Galley slavery

“ It is in vain for either England or the United States to shirk the guilty responsibility of introducing slaves on free soil. England has the additional guilt of having acted against the wishes of the colonists; the United States has the additional guilt of increasing slave territory a century later, and when the philanthropists of every country were busied in endeavours to solve the problem, "How can slavery be abolished?" ”

“ In these primeval woods, in these wild untrodden recesses of the almost barbaric isle, the galley-slave was safer than kings are on their thrones. He was once more happy; he sent at pleasure a ball from his rifle down the azure depths of the air; he drank deep and drank often; he had a long fine dagger in his belt; he had danger, plunder, bloodshed, the three things that made the daily bread that he had pined for and hungered for as the first food of life; he felt once more to have hold on his manhood which they had done all they knew to chain down and cudgel out of him. ”

“ And Northern men cower at this, and consent to have their lips padlocked, and to be robbed of their constitutional right, aye, and their natural right, while travelling Southward; while the lordly slaveholder traverses the length and breadth of the Free States, with open mouth and impious tongue, cursing freedom and its advocates with impunity, and choosing Plymouth Rock, and the celebration of the landing of the Pilgrims upon it, as the place and the occasion specially fitting to eulogize Slavery and the Fugitive Slave Bill! ”

“ With these came a host of men equally devoted. They taught that not only the slave-holders, but the people of the Free States too, — in fact, all the citizens of this Republic, — were responsible for the “crime of slavery;” and Garrison went so far as to insist that, not the colonization of free negroes, nor the gradual emancipation of the slaves, but the unconditional and immediate abolition of slavery was the duty enjoined by moral law upon all righteous men. ”

“ If they really mean and believe what they say, it is something more heinous than impertinence to urge the planters to dispossess themselves of their property by colonization; and if the slaves belong of right to them,—are on a par with goods and chattels,—how idle, how supremely ridiculous it is to mourn over their wretched condition, to sigh for their emancipation, to declaim against the evil and wickedness of slavery, or even to denounce the slave trade! But the unfortunate blacks are not now, and never can be, the property of the planters ”

“ Like our slaves, the freedom of the negro has no birthday. No man can tell the day of the month, or the month of the year, upon which slavery was abolished in the United States. We cannot even tell when it began to be abolished. Like the movement of the sea, no man can tell where one wave begins and another ends. The chains of slavery with us were loosened by degrees. First, we had the struggle in Kansas with border ruffians; next, we had John Brown at Harper’s Ferry; next, the firing upon Fort Sumter; a little while after, we had Fremont’s order, freeing the slaves of the rebels in Missouri. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is our duty to [13] proclaim that the cause of the negro is our cause, and that we will insist upon doing away, to the best of our human ability, the stain of Slavery, not only from every portion of this mighty empire, but from the whole face of the earth." "Let the American Abolitionists be honoured in proportion as the slaveholders are execrated." ”

“ And last, the law treats the slave so fully as a rational and responsible human, that it even bestows on him the right of litigation against his own master, in one case. Any African setting up a plea of unlawful detention in bondage, against his master, is allowed to sue in forma pauperis, in the courts of law. How could the fact be more clearly defined, that the institution of slavery treats the slave as a rational human being, and gives the master property in nothing but his labour? ”

“ Is it not the oppressor, seeing that he bends his fellow-men under the yoke of a frightful slavery, lives on the sweat of the brow of his fellow-men, depraves, debases and martyrizes his fellow-beings, kills them to satisfy a whim or out of sheer cruelty, and thus compels them to reconquer by force the freedom that they have been deprived of? Never forget this, my son, if, once subjugated, the whole Gallic race had shown itself as patient, as timid, as resigned as did our poor ancestor Fergan the weaver, our slavery never would have been abolished! ”

“ We are sickened by the constant reiteration of "extraneous mass," "African inferiority," &c. which tends immediately to justify the slaveholder in his crime, and increase already existing prejudice. The Colonization Society never will effect the removal of slavery. The God of justice will never, in my opinion, let this nation off so easily. It is in vain to hold back. The eyes of all will ultimately be opened to see that nothing but universal emancipation can possibly avert impending wrath.' [AL] ”

“ WITH the growing population of slaves in the Southern States of America, there is a fearful increase of half whites, most of whose fathers are slaveowners and their mothers slaves. Society does not frown upon the man who sits with his mulatto child upon his knee, whilst its mother stands a slave behind his chair. The late Henry Clay, some years since, predicted that the abolition of Negro slavery would be brought about by the amalgamation of the races. ”

“ Shall we protect and insure the ordinary treatment of a prisoner of war? Under it, every negro yet captured has suffered death or been sent back to the hell of slavery from which he had escaped. The bloody massacre of black prisoners at Murfreesboro, brooked, so far as the public knows, no retaliation at Washington. The black servants captured at Galveston—free men and citizens of Massachusetts—were sold into slavery and remained there. In every instance in which they have had the opportunity, the rebels have enforced their barbarous proclamation. ”

“ It is boldly asserted by some colonizationists, that 'the negroes are happier when kept in bondage,' and that 'the condition of the great mass of emancipated Africans is one in comparison with which the condition of the slaves is enviable.' What is the inference? Why, either that slavery is not oppression— (another paradox) —or that real benevolence demands the return of the free people of color to their former state of servitude. Every kidnapper, therefore, is a true philanthropist! Our legislature should immediately offer a bounty for the body of every free colored person! ”

“ Moreover, as appears by the census of 1850, — in the Free States the population is thirteen millions and upwards, whereas the white population in the Slave States is but little more than six millions. Thus it appears that less than one-third of American citizens are slave-owners, or even dwellers in the States where slavery exists. Is it right, then, to stigmatize the whole nation for the doings or for the condition of a small minority? ”

“ Thus, the plantations of the Northern slave States now present to the traveller very few of the darker and more oppressive peculiarities of the system; and, provided he does not stray too near the precincts where the negroes are sold, or come across gangs of them on their way to Georgia, Louisiana, or Alabama, he may, if he is a very superficial observer, conclude that the most prosperous slavery is not much worse than the most miserable freedom. ”

“ I have observed a singular thing in Corfu, where there are often as many as three thousand galley slaves; it is that the men who row on the galleys, in consequence of a sentence passed upon them for some crime, are held in a kind of opprobrium, whilst those who are there voluntarily are, to some extent, respected. I have always thought it ought to be the reverse, because misfortune, whatever it may be, ought to inspire some sort of respect; but the vile fellow who condemns himself voluntarily and as a trade to the position of a slave seems to me contemptible in the highest degree. ”

“ As Nero fiddled while Rome was burning, so the slaveholding spirit of this nation rejoices, as one barrier of liberty after another is destroyed, and fresh victims are multiplied for the cotton-field and the auction-block. For one impeachment of the slave system, a thousand defences are made. For one rebuke of the man-stealer, a thousand denunciations of the Abolitionists are heard. For one press that bears a faithful testimony against Slavery, a score are ready to be prostituted to its service. ”

“ Henry Clay said: “The emancipated slave should be removed. This is a condition indispensable. Expense of expatriation is to be defrayed by a fund to be derived from the labor of each freedman.”
Judge Bullock of Kentucky said: “He [the colored man] is an exotic that does not and cannot flourish on American soil. There is no place for him in this country. It is not their land, and they cannot be made at home here.”
The Colonization Journal said: “You cannot abolish slavery, for God is pledged to sustain it.”
147“Policy, and even the voice of humanity, forbid the progress of manumission. ”

“ The few cannot rule when the many know their rights. If the poor whites realized that slavery kept them poor, would they not vote it down? But the South and the world are a long way off from general education. When it comes to that, we shall need no laws, and no slavery, for the millennium will have arrived."
"I'm glad you think slavery will not exist during the millennium," I replied, good-humoredly; "but how is it that you insist the negro is naturally inferior to the white, and still admit that the 'white trash,' are far below the black slaves?" ”

“ Governor Giles of Virginia did not take that ground in his address to the Legislature in 1827. Speaking of punishing free blacks by selling them as slaves, he says: “Slavery must be admitted to be a punishment of the highest order; and according to every just rule for the apportionment of punishment to crimes, it would seem that it ought to be applied only to crime of the highest order!”
But even if it were true that the slaves were as happy and contented as slave-holders try to represent them—what would it prove? ”

“ The laws which govern slaves are as various as the states where they exist. In some states manumission is comparatively unobstructed. In Delaware, it is a penal offence even to sell a slave to a notorious slavedealer. In Georgia, the law forbids, or lately forbade, the importation of slaves for sale. Now, how can a Georgian import slaves into California from Georgia, when the very laws of his own state, under which he claims to hold slaves, and under which laws he claims to carry slaves with him, forbid their importation? ”

“ Why should not the Slave Power make colossal strides over the continent? "There is no North." A sordid, truckling, cowardly, compromising spirit, is everywhere seen. No insult or outrage, no deed of impiety or blood, on the part of the South, can startle us into resistance, or inspire us with self-respect. We see our free coloured citizens incarcerated in Southern prisons, or sold on the auction-block, for no other crime than that of being found on Southern soil ”

“ How much soever he looked forward with anxious expectation to the period when the negroes might with safety be liberated, he knew too well the effect which the long continuance of abject slavery produced upon the human mind to think of their immediate emancipation, a measure which at the present moment would be injurious both to them and to the colonies. ”

“ Almost every body has heard of the recent case of Mary Gilmore, of Philadelphia, a perfectly white girl, of Irish parentage, who was taken up and tried as a runaway slave. A Missouri newspaper proves that a white man may, without a mistake, be adjudged a slave. “A case of a slave sueing for his freedom, was tried a few days since in Lincoln county, of which the following is a brief statement of particulars: A youth of about ten years of age sued for his freedom on the ground that he was a free white person. ”

“ Thus was England for a time disgraced as the seat both of slavery and a slave-trade! It may just be remarked here, that there is nothing so barbarous and atrocious, but that human nature may be familiarized to it by habit and opportunity. It was indignantly denied by the advocates of slavery that negroes were kidnapped in Africa; but when human beings were a marketable commodity, they were kidnapped even in England. ”

“ Are rich men forever to use their “thirty pieces of silver,” or their “ten thousand pounds sterling,” or their hundreds of thousands of dollars, to reward the Judases for betraying their Savior? Viewed by the light of our increased knowledge, and by our more elevated standard of duty, the extension of slavery into California or New Mexico, at the present time, or even the sufferance of it there, is a vastly greater crime than was the African slave trade itself, in the last century ”

“ The English abolitionists have labored long and arduously. Every inch of the ground has been contested.—After obtaining the decision that negroes brought into England were freemen, it took them thirtyfive years to obtain the abolition of the slave trade. But their progress, though slow and difficult, has been certain. They are now on the very eve of entire, unqualified emancipation in all their colonies. I take very little interest in politics, unless they bear upon the subject of slavery;—and then I throw my whole soul into them. ”