The Liberator

SELECTIONS.

Testimony against Slavery...Woman's Sphere.

We make further extracts from Dr. Channing's recent pamphlet on West-India Emancipation:

It is important, that we should each of us bear our conscientious testimony against slavery, not only to swell that tide of public opinion, which is to sweep it away, but that we may save ourselves from sinking into silent, unsuspected acquiescence in the evil. A constant resistance is needed to this downward tendency, as is proved by the tone of feeling in the free states. What is more common among ourselves, than a courteous, apologetic disapprobation of slavery, which differs little from taking its part? This is one of its worst influences. It taints the whole country. The existence, the perpetual presence of a great, prosperous, unrestrained system of wrong in a community, is one of the sorest trials to the moral sense of the people, and needs to be earnestly withstood. The idea of justice becomes unconsciously obscured in our minds. Our hearts become more or less seared to wrong. The South says, that slavery is nothing to us at the North. But through our trade we are brought into constant contact with it; we grow familiar with it; still more we thrive by it; and the next step is easy, to consent to the sacrifice of human beings, by whom we prosper. The dead know not their want of life, and so a people whose moral sentiments are palsied by the interweaving of all their interests with a system of oppression, become degraded without suspecting it. In consequence of this connection with slave countries, the Idea of Human Rights, that great idea of our age, and on which we profess to build our institutions, is darkened, weakened among us, so as to be to many little more than a sound. A country of licensed, legalized wrongs, is not the atmosphere in which the sentiment of reverence for these rights can exist in full power. In such a community, there may be a respect for the arbitrary rights, which law creates and may destroy, and a respect for historical rights, which rest on usage. But the fundamental rights which inhere in man as man, and which lie at the foundation of a just, equitable, beneficent, noble polity, must be imperfectly comprehended. This depression of moral sentiment in a people is an evil, the extent of which is not easily apprehended. It affects and degrades every relation of life. Men, in whose sight human nature is stripped of all its rights and dignity, cannot love or honor any who possess it, as they ought. In offering these remarks, I do not forget what I rejoice to know, that there is much moral feeling among us in regard to slavery. But still there is a strong tendency to indifference, and to something worse; and on this account, we owe it to our own moral health, and to the moral life of society, to express plainly and strongly our moral abhorrence of this institution. This duty is rendered more urgent by the depraving tendency of our political connections and agitations. It has been said much too sweepingly, but with some approximation to truth, that in this country we have hosts of politicians, but no statesmen; meaning, by the latter term, men of comprehensive, far-reaching views, who study the permanent good of the community, and hold fast under all changes to the great principles on which its salvation rests. The generality of our public men are mere politicians, purblind to the future, fevered by the present, merging patriotism in party spirit, intent on carrying a vote or election, no matter what means they use or what precedents they establish, and holding themselves absolved from a strict morality in public affairs. A principal object of political tactics is to conciliate and gain over to one or another side the most important interests of the country; and, of consequence, the slave interest is propitiated with no small care. No party can afford to lose the South. The master's vote is too precious to be hazarded by sympathy with the slaves. Accordingly, parties and office-seekers wash their hands of abolitionism as if it were treason, and without committing themselves to slavery, protest their innocence of hostility to it. How far they would bow to the slave power, were the success of a great election to depend on soothing it, cannot be foretold, especially since we have seen the party, most jealous of popular rights, surrendering to this power the right of petition. In this state of things, the slaveholding interest has the floor of Congress very much to itself. Now and then, a man of moral heroism meets it with erect front, and a tone of conscious superiority. But political life does not abound in men of heroic mould. Military heroes may be found in swarms. Thousands die fearlessly on the field of battle, or the field of honor. But the moral courage, which can stand cold looks, frowns and contempt, which asks counsel of higher oracles than people or rulers and cheerfully gives up preferment to a just cause, is rare enough to be canonized. In such a country, the tendency to corruption of moral sentiment in regard to slavery, is strong. Many are tempted to acquiescence in it; and, of consequence, the good man, the friend of humanity and his country, should meet the danger by strong, uncompromising reprobation of this great wrong. I would close this topic with observing, that there is one portion of the community, to which I would especially commend the cause of the enslaved, and the duty of open testimony against this form of oppression; and that is our women. To them above all others, slavery should seem an intolerable evil, because its chief victims are women. In their own country, and not very far from them, there are great multitudes of their sex exposed to dishonor, held as property by man, unprotected by law, driven to the field by the overseer, and happy if not consigned to infinitely baser uses, denied the rights of wife and mother, and liable to be stripped of husband and child when another's pleasure or interest may so determine. Such is the lot of hundreds of thousands of their sisters; and is there nothing here to stir up woman's sympathy, nothing for her to remember when she approaches God's throne, or opens her heart to her fellow-creatures? Woman should talk of the enslaved to her husband, and do what she can to awaken, amongst his ever thronging worldly cares, some manly indignation, some interest in human freedom. She should breathe into her son a deep sense of the wrongs which man inflicts on man, and send him forth from her arms, a friend of the weak and injured. She should look on her daughter, and shudder at the doom of so many daughters on her own shores. When she meets with woman, she should talk with her of the ten thousand homes which have no defence against licentiousness, against violation of the most sacred domestic ties; and through her whole intercourse, the fit season should be chosen to give strength to that deep moral conviction which can alone overcome this tremendous evil. I know it will be said, that in thus doing, woman will wander beyond her sphere, and forsake her proper work. What! Do I hear such language in a civilized age, and in a land of Christians? What, let me ask, is woman's work? It is to be a minister of Christian love. It is to sympathize with human misery. It is to breathe sympathy into man's heart. It is to keep alive in society some feeling of human brotherhood. This is her mission on earth. Woman's sphere, I am told, is home. And why is home instituted? Why are domestic relations ordained? These relations are for a day; they cease at the grave. And what is their great end? To nourish a love which will endure forever, to awaken universal sympathy. Our ties to our parents are to bind us to the Universal Parent. Our fraternal bonds to help us to see in all men our brethren. Home is to be a nursery of Christians; and what is the end of Christianity, but to awaken in all souls the principles of universal justice and universal charity? At home we are to learn to love our neighbor, our enemy, the stranger, the poor, the oppressed. If home do not train us to do this, then it is wofully perverted. If home counteract and quench the spirit of Christianity, then we must remember the Divine Teacher, who commands us to forsake father and mother, brother and sister, wife and child, for His sake, and for the sake of his truth. If the walls of home are the bulwarks of a narrow, clannish love, through which the cry of human miseries and wrongs cannot penetrate, then it is mockery to talk of their sacredness. Domestic life is at present too much in hostility to the spirit of Christ. A family should be a community of dear friends, strengthening one another for the service of their fellow creatures. Can we give the name of Christian to most of our families? Can we give it to women, who have no thoughts or sympathies for multitudes of their own sex, distant only two or three days' journey from their doors, and exposed to outrages, from which they would pray to have their own daughters snatched, though it were by death?