I am too busy right now to write a blog entry, so I've decided to leave you with some texts to think about.
Excerpt from David Walker's Appeal of 1829
"...I will give here a very imperfect list of the cruelties inflicted on us
by the enlightened Christians of America.--First, no trifling portion
of them will beat us nearly to death, if they find us on our knees
praying to God.--They hinder us from going to hear the word of
God--they keep us sunk in ignorance, and will not let us learn to read
the word of God, nor write--If they find us with a book of any
description in our hand, they will beat us nearly to death--they are so
afraid we will learn to read, and enlighten our dark and benighted minds - They will not suffer us to meet together to worship the God who made
us--they brand us with hot iron--they cram bolts of fire down our
throats--they cut us as they do horses, bulls, or hogs--they crop our
ears and sometimes cut off bits of our tongues--they chain and
hand-cuff us, and while in that miserable and wretched condition, beat
us with cow-hides and clubs--they keep us half naked and starve us
sometimes nearly to death under their infernal whips or lashes (which
some of them shall have enough of yet)--They put on us fifty-sixes and
chains, and make us work in that cruel situation, and in sickness,
under lashes to support them and their families.--They keep us three or
four hundred feet under ground working in their mines, night and day to
dig up gold and silver to enrich them and their children.--They keep us
in the most death-like ignorance by keeping us from all source of
information, and call us, who are free men and next to the Angels of
God, their property!!!!!! They make us fight and murder each other,
many of us being ignorant, not knowing any better.--They take us,
(being ignorant,) and put us as drivers one over the other, and make us
afflict each other as bad as they themselves afflict us--and to crown
the whole of this catalogue of cruelties, they tell us that we the
(blacks) are an inferior race of beings! incapable of self
government!!--We would be injurious to society and ourselves, if
tyrants should loose their unjust hold on us!!! That if we were free we
would not work, but would live on plunder or theft!!!! that we are the
meanest and laziest set of beings in the world!!!!! That they are
obliged to keep us in bondage to do us good!!!!!!--That we are
satisfied to rest in slavery to them and their children!!!!!!--That we
ought not to be set free in America, but ought to be sent away to
Africa!!!!!!!!--That if we were set free in America, we would involve
the country in a civil war, which assertion is altogether at variance
with our feeling or design, for we ask them for nothing but the rights of man,
viz. for them to set us free, and treat us like men, and there will be
no danger, for we will love and respect them, and protect our
country--but cannot conscientiously do these things until they treat us
like men...."
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Excerpt Thomas Paine's "African Slavery in America" (1775)
That some desperate wretches should be willing to steal and enslave men
by violence and murder for gain, is rather lamentable than strange. But
that many civilized, nay, Christianized people should approve, and be concerned
in the savage practice, is surprising; and still persist, though it has
been so often proved contrary to the light of nature, to every
principle of Justice and Humanity, and even good policy, by a succession
of eminent men, and several late publications.
Our Traders in MEN (an unnatural commodity!) must know the wickedness
of the SLAVE-TRADE, if they attend to reasoning, or the dictates of their own
hearts: and such as shun and stifle all these, willfully sacrifice Conscience,
and the character of integrity to that golden idol.
The Managers the Trade themselves, and others testify, that many of these
African nations inhabit fertile countries, are industrious farmers, enjoy
plenty, and lived quietly, averse to war, before the Europeans debauched them
with liquors, and bribing them against one another; and that these inoffensive
people are brought into slavery, by stealing them, tempting Kings to sell
subjects, which they can have no right to do, and hiring one tribe to war
against another, in order to catch prisoners. By such wicked and inhuman ways
the English are said to enslave towards one hundred thousand yearly; of which
thirty thousand are supposed to die by barbarous treatment in the first year;
besides all that are slain in the unnatural ways excited to take them. So much
innocent blood have the managers and supporters of this inhuman trade to answer
for to the common Lord of all!
***
They show as little reason as conscience who put the matter by with saying
— "Men, in some cases, are lawfully made slaves, and why may not these?" So
men, in some cases, are lawfully put to death, deprived of their goods,
without their consent; may any man, therefore, be treated so, without any
conviction of desert? Nor is this plea mended by adding — "They are
set forth to us as slaves, and we buy them without farther inquiry, let
the sellers see to it." Such man may as well join with a known
band of robbers, buy their ill-got goods, and help on the trade; ignorance
is no more pleadable in one case than the other; the sellers plainly own
how they obtain them. But none can lawfully buy without evidence that they
are not concurring with Men-Stealers; and as the true owner has a right
to reclaim his goods that were stolen, and sold; so the slave, who is proper
owner of his freedom, has a right to reclaim it, however often sold.
Most shocking of all is alledging (sic) the sacred scriptures to favour this
wicked practice. One would have thought none but infidel cavillers (sic) would
endeavour to make them appear contrary to the plain dictates of natural
light, and the conscience, in a matter of common Justice and Humanity; which
they cannot be. Such worthy men, as referred to before, judged otherways;
Mr. Baxter declared, the Slave-Traders should be called Devils, rather
than Christians; and that it is a heinous crime to buy them. But some
say, "the practice was permitted to the Jews." To which may be
replied,
***
As much in vain, perhaps, will they search ancient history for examples
of the modern Slave-Trade. Too many nations enslaved the prisoners they
took in war. But to go to nations with whom there is no war, who have no
way provoked, without farther design of conquest, purely to catch inoffensive
people, like wild beasts, for slaves, is an height of outrage
against humanity and justice, that seems left by heathen nations to be practised
by pretended Christian. How shameful are all attempts to colour and excuse
it!
As these people are not convicted of forfeiting freedom, they have still
a natural, perfect right to it; and the governments whenever they come should,
in justice set them free, and punish those who hold them in slavery.
So monstrous is the making and keeping them slaves at all, abstracted
from the barbarous usage they suffer, and the many evils attending the practice;
as selling husbands away from wives, children from parents, and from each
other, in violation of sacred and natural ties; and opening the way for
adulteries, incests, and many shocking consequences, for all of which the
guilty Masters must answer to the final Judge.
If the slavery of the parents be unjust, much more is their children's;
if the parents were justly slaves, yet the children are born free; this
is the natural, perfect right of all mankind; they are nothing but a just
recompense to those who bring them up: And as much less is commonly spent
on them than others, they have a right, in justice, to be proportionably
sooner free...."
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Excerpt John Stuart Mill's "On Liberty" (1869)
...Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at
first, and is still vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as operating
through the acts of the public authorities. But reflecting persons
perceived that when society is itself the tyrant—society collectively,
over the separate individuals who compose it—its means of tyrannizing
are not restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of its
political functionaries. Society can and does execute its own mandates:
and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at
all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practises a social
tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since,
though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer
means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life,
and enslaving the soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the
tyranny of the magistrate is not enough: there needs protection also
against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the
tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its
own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from
them; to fetter the development, and, if possible, prevent the
formation, of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and
compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own.
There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion
with individual independence: and to find that limit, and maintain it
against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human
affairs, as protection against political despotism.
But though this proposition is not likely to be contested in
general terms, the practical question, where to place the limit—how to
make the fitting adjustment between individual independence and social
control—is a subject on which nearly everything remains to be done. All
that makes existence valuable to any one, depends on the enforcement of
restraints upon the actions of other people. Some rules of conduct,
therefore, must be imposed, by law in the first place, and by opinion
on many things which are not fit subjects for the operation of law.
What these rules should be, is the principal question in human affairs;
but if we except a few of the most obvious cases, it is one of those
which least progress has been made in resolving. No two ages, and
scarcely any two countries, have decided it alike; and the decision of
one age or country is a wonder to another. Yet the people of any given
age and country no more suspect any difficulty in it, than if it were a
subject on which mankind had always been agreed. The rules which obtain
among themselves appear to them self-evident and self-justifying. This
all but universal illusion is one of the examples of the magical
influence of custom, which is not only, as the proverb says, a second
nature, but is continually mistaken for the first. The effect of
custom, in preventing any misgiving respecting the rules of conduct
which mankind impose on one another, is all the more complete because
the subject is one on which it is not generally considered necessary
that reasons should be given, either by one person to others, or by
each to himself. People are accustomed to believe, and have been
encouraged in the belief by some who aspire to the character of
philosophers, that their feelings, on subjects of this nature, are
better than reasons, and render reasons unnecessary. The practical
principle which guides them to their opinions on the regulation of
human conduct, is the feeling in each person's mind that everybody
should be required to act as he, and those with whom he sympathizes,
would like them to act. No one, indeed, acknowledges to himself that
his standard of judgment is his own liking; but an opinion on a point
of conduct, not supported by reasons, can only count as one person's
preference; and if the reasons, when given, are a mere appeal to a
similar preference felt by other people, it is still only many people's
liking instead of one. To an ordinary man, however, his own preference,
thus supported, is not only a perfectly satisfactory reason, but the
only one he generally has for any of his notions of morality, taste, or
propriety, which are not expressly written in his religious creed; and
his chief guide in the interpretation even of that. Men's opinions,
accordingly, on what is laudable or blameable, are affected by all the
multifarious causes which influence their wishes in regard to the
conduct of others, and which are as numerous as those which determine
their wishes on any other subject. Sometimes their reason—at other
times their prejudices or superstitions: often their social affections,
not seldom their antisocial ones, their envy or jealousy, their
arrogance or contemptuousness: but most commonly, their desires or
fears for themselves—their legitimate or illegitimate self-interest.
Wherever there is an ascendant class, a large portion of the morality
of the country emanates from its class interests, and its feelings of
class superiority. The morality between Spartans and Helots, between
planters and negroes, between princes and subjects, between nobles and
roturiers, between men and women, has been for the most part the
creation of these class interests and feelings: and the sentiments thus
generated, react in turn upon the moral feelings of the members of the
ascendant class, in their relations among themselves. Where, on the
other hand, a class, formerly ascendant, has lost its ascendancy, or
where its ascendancy is unpopular, the prevailing moral sentiments
frequently bear the impress of an impatient dislike of superiority.
Another grand determining principle of the rules of conduct, both in
act and forbearance, which have been enforced by law or opinion, has
been the servility of mankind towards the supposed preferences or
aversions of their temporal masters, or of their gods. This servility,
though essentially selfish, is not hypocrisy; it gives rise to
perfectly genuine sentiments of abhorrence; it made men burn magicians
and heretics. Among so many baser influences, the general and obvious
interests of society have of course had a share, and a large one, in
the direction of the moral sentiments: less, however, as a matter of
reason, and on their own account, than as a consequence of the
sympathies and antipathies which grew out of them: and sympathies and
antipathies which had little or nothing to do with the interests of
society, have made themselves felt in the establishment of moralities
with quite as great force.
The likings and dislikings of society, or of some powerful
portion of it, are thus the main thing which has practically determined
the rules laid down for general observance, under the penalties of law
or opinion. And in general, those who have been in advance of society
in thought and feeling, have left this condition of things unassailed
in principle, however they may have come into conflict with it in some
of its details. They have occupied themselves rather in inquiring what
things society ought to like or dislike, than in questioning whether
its likings or dislikings should be a law to individuals. They
preferred endeavouring to alter the feelings of mankind on the
particular points on which they were themselves heretical, rather than
make common cause in defence of freedom, with heretics generally. The
only case in which the higher ground has been taken on principle and
maintained with consistency, by any but an individual here and there,
is that of religious belief: a case instructive in many ways, and not
least so as forming a most striking instance of the fallibility of what
is called the moral sense: for the odium theologicum, in a
sincere bigot, is one of the most unequivocal cases of moral feeling.
Those who first broke the yoke of what called itself the Universal
Church, were in general as little willing to permit difference of
religious opinion as that church itself. But when the heat of the
conflict was over, without giving a complete victory to any party, and
each church or sect was reduced to limit its hopes to retaining
possession of the ground it already occupied; minorities, seeing that
they had no chance of becoming majorities, were under the necessity of
pleading to those whom they could not convert, for permission to
differ. It is accordingly on this battle field, almost solely, that the
rights of the individual against society have been asserted on broad
grounds of principle, and the claim of society to exercise authority
over dissentients, openly controverted. The great writers to whom the
world owes what religious liberty it possesses, have mostly asserted
freedom of conscience as an indefeasible right, and denied absolutely
that a human being is accountable to others for his religious belief.
Yet so natural to mankind is intolerance in whatever they really care
about, that religious freedom has hardly anywhere been practically
realized, except where religious indifference, which dislikes to have
its peace disturbed by theological quarrels, has added its weight to
the scale. In the minds of almost all religious persons, even in the
most tolerant countries, the duty of toleration is admitted with tacit
reserves. One person will bear with dissent in matters of church
government, but not of dogma; another can tolerate everybody, short of
a Papist or an Unitarian; another, every one who believes in revealed
religion; a few extend their charity a little further, but stop at the
belief in a God and in a future state. Wherever the sentiment of the
majority is still genuine and intense, it is found to have abated
little of its claim to be obeyed...."
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