"Manumission" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the founders of the Manumission Society, the object of which was the abolition of slaves in the State of New York. Patrick Henry, speaking of slavery, said: "A serious view of this subject gives a gloomy prospect to future times." Slavery ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... the mother of a boy five years old, who is my father's son. After remaining some time in New York, he took me to Cincinnati and other cities at the North, in all of which I continued to live with him as before. During this sojourn in the Free States I induced him to give me a deed of manumission; but on our return to New Orleans he obtained it from me and destroyed it. At this time I tried to break off the unnatural connection, whereupon he caused me to be publicly whipped in the streets of the ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... diocesan conventions.[1] As early as 1801 Rev. John Chavis, a Negro of North Carolina, was licensed by the Hanover Presbytery of Virginia as a missionary to his own people.[2] The incompatibility of an ordained minister of the same denomination being a slave was recognized in the manumission of Rev. John Gloucester, the slave of Rev. Gideon Blackburn, of Tennessee, on the organization of the first colored Presbyterian church of the country, at Philadelphia, in 1807, and the subsequent settlement of ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... created equal could become a practical reality. Unlike later generations, however, the Revolutionary generation made no attempt to justify slavery or to accept its extension. In 1778 Virginia became the first state to prohibit the importation of slaves, and in 1782 passed a liberal manumission law permitting masters to free their slaves without special legislative act. Many took advantage of this law. Virginia also determined that there should be no slavery in the western lands ceded to the federal government. ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... Promoting the Manumission of Slaves" was organized January 25, 1785, and John Jay was the first president. On being appointed Chief Justice of the United States, he resigned, and Alexander Hamilton was appointed to his place. This society circulated gratuitously Dr. Samuel ...
— Anti-Slavery Opinions before the Year 1800 - Read before the Cincinnati Literary Club, November 16, 1872 • William Frederick Poole
... our Lord 1842 had come, peace and prosperity were in all portions of North Carolina. Society was still divided into three classes. These were: the white people, the slaves and the free negroes. The latter class had originated by manumission, and were numerous in some of the eastern counties. They had lost the right of suffrage by the action of the ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... still carrying on her back the bones of her late husband, which are now removed and placed in a covered box, which is nailed or otherwise fastened to a post twelve feet high. Her conduct as a faithful widow is next highly eulogized, and the ceremony of her manumission is completed by one man powdering on her head the down of birds and another pouring on it the contents of a bladder of oil. She is then at liberty to marry again or lead a life of single blessedness; but few of them, I believe, wish to encounter the ...
— An introduction to the mortuary customs of the North American Indians • H. C. Yarrow
... said he, 'if the slaves should, some night, take possession of us, and demand a universal manumission, and we should refuse, and fire and sword and pillage and all manner of violence should ensue, and our persons and property should be at their will, vast multitudes of your people, including clergymen, would exclaim that the day of God's righteous vengeance had come, ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... or warm. Mr. A. insists on the slavery question, speaks of the project of Mason and Slidell in London to offer certain moral concessions to English anti-slavery feeling,—such as the regulations of marriage, the repeal of laws against manumission, etc. Mr. Adams warns that these offers may make an ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... forbidding unauthorized gatherings of people; on the 23d a second, requiring all tenants, villains, and freemen alike to perform their usual services to their lords; and on the 2d of July a third, withdrawing the charters of pardon and manumission which had been granted on the 15th of June. Special sessions of the courts were organized in the rebellious districts, and the leaders of the revolt were searched out and executed by ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... his or her slave for enlistment into the military service shall if such slave be accepted receive from the recruiting officer a certificate thereof and become entitled to compensation for the service or labor of said slave, not exceeding the sum of $300, upon filing a valid deed of manumission and of release and making satisfactory proof of title; and the recruiting officer shall furnish to any claimant a descriptive list of any person enlisted and claimed under oath to be his or her slave, and allow anyone claiming under oath that his or her slave has been enlisted without ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 10. • James D. Richardson
... they were bought and sold with land, and were conveyed in the grants of it promiscuously with the cattle and other property upon it; and in the Anglo-Saxon wills, these wretched beings were given away precisely as we now dispose of our plate, our furniture, or our money. At length the custom of manumission, and the diffusion of Christianity, ameliorated the condition of the Anglo-Saxon slaves. Sometimes individuals, from benevolence, gave their slaves their freedom—sometimes piety procured a manumission. But the most interesting kind of emancipation appears in those writings which ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 479, March 5, 1831 • Various
... many and intricate combinations, without a full explanatory preface, or any attendant notes, to point out the principles upon which I proceeded in every regulation which I have proposed towards the civilization and gradual manumission of negroes in the two hemispheres. I confess I trust infinitely more (according to the sound principles of those who ever have at any time meliorated the state of mankind) to the effect and influence of religion than to all the rest of the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... a charming subject for conversation would be the gallant and generous last partings between man and wife! Each, perhaps, a new mate in eye, and rejoicing secretly in the manumission, could afford to be complaisantly sorrowful in appearance. 'He presented her with this jewel, it will be said by the reporter, for example sake: she him with that. How he wept! How she sobb'd! How they looked after one another!' Yet, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... and its mover defended it as "destroying to a great extent the source and origin of the rebellion, and the only thing which had ever seriously threatened the peace of the Union." The men of the Border States, appalled at so general a manumission, declared that it would produce intolerable conditions in their States, leading either to reenslavement or extermination. So strenuous an anti-slavery man as Senator Hale also suggested that the measure was unconstitutional. Similar discussion upon similar propositions ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... occasions; on one, for the security of the colonies bordering upon Illyricum, and on the other, to guard (88) the banks of the river Rhine. Although he obliged persons of fortune, both male and female, to give up their slaves, and they received their manumission at once, yet he kept them together under their own standard, unmixed with soldiers who were better born, and armed likewise after different fashion. Military rewards, such as trappings, collars, and other decorations of gold and silver, he distributed more readily ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... implore the Almighty to crown His favours with thy safe faring forth the palace!' Presently appeared my mistress's sister, whose name was Ftir, and Shajarat al-Durr said to her, O my sister, how shall we do to bring him out of the palace in safety; for indeed Allah hath vouchsafed me manumission and, by the blessing of his coming, I am become a free woman.' Quoth Fatir, I see nothing for it but to dress him in woman's gear.' So she brought me a suit of women's clothes and clad me therein; and I went out forthwith, O Commander of the Faithful; but, when I came to the midst of the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... cases, at the death of their patrons, the bondsmen who were deemed most worthy were, according to the means of the testator, provided for in a manner lifting them above the necessity of future dependence. Manumission, too, either by favour or through purchase, was allowed the fullest operation. Here then was the active influence of higher motives than mere greed of gain or the pride of racial power mellowing the lot and gilding the future prospects ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... 'Till America,' he wrote, 'comes into this measure (emancipation) her prayers to heaven will be impious. I believe God governs the world, and I believe it is a maxim in His as in our courts, that those who ask for equity ought to do it.' He set the example in the manumission of a boy then his legal property, and was the president of the first anti-slavery society, bequeathing the cause to his descendants, who have faithfully acquitted themselves of the once contemned but now honored trust, for three generations; for his son ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... inhuman treatment of criminals, who were considered not so well as the beasts of the field. Organized Christianity secured human treatment of prisoners while they were in confinement, and the abolition of punishment by crucifixion. Gladiatorial shows were suppressed, and laws permitting the freer manumission of slaves were passed. The exposure of children, common to both Greeks and Romans, was finally forbidden by law. The laws of marriage were modified so that the sanctity of the home was secured; and, finally, ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... for the latter to take my money[A] and buy of her my freedom, as I could not legally purchase it, and as the laws forbid emancipation except for "meritorious services." This done, Mr. Smith endeavored to emancipate me formally, and to get my manumission recorded; I tried also; but the court judged that I had done nothing "meritorious," and so I remained, nominally only, the slave of Mr. Smith for a year; when, feeling unsafe in that relation, I accompanied him to New York whither he was going to purchase goods, and was there regularly and ...
— The Narrative of Lunsford Lane, Formerly of Raleigh, N.C. • Lunsford Lane
... injuries to a slave were punished by a fine. The slave could trade and acquire property for himself, could receive wages for his work when hired to another, could give evidence in a court of law, and might obtain his freedom either by manumission, by purchase, by adoption, or by ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce
... driven to the verge of despair. At one time he thought of setting fire to the four corners of the monastery,—at another, he proposed to inveigle the abbot into some place where he might torment him till he signed the manumission papers of Tiennette,—in fine, he projected a thousand schemes, which all evaporated into air. But, after many lamentations, he thought he would carry off the girl to some secure place, whence nothing could draw him, and made his preparations in consequence, ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... I said. "You have another slave, Miss Caroline, another that refuses manumission—another bit of personal property, ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... disciples in the humbler walks of life, who remained steadfast, should be divested of their rights as citizens and free-men; and providing that even slaves, so long as they continued Christians, should be incapable of manumission. [304:2] Some time afterwards another edict was promulgated directing that all ecclesiastics should be seized and put in chains. When the jails were thus filled with Christian ministers, another edict made its appearance, commanding ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... slaves. The question was negatived by a majority of but one person; and this opposition seemed to arise rather from a dislike to the attempt of forcing such a measure upon the members of that community, than from any other consideration. I have the pleasure of being credibly informed, that the manumission of slaves, or the employment of free men in the plantations, is now daily gaining ground in North America. Should slavery be abolished there, (and it is an event, which, from these circumstances, we may reasonably expect to be produced in time) let it be remembered, that the Quakers ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson
... at bed-time she retired with the gift under her arm. In the light of her bedroom candle Marguerite hung not in greater ecstasy over the jewel-casket than hung Zuleika over the box of tricks. She clasped her hands over the tremendous possibilities it held for her—manumission from her bondage, wealth, fame, power. Stealthily, so soon as the house slumbered, she packed her small outfit, embedding therein the precious gift. Noiselessly, she shut the lid of her trunk, corded it, ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... was popular in some quarters, and would have been more so if it had been a general declaration of emancipation. The Kentucky legislature would not budge till that proclamation was modified; and General Anderson telegraphed me that on the news of General Fremont having actually issued deeds of manumission, a whole company of our volunteers threw down their arms and disbanded. I was so assured as to think it probable that the very arms we had furnished Kentucky would be turned against us. I think to lose Kentucky is nearly ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... them. The men wore swords or rapiers as a part of their daily apparel. Their wives had domestic servants. Every farmer had his hired laborers, and many of them had slaves. The relation of servitude, however, differed from that on Southern plantations in many respects. The slaves, without any formal manumission, easily obtained their freedom, and often became landholders. The courteous decorum acquired from the example of the eminent men among the first planters long continued to mark the manners of this people; and its vestiges remain to the present day. It strikingly ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... Mr. Henson says about the manumission of slaves by some of the mediaeval clergy is unquestionably true. But who doubts that, during a thousand years, a humane and even a noble heart often beat under a priest's cassock? These manumissions, ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... earth They doff her livery, slip to the worm, Which lacqueys them, their suits of maintenance, And that soiled workaday apparel cast, Put on condition: Death's ungentle buffet Alone makes ceremonial manumission; So are the heavenly statutes set, and those Uranian tables of the primal Law. In a little peace, in a little peace, Like fierce beasts that a common thirst makes brothers, We draw together to one hid dark lake; In a little ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... slow in securing total manumission and colonization, it would be progressive and certain. God works out the destiny of nations by no sudden or spasmodic action. His great and beneficent changes are generally slow and gradual, but when he wills ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of Roman law suggested the triple abrenunciatio of Satan. Like the legal ceremony, baptism freed the believer from one (Satan) who, by the mere fact of the believer's birth, had power of death over him. And as the legal manumission dissolved a son's previous agnatic relationships, so, too, the person baptized gave up father and mother, &c., and became one of a society of brethren the bond between whom was not physical but spiritual. The idea of adoption in baptism as a son and heir ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... relatives of the slain. The Kazi has the administration of the Shariat or religious law: he cannot, however, pronounce sentence without the Governor's permission; and generally his powers are confined to questions of divorce, alimony, manumission, the wound-mulct, and similar cases which come within Koranic jurisdiction. Thus the religious code is ancillary and often opposed to "El Jabr,"—"the tyranny,"—the popular designation of what we call Civil ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... it further enacted, That every such enrolled person, who shall have become free by manumission or otherwise, if he shall thereafter become indigent, shall be deemed to be settled in the town in which the person who manumitted him was settled at the time of such manumission, or in such other town where he shall have gained a settlement subsequent to his discharge from the said service; ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... reasonable time and take them away again. The third provides a temporary system of apprenticeship and eventual emancipation for children born of slavemothers after January 1, 1850. The fourth provides for the manumission of slaves by the Government on application of the owners, the latter to receive their full cash value. The fifth provides for the return of fugitive slaves from Washington and Georgetown. The sixth submits this bill itself to a popular vote in the District as a ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... Grignon's to Jack on the day of his liberation, but I for one will not quarrel with his lordship. He and many other sinners had a jolly night. They said Kew made a fine speech, in hearing and acknowledging which Jack Belsize wept copiously. Barnes Newcome was in a rage at Jack's manumission, and sincerely hoped Mr. Commissioner would give him a couple of years longer; and cursed and swore with a great liberality on hearing of ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of the Getae. Greek legend made him a Getan slave of Pythagoras, who on manumission went home, became priest of the chief deity of the Getae, and taught the Pythagorean doctrine of ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... confess is a freeman; but it may be said that many persons are so shackled by their fortune that they are hindered from enjoyment of that manumission which they have obtained from virtue. I do both understand, and in part feel the weight of this objection. All I can answer to it is, "That we must get as much liberty as we can; we must use our utmost endeavours, and when ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... Almighty Allah and our lord the Kazi." When the judge heard this tale he asked Hubub the nurse, "Is this indeed thy lady and are ye strangers and is she unmarried?", and she answered, "Yes." Quoth he, "Marry her to me and on me be incumbent manumission of my slaves and fasting and pilgrimage and almsgiving of all my good an I do you not justice on this dog and punish him for that he hath done!" And quoth she, "I hear and obey." Then said the Kazi, "Go, hearten thy heart and that of thy lady; ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... opinion, I had merited manumission; but that I was not the property of the municipality of Nuceria, but of the fiscus; [Footnote: See Note B.] I was, in short, part of the personal property of the Emperor and could be manumitted only by the Emperor, ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... in an apportioned world, it had to buy its right to disturb the established social order. The dividend of the shareholder was the tribute the new enterprise had to pay the old wealth. The share was the manumission money of machinery. And essentially the shareholder represents and will continue to represent the responsible managing owner of a former state of ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... August, 1939, was a large body of slave narratives, photographs of former slaves, interviews with white informants regarding slavery, transcripts of laws, advertisements, records of sale, transfer, and manumission of slaves, and other documents. As unpublished manuscripts of the Federal Writers' Project these records passed into the hands of the Library of Congress Project for processing; and from them has been assembled the present collection of some two thousand narratives from the following ...
— Slave Narratives, Administrative Files (A Folk History of - Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves) • Works Projects Administration
... criminal cases, but by no means restricted to them; resort was had to it in pleas respecting freehold, in writs of right, in warranty of land or of goods sold; debts upon mortgage or promise, denial of suretyship by sureties, validity of charters, manumission, questions concerning services, etc. All such quarrels might be submitted to the issue of the duel, which was pre eminently the means of invoking the judgment of God. To us no proceeding appears less effectual or more cruel, but even so wise a man as Dante ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... This manumission[48] and placing them in a way of livelihood, I look upon as only what is due to a good servant, which encouragement will make his successor be as diligent, as humble, and as ready as he was. There is something wonderful in the narrowness of those minds, ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... progress of Christian practice and doctrine on this subject, it is, as usual, mixed of good and evil. The humanity of good Pagan emperors softened the harshness of the laws of bondage, and manumission had always been extremely common amongst the Romans. Of course, the more humane religion of Christ acted still more powerfully in the same direction, especially in inculcating the propriety of freeing Christian ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... nowise with the right of property, and hopes and labors for the gradual abolition of slavery, by the voluntary and gradual manumission of slaves, when the free persons of color shall have first been transferred to their aboriginal climate and soil.'—[G. W. P. Custis, Esq.—African Repository, vol. i. ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison |
