Patrick Henry Quotes
It is a debt we owe to the purity of our religion to show that it is at variance with that law which warrants slavery.
Henry, William Wirt. Patrick Henry: Life, Correspondence and Speeches, vol. 1, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1891, p. 152.
Even before we had a Constitution there was major opposition to slavery. The “price” of the American Union was the acceptance of the slavery of the South. But the hypocrisy of a country based on liberty to allow and enforce slavery was not lost on the founding fathers. Ironically the abolitionists among the founding fathers were certain that they could persuade the Southern slaveholders of the error of slavery in a few years and things would be set right in the land. Even George Washington {630626}, and Thomas Jefferson and some other slaveowners at the time wished to see its abolition. Slaveholding Southern Founding Fathers in general were so wary of the abolitionists that they achieved structural, disproportionate, power in the new Constitution to ward off the abolitionists attempts to reform slavery.
His family was one of the wealthiest in Rhode Island. He called in the entire family and he formally read the deed. The family itself had actually been active in the slave trade under John, his oldest brother, so this deed was very shocking to them. Moses became a leading abolitionist in Rhode Island and John the major defender of slavery in the state. Despite that, the brothers actually remained close.
The country had been completely polarized by 1854. It was only a matter of time for something like the Civil War to break out. The impossibility of compromise was not just held by radicals like Garrison but after the Compromise of 1850 fell apart, most politicians on both sides s
The political conflict between the right of the slave to liberty and the right of the slave owner to his property made the immediate abolition of slavery very difficult after the Spanish had been overthrown in South America.
Brown was then a member of the state legislature representing Providence. He was also himself a ship owner in the slave trade and he was the brother of the leading Rhode Island abolitionist, Moses Brown. See {585793}. John Brown became the first American, prosecuted in federal court for illegal slave trading –-- a prosecution brought, in part, by his own brother, Moses. He was acquitted.
A few years later he had a clearer idea of what was to be done. However, the additional factor of the Civil War played a big part in driving his Emancipation Proclamation. See {609360}
As an entertainer she had toured much of the world and seen American slavery and that of some other nations. She became a staunch abolitionist and like entertainers in the 20th and 21st centuries she used her celebrity to give anti-slavery lectures and perform for audiences where she donated the proceeds of the event to the abolition cause. She is a particularly interesting political figure in that she seems to be one of the first entertainers to perform for a social cause and become an activist.
Patrick Henry was an American attorney, planter, politician, and orator best known for his declaration to the Second Virginia Convention (1775): "Give me liberty, or give me death!" A Founding Father, he served as the first and sixth post-colonial Governor of Virginia, from 1776 to 1779 and from 1784 to 1786.
