Domestic slavery

“ Domestic slavery, such as ours, is the only institution which I know of, that can secure that spirit of equality among freemen, so necessary to the true and genuine feeling of republicanism, without propelling the body politic at the same time into the dangerous vices of agrarianism, and legislative intermeddling between the laborer and the capitalist. The occupations which we follow, necessarily and unavoidably create distinctions in society. ”

“ Because they cannot accept the extreme dogma, that domestic slavery is the beau ideal of the proper relation of labour to capital, they seem to imagine that they are bound in consistency to hold that it is somehow an evil. Yet they have too much reverence for God's word to assert, with the abolitionists, in the teeth of its fair meaning, that slavery is sin per se. ”

“ No community of natives demonstrates the peculiar workings of domestic slavery so well as these people, for in no other place on the coast can any one find so many instances of the rapid rise of a bought slave from the lowest rung of the slave ladder to the topmost. ”

“ After making all reasonable allowances, our colored population can be considered, at the most, but semi-heathen. As to their temporal estate—Brutal stripes, and all the various kinds of personal indignities, are not the only species of cruelty which slavery licenses. The law does not recognize the family relations of the slave, and extends to him no protection in the enjoyment of domestic endearments. ”

“ Now, in this kingdom everyone and everything belongs to the king. He farms out his female slaves to all and sundry as rewards for meritorious services rendered the king. All children born as a result of these operations belong to the king, just as the parents do. It must be remembered that this is “domestic” slavery and not at all the horrible affair commercial slavery once was. There is no export of slaves, as the coming of the white man has prevented it. Domestic slavery entails upon the master certain duties towards the slave. ”

“ For the most trifling reasons, and sometimes for no conceivable reason at all, his majesty has rejected laws of the most salutary tendency. The abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of desire in those colonies, where it was unhappily introduced in their infant state. But previous to the enfranchisement of the slaves we have, it is necessary to exclude all further importations from Africa; yet our repeated attempts to effect this by prohibitions, and by imposing duties which might amount to a prohibition, have been hitherto defeated by his majesty's negative: ”

“ In all countries where a few own the property and the population is tolerably dense, laborers relieved from domestic slavery are remitted to the exploitation of skill and capital, which renders them less free and worse situated in all respects after emancipation than before. ”

“ That it has long been a source of deep regret to a large portion of the citizens of the United States, as well as to the friends of human rights and liberty throughout the world, that domestic Slavery, with all its odious features, continues to be tolerated by the national government in the small territory over which the Constitution invests it with exclusive jurisdiction. Your Memorialists are convinced, that a strong simultaneous effort of those who hold this sentiment in different sections of our country, would imperiously engage the attention of Congress to this interesting subject ”

“ Domestic slavery is a universal institution, the so-called "house captives "being considered as secondary members of the family, and treated in every respect like 74— AF their associates. Those employed as artisans, weavers, potters, carpenters, builders, and the like, also for the most part enjoy a considerable share of practical freedom. ”

“ When suffering the extremity of famine, mothers in the interior sometimes sell their children to a wealthier neighbor, for the sake of procuring food. But the domestic slavery of the Africans is altogether of a milder character, and more resembles Hebrew servitude, than the slavery existing among white men. ”

“ Slavery next made its attack directly on the patricians, and following the order of Providence in the government of the moral world, began with silent but sure influence to corrupt the virtue of families, and even to destroy domestic life. It is a well ascertained fact, that slavery diminishes the frequency of marriages in the class of masters. ”

“ Thus, slavery is not likely to be surrendered by the negroes themselves as a national institution. Their social interests will continue to maintain hereditary bondage; they will send the felon and the captive to foreign barracoons; and they will sentence to domestic servitude the orphans of culprits, disorderly children, gamblers, witches, vagrants, cripples, insolvents, the deaf, the mute, the barren, and the faithless. Five-sixths of the population is in chains. ”

“ Report, that although in their opinion the intimate connexion existing between the Domestic Slave Trade and the system of slavery generally, precludes the expectation of applying a very efficient check to the one, except by a reduction of the other, yet they indulge the hope that the united influence of the several Abolition and Anti-Slavery Societies throughout the Union, directed to memorializing Congress, might procure some wholesome restraint upon a traffick fraught with such aggravated evil, and productive of such complicated misery. ”

“ It is the most gigantic system of slavery the world has yet seen, and therefore it is that freedom gradually disappears from every country over which England is enabled to obtain control, as witness the countries to which reference has just been made. ”

“ He has no wife to share his sorrows, or to partake his joys; for neither law nor public opinion sanctions the marriage of slaves! The very children whom the slave presses to his heart are not regarded, either by law or public sentiment, as his dear children, but only as part of the stock of the plantation! Mother and children may be, and are, sold at auction, and separated from him and from each other for ever! ”

“ The practice of separating children from their mothers, and hiring the latter out at distances too great to admit of their meeting, except at long intervals, is a marked feature of the cruelty and barbarity of the slave system. But it is in harmony with the grand aim of slavery, which, always and everywhere, is to reduce man to a level with the brute. ”

“ He saw them clinging to the half frantic husband and father, when the minions of a wicked law tore him away from them for ever. That intelligent, worthy, industrious man was ruthlessly plunged into the deep, dark grave of slavery, where tens of thousands perish yearly, and leave no record of their wrongs. ”

“ We want them to know that a knowledge of their whippings, their scourgings, their brandings, their chainings, is not confined to their plantations, but that some negro of theirs has broken loose from his chains—has burst through the dark incrustation of slavery, and is now exposing their deeds of deep damnation to the gaze of the christian people of England.
The slaveholders resort to all kinds of cruelty. ”

“ But, I may remark, that, if the lineal descendants of Ham are only to be enslaved, according to the scriptures, slavery in this country will soon become an unscriptural institution; for thousands are ushered into the world, annually, who—like myself—owe their existence to white fathers, and, most frequently, to their masters, and master’s sons. The slave-woman is at the mercy of the fathers, sons or brothers of her master. ”

“ For example, to be taken prisoner in war, to take refuge in the house of another, to be unable to pay one’s debts, or, if a girl, being married out of her family or tribe,—these were so many new sources of slavery created by the general law. ”

“ This is white slavery. This allows one white man to buy another, to buy a woman, to separate families and rob a mother of her child. This makes the whip upon the naked backs of men and women a legal tender for labor performed. ”

“ And here—as a Southern man, brought up in the midst of a household of slaves—let me remark, that the worst feature of our system of slavery is the possibility of the negroes falling into the hands of a brutal owner capable of exercising all the power of inflicting misery which the law gives him. ”

“ That there are slaveholders amiable, just, and humane, there is not a doubt; but slavery in its practice as a system deprives these millions of knowledge, takes away from them the Bible, keeps a race in heathen ignorance in a Christian land, denies to the slaves compensation for their labour, the rights of marriage and of the parental relation, which are respected even among the most savage nations; it sustains an iniquitous internal slave-trade—it corrupts the owners, and casts a slur upon the dignity of labour. ”

“ But none of the enormities named, or that could be named, constituted a necessary part of the institution of slavery, or necessarily emanated from it. What enormities have wicked men sometimes committed in the transportation of emigrants from Germany and Ireland? Wicked men, intrusted with power, have, at least sometimes, been found to abuse it. Is it any argument against the institution of marriage, because some women have made their husbands support and educate children not their own? Or, because some men murder, treat with cruelty, or make their wives totally miserable and wretched? ”

“ Again, all slaves did not suffer under negro slavery, neither do all married women suffer from this legalized servitude. Still, the principle of slavery is wrong, and the principle of emancipation is right, and the laws ought so to regard it. ”

“ They lay it down as a maxim that immediate emancipation is the only just course, and the only safe policy. They say that slavery is a common evil, and therefore there is a common right to investigate it, and search for modes of relief. ”

“ If a freeman should kidnap the male or female slave of another, he shall be compelled to give, by way of reparation, four slaves of the same sex to the master or mistress of said [248] slave, and shall receive a hundred lashes in public; and if he should not have the property wherewith to make restitution, he himself shall be reduced to slavery. ”

“ I scarcely need tell you that our most embarrassing heritage from slavery was a homelessness and a lack of home ties. All the sanctities of marriage, the precious instincts of motherhood, the spirit of family alliance, and the upbuilding of home as an institution of the human heart were all ruthlessly ignored and fiercely prohibited by the requirements of slavery. Colored people in bondage were only as men, women, and children, and not as fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters. ”

“ But when, in the progress of early civilization, the families congregated in any particular locality or country came to find it necessary to constitute themselves into one great society for the purposes of exchange or commerce, intermarrying, mutual defence against aggression, &c., the despotic will of individuals gave place, of necessity, to a general law of the heads of families composing the society. It was then, and not till then, that slavery became a legal institution. ”

“ Let not the reader infer from what has been said, that the parlor-slaves, chamber-maids, &c. in the slave states are not treated with cruelty—far from it. They often experience terrible inflictions; not generally so terrible or so frequent as the field-hands, and very rarely in the presence of guests [24] House-slaves are for the most part treated far better than plantation-slaves, and those under the immediate direction of the master and mistress, than those under overseers and drivers. ”

“ The institution of slavery has accomplished the double feat, in America, not only of degrading and brutalizing her black working classes, but of producing, notwithstanding a fertile soil and abundant room, a poor white population as degraded and brutal as ever existed in any of the most crowded districts of Europe. ”

“ Slaves are held as property, at the disposal of their master, and possess, strictly speaking, no legal rights, civil or religious, and, if ever so much abused, can seek no redress in any court of justice. They are in a great measure kept without the means of intellectual, moral and spiritual improvement. And by sale and the removal of the purchased slaves to a distant part of the country, the most endearing ties are liable continually to be severed, and the nearest relatives, husbands and wives, parents and children, and brothers and sisters, to be torn from each other, and forever separated. ”

“ Who will say, that this system of slavery, under which no female, who has a drop of African blood in her veins, has any defence for her virtue, against any white man, even for an hour, and no possibility of escaping from pollution, is not unspeakably worse than fornication and adultery, or even the violation of purity by force, where there are laws to apprehend and punish for such a crime? ”

“ But, be this as it may, it is abundantly proven, that slavery is, essentially and inevitably, at war with the sacred rights of the family state. Let me say, then, in conclusion under this head, that in whatever other company you put slavery, place it not in that of the just relations of husband and wife, parent and child. They can no more company with each other, than can fire with water. Their natures are not only totally opposite to, but destructive of, each other. ”