THE DOOR OF ESCAPE FROM ANTI-SLAVERY EMBARRASSMENTS.
THERE is a sequel to the story of Jonw BROWN and Judge O'NEALL of South Carolina, which is instructive. In March last, an Anti- Slavery meeting at Glasgow strongly censured the Judge for pro- nouncing the sentence of death on BROWN for aiding a female slave to escape. It appears that the resolutions were transmitted to the Judge by Mr. ALEXANDER HASTIE ; and JOHN BOLTON O'NEALL has penned a reply, addressed to Mr. HASTIE, and published in the Glasgow newspapers. It states some facts and makes some remarks worth consideration.
"John L. Brown was tried before me, at the November session of the Court for Fairfield district, upon the charge of stealing the slave, and aiding her to run away. The evidence very well warranted a conviction of either offence. The facts were left to a jury of the vicinage, well acquainted with Brown ; and they chose to convict him of aiding the slave to run away. The case was carried to the Court of Appeals, sitting in December at Columbia; and his motions in arrest of judgment and for new trial were refused. As the organ el the law, I pronounced the sentence, which your reverend orator has termed • a cold-blooded address.' I do not quarrel with his terms or his charity; he has a Master to whom he must account as well as I: and if he can lay his hand upon his heart and say I have done right,' 1 shall leave him to the undis- turbed enjoyment of conscious rectitude. 1 hope, however, he, you, and the Glaggow community, will observe that I did not make the law under which your much-pitied victim, John L. Brown, was condemned. It was passed in 1750, while we were under the rule of King, Lords, and Commons. Even in Scotland, I presume, it is known that a judge is bound to enforce the law ; and hence, therefore, you will know that 1 had no more discretion in awarding Brown's punishment than you would have of enforcing the laws of your own burgh. My sentence, if it be considered ' cold-blooded ' in Scotland, was written with very different feelings. It was intended to prepare, as well as I could, an erring young man for death—the death of the body. * • * " In the second place, you and your friends have made a sad mistake, in selecting 'the benevolent-minded young man, John L. Brown,' as your martyr in the cause of slavery. You suppose him to be an Abolitionist! 'Hine like lachrymw.' He is a native of Fairfield district ; an idle, dissipated young man. He kept the Mulatto woman, whom he aided to run away, for a while as his mistress. His object was not to aid her in escaping from slavery; but either to conceal her in South Carolina, and still keep her as his mistress, or to carry her to some of the other Slave States, and then, after his lust was satiated, to sell her. He is still in the world ; and if he were today charged with being an Abolitionist, he would regard it as a greater reproach than to be called a Negro thief.
"In the third place, John L. Brown has not earned the crown of martyrdom, by being 'hanged like a dog.' At the instance of myselt and my brethren, the Governor, in two or three days after the sentence was passed, commuted the punishment to forty stripes save one ; to be inflicted on the day assigned for his execution, the 26th of April. The reason for appointing a day so distant for his execution was not, as your orators suppose, to aggravate the punish- ment, but to keep him in the solitude of a prison, with the terror of an an- ticipated dreadful punishment hanging over his head, in the hope that it might be the means of reforming him, and sending him from the gaol a better man. Bat John L. Brown was not even whipped. At the instance of his neighbours of Fairfield district, the Governor granted him a full pardon ; and he was din. charged from prison on the 29th of March, six days after your great meeting. But if its proceedings, and kindred proceedings of American Abolitionists, had reached the Governor, I fear that they would have constituted poor argw. Steals for mercy. • "la the fourth place, if you and your Glasgow friends are sincere, and wish to ameliorate the condition of slavery and expedite emancipation, you will permit one who has the benefit of some experience (and who possesses a little more humanity than your orators, clergymen and scholars though they be are willing to give him credit for) most respectfully to say, that you are pursuing the very course which will defeat you. Abuse never convinced mess that thy were wrong." [All the Italics are those of the original in the Scotch papers. j
The Judge makes some taunting allusion to "White slavery" in Scotland,—which is very idle quibbling; and his vulgar reproach, that the Anti-Slavery resolutions if they had arrived sooner in
Charleston and Columbia, would have stopped a donation from South Carolina for the Free Church, is in a still lower spirit.
Throughout the letter there is a rudeness or coarseness of under- standing which makes it have the very opposite effects to those in- tended by the writer—anything but an imposing vindication of his country and its laws, and a display of his own powers. But there is sound sense in some parts. Abuse never does convince men that they are wrong ; and the course pursued by the Anti- Slavery body has defeated its efforts "to ameliorate slavery and
expedite emancipation." The Anti-Slavery people have persisted in disregarding that wise fable of the North-wind and the Sun ; they have persisted in shutting their eyes to the disastrous results of their own errors; and the consequence is, that the slave-trade continues, more cruel and profitable than ever ; emancipation of slaves in the countries where they most abound is as distant as ever, and still an unsolved problem ; and the only large community that they have succeeded in forcing to abolish slavery—that of the West Indies—is threatened with consequent ruin. Is that encour- aging? Of all countries, it is on every account most desirable to
abolish slavery in the United States : has any progress been made towards that end ? have bull-headed 'cute fellows like Judge O'NEAL', been brought nearer to conversion ? The question is still an enigma, so dark that men refuse to hazard a guess at its solution, or even to look it in the face. Is that progress?
This utter failure should suggest a revision of the policy which has led to it, and would almost imply the wisdom of resorting to
an inverse process. We cannot legislate for other countries : we can only force them to legislate themselves, if ever, by very offensive obtrusions of advice, backed with threats of fiscal loss; and the
fiscal loss cannot be inflicted without serious loss also to ourselves, for the country imposing a prohibitive or protective duty almost always pays it, though another country may lose to an equal amount.
But we can legislate for ourselves; we can in our own acts carry out our principles. We assert to foreign countries, that abolition is practicable ; that free labour is more profitable; and that it may be easily procured. Let us show in practice that it is so. We
have the means. Instead of obstructing, as heretofore, let us assist the West Indian colonists—who must perforce be our agents in the
process—to obtain free labour whencesoever it may come. Let us put them in a position to show that, with free labour, countries trading in Tropical produce can prosper. Let us not tax others by self-recoiling import-duties, because they differ with us in opinion; but let us content us with ourselves abjuring the sin of slavery— with showing that they who forego it prosper best, not only in their
soul's peace, but in worldly advantages ; let us show that safety and wealth, not disorder and ruin, wait on emancipation. That great example and illustration of free labour would do more to convince slave-owning countries of the soundness of our views, than cart- loads of invective, or fleets of ships hunting for prize-money. It could offend none; it could be no pretext for hostile and embar- rassing reproaches.
Previous page
