Slave pass

“ The infusion of Anglo-Saxon with African blood has created an insurrectionary feeling among the slaves of America hitherto unknown. Aware of their blood connection with their owners, these mulattoes labour under the sense of their personal and social injuries; and tolerate, if they do not encourage in themselves, low and vindictive passions. On the other hand, the slave owners are aware of their critical position, and are ever watchful, always fearing an outbreak among the slaves. ”

“ It seemed to me, that this gentleman was too benevolent a man, to arrest and send me back to my cruel mistress; and yet, how could I expect, or even hope, that a cotton planter would see a runaway slave on his premises, and not cause him to be taken up, and sent home? Failing to seize a runaway slave, when he has him in his power, is held to be one of the most dishonourable acts, to which a southern planter can subject himself. Nor should the people of the north be surprised at this. Slaves are regarded, in the south, as the most precious of all earthly possessions ”

“ My opinion is that American slavery, as I have seen it in the internal slave-trade, as I have seen it on the rice and sugar plantations, and in the city of New Orleans, is full as bad as slavery in any country of the world, heathen or Christian. People who go for visits or pleasure through the Southern States cannot possibly know those things which can be seen of slavery by ship-masters who run up into the back plantations of countries, and who transport the slaves and produce of plantations. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But, soothing as these retrospections of our father's useful life and humane management of his numerous slaves are to my heart, I must turn from the pleasing picture, and tell you what the abolitionists have reported about us at the North. They say, "That one of our punishments is to bury our negroes up to their necks, and leave them for a whole day perhaps thus imprisoned." "That a master claims all the property of the slave when he dies, and his wife and children get nothing ”

“ At any rate the quiet conduct of the slaves everywhere is the very best answer that could be given to the accusations that have been made as to their cruel treatment. At present the whole of the property of the slave-owners throughout the Southern States is at their mercy, and they might burn, kill, and destroy; and yet in no single instance have they risen against what are called their oppressors, even when the Federals have been close at hand. ”

“ Slavery is becoming daily more and more odious, in the east, in the west, in the north, ay, and in the south. Individually, many slaveholders are becoming less attached to their property. There may be too much even of this good thing. Slavery would continue longer, in the present slave states, if it were extended to the new territories ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ The consequences that have been so often drawn,—the tearing of the Slave from his country and family, would indeed, in this case, take effect, for the civilized and domiciliated Slave would be torn from his family and connections, to supply the deficiencies on those estates and islands where the Negro population does not increase. ”

“ There have not been wanting men and newspapers to urge that the United States should reimburse the slave-holders of the South for the wholesale confiscation, so to speak, of their property. True, these men and newspapers belong to that class of unrepentants who believed that slavery was a Divine institution and that the slave-holder was a sort of vicegerent of heaven, a holy Moses, as it were. ”

“ By that cruel act of Congress, everybody, all over the country, was required to send back fugitive slaves to their masters. Whoever concealed them or helped them in any way became liable to a year's imprisonment and a fine of a thousand dollars, besides paying the price of the slave. In all the Northern cities there were many honest, industrious colored people who had escaped from Slavery years before, and were now getting a comfortable living. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And now came the great battle of the Fugitive Slave Law. The sorceress slavery meditated a grand coup d' etat that should found a Southern slave empire, and shake off the troublesome North, and to that intent her agents concocted a statute so insulting to Northern honor, so needlessly offensive in its provisions, so derisive of what were understood to be its religious convictions and humane sentiments, that it was thought verily, "The North never will submit to this, and we shall make here the breaking point." ”

“ The Fugitive Slave law was passed, and thereby the rights of freemen, the property of men in themselves, all the household sanctities, all the domestic endearments of half a million of men, were put in peril. This was the equivalent given! A mere barter of the holiest interests for worldly advantages! And these interests were given away by men who did not own them, and therefore had no right to transfer them. The whites, north and south, played a game, and made the black people their stakes. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The advertisements for runaways, with which the Southern Papers are crowded, demonstrate the discontent of the Slaves, and their longings for freedom. The unwillingness of the Slaveholders to bring their Slaves to the North, during their Summer pilgrimages, testify their apprehensions on the subject. Happy, indeed! Who can describe the sufferings of parents, for ever bereft of their children; mothers robbed of their daughters; children torn from their parents; young women, and married women, exposed to the brutal lusts of Slave-drivers, masters, and overseers. Millions doomed to insult ”

“ True, in these latter days men and women of the South, and honest ones, too, have striven feverishly to paint Negro slavery in bright alluring colors. They have told of childlike devotion, faithful service and light-hearted irresponsibility, in the fine old aristocracy of the plantation. Much they have said is true. But when all is said and granted, the awful fact remains congealed in law and indisputable record that American slavery was the foulest and filthiest blot on nineteenth century civilization. ”

“ As the anti-slavery movement developed, the call for immediate liberation became more insistent and imperative. The colonization method lost credit. Slavery was coming to be regarded by its opponents not merely as a social evil to be eradicated, but as a personal sin of the slave-holder, to be renounced as promptly as any other sin. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Whatever might be the case with the law of England, the law of Moses, in authorizing the enslavement of "strangers," seemed to give to the purchase of negro slaves an express sanction. The number of negroes in the colony, limited as it was to a few cargoes, brought at intervals by Dutch traders, was long too small to make the matter appear of much moment, and more than forty years elapsed before the colonists thought it necessary to strengthen the system of slavery by any express enactments. ”

“ They do not understand what a vast gulf flows between them and the equality of position with the white race which most of those who have aspirations imagine to be meant by emancipation. He said the town slave-owners were very severe and harsh in demanding larger sums than the slaves could earn. The slaves are sent out to do jobs, to stand for hire, to work on the quays and docks. Their earnings go to the master, who punishes them if they do not bring home enough. ”

“ In a fifth, it would be a petty negro chief disposing of twenty or thirty negroes taken alive in a recent attack upon a village at a little distance from his own. Sometimes these forays in quest of negroes to sell are on a very large scale, and then they are called slave-hunts. The king of one negro country collects a large army, and makes an expedition into the territories of another negro king, ravaging and making prisoners as he goes. ”

“ And their interest was quickened and their determination confirmed by the reports that came to us from Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and many other places, of the preparations that were making to protect the colored people, and set at defiance the plan for their re-enslavement. The historian of our country, if he be one worthy of the task, will linger with delight over the pages on which he shall narrate the uprising of the people364 generally, in 1850 and 1851, throughout the Northern States, in opposition to the Fugitive Slave Law. ”

“ Colored people were allowed to ride in a filthy box, behind white people, at the south, but there they were not required to pay for the privilege. It made me sad to find how the north aped the customs of slavery. ”

“ The particular instances mentioned in the evidence, of slaves dying in consequence of severe and cruel treatment from their masters, were not punished, though generally known; nor do the perpetrators of these barbarities appear to have suffered any disgrace!
If you speak to a negro of future punishments, he says,——“Why should a poor negro be punished? he does no wrong? fiery cauldrons, and such things, are reserved for white people, as punishments for the oppression of slaves.” ”

“ All these laws, apparently for the protection of the slave, are rendered perfectly null and void, by the fact, that the testimony of a negro or mulatto is never taken against a white man. If a slave be found toiling in the field on the Sabbath, who can prove that his master commanded him to do it? ”

“ These centuries have indeed been centuries of enslavement, but certainly not of debasement nor any form of retrogression. For slavery is and has been, from time immemorial, practically universal in the fatherland of the Negro—slavery more cruel and degrading and inhuman than is known elsewhere on the globe. We enter into no details, unwilling to make our pages needlessly repulsive. In fact, the training of servitude in the South has worked mightily for the Negro's advancement—not unlike the domestication of the lower animals. ”

“ This, however, was only the case with the professional slave-driver, who was commissioned to convey the negroes to the coast; and if we wish to form a conception of the extent and intricate working of the curse inflicted upon the negroes by their contact with white men, we must set ourselves to imagine all the previous kidnapping and fighting which must have been necessary to procure every one of these droves which the Slatees carried down. What a number of processes must have conspired to bring a sufficient number of slaves together to form a drove! ”

“ Neither the aged nor the sick are spared; women, and even children in the womb, fall a sacrifice to their fury; the huts are plundered, the little possessions of the unfortunate inhabitants carried away or destroyed, and all that fall alive into the hands of the robbers are led as slaves into the camp. When the negroes see that their resistance is no longer of any avail, they frequently prefer death to slavery ”

“ In fact, so handsomely had the vicious slave behaved under the altered conditions of freedom and 513kindly confidence, that his wages had been voluntarily increased one-third, and he had once or twice been sent out as a trusty man to try and hire more hands for the plantation.
“There’s a proof,” said the Northern proprietor who had recently come into possession, “of the evil influences of the old system. A man of any spirit was sure to be driven into revolt by slavery, and then you had a very dangerous nigger. Freedom makes a first-class hand of him.” ”

“ 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. ”