Quotes About Slavery

The Chalcedean slave trade had largely created the pirates and their settlements.

Why hire what you could buy outright? That seemed to be the philosophy here in the slavemart, yet Wintrow wondered how those shopping for slaves could not see themselves in their faces, or recognize one's neighbors. No one else seemed disturbed by it... It seemed that, in the eyes of the buyers, a failure of finances instantly changed a man from a friend or neighbor into merchandise.

We slaves, we lords, we fools, we men and women, we mortals, we toys of the gods—all the same thing, Palli. They are all the same to me now.

many Europeans were enslaved in North Africa and elsewhere. Africans were enslaved here, and slavery of one kind or another existed over much of the world. Even the poor of Europe lived lives but little different from those of slaves, and in many cases they were worse off. Slaves were at least fed and clothed by their masters, and the poor of Europe had no such care.

Contrary to general opinion, slave raids from Africa to the coasts of Europe were not uncommon. The raid on the village of Baltimore, a town in West Cork, Ireland, took place in 1631. More than one hundred people were carried away into slavery.

Read the Bible. There'd been whites held as slaves for several thousand years before the blacks were enslaved.

The Egyptians had Hebrew slaves as well as others. The Romans had Greek slaves as well as slaves from England and Gaul.

I think that we Americans, at least in the Southern col[onie]s, cannot contend with a good grace for liberty until we shall have enfranchised our slaves

Few, if any, other founding fathers opposed slavery more consistently or toiled harder to eradicate it than Hamilton—a fact that belies the historical stereotype that he cared only for the rich and privileged.

It was testimony to the political genius of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison that they diverted attention from the grisly realities of southern slavery by casting a lurid spotlight on Hamilton's system as the paramount embodiment of evil. They inveighed against the concentrated wealth of northern merchants when southern slave plantations clearly represented the most heinous form of concentrated wealth.

Hamilton, using the pen name "Civis" in a newspaper piece of February 23, 1791, penned the following telling sarcasm to Madison and Jefferson: "As to the negroes, you must be tender upon that subject. . . . Who talk most about liberty and equality . . . ? Is it not those who hold the bill of rights in one hand and a whip for affrighted slaves in the other?

January 25, 1785, nineteen people gathered at the home of innkeeper John Simmons to form a society that would safeguard blacks who had already secured their freedom and try to win freedom for those still held in bondage. The group was called the New York Society for Promoting the Manumission of Slaves.

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. ABRAHAM LINCOLN Speech at the Republican convention, Springfield, Illinois, June 16, 1858

In Hudson, John Brown would assert his indictment of slavery to anybody who would listen. Jesse listened.

You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery.

Trust you to mention love, Gustav. But the word has no meaning for me any more. I'm enslaved to Hans Hirsch, that's all I know – because he's beautiful and because he has power over me. Thank goodness my father died. Armin always saw right through me. He would have known that what I've got is slavery, nothing more nor less.

True Christians are made to be slaves.

Christianity preaches only servitude and dependence. Its spirit is so favourable to tyranny that it always profits by such a régime. Genuine Christians are made to be slaves, and they know it and don't much mind: this short life counts for too little in their eyes.

Those who, even today, claim that "states' rights" caused Southern secession and the Civil War use these statistics to argue that slavery was not the cause of the Civil War, but that is false. Every settler in the Southern states aspired to own land and slaves or to own more land and more slaves, as both social status and wealth depended on the extent of property owned.

Washington and the other founders of the United States designed a governmental and economic structure to serve the private property interests of each and all of the primary actors, nearly all of them slavers and land speculators.

The United States was founded as a capitalist state and an empire on conquered land, with capital in the form of slaves, hence the term chattel slavery; this was exceptional in the world and has remained exceptional. The capitalist firearms industry was among the first successful modern corporations. Gun proliferation and gun violence today are among its legacies.

Hawkins' mission was to instill Euro-American values and practices in Indigenous peoples - including the profit motive, privatization of property, debt, accumulation of wealthy by a few, and slavery - allowing settlers to gain the land and assimilate the Muskogees.

It really isn't hard to write a book that prohibits sexual slavery—you just put in a few lines like "Don't take sex slaves!" and "When you fight a war and take prisoners, as you inevitably will, don't rape any of them!" And yet God couldn't seem to manage it.

Rather than support the rights of women and girls to not live as slaves, for instance, Western liberals support the right of theocrats to treat their wives and daughters however they want—and to be spared offensive cartoons in the meantime.