A Quote by Gerrit Smith

It, sometimes, suits the slaveholders to claim, that their slavery is an exclusively State concern; and that the North has, therefore, nothing to do with it. — © Gerrit Smith
It, sometimes, suits the slaveholders to claim, that their slavery is an exclusively State concern; and that the North has, therefore, nothing to do with it.
As for slavery, there is no need for me to speak of its bad aspects. The only thing requiring explanation is the good side of slavery. I do not mean indirect slavery, the slavery of proletariat; I mean direct slavery, the slavery of the Blacks in Surinam, in Brazil, in the southern regions of North America. Direct slavery is as much the pivot upon which our present-day industrialism turns as are machinery, credit, etc. … Slavery is therefore an economic category of paramount importance.
To reduce this claim of slavery to an absurdity, it is only necessary to add that there are only two states in which slaves are a majority, and not one in which the slaveholders are not a very disproportionate minority.
It [slavery] has exercised absolute mastery over the American Church. . . . With the Bible in their hands, her priesthood have attempted to prove that slavery came down from God out of heaven. They have become slaveholders and dealers in human flesh.
The men and women of the North are slaveholders, those of the South slaveowners. The guilt rests on the North equally with the South.
Essentially, the BJP is nothing more than a north Indian party. Its mentality is also north Indian. They are quite capable of backtracking on the issues relating to Tamil Nadu if it suits them. But I will not allow that.
Slaveholders deployed so-called scientific racism to justify racial slavery.
If there is a State, there must be domination of one class by another and, as a result, slavery; the State without slavery is unthinkable - and this is why we are the enemies of the State.
Abolish slavery tomorrow, and not a sentence or syllable of the Constitution need be altered. It was purposely so framed as to give no claim, no sanction to the claim, of property in man. If in its origin slavery had any relation to the government, it was only as the scaffolding to the magnificent structure, to be removed as soon as the building was completed.
It is perfectly clear, in the first place, that the constitution of the United States did not, of itself, create or establish slavery as a new institution; or even give any authority to the state governments to establish it as a new institution. The greatest sticklers for slavery do not claim this.
Whoever says State necessarily says domination, and, consequently, slavery; a State without slavery, open or concealed, is inconceivable: that is why we are enemies of the State.
The blunting effects of slavery upon the slaveholder's moral perceptions are known and conceded the world over; and a priveleged class, an aristocracy, is but a band of slaveholders under another name.
Every new development for the last three centuries has brought men closer to a state of affairs in which absolutely nothing would be recognized in the whole world as possessing a claim to obedience except the authority of the State. The majority of people in Europe obey nothing else.
For of all slaveholders with whom I have ever met, religious slaveholders are the worst. I have ever found them the meanest and basest, the most cruel and cowardly, of all others.
Slavery, you know, is nothing else than the unwilling labor of many. Therefore to get rid of slavery it is necessary that people should not wish to profit by the forced labor of others and should consider it a sin and a shame. But they go and abolish the external form of slavery and arrange so that one can no longer buy and sell slaves, and they imagine and assure themselves that slavery no longer exists, and do not see or wish to see that it does, because people still want and consider it good and right to exploit the labor of others.
Slavery was a central concern of governance form the time of the first nation-state. The Code of Hammurabi, the earliest know set of laws for governing an empire, prescribed death for anyone who harbored a fugitive or otherwise helped a slave to escape. The relationship between the law and bondage goes back even farther: Indeed, the oldest extant legal documents don't concern the sale of land, houses, or even animals, but slaves.
[...] it is generally accepted that the Civil War was fought over the issue of slavery. That, at best, is a half-truth. Slavery was an issue, but the primary force for war was a clash between the economic interests of the North and the South. Even the issue of slavery itself was based on economics.
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