Page:The Barbarism of Slavery - Sumner - 1863.pdf/16

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condensed in express

all

this sententious

form of

as in itself a

is

is

feeble to

now vaunted

ennobling " at least to the at it in whatever light you

civilization, "

master, if not to the slave.

and

Language

judgment.

the enormity of this institution, which

Look

always the scab, the canker, the "bare-bones," and the shame of the country wrong, not merely in the abstract, as is often admitted by its apologists, but wrong in the Look concrete also, and possessing no single element of right. at it in the light of principles, and it is nothing less than a huge insurrection against the eternal law of God, involving in its prewill,

it is



all human rights, and also the denial of which God himself is manifest, thus being practically the grossest lie and the grossest Atheism. Founded in violence, sustained only by violence, such a wrong must by a sure law of compensation blast the master as well as the slave blast the community of blast the lands on which they live which they are a part blast the Government which does not forbid the outrage and the longer it exists and the more completely it prevails, must its blasting influences penetrate the whole social system. Barbarous in origin barbarous in its law

tensions the denial of

that Divine

Law

in









barbarous in

employs it

pretensions







rous wherever

while



barbarous in the instruments it barbarous in consequences barbarous in spirit barbaall its

it

shows

itself,



Slavery must breed Barbarians,

develops everywhere, alike in the individual and in the which he belongs, the essential elements of Barbar-

society to

In this character it is now conspicuous before the world. In undertaking now to expose the Barbarism of Slavery, the whole broad field is open before me. There is nothing in its character, its manifold wrong, its wretched results, and especially in its influence on the class who claim to be "ennobled" by it, that will not fall naturally under consideration.

ism.

I

know

well the difficulty of this discussion involved in the

humiliating Truth with which I begin.

Senators on former ochave even protested against any comparison between what were called the "two civilizations, meaning the two social systems produced respectively by Freedom and by Slavery. The sensibility and the protest are not " Two civilizations !" Sir, in this unnatural, though mistaken.

casions, revealing their sensibility,

nineteenth century of Christian light, there can be but one Civilization,

and

this is

where Freedom

prevails.

Between Slav-