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Read Ebook: Essay on the Principles of Translation by Woodhouselee Alexander Fraser Tytler Lord
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Ebook has 179 lines and 12383 words, and 4 pages
J. Warren Keifer
Andrew H. Reeder, first governor of Kansas Territory, Flight in Disguise, 1855
Abraham Lincoln
Map of the United States, 1860
General Ulysses S. Grant, U.S.A.
Confederate Silver Half-Dollar
John Beatty, Brigadier-General of Volunteers
Rich Mountain and Cheat Mountain Country, W. Va.
General William T. Sherman, U.S.A.
Major-General O. M. Mitchel
Brevet Brigadier-General Wm. H. Ball
Rev. William T. Meloy, D. D., Lieutenant 122d Ohio Volunteers
Major-General Robert H. Milroy
Lieutenant James A. Fox, 110th Ohio Volunteers
Map of Shenandoah valley
Rev. Milton J. Miller, Chaplain 110th Ohio Volunteers
Rev. Charles C. McCabe, D. D., Bishop M. E. Church, Chaplain 122d Ohio Volunteers
SLAVERY AND FOUR YEARS OF WAR
SLAVERY AND FOUR YEARS OF WAR
I INTRODUCTORY
Slavery is older than tradition--older than authentic history, and doubtless antedates any organized form of human government. It had its origin in barbaric times. Uncivilized man never voluntarily performed labor even for his own comfort; he only struggled to gain a bare subsistence. He did not till the soil, but killed wild animals for food and to secure a scant covering for his body; and cannibalism was common. Tribes were formed for defence, and thus wars came, all, however, to maintain mere savage existence. Through primitive wars captives were taken, and such as were not slain were compelled to labor for their captors. In time these slaves were used to domesticate useful animals and, later, were forced to cultivate the soil and build rude structures for the comfort and protection of their masters. Thus it was that mankind was first forced to toil and ultimately came to enjoy labor and its incident fruits, and thus human slavery became a first step from barbarism towards the ultimate civilization of mankind.
White slavery existed in the English-American colonies antecedent to black or African slavery, though at first only intended to be conditional and not to extend to offspring. English, Scotch, and Irish alike, regardless of ancestry or religious faith, were, for political offenses, sold and transported to the dependent American colonies. They were such persons as had participated in insurrections against the Crown; many of them being prisoners taken on the battle- field, as were the Scots taken on the field of Dunbar, the royalist prisoners from the field of Worcester; likewise the great leaders of the Penruddoc rebellion, and many who were taken in the insurrection of Monmouth.
Of these, many were first sold in England to be afterwards re-sold on shipboard to the colonies, as men sell horses, to the highest bidder.
There was also, in some of the colonies, a conditional servitude, under indentures, for servants, debtors, convicts, and perhaps others. These forms of slavery made the introduction of negro and perpetual slavery easy.
Australasia alone, of all inhabited parts of the globe, has the honor, so far as history records, of never having a slave population.
Egyptian history tells us of human bondage; the patriarch Abraham, the founder of the Hebrew nation, owned and dealt in slaves. That the law delivered to Moses from Mt. Sinai justified and tolerated human slavery was the boast of modern slaveholders.
Moses, from "Nebo's heights," saw the "land of promise," where flowed "milk and honey" in abundance, and where slavery existed. The Hebrew people, but forty years themselves out of bondage, possessed this land and maintained slavery therein.
The advocates of slavery and the slave trade exultingly quoted:
"And I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hands of the children of Judah, and they shall sell them to the Sabeans, to a people far off; for the Lord hath spoken it."--Joel iii, 8.
They likewise claimed that St. Paul, while he preached the gospel to slaveholders and slaves alike in Rome, yet used his calling to enable him to return to slavery an escaped human being--Onesimus.
The advocates of domestic slavery justified it as of scriptural and divine origin.
From the Old Testament they quoted other texts, not only to justify the holding of slaves in perpetual bondage, but the continuance of the slave trade with all its cruelties.
"And he said, I am Abraham's servant."--Gen. xxiv., 34.
"I got me servants and maidens and had servants born in my house; also I had great possessions of great and small cattle above all that were in Jerusalem before me."--Eccles. ii., 7.
"And he said, Hagar, Sarai's maid, whence comest thou? and she said, I flee from the face of my mistress Sarai.
"And the angel of the Lord said unto her, Return to thy mistress, and submit thyself to her hands."--Gen. xvi., 8, 9.
"A servant will not be corrected by words; for though he understand, he will not answer."--Prov. xxix., 19.
And from the New Testament they triumphantly quoted:
"Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was called. Art thou called being a servant? care not for it; but if thou mayest be made free, use it rather."--I Cor., vii., 20-22.
"Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ," etc.
"And, ye masters, do the same things unto them, forbearing threatening: knowing that your Master also is in heaven; neither is there respect of persons with him."--Eph., vi., 5-9.
"Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh, not with eye service, as men pleasers; but in singleness of heart, fearing God."--Col. iii., 22.
"Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal; knowing that ye also have a Master in heaven."--Col. iv., 1.
"Let as many servants as are under the yoke count their own masters worthy of all honor, that the name of God and his doctrines be not blasphemed," etc.--I Tim., vi., 1, 2.
"Exhort servants to be obedient unto their own masters, and to please them well in all things; not answering again; not purloining, but showing all good fidelity; that they may adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things."--Titus ii., 9, 10.
"Torture the hollowed pages of the Bible, To sanction crime, and robbery, and blood, And, in oppression's hateful service, libel Both man and God."
The deductions made from the texts quoted were unwarranted. The principles of justice and mercy, on which the Christian religion is founded, cannot be tortured into even a toleration of the existence of the unnatural and barbaric institution of slavery, or the slave trade.
The friends of freedom and those who believed slavery sinful never for a moment assented to the claim that it was sanctioned by Holy Writ, or that it was justified by early and long-continued existence through barbaric or semi-barbaric times. They denied that it could thus even be sanctified into a moral right; that time ever converted cruelty into a blessing, or a wrong into a right; that any human law could give it legal existence, or rightfully perpetuate it against natural justice; they maintained that a Higher Law, written in God's immutable decrees of mercy, was paramount to all human law or practice, however long continuing; that the lessons taught by Christ in the Sermon on the Mount and in all his life and teachings were a condemnation of it; and that an enlightened, progressive civilization demanded its final overthrow.
Alexander, the mighty Macedonian , sold captives taken at Tyre and Gaza, the most accomplished people of that time, into slavery.
Rome had her slaves; and her slave-marts were open at her principal ports for traffic in men and women of all nationalities, especially Christians and captives taken in war.
The German nations of the shores of the Baltic carried on the desolating traffic. Russia recognized slavery and carried on a slave trade through her merchantmen.
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