William Goodell Quotes
SLAVES CANNOT MARRY. Being held as Property, and incapable of making any Contract, they cannot contract Marriage recognized by Law. MEN may forget or disregard the rules of logic in their reasonings about slavery, but the genius that presides over American slavery never forgets or disregards them. From its well-defined principle of human chattelhood it never departs, for a single moment. If any thing founded on falsehood might be called a science, we might add the system of American slavery to the list of the strict sciences. From a single fundamental axiom, all the parts of the system are logically and scientifically educed. And no man fully understands the system, who does not study it in the light of that axiom. The slave has no rights. Of course he, or she, cannot have the rights of a husband, a wife. The slave is a chattel, and chattels do not marry. The slave is not ranked among sentient beings, but among things, and things are not married. Slaves are not people, in the eye of the law. They have no legal personality. So said by their votes, the Federal Congress.
Abolition was an issue from the first Congress onward. By the 1850s there was a major, and in the view of the Southern Slavery enthusiasts, incessant political, journalistic, and intellectual attacks on slavery. The latter two really affected public opinion and opposition to slavery grew in intellectual and educated circles. This document was an example of the literature of the time where the attack on slavery was made by simply explaining the “logic and facts” of the existing laws of the slave states. Once exposed in their entirety, the horror and immorality of the institution was supplemented by the intellectual absurdity and logical fallacies of the pro slavery forces. Note the swipe Goodell takes at Congress. This kind of public criticism made it harder and harder for the Northern Congressmen to “go along” with the South on the slavery issue, and the next decade of increased polarization on slavery culminated in the Civil War. It was not the Southern representatives who changed, but consciousness raising and public opinion changed the Northern perspective and the voting of the Northerners to oppose slavery. Earlier “compromises” became no longer morally or politically acceptable.
William Goodell, 1792-1878, Abolitionist, The American Slave Code in Theory and Practice: Its Distinctive Features Shown by Its Statutes, Judicial Decisions, and Illustrative Facts., 1853
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The Pennsylvania Society for promoting the Abolition of Slavery had submitted a petition to Congress which refused to consider it, this resolution being the reason.
Baron Brougham and Vaux
At the time the law in the United States gave a husband control of all property of the wife including any money she might earn. In this sense the English Christian legal tradition was far less fair and modern than even Islam which guaranteed some property and inheritance rights to women.
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.
Butler was at the time the Union general in charge of Louisiana. He had on his hand a large group of slaves whose owners had abandoned the area. There was no emancipation yet. He wrote for instructions. The result was the first actual emancipation of slaves.
This bull was issued to Bishop Ferdinand located at Rubicon on the island of Lanzarote. Many critics of the Catholic Church point to the widespread use of slavery by Catholic laity and even the clergy during the Age of Discovery. It is clear, however, from the earliest appearance of slavery during this period that the official teaching of the Church condemned it as a crime subject to the sentence of excommunication ipso facto (by the very deed itself). The Church’s condemnation of “slavery,” however, did not extend to “just title” slavery, which approved of the practice in circumstances in which the person was deprived of their liberty justly. Specific examples have included slaves captured in war, persons condemned to slavery for a crime, and those who sold themselves into slavery. For an example of a type of “just title” slavery being legitimatised, see Nicholas V {612174}. In many cases the line between slavery for no morally justifiable reason, i.e. racial slavery, and “just title” slavery remained unclear to Catholic laity and clergy alike.
The issue of slavery which had been suppressed in Congress for the first decades of the nation broke out when Missouri was considered for statehood. 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 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.
as opposed to bringing slaves into the territory of California. There was a recognition that the institution of slavery corrupted the whole society. It therefore was preferable to use Chinese contract labor to diminish agricultural labor costs. If the price of admission to the union was to allow slavery, this paper and its readership would think it too high and would rather be independent.
The Irish generally were not very sympathetic to the abolitionist movement and many saw the Negro as a competitor for jobs. However, the Republicans in Ireland left no doubt where they stood, and they castigated their American Brethren for their pro-slavery position. This particular letter was reprinted by the New England Anti-Slavery Tract Association and was read and appreciated by most abolitionists of both races.
By not dealing with the issue of slavery early in America’s history when it was a very small economic factor in American society, our ancestors delayed action to the point where the economic factor was the overwhelming practical impediment to abolition.
Van Buren was Ambassador to England at the time.
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.
This proverb is a large part of the conceptual basis of the concept of honor killing. It starts with the notion that women are property. However, being animate property women are in the same class as livestock. And if a camel or a donkey get lose and does damage, the owner is responsible. So if a woman does something wrong, it is the father or the husband who is responsible. Since sexual behavior of most kinds is contrary to the Islamic custom and law, any activity in this regard, demonstrates that the father of husband has not been up to his obligations and is therefore dishonored. Therefore, the least he can do, to provide a deterrent to other women is to kill the offending female. Without the concept of property, the entire chain of logic collapses under its own weight.
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.
It was the common practice in France to allow citizens to work in various occupations only if they received Royal permission. Some obtained monopolies in certain trades for certain areas. This is an excellent case of a reform which completely reversed previous policies. The authority doing the reform takes credit for it ignoring that the abuses and evils that it corrected were operated and maintained by them also. This quotation was also used in arguing the Slaughterhouse Cases before the Supreme Court in 1873.
William Goodell was an abolitionist and reformer born in Coventry, New York on October 3, 1792.
