Slave property

“ The property of the slave also is absolutely the property of his master, the slave himself being the subject of property, and as such saleable, or transmissible at the will of his master.—A slavery, so malignant as that described, does not leave to its wretched victims the least vestige of any civil right, and even divests them of all their natural rights. ”

“ Slavery steals from mother's arms their dear ones, and leaves them to mourn their loss. The Slave laws are not obsolete, as some would have you believe, but strictly conformed to, when the interest of the owner requires it. Another case, just in point, is that of Mrs. Forester, of Washington city, the capital of the United States, who sold one of her Slaves his liberty, for three hundred dollars, but his wife and three children remained her property, as he was unable to purchase them. ”

“ We have disposed of the moral division of this question on biblical grounds, as 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? ”

“ If justice is to be appealed to in determining the amount of compensation, let her determine the grounds also. If it be her province to say how much compensation is "just," it is hers to say whether any is "just,"—whether the slave is "just" property at all, rather than a "person." Then, if justice adjudges the slave to be "private property," it adjudges him to be his own property, since the right to one's self is the first right—the source of all others—the original stock by which they are accumulated—the principal, of which they are the interest. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Men, women, and children can own, for the time being, the land that they have cleared for farming purposes; and can own slaves whom they have bought or inherited. I have known a case in which a slave owned a slave, and that slave—the property of another slave—owned a slave also. When we bought a piece of land in 1890, the price given was divided among the head-men in the town according to their importance, and they gave a part of their shares to their followers—members of their family, but not to their slaves. ”

“ In the case of property in the labor of a man, or what is usually called slave property, the insecurity would be so great that the owner could not ordinarily retain it. Therefore, though the right would remain, the remedy being withheld, it would follow that the owner would be practically debarred, by the circumstances of the case, from taking slave property into a Territory where the sense of the inhabitants was opposed to its introduction. ”

“ M'Lean and Curtis held, per contra, that slaves are recognized property only locally and by the laws of particular states, being out of those states not property, nor even slaves, except in the single case of fugitives. ”

“ By the progress of milder legislation under the Emperors, much of the protection of law was thrown round the slave, he became capable of possessing property, and the evil altogether assumed a considerably gentler aspect. Until, however, slavery assumes the mitigated form, of villenage, in which not only the slaves have property and legal rights, but their obligations are more or less limited by usage, and they partly labour for their own benefit; their condition is seldom such as to produce a rapid growth either of population or of production. ”

“ It is true as I stated it, that slave property peculiarly requires the protection of society, and would ordinarily become valueless in the midst of a community, which would seek to seduce the slave front his master, and conceal him whilst absconding, and as jurors protect each other in any suit which the master might bring for damages. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There are few proprietors, at this day, more to be pitied than the large planters of Virginia and the Carolinas; as high-spirited, generous a race as may anywhere be encountered, but much weighed down of late by the pressure of circumstances which they cannot control, and which every year threatens to render more heavy, unless, through some miraculous interposition, the growing causes be removed or checked. The very slave property, for the inherited possession of which they are abused, is becoming in many cases a burthen. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Labour of another may be Property.
By confounding the master's right to the slave's labour with a pretended property in his conscience, soul, and whole personality, abolitionists have attempted 272 to represent "property in man" as a self-evident wrong. But we shall show that, in the only sense in which we hold it, property in man is recognized by the laws of every commonwealth. The father has property in his child, the master in his apprentice, the husband in his wife, the wife in her husband, and the employer in his hireling. ”

“ As already observed, almost every one was either an actual slave or an owner of slaves. If a slave-owner, he lived upon the revenues of his estates—upon his possessions, of which his slaves constituted a part, often the greater part. If a slave, his wants were supplied, and his necessities provided for, by those to whom he belonged. If a predial slave, he was kept out of the produce of his master’s farms, just as the herds and flocks were kept, both being regarded alike in the light of chattel property. If a domestic slave, his keep was a necessary part of his master’s household expenses. ”

“ By it, by the very constitution of a country which proudly boasts of freedom, three millions T 2 of intelligent and responsible beings are reduced to the level of mere property—property legally reclaimable, too, in the Free States by an act called the Fugitive Slave Act. That there are slaveholders amiable, just, and humane, there is not a doubt ”

“ Neither can men, by the same principles, be considered as lands, goods, or houses, among possessions. It is necessary that all property should be inferiour to its possessor. But how does the slave differ from his master, but by chance? ”

“ No reasonable man — no one who knows anything of human nature — can entertain the expectation (however desirable it may seem) that many hundreds of thousands of slave-holders, in fifteen different States of the Union, should at once change all their ways of feeling, thinking, and doing, give up all their long-established social habits and arrangements, and sacrifice property (or what they have always been accustomed to consider as legitimate property) to the enormous amount of between two or three hundred millions sterling (a thousand or fifteen hundred millions of dollars) . ”

“ We protest against the doctrine laid down in the District Court, that men are to be deprived of property, life, and character-for a forfeit of all these are the penalties of engaging in the slave-trade-on any 'suspicions,' however strong. ”

“ It declared that the statutes and regulations concerning slaves were inapplicable to persons of color and although such were not entitled to social or political equality with white persons, they were given the right to own and dispose of property, to make contracts, to enjoy the fruits of their labor, to sue and be sued, and to receive protection under the law in their persons and property. ”

“ I believe that the right of property in a slave is not distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitution, and Judge Douglas thinks it is. I believe that the Supreme Court and the advocates of that decision may search in vain for the place in the Constitution where the right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed I say, therefore, that I think one of the premises is not true in fact. ”

“ Besides, the mere toleration of the slave trade could not make slavery itself—the right of property in man—lawful any where; not even on board the slave ship. Toleration of a wrong is not law. ”

“ The slave could trade and acquire property for himself, could receive wages for his work when hired to another, could give evidence in a court of law, and might obtain his freedom either by manumission, by purchase, by adoption, or by impressment into the royal service. ”

“ That things, not persons, are the objects of property. McKean, Chief Justice, delivered his sentiments in an elaborate charge to the jury—in the course of which, he said: "Slavery is of very ancient origin. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The slave-holder claims the slave as his Property. The very idea of a slave is, that he belongs to another, that he is bound to live and labor for another, to be another's instrument, and to make another's will his habitual law, however adverse to his own. ”

“ It may be easily conceived, that under these circumstances, especially as they were often intrusted with property to a large amount, there must have arisen a practice of allowing the slave to consider a part of his gains as his own. ”

“ There was a visionary dogma that negro slaves were not property. “That is property which the law declares property.” That species of property was worth twelve hundred millions. Would the abolitionists raise that sum to indemnify the owners? ”

“ Did the protection we received annul our rights as men, and lay us under an obligation of being miserable ?
Who among you, my countrymen, that is a father, would claim authority to make your child a slave because you had nourished him in his infancy?
It is a strange species of generosity which requires a return infinitely more valuable than anything it could have bestowed; that demands as a reward for a defence of our property, a surrender of those inestimable privileges, to the arbitrary will of vindictive tyrants, which alone give value to that very property. ”

“ This, it would seem, must further mitigate the dissatisfaction of those who favor perpetual slavery, and especially of those who are to receive the compensation. Doubtless some of those who are to pay and not to receive will object. Yet the measure is both just and economical. In a certain sense the liberation of slaves is the destruction of property—property acquired by descent or by purchase, the same as any other property. ”

“ The master may sell him, dispose of his person, his industry, his labor; he can do nothing, possess nothing, nor acquire any thing, but which must belong to his master." "Slaves shall be deemed, taken, reputed, and adjudged," say the South [Pg 14] Carolina laws, "to be chattels personal in the hands of their masters, and possessions to all intents and purposes whatsoever." Such is slavery, a claim to man as property. ”

“ Again, we are brought by learned Senators to the Constitution, which requires that there shall be “just compensation,” where “private property” is taken for public use. But, plainly, here the requirement is absolutely inapplicable, for there is no “private property” to take. Slavery is but a bundle of barbarous pretensions, from which certain persons are to be released. At what price shall the bundle be estimated? How much shall be paid for the controlling pretension of property in man? ”

“ Slavery, therefore, though claiming to be a kind of property, is the bane of property; and the more slaves there are found in the inventory of a nation’s wealth, the less in value will the aggregate of that inventory be. ”

“ This asserted and exercised right is the vital principle and substance of the institution. It is the central delusion and transgression; and the evils of the system to white and black are its legitimate consequences. The legal and the leading idea concerning slaves is that they are property: of course, the idea that they are men, invested with the rights of men, practically sinks; and, from the premise that they are property, the conclusion is logical that they may be treated as property. ”

“ Shall we pay the whelps of slavery for the privilege of converting them into decent, honest, upright men? No, never! The non-slaveholders expect to gain, and will gain, something by the abolition of slavery; but slaveholders themselves will, by far, be the greater gainers; for, in proportion to population, they own much larger and more fertile tracts of land, and will, as a matter of course, receive the lion’s share of the increase in the value of not only real estate, but also of other [Pg 329] genuine property, of which they are likewise the principal owners. ”