Slavery In History: Burkholder Media Classics

The laws of history are as absolute as the laws of nature or the laws of hygiene. As an individual cannot with impunity violate hygienic law-as nature always avenges every departure from her eternal order: so nations and communities cannot safely deviate from the laws of history, still less violate them with impunity. History positively demonstrates that slavery is not one of the natural laws of the human race, any more than disorders and monstrosities are normal conditions of the human body. It is unnecessary to dwell on the generally known fact of the captivity and enslavement of the Jews, or to detail the researches concerning the Hycksos-first slaves, then masters and rulers, and finally again overpowered and reduced to captivity. But beside these Shemites, Hebrews-be they Hycksos or not-all other races and nations were at some time or other captives and slaves in Egypt. The Pharaohs warred with Asiatics, and especially with what is now called Caucasian races; and the monuments show that red, white, and yellow slaves taken in war were far more numerous than the blacks. In the history of the Phoenicians, and therefore, in the earliest authentic epoch, a great historical and social law manifests itself in full action. This activity it retains through all the subsequent social and political catastrophes in the life of nations and empires, down even to Hayti with her immortal Toussaint. Slavery generates bloody struggles. Many of these have resulted in the slaves violently regaining their liberty, while others have destroyed the whole state-swallowing up the slaveholders in their own blood, or burying them under the ruins of their own social edifice. This whole question of Slavery must be forced back to where it was left by the immortal expounders of Southern instinct and intuition on slavery, those noble patriots-Henry, Laurens, Washington, Jefferson, Mason, Randolph, and a host of other great names-now forsworn by their political descendants. (From The Book)