THE AMERICAN SLAVE CODE.

PRELIMINARY CHAPTER.

OCCASIONS AND USES FOR THIS VOLUME.

THE practical importance of an exact knowledge of the Slave Code and of its legitimate workings, will be manifest from the considerations that follow.

It is often maintained that the "legal relation of master and slave" is not a criminal one, and that there is no sin, or moral wrong, in the mere fact of sustaining that relation. On the other hand, it is held that the relation is wrong in itself, and cannot be innocently sustained.

Such a question cannot, intelligently, be settled without a correct understanding of that "legal relation," and of the particulars in which it consists. And it is only by the Slave Code of the country that "the legal relation" can be ascertained. By this, and by this only, is it to be defined. "The legal relation of master and slave" is what the Slave Code declares it to be. And it is nothing else.

It is worse than mere trifling, it is evasion and sophistry, to ransack the archives of some other age

and nation for the laws and usages which then con stituted slavery, or which we may now choose to call slavery; and then, on the assumed (or even the ascertained) innocency or divine sanction or tolerance of those usages, to argue the innocency of the existing "relation of master and slave" in this country. Sincere and honest inquirers are bound to ascertain "the legal relation of master and slave" as it now exists in America, in virtue of the code that authorizes and defines it. They are bound to bring "the legal relation," as thus defined and ascertained, to the standard of the Divine will, and say to whether or no it corresponds with that standard. The question whether it is right or wrong to sanction such a "legal relation" by "sustaining" it, will then be easily settled.

No man, in America, can hold a slave by any other tenure, or in any other "relation," than that which the American Slave Code describes. He cannot hold a slave under the code of Moses, (if it ever could have been done,) nor under the usages of Abraham's day, for no such code or usages now exist. If he relinquishes the hold on his slave that the American Slave Code gives him, he manumits him, at once and entirely. Let him do this, or let that code be blotted out, and he cannot forcibly retain a man in bondage a single day, without becoming a felon in the eye the law. So that in "sustaining the legal relation," he sustains and sanctions the code, and its character becomes his. The more unsullied his reputation may be in other respects, the more effectually does his

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example of slaveholding sanction the system, and rivet the chains of the slave.

It must be futile and absurd to decry the code, and yet attempt to justify him who holds a slave under it. The code would harm no one, if no one ever made use of it. The worst that can properly be said of the code is, that it enables men who are thus disposed to hold the "relation" described by it. For, the very men for whose consideration we make this remark are forward to tell us that the system (in other words, the code) is not to be held responsible for the mere abuses committed under it. It must, then, be responsible for the relation, and those who sustain the relation must be responsible for it.

We propose, then, by an exhibition of the American Slave Code, to test the moral character of American slaveholding. The practice (in the absence of mere abuses) cannot be better than the code, or rule of conduct, that gives it license and sanction.

On the other hand, the usages under any code are seldom or never better than the code itself. Communities are not forward to proclaim themselves worse than they are, by giving public license to evil practices not prevalent among them, and which they do not intend to practise and sustain. "No people," says a learned writer and profound thinker,* "were ever yet found who were better than their laws, though many have been known to be worse." The only exceptions to this rule are where bad laws

* Dr. Priestley.

are forced upon a community without their consent; or where, from their odiousness, or by the progress of civilization since their enactment, they have become obsolete. In our own country, the people (except the victims of the Slave Code) enact their own statutes. And in the present investigation it will be made apparent that the Slave Code has not become obsolete.

The present contest for the abolition of American slavery has encountered a species of opposition which it has been difficult to meet. If existing practices are arraigned, we are told that these are only abuses of the system, which argue nothing against the innocent "legal relation." Thus all efforts for the abolition of that innocent relation are discountenanced and disparaged. At the same time, all adequate, trustworthy, and truthful representations of the cruelties habitually and extensively practised upon slaves, are scouted as incredible or exaggerated. Attempts are made to offset them by the cool remark that parents are sometimes cruel to their children, mechanics to their apprentices, and capitalists to operatives in their employ. To this it is often added that, on the whole, slaves are as well off as other laboring people, and better off than they would be if set free. In this way, the sympathies of the people of the North are withdrawn from the slaves. And whether we arraign "the legal relation," or the socalled "abuses," we find our attacks warded off by the arts of sophistry and evasion. Even ministers of religion and ecclesiastical bodies have been proficients