But there was one way in which a Jew might illegally be reduced to servitude; it was this, he might be _stolen_ and afterwards sold as a slave, as was Joseph. To guard most effectually against this dreadful crime of manstealing, God enacted this severe law. "He that stealeth a man and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death." [1] As I have tried American Slavery by _legal_ Hebrew servitude, and found, (to your surprise, perhaps,) that Jewish law cannot justify the slaveholder's claim, let us now try it by _illegal_ Hebrew bondage. Have the Southern slaves then been, stolen? If they did not sell themselves into bondage; if they were not sold as insolvent debtors or as thieves; if they were not redeemed from a heathen master to whom _they had sold themselves_; if they were not born in servitude according to Hebrew law; and if the females were not sold by their fathers as wives and daughters-in-law to those who purchased them; then what shall we say of them? what can we say of them but that according _to Hebrew Law they have been stolen_.
But I shall be told that the Jews had other servants who were absolute slaves. Let us look a little into this also. They had other servants who were procured in two different ways.
1. Captives taken in war were reduced to bondage instead of being killed; but we are not told that their children were enslaved Deut. xx, 14.
2. Bondmen and bondmaids might be bought from the heathen round about them; these were left by fathers to their children after them, but it does not appear that the _children_ of these servants ever were reduced to servitude. Lev. xxv, 44.
I will now try the right of the southern planter by the claims of Hebrew masters over their _heathen_ slaves. Were the southern slaves taken captive in war? No! Were they bought from the heathen? No! for surely, no one will _now_ vindicate the slave-trade so far as to assert that slaves were bought from the heathen who were obtained by that system of piracy. The _only_ excuse for holding southern slaves is that they were born in slavery, but we have seen that they were _not_ born in servitude as Jewish servants were, and that the children of heathen slaves were not legally subjected to bondage even under the Mosaic Law. How then have the slaves of the South been obtained?