Charles Osborn Quotes
It is fast approaching when the United States shall no longer be stained with this foul pollution of slavery.
The first anti-slavery newspaper published in the United States & the first journal in America to advocate immediate, unconditional emancipation
Charles Osborn, 1775-1847, Quaker Minister & Abolitionist, Cofounder of the Manumission Society of Tennessee, Publisher & Editor of Philanthropist Philanthropist, Volume 1, Number 1, August 29, 1817
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Later changed the name to The Emancipator. Many are surprised that a Southern State would have had such strong abolitionist sentiment so early, but East Tennessee was a hotbed of abolition. See {614117} and {614069}
In this quotation Lincoln got out of the rhetorical trap that Douglas had set for him by disclosing his personal preferences as opposed to the positions that Douglas had accused him of being pledged to. See {615827}.
Washington was from Virginia, the largest of the slave states, and he himself owned slaves. In his will he emancipated all his slaves. Most of his fellow Southern Slave owners however not only disagreed about the abolition of slavery but were adamant that slavery spread so that the abolitionists never attain a majority.
It was in fact, the following year when the South rebelled to prevent a “settlement”, but the irony was that the Civil War brought the settlement—emancipation-- faster and on less favorable terms than had they not rebelled and let the political process end slavery gradually as the majority of the nation wanted and morality dictated.
While England was strongly opposed to slavery, the English textile industry benefited from importing American Southern cotton. So many in England were supportive of the Confederacy.
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.
Baldwin was a young lawyer at the time. He represented a shipload of ex-slaves who had taken over their Spanish slave ship and landed in America. The Spanish claimed, the ship owners and some of the crew all claimed the “property.”
The Act was passed by the Pennsylvania General Assembly whose clerk interestingly enough was Tom Paine.
The issue of slavery which had been suppressed in Congress for the first decades of the nation broke out when Missouri statehood was considered. By previous agreement, slavery was not even discussed in Congress but the time period elapsed. Tallmadge not only proposed that no more slaves could come into Missouri {613176} but most shocking to the Southerners was that every person born in the new state would be free at the age of 25. In a generation, there would be no more slavery in Missouri and there would be no economic compensation for slave owners at all. The House of Representatives accepted the amendment, but it failed in the Senate. At that time, Senators were not elected by voters but were appointed by the state legislators and the Southern slave states had a disproportionate share of the senate from a population point of view. But what this quotation shows clearly that a majority of the country in 1819 were opposed to slavery and were willing to end it without compensation.
Benezet was a Huguenot whose family had been persecuted in France. He identified with the cause of Blacks, Indians and Acadians. He was also one of the first leaders of the American Peace Movement.
At the time Canada was one of the preferred destinations of escaping slaves traveling the Underground Railroad.
One of the many complaints that many people made at the time about Smith and his Mormons was that they opposed slavery. In fact, Smith not only opposed it be had a plan for compensating the slave owner and a method for paying for it. Smith was not advocating the kinds of personal lifestyle issues of his church the way modern religious leaders do, but was concerned with the much larger issues of expansionism, corruption of the courts and judiciary, and land distribution. He was a classic reform candidate in that sense. Smith had written to most of the then likely Presidential candidates of both major parties asking for their position on the Mormons who were facing persecution wherever they went. None of the politicians would make any satisfactory commitments. Smith took Direct Action and became the only major religious official to have run for the Presidency of the United States until Pat Robertson tried and failed in 2000. Smith’s assassination shortly thereafter cut his run for the Presidency short before it made much headway and politically he had no chance to affect the race.
Earlier {629154} Smith was much more sympathetic with slavery. His views evolved as you can see by the comparison. He stated that he had a vision and made two prophesies {629156} that indeed came true. The last idea of slave buyouts seemed plausible to many abolitionists initially when they were not really knowledgeable about the economics of slavery. However, once they studied it, it became clear what it would not work even if the Southerners would then be willing to accept Blacks as free laborers which most were not, The two biggest problems were: 1) the international slave trade had been abolished. The only source of new slaves for growth was breeding them. Therefore, having slaves had TWO economic values—the work that they could do and the reproduction of themselves. A critical mass of owned slaves produced an income forever. And for Southerners who were culturally adverse to work (see {629169}), just having cash for their slaves was not enough. They were the servants, the farm labor, and their recreational sex. 2) and most important, the value or the slaves of the South was greater than the economic value of all the land, all the farms, all the buildings, all the factories, and all the inventory of the stores of the South all put together. The Southern slaves were the majority of the wealth of the south. There was no asset that could ever produce enough value to pay for the slaves—even over time. It would be like trying to buy all the shares of all the corporations in America today. There is no asset big enough to raise the money to ever finance it. The idea may have worked in Colonial America or even prior to the outlaw of the international slave trade, but by the time anyone took the idea seriously it was economically no longer feasible.
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.
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