Timothy Williston - Three Prize Essays on American Slavery

A benevolent individual, who has numerous friends and acquaintances both North and South, and who has had peculiar opportunities for learning the state and condition of all sections of the nation, perceiving the danger of our national Institutions, and deeply impressed with a sense of the importance, in this time of peril, of harmonizing Christian men through the country, by kind yet faithful exhibitions of truth on the subject now agitating the whole community, offered a premium of $100 for the best Essay on the subject of Slavery, fitted to influence the great body of Christians through the land.

The call was soon responded to by nearly fifty writers, whose manuscripts were examined by the distinguished committee appointed by the Donor, whose award has been made, as their certificate, here annexed, will show.

The undersigned, appointed a Committee to award a premium of one hundred dollars, offered by a benevolent individual, for the best Essay on the subject of Slavery, "adapted to receive the approbation of Evangelical Christians generally," have had under examination more than forty competing manuscripts, a large number of them written with much ability. They have decided to award the prize to the author of the Essay entitled, " The Error and the Duty in regard to Slavery ," whom they find, on opening the accompanying envelope, to be the Rev. R. B. Thurston, of Chicopee Falls, Mass.

They would also commend to the attention of the public, two of the remaining tracts, selected by the individual who offered the prize, and for which he and others interested have given a prize of one hundred dollars each. One of these is entitled, " Friendly Letters to a Christian Slave-holder ," by Rev. A. C. Baldwin, of Durham, Conn.; the other, " Is American Slavery an Institution which Christianity sanctions and will perpetuate? " by Rev. Timothy Williston, of Strongsville, Ohio.

May, 1857.

The great and agitating question of our country is that concerning slavery. Beneath the whole subject there lies of course some simple truth, for all fundamental truth is simple, which will be readily accepted by patriotic and Christian minds, when it is clearly perceived and discreetly applied. It is the design of these pages to exhibit this truth, and to show that it is a foundation for a union of sentiment and action on the part of good men, by which, under the divine blessing, our threatening controversies, North and South, may be happily terminated.

To avoid misapprehension, let it be noticed that we shall examine the central claim of slavery, first, as a legal institution; afterwards, the moral relations of individuals connected with it will be considered. In that examination the term property, as possessed in men , will be used in the specific sense which is given to it by the slave laws and the practical operation of the system. No other sense is relevant to the discussion. The property of the father in the services of the son, of the master in the labor of the apprentice, of the State in the forced toil of the convict, is not in question. None of these relations creates slavery as such; and they should not be allowed, as has sometimes been done, to obscure the argument.

The limits of a brief tract on a great subject compel us to pass unnoticed many questions which will occur to a thoughtful mind. It is believed that they all find their solution in our fundamental positions; and that all passages of the Bible relating to the general subject, when faithfully interpreted in their real harmony, sustain these positions. It is admitted that the following argument is unsound if it does not provide for every logical and practical exigency.

The primary truth which is now to be established may be thus stated: All men are invested by the Creator with a common right to hold property in inferior things; but they have no such right to hold property in men.

Christians agree that God as the Creator is the original proprietor of all things, and that he has absolute right to dispose of all things according to his pleasure. This right he never relinquishes, but asserts in his word and exercises in his providence. The Bible speaks thus: "The earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof, the world and they that dwell therein, for he hath founded it. We are his people and the sheep of his pasture" – ourselves, therefore, subject to his possession and disposal as the feeble flock to us. Even irreligious men often testify to this truth, confessing the hand of providence in natural events that despoil them of their wealth.

Now, under his own supreme control, God has given to all men equally a dependent and limited right of property. Given is the word repeatedly chosen by inspiration in this connection. "The heavens are the Lord's, but the earth hath he given to the children of men." In Eden he blessed the first human pair, and said to them, in behalf of the race, "Replenish the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed." This, then, is the original and permanent ground of man's title to property; and the important fact to be observed is the specific divine grant . The right of all men equally to own property is the positive institution of the Creator. We all alike hold our possessions by his authentic warrant, his deed of conveyance.

Let us be understood here. We are not educing from the Bible a doctrine which would level society, by giving to all men equal shares of property; but a doctrine which extends equal divine protection over the right of every man to hold that amount of property which he earns by his own faculties, in consistency with all divine statutes.

This right is indeed argued from nature; and justly; for God's revelations in nature and in his word coincide. It is, however, a right of so much consequence to the world, that, where nature leaves it, he incorporates it, and gives it the force of a law; so that in the sequel we can with propriety speak of it as a law, as well as an institution. To the believer in the Bible, this law is the end of argument.

It will have weight with some minds to state that this position is supported by the highest legal authority. In his Commentaries on the Laws of England, Blackstone quotes the primeval grant of God, and then remarks, "This is the only true and solid foundation of man's dominion over external things, whatever airy metaphysical notions may have been started by fanciful writers upon this subject. The earth, therefore, and all things therein, are the general property of all mankind, exclusive of other beings, from the immediate gift of the Creator." 1 1 An extended passage containing the extract may be found conveniently in Chambers' Cyclopædia of English Literature, vol. 2, p. 246.

It will enhance the force of this argument to remember that this universal right of property is one of what may be called a sacred trinity of paradisaical institutions. These institutions are the Sabbath, appointed in regard for our relations to God as moral beings; marriage, ordained for our welfare as members of a successive race; and the right of property, conferred to meet our necessities as dwellers on this material globe. These three are the world's inheritance from lost Eden. They were received by the first father in behalf of all his posterity. They were designed for all men as men. It is demonstrable that they are indispensable, that the world may become Paradise Regained. "Property, marriage, and religion have been called the pillars of society;" and the first is of equal importance with the other two; for all progress in domestic felicity and in religious culture depends on property, and also on the equitable distribution or possession of property, as one of its essential conditions. Property lies in the foundation of every happy home, however humble; and property gilds the pinnacle of every consecrated temple. The wise and impartial Disposer, therefore, makes the endowments of his creatures equal with their responsibilities: to all those on whom he lays the obligations of religion and of the family state, he gives the right of holding the property on which the dwelling and the sanctuary must be founded. It is a sacred right, a divine investiture, bearing the date of the creation and the seal of the Creator.