Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes
The moral equalizes all; enriches, empowers all. It is the coin which buys all, and which all find in their pocket. Under the whipof the driver, the slave shall feel his equality with saints and heroes.
This quotation illustrates a huge difference between Roman Slavery (as well as slavery in many other societies) on the one hand and American Slavery which was much more pernicious. In Rome, slave and master status was a function of circumstances—events and luck. The slave was inherently no less able than the master. Indeed, if a battle might have gone the other way, their roles could be reversed. There was huge inequality of rights and privileges, between slaves and masters, but inherently they were both humans. Often slaves as a result of life before capture were very educated—far more so than their masters. Some were leaders, some poets. In American Slavery there was an overlay of inherent inferiority which most Southerners believed, and worst of all, the perpetuation of that notion tended to be believed by most American slaves. The American slave never had the human dignity that a Roman slave did.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, who went by his middle name Waldo, was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, abolitionist and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society, and he disseminated his thoughts through dozens of published essays and more than 1,500 public lectures across the United States.
