Most
plantations were owner-operated and
the planters themselves often worked in the fields. Of the total southern
white population of 8,099,760 in 1860, only 384,000 owned slaves.
Of these, 10,780 owned fifty or more. It was calculated that about
88 per cent of America's slave-owners owned twenty slaves or less.
The death-rate amongst slaves was high. To replace their losses, plantation
owners encouraged the slaves to have children. Child-bearing started
around the age of thirteen, and by twenty the women slaves would be
expected to have four or five children. To encourage child-bearing
some population owners promised women slaves their freedom after they
had produced fifteen children.
The wealth of the South was concentrated in the hands of around a
thousand families. These large landowners would usually own well over
100 slaves and relied heavily on overseers
to run their plantations. In 1850 it was estimated that these thousand
families had an income of about $50,000,000 while the remaining 660,000
families received only $60,000,000.
(1) William
Box Brown, Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown (1851)
My master's son Charles, at one time,
became impressed with the evils of slavery, and put his notion into
practical effect by emancipating about forty of his slaves, and paying
their expenses to a free state. Our old master, about this time, being
unable to attend to all his affairs himself, employed an overseer
whose, disposition was so cruel as to make many of the slaves run
away. The change in our treatment was so great, and so much for the
worse, that we could not help lamenting that the master had adopted
such a change. There is no telling what might have been the result
of this new method amongst slaves, so unused to the lash as we were,
if in the midst of the experiment our old master had not been called
upon to go the way of all the earth. As he was about to expire he
sent for my mother and me to come to his bedside; we ran with beating
hearts and highly elated feelings, not doubting, in the, least, but
that he was about to confer upon us the boon of freedom - for we had
both expected that we should be set free when master died - but imagine
our deep disappointment when the old man called me to his side and
said, Henry yon, will make a good plough-boy, or a good gardener,
now you must be an honest boy and never tell an untruth.
(2)
Lewis Clarke, Narrative of the Sufferings
of Lewis Clark (1845)
William
Campbell promised my father that his daughter Letitia should be made
free in his will. It was with this promise that he married her. I
have no doubt that Mr. Campbell was as good as his word, and that
by his will, my mother and her nine children were made free. But ten
persons in one family, each worth three hundred dollars, are not easily
set free among those accustomed to live by continued robbery. We did
not, therefore, by an instrument from the hand of the dead, escape
the avaricious grab of the slaveholder. It is the common belief that
the will was destroyed by the heirs of Mr. Campbell.
(3)
Carl
Schurz, speech to members of the Republican
Party
in Massachusetts (18th April, 1859)
I
wish the words of the Declaration of Independence, "that all
men are created free and equal, and are endowed with certain inalienable
rights," were inscribed upon every gatepost within the limits
of this republic. From this principle the revolutionary fathers derived
their claim to independence; upon this they founded the institutions
of this country; and the whole structure was to be the living incarnation
of this idea.
Shall I point out to you the consequences of a deviation from this
principle? Look at the slave states. This is a class of men who are
deprived of their natural rights. But this is not the only deplorable
feature of that peculiar organization of society. Equally deplorable
is it that there is another class of men who keep the former in subjection.
That there are slaves is bad; but almost worse is that there are masters.
Are not the masters freemen? No, sir! Where is their liberty of the
press? Where is their liberty of speech? Where is the man among them
who dares to advocate openly principles not in strict accordance with
the ruling system? They speak of a republican form of government,
they speak of democracy; but the despotic spirit of slavery and mastership
combined pervades their whole political life like a liquid poison.
They do not dare to be free lest the spirit of liberty become contagious.
The system of slavery has enslaved them all, master as well as slave.
What is the cause of all this? It is that you cannot deny one class
of society the full measure of their natural rights without imposing
restraints upon your own liberty. If you want to be free, there is
but one way - it is to guarantee an equally full measure of liberty
to all your neighbors.
(4)
Robert Toombs, speech in the Georgia legislature
(13th November, 1860)
In
1790 we had less than 800,000 slaves. Under our mild and humane administration
of the system, they have increased about 4 million. The
country had expanded to meet the growing want; and Florida, Alabama,
Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, and
Missouri have received this increasing tide of African labor; before
the end of this century, at precisely the same rate of increase, the
Africans among us in a subordinate condition will amount to 11 million
persons. What shall be done with them?
We must
expand or perish. We are constrained by an inexorable necessity to
accept expansion or extermination. Those who tell you that the territorial
question is an abstraction, that you can never colonize another territory
without the African slave trade are both death and blind to the history
of the last sixty years. For twenty years the Abolition societies,
by publications made by them, by the public press, through the pulpit
and their own legislative halls, and every effort - by reproaches,
by abuse, by vilification, by slander - to disturb our security, our
tranquillity - to excite discontent between the different classes
of our people, and to excite our slaves to insurrection. No nation
in the world would submit to such conduct from any other nation. I
will not willingly do so from this Abolition Party.
Mr. Lincoln's Republican Party all speak with one voice, and speak
trumpet-tongued their fixed purpose to outlaw $4 billion of our property
in the territories, and to put it under the ban of the empire in the
states where it exists. They declare their purpose to war against
slavery until there shall not be a slave in America, and until the
African is elevated to a social and political equality with the white
man. Lincoln endorses them and their principles, and in his own speeches
declares the conflict irrepressible and enduring, until slavery is
everywhere abolished.
My countrymen, "if you have nature in you, bear it not."
Withdraw yourselves from such a confederacy; it is your right to do
so - your duty to do so. I know not why the Abolitionists should object
to it, unless they want to torture and plunder you. If they resist
this great sovereign right, make another war of independence, for
that then will be the question; fight its battles over again - reconquer
liberty and independence. as for me, I will take any place in the
great conflict for rights which you may assign. I will take none in
the federal government during Mr. Lincoln's administration.
(5)
Carl
Schurz,
speech in St. Louis (1st August, 1860)
Slavery
demands extension by an aggressive foreign policy; free labour demands
an honourable peace and friendly intercourse with the world abroad
for its commerce, and a peaceable and undisturbed development of our
resources at home for its agriculture and industry. Slavery demands
the absolute ascendency of the planning interest in our economic policy;
free labour demands legislation tending to develop all the resources
of the land, and to harmonize the agricultural, commercial and industrial
interests. Slavery demands the control of the general government for
its special protection and the promotion of its peculiar interests;
free labour demands that the general government be administered for
the purpose of securing to all the blessings of liberty, and for the
promotion of the general welfare.
Look around you and see how lonesome you are in this wide world of
ours. as far as modern civilization throws its rays, what people,
what class of society is there like you? There is no human heart that
sympathizes with your cause, unless it sympathizes with the cause
of despotism in every form. There is no human voice to cheer you on
in your struggle; there is no human eye that has a tear for your reverses;
no link of sympathy between the common cause of the great human brotherhood
and you. You hear of emancipation in Russia and wish to fail. You
hear of Italy rising, and fear the spirit of liberty may become contagious.
Where all mankind rejoices, you tremble.
Why not manfully swing round into the grand march of progressive humanity?
You say it cannot be done today. Can it be done tomorrow? Will it
be easier twenty, fifty years hence, when the fearful increase of
the negro population will have aggravated the evils of slavery a hundredfold,
and with it the difficulties of its extinction? Did you ever think
of this? The final crisis, unless prevented by timely reform, will
come with the inexorable certainly of fate, the more terrible the
longer it is delayed. Is that the inheritance you mean to leave to
coming generations - an inheritance of disgrace, crime, blood, destruction?
Hear me, slaveholders of America! If you have no sense for the right
of the black, no appreciation of your own interests, I entreat, I
implore you, have at least pity on your children!
(6)
James Henry Thornwell, a South Carolina Presbyterian clergyman (16th
May, 1861)
Do
the Scriptures directly or indirectly condemn slavery as a sin? If
they do not, the dispute is ended, for the church, without forfeiting
her character, dares not go beyond them. Now, we venture to assert
that if men had drawn their conclusions upon this subject only from
the Bible, it would no more have entered into any human head to denounce
slavery as a sin than to denounce monarchy, aristocracy, or poverty.
Now, when it is said that slavery is inconsistent with human rights,
we crave to understand what point in this line is the slave conceived
to occupy. There are, no doubt, many rights which belong to other
men - to Englishmen, to Frenchmen, to his master, for example - which
are denied to him. But is he fit to possess them? Has God qualified
him to meet the responsibilities which their possession necessarily
implies? His place in the scale is determined by his competency to
fulfill its duties.
The truth is, the education of the human race for liberty and virtue
is a vast providential scheme, and God assigns to every man, by wise
and holy degree, the precise place he is to occupy in the great moral
school of humanity.
(7)
James
Pennington, The
Fugitive Blacksmith (1859)
There is no one feature of slavery to
which the mind recurs with more gloomy impressions, than to its disastrous
influence upon the families of the masters, physically, pecuniarily,
and mentally.
It seems to destroy families
as by a powerful blight, large and opulent slaveholding families often
vanish like a group of
shadows at the third or fourth generation. This fact arrested my attention
some years before I escaped from slavery, and of course before I had
any enlightened views of the moral character of the system. As far
back as I can recollect, indeed, it was a remark among slaves, that
every generation of slaveholders are more and more inferior. There
were several large and powerful families in our county, including
that of my master, which affords to my mind a melancholy illustration
of this remark. One of the wealthiest slaveholders in the county,
was General R., a brother-in-law to my master. This man owned a large
and highly valuable tract of land, called R.'s Manor. I do not know
how many slaves he owned, but the number was large. He lived in a
splendid mansion, and drove his coach and four. He was for some years
a member of Congress. He had a numerous family of children.
The family showed no particular
signs of decay until he had married a second time, and had considerably
increased his number of children. It then became evident that his
older children were not educated for active business, and were only
destined to be a charge. Of sons (seven or eight), not one of them
reached the eminence once occupied by the father. The only one that
approached to it, was the
eldest, who became an officer in the navy, and obtained the doubtful
glory of being killed in the Mexican war.
General R. himself ran
through his vast estate, died intemperate, and left a widow and large
number of daughters, some minors, destitute, and none of his sons
fitted for any employment but in the army and navy.
(8)
President Jefferson Davis, war message
(29th April, 1861)
The climate and soil of the
Northern states soon proved unpropitious to the continuance of slave
labor, while the reverse being the case in the South, made unrestricted
free intercourse between the two sections unfriendly.
The Northern states consulted their own interests by selling their
slaves to the South and prohibiting slavery between their limits.
The South were willing purchasers of property suitable to their wants,
and paid the price of the acquisition without harboring a suspicion
that their quiet possession was to be distributed by those who were
not only in want of constitutional authority but, by good faith as
vendors, from disquieting a title emanating from themselves.
As soon, however, as the Northern states that prohibited African slavery
within their limits had reached a number sufficient to give their
representation a controlling vote in the Congress, a persistent and
organized system of hostile measures against the rights of the owners
of slaves in the Southern states were inaugurated and gradually extended.
A series of measures was devised and prosecuted for the purpose of
rendering insecure the tenure of property in slaves.
Fanatical organizations, supplied with money by voluntary subscriptions,
were assiduously engaged in exciting among the slaves a spirit of
discontent and revolt. Means were furnished for their escape from
their owners and agents secretly employed to entice them to abscond.
(9)
Radical
Republicans
at the end of the American Civil War
feared that Abraham Lincoln might allow
slavery to continue in the South. On 9th January, 1865, Benjamin
Wade, the leader of this group
in the Senate, warned Lincoln not to make a pragmatic decision on
this issue.
The
radical men are the men of principal;
they are the men who feel what they contend for. They are not your
slippery politicians who can jigger this way or that, or construe
a thing any way to suit the present occasion. They are the men who
go deeply down for principle, and having fixed their eyes upon a great
principle connected with the liberty of mankind or the welfare of
the people, are not to be detached by any of your higgling.
Do you suppose we are now to back down and to permit you to make a
dishonorable proslavery peace after all the bloodshed and all the
sacrifice of life and property? It cannot be. Such revolutions never
go backwards, and if God is just, and I think he is, we shall ultimately
triumph. If, however, the President does believe as they say, and
dare take the position they would ascribe to him, it is so much the
worse for the President. The people of the United States are greater
than the President. The mandate they have sent forth for the death
and execution of this monster, slavery, will be persisted in. The
monster must die, and die he shall.
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