Slaveholder

“ 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. ”

“ They would cheerfully pilot them, or give them a free passage on the Under-Ground Railroad! But all those pious slaveholders from necessity are ready to lynch or imprison any man who may undertake to release them from the “necessary evils” of slavery. A slaveholder from necessity is one who holds slaves because holding them is a necessary condition of robbing them. ”

“ And so it was as far as the negro is concerned; but there is in America today another form of slavery which no clash of arms can eradicate, and this is the picture of the slaveholder: [Draw Fig. 47 complete.] The 'little brown jug,' which we use as a type of the saloon power, holds millions of men and boys in its grasp, consuming their brains, their bodies, and their money, and bringing misery and hopelessness to them and to those who love them. From Europe comes many a cry of anguish, showing that the same powerful slaveholder holds sway across the ocean. ”

“ We are now told that the obedient and unresisting submission of the slaves proves that they are satisfied with their condition, and have no desire to be free. And we are asked to admit, therefore, that Slavery is not a curse, but an absolute blessing, to those whom it affects most nearly! Or we are pointed to the multitude of slaves daily seeking the protection of the United States flag, and are informed that slaveholders are contending for the right to retain their property. ”

“ It knows that the owners of slaves are the owners, and no one else—it does not, in the most remote degree, touch that delicate subject. Every slaveholder may, therefore, remain at ease concerning it or its progress or objects.'— [An advocate of the Society in the New-Orleans Argus.] ”

“ Slavery benefits no one but its immediate, individual owners, and them only in a pecuniary point of view, and at the sacrifice of the dearest rights and interests of the whole mass of non-slaveholders, white and black. ”

“ But the slaveholder believes, there are many things to be taken into consideration—self preservation, good order of society and the condition of the emancipated slave, are all to be regarded and weighed, before freedom is granted. ”

“ The slaveholders felt that when slavery was denounced among themselves, it was not so bad; but let one of the slaves get loose, let him summon the people of Britain, and make known to them the conduct of the slaveholders toward their slaves, and it cuts them to the quick, and produces a sensation such as would be produced by nothing else. ”

“ It was his peculiar doctrine that a man has a perfect right to interfere by force with the slaveholder, in order to rescue the slave. I agree with him. They who are continually shocked by slavery have some right to be shocked by the violent death of the slaveholder, but no others. ”

“ Of all things that have been said of slavery to which exception has been taken by slaveholders, this, the charge of cruelty, stands foremost, and yet there is no charge capable of clearer demonstration, than that of the most barbarous inhumanity on the part of the slaveholders toward their slaves. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We say, therefore, that, deeply impressed with the conviction that slavery is a great social and political evil, a sin and a crime, in the fullest sense, whenever we speak of gentlemen of the South, or of gentlemen anywhere, or at whatever time, or in whatever connection we may speak of gentlemen, we seldom allude to slaveholders, for the simple reason that, with few exceptions, we cannot conscientiously recognize them as gentlemen. ”

“ 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 experience of the fifty years passed under it, shows us the slaves trebling in numbers;—slaveholders monopolizing the offices and dictating the policy of the Government;—prostituting the strength and influence of the Nation to the support of slavery here and elsewhere;—trampling on the rights of the free States, and making the courts of the country their tools. ”

“ The fact that the master inflicts pain upon the slave not merely as an end to gratify passion, but constantly as a means of extorting labor, is enough of itself to show that the system of slavery is unmixed cruelty.
3. That the slaves must suffer frequent and terrible inflictions, follows inevitably from the character of those who direct their labor. Whatever may be the character of the slaveholders themselves, all agree that the overseers are, as a class, most abandoned, brutal, and desperate men. This is so well known and believed that any testimony to prove it seems needless. ”

“ Slaveholders and slave-breeders shall be convinced, confuted, convicted, and converted. They shall, in their hearts and consciences, if not with their tongues and pens, bear testimony to the triumphant achievements of free labor. ”

“ My only argument with any persons who have heard and believed such monstrosities about us is, that the slaveholders may be destitute, as the abolitionists would fain believe, of every benevolent virtue, but they certainly are not divested of their love of self; and, therefore, they could not hurt or be cruel to a single one of their slaves, who, if he died, would be a loss to them of six, seven, eight, nine, or ten hundred dollars. ”

“ This morning I witnessed the sale of twelve slaves, and I could but shudder at the language used and the liberties taken with the females!"
2d. As a proof, that in the kinds of servitude referred to, God did not invest Abraham, or any other person with that absolute ownership of his fellow-men, which is claimed by Southern slaveholders—I would remark, that He has made man accountable to Himself; but slavery makes him accountable to, and a mere appendage to his fellow-man. Slavery substitutes the will of a fallible fellow-man for that infallible rule of action—the will of God. ”

“ With regard to the sophistical reasoning which teaches that abolitionists, before abolishing slavery, should compensate the slaveholders for all or any number of the negroes in their possession, we have, perhaps, said quite enough ”

“ On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The slaveholders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. ”

“ To be told that we ought not to agitate the question of Slavery, when it is that which is forever agitating us, is like telling a man with the fever and ague on him to stop shaking, and he will be cured. The discussion of Slavery is said to be dangerous, but dangerous to what? The manufacturers of the Free States constitute a more numerous class than the slaveholders of the South: suppose they should claim an equal sanctity for the Protective System. ”

“ I could tell of more slaveholders as cruel as those I have described. They are not exceptions to the general rule. I do not say there are no humane slave-holders. Such characters do exist, notwithstanding the hardening influences around them. ”

“ The majority of slaveholders find it necessary, to insure obedience, at times, to avail themselves of the utmost extent of the law, and many go beyond it. If kindness were the rule, we should not see advertisements filling the columns of almost every southern newspaper, offering large rewards for fugitive slaves, and describing them as being branded with irons, loaded with chains, and scarred by the whip. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But the ruin of small slaveholders is often accomplished in a single lifetime.
When a white family own five or ten slaves, they cannot afford to be indolent and expensive in their habits; for one black drudge cannot support one white gentleman or lady. ”

“ I assert most unhesitatingly, that the religion of the south is a mere covering for the most horrid crimes,—a justifier of the most appalling barbarity,—a sanctifier of the most hateful frauds,—and a dark shelter under, which the darkest, foulest, grossest, and most infernal deeds of slaveholders find the strongest protection. ”

“ I have seen the time when it was the belief of an apparently overwhelming majority of the Southern whites that the “peculiar institution” of slavery was an economic, moral, social and political blessing, while, in fact, slavery as the predominant interest, making everything else subordinate to itself, weighed down, like an incubus, industry, commercial enterprise, popular education—everything that constitutes progressive civilization. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Let not the apologists for slavery bring up the isolated cases of leniency, giving instruction, and affectionate attachment, that are found among some masters, as specimens of slavery! It is unfair! They form exceptions, and much do I respect them; but they are not the rules of slavery. The strife that is being stirred up is not to take away anything that belongs to another,—neither their silver or gold, their fine linen or purple, their houses or land, their horses or cattle, or anything that is their property; but to rescue a neighbor from their unmanly cupidity. ”

“ The institution of slavery, wielding a most potent and commanding authority, brought every thing, in politics, science, philosophy, and letters, to bear in support of the slave trade, in maintenance of the institution of slavery, and to uphold the dogma that the Negro was but an inferior animal. ”

“ But it will appear that the institution of slavery has produced not only heathenish, degraded, miserable slaves, but it produces a class of white people who are, by universal admission, more heathenish, degraded, and miserable. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But are they not the happiest, most contented people in the world—at any rate, when they are in hospital? I declare that to me the more orderly, methodical, and perfect the arrangements for economising slave labour—regulating slaves—are, the more hateful and odious does slavery become. I would much rather be the animated human chattel of a Turk, Egyptian, Spaniard, or French creole, than the labouring beast of a Yankee or of a New England capitalist. ”

“ Wherever slavery exists to any considerable extent, with the exception of some recently settled portions of the country, and which have not yet felt, in a great degree, the baneful and deteriorating influence of slave labor—we hear, at this moment, the cry of suffering. ”

“ We have got our wives, our daughters, our sons, our property, all at their mercy—a quantity of papers and pamphlets are circulated among them, in which the slave-holder is portrayed as a monster of hell—a picture or plate of some act of cruelty generally heads the production—individual acts of cruelty and oppression are selected, and so related as if similar deeds were daily committed by every slave-holder in the South! What must the poor man of colour think upon reading, or seeing, this? ”

“ 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. ”

“ But it is still here, it still works and one of the most magnificent anomalies in modern human history is the labor and fighting of a half-million black men and two million whites for the freedom of four million slaves and these same slaves, dumbly but faithfully and not wholly unconsciously, protecting the mothers, wives and children of the very white men who fought to make their slavery perpetual. ”

“ A single glance at the origin of negro slavery will suggest the remedy which ought to be applied. The slavery and the slave trade of the western world began in a desire to obtain by forced labor the products of the earth. ”

“ 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. ”