Slavery and the ConstitutionBowditch, William I. (William Ingersoll)
Religion
Slavery and the Constitution
Bowditch, William I. (William Ingersoll)
Enslaved persons -- United States -- Social conditions; Slavery -- United States
[N] "The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church recently expelled a
minister from both the ministry and the church, for marrying a sister of
his deceased wife."--_The Church as it is_, p. 76.
[O] Colored persons are not competent witnesses on the trial of a white
man. Any white man, therefore, can, with perfect impunity, commit any
excess whatever upon any slaves, so long as they or their companions
alone are witnesses. So carefully does the law guard the honor of the
female slave!
[P] The original of this advertisement may be seen at the Anti-Slavery
office, Boston, 21, Cornhill, pasted on one side of a copy of the
newspaper called "Spirit of Liberty"! How appropriate a heading!
[Q] For this and other advertisements from Boston papers, I am indebted
to my friend Wendell Phillips.
[R] We cut this advertisement from the "Boston Daily Republican" of Aug.
30, 1849. It previously appeared in the "Providence Journal."
[S] A writer in the "New Orleans Argus," Sept. 1830, in an article on
the culture of the sugar-cane, says,--"The loss by death in bringing
slaves from a northern climate, which our planters are under the
necessity of doing, is not less than twenty-five per cent"! Our tables
prove the same thing. Of the 40,000 slaves annually carried south, only
29,101 are found to survive;--a greater sacrifice of life than that
caused by the middle passage!
[T] The Act of 1741, of which this law is in part a revision, reads
thus, sec. 45: "Which proclamation shall be published on a _sabbath-day
at the door of every church or chapel, or, for want of such, at the
place where divine service shall be performed in the said county, by the
parish clerk or reader, immediately after divine service_; and, if any
slave or slaves, against whom proclamation hath been thus issued, stay
out and do not immediately return home, it shall be lawful for any
person or persons whatsoever to kill and destroy such slave or slaves by
such ways or means as he or she shall think fit, without accusation or
impeachment of any crime for the same."--In those happy days, Father
Taylor would not have been called on to thank God, that the man who was
on the point of strangling his brother according to law was not troubled
by any feeling of _sentimentalism_!
[U] The Rev. Dr. Furman, of North Carolina, another Baptist clergyman,
like Dr. Fuller wrote a defence of slavery. After his death, his legal
representative advertised for sale at auction his real estate, and "a
library of a miscellaneous character, _chiefly theological_;
twenty-seven negroes, _some of them very prime_," &c. ("The Church as it
is," p. 73.)
[V] This point, and the legality of Colonial and State Slavery, are more
elaborated in an article called "The Constitutionality of Slavery,"
printed in the "Massachusetts Quarterly Review;" a purely legal,
uninteresting examination, which needs not to be repeated here.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account