slavery

The free worker receives a wage; the slave an education, food, care, clothing; the money that the master spends to keep the slave is drained little by little and in detail; one hardly perceives it.1

For most of human history people owned other people. Then, only a hundred and fifty years ago, our ancestors figured out that was a bad idea. One day we__l figure out, or our descendants will figure out, that people owning land they don__ live on or work is a bad idea too.

The subject of British abolitionism has long been controversial, complex, and even baffling. It also raises the issue of moral progress in history - whether groups of reformers and even nations can succeed in eliminating deeply entrenched forms of human oppression, and if so, by what methods, misconceptions, and under what conditions?

The use of rape and enslavement as weapons of war MUST END!

The biggest thing the white man takes from us ain__ our bodies. He takes our voices, too. He swallows up our yes__ and no__ like biscuits. But one day our yes__ and no__ will be so loud and strong they will lodge in his throat. He will have to spit them out to keep from choking. He will starve. There won__ be nothing left of him except the shadows he casts on the deadest night.

As she gracefully descended down portico, the white gloved hand of the lady of the estate met the white-glove worn by a Negro footman, as a vast expanse of hoop skirt filled the carriage doorway. It was a skirt of fine white lawn with ruffles embroidered with little pink and blue flowers complete with green stems. The white trash girl looked on in amazement, involuntarily wincing at the thought of the long hours plantation slave seamstresses had devoted to decorating a dress that might only be worn a half dozen times and survive as many launderings.

As a people, we have been tolled farther and farther away from the facts of what we have done by the romanticizers, whose bait is nothing more than the wishful insinuation that we have done no harm. Speaking a public language of propaganda, uninfluenced by the real content of our history which we know only in a deep and guarded privacy, we are still in the throes of the paradox of the __entleman and soldier._ However conscious it may have been, there is no doubt in my mind that all this moral and verbal obfuscation is intentional. Nor do I doubt that its purpose is to shelter us from the moral anguish implicit in our racism__n anguish that began, deep and mute, in the minds of Christian democratic freedom-loving owners of slaves.

Well," said St. Clare, "suppose that something shoul bring down the price of cotton once and forever, and make the whole slave property a drug in the market, don't you think we should soon have another version of the Scripture doctrine? What flood of light would pour the church, all at once, and immediately it would be discovered that everything in the bible and reason went the other way.

Under the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 emancipating the enslaved in most of Britain__ colonies, the British state agreed to pay £20 million compensation to slave owners and other beneficiaries of slavery such as mortgagees and annuitants who had financial claims secured on the enslaved.

What I have said respecting and against religion, I mean strictly to apply to the slaveholding religion of this land, and with no possible reference to Christianity proper; for, between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference__o wide, that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of the one, is of necessity to be the enemy of the other. I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity.

Man cannot be reduced to slavery if he is not distorted first. The politician and the priest have been in a deep conspiracy down the ages. They have been reducing humanity to a crowd of slaves. They are destroying every possibility of rebellion in man__nd love is rebellion, because love listens only to the heart and does not care a bit about anything else.

And oft the blessed time foretellsWhen all men shall be free;And musical, as silver bells,Their falling chains shall be.

Although it would lead me to believe otherwise, fear has little interest in intimidating me. Rather, it much prefers to enslave me.

You may have bought my body, you may even have the papers to prove it, but don't fool yourself into thinking for a moment that my heart and mind were included in the purchase.

If I say you are not free to associate with me, it also means I too am not free to associate with you. I might call you the slave but not less bound by the slavery I have created."- Prince Ikan

The Irish were poor, but not enslaved. He had come here to hack away at the ropes that held American slavery in place. Sometimes it withered him just to keep his mind steady. He was aware that the essence of proper intelligence was the embrace of contradiction. And the recognition of complexity was to be balanced against the need for simplicity. He was still a slave. Fugitive. If he returned to Boston he could be kidnapped at any time, taken south, strapped to a tree, whipped. His owners. They would make a spectacle of his fame. They had tried to silence him for many years already. No longer. He had been given a chance to speak out against what had held him in chains. And he would continue to do so until the links lay in pieces at his feet.

Especially appealing to the planter elite was the conservatism of the American Revolution. Indeed, according to their reading, it had been so conservative that it hardly deserved the title of revolution at all. The goal had been simple political independence, and the issue of home rule had not expanded to include the dangerous question of who should rule at home. The men who made the revolution had maintained control in victory.

There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven, that does not know that slavery is wrong for him.