If the offense of Slavery were less extended; if it were confined to some narrow region; if it had less of grandeur in its proportions; if its victims were counted by tens and hundreds, instead of millions, the five headed enormity would find little indulgence. All owuld rise against it, while religions and civilization would lavish there choicests efforts in the general warfare. But what is wrong when done to one man cannot be right when done to many. If it is wrong thus to degrade a single soul - if it is wrong to degrade you Mr. President, - it cannot be right to degrade a whole race. And yet this is deniced by tthe barbarous logic of Slavery, which, taking advantage of its won wrong, claims immunity because its Usurption has assumed a front of audacity that cannot be safely attacked. Unhappily, there is Barbarism elsewhere in the world; but American Slavery, as defined by existing law, stands forth as the greatest organized Barbarism on which the sun now shines. It is without single peer. Its author, making it, broke the die.
If curiosity carries us to the origin of this law - and here I approach a topic often considered in this Chamber- we shall confess again its barbarism. It is not derived from common law, that fountain of liberty; for this law, while unhappily recognizing a system of servitude known as villienage, secured to the bondmn privileges unknown to the American slave; protected his person against mayhem; protected his wife against rape; gave 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 Roman law, that fountain of tyranny for two reasons- first, because this law, in its better days, when its early rigors were spent - like the common law itself - secured to bondman privileges unknown to the American slave - in certain cases of cruelty rescued from his master - prevented the 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 Roman Law, while this law, even before the discovery of this continent, had lost all living efficacy. It is not derived from the Mahomedan law; for under the mild injunctions of the Koran, a benignant servitdue, unlike yourse, has prevailed, where the lash is not allowed 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 his bond-woman, takes her from the transferable character of a chattel, and confers complete freedom upon her offspring. It is not derived fro the Spanish lawl for this law contains humane elements, unknown to your system, borrowed, perhaps, from the Mahomedan Moors who so long occupied Spainl and, besides, our Thirteen colonies had no umbilical connection with Spainl. 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 other Senators that in not a single State of the Union can any such statutes 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 monstersl from Guinia, Dahomey, and Congo. There is its origin and fountain. This benighted region, we are told by Chief Justice Marshall in a memorabe Judgement, (The Antelope, 10 Wheaton R., 66) still asserts a right, discarded by Christendom, to enslave captives taken in war; and this African Barbarism is the beginning of American Slavery. And the Supreme Court of Georgia, A Slave State, has not shrunk from the 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." (Neal vs Farmer, 9 Georgia Reports, p. 555.) It is natural that a right, thus derived in defiance of Christendom, and openly founded on the most vulgar Paganism, should be exercised, without any mitigaging influence of Christianity; that the master's authority over the person of his slave- over his conjugal relations - over his parental relations - over the employment of his time - over all his acquisitions, should be recognized, while no generous presumption inclines to Freedom, and the womb of the bond-woman can deliver only a slave.
From its home in Africa, where it is sustained by immemorial usage, this barbarism, thus derived and thus developed, traversed the ocean to American soil. It entered on board that fatal slave ship "built in the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark," which in 1629 landed its cruel cargo at Jamestown, in Virginia, and it has boldly taken its place in every succeeding slave-ship from that early day till now - helping to pack the human freight, regardless of human agonyl surviving its countless victime plunged beneath the waves; and it has left the slave-ship only to travel inseperable from the slave in his various doom, santioning by its barbarous code every outrage, wheter of mayhem or robbery, of lash or lust, and fastening itself upon his off-spring to the remotest generation. Thus are the barbarous perogatives of barbarous half-naked African chiefs perpetuated in American slave masters, while the Senator from Virginia, [Mr. Mason] perhaps unconscious of their origin - perhaps desirous to secure for them the appearance of a less barbarous pedigree - tricks them out with the phrase of the Roman law, discarded by the common law, partus sequitor ventrum, which simply renders into ancient Latin an existing rule of African barbarism, recognized as an existing rule of American Slavery.
Such is the plain juridical of the American slave code, which is now vaunted as a badge of civilization. But all law, whatever may be its juridical origin, whether English or Mahomedan, Roman or African, may be traced to other and ampler influences in nature, sometime of Right, and sometimes of Wrong. Surely the law which blasted the slave trade as piracy punishable by death had a different inspiration from that other law, which secured immunity for the slave trade thoughout an immense territory, and invested its supporters with political power. As there is a higher law above, so there is a lower law below, and each is felt in human affairs.