MANHOOD.
LECTURE OF HON. HORACE MANN, IN SYRACUSE.
The opening lecture of the anti-slavery course was given at the City Hall, last evening, by Hon. Horace Mann. The attendance was respectable, though no large. Among the admiring hearers was Hon. Gerrit Smith, whose entrance to the meeting was greeted with applause.
It is an old adage, that the best wine should always come at the end of the feast. But we very much doubt whether the managers of the anti-slavery cause will be able to serve us up a more delicious potation of the unadulterated wine on which the heart and spirit grow fat, than we had last evening. It was one of the most purely intellectual efforts to which we have ever listened and was received with unbounded satisfaction.
The great length of the speech and our limited space, precludes the idea of giving anything more than an outline of this great effort; but we propose to furnish our readers with a sketch of his leading and most telling points.
He commenced by saying that if, at any time, community is divided into hostile parties it is meet and necessary that we should recur to first principles, going over the problem to discover when and where one side or the other departs from the path of rectitude.
If we are vexed with the conflicting claims of government--if it be said that some men were born booted and spurred to ride over the masses--or if he said that some were born with gold rings in their ears and the rest with iron rings in their nose, to indicate that a few were to lead, and the masses to be led--that one woman is made of porcelain and another of pewter--then it is meet and necessary that we recur to the first principles of our government, that "all men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
In the light of this great principle, we repel all claims of the divine right of one man to more privileges than belong to another. We deny that any set of men, political or hierarchal [hierarchical], have been annointed from a viol of holy oil from heaven, to ride over their fellows. We suspect that if any such viol was ever sent, it did not contain holy oil but assafoetida and the gum of the Upas tree. As for the men born with boots and spurs, he said we will not believe a word of it, unless they shall produce the boots and spurs themselves, and give us the name of the firm who made them.
The Scriptures no where tell us that God dwells peculiarly in the hearts of Popes, Bishops, Cardinals or Priests.
But it is denied that all men are created equal. It has been denied for ages in the Eastern country by tyrants and Kings. But how singular that it should be denied by the American Government. Yet it has been denied by the great Statesmen of South Carolina. Mr. Calhoun declared that the doctrine of the Declaration, "that all men are created equal," was false.--He argued that men are not created at all--they are born. As well might we deny the declaration in the first chapter of Genesis, that in the beginning God created the Heavens and the earth, by saying that he could not have created both first.
In 1850, when that deadly blast of pro-slavery sentiment, blew over the North, a gentleman in Lowell cited the Golden Rule in favor of Slavery! He made it read, "Whatsoever things men would do to you if they had a chance, do ye also to them."
I maintain that the doctrine of the Declaration of Independence is as true as that God is the Creator of Heaven and Earth--as true as that we should do unto others as we would have others do to us.
Mr. M. next presented a most telling and sarcastic review of the standard by which tyrants measure men. While in reality manhood consists in the capacities of the immortal spirit, which elevates it above the brute, tyranny measures it by the outward manifestations.--It judges by the curl on the hair--the length of the heel--the thickness of the lips--the shape of the nose. It has sometimes been regarded as a virtue for a man to stand on a question "flat-footed;" but this is the slave's condemnation.
Let us suppose, that one of these savans who thus judge the manhood, was to sit as umpire, and decide the question as to whether Touissant L'Overture was a man or a chattel.--It is not asked whether he had displayed the spirit of Jesus Christ; whether he had generously saved the life of his master; whether he was a faithful servant; whether he spurned the temptation to betray liberty; whether he was a sufficient statesman to lead his people to prosperity; whether he was a sufficient warrior to repel the armies of a powerful foreign foe. These are not the questions; but he examines the hair to see whether it has a kink too much; he looks at the shape of the heel and the lips, and by these tests, Touissant L'Overture--the Warrior, the Statesman, the Christian--is declared to be not a man, but a beast. As though it were worse to have kinks in the hair than in the heart--more unfortunate to have darkness of skin than darkness of soul. I care not if it be proven that there were as many Adams as there are types of the race--wherever we find the attributes and thoughts that wander up and down eternity, we find the beings entitled to all the rights of men. In regard to all these peculiarities of physical development, he would say in the language of the Scotch bard,
"A man's a man for a' that."
I say Anathema Maran-atha to any philosophy or any ethnology that would make Frederick Douglass a chattel, and Stephen A. Douglas a man! (Great laughter and applause.)
The speaker drew a most cutting picture of a body of learned theologians together, like doctors round a dissecting table, dissecting the truths of the gospel, cutting out and casting away everything that does not suit the churches south of Mason and Dixon's line. They take the very body of Christ himself, and cast away such parts as displease them, fitting it for a southern market. In that market his most precious truths are contraband. Christ cannot get a hearing there, unless he submits to a sort of a spiritual Missouri Compromise. At first it consents to observe its part of the compromise, but soon becomes too lazy to do even this--rejects it, and then claims admission into heaven, on the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. Paul sent back Onesimus; and, behold; this is tortured into the support of the Fugitive Slave Law. Paul is made to stand as United States commissioner and Onesimus as Jerry, while Mr. Reynolds represents Philemon. If this is so--if this act of Paul is the authority for the Fugitive Slave Law, we insist that it should also regulate the manner of sending back fugitives. They must be sent back with a letter in their pocket, recommending them as beloved brothers in the Lord, and not with a lash on their backs. Did Paul search through the Roman camp to find blood hound centurians to thrust him back? Did Philemon greet his new brother in the Lord with a sound flogging, as our southern slaveholders do? No, and the fair interpretation of the old maxim justia fiat ruet codum, as applied to the case of Jerry, would be, "Let Jerry be free, though the heavens fall!"
Not finding support for slavery in the New Testament, its defenders turn to the old. Now it is a significant fact that one of the most important events in the early history of the world, was the grand achievement of that first great practical Abolitionist, Moses, who ran off two millions of Slaves at a single trip! This was a stampede worthy of record. Give us Moses for a conductor on the Underground Railroad! He did not run off one here and another there--Frederick Douglass to-day, and J.W. Loguen to-morrow. He did it all at a time. He mingled with the slaves, marshalled them and marched.
This not only gives us the proper way of treating Fugitive Slaves, but of treating their pursuers. When Pharaoh followed them, the sea opened to receive them. In the language of the Scriptures, "they sank as lead in the mighty waters."
Pharaoh has been held up to the execration of men for holding the Israelites in bondage.--But it certainly is not as wicked to hold hereditary slaves as to extend slavery; and in the light of this fact, what execration does our President deserve, who has used the power of the Government to extend slavery? It is a somewhat singular fact that the three great tools in the hands of despotism have been the three P.'s viz: Pharaoh, Potipher and Pierce.
The speaker said that Liberty consisted of four elements or kinds:
1st. Natural.
2d. Civil.
3d. Religious.
4th. That Spiritual Liberty wherewith Christ makes his Disciples free.
He dwelt most powerfully and happily on those several branches of the subject, displaying a depth and originality of thought truly refreshing.
1st. Natural Liberty is the liberty of doing as we please, independent of all society. It is the freedom of solitude. Daniel Boone, learning that another man had settled within sixty miles of him, said he did not see why a man would want to come and stick himself down under his nose; and moved away! This was Natural Liberty.
In civil liberty something is taken away from this natural liberty; but very much is added. We gain protection from the injustice of others. It imposes duties. It implies the right always to use our own as we please, without interfering with the rights of others; the right to go where we please almost always; and always the right to think and speak as we please, being accountable only for speaking falsehood in malice; and most especially the right of establishing our own forms of government, and choosing our own rules.
He dwelt on these points at considerable length; and we are unable to present, in our limited space, to give an adequate idea of his powerful arguments and biting sarcasm.
As to the right of going where we please, he maintained that it was inalienable. The man born north of Mason and Dixon's line, has a perfect right to go south of it, if he pleases; and the man born south of that line has a right to come north if he chooses; and if opposed, has the right of resistance, and the resistance must be commensurate with the demands of the case. If the opposition be only in words, then the resistance should go no further. If it extend to the gentle laying on of the hands, then the resistance should be like the laying on of hands in the Presbyterian ordinations--just enough to magnetize the opponent and bring him into sympathy.
If the opposition resorts to revolvers, and steel, and fire, then the resistance must take on the form of fire and devastation, and death!--And, however far from the sanctuary of Liberty, if he would flee thither and is opposed with force, he may leave a path of blood, and flame, and desolation, till he crosses the Jordan, and reaches the Canaan of his aspirations! [Applause] No man who believes in the Declaration of Independence can deny this right.
In considering the right of the people to elect their own rulers and adopt their own forms of Government, Mr. Mann handled the "Divine Right of Kings," and the claims of aristocracy "without mittens." He represented the race of Kings and Aristocrats generally, as imbecile and wicked, unfit to govern or rank among the noble men of earth. The Czar of Russia has sacrificed three hundred thousand men within the last year, not for the good of the people, but for his own selfish and ambitious purpose. So notorious have the race of Kings and aristocrats become for imbecility and wickedness, that it is no longer considered a good pun to call the Guelphs whelps, or the Bourbons baboons.
What king craft and aristocracy are on a large scale, slavery is on a small scale. Slavery is king craft and aristocracy in retail; and wholesale dealers always put off their poorest wares for the retail trade.
Under the head of religious freedom, Mr. Mann claimed the right of every one to his conscience and opinions. But the Popes and priests have described to us heaven and hell, and have claimed both as their own. But just so far as a man denies civil or religious liberty to another, he denies it for himself. If a man would shut another out of heaven, he must stand outside of heaven himself, and he who would obtain religious freedom for himself, must first recognize the same freedom for others.
Of all men the Clergy should be most interested in making this land one of religious liberty; and we should beware of all literature which must first pass through the hands of men, who allow nothing to go out that cannot be tortured into the support of human slavery.
The freedom wherewith Christ made us free, Mr. Mann considered the grand result of all the other elements of Liberty. This is that lifts the spirit up to communion with the Divine and heavenly. It is the crowning work of us all.
"Manhood - Lecture of Hon. Horace Mann, in Syracuse," Rochester (NY) Frederick Douglass' Paper, December 14, 1855, p. 4.