The Conflict with Slavery: Part 1 from The Works of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume VII — John Shaqi
The Conflict with Slavery: Part 1 from The Works of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume VIIWhittier, John Greenleaf
Philosophy
The Conflict with Slavery: Part 1 from The Works of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume VII
Whittier, John Greenleaf
Antislavery movements -- United States; Slavery -- United States
Let us not forget that should the slaves, goaded by wrongs unendurable,
rise in desperation, and pour the torrent of their brutal revenge over
the beautiful Carolinas, or the consecrated soil of Virginia, New England
would be called upon to arrest the progress of rebellion,--to tread out
with the armed heel of her soldiery that spirit of freedom, which knows
no distinction of cast or color; which has been kindled in the heart of
the black as well as in that of the white.
And what is this system which we are thus protecting and upholding? A
system which holds two millions of God's creatures in bondage, which
leaves one million females without any protection save their own feeble
strength, and which makes even the exercise of that strength in
resistance to outrage punishable with death! which considers rational,
immortal beings as articles of traffic, vendible commodities,
merchantable property,--which recognizes no social obligations, no
natural relations,--which tears without scruple the infant from the
mother, the wife from the husband, the parent from the child. In the
strong but just language of another: "It is the full measure of pure,
unmixed, unsophisticated wickedness; and scorning all competition or
comparison, it stands without a rival in the secure, undisputed
possession of its detestable preeminence."
So fearful an evil should have its remedies. The following are among the
many which have been from time to time proposed:--
1. Placing the slaves in the condition of the serfs of Poland and
Russia, fixed to the soil, and without the right on the part of the
master to sell or remove them. This was intended as a preliminary to
complete emancipation at some remote period, but it is impossible to
perceive either its justice or expediency.
2. Gradual abolition, an indefinite term, but which is understood to
imply the draining away drop by drop, of the great ocean of wrong;
plucking off at long intervals some, straggling branches of the moral
Upas; holding out to unborn generations the shadow of a hope which the
present may never feel gradually ceasing to do evil; gradually refraining
from robbery, lust, and murder: in brief, obeying a short-sighted and
criminal policy rather than the commands of God.
3. Abstinence on the part of the people of the free states from the use
of the known products of slave labor, in order to render that labor
profitless. Beyond a doubt the example of conscientious individuals may
have a salutary effect upon the minds of some of the slave-holders; I but
so long as our confederacy exists, a commercial intercourse with slave
states and a consumption of their products cannot be avoided.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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