Page:The Barbarism of Slavery - Sumner - 1863.pdf/48

 42 of themselves, discoloring their very souls, blotting their characters, and breaking forth in moral leprosy. This language is strong



but the evidence

of happy natures

is

and not be harmed.

Some

even stronger.

—like honorable

Senators

Mithridates fed on poison, and lived

may

be that there is a moral Mithridates, without bane the poison of Slavery. it

may be

there

—who can thus feed

and

who can swallow

Instead of "ennobling" the master, nothing can be clearer than that the slave drags his master down, and this process begins in childhood,

and

is

continued through

Living

life.

much

association with his slave, the master finds nothing to

him of

in

remind

own

deficiencies, to prompt his ambition or excite Without these provocations to virtue, and without an elevating example, he naturally shares the Barbarism of the society which he keeps. Thus the very inferiority which the

his

his shame.

Slave -master attributes to the African race, explains the melancholy condition of the communities in which his degradation declared

by

A single

is

law. false principle or vicious

character otherwise blameless



and

thought

may

degrade a

this is practically true of the

Accustomed to regard men as property, his sensibilities are blunted and his moral sense is obscured. He consents to acts from which Civilization recoils. The early Church sold its property, and even its sacred vessels, for the redemption of captives. This was done on a remarkable occasion by St. Ambrose, and successive canons confirmed the example. But Slave-master.

in the Slave States this is all reversed.

Slaves there are often

sold as the property of the Church, and an instance

a slave sold in South-Carolina in order to

munion-table.

Who can

buy

is

related of

plate for the com-

calculate the effect of such an

exam-

ple?

Surrounded by pernicious influences of all kinds, both posiand negative, the first making him do that which he ought not to do, and the second making him leave undone that which he ought to have done through childhood, youth, and manhood, even unto age unable while at home to escape these influences, overshadowed constantly by the portentous Barbarism tive

—

—

about him, the Slave-master naturally adopts the bludgeon, Through these he governs

the revolver and the bowie-knife. his plantation,

and

secretly

armed with

these,

he enters the