Slavery -- United States; United States -- Politics and government -- 1849-1853
the western world with these proofs of human avarice and guilt. It is
proposed that we ourselves should create and should publish to the
world, not one, but untold millions of “Examples of _a Crime on the
Life of the Soul_.” It is proposed that the self-styled freemen, the
self-styled Christians, of fifteen great states in this American Union,
shall engage in the work of procreating, rearing, and _selling_ Caspar
Hausers, often from their own loins; and if any further development
of soul or of body is allowed to the American victims than was
permitted to the Bavarian child, it is only because such development
will increase their market value at the barracoons. It is not from
any difference of motive, but only the better to insure that motive’s
indulgence. The slave child must be allowed to use his limbs, or how
could he drudge out his life in the service of his master? The slave
infant must be taught to walk, or how, _under the shadow of this
thrice-glorious Capitol_, could he join a coffle for New Orleans?
I know, sir, that it has been said, within a short time past, that
Caspar Hauser was an impostor, and his story a fiction. Would to God
that this could ever be said of his fellow-victims in America!
For another reason slavery is an unspeakable wrong. The slave is
debarred from testifying against a white man. The courts will not hear
him as a witness. By the principles of the common law, if any man
suffers violence at the hands of another, he can prefer his complaint
to magistrates, or to the grand juries of the courts, who are bound
to give him redress. Hence the law is said to hold up its shield
before every man for his protection. It surrounds him in the crowded
street and in the solitary place. It guards his treasures with greater
vigilance than locks or iron safes; and against meditated aggressions
upon himself, his wife, or his children, it fastens his doors every
night more securely than triple bolts of brass. But all these sacred
protections are denied to the slave. While subjected to the law of
force, he is shut out from the law of right. To suffer injury is his,
but never to obtain redress. For personal cruelties, for stripes that
shiver his flesh, and blows that break his bones, for robbery or for
murder, neither he nor his friends can have preventive, remedy, or
recompense. The father, who is a slave, may see son or daughter scored,
mangled, mutilated, or ravished before his eyes, and he must be dumb as
a sheep before its shearers. The wife may be dishonored in the presence
of the husband, and, if he remonstrates or rebels, the miscreant who
could burn with the lust will burn not less fiercely with a vengeance
to be glutted upon his foiler.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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