Bondmen and bondmaids might be bought of the heathen round about them.  Lev. xxv, 44.

I will now try the right of the southern planter by the claims of Hebrew masters to their heathen servants.  Were the southern slaves bought from the heathen?  No!  For surely, no one will now vindicate the slave-trade so far as to assert that slaves were bought from the heathen who were obtained by that system of piracy.  The only excuse for holding southern slaves is that they were born in slavery, but we have seen that they were not born in servitude as Jewish servants were, and that the children of heathen servants were not legally subjected to bondage, even under the Mosaic Law.  How then have the slaves of the South been obtained?

I will next proceed to an examination of those laws which were enacted in order to protect the Hebrew and the Heathen servant; for I wish you to understand that both were protected by Him, of whom it is said “his mercies are over all his works.”  I will first speak of those which secured the rights of Hebrew servants.  This code was headed thus: 

1.  Thou shalt not rule over him with rigor, but shalt fear thy God.

2.  If thou buy a Hebrew servant, six years shall he serve, and in the seventh year he shall go out free for nothing.  Ex. xxi, 2.  And when thou sendest him out free from thee, thou shalt not let him go away empty:  Thou shalt furnish him liberally out of thy flock and out of thy floor, and out of thy wine-press:  of that wherewith the Lord thy God hath blessed thee, shalt thou give unto him.  Deut. xv, 13, 14.

3.  If he come in by himself, he shall go out by himself; if he were married, then his wife shall go out with him.  Ex. xxi, 3.

4.  If his master have given him a wife, and she have borne him sons and daughters, the wife and her children shall be his master’s, and he shall go out by himself.  Ex. xxi, 4.

5.  If the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free; then his master shall bring him unto the Judges, and he shall bring him to the door, or unto the door-post, and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl, and he shall serve him for ever.  Ex. xxi, 5, 6.

6.  If a man smite the eye of his servant, or the eye of his maid, that it perish, he shall let him go free for his eye’s sake.  And if he smite out his man servant’s tooth or his maid servant’s tooth, he shall let him go free for his tooth’s sake.  Ex. xxi, 26, 27.

7.  On the Sabbath, rest was secured to servants by the fourth commandment.  Ex. xx, 10.

8.  Servants were permitted to unite with their masters three times in every year in celebrating the Passover, the feast of Weeks, and the feast of Tabernacles; every male throughout the land was to appear before the Lord at Jerusalem with a gift; here the bond and the free stood on common ground.  Deut. xvi.