Benjamin Rush Mocked Slavery

In September, Rush immediately wrote another pamphlet in response to Nisbet’s criticism. In Nisbet’s tract, he explained that domestic slavery “was not forbidden in the New Testament,” “domestic Slavery had existed in every Age and Corner of the World,” and by treating his slaves well, slave planters “committed no Crime in keeping them.” However, Rush did not think so. “If domestic Slavery is agreeable to the Will and Laws of God,” Rush wrote, then the “British Constitution was obtained unjustly.” Finally Rush negatively evaluated Nisbet’s tract:

You have called in question the Justice and goodness of the Supreme Being. You have charged the Father of Mankind with being the Author of the greatest Evils to his Children. You have aimed to establish Principles, which justify the most extensive and cruel Depradations which have been made by Conquerors and Tyrants, upon the Liberties and Lives of Mankind, and which at the same time condemn those glorious Events, and illustrious Men, that Britain and her Colonies, are indebted to for their Liberty and Prosperity.

In refuting Nisbet’s arguments, Rush defended his views in terms of “justice and goodness of the Supreme Being,” “the most extensive and cruel Depradations,” “Liberties and Lives of Mankind,” as well as “Liberty and Prosperity.” As a faithful Christian, it was reasonable for Rush to defend his views in terms of religion.

Yet, unlike Woolman and other abolitionists who defended their antislavery views just in terms of the Scripture and the Old Testament, Rush asserted his understanding of slavery in terms of the Enlightenment thinking he received when he was in Edinburgh. He believed that slavery violated the “Law of Nature” and liberty. Also, human nature or humanity was also a standard for him to criticize the evils of slavery. In reply to Nisbet’s description of the punishments on the Negroes, Rush pointed out that it explained “the Weakness, and Depravity of Human Nature,” and “no Accounts of the Cruelty of these Punishments will appear exaggerated.” To support his statement, he explained the Domestic Slavery greatly violated the natural Love of Liberty and the humanity:

“The natural Love of Liberty which is common to all Men, and the Love of Ease which is peculiar to the Inhabitants of Warm Climates, can only be overcome by severe Laws and Punishments. While Slaves are employed in a Climate and Labor, and treated with an Inhumanity…… While they are denied so many of the Necessaries and Comforts of Life, and lastly while their Proportion is so much greater than that of the white People, nothing but the Whip, melted Wax, Brine, the Gallows, the Stake, and the Gibbet, will long prevent Insurrections among them.”

The slaves were treated so humane in the West-Indian islands that Rush was very sympathetic to them.