CHAPTER XII.

The subject of slavery for the last thirty-five years has been an exciting one in the United States.  There has been much discussion, and what is worse, much angry contention on the subject.  It has been a hobby for demagogues, and a fire-brand in the hands of factious disorganizers.  Fanatics and false philanthropists have rolled it as a sweet morsel under their tongues.  It has furnished them with a pretext to cry liberty! liberty! from the rising to the setting sun.  Their whole souls, bodies, and minds, appear to have been absorbed in the contemplation of African slavery.  They appeared to be wholly engrossed with this one idea, to be engulphed! swallowed up! lost! confounded and bewildered in visionary abstractions, and ever and anon, their plaintive notes were heard throughout the hills and dales, liberty and oppression, the burden of their songs.  They seemed to consider all crime, all oppression, all injustice, all wrong, as merged in African slavery and its concomitant evils, and themselves the peculiar, the special guardians of the rights of man.  The North and the South have been hissed on each other with demoniac fury, and have glutted their vengeance in attempts to “bite and devour each other.”  Truth, justice, and righteousness have been lost sight of, and a fair and impartial statement of facts has seldom been placed before the public; but in its stead, crimination and recrimination have been hurled from North to South, and from South to North.

The North has arraigned the South, and the South has hurled defiance at the North; or, if the former set up a defense, it was little better than special pleading.  Those who have read the foregoing pages are apprised, that it was no part of my design in this work, to exonerate either North or South, there is guilt enough everywhere to humble us all.  But I have long considered the attacks of abolitionists on slaveholders, as devoid of truth and justice, and that their views on slavery, were in direct opposition to the revealed will of God.  Abolitionism cannot be of God, because its views, plans, and machinations, are in direct opposition to the revealed will of God.  Whosoever sows dissension or excites discontent among the slaves, and influences them to dishonor, despise, or forsake the service of their masters, in so doing, violates the positive injunctions of the Bible.  Servants are commanded in the New Testament to obey, love, and serve their masters, and to resign themselves to the will of God, and be content with their lot.  Servants are not only taught to obey their masters, but to account them worthy of all honor, and to endeavor to please them in all things.  “If any man teach otherwise, (says the apostle), he is proud, knowing nothing.”  But abolitionists do teach otherwise; hence, we find many of the leaders of that party repudiating the Bible.