For the first time in the annals of humanity, domestic slavery, or the system of chattelhood and traffic in man, is erected into a religious, social and political creed. This new creed has its thaumaturgus, its temples, its altars, its worship, its divines, its theology, its fanatical devotees; it has its moralists, its savants and sentimentalists, its statesmen and its publicists. The articles of this new faith are preached and confessed by senators and representatives in the highest councils of the American people, as well as in the legislatures of the respective States; they are boldly proclaimed by the press, and by platform orators and public missionaries; in a word, this new faith over-shadows the whole religious, social, intellectual, political and economical existence of a large portion of the Republic.

The less fervent disciples consider domestic slavery as an eminently practical matter, and regard those of[Pg viii] an opposite opinion as abstruse theorizers; and history is called in and ransacked for the purpose of justifying the present by the past.

Well: history contains all the evidences—multifarious and decisive.

It is asserted that domestic slavery has always been a constructive social element: history shows that it has always been destructive. History authoritatively establishes the fact that slavery is the most corroding social disease, and one, too, which acts most fatally on the slaveholding element in a community.

Not disease, but health, is the normal condition of man\'s physical organism: not oppression but freedom is the normal condition of human society. The laws of history are as absolute as the laws of nature or the laws of hygiene. As an individual cannot with impunity violate hygienic law—as nature always avenges every departure from her eternal order: so nations and communities cannot safely deviate from the laws of history, still less violate them with impunity. History positively demonstrates that slavery is not one of the natural laws of the human race, any more than disorders and monstrosities are normal conditions of the human body.

History demonstrates that slavery is not coeval[Pg ix] with, nor inherent in, human society, but is the offspring of social derangement and decay. The healthiest physical organism may, under certain conditions, develop from within, or receive by infection from without, diseases which are coeval, so to speak, with the creation, and which hover perpetually over animal life. The disease, too, may be acute or chronic, according to the conditions or predispositions of the organism. History teaches that domestic slavery may, at times, affect the healthiest social organism, and be developed, like other social disorders and crimes, so to speak, in the very womb of the nation. As the tendency of vigorous health is to prevent physical derangements and diseases, so the tendency of society in its most elevated conception is to prevent, to limit, to neutralize, if not wholly to extirpate, all social disorders. Not depravity and disease, but purity and virtue, are the normal condition of the individual: not oppression but freedom is the normal condition of society.

Some investigators and philosophers discover an identity between the progressive development of the human body and the various stages of human society—beginning with the embryonic condition of both. More than one striking analogy certainly ex[Pg x]ists between physiological and pathological laws, and the moral and social principles which ought to be observed by man both as an individual, and in the aggregate called society. Thus some of the pathologic axioms established by Rokitansky[1] (the greatest of living pathologists) are equally sustained by the history of nations.

    "No formation is incapable of becoming diseased in one or more ways. Several anomalies coexisting in an organ commonly stand to each other in the relation of cause and effect. Thus, deviation in texture determines deviation in size, in form."

The following pages will demonstrate that nations and communities may become diseased in many ways; and that in proportion as their social textures deviate from the normal, do they become more and more deformed and demoralized.

    "All anomalies of organization involving any anatomical change manifest themselves as deviations in the quantity or quality of organic creation, or else as a mechanical separation of continuity. They are reducible to irregular number, size, form, continuity, and contents."

Oppressions, tyrannies, domestic slavery, chattelhood, are so many mechanical separations of continuity, which in the social organic creation is liberty.

[Pg xi]

    "General disease engenders the most various organs and textures according to their innate, general or individual tendencies, either spontaneously or by dint of some overpowering outward impulse, a local affection which reflects the general disease in the peculiarity of its products. The general disease becomes localized, and, so to speak, represented in the topical affection."

Violence and oppression generated various and peculiar forms of servitude, until nearly all of them ended in chattelhood, which many are wont to consider as a topical affection of certain races and nations. Declining Greece and Rome in the past, Russia under our own eyes, serve as illustrations.

    "A general disease not unfrequently finds in its localization a perpetual focus of derivation, with seeming integrity of the organism in other respects."

So nations infected with slavery, nevertheless had brilliant epochs of existence; and this "seeming integrity of the organism" misleads many otherwise averse to chattelhood, and makes them indifferent to its existence.

    "Where several diseases coexist in an individual, they are in part primary, in part secondary and subordinate, although homologous to the former."

So many evils are the lot of human society, but almost all of them are secondary and subordinate to oppression, violence, and slavery.

[Pg xii]

    "The issue of a local disease in health consists either in the perfect re-establishment of the normal condition, or else in partial recovery; more or fewer important residua and sequell? of the disease not incomparable with a tolerably fair state of health, remaining entailed."

The history of the slow recovery of post-Roman Europe from domestic bondage justifies the application of this pathologic axiom to the social condition of nations.

    "Issue in death: 1. Through exhaustion of power and of organic matter."

The history of republican, but above all, of imperial Rome, demonstrates that its decline and death were caused through the extinction of freedom, free labor, and the free yeomanry, which in every state constitutes the power, the organic matter of a nation.

    "2. Through the suspended function of organs essential to life, through palsy, etc."

When the laboring classes are enslaved, the life of a nation is speedily palsied.

    "3. Through vitiation of the blood."

What blood is to the animal organism, sound social and political principles are to society. When such principles become vitiated, the nation is on the path of decline and death.

[Pg xiii]

    "The worst malformation is never so anomalous as not to hear the general character of animal life, etc. Even an individual organ never departs from its normal character so completely that amid even the greatest disfigurement, this character should not be cognizable."

So often the enslaver and the slaveholding community may preserve some features of the normal human character, notwithstanding the "disfigurement" produced.

    "The excessive development of one part determines the imperfect and retarded development of another, and the converse."

So the oligarchic development retards the growth and advancement of the laboring classes, whether the hue be white or black: it prevents or retards the culture and civilization of individuals and communities.

    "Various and manifold as are the forms of monstrosity, some of them recur with such uniformity of type as to constitute a regular series."

History shows that various as are the other social monstrosities, domestic slavery always recurred with a filial uniformity of type.

    "The genesis of malformation in the human body is still veiled in much obscurity despite some progress made in science."

Social teratology, or the science of monstrosities, easily traces the origin and genesis of domestic slavery.
 
A conscientious study of the records of bygone nations, as well as of the events daily witnessed during a decennium, produced the following pages. They complete what I said about slavery a few years ago.[2] As then, so now, I am almost wholly unacquainted with anti-slavery literature in any of its manifestations. I diligently sought for information in the literary and political productions of pro-slavery writers. Beside legislative enactments, political discussions, and resolutions by Congress and the legislatures of the various Slave States, and the messages of their respective governors, I read every thing that came within my reach, even sermons, heaps of "De Bow\'s Review" and "Fletcher\'s Studies on Slavery."[3] Ah!...

For years the rich resources of the Astor Library have facilitated my general studies, and the information there sought and found was enhanced by the kindest liberality experienced from Dr. Coggswell and all his assistants.

And now let History unfold her records.