"Slaveholding" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... political or other liking for the South was a much stronger and more active feeling than the humanitarian or other dislike of slavery; the first feeling, indeed, soon developed into a passion, the second into a self-reproachful obstruction. Thus the logical view, that slavery as well as the slaveholding interest was right, exercised a powerful centripetal attraction; and many minds were betrayed into adopting it as a truth, or using it for a purpose, without probing the depth of apostasy to their own more solid ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... proof of their sincerity. We do not say that this is reprehensible, but it is easy to see that it has the seeds of a great crop of scandals in it. Donations in an age of great munificence, and horror of far-off or unattractive sins, like the slaveholding of Southerners and the intemperance of the miserable poor, are not, and ought not to be, accepted as signs of inward and spiritual grace, and of readiness to scale "the toppling ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... sets armies in the field, summoned from distant Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas, as well as from nearer Virginia, and composed of the whole lawless population—the poor who cannot own slaves as well as the rich who own them—throughout the extensive region where, with satanic grasp, this slaveholding minority ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... of slave-holding States, and for the precedent it established, that the Constitution was a barrier only to what should impede, never to what might promote, the interests of Slavery,—was the first great stride she made as she stalked to her design. The admission of Missouri as a slaveholding State, granted after a struggle that shook American society to the centre, and then only on the memorable promises now broken to the ear as well as to the hope, was the next vantage-ground seized and maintained. The nearly contemporary ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... temperate Eastern Kentucky, 'a portion of the great central district of mountain slopes and valleys,' let the reader turn to the secession hot-bed of the State. He will find it the largest slaveholding district of Kentucky. It is worth noting that secession is matured in the slave regions, for though it is popularly identified with slavery, they are not wanting among its leaders—no, nor among their traitorous and cowardly sympathizers here at the North—who constantly ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... one element yet wanting to assure the right usage of all this wealth of material, intellectual, and ecclesiastical power. This was what the slaveholding aristocracy saw at once to be the fatal omen for their cause, and nicknamed 'Abolitionism.' Abolitionism, as recognized by the Slave Power, is nothing more nor less than the religious reverence for man and his natural rights. This moral respect for the nature and rights of all ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... jester are alike condemned on their own indictment, since upon cupidity the most petulant, upon cupidity the most voracious in its greedy demands, rested the whole Spartan polity, as does the system of slaveholding in the South. The Spartan, like the Southern planter, might protest that money was of no consequence whatever, that to him it was only so much iron,—but why? Only because that, by the satisfaction of a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... Mountain and thrice they have acquitted themselves so that their deeds are noted in history. A souvenir of their part in the War of 1812 at the Battle of the Thames is kept in one of the favorite names for mountain girls—"Lake Erie." In the Civil War many volunteers from the free, non-slaveholding mountain regions of Kentucky and Tennessee joined the Union Army, and it is said that they exceeded all others in stature and physical development. And in our own day their sons again came down from the mountains to ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... battles. Meanwhile with every day's delay Emancipation, as a predetermined necessity, gains ground among the people, and very rapidly indeed in the army. It was the lowest and most tyrannical form of an aristocracy—that of slaveholding planterdom—which caused and is still causing all this trouble, and it is beginning to work its way into the minds of the multitude that it is hardly worth while to risk every thing, and see the real criminals reinstated after all in their ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the early Boston editors, who seems to have been an odd fish—somewhat witty, but, to use a homely proverb, 'as rough as a rat-catcher's dog.' He first established the Boston Weekly Rehearsal, in 1731, and afterward the Boston Evening Post. His name was Thomas Fleet. Massachusetts was then a slaveholding country, and Fleet owned several negroes, two of whom he instructed in the art of printing. Their names were Pompey and Caesar—the only two Romans, I believe, who ever belonged to the printing fraternity. These honest fellows lived and printed until after ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... policy of the Government to concentrate its attention upon the internal development of the country, and to concern itself little with external interests, except so far as they promoted the views of that section which desired to give extension to slaveholding territory. The avoidance of entangling alliances had become perverted to indifference to the means by which alone, in the last resort, the nation can assert and secure control in regions outside its borders, ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... aptly described Hannibal as a "loafing, out-at-elbows, down-at-the-heels, slaveholding Mississippi river town." Young Clemens accepted the institution of slavery as a matter of course, for his father was a slave-owner; and his mother's wedding dowry consisted in part of two or three slaves. Judge Clemens was a very austere man; like so many ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... be maintained. The time will come, when repudiation will be repudiated by Mississippi—when her wretched secession leaders, the true authors of her disgrace and ruin, will be discarded—when her insolent slaveholding oligarchy will be overthrown, when the people will break the chains of their imperious masters, and labor, without regard to color, will be emancipated. Secession, repudiation, and slavery are the same in principle and had the same leaders. Jefferson Davis carried ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... wealth, culture, and boundless hospitality, checked manufacture, retarded the growth of cities, and turned the tide of immigration westward. Without a vigorous public school system, a considerable part of the non-slaveholding class remained without ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... of the Unitarian connexion, maintained in his lectures that the safety of the Union is not to be hazarded for the sake of the African race. He declares that, for his part, he would send his own brother or child into slavery, if needed to preserve the Union between the free and the slaveholding States; and, counselling the slave to similar magnanimity, thus exhorts him:—"YOUR RIGHT TO BE FREE IS NOT ABSOLUTE, UNQUALIFIED, IRRESPECTIVE OF ALL CONSEQUENCES. If my espousal of your claim is likely to involve your race ...
— Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom • William and Ellen Craft
... facts of the last four or five years admit of our believing the worst that can be suspected of the purposes of the Democratic party. It is not uncharitable to say that the leaders and managers of that party contemplate, in the event of their triumph in November, the surrender of the country to the slaveholding oligarchy; in the event of their defeat by a small majority, the extension of the civil war over the North. Four years ago we could not be made to believe that Secession was a possible thing. We admitted that there were ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... aristocracy is directed. Liberal leaders have made your name odious by pointing to your institutions as the condemnation of our own. They did this too indiscriminately perhaps, while in one respect your institutions were far below our own, inasmuch as you were a slaveholding nation. "Look," they were always saying, "at the Model Republic,—behold its unbroken prosperity, the harmony of its people under the system of universal suffrage, the lightness of its taxation,—behold, above all, its immunity from war!" ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... no reason why the second great evil—the separation of families (under a certain age) should not be entirely removed by proper legislation; and I believe measures to this effect have already been mooted in more than one of the slaveholding States. Putting these two points aside, I believe that the condition of the slave—especially where the "patriarchal" system prevails—is infinitely better than that of the coolies: the unutterable horrors and waste ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... proposition, he took issue unqualifiedly. "Mr. Lincoln asserts, as a fundamental principle of this government, that there must be uniformity in the local laws and domestic institutions of each and all the States of the Union, and he therefore invites all the non-slaveholding States to band together, organize as one body, and make war upon slavery in Kentucky, upon slavery in Virginia, upon slavery in the Carolinas, upon slavery in all of the slave-holding States in this Union, ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... be crushed within him, before his back can be fitted to the burden of perpetual slavery; and that his back is not fitted to it, is manifest by the insurrections that so often disturb the peace and security of slaveholding countries. Who ever heard of a rebellion of the beasts of the field; and why not? simply because they were all placed under the feet of man, into whose hand they were delivered; it was originally designed that they should serve him, therefore ...
— An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South • Angelina Emily Grimke
... party favorable to slavery in our state. It will seem strange to many of my readers that Ohio people of color were once not only not allowed to vote, but were not allowed to give testimony in the courts of law. They were treated in this like the Southern slaves, and in fact there was really a sort of slaveholding in Ohio, in spite of the law. In the river counties many farmers hired slaves from their masters in Virginia and Kentucky; and when the Southerners traveled through Ohio, they brought their slaves into the state with them, and took them out again. But when the conscience of the Northern people ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... exaggerations which follow. The worst being possible, every one takes the worst for granted. Undoubtedly a dozen armed men could have stifled this insurrection, even after it had commenced operations; but it is the fatal weakness of a rural slaveholding community, that it can never furnish men promptly for such a purpose. "My first intention was," says one of the most intelligent newspaper narrators of the affair, "to have attacked them with thirty or forty men; but those who had families here were ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... section, including South Carolina, Georgia, and the Gulf States, was even more sharply defined in the attitude it assumed toward the anti-slavery movement. At no time did the cause of emancipation become formidable in this section. In all these States there was, of course, a large class of non-slaveholding whites, who were opposed to slavery and who realized that they were victims of an injurious system; but they had no effective organ for expression. The ruling minority gained an early and an easy victory and to the end held a firm hand. To the inhabitants of this ...
— The Anti-Slavery Crusade - Volume 28 In The Chronicles Of America Series • Jesse Macy
... Totila told them, had drawn down on them the anger of heaven. But more; though they reformed their morals, and that nobly, under the stern teaching of affliction, that could not save them. They were ruined by the inherent weakness of all slaveholding states; the very weakness which had ruined, in past years, the Roman Empire. They had no middle class, who could keep up their supplies, by exercising for them during war the arts of peace. They had no lower class, ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... serious clashes between legislatures and courts are likely to occur, as the social equilibrium shifts the legislature almost certainly will reflect the rising, the court the sinking power. I take the Dred Scott Case as an illustration. In 1857 the slaveholding interest had passed the zenith of high fortune, and was hastening toward its decline. In the elections of 1858 the Democratic party, which represented slavery, was defeated. But the Supreme Court had been organized by Democrats who had been dominant for many years, and it ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... conscience and moral sentiment even of a free community. Nobody can tell the thousand ways in which by trade, by family affinity, or by political expediency, the free part of our country is constantly tempted to complicity with the slaveholding part. It is a terrible thing to become used to hearing the enormities of slavery, to hear of things day after day that one would think the sun should hide his face from, and yet, to get used to them, to discusss them coolly, to dismiss them coolly. For example, ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... From the Slaveholding States, however, as was to be expected, came a flood of indignant recrimination and rebuke. No one act, perhaps, ever produced more frantic irritation or called out more unsparing abuse. It came with the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... has triumphed in its warfare with the North: the political power passed into its hands with the defeat of the Father of the Protective Tariff, ten years since, in the last effort of his friends to elevate him to the Presidency: the slaveholding and commercial interests then gained the ascendency, and secured the power of annexing territory at will: the nation has become rich in commerce, and unbounded in ambition for territorial aggrandizement: the people acquiesce in the measures of Government, and are proud of the influence ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... at Sherman, who with some seventy Republicans of the previous Congress had signed a circular indorsing and recommending the book upon the general statement that it was an anti-slavery work, written by a Southerner. The book addressed itself to non-slaveholding Southern whites, and was mainly made up of statistics, but contained occasional passages of intolerant and vindictive sentiment against slaveholders. Whether it could be considered "insurrectionary" depended altogether on the pro-slavery or anti-slavery bias of the critic. ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... in Mexico, referred to. Pot-hooks, death in. Power, a first-class, elements of. Preacher, an ornamental symbol, a breeder of dogmas, earnestness of, important. Present, considered as an annalist, not long wonderful. President, slaveholding natural to, must be a Southern resident, must own a nigger, the, his policy, his resemblance to Jackson. Princes mix cocktails. Principle, exposure spoils it. Principles, bad, when less harmful, when useless. Professor, Latin, in College, Scaliger. Prophecies, fulfilment ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... disliking Democracy. However, the war burst at last, heralded by that mysterious lunatic who appeared like a warning giant in the twilight day of the Union,—old John Brown; and as the Gulf States wheeled into line and pulled down the old colors, the Old Dominion, Southern and slaveholding, was too impulsive not to follow the whirlwind. She did not go for policy's sake, nor for principle's sake, but for emotion's sake. How wild and jubilant, and confident, were those Richmond mass meetings, at which separation was counselled! How awful seems their levity at this ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... blast of the Texian bugle, thousands of volunteers from the slaveholding States rushed to the standard of "the lone star." Agents were sent to the United States to create an interest in behalf of Texas—the most inflammatory appeals were made to the people of the Union—and armed bodies of American citizens were openly formed ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... The Secession Ordinance passed the Convention of South Carolina December 20, 1860. The next day, December 21, the Convention adopted the "Declaration of Causes" which led to that Secession. This document declares, as to the non-slaveholding States, that they have "denounced as sinful the institution of Slavery"; that they have "united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States whose opinions and purposes are hostile ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... polling of the vote upon secession was marked with bloodshed. The county was on the military border between the free and the slaveholding states. Coonrod Pile had been a slaveholder, but few of the mountaineers were owners. Slavery as an institution did not appeal to their Anglo-Saxon principles; poverty had prevented slavery's advance into the mountains as a custom, and as racial distinction was not to be clearly defined ...
— Sergeant York And His People • Sam Cowan
... present Governor of Tennessee, and Cincinnati aspirant: he voted three times for the Wilmot Proviso, and so doubtful are his doctrines on the slavery question, that many slaveholding members of his own party regard him as extremely "dangerous to ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... 1. The personal liberty laws, which never freed a slave. 2. Exclusion from a Territory which slaveholders will never desire to occupy. 3. Apprehension of an event which will never take place. For the sake of these three causes of complaint, all of them utterly without practical result, the slaveholding States, unquestionably the weakest section of this great Confederacy, are voluntarily and precipitately surrendering the realities of solid power woven into the very texture of a government that now keeps ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... as from a nightmare, to find the old life swept away forever. In the South, the Confederates, bitter and sullen, groping amid the ruins of their institutions, sought to find some substitute for the agricultural despotism exercised for generations by their slaveholding families. In the East, the first families of the Revolution, secure in their preeminence, assumed again the manufacturing-banking-social prestige. The far West was still almost unknown, and remained in possession of the buffalo and the Indian. Settlers poured, in increasing ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... American propagandists of slavery here, who seem to feel it incumbent on them to recognize this hideous excrescence as a national peculiarity, and to consider any reflection upon it, on the part of the liberty-loving Swiss, as an insult to the American nation. The sophisms by which slaveholding has been justified from the Bible have left their slimy track even here. Alas! is it thus America fulfils her high destiny? Must she send missionaries abroad ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Ohio as compared with Kentucky, that the value of the product of Ohio was nearly triple that of Kentucky, and, per capita, much more than one third greater. No reason can be assigned for these remarkable results, except that Kentucky was slaveholding, and Ohio ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... manifest absurdity, she has declared, through the Supreme Court of the United States, that negroes are not men in the ordinary meaning of the word. To eat dirt is bad enough, but to find that we have eaten more than was necessary may chance to give us an indigestion. The slaveholding interest has gone on step by step, forcing concession after concession, till it needs but little to secure it forever in the political supremacy of the country. Yield to its latest demand,—let it mould the evil ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... and free enjoyment of the rights of citizenship conferred upon the colored people by the recent amendments to the Constitution still prevails in several of the late slaveholding States. It has, perhaps, not been manifested in the recent election to any large extent in acts of violence or intimidation. It has, however, by fraudulent practices in connection with the ballots, with the ...
— Messages and Papers of Rutherford B. Hayes - A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • James D. Richardson
... universal freedom, though at times dormant, was ever apparent despite the attachment to the South of the trading classes of northern cities, which profited by the slave trade and their commerce with the slaveholding States. The Northern States maintaining this liberal attitude developed, therefore, into an asylum for the Negroes who were oppressed ...
— A Century of Negro Migration • Carter G. Woodson
... were a thoroughly inhuman people. Their calling, they held, was to conquer all the nations of the earth, to plunder them, to enslave them. They were the great slaveholding, man- stealing people. Mercy was a virtue which they had utterly forgotten. Their public shows and games were mere butcheries of blood and torture. To see them fight to death in their theatres, pairs after pairs, sometimes ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... slavery, and being naturally a man of kind feelings, treated his slaves with all the consideration he did his other animals, and more, perhaps. But Mrs. Dumont, who had been born and educated in a non-slaveholding family, and, like many others, used only to work-people, who, under the most stimulating of human motives, were willing to put forth their every energy, could not have patience with the creeping gait, the dull understanding, or see any cause for the listless manners ...
— The Narrative of Sojourner Truth • Sojourner Truth
... those who come into its ports connected with the shipping interests, pursuing an honest vocation, and intending to leave whenever their ship was ready. The consul was censured by the press in several of the slaveholding States, because he dared to bring the matter before the local legislature. We are bound to say that Consul Mathew, knowing the predominant prejudices of the Carolinians, acted wisely in so doing. First, he knew ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams |
