all of them. But we cannot look at the matter in that light. The truth is that we are forbidden to enter upon a train of general reasoning on the subject. We cannot allow the right of the master to be brought into discussion in the courts of justice. The slave, to remain a slave, must be made sensible that there
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Never had Clayton so forcibly realized the horrors of slavery as when he heard them thus so calmly defined in the presence of one into whose soul the iron had entered.
The tones of Judge Clayton's voice, so passionless, clear, and deliberate; the solemn, calm, unflinching earnestness of his words, were more than a thousand passionate appeals.
"I hope it will not be considered a disrespect or impertinence for me to say that the law of slavery, and the nature of that institution, have for the first time been made known to me to-day in their true character. I had before flattered myself with the hope that it might be considered a guardian institution, by which a stronger race might assume the care and instruction of the weaker one; and I had hoped that its laws were capable of being so administered as to protect the defenceless. This illusion is destroyed. I see but too clearly now the purpose and object of the law. I cannot,
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audience. But Judge Clayton sat with unmoved serenity. The words had struck to the depth of his soul. They had struck at the root of one of his strongest hopes in life. But he had listened to them with the same calm and punctilious attention which it was his habit to give to every speaker; and, with unaltered composure, he proceeded to the next business of the court.
He is Jewish in his notions.
"Whatever is divinely ordered, becomes right by that fact."
abstraction of "divinity"; people will assume what so because of providence
I retain the legal relation of owner simply as a means of protecting my servants from the cruelties of the law, and of securing the opportunity to educate and elevate them."
"suppose the law is so rooted in the nature of the institution, that it cannot be repealed without uprooting the institution? What then?"
!
Human law is, at best, but an approximation, a reflection of many of the ills of our nature. Imperfect as it is, it is, on the whole, a blessing. The worst system is better than anarchy."
"My son, no reform is possible, unless we are prepared to give up the institution of slavery.
am not myself gifted with the talents of a reformer. My turn of mind fits me for the situation I hold.
It is of more consequence that we should do right, than that we should enjoy ourselves."
It is remarkable with what tenacity people often will cling to life, whose enjoyments in it are so dull and low that a bystander would scarcely think them worth the struggle of preservation.
Galling and intolerable as it would have been otherwise, he felt, when with her, that her service was perfect freedom.
He saw that it was an evil which she had no power over, and he shrank from annoying her with it.
Judge Peters is dying!
"God," said Nina; "I am not afraid!"
so is nina now fully indoctrination into relgion? caught up in the fervor?
After writing this, Nina lay down and slept—slept all night as quietly as if death and disease were not hanging over her head. In
is this illness an allusion to slavery? or am I reading too much into this? random opression that you have to learn to live with
The mind can become familiar with anything, even with the prospect of danger and death, so that it can appear to be an ordinary condition of existence.
Towards evening, the baby died. Tiff held it in his arms to the very last; and it was with difficulty that Nina and Milly could persuade him that the little flickering breath was gone forever.
This life may be truly called a haunted house, built as it is on the very confines of the land of darkness and the shadow of death. A thousand living fibres connect us with the unknown and unseen state; and the strongest hearts, which never stand still for any mortal terror, have sometimes hushed their very beating at a breath of a whisper from within the veil. Perhaps the most resolute unbeliever in spiritual things has hours of which he would be ashamed to tell, when he, too, yields to the powers of those awful affinities which bind us to that unknown realm.
life as a kind of haunted house; already limited. there's so much we can't know. enjoy that mysticism.
You are baptized with fire.
Clayton, however, knew enough of the law which regulates the condition in which Harry stood, to know that it was of no more avail in his case than so much blank paper.
"The matter is," said Harry, "that I have all my life been toiling for my liberty, and thought I was coming nearer to it every year; and now, at thirty-five years of age, I find myself still a slave, with no hope of getting free!"
"My boy, this is a dispensation of Divine Providence!" "I call it a dispensation of human tyranny!" said Harry. "It pleased the Lord," continued Mr. Jekyl, "to foredoom the race of Ham"—
I'm Colonel Gordon's oldest son—as white as my brother, who you say owns me! Look at my eyes, and my hair, and say if any of the rules about Ham pertain to me!"
Harry was now thoroughly roused. He had inherited the violent and fiery passions of his father. His usual appearance of studied calmness, and his habits of deferential address, were superinduced; they resembled the thin crust which coats over a flood of boiling lava, and which a burst of the seething mass beneath can shiver in a moment.
You men who call yourselves religious, and stand up for such tyranny,—you serpents, you generation of vipers,—how can you escape the damnation of hell? You keep the clothes of them who stone Stephen! You encourage theft, and robbery, and adultery, and you know it! You are worse than the villains themselves, who don't pretend to justify what they do. Now, go, tell Tom Gordon—go! I shall fight it out to the last! I've nothing to hope, and nothing to lose. Let him look out! They made sport of Samson,—they put out his eyes,—but he pulled down the temple over their heads, after all. Look out!"
Harry struck back a blow so violent as to send him stumbling across the room, against the opposite wall; then
He who glides dreamily down the glassy surface of a mighty river floats securely, making his calculations to row upward. He knows nothing what the force of that seemingly glassy current will be when his one feeble oar is set against the whole volume of its waters.
It was the fault of Clayton, and is the fault of all such men, that he judged mankind by himself. He could not believe that anything, except ignorance and inattention, could make men upholders of deliberate injustice. He thought all that was necessary was the enlightening of the public mind, the direction of general attention to the subject. In his way homeward he revolved in his mind immediate measures of action. This evil should no longer be tampered with. He
It is the last triumph of affection and magnanimity, when a loving heart can respect that suffering silence of its beloved, and allow that lonely liberty in which only some natures can find comfort.
"But would it not have been better," said Mrs. Clayton, "to have preserved your personal influence, and thus have insinuated your opinions more gradually? There is such a prejudice against abolitionists; and, when a man makes any sudden demonstration on this subject, people are apt to call him an abolitionist, and then his influence is all gone, and he can do nothing." "I suspect," said Clayton, "there are multitudes now in every part of our state who are kept from expressing what they really think, and doing what they ought to do, by this fear. Somebody must brave this mad-dog cry; somebody
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There are some cases where silence is the most disagreeable kind of dissent, because it admits of no argument in reply.
"did not the church, in the primitive ages, stand against the whole world in arms? If religion be anything, must it not take the lead of society, and be its sovereign and teacher, and not its slave?"
Miss Nina she's dead, and Mr. John Gordon,
It's my 'pinion," said Tiff, "dat when folks is honest, and does de bery best dey can, dey don't need to be 'fraid to speak to angels, nor nobody else;
There is a power in men of a certain class of making an organization of any kind, whether it be political or ecclesiastical, an object of absorbing and individual devotion. Most men feel empty and insufficient of themselves, and find a need to ballast their own insufficiency by attaching themselves to something of more weight than they are. They put their stock of being out at interest, and invest themselves somewhere and in something; and the love of wife or child is not more absorbing than the love of the bank where the man has invested himself. It is true, this power is a noble one; because
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!!!!
The anti-slavery cause he regarded with a simple eye to this question. It was a disturbing force, weakening the harmony among
brethren, threatening disruption and disunion.
"Well," said Dr. Cushing, "it's, after all, nothing but the tone of your abolition fanatics that stands in the way. These slavery discussions in general assembly have been very disagreeable and painful to our people, particularly those of the western brethren. They don't understand us, nor the delicacy of our position. They don't know that we need to be let alone in order to effect anything. Now, I am for trusting to the softening, meliorating influences of the Gospel. The kingdom of God cometh not with observation. I trust that, in his mysterious providence, the Lord will see fit, in his own
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We are not half as near to emancipation, apparently, as we were in eighteen hundred and eighteen."
We thought we would pass a resolution that slavery was a moral evil, if the southern brethren liked that better than the old way of calling it a sin, and we really were getting on quite harmoniously, when some of the southern ultras took it up; and they said that moral evil meant the same as sin, and that would imply a censure on the brethren.
CHAPTER XLII. THE RESULT.
cut off for 70% of book
Of course, we are all willing to say that slavery is an evil, 'entirely inconsistent with the spirit of the Gospel,' and all that, because that's on your own books; we only agree to say nothing about it, nowadays, in our public capacity, because what was said in eighteen hundred and eighteen is all-sufficient, and prevents the odium and scandal of public controversy now. Now,
