Freeman (slavery)

“ I found it just as hard to be beaten over the head with a piece of iron in New York as it was in Virginia. Whips and chains are everywhere necessary to degrade and brutalize the slave, in order to reduce him to that abject and humble state which Slavery requires. ”

“ How much more rational would it be, to argue that the natural enemy of the privileges of a freeman, is he who is robbed of them himself! Dishonorable to the species is the idea that they would ever prove injurious to our interests—released from the shackles of slavery, by the justice of government and the bounty of individuals—the want of fidelity and attachment would be next to impossible. ”

“ I have here been combating the argument, that because the Fugitive Slave law is aimed at slaves, no freeman has any ground of complaint against it, even though he should be converted into a chattel under it. He must console himself under the doom of interminable bondage, with the patriotic and pious reflection that he is only suffering, as an exception, to prove the general excellence of the law ”

“ If the system and practice of Slavery is a righteous one, instituted by an All-wise God, certainly no human power— especially one so impotent and futile as the abolition power is said to be —can ever overthrow it. ”

“ A person allowed to pursue only one trade or calling, and only in one locality of the country, would not be, in the strict sense of the term, in a condition of slavery, but probably none would deny that he would be in a condition of servitude. He certainly would not possess the liberties nor enjoy the privileges of a freeman. ”

“ It introduces between him and his laborers, mutual repellancies and estrangement; it encourages the former to exercise an authority which he would not venture to assume under a system of perfect freedom; it emboldens the latter to display an insolence which he would not have dreamed of in a state of slavery, and thus begetting in the one, the imperiousness of the slaveholder without his power, and in the other, the independence of the freeman without his immunities, it perpetuates a scene of angry collision, jealousy and hatred. ”

“ Is not one man’s property sometimes taken to pay another man’s debts? and is not one man sometimes executed for another man’s murder? Why, then, should the courts of justice be arraigned, if a freeman, instead of a slave, is sometimes consigned to bondage?”
Sir, the unmistakable distinction lies here; that if there be any difference between the kind or degree of proof applicable to a freeman and that applicable to a slave, then, in a free state, you must first prove a man to be a slave by freeman’s proof. ”

“ But I mention the existence of slavery only that we may remember that when we speak of freedom, freeman, democracy, and the like, we are after all speaking of the rights of a privileged class—that, whether in Athens, in Rome, or in the early Teutonic communities, there was always a large mass13 of human beings who had no share in the freedom, the victory, or the glory of their masters. ”

“ Freeman, "that there are so few blacks that, with their freedom, avoid poverty and vice, nobly resisting the natural tendency of their condition, has led some to suppose, that however undesirable in itself slavery may be, the blacks generally gain but little, and in most instances are great losers, by emancipation. The free blacks are, as a whole, exceedingly corrupt, depraved, and abandoned. ”

“ No! the man who knows, or suspects, that he has seized a freeman, or that his victim even believes himself to be a freeman, and will put the claimant to the trouble and expense of a trial, will plunge that freeman into the abyss of bondage, where no ray of hope may ever reach him, and where his voice will be hushed as in the silence of death. ”

“ A freeman may be suddenly arrested, and dragged into court, and on certain papers being read against him, which he never saw nor heard of before, he may be ordered into the custody of officers, and hurried to a returnless distance from wife, children, and friends, reduced to the direst form of bondage the world ever knew, and at the expense of the very government which he has been taxed to support, and which in turn was bound to protect him. ”

“ I rejoined, that it seemed hard that I must be compelled to prove myself a freeman: and that it would appear more consonant to reason, that my master should prove me to be a slave. He, however, assured me that this was not the law of Georgia, where every man of colour was presumed to be a slave, until he could prove that he was free. He then told me that if I expected him to talk to me, I must give him a fee; whereupon I gave him all the money I had been able to procure, since my arrival in the country, which was two dollars and seventy-five cents. ”

“ The authors of the Federalist deemed the principle of excluding an interested party from all power of deciding his own cause to be so important, that they laid down the following doctrine: “No man ought certainly to be a judge in his own cause, or in any cause, in respect to which he has the least interest or bias.” (No. 80.) Yet the only chance which the Fugitive Slave law allows to a freeman, when carried into bondage, is that which he may exercise while under the absolute control of his robber master. ”

“ Freeman, "of bona fide emancipation, in the midst of the slave-holding States, evidenced by self-denying exertions to place the emancipated blacks in a land where they may be truly free and blessed, will have more effect in free — ing others, than a hundred auxiliaries at the North, or tens of thousands of speeches and resolves which never reach the eye or ear of a single slave-holder, or if they do, serve only to irritate, and shut up every avenue to conviction." And so it is: "God's ways are not as our ways, neither are His thoughts as our thoughts." ”

“ After declaring that he who is 'guilty of wilfully and maliciously killing a slave, shall suffer the same punishment as if he had killed a freeman;' the act concludes thus: 'Provided, always, this act shall not extend to the person killing a slave outlawed by virtue of any act of Assembly of this state; or to any slave in the act of resistance to his lawful overseer, or master, or to any slave dying under moderate correction.' Reader, look at this proviso. 1. It gives free license to all persons to kill outlawed slaves. Well, what is an outlawed slave? ”

“ None of them, then, can with justice cast reproaches on America; for if she has been guilty of receiving the stolen goods, they have been guilty of the still greater crime of taking them. ↑ "When England," remarks Mr. Freeman, "introduced slavery into her American colonies, she had as much free labor at home as the landholders wished to employ; and it has been on this account, and this only, that the past was enabled to say,
'Slaves cannot breathe in England ”

“ If a slave is to be freed this should be done publicly, in court, or church or market, and lance and helmet or other the arms of free men should be given him, while he should give his lord thirty pence, that is the price of his skin, as a sign that he is henceforth ‘worthy of his hide.’ On the other hand, when a free man falls into slavery then also there should be a public ceremony. ”

“ Even colored people who had been free all their lives felt themselves very insecure in their freedom, for under this law the oaths of any two villains were sufficient to consign a free man to slavery for life. ”

“ Is not this, then, a case parallel with that of the slaves? And in both, I may as justly accuse you of oppression, of tyranny, of a hatred to liberty, because you will not emancipate lunatics, and all children, as you accuse me, for not advocating the immediate abolition of slavery.
Slavery is derived from slave; as servant comes from service. In the English language the two are distinct from one another; the former term being applied to involuntary, the latter to voluntary, servitude. ”

“ How shall I describe my first experience of free life? Nothing can be greater than the contrast it affords to a plantation experience, under the suspicious and vigilant eye of a mercenary overseer or a watchful master. Day and night are not more unlike. The mandates of Slavery are like leaden sounds, sinking with dead weight into the very soul, only to deaden and destroy. The impulse of freedom lends wings to the feet, buoys up the spirit within, and the fugitive catches glorious glimpses of light through rifts and seams in the accumulated ignorance of his years of oppression. ”

“ I know not if a day is ever to come when the nature of right freedom will be understood, and when men will see that to obey another man, to labor for him, yield reverence to him or to his place, is not slavery. ”

“ They are free certainly, but they are also degraded, rejected, the offscum and the offscouring of the very dregs of your society; they are free from the chain, the whip, the enforced task and unpaid toil of slavery ”

“ Neither inadequate remuneration, physical discomfort, intellectual ignorance, moral degradation, is essential to the condition of a slave. Yet if all these ideas are removed from the commonly received notion of slavery, how little will remain. All the ideas which necessarily enter into the definition of slavery are deprivation of personal liberty, obligation of service at the discretion of another, and the transferable character of the authority and claim of service of the master. ”

“ Men seldom see themselves as others see them; and while, to ourselves, everything connected with our contemplated escape appeared concealed, Mr. Freeland may have, with the peculiar prescience of a slaveholder, mastered the huge thought which was disturbing our peace in slavery. ”

“ But, in regard to innocence and guilt, where is the white line? How high up can a slaveholder go and not lose his free agency? At what elevation will the whip fall from the hand of the master, and the fetter from the limbs of the slave? There is no such point. Freedom and slavery on the one hand, and climate and geology on the other, are incommensurable quantities. We might as well attempt to determine a question in theology by the cube root, or a question in ethics by the black art. Slavery, being a crime founded upon human passions, can go wherever those passions are unrestrained. ”

“ Will they tell the great Judge that it was necessary to preserve the slave system,—that it could not be preserved without them?
Will they dare look upon those eyes, which are as a flame of fire, with any such avowal?
Will He not answer, as with a voice of thunders, “Ye have killed the poor and needy, and ye have forgotten that the Lord was his helper”?
The deadly sin of slavery is its denial of humanity to man. This has been the sin of oppression, in every age. ”

“ Do you talk of selling a man? You might as well talk of selling immortality or sunshine! [Pg 60] You might as well talk of your right to monopolise the atmosphere, to determine how much air a man should breathe, and to retail it out to him by the jaw-full!
Again, it is said the slave has a maintenance guaranteed to him in old age, and is thus rendered free from those corroding cares in reference to his support which wear upon the poor free man. Is this provision of so high a consequence that men voluntarily submit to slavery? ”

“ The Institutions of this country do not know me—do not recognize me as a man. I am not thought of, spoken of, in any direction, out of the Anti-Slavery ranks, as a man. I am not thought of or spoken of, except as a piece of property belonging to some Christian Slaveholder, and all the Religious and Political Institutions of this Country alike pronounce me a Slave and a chattel. ”

“ He who (no matter where) seizes a human being, (no matter whom,) and reduces him to involuntary servitude, shall die; for he seeks to take away the rights and privileges of freedom, all that goes to make up life; seeks to make property of man, to extinguish the man in the chattel.
"But," it is said, "this only refers to stealing slaves." Mark the logic: a man could seize and enslave another with impunity; but if, afterward, the father, brother, or friend of the enslaved should attempt to rescue him, he must die! Glorious argument for slaveholders and slave-catchers! ”

“ I had already vaguely begun to feel that there was more than one kind of slavery, and that the workingmen who had protested so vigorously against slaves in America could hardly call themselves free men. ”

“ Had they been properly educated, and prepared for freedom, they might have turned out well; but those wretches are a melancholy example of what will be found to be the case in other countries where slavery still exists, should the slaves suddenly be made free, or should they rise and win their freedom for themselves. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Therefore, when the choice exists, to employ at an equal price free or slave labor, the former will be decidedly preferred, because it is regarded as more capable, more diligent, more faithful, more worthy of confidence. — 'The fact is,' says one of her own distinguished citizens, 'slavery is the bane and ruin of one portion of our land, and the advantage of free labor and industry has exalted the other portion. ”

“ A people long used to hardship, dependent on the capricious mercy of their masters, subject without appeal to impositions laid on them by the stronger hand, they learned by daily experience that government by laws made without their own consent, and administered by officers imposed on them against their will, was the very definition of slavery. ”

“ He, whose labor had contributed to the comfort and social happiness of others,—who, while they were testing on scores of battle fields their power to rob him of his freedom, was caring for and protecting their wives and daughters and furnishing the sinews of the unholy war—was now at the mercy of those who had gone forth to battle with the cry that, “slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition.” ”