#slavery

I am a democrat [proponent of democracy] because I believe in the Fall of Man. I think most people are democrats for the opposite reason. A great deal of democratic enthusiasm descends from the ideas of people like Rousseau, who believed in democracy because they thought mankind so wise and good that every one deserved a share in the government. The danger of defending democracy on those grounds is that they’re not true. . . . I find that they’re not true without looking further than myself. I don’t deserve a share in governing a hen-roost. Much less a nation. . . . The real reason for democracy is just the reverse. Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows. Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves. I do not contradict him. But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters. ↗

— C.S. Lewis

#democracy #slavery #men

If that form of government, that system of social order is not wrong - if those laws of the Southern States, by virtue of which slavery exists there, and is what it is, are not wrong - nothing is wrong. ↗

— Leonard Bacon

#form #government #laws #nothing #order

I read a funny story about how the Republicans freed the slaves. The Republicans are the ones who created slavery by law in the 1600's. Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves and he was not a Republican. ↗

— Marion Berry

#abraham #abraham lincoln #created #freed #funny

If the flag of an armed enemy of the U.S. is allowed to fly over government buildings, then it implies that slavery, or at least the threat of slavery, is sanctioned by that government and can still legally exist. ↗

— Amiri Baraka

#armed #buildings #enemy #exist #flag

In a word, if any kind of slavery can be vindicated by the Holy Scriptures, we are already sure our making and holding the Negroes our slaves, as we do, cannot be vindicated by any thing we can find there, but is condemned by the whole of divine revelation. ↗

— Samuel Hopkins

#any #cannot #condemned #divine #find

As legal slavery passed, we entered into a permanent period of unemployment and underemployment from which we have yet to emerge. ↗

— Julian Bond

#entered #into #legal #passed #period

I think a commission set up to examine slavery and the consequences of it, would probably be a very fruitful, important dialogue for the United States to be involved in. ↗

— Bob Matsui

#consequences #dialogue #examine #fruitful #i

The state of slavery is in its own nature bad. ↗

— Charles de Secondat

#nature #own #slavery #state

If slavery, limited as it yet is, now threatens to subvert the Constitution, how can we as wise and prudent statesmen, enlarge its boundaries and increase its influence, and thus increase already impending dangers? ↗

— William H. Seward

#boundaries #constitution #dangers #enlarge #how

It is the maintenance of slavery by law in a state, not parallels of latitude, that makes its a southern state; and the absence of this, that makes it a northern state. ↗

— William H. Seward

#latitude #law #maintenance #makes #northern