A Defence of Virginia. Robert Lewis Dabney
men deem that this discussion is antiquated, may be judged from the fact that Bishop Hopkins (one of the most revered divines among Episcopalians) judged it proper, in 1864, and Dr. Stuart Robinson, of Louisville, (equally esteemed among Presbyterians,) in 1865, to put forth new and able arguments upon this question.
It should be added, in explanation, that, as a son of Virginia, I have naturally taken her, the oldest and greatest of the slaveholding States, as a representative. I was most familiar with her laws. In defending her, I have virtually defended the whole South, of which she was the type; for the differences between her slave institutions and theirs were in no respect essential.
The most fearful consequence of the despotic government to which the South is now subjected, is not the plundering of our goods, nor the abridgment of privileges, nor the death of innocent men, but the degrading and debauching of the moral sensibilities and principles of the helpless victims. The weapon of arbitrary rulers is physical force; the shield of its victims is usually evasion and duplicity. Again: few minds and consciences have that stable independence which remains erect and undebauched amidst the disappointments, anguish, and losses of defeat, and the desertion of numbers, and the obloquy of a lost cause. Hence it has usually been found, in the history of subjugated nations, that they receive at the hands of their conquerors this crowning woe—a depraved, cringing, and cowardly spirit. The wisest, kindest, most patriotic thing which any man can do for his country, amidst such calamities, is to aid in preserving and reinstating the tottering principles of his countrymen; to teach them, while they give place to inexorable force, to abate nothing of righteous convictions and of self-respect. And in this work he is as really a benefactor of the conquerors as of the conquered. For thus he aids in preserving that precious seed of men, who are men of principle, and not of expediency; who alone (if any can) are able to reconstruct society, after the tumult of faction shall have spent its rage, upon the foundations of truth and justice. The men at the North who have stood firmly aloof from the errors and crimes of this revolution, and the men at the South who have not been unmanned and debauched by defeat—these are the men whom Providence will call forth from their seclusion, when the fury of fanaticism shall have done its worst, to repair its mischiefs, and save America from chronic anarchy and barbarism; if, indeed, any rescue is designed for us. It is this audience, "few but fit," with which I would chiefly commune. They will appreciate this humble effort to justify the history of our native States, and to sustain the hearts of their sons in the hour of cruel reproach.
Hampden Sidney, Virginia, June, 1867.
A DEFENCE OF VIRGINIA.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
To the rational historian who, two hundred years hence, shall study the history of the nineteenth century, it will appear one of the most curious vagaries of human opinion, that the Christianity and philanthropy of our day should have given so disproportionate an attention to the evils of African slavery. Such a dispassionate observer will perceive that, while many other gigantic evils were rampant in this age, there prevailed a sort of epidemic fashion of selecting this one upon which to exhaust the virtuous indignation and sympathies of the professed friends of human amelioration. And he will probably see in this a proof that the Christianity and benevolence of the nineteenth century were not so superior, in wisdom and breadth, to those of the seventeenth and eighteenth, as the busy actors in them had persuaded themselves; but were, in fact, conceited, overweening, and fantastic.
It will appear to him a still stranger fact, that this zeal against African slavery was so partial in its exhibition. Up to this day, not only the Southern States of the late American Union, but the Brazilian, Turkish, and Spanish empires, among civilized nations, and many barbarous people, have continued the explicit practice of slavery, in so stern a form, that the institution in the Confederate States was, by comparison, extremely mild. Yet, throughout the Northern States of America and Europe, it is upon the devoted heads of Southern masters almost exclusively that the vials of holy wrath are poured out. Renascent Spain is quite a pet among Yankees and Europeans, though tenaciously clinging, in her colonies, to a system of slavery at whose barbarities the public sentiment of these Southern States would shudder, and though persistently winking at the African Slave Trade in addition. Slaveholding Brazil is on most pleasing terms with the United States and the European governments, which vie in soliciting her commercial intercourse and friendship with most amiable suavity. But when the sounding lash of the self-constituted friend of man is raised to chastise "the wickedness of slavery," all Yankeedom and all Europe seem to think only of us sinners. And yet here, of all places where it prevailed, African bondage was most ameliorated and most justifiable! Indeed, not a few of these consistent reformers have ten-fold as much patience with that demon of slaveholders, the King of Dahomey, as with the benignant Christian master in Virginia; and go to that truculent savage to request him not to cut the throats of another thousand of his inoffensive slaves in a "grand custom," with far more of courtesy, forbearance, and amiability, than they can exercise towards us, when they come to reason with us touching the rights of our late peaceful and well-fed domestics. We see no reason for this partiality, but that the King of Dahomey is himself of that colour, which seems to be the only one acceptable to the tastes of this type of philanthropists. An Abolitionist poet has sung of our oppressing our brother man, because he was "guilty of a skin." To give the contrast, these persons act as though, in their view, the King of Dahomey's meritorious possession of the skin of approved colour, were enough to cover his multitude of sins! Now, if the rest of Christendom have determined to take slaveholders for their pet objects of abuse, we may justly demand of them, at least, to distribute their hard words more generally, and give all a share.
This injustice is to be accounted for, in part, by the greater prominence which the late United States held before the world, making all their supposed sins more prominent; and in part by the zeal of our late very amiable and equitable partners, the Yankee people. They reserved their abuse and venom on this subject for their Southern fellow-citizens alone. They made it their business to direct the whole storm of odium, from abroad and at home, on our heads. They, having the manufacture of American books chiefly in their hands, took pains to fill Europe and their own country with industrious slanders against their own brethren: and so occupied the ear of the world with abuse of us, as to make men almost forget that there were any other slaveholders. For this they had two motives, one calculated, and the other passionate and instinctive. The latter was the sectional animosity which was bred by the very intimacy of their association under one government, with rival interests. The man who has learned to hate his brother, hates him, and can abuse him, more heartily than any more distant enemy. The deliberative motive was, to reduce the South to a state of colonial dependency upon themselves, and exclude all other nations from the rich plunder which they were accustomed to draw from the oppressed section, by means of the odium and misunderstanding which they created concerning us. The South was their precious gold mine, from which they had quarried, and hoped yet again to quarry, hoards of wealth, by the instruments of legislative and commercial jugglery. From this precious mine, they wished to keep other adventurers away by the customary expedient of spreading an odious character for moral malaria and pestilential vices around it. It did not suit their selfish purposes, that Europe should know, that in this slaveholding South was the true conservative power of the American Government, the most solid type of old English character, the greatest social stability and purity, and above all, the very fountain of international commerce and wealth; lest Europe should desire to visit and to trade with this section for itself. And the readiest way to prevent this, was to paint the South to all the rest of the world, in the blackest colours of misrepresentation, so as to have us regarded as a semi-barbarous race of domestic tyrants, whose chief occupations were chaining or scourging negroes, and stabbing each other with bowie-knives. The trick was a success. The Yankee almost monopolized the advantages of Southern trade and intercourse.
But the South should have been impelled by the same facts to defend its institutions before the public opinion of the civilized world; for opinion is always omnipotent in the end, whatever prejudices and physical powers may oppose it. If