Henry Watson Bibb Quotes
To be compelled to stand by and see you whip and slash my wife without mercy, when I can afford her no protection, not even by offering myself to suffer the lash in her place, was more than I felt it to be the duty of a slave husband to endure, while the way was open to Canada.
Henry Watson Bibb, 1515-1554, Runaway slave, Letter to his former master William Gatewood, from Canadian Detroit, March 23, 1844
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
In 1851 the Anti-Slavery Society of Canada was founded stimulating a major public debate in Canada. Although there was no slavery in Canada, there were sharp differences as to how overt Canadians should become in opposition to American slavery. Southern politicians pressured Canada not to interfere and objected to Canadians giving asylum to fugitive slaves. The hypocrisy of American principles of freedom and liberty with the institution of slavery was a favorite target of Brown’s speeches and writing.
There were no women’s shelters in the 19th century, and the police or sheriffs would not entertain a complaint from a wife for assault, sexual or otherwise. She compared the state of women to that of fugitive slaves a few decades earlier. Then there was the Underground Railroad and other institutions which would shelter and help the slaves. There was no such mechanism for women abused in their marriage.
Sexual abuse of female slaves was very common in the American South. See {642027} and {642028}. In the 1930s over 2,300 formerly enslaved African Americans were interviewed by members of the Federal Writers' Project, a New Deal agency in the Works Progress Administration (WPA) during the Great Depression. This particular abuse was one of the most common reported. Ironically, the Southern justification for segregation and prohibition of inter-marriage even through the 1950s, was to prevent the great “crime” of miscegenation which white slave owners and their male friends committed by raping and sexually exploiting the female slaves. Today, as DNA analysis shows, most traditional Southern “white” families have recent Negroes in their ancestry.
This Biblical Quotation was one of the main reasons that Christian religious abolitionists were so active in the Underground Railroad and other efforts to assist and harbor fugitive slaves. It was also a motivating force for those states which passed laws making a slave free the second he set foot in the state. It was cited by many of those Northerners refusing to follow the Federal Fugitive Slave Act even after the Supreme Court upheld it in the Dred Scott decision. The act required them to return a fugitive slave to his master. This clearly violated this passage of the Bible. and the concept of States Rights. The Southern States which pushed the Fugitive Slave Act through Congress and complained bitterly when it was ignored by many Northern States were never able to provide any refute to the argument that because of this passage, following the act would be violating the law of God. The South which viewed itself as a bastion of Christianity, never were troubled by this passage when they passed state laws requiring the return of fugitive slaves. It illustrates the hypocrisy that slavery forced upon its advocates.
Parker and other escaped slaves in Christiana fought off slave catchers and killed the slave owner leading them. Charged with treason, he escaped to Canada with his family and lived there the rest of his life. While not a polished writer, after he himself had escaped and went to Christiana and leaned to read and write. He wrote this narrative of his life as a slave—one of the few written works we have from slaves.
Paglia was an anti feminist. She never studied the intimidation effect of men who threaten their spouse’s lives if they are abandoned and each year many spouses and girlfriends are murdered for just that reason. Nor has she studied the millions of women who have no way to make a living yet have children to support who then stay with an abusive partner.
There were very few public figures of any kind who would even talk about the problem of marital rape. She was one of those and attracted huge audiences. Unfortunately, marital rape is much still with us although there have been some prosecutions beginning in the latter part of the 20th century.
