Xiv.
If curiosity carries us to the origin of this law,—and here I approach a topic often considered in this Chamber,—we shall again confess its Barbarism. It is not derived from the Common Law, that fountain of Liberty; for this law, while unhappily recognizing a system of servitude known as villeinage, secured to the bondman privileges unknown to the American slave,—guarded his person against mayhem,—protected his wife against rape,—gave to his marriage equal validity with the marriage of his master,—and surrounded his offspring with generous presumptions of Freedom, unlike that rule of yours by which the servitude of the mother is necessarily stamped upon the child. It is not derived from the Roman Law, that fountain of Tyranny, for two reasons: first, because this law, in its better days, when its early rigors were spent. like [325] the Common Law itself, secured to the bondman privileges unknown to the American slave,—in certain cases of cruelty rescued him from his master, prevented separation of parents and children, also of brothers and sisters, and even protected him in the marriage relation; and, secondly, because the Thirteen Colonies were not derived from any of those countries which recognized the Roman Law, while this law, even before the discovery of this continent, had lost all living efficacy. It is not derived from the Mohammedan Law; for, under the mild injunctions of the Koran, a benignant servitude, unlike yours, has prevailed, —where the lash is not allowed to lacerate the back of a female,— where no knife or branding-iron is employed upon any human being, to mark him as the property of his fellow-man,—where the master is expressly enjoined to listen to the desires of his slave for emancipation,—and where the blood of the master, mingling with that of his bondwoman, takes from her the transferable character of chattel, and confers complete freedom upon their offspring. It is not derived from the Spanish Law; for this law contains hnmane elements unknown to your system, borrowed, perhaps, from Mohammedan Moors who so long occupied Spain; and, besides, our Thirteen Colonies had no umbilical connection with Spain. Nor is it derived from English statutes or American statutes; for we have the positive and repeated averment of the Senator from Virginia [Mr. Mason], and also of other Senators, that in not a single State of the Union can any such statutes establishing Slavery be found. From none of these does it come. No, Sir, not from any land of Civilization is this Barbarism derived. It comes from Africa, ancient nurse of monsters,—from Guinea, Dahomey, and Congo. There is its origin and fountain. This benighted region, we are told by Chief-Justice Marshall in a memorable judgment, still asserts a right, discarded by Christendom, to enslave captives taken in war; and this African Barbarism is the beginning of American Slavery. The Supreme Court of Georgia, a Slave State, has not shrunk from this conclusion. ‘Licensed to hold slave property,’ says the Court, ‘the Georgia planter held the slave as a chattel, either directly from the slave trader or from those who held under him, and he from the slave-captor in Africa. The property of the planter in the slave became thus the property of the original captor.’ It is natural that a right thus derived in defiance of Christendom, and openly founded on the most vulgar Paganism, should be exercised without mitigating influence from Christianity,—that the master's authority over the person of his slave, over his conjugal relations, over his parental relations, over the employment [326] of his time, over all his acquisitions, should be recognized, while no generous presumption inclines to Freedom, and the womb of the bondwoman can deliver only a slave.
