The North Star (Rochester)/1847/12/03/Blue and Black Laws
From the Liberator.
BLUE AND BLACK LAWS.
A signal proof of the practical value of American piety, has recently been afforded by the sanctimonious state of Connecticut. We suppose our readers know there is no State that has made her phylacteries broader, or made louder prayers at the corners of the streets, or tithed mint, anise and cummin more strictly than this same psalm-singing Connecticut. She is eminently an Orthodox Commonwealth. Heresy has abstained from her borders in an extraordinary manner. Only one or two Unitarian congregations have been able to breathe there—and we are not quite sure that they are not starved to death. Profane amusements have stood rebuked before the severe virtue of her look. Play-actors have fled amain before her face. Balls have been looked out of countenance. Cards and dice are unknown iniquities. The Sabbath is, or was lately preserved by law as strictly as an English patridge. The Clergy is recognized a true Theocratic Oligarchy. The sanctuary is thronged from week to week with the desperation of a people stripped of every other diversion. It is the State of Colleges, Theological Schools, Bible, Missionary, Tract, and Colonization Societies. If ever there were a nation zealous of good works, here is their habitation. The atmosphere that overhangs the land is heavy with the odor of sanctity.
The laws by which the piety and morality of this peculiar people were hedged around in the elder time, were denominated by the profane, "the Blue Laws." And that cerulean hue has thence been taken as the color of righteous souls as well as of "true hearts." The old Blue Laws to be sure, have been somewhat modified, as time has worn on; but the spirit that dictated and inspired them has survived and still walks abroad. That spirit was the spirit of caste and tyranny. The spirit that looked about tor some to whom it might say—"Stand further off, for I am holier than thou!" This spirit is still rife and rampant. It is still embodied in laws,—of which the color only is changed. The Blue Laws have given way to the Black Laws—laws as cruel, as absurd, as unnatural, as immoral, as Anti-Christian as anything in the whole circle of the Blue Laws, or as their whole code put together. The Blue Laws were an oppression to man. The Black Laws are an insult to God. The Blue Laws contemplated the texture of a man's soul—the Black Laws that of his skin. The one had to do with matters within the control of those upon, whom they acted. The other with matters over which the sufferers have only, the power of the Ethiopian over his skin, or the leopard over his spots. The one code punished men for acts of their own doing; the other punishes them for the crime of their Creator.
Within a few weeks, an amendment to the Constitution of Connecticut, by which the equal political rights of colored men with white men were recognized, was submitted to the suffrages of the People. The proposition, as far as we are informed, stood alone. The bald question whether the color of the skin, should be a bar to political equality, was that which the lieges of Connecticut were called together to decide. And what was the decision? Out of some fifty thousand voters, only about twenty-five thousand took the pains to express any opinion at all; and of those that did vote, only some five thousand were found willing to recognize the man of color as a political equal with themselves. Those who abstained from voting may fairly be taken as opposed to the amendment,—so it appears that out of the entire voting population, but one tenth were free from this base, degrading, absurd, inhuman, anti-Christian prejudice of color! We doubt whether any community, in proportion to its size, could be found, in the world, out of this country, that would not be ashamed of political association with such riduculous barbarians. The Hottentots rise to a high place in the scale of civilization in the comparison. For we do not believe that even a Hottentot would deny the humanity of a Connecticut pedlar, should one find his way to his kraal,—at least if he had never heard of this demonstration on the part of the Pedlar State.
The meanness of this transaction is a match for its absurdity. The State of Connecticut, we take it, has not the slightest scruples about putting her dirty hands into the pockets of these colored citizens,—or rather inhabitants who are not citizens,—and making them pay their proportion of the expenses of the government, in which they have no voice. Some seventy-five years ago there was none of the Colonies louder in denunciations of the British Parliament for taxing them without representation than this same colony of Connecticut. She sent Israel Putnam and (which is more to the purpose) Benedict Arnold, to fight the battles of liberty. And having got what she wanted, as far as Great Britain was concerned, she turns round and treats a portion of her own population in the same manner. The British Parliament imposed the taxes on tea, glass and painter's colors, because it supposed that the Colonies were not strong enough to resist the imposition. The State of Connecticut does the very same thing, because she knows that the handful of poor colored men within her borders can offer no effectual resistance to this oppression. She is proved, by her own acts, to be recreant to principle. She is a traitor to the cause for which the Revolution was fought. She shows that now, at least, the spirit of Arnold predominates over that of Putnam in her composition.
Now what can be the motive for such a demonstration as this? The motive we apprehend to be two-fold. It is compounded partly of the wish which low grovelling natures have to trample on something beneath them. This accounts for much of the persecution of the colored people, everywhere, in the free States. It is a comfort to the lowest and most degraded of the whites to feel that there is a class of society which they can despise and trample. In the States which make the loudest pretensions to Democracy and regard for popular rights, the popular right of insulting and injuring the colored people with impunity is one of the most prized of all. This element, doubtless, enters largely into the mental composition of this nine-tenths of Connecticut voters. But there is yet another, the influence of which is so less potent. There is no State of which a greater proportion of the inhabitants are engaged in direct business with the South. This traffic, manufacturing, commercial and peddling, extends itself through all classes of Society. And the result is a depth and bitterness of pro-slavery depravity, of which this vote is but an imperfect type.
There is but one thing to be said in mitigation of the sentence of unqualified condemnation which this recreant State deserves. And that is, that the abolitionists have hardly done their duty by her. They have passed by to fields of greater promise, and left her to the tender mercies of pro-slavery religion and pseudo-abolitionism. The result is a proof of the value of the labors of American Theology, and of the Third Political Party. We commend it to the American A. S. Society as a missionary ground calling loudly upon them to come over and help it. A campaign or two carried on with the spirit with which the war has been carried into other parts of the enemy's country, we are confident would make an impression, the effect of which would be seen whenever the question shall come up again for adjudication.—Q.