Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave. Second Edition

by William Wells Brown

"We believe the servitude which prevails in the south far preferable to that of the north, or in Europe. Slavery will exist in all communities. There is a class which may be nominally free, but they will be virtually slaves."—Mississippian, July 6th, 1838.

"Those who depend on their daily labor for their daily subsistence can never enter into political affairs, they never do, never will, never can."—B. W. Leigh in Virginia Convention, 1829.

"All society settles down into a classification of capitalists and laborers. The former will own the latter, either collectively through the government, or individually in a state of domestic servitude as exists in the southern states of this confederacy. If LABORERS ever obtain the political power of a country, it is in fact in a state of REVOLUTION. The capitalists north of Mason and Dixon's line have precisely the same interest in the labor of the country that the capitalists of England have in their labor. Hence it is, that they must have a strong federal government (!) to control the labor of the nation. But it is precisely the reverse with us. We have already not only a right to the proceeds of our laborers, but we OWN a class of laborers themselves. But let me say to gentlemen who represent the great class of capitalists in the north, beware that you do not drive us into a separate system, for if you do, as certain as the decrees of heaven, you will be compelled to appeal to the sword to maintain yourselves at home. It may not come in your day; but your children's children will be covered with the blood of domestic factions, and a plundering mob contending for power and conquest."—Mr. Pickens, of South Carolina, in Congress, 21st Jan., 1836.

"In the very nature of things there must be classes of persons to discharge all the different offices of society from the highest to the lowest. Some of these offices are regarded as degraded, although they must and will be performed. Hence those manifest forms of dependent servitude which produce a sense of superiority in the masters or employers, and of inferiority on the part of the servants. Where these offices are performed by members of the political community, a DANGEROUS ELEMENT is obviously introduced into the body politic. Hence the alarming tendency to violate the rights of property by agrarian legislation which is beginning to be manifest in the older states where UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE prevails without DOMESTIC SLAVERY.

"In a word, the institution of domestic slavery supersedes the necessity of AN ORDER OF NOBILITY AND ALL THE OTHER APPENDAGES OF A HEREDITARY SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT."—Gov. M'Duffie's Message to the South Carolina Legislature, 1836.

"We of the south have cause now, and shall soon have greater, to congratulate ourselves on the existence of a population among us which excludes the POPULACE which in effect rules some of our northern neighbors, and is rapidly gaining strength wherever slavery does not exist—a populace made up of the dregs of Europe, and the most worthless portion of the native population."—Richmond Whig, 1837.

"Would you do a benefit to the horse or the ox by giving him a cultivated understanding, a fine feeling! So far as the MERE LABORER has the pride, the knowledge or the aspiration of a freeman, he is unfitted for his situation. If there are sordid, servile, laborious offices to be performed, is it not better that there should be sordid, servile, laborious beings to perform them?

"Odium has been cast upon our legislation on account of its forbidding the elements of education being communicated to slaves. But in truth what injury is done them by this? He who works during the day with his hands, does not read in the intervals of leisure for his amusement or the improvement of his mind, or the exception is so very rare as scarcely to need the being provided for."—Chancellor Harper, of South Carolina.—Southern Lit. Messenger.

"Our slave population is decidedly preferable, as an orderly and laboring class, to a northern laboring class, that have just learning enough to make them wondrous wise, and make them the most dangerous class to well regulated liberty under the sun."—Richmond (Virginia) Enquirer.