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690 prelude to war What Is Slavery? Slavery Is Despotism 1853 harriet beecher stowe Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–96) was the daughter of the famous New England minister Lyman Beecher. She is the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, an abolitionist novel written in response to the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. The book sold more than 300,000 copies in its first year. Two years later, Stowe published A key to Uncle Tom’s cabin; presenting the original facts and documents upon which the story is founded. Together with corroborative statements verifying the truth of the work. Selections reproduced here are taken from that work. In it, Stowe sought to answer critics who charged her with exaggerating the plight of black slaves. What Is Slavery? The author will now enter into a consideration of slavery as it stands revealed in slave law. What is it according to the definition of law-books and legal interpreters? “A slave,” says the law of Louisiana, “is one who is in the power of a master to whom he belongs. The master may sell him, dispose of his person, his industry , and his labour; he can do nothing, possess nothing, nor acquire anything, but what must belong to his master.” South Carolina says: “Slaves shall be deemed, sold, taken, reputed, and adjudged in law, to be chattels personal in the hands of their owners and possessors, and their executors, administrators, and assigns, to all intents, constructions and purposes whatsoever.” The law of Georgia is similar. Let the reader reflect on the extent of the meaning in this last clause. Judge Ruffin, pronouncing the opinion of the Supreme Court of North Carolina, says a slave is “one doomed in his own person, and his posterity, to live without knowledge, and without the capacity to make anything his own, and to toil that another may reap the fruits.” This is what slavery is, this is what it is to be a slave! The slave-code, then, of the Southern States, is designed to keep millions of human beings in the condition of chattels personal; to keep them in a condition in which the master may sell them, dispose of their time, person, and labour; in which they can do nothing, possess nothing, and acquire nothing, except for the benefit of the master; in which they are doomed in themselves and in their posterity to live without knowledge, without the power to make anything their own, to toil that another may reap. The laws of the slave-code are designed to work out this problem, consistently with the peace of the community, and the safety of that superior race which is constantly to perpetrate this outrage. From this simple statement of what the laws of slavery are designed to do—from a consideration that the class thus to be reduced, and oppressed, and made the subjects of a perpetual robbery, are men of like passions with our own, men originally made in the image of God as much as ourselves, men partakers of that same humanity of which Jesus Christ is the highest ideal and expression—when we consider that the material thus to be acted upon is that fearfully explosive element, the soul of man; that soul elastic , upspringing, immortal, whose free will even the Omnipotence of God refuses to coerce, we may form some idea of the tremendous force which is necessary to keep this mightiest of elements in the state of repression which is contemplated in the definition of slavery. Of course, the system necessary to consummate and perpetuate such a work, from age to age, must be a fearfully stringent one; and our readers will find that it is so. Men who make the laws, and men who interpret them, may be fully sensible of their terrible severity and inhumanity; but if they are going to preserve the thing, they have no resource but to make the laws and to execute them faithfully after they are made. They may say with the Hon. Judge What Is Slavery? 691 *We except the State of Louisiana. Owing to the influence of the French code in that State, more really humane provisions prevail there. How much these provisions avail in point of fact will be shown when we come to that part of the subject. Ruffin, of North Carolina, when solemnly from the bench announcing this great foundation principle of slavery, that “the power of the master must...

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