Slave (American English)

“ Slavery is abolished. The cause of antagonism is removed; and you must see that it is altogether illogical—‘putting new wine into old bottles, mending new garments with old clothes’—to legislate from slave-holding and slave-driving premises for a people whom you have repeatedly declared your purpose to maintain in freedom. ”

“ The habit of mind of traders in power would not be esteemed favorable to delicate moral perception. American slavery affords no exception to this rule. No excess of good nature or of tenderness in individuals has been able to give a new character to the system, to tear down the whipping-house. The plea in the mouth of a slave-holder that the negro is an inferior race sounds very oddly in my ear. ”

“ It is the slaveholder NOW, he who looks upon labor as only fit for a servile race, it is him and his kindred spirits who live upon the labor of others, endeavoring to reduce the white laborer to the condition of the slave. They do not yet claim him as property, but they would exclude him from all participation in the public affairs of the country. It is further said, that if the negroes were free, the black would rival the white laborer in the free States. ”

“ The scenes that I have witnessed are enough to harrow up the soul; but could the slave be permitted to tell the story of his sufferings, which no white man, not linked with slavery, is allowed to know, the land would vomit out the horrible system, slaveholders and all, if they would not unclinch their grasp upon their defenceless victims. ”

“ First, there are the five millions of mean, non-slaveholding whites. These the system has reduced to a condition below that of the slave himself, in many cases. Slavery becomes at once their curse and their infatuation. It fascinates while it crushes them ”

“ But, in being protected in his life and limbs against the violence of others, even of the master of his labour and liberty; and in being punishable himself for all violence committed against others; the slave is no less evidently regarded by law, as a member of the society, and not as a part of the irrational creation; as a moral person, and not as a mere article of property. ”

“ There is no such thing as a Bible defence of slavery at the present day. Slavery in the United States is a social institution, originating in the convenience and cupidity of our ancestors, existing by state laws and recognized to a certain extent—for the recovery of slave property—by the constitution. ”

“ On the other hand, many of the people of another part of the United States regard slavery, if not in the abstract a blessing, at least as now existing a condition of society best for both white and black, while they exist together ”

“ When I say that I regard slavery in itself as a great moral, social, and political evil, I only use language which has been adopted by distinguished men, themselves citizens of slave-holding States. I shall do nothing, therefore, to favor or encourage its further extension. We have slavery already amongst us. The Constitution found it in the Union; it recognized it, and gave it solemn guaranties. ”

“ It is a mistake to suppose that the southern planters could ever retain their property, or live amongst their slaves, if those slaves were not kept in terror of the punishment that would follow acts of violence and disorder. There is no difference between the feelings of the different races of men, so far as their personal rights are concerned. ”

“ Slavery is, after all, the great demoralizer of the human race. In addition to the marks of barbarism left upon the features of the African, he has the indelible imprint of the task-master. Want of food, clothing, medical attention when sick, over-work, under the control of drunken and heartless drivers, the hand-cuffs and Negro whip, together with the other paraphernalia of the slave-code, has done much to distinguish the blacks from the rest of the human family. ”

“ And now let us briefly inquire into the influence of slavery on the white man's character; for in this evil there is a mighty re-action. "Such is the constitution of things, that we cannot inflict an injury without suffering from it ourselves: he who blesses another, benefits himself; but he who sins against his fellow-creature, does his own soul a grievous wrong." The effect produced upon slave-captains is absolutely frightful. ”

“ The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers. I could regard them in no other light than a band of successful robbers, who had left their homes, and gone to Africa, and stolen us from our homes, and in a strange land reduced us to slavery. I loathed them as being the meanest as well as the most wicked of men. As I read and contemplated the subject, behold! that very discontentment which Master Hugh had predicted would follow my learning to read had already come, to torment and sting my soul to unutterable anguish. ”

“ The sole view of the writer has been to make the citizens of the United States acquainted with each other, and to give a faithful portrait of the manners, usages, and customs of the southern people, so far as those manners, usages, and customs have fallen under the observations of a common negro slave, endued by nature with a tolerable portion of intellectual capacity. ”

“ Such is the influence of slavery in the United States, that the ministers of religion, even in the so-called free states, are the mere echoes, instead of the correctors, of public sentiment. We have thought it advisable to show that the present system of chattel slavery in America undermines the entire social condition of man, so as to prepare the reader for the following narrative of slave life, in that otherwise happy and prosperous country. ”

“ In the Southern part of the United States I was a slave, thought of and spoken of as property. In the language of the law, "held, taken, reputed and adjudged to be chattel in the hands of my owners and possessors, and their executors, administrators, or assigns, to all intents, constructions, and purposes whatever."—Brev. Digest, 224. In the Northern States, a fugitive slave, liable to be hunted at any moment like a felon, and to be hurried into the terrible jaws of slavery—doomed by an inveterate prejudice against color to insult and outrage in every hand. ”

“ Objects in themselves indifferent, which they are forbidden to touch, or even approach, excite in the minds of the unreflecting, ungovernable impulses. The slave, who is taught from infancy, to regard his condition as unchangeable, and his fate as fixed, by the laws of nature, fancies that he sees his master in possession of that happiness which he knows has been denied to himself. ”

“ Taking the blacks as they are, and comparing them also with what they would be in Africa, or if set free, to remain in connection with the whites, slavery is not a curse. To be free is, of course, in itself a blessing. But it depends on many things whether, under existing circumstances, being a slave here is practically a curse. Our people generally insist that it must be, and therefore that it is. ”

“ And I will say further, perhaps other gentlemen may remember the instances, that although slavery, as a system of servitude attached to the earth, exists in various countries of Europe, I am not at the present moment aware of any place on the globe in which this property of man in a human being as a slave, transferable as a chattel, exists, except America. ”

“ The effects of Slavery on the bond and Colonization on the free. Of the first we shall say but little, but will here repeat the language of a high-minded Virginian in the Legislature of that State, on the recent discussion of the slave question before that honorable body, who declared, that man could not hold property in man, and that the master held no right to the slave, either by a law of nature or a patentee from God, but by the will of society; which we declare to be an unjust usurpation of the rights and privileges of men. ”

“ But, where, pray, can we go to find moral power in this nation sufficient to overthrow Slavery? To what institution, to what party shall we apply for aid? I say we admit that there are evils which can be best removed by influences confined to their immediate locality. But in regard to American Slavery it is not so. ”

“ This will be seen by the fact, that the slaveholders like to have their slaves spend those days just in such a manner as to make them as glad of their ending as of their beginning. Their object seems to be, to disgust their slaves with freedom, by plunging them into the lowest depths of dissipation. ”

“ And slavery had so hardened men's hearts, that the above act was found to be necessary to teach the alphabet of human kindness. No wonder human forbearance was strained to its greatest tension when masters, thus liberating their slaves, assumed the lofty air of humanitarians who had actually done a noble act in manumitting a slave! ”

“ No one who has travelled largely through the Southern States will require to be told that the slave system sanctions the holding in slavery of persons who are undistinguishable in complexion from the whitest Anglo-Saxons. ”

“ When I am indulging in my views of American prospects and American liberty, it is mortifying to be told that in that very country a large portion of the people are slaves. It is a dark spot on the face of the nation. ”

“ The impression is cunningly made, that slavery is the only power that can prevent the laboring white man from falling to the level of the slave's poverty and degradation. To make this enmity deep and broad, between the slave and the poor white man, the latter is allowed to abuse and whip the former, without hinderance. ”

“ Slavery is destructive of the white. I have known young men and women, amiable in all respects, of the most attractive manners and dispositions, but towards their slaves they were unjust and severe.
“There are naturally exceptions. There are good and tender masters and mistresses, but these are few. The rule is, that slavery blinds and hardens the mind of the slave-owner from childhood upwards. ”

“ I have observed this in my experience of slavery,—that whenever my condition was improved, instead of its increasing my contentment, it only increased my desire to be free, and set me to thinking of plans to gain my freedom. ”

“ I can testify, from my own experience and observation, that slavery is a curse to the whites as well as to the blacks. It makes white fathers cruel and sensual; the sons violent and licentious; it contaminates the daughters, and makes the wives wretched. ”

“ Experience is a keen teacher; and long before you had mastered your A B C, or knew where the "white sails" of the Chesapeake were bound, you began, I see, to gauge the wretchedness of the slave, not by his hunger and want, not by his lashes and toil, but by the cruel and blighting death which gathers over his soul. ”

“ The blunting effects of slavery upon the slaveholder's moral perceptions are known and conceded, the world over; and a privileged class, an aristocracy, is but a band of slaveholders under another name. ”

“ How far the slave laws are conducive to the enjoyment of those they govern, each individual can judge for himself. In the Southern papers, we continually see pictures of runaway negroes, and sometimes the advertisements identify them by scars, or by letters branded upon them. Is it natural for men to run away from comfort and happiness, especially when any one who meets them may shoot them, like a dog? and when whipping nearly unto death is authorized as the punishment? I forbear to describe how much more shocking slave whipping is than anything we are accustomed to see bestowed upon cattle. ”

“ Why, the slave is not only robbed of his labor, but of his very chances as a thinking being. Yes, with a charming consistency, the slavery barons, the Hammonds and the Davises, while they tell us the negro is unfitted for mental cultivation, institute the severest penal laws against all attempts to teach the slave to read!
The first natural instinct of the slave, black or white, towards his master is, to cheat and baffle that armed embodiment of wrong, who stands to him in the relation of a thief and a tyrant. ”

“ But the advocates of slavery tell us, that on the negro's own account, it is best to keep him in slavery; that without a master to guide him and take care of him, he is a wretched being; that freedom is the greatest curse that can be bestowed upon him. ”

“ I, on the other hand, deny that the Constitution guarantees the right to hold property in men, and believe that the way, the true way, to abolish slavery in America is to vote such men into power as will exert their moral and political influence for the abolition of slavery. This is the issue plainly stated, and you shall judge between us. ”

“ On the other hand, it was contended, that slaves are deemed persons, as well as property. They partake of the qualities of both. In being compelled to labour, not for himself, but for his master; in being vendible by one master to another; and, in being subject, at all times, to be restrained in his liberty, and chastised in his body, by the will of another, the slave may appear to be degraded from the human rank, and classed with the irrational animals, which fall under the denomination of property. ”

“ All society groans under the slavery of stupendous toil and a pittance wage. The negro slavery of the Southern States of America was better than the white slavery of to-day all over the earth, but more particularly in Europe and in America. ”

“ If a slave is found out of the limits of the town in which he lives, or beyond the plantation on which he is usually employed, without a written permission from his master, or the company of some white person, any body may inflict twenty lashes upon him; and if the slave resist such punishment, he may be lawfully killed. ”