The below essay was written in 1858. The writer believed that slavery should be abolished but that Negroes were inferior and, therefore, should serve and obey the White race. I wonder how many Americans still believe this, even subliminally? And does it become a self-fulfilling prophesy?
"A slave is not property, because he is a man. A man cannot be the subject of property, though his labor may. He is not a thing. Even in the lowest forms of humanity, he has intellect, passions, sentiments, conscience, which establish his brotherhood with all men, which establish the theoretic equality of man as man, and separate him from the lower animals and material things. To man, to the race of men, the earth was given as an inheritance. Whatever he can make, or modify, or add value to is property.
"But man was not given to man to possess. He is not a product of industry, but himself a producer. It is a proposition so plain, it is difficult to make plainer by argument. Its truth is self-evident. No man can imagine himself to be property. Every instinct and impulse of his nature revolt at the idea. But the idea of subjection to a superior nature, of obedience and service in return for protection and care, of looking up to another for guidance and direction, is natural; it arises at once from inequality of intellectual force, and pervades, in a greater or less degree, all the relations of life.
"[Although the Negro is inferior] what degree of inferiority confers the right to own a man? The Indians are an inferior race. Are they property? The Irish are inferior to the Anglo-Saxon. Is he property? What would be thought of any State that should declare him a chattel? Is the Negro the only race who can be the subject of property? With his capacity for improvement, his courage, his warm feelings, is he so low in the scale of being that he cannot be recognized as a man, but must be regarded as one of the lower animals?"
