Freedom Denial Quotes
This was written from Washington DC where slavery was legal at the time.
Lopez had come from Portugal and had been living in Rhode Island for 9 years and was active in shipping, whaling and candle making. He, and another Jew, Issac Elizer, petitioned the Rhode Island Superior Court for naturalization and citizenship rights. The court turned them down and they appealed to the Rhode Island Assembly—then not only the legislature but the highest court in the colony. The assembly came up with a compromise. The Jews were allowed to continue to live and work in Rhode Island but they could not hold public office or vote. They told the Superior Court to reconsider the case however as Lopez and Elizer were model citizens—but for religion just the kind the colony wanted. This case and many others were known to the founding fathers who were determined to put a stop to the practice of conditioning voting and office holding rights on adhering to the particular sect of the majority of the colony. Lopez and Elizer then appealed again to the Superior Court.
After emancipation of the slaves legislation and the enforcement thereof were needed to produce freedom. Congress passed much legislation but the Southern anti-Negro forces made enforcement difficult and finally impossible. It would be 100 years before civil rights became a reality in the South and many other parts of the nation.
Canada was then still under British rule.
This quotation is interesting for two reasons. First it is a good example of the twisted logic of some of the Slavery apologists who claimed that the Negro slave was better off than the free wage earner. The second reason is that it illustrates the norms of the treatment of the working man before the Civil War. The union movement would change the situation for the free laborer over the next century and then holidays and worker rights became normalized in American society. See {641290} for another of his absurd arguments.
of the North originally permitting slavery
