The Sable Cloud | Page 5

But we had well nigh borrowed strength to our prejudices
from this place of old Timmy's grave, and were saying with ourselves,
Thus the slave-holders bury their slaves where the water may overflow
them; but you seem to apologize to your father for Timmy's having
such a poor place for his remains by saying, "His own" (Timmy's)
"family selected his burying-place, and probably did not think of this."
Very kind in you, dear madam, to speak so. "The friends of the slave"
are greatly obliged to you for such consideration. You say, "His own
family selected his burying-place." Do slaves have such a liberty? Can
they go and come in their burying-grounds and choose places for the
graves of their kindred? This is being full as good to your servants, in
this particular, as we are at the North to our domestics. You thought
poor old Timmy's grave was not in a spot sufficiently choice for this
little babe's grave, and, it seems, you inclosed a spot, and inaugurated it
by the burial of this child, for the last resting-place of other babes, the
kindred of this child and of your other servants. This looks as though
there were some domestic permanence in some parts of the South
among the servants of a household; and as though the birth and death of
a child have some other associations with you than those which belong
to the breeding and sale of poultry. We are truly glad to think of all this.
It is exceedingly pleasant to have a good opinion of people, much more
so than to believe evil of them, and to accuse them wrongfully.
In speaking thus to you, I make myself think--and I hope I do not seem
self-complacent in saying it, for you must have learned from the tone of
my remarks, if from no other source, that self-complacency is not a
Northern characteristic, especially in our feelings toward the South--but
I make myself think, by this candid admission of what seems good in
you, of a venturesome remark by Paul the Apostle to your brother
slave-holder Philemon, in that epistle in which he sends back the slave
Onesimus,--a very trying epistle to us at the North, though on the whole,
many of us keep up our confidence in inspiration notwithstanding this
epistle, especially as it is explained to us by some at the North who
know most of Southern slavery, our inbred hatred of which, it is
insisted by some of our best scholars, should control even our
interpretation of the word of God. Paul speaks to this slave-holder,

Philemon, of "the acknowledging of every good thing which is in
you,"--which we think was exceedingly charitable, considering that it
was said to a holder of slaves; and perhaps quite too much so; for the
truth is not to be spoken at all times, and especially not of those who
hold their fellow-men in bondage. I am often constrained to think that it
was an inconsiderate, unwise thing in the Apostle to take this favorable
view of that slave-holder; he may, however, have written by permission,
not by commandment; that would save his inspiration from reproach;
for had he been inspired in writing this epistle, I ask myself, Would he
not have foreseen our great Northern conflict with the mightiest
injustice upon which the sun ever shone? and would he not have
foreseen how much aid and comfort that epistle would give the friends
of oppression on this continent? One first truth in the minds of the most
eminent "friends of freedom" is this: "Slavery is the sum of all
villanies." Other truths follow in their natural order; among them the
question of the inspiration of the Bible has a place; but slavery leads
some of them to think lightly, and to speak disparagingly, of the Bible,
because it comes in conflict with their theories regarding slave-holding,
which is certainly not always referred to in Scripture in the tone which
we prefer. There was the Apostle James, too, writing about "works" in
the same unguarded manner as Paul when speaking of slaves and
slave-holders. Pity that he could not have let "works" alone, seeing it
was so important for the other Apostles to establish the one idea of
justification by faith. He made great trouble for Luther and his
companions in their contest with Popery. Luther had to reject his epistle;
"_straminea epistola_" he called it,--an epistle of straw,--weak,
worthless; and he denied its inspiration, because it conflicted with his
doctrine of "faith alone." So much for trying to be candid and just, and
for presenting the other side of a subject, or of a man, when the spirit of
the age is averse to it, and candor is in danger of being looked upon as a
time-serving