The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive/Chapter 43
Mr Telfair, perhaps from professional habit, seemed to run upon such subjects as occupied his mind, into a sort of lengthened discourse, and I let him go on without interruption. Mr Mason, I had observed during this conversation, had not let drop a single word; and after Mr Telfair had left us, I felt some curiosity to draw him out. I accordingly put to him several questions, by way of getting at his opinion of the colonization scheme. "I am a member," he said, "of the Colonization Society, secretary, in fact, of the same branch of which Mr Telfair is president; one of my servants, a superior man, who evinced a disposition to go, I set free and sent to Liberia; but I am sorry to say he died of the seasoning fever within a month or two after his arrival. I always thought the Colonization Society a good thing, as a sort of a brooding hen, under whose wings the callow humane sentiment of the south might take shelter, and be cherished and kept alive against a time of more efficient action. I never expected any thing important from what it might do directly, but a good deal from its keeping the evils of slavery, and the necessity of some remedy for them, constantly before the public mind. The best thing it has done yet certainly is, its having hatched out of its northern eggs these same abolition societies, which are making so much stir just at this moment."
"Indeed," I asked, "and is that the fact?"
"So far as I am informed," said Mr. Mason, "all the most active persons in these abolition societies first had their attention drawn to the subject by the colonization scheme. Of that scheme several of them were originally warm champions. But on further consideration, it seemed too much like carrying coals to Newcastle, the transporting some two or three millions of people from their homes, where their labor is greatly needed, and is capable of being productively applied, across the ocean to an uncultivated wilderness, where the native supply of labor already far exceeds the demand. As the slaves must be emancipated before they can be colonized, it seemed quite effort enough to emancipate them here, without being obliged to provide in addition for their transportation out of the country, at immense and ruinous expense, depriving the southern states of that productive labor which is the very thing they stand most in need of. It was these ideas combined with those of the sin and wrong of slavery, a wrong and sin to be abandoned, not gradually, but at once, that no doubt gave rise to the abolition societies."
"But," I asked, "in view of such results as those mentioned by Mr Telfair, how can you speak of the springing up of these societies as a good thing?"
"I hope," said Mr Mason, looking round with an air of some uneasiness, but whether real or assumed I could hardly tell — "I hope there are no lurking members of the committee of vigilance within ear shot. Our overseers have a habit of playing the eavesdropper among the negro cabins, and how soon the same system may be extended to us masters is more than I can tell. But to answer your question," — and here he sunk his voice almost to a whisper, — "the first step towards the cure of any serious disorder is to understand the real nature of it, and especially to bring the patient himself to a true sense of his own condition. And that is a result which these abolition societies are already beginning to produce. Even those who have thought most about it have never hitherto been fully aware of the real nature and extent of the evil we had to deal with. We knew indeed that our American goddess of liberty lay asleep and dreaming, like Milton's Eve, with a foul toad at her ear; yet we thought that, after all, it was but a toad, which, however ugly and venomous, the growing light of day, as the sun was getting towards high noon, would drive to skulk into some hole or other. But these northern abolitionists having undertaken to poke the creature a little by way of hastening his progress, choosing for that purpose the famous national declaration of ours that all men are created free, with certain unalienable rights, — see how this, as we thought comparatively harmless thing, starts up a horrible and bloodthirsty monster, threatening to swallow down the poor trembling goddess of American liberty at a single gulp! I do not mean the liberty of black men or colored men, — for here in America they never had any, — but the liberty of us white men, us masters.
"The pretended danger of slave insurrection is made occasion for suppressing all liberty of thought, speech, or writing, derogatory to the institution of slavery. That danger does very well to frighten fools with, and it is by frightening fools that knaves generally get themselves intrusted with power. But the insurrection, as Mr Telfair very well remarked, which the leaders in this business are most afraid of, is not an insurrection of slaves, but an insurrection of. conscience — an insurrection which they intend to find the means, if they can, to anticipate and prevent.
"Here, now," he added, taking up a newspaper, "here it is openly confessed and stated in so many words by the Washington Telegraph, a leading champion of the rights and interests of the slaveholder, and a chief promoter of all the prevailing alarm: 'We hold' — here he read from the paper — 'that we have most to fear from the gradual operation of public opinion among ourselves, and that those are the most insidious and dangerous invaders of our rights and interests, who, coming to us in the guise of friendship, endeavor to persuade us that slavery is a sin, a curse, and an evil. Our greatest cause of apprehension is from the operation of the morbid sensibility which appeals to the consciences of our people, and would make them the voluntary instruments of their own destruction.' And the way in which it is proposed to prevent these appeals to the morbid sensibility of conscience is pretty distinctly set forth in another paragraph, which I find quoted from the Columbia: Telescope, a South Carolina paper: 'Let us declare that the question of slavery is not, and shall not be, open to discussion; that the system is deep rooted among us, and must remain forever; that the very moment any private individual attempts to lecture us upon its evils and immorality, and the necessity of putting means in operation to secure us from them, in the same moment his tongue shall be cut out and cast upon the dunghill.'
"This appeal to southern consciences, which it is proposed to put down by this summary process, has revealed the true state of the case. The great mass of our people, whether at the south or the north, even those who speak of slavery as an evil, do not really regard it so. Compared with the emancipation of the laves, they regard it as a positive good. They may possibly admit that slavery is bad, but they are quite certain that freedom would be much worse. Then, again, there appears to be among us a vastly larger class than any body supposed, who hold that slavery is no evil at all in any sense, but a positive good — a good thing for the slaves, who are thus enabled to live free from care, in sleek and happy contentment, and a good thing for the masters, who, in being raised above the necessity of base and servile employments, are thus enabled to preserve the dignity of freedom. This romantic view of the case might not, perhaps, so well bear discussion, but you see they do not intend to allow any. Yet, without a full and free discussion of our existing system, in all its bearings and operations, how can we reasonably hope or expect to bring about any beneficial change? The struggle which you now see beginning, and which this northern appeal to southern consciences has provoked, is plainly, to my mind, the final and decisive struggle between the extension and perpetuation of slavery on the one hand and emancipation on the other. he institution of slavery in this country is vastly more potent than any body had supposed. It not only has complete control of the governments of all the southern states, so as to be enabled to enact whatever laws it pleases, but, by means of its vigilance committees and its system of lynchings, it completely overrides both laws and constitutions in the exercise of a despotic and arbitrary power, derived from the discretionary discipline of the plantation, but totally inconsistent with all established ideas of English or American liberty. Not content with this, it is eagerly clutching at all the powers and patronage of the general government, which it seeks to transform from a bulwark of freedom to a bulwark of slavery; and not content with this, it seeks to dictate to the northern states a course of action in conformity with this same view. Having completely suppressed, at least for the time being, all liberty, at the south, of speech, writing, or reading on this forbidden subject, it is endeavoring to accomplish the same thing at the north. Northern politicians are stimulated, by hopes of currying southern favor, to put themselves at the head of anti-abolition mobs, and northern merchants, by the hope of securing southern customers, to hold public meetings to call upon the state legislatures to pass laws to restrict the liberty of the press. That very thing I see has just been done in the degenerate city of Philadelphia; and Boston and New York are very loudly called upon to imitate the disgraceful example. Yes, Mr Moore, seasonably or unseasonably the great battle has begun, the great struggle on which the future fate of America is to depend. The slavery or the freedom of our colored inhabitants is an interesting question; that, however, has already become but a merely subordinate one. The first great question is, Shall not merely the political, but the intellectual, moral, and religious control of this country pass into the hands of the upholders of perpetual slavery? or shall our old American notions that all men are equal before God, and ought to be equal before the law, continue to circulate? Shall the control, not only of our politics and legislation, but of our newspapers, our churches, our literature, our public sentiment, pass into the hands of the hard, the cruel, the tyrants by nature, the mercenary, the scoffers at justice and human rights, the sleek, comfortable time-servers, equally ready, for a consideration, to read prayers to God or to the devil? or shall the votaries of human advancement, the friends of man, the true servants of the God of love, have liberty to live, speak, and labor among us? The first question is about our own liberty, and that not alone the liberty of acting, but the mere liberty even of writing, reading, talking, and thinking."
Warming with his subject, and striding up and down the room, Mr Mason had uttered all the latter part of this long discourse, not without many gesticulations, and in a tone of voice rising at times a little above the ordinary key. But he suddenly checked himself, and added, in a subdued tone, "I, for my part, had rather been born the most miserable negro in North Carolina, than, having enjoyed, as I have, the advantages of education and the privileges of freedom, to find myself, from being the master, as I had imagined, of my own slaves, my own thoughts, and my own course of conversation and reading, all at once converted into a deputy slave driver, under a committee of vigilance, composed,as those committees generally are, of the greatest fools and the greatest scoundrels among us, and obliged to read, talk, and think under their inquisitorial jurisdiction."
"Pardon me," said I, "Mr Mason, if I take the liberty Of putting one question. How is it possible that, entertaining the opinions which, since I have enjoyed the pleasure of your hospitality, I have heard you so freely express — how is it possible that you can continue a slaveholder?" "As to that," answered Mr Mason, "you must have observed before how that the opinions and practices of men do not always run in parallel channels. A man's own opinion and his own choice have often very little to do with the position which he occupies. The people on this and the other plantation came to me by inheritance. You certainly would not have me, to escape from a position personally disagreeable, sell out my interest in slaves, pocket the money, move off to the north, and leave them to their fate."
"No, certainly," I replied; "if they are to remain slaves, I hardly think they would gain any thing by a change of masters."
"Their remaining slaves," said Mr Mason, "is not, at present, a thing within my control. In the first place, there exists still an undischarged mortgage, in which they are included. But that I hope to pay off within the next six months. Then the portions of these two young sisters of mine are a lien upon the estate, for the discharge of which I have yet made only a partial provision. Then, again, here in North Carolina, a master cannot set his slaves free at his own will and pleasure. He must first have the consent of the county court; and nowadays that is not a thing so easy to be obtained."
"However," he added, "since I have gone so far in making a confidant of you, I will tell you yet another secret. I do not mean to remain a slaveholder except just so long as is necessary, to escape from that position with honor to myself and benefit to all the parties concerned. All my arrangements are made with that view. To give me any freedom of action in this matter, it is necessary first to clear off the encumbrances, the debts due, and the portions of my sisters. Those sisters are to set off in a few days for the north, there to be placed for their education. I mean to invest their money at the north. I hope they will marry and settle at the north. They shall have no slaveholding husbands if I can help it, and that for more reasons than one. I don't want my sisters to be the mere heads of a seraglio, with some black or brown favorite, perhaps, quite carrying the day over them in real preference. Their poor mother — you are to observe they are only half sisters of mine — suffered quite enough in that way. The poor woman actually fretted herself to death with jealousy and vexation, for which, I am sorry to say, my honored father gave her too much cause. In fact, he had very patriarchal ideas. You may easily perceive, from the variety of complexion, that, among the servants here and at Poplar Grove, there is a considerable infusion of Anglo-Saxon blood. I don't doubt that a large part of the lighter colored among them can claim more or less of blood relationship to myself; and therefore I feel the more called upon to act the part, not of a mean, selfish despot, but of the head of a family, the chief of a tribe, whose clansmen are his poor relations, who have a family claim upon him for the judicious conduct of their joint affairs.
"My plan is this: As soon as the debts are_ paid, and I have laid by enough money to purchase a good tract of land in Ohio or Indiana, I mean to emigrate with the whole family. To set them free here, even if there were no legal obstacles in the way, would not, in the present state of feeling towards free colored people, and the little chance they can have to rise in the world, be much of a favor. It would be too much like setting them free as the coons are, as one of them once said to me, making a sort of free vermin of them, rather than free men. And with the ignorance and incapacity which a life of slavery has engendered, and the prejudices and obstacles they would have to encounter in any of the free states, — in some respects more violent and oppressive than those felt here, — it would hardly be much of a favor to send them out by themselves, to seek their fortune at the north. To give them a fair chance, to prevent them from bringing a disgrace on the idea of emancipation, I intend to go with them, and to be the leader and founder of the colony. That is the work for which J reserve myself. I live a bachelor, as you see; nor do I ever mean to marry, so long as I live in a slave state. With all these people to settle and provide for, I have quite family enough, quite encumbrances enough on my hands, without that."
What an honest glow of enthusiasm, confidence, and self-respect kindled in Mr Mason's face as he spoke! How. the nobleness of the man grew upon me as he thus detailed his plans and intentions! Here, indeed, was the spirit of genuine Christianity. Here was a man indeed. How small a number of such men would suffice to save the southern Sodom from perdition! to make it truly a land of joy, of justice, of peace, plenty, and of hope, instead of what it now is — the stumbling-block of freedom, the opprobrium of civilization and Christianity!