Slavery

If there breathe on earth a slave,
Are ye truly free and brave? ~ James Russell Lowell

Slavery is a form of forced labour in which people are held under the involuntary control of others, and required to work under legal penalty. Most notably, from the 16th to the 19th centuries, millions of people were taken from Africa to the Americas to work there.

Quotes

  • The accursed system of slavery will fall, as did Satan from Heaven.
  • “I am a poor, ignorant man . . . but I have heard of the Declaration of Independence, and have read the Bible. The Declaration says all men are created equal, and the Bible says God has made us all of one blood. I think . . . we are entitled to good treatment, that it is wrong to hold men in slavery”
    • Arthur Tappan, an elderly black man who spoke at the New York City Anti-Slavery Society in 1833. As quoted by Stern, Joseph (1941), Science & Society, Vol 5, p. 168. See also Ottley, Roi (1948), Inside Black America, p. 14.
  • Racial segregation must be seen for what it is — and that is an evil system, a new form of slavery covered up with certain niceties of complexity.
  • “I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?”
    • Ain't I a Woman? (1851), by Sojourner Truth (ca.1797-1883), a black woman who was born into slavery and later became a prominent abolitionist and activist
  • "Slavery was the wickedest thing in the world, the greatest curse the earth had ever felt... The sin of slavery is so clearly written out, and so much talked against, that if any one says he don't know, and has not heard, he must, I think, be a liar."
    • John Dumont (1849), a former slaveholder and former master of Sojourner Truth. As quoted in Olive Gilbert & Sojourner Truth (1878), Narrative of Sojourner Truth, a Bondswoman of Olden Time, page 124
  • "If the trade is at present carried on to the same extent and nearly in the same manner, while we are delaying from year to year to put a stop to our part in it, the blood of many thousands of our helpless, much injured fellow creatures is crying against us. The pitiable state of the survivors who are torn from their relatives, connections, and their native land must be taken into account. I fear the African trade is a national sin, for the enormities which accompany it are now generally known; and though, perhaps, the greater part of the nation would be pleased if it were suppressed, yet, as it does not immediately affect their own interest, they are passive. {...] Can we wonder that the calamities of the present war begin to be felt at home, when we ourselves wilfully and deliberately inflict much greater calamities upon the native Africans, who never offended us?. "Woe unto thee that spoilest, and thou wast not spoiled when thou shalt cease to spoil, thou shalt be spoiled"
    • John Newton (1797), former slave-trader who later became an abolitionist. . Alluding to the biblical verse in Isaiah 33:1. As quoted in The Works of the Rev. John Newton... to which are Prefixed Memoirs of His Life (1839), Vol. 2, U. Hunt., page 438
  • "I should be inexcusable, considering the share I have formerly had in that unhappy business, if, upon this occasion, I should omit to mention the African slave-trade. I do not rank this amongst our national sins, because I hope, and believe, a very great majority of the nation earnestly long for its suppression. But, hitherto, petty and partial interest prevail against the voice of justice, humanity and truth. This enormity, however, is not sufficiently laid to heart. If you are justly shocked by what you hear of the cruelties practised in France, you would, perhaps, be shocked much more, if you could fully conceive of the evils and miseries inseparable from this traffic, which I apprehend, not from hearsay, but from my own observation, are equal in atrocity, and, perhaps superior in number, in the course of a single year, to any or all the worst actions which have been known in France since the commencement of their revolution. There is a cry of blood against us; a cry accumulated by the accession of fresh victims, of thousands, of scores of thousands, I had almost said of hundreds of thousands, from year to year."
    • John Newton (1797), former slave-trader who later became an abolitionist. As quoted in The Works of the Rev. John Newton... to which are Prefixed Memoirs of His Life (1839), Vol. 2, U. Hunt, pages 429-230.
  • Are we disposed to be the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, I consider it as nothing less than a question of freedom or slavery; and in proportion to the magnitude of the subject ought to be the freedom of the debate. It is only in this way that we can hope to arrive at truth, and fulfill the great responsibility which we hold to God and our country.
  • Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
  • Vis tu cogitare istum, quem servum tuum vocas, ex isdem seminibus ortum eodem frui caelo, aeque spirare, aeque vivere, aeque mori!
  • Personally I believe the bicentenary offers us a chance not just to say how profoundly shameful the slave trade was – how we condemn its existence utterly and praise those who fought for its abolition, but also to express our deep sorrow that it ever happened, that it ever could have happened and to rejoice at the different and better times we live in today.
  • Slavery, throughout its entire existence in the United States, is none other than the most barbarous, unprovoked and unjustifiable war of one portion of its citizens against another portion, the only conditions of which are perpetual imprisonment and hopeless servitude, or absolute extermination, in utter disregard and violation of those eternal and self-evident truths set forth in our Declaration of Independence:
    • John Brown, "Provisional Constitution and Ordinances"
  • I would not have a slave to till my ground,
    To carry me, to fan me while I sleep,
    And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth
    That sinews bought and sold have ever earn'd.
  • Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs
    Receive our air, that moment they are free;
    They touch our country, and their shackles fall.
  • Plato defined a slave as one who accepts from another the purposes which control his conduct. This condition obtains even where there is no slavery in the legal sense. It is found wherever men are engaged in activity which is socially serviceable, but whose service they do not understand and have no personal interest in.
  • I have often been utterly astonished, since I came to the north, to find persons who could speak of the singing, among slaves, as evidence of their contentment and happiness. It is impossible to conceive of a greater mistake. Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears. At least, such is my experience. I have often sung to drown my sorrow, but seldom to express my happiness. Crying for joy, and singing for joy, were alike uncommon to me while in the jaws of slavery. The singing of a man cast away upon a desolate island might be as appropriately considered as evidence of contentment and happiness, as the singing of a slave; the songs of the one and of the other are prompted by the same emotion.
    • Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (1845)
  • I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and incur my own abhorrence. From my earliest recollection, I date the entertainment of a deep conviction that slavery would not always be able to hold me within its foul embrace; and in the darkest hours of my career in slavery, this living word of faith and spirit of hope departed not from me, but remained like ministering angels to cheer me through the gloom. This good spirit was from God, and to him I offer thanksgiving and praise.
    • Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (1845)
  • If one looks across the expanse of history, one cannot help but notice a curious sense of identification between the most exalted and the most degraded; particularly, between emperors and kings, and slaves. Many kings have surrounded themselves with slaves, appoint slave ministers-there have even been, as with the Mamluks of Egypt, actual dynasties of slaves. Kings surround themselves with slaves for the same reason they surround themselves with eunuchs: because the slaves and criminals have no families or friends, no possibility of other loyalties-or at least that, in principle, they shouldn't. But in a way, kings should really be like that too. As many an African proverb emphasizes: a proper king has no relatives either, or at least, he acts as if he does not. In other words, the king and slave are mirror images, in that unlike normal human beings who are defined by their commitments to others, they are defined only by relations of power. They are as close to perfectly isolated, alienated beings as one can possibly become.
  • I can understand the poor and stupid voting for Marxism or one of its fashionable variants. If you've no hope of being other than a slave, you may as well opt for the most efficient form of slavery.
  • "A house divided against itself cannot stand". I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.
  • In giving freedom to the slave we assure freedom to the free, — honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve.
  • I have always thought that all men should be free; but if any should be slaves, it should be first those who desire it for themselves, and secondly, those who desire it for others. When I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
    • Abraham Lincoln, in an address to an Indiana Regiment passing through Washington (17 March 1865); The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln Volume VIII
  • As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.
    • Abraham Lincoln, in notes for a speech from a fragment presented by to the Chicago Veterans Druggist's Association in 1906 by Judge James B. Bradwell, who claimed to have received it from Mary Todd Lincoln. Collected Works, 2:532
  • If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands.
  • I have a dream: that one day, right down in Georgia and Mississippi and Alabama, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to live together as brothers.
  • I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal." I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.
  • We've got to stay together and maintain unity. You know, whenever Pharaoh wanted to prolong the period of slavery in Egypt, he had a favorite, favorite formula for doing it. What was that? He kept the slaves fighting among themselves. But whenever the slaves get together, something happens in Pharaoh's court, and he cannot hold the slaves in slavery. When the slaves get together, that's the beginning of getting out of slavery. Now let us maintain unity.
  • If there breathe on earth a slave,
    Are ye truly free and brave?
    If ye do not feel the chain,
    When it works a brother's pain,
    Are ye not base slaves indeed,
    Slaves unworthy to be freed?
  • They are slaves who fear to speak
    For the fallen and the weak    ;
    They are slaves who will not choose
    Hatred, scoffing, and abuse,
    Rather than in silence shrink
    From the truth they needs must think;
    They are slaves who dare not be
    In the right with two or three.
  • Slavery is in itself an arrogant denial of human rights, and by no human reason can the power to establish such a wrong be placed among the attributes of any just sovereignty.
  • "When Charles Darwin entered the world 200 years ago, there was one clear and simple answer to the slave's question. All men were men and brothers, because all were descended from Adam. By the time Darwin had reached adulthood, however, opinions around him were growing more equivocal [...] By the mid-19th-century, many influential voices denied that the enslaved African was a brother, and it was broadly taken for granted that as a man, he was of an inferior sort to his white master".
  • As soon as men live entirely in accord with the law of love natural to their hearts and now revealed to them, which excludes all resistance by violence, and therefore hold aloof from all participation in violence — as soon as this happens, not only will hundreds be unable to enslave millions, but not even millions will be able to enslave a single individual.
  • “Whoever steals a man and sells him, and anyone found in possession of him, shall be put to death."

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 715-16.
  • Servi peregrini, ut primum Galliæ fines penetraverint eodem momento liberi sunt.
    • Foreign slaves, as soon as they come within the limits of Gaul, that moment they are free.
    • Bodinus, Book I, Chapter V
  • Lord Mansfield first established the grand doctrine that the air of England is too pure to be breathed by a slave.
    • Lord Campbell, Lives of the Chief Justices, Volume II, p. 418
  • No more slave States and no more slave territory.
    • Salmon P. Chase, Resolutions Adopted at the Free-Soil National Convention (Aug. 9, 1848)
  • Cotton is king; or slavery in the Light of Political Economy.
    • David Christy, title of book (pub. 1855)
  • It [Chinese Labour in South Africa] could not, in the opinion of His Majesty's Government, be classified as slavery in the extreme acceptance of the word without some risk of terminological inexactitude.
  • Nimia libertas et populis et privatis in nimiam servitutem cadit.
    • Excessive liberty leads both nations and individuals into excessive slavery.
    • Cicero, De Republica, I. 44
  • Fit in dominatu servitus, in servitute dominatus.
    • He is sometimes slave who should be master; and sometimes master who should be slave.
    • Cicero, Oratio Pro Rege Deiotaro, XI
  • I do not see how a barbarous community and a civilized community can constitute a state. I think we must get rid of slavery or we must get rid of freedom.
  • Corrupted freemen are the worst of slaves.
  • Resolved, That the compact which exists between the North and the South is a covenant with death and an agreement with hell; involving both parties in atrocious criminality, and should be immediately annulled.
  • The man who gives me employment, which I must have or suffer, that man is my master, let me call him what I will.
  • The very mudsills of society. * * * We call them slaves. * * * But I will not characterize that class at the North with that term; but you have it. It is there, it is everywhere, it is eternal.
    • James H. Hammond, speech in the U. S. Senate. (March 1858)
  • Cotton is King.
    • James H. Hammond. Phrase used in the Senate, March, 1858. Gov. Manning of South Carolina, Speech at Columbia, S. C. (1858)
  • Whatever day
    Makes man a slave, takes half his worth away.
    • Homer, The Odyssey, Book XVII, line 392. Pope's translation.
  • [England] a soil whose air is deemed too pure for slaves to breathe in.
    • Capel Lofft, Reports, p. 2. Margrave's Argument. (14 May 1772)
  • The air of England has long been too pure for a slave, and every man is free who breathes it.
    • Lord Mansfield. Said in the case of a negro, James Somersett, carried from Africa to Jamaica and sold.
  • Execrable son! so to aspire
    Above his brethren, to himself assuming
    Authority usurp'd, from God not given.
    He gave us only over beast, fish, fowl,
    Dominion absolute; that right we hold
    By his donation; but man over men
    He made not lord; such title to himself
    Reserving, human left from human free.
  • Where bastard Freedom waves
    Her fustian flag in mockery over slaves.
    • Thomas Moore, To the Lord Viscount Forbes, written from the City of Washington
  • And ne'er shall the sons of Columbia be slaves,
    While the earth bears a plant, or the sea rolls its waves.
    • Robert Paine, Ode, Adams and Liberty (1798)
  • You have among you many a purchas'd slave,
    Which, like your asses and your dogs and mules,
    You use in abject and in slavish parts,
    Because you bought them.
  • Englishmen never will be slaves; they are free to do whatever the Government and public opinion allow them to do.
  • Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still,
    Slavery! said I—still thou art a bitter draught.
  • By the Law of Slavery, man, created in the image of God, is divested of the human character, and declared to be a mere chattel.
    • Charles Sumner, The Anti-Slavery Enterprise, address at New York (9 May 1859)
  • Where Slavery is there Liberty cannot be; and where Liberty is there Slavery cannot be.
    • Charles Sumner, Slavery and the Rebellion, speech before the New York Young Men's Republican Union (Nov. 5, 1864)
  • They [the blacks] had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.
    • Roger B. Taney, The Dred Scot Case. See Howard's Rep, Volume XIX, p. 407
  • Slavery is also as ancient as war, and war as human nature.
    • Voltaire, Dictionnaire philosophique portatif ("A Philosophical Dictionary") (1764), Slaves
  • I never mean, unless some particular circumstances should compel me to do it, to possess another slave by purchase, it being among my first wishes to see some plan adopted by which slavery in this country may be abolished by law.
  • That execrable sum of all villanies commonly called the Slave-trade.
  • A Christian! going, gone!
    Who bids for God's own image?—for his grace,
    Which that poor victim of the market-place
    Hath in her suffering won?
  • Our fellow-countrymen in chains!
    Slaves—in a land of light and law!
    Slaves—crouching on the very plains
    Where rolled the storm of Freedom's war!
  • What! mothers from their children riven!
    What! God's own image bought and sold!
    AMERICANS to market driven,
    And bartered as the brute for gold!
  • Time-servers are the cowering slaves of slaves,
    Alone on earth, who serves the Lord is free,
    Each soul shall win the gift that it most craves;
    Seek God, my soul — God shall your portion be!


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Last modified on 9 May 2013, at 01:52