Slavery. By William E. Channing [pp. 268-306]

Slavery.
nised as Christians? It cannot be that slaveholding belongs
to the same category with these crimes; and to assert the
contrary, is to assert that Christ is the minister of sin.
This is a point of so much importance, lying as it does at
the very foundation of the whole subject, that it deserves to
be attentively considered. The grand mistake, as we apprehend, of those who maintain that slaveholding is itself a
crime, is, that they do not discriminate between slaveholding
in itself considered, and its accessories at any particular time
or place. Because masters may treat their slaves unjustly,
or governments make oppressive laws in relation to them, is
no more a valid argument against the lawfulness of slaveholding, than the abuse of parental authority, or the unjust
political laws of certain states, is an argument against the
lawfulness of the parental relation, or of civil government.
This confusion of points so widely distinct, appears to us to
run through almost all the popular publications on slavery,
and to vitiate their arguments. Mr. Jay, for example, quotes
the second article of the constitution of the American AntiSlavery Society, which declares that "slaveholding is a heinous crime in the sight of God," and then, to justify this
declaration, makes large citations from the laws of the several southern states, to show what the system of slavery is
in this country, and concludes by saying, "This is the system which the American Anti-Slavery Society declares to
be sinful, and ought therefore to be immediately abolished."
There is, however, no necessary connexion between his premises and conclusion. We may admit all those laws which
forbid the instruction of slaves; which interfere with their
marital or parental rights; which subject them to the insults
and oppression of the whites, to be in the highest degree
unjust, without at all admitting that slaveholding itself is a
crime. Slavery may exist without any one of these concomitants. In pronouncing on the moral character of an act,
it is bbviously necessary to have a clear idea of what it is;
yet how few of those who denounce slavery, have any well
defined conception of its nature. They have a confused idea
of chains and whips, of degradation and misery, of ignorance
and vice, and to this complex conception they apply the
name slavery, and denounce it as the aggregate of all moral
and physical evil. Do such persons suppose that slavery, as
it existed in the family of Abraham, was such as their imagi nations thus picture to themselves? Might not that patri arch have had men purchased with his silver, who were well
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