A Public Service Announcement: Slavery

A Public Service Announcement regarding slavery: it doesn’t require chains, locks, and keys.

The following excerpts from three books on slavery have, I believe, many connections to income taxation as well as to other institutions or policies which are unfriendly to human rights.  We have much to learn about freedom when we study its opposite.  

The first book is a biography of Harriet Tubman.  The second book was written by William Still, who interviewed fugitive slaves as they were just escaping from slavery.  The third book is what the recent movie Amazing Grace is based upon (a movie that’s on my must-see list).

Take some time, dear reader, to ponder the connections between then and now, the connections between that "peculiar institution" and some of the other institutions we live under today.  I think it will be time well spent.

From Bound For the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, by Kate Clifford Larson.  Ballantine Books, 2005  

Earning your own living not a right for a slave: “Harriet hired out her time quite regularly during the 1840s, paying Brodess [her master] a yearly fee [$50-$60] for the privilege of hiring herself out to temporary masters of her own choosing…”

Escaping the system: “The system of slavery could work only if those enslaved believed the costs of escape would be too great and the chances of successfully getting away too remote.”

Necessity of earning a living: “For the thousands of refugees who fled north for a chance at a free life, daily struggle did not end when they left the South.  Liberty did not guarantee food, clothing, and housing. The daily work of survival continued… ”

Importance of being self-supporting: “On June 5 [1863] Montgomery led his regiment down the coast to capture Darien, Georgia.  Tubman stayed behind to help the newly arrived freedmen from the Combahee raid.  ‘Most of those coming from the mainland are very destitute, almost naked…I am trying to find places for those able to work, and provide for them as best I can, so as to lighten the burden on the Government as much as possible, while at the same time they learn to respect themselves by earning their own living.’”

Notice that rather than laying the burden of these newly freed slaves on the government (as would most likely happen today), Ms. Tubman advocated assistance from the private sector instead.  She also avoided creating a generation that crippled itself with dependency upon government services.  It was a self-respect issue.

From The Underground Railroad, by William Still.  Dover, 2007 

The desire of slaves to be self-supporting, Cordelia Loney, 1859: “As many creature comforts and religious privileges as she had been the recipient of under her ‘kind mistress,’ still she ‘wanted to be free,’ and ‘was bound to leave’…She was willing to take the entire responsibility of taking care of herself.”

The desire of slaves to be self-supporting, Barnaby Grigby, 1855: “He was prompted to escape because he ‘wanted to live by the sweat of his own brow,’ believing that all men ought so to live.  This was the only reason he gave for fleeing.”

Contentment with slavery is learned, Charles Thompson, 1857:

Vigilance Committee of Philadelphia: “Suppose your master was to appear before you, and offer you the privilege of returning to Slavery or death on the spot, which would be your choice?”

Charles Thompson: “Die right there.  I made up my mind before I started.”

VC: “Do you think that many of the slaves are anxious about their Freedom?”

CT: “The third part of them ain’t anxious about it, because the white people have blinded them, telling about the North – they can’t live here; telling them that the people are worse off than they are there; they say that the ‘niggers’ in the North have no houses to live in, stand about freezing, dirty, no clothes to wear.  They all would be very glad to get their time, but want to stay where they are.”

Remember, without an income tax, we'd all be standing around dirty, naked and freezing, and wondering where all the roads and schools went.  Keep preaching that to anyone who speaks against it.

The injustice of slavery in being forced to support others, Benjamin Ross, 1854: “Benjamin was twenty-eight years of age, chestnut color, medium size, and shrewd.  He was the so-called property of Eliza Ann Brodins, who lived near Buckstown, in Maryland.  Ben did not hesitate to say, in unqualified terms, that his mistress was ‘very devilish.’  He considered his charges, proved by the fact that three slaves (himself one of them) were required to work hard and fare meagerly, to support his mistress’ family in idleness and luxury.”

Earning your own living not a right for a slave, John Judah, 1855: “John was a mulatto, of genteel address, well clothed, and looked as if he had been ‘well fed.’  Miss Eliza Lambert had the honor of owning John, and was gracious enough to allow him to hire his time for one hundred and ten dollars per annum.  After this sum was punctually paid, John could do what he pleased with any surplus earnings…John accused his mistress of being hard in money matters, not caring how the servants fared, so she got ‘plenty of money out of them.’”

Hating even mild forms of slavery, Richard Bradley, 1855: “He was sufficiently intelligent to look at Slavery in all its bearings, and to smart keenly under even ordinarily mild treatment.”

Hating even mild forms of slavery, six slaves who escaped the Honorable L. McLane, 1857: “Although this party was of the class said to be well fed, well clothed, and not over-worked, yet to those who heard them declare their utter detestation of slavery and their determination to use their instruments of death [they were all armed when they escaped] even to the taking of life, rather than again be subjected to the yoke, it was evident that even the mildest form of slavery was abhorrent.”

It's so easy for us to tolerate the income tax - it's just a little taken out each month.  Not a big deal. My master hardly ever whips me, and when he does, he has a light touch.

Hating even mild forms of slavery, Mary Frances Melvin, 1858: “Mary Frances hailed from Norfolk; she had been in servitude under Mrs. Chapman, a widow lady, against whom she had no complaint to make; indeed, she testified that her mistress was very kind, although fully allied to slavery.  She said that she left, not on account of bad treatment, but simply because she wanted her freedom.”

She simply wanted her freedom, though she risked losing her life in pursuing it.

From Bury the Chains, by Adam Hochschild.  Mariner Books edition, 2006

Ending slavery has economic costs: “For fifty years, activists in England worked to end slavery in the British Empire.  None of them gained a penny by doing so, and their eventual success meant a huge loss to the imperial economy.  Scholars estimate that abolishing the slave trade and then slavery cost the British people 1.8 percent of their annual national income over more than half a century, many times the percentage most wealthy countries today give in foreign aid.”

How often do I hear the economic argument when I'm speaking of human rights?  The income tax is a human rights issue before it is an economic issue.  This is where we have been blinded.

Society scoffs at ending institutions they take for granted: “If, early that year [1787], you had stood on a London street corner and insisted that slavery was morally wrong and should be stopped, nine out of ten listeners would have laughed you off as a crackpot.  The tenth might have agreed with you in principle, but assured you that ending slavery was wildly impractical: the British Empire’s economy would collapse.  The parliamentarian Edmund Burke, for example, opposed slavery but thought that the prospect of ending even just the Atlantic slave trade was ‘chimerical.’  Within a few short years, however, the issue of slavery had moved to center stage in British political life.”

Acceptance of slavery closes people to thinking of alternatives: “Slavery in the British Empire seemed as entrenched as ever [in 1783].  If pressed, some Britons might have conceded that the institution was unpleasant – but where else would sugar for your tea come from?  Where would Royal Navy sailors get their rum?  The slave trade ‘was not an amiable trade,’ as a member of Parliament once commented, ‘but neither was the trade of a butcher an amiable trade, and yet a mutton chop was, nevertheless, a very good thing.’”

And so I always hear: But without the income tax, how would we pay for roads and schools?

Change comes through the solution-oriented, not the problem-oriented: “We can only imagine how the [anti-slavery] committee members felt as they dispersed to their homes that night [after their first meeting].  The task they had taken on was so monumental as to have seemed to anyone else impossible.  They had to ignite their crusade in a country where the great majority of people, from farmhands to bishops, accepted slavery as completely normal.  It was also a country where profits from West Indian plantations gave a large boost to the economy, where customs duties on slave-grown sugar were an important source of government revenue, and where the livelihoods of tens of thousands of seamen, merchants, and shipbuilders depended on the slave trade.  The trade itself had increased to almost unparalleled levels, bringing prosperity to key ports, including London itself.  How even to begin the massive job of changing public opinion?”

A reason for hope: “Britons’ confidence in their rights ran proud and deep.  Without it, the abolitionists could never have persuaded them that slaves had rights as well.”

Be careful what you fight for: “I would fain know what the soldier hath fought for all this while?  He hath fought to enslave himself, to give power to men of riches, men of estates, to make him a perpetual slave.” –Colonel Thomas Rainborough, the Putney Debates of 1647

Why Antigua was thought to be safe from a slave uprising: Partly because there were “missionaries to the slaves ‘whose Preachers constantly recommend in the strongest terms the Necessity and Duty of Subordination and passive Obedience to their Masters.’”

Reminds me of the old hymn: "Trust and obey, for there's no other way to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey."  This message brought to you by the status quo.