Slave owner

“ If the slave-owner of our times has no slave, John, whom he can send to the cesspool, he has five shillings, of which hundreds of such Johns are in such need that the slave-owner of our times may choose any one out of hundreds of Johns and be a benefactor to him by giving him the preference, and allowing him, rather than another, to climb down into the cesspool. ”

“ On the one hand, if the owner of the slave could go into this non-slaveholding state, and seize the negro, put his hands upon him, and the whole world would recognise the truth of his ownership of property, and the fact of the escape of that property, there would be no difficulty then in those states where prejudice against slavery exists in the highest degree. ”

“ Philemon, he could not also have "owed him ought." [A] The American slave is, according to law, as much the property of his master as any other chattel; and can no more "owe" his master than can a sheep or a horse. The basis of all pecuniary obligations lies in some "value received." How can "an article of merchandise" stand on this basis and sustain commercial relations to its owner? There is no person to offer or promise. Personality is swallowed up in American slavery! ”

“ Arrived at the place of destination, the condition of the slave is scarcely less deplorable. They are advertised with cattle; chained in droves, and driven to market with a whip; and sold at auction, with the beasts of the field. They are treated like brutes, and all the influences around them conspire to make them brutes.
"Some are employed as domestic slaves, when and how the owner pleases; by day or by night, on Sunday or other days, in any measure or degree, with any remuneration or with none, with what kind or quantity of food the owner of the human beast may choose. ”

“ These slave-owners of whom I now speak deeply deplore the circumstances under which they are placed, and, while wanting the spirit of self-sacrifice, and the moral courage, which would lead them, by manumitting their slaves, to enter into a novel competition with slave-labour on other estates, do their best to ameliorate the condition in which the Africans are placed, encouraging them, by the sale of little articles of their own manufacture, to purchase their freedom, which is granted at a very reduced rate. ”

“ It is often attempted to palliate slavery by comparing the state of slaves with our poorer countrymen: if the misery of our poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin; but how this bears on slavery, I cannot see; as well might the use of the thumb-screw be defended in one land, by showing that men in another land suffered from some dreadful disease. Those who look tenderly at the slave-owner, and with a cold heart at the slave, never seem to put themselves into the position of the latter;—what a cheerless prospect, with not even a hope of change! ”

“ The fact is, the Southern slave-owners believed that, in some way, the ownership of slaves conferred a sort of patent of nobility—a right to govern independent of the interest or wishes of those who did not hold such property. ”

“ In every aspect in which slavery among us can be considered, it is pregnant with difficulty. Its continuance in the States in which it has taken root has resulted in the monopoly of the soil, to a great extent, in the hands of the slaveholders, and the entire control of all departments of the State Government; and yet a majority of people in the slave States are not slave-owners. ”

“ O mother! I’ve no one to love me—no heart
Can bear like thine own in my sorrows a part;
No hand is so gentle, no voice is so kind!
O! none like a mother can cherish the blind!
Poor blind one! no mother thy wailing can hear,
No mother can hasten to banish thy fear;
For the slave-owner drives her o’er mountain and wild,
And for one paltry dollar hath sold thee, poor child!
Ah! who can in language of mortals reveal
The anguish that none but a mother can feel,
When man in his vile lust of mammon hath trod
On her child, who is stricken and smitten of God! ”

“ Supposing the negro to be a man, the Slave-owners who have set their hands to these sentiments have pronounced the doom of their own institution and saved its adversaries further trouble. But it must in fairness to them be owned that they have set their hands to too much. ”

“ This force it was which, operating by calculations of profit and loss upon the mass of worldly-minded slave-owners, taught them, if not instinctively, at least by practical experience, that their bondmen might be made more servile and profitable slaves for them, without the name, than any that ever bore the name. ”

“ Slave-owners have never yet, in any part of the world, been known to favor, as a body, any scheme, which could ultimately tend to abolish slavery; yet in this country, they belong to the Colonization Society in large numbers, and agree to pour from their State treasuries into its funds. Individuals object to it, it is true; but the scheme is very generally favored in the slave States. ”

“ It is too common to associate with the slave-holder the character of the slave-merchant. And we regret to see the abolitionist of the day seizing upon the cruelties and abuses of power by a few slave-owners in regard to their slaves, in order to excite odium against slave-holders as a class. ”

“ But in whatever degree the question of immediate pecuniary profit may be unsettled, the evils of slavery in affecting the morals and happiness of society, in abridging public and private enterprize, in promoting idleness and extravagance, and in accelerating the impoverishment of land, are sufficiently capable of demonstration, and are indeed freely admitted by many slave holders. ”

“ Is man ever a creature to be trusted with wholly irresponsible power? And does not the slave system, by denying the slave all legal right of testimony, make every individual owner an irresponsible despot? Can anybody fall to make the inference what the practical result will be? If there is, as we admit, a public sentiment among you, men of honor, justice and humanity, is there not also another kind of public sentiment among the ruffian, the brutal and debased? And cannot the ruffian, the brutal, the debased, by slave law, own just as many slaves as the best and purest? ”

“ Indeed a very brief glance will show that slavery is inconsistent with economy, whether domestic or political.
The slave is bought, sometimes at a very high price; in free labor there is no such investment of capital. ”

“ Must our arguments be based upon justice and mercy to the slaveholders only? Have the negroes no right to ask compensation for their years and years of unrewarded toil? It is true that they have food and clothing, of such kind, and in such quantities, as their masters think proper. But it is evident that this is not the worth of their labor; for the proprietors can give from one hundred to five and six hundred dollars for a slave, beside the expense of supporting those who are too old or too young to labor. ”

“ As a mere laborer, the slave feels that he toils for his master, and not for himself; that the laws do not recognise his capacity to acquire and hold property, which depends altogether upon the pleasure of his proprietor, and that all the fruits of his exertions are reaped by others. ”

“ Even in the lands of slavery, the slavetrader is loathed as an ignoble character, from whom the countenance is turned away; and can the Slave-Hunter be more regarded while pursuing his prey in a land of Freedom? ”

“ How wonderful is His providence amid the disastrous and destructive doings of men! The slave-trade has been carried on for centuries by cruel, ruthless men, without a thought of mercy. The system of slavery, in the lands of the black man's thraldom, has been a system of greed, and overwork, and lust, and premature decay, and death, with but slight and incidental alleviations. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Does he secure his slaves against the chances of the inter-state slave trade—against [Pg 185] sale at auction for his debts—against the lash of a Legree? No. What then entitles him to the character of a kind slaveholder? Why he simply treats them as a good man treats a fine horse or a favorite dog. He feeds them well, works them moderately, whips but little, but robs them of all! We abuse language when we say—a benevolent robber, a gentlemanly pickpocket, an honorable pirate or a kind slaveholder. ”

“ Make the case your own. 'Master,' said a slave at Liverpool, to the merchant that owned him, 'what if some of my countrymen were to come here, and take away mistress, and Tommy, and Billy, and carry them into our country, and make them slaves, how would you like it? 'His answer as worthy of a man 'I will never buy a slave more while live.' Let his resolution be yours. Have no more any part in this detestable business. Instantly leave it to those unfeeling wretches ' who laugh at human nature and compassion.' Be you a man; not a wolf, a devourer of the human species. ”

“ Speaking of slavery to a fellow lawyer, he said: "It is the most glittering, ostentatious, and displaying property in the world; and now, if a young man goes courting, the only inquiry is how many negroes he or his lady love owns. The love of slave property is swallowing up every other mercenary possession. ”

“ We have disposed of the moral division of this question on biblical grounds, and we will now look at its legal and political aspect. Slaves, as property, are as much legitimated by legislative enactments and safeguards, as any species of property in our country, in lawful possession; and, therefore, it is the height of presumption and injustice to ask the slave-holder to surrender up this species of property—which gives to his other property whatever value it may possess. It is the insolent demand of rank agrarianism. On what principle, then, can the abolitionists rest this demand? ”

“ Our northern free states denouncing slavery as a crime, confessedly inconsistent with their civil and religious principles, yet, for commercial and pecuniary considerations, deliberately entering into a compact with slaveholders tolerating a twenty years' perpetuation of the African slave trade, the rendition of fugitives, the suppression of servile insurrections, and allowing to the slaveholders a virtual property basis of representation. ”

“ It is not probable that any open attempt to secure me as a slave could have succeeded, further than the obtainment, by my master, of the money value of my bones and sinews. Fortunately for me, in the four years of my labors in the abolition cause, I had gained many friends, who would have suffered themselves to be taxed to almost any extent to save me from slavery. ”

“ They have purchased your slave judges, they have debauched your slave legislatures, and they have forced to worse horrors than chattel slavery your slave boys and girls. Two million of your children are toiling to-day in this trader-oligarchy of the United States. Ten millions of you slaves are not properly sheltered nor properly fed. ”

“ The proprietors, though they live in luxury, generally die in debt: their negroes are so hardly treated that no profit is made by their labor. Many of them are great gamblers. At the death of a proprietor, it commonly happens that his colored people are sold towards paying his debts. So it must and will be with the masters while slavery continues: when freedom is established, I believe they will begin to prosper greatly. ”

“ Vide Nyendael and Artus of Dantzic, in De Bry’s India Orientalis, &c.—Bosman,—Barbot.
7. Moore, many years factor to the African Company, about 1730, says, ‘Since this trade has been used, all punishments are changed into slavery, there being an advantage in such condemnations. They strain for crimes very hard, in order to get the benefit of selling the criminal. Not only murder, theft, and adultery, but every trifling crime is punished by selling the criminal for a Slave.’ ”

“ They dressed like the poorest freedmen. No one dare misuse the slave of another simply because he was a slave. If the master abused a slave, the latter had an asylum in the temple and could demand to be sold. Slaves could pursue any trade which they knew, paying a stipulated sum to their owners, and could thus buy their manumission. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Why do slave masters keep slaves? To get labor out of them—and to get money by their labor—and to gratify their affections and appetites by money. They keep slaves to please themselves and to pamper their families—God and their neighbor, in this relation, are as nought to them.
Why do people use slave produce? To please themselves and their company! The cry of the laborer, whose wages are kept back by fraud and force, has gone up to God against it. ”