United Colonies of New England Quotes

The truth that we are required to face about the slave trade is that it was founded on violence and terror … not done to Americans but done by Americans to others.

What was new in the imperialism of Germany and Japan in World War II was the far more ruthless treatment of subject populations.

Spanish colonial policy has been a failure. All the defects of character and administration which produced such disastrous results at home had naturally fuller scope for development in the colonies. The discoveries of Columbus did not open up a new continent to be settled by industrious immigrants coming to found states and develop their resources in peaceful industry. The marvelous exploits of the Conquistadors were performed in the craziest thirst for gold, and those who succeeded them came in the hope of speedy enrichment and return, to accomplish which they exploited to the utmost the unhappy natives, and when these were no longer available replaced them with African slaves.

We must find new lands from which we can easily obtain raw materials and at the same time exploit the cheap slave labor that is available from the natives of the colonies. The colonies would also provide a dumping ground for the surplus goods produced in our factories.

The U.K. and the U.S. could not have been built today without Africa's aid. It is all the resources that were taken from Africa, including human, that built these countries today! So when they try to give back, we shouldn't be on the defensive.

Trafficking Negroes is right, just and lawful. In my opinion there is no more crime in bringing off a cargo of slaves than in bringing off a cargo of jackasses.

I purchase slaves and manumit [free] them at proper ages, and when their faithful services shall have afforded a reasonable retribution

The buying and selling of slaves could hardly be considered paternalistic: parents do not normally sell their children.

Captain Sutter keeps from 600-800 Indians in a perfect state of slavery.

I have never been able to procure sufficient slaves to cultivate my lands and that of any guilt that attached to this trade we [planters] were at most but partners with the Parliament which tolerated it, and the country which profited so much from it.

Many attempts had been made by colonial legislatures to cut off or to tax the importation of slaves.

When people think of slavery, they think of an era from the distant past. Grainy photographs from Civil War times. And yet it goes on.

People-trafficking is modern day slavery. There are more slaves today than there were at the height of the slave trade.

People say that slaves were taken from Africa. This is not true: People were taken from Africa, among them healers and priests, and were made into slaves.

Decolonization actually boosted slavery. As foreign powers withdrew from the colonies, people were enslaved by their own countrymen. And we see it in Africa, we see it in Asia.

What should we suppose must naturally be the consequence of our carrying on a slave trade with Africa? With a country, vast in its extent, not utterly barbarous, but civilized in a very small degree? Does any one suppose a slave trade would help their civilization?

In order to thrive, the slave trade requires the direct or indirect involvement of national governments, at both the source and the destination. Since prophets are high, slavers have plenty of money to pay off government officials and local police…. If ordinary criminals are rarely punished for dealing in slaves, high level officials in such places enjoyed even more impunity.

The commerce of this country is almost entirely confined to slaves

This Scalping Business hath been encouraged, in the Colonies, for more than a Century past. Premiums have been given, frequently, by the Massachusetts Assemblies, for the Scalps of Indians, even when they boasted loudest of their Sanctity; & I have seen a Vessel enter the Harbor of Boston, with a long String of hairy Indian Scalps strung to the rigging, & waving in the wind;

The enslavement of Africans [in America] built the world's strongest economy.

Of all the shameful and infamous expedients whereby man has preyed upon man … this vile thing [the rubber trade] dares to call itself commerce.

For the good of the souls of said cannibals … the greater the number sent over to Spain the better … They [the Caribe Indians] are a wild people, fit for any work, well proportioned and very intelligent, and who … will be better than any other kind of slaves.

Let no man, for the future, presume to carry on the wicked trade of selling men in markets, like brute beasts, which hitherto hath been the common custom of England.

It was a piteous sight to see them exposed for sale in Algiers, for then they parted the wife from the husband, and the father from the child; then say I, they sell the husband here, and the wife there, tearing from her arms a daughter whom she cannot hope to see again.

This is about slavery.