The slave system owned the minds and bodies of its victims, who loved but had no legal title to their mates, or to the offspring who were born to them any more than did the cattle of the masters own their mates or the young which were born to them.
Grimké discusses the lack of legal rights for slaves regarding family and relationships, likening their situation to that of livestock.
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When he had ceased speaking I said to those around me: 'That is a providential man; he is a prophet; he will shake our nation to its center, but he will shake slavery out of it.
The South does not regard the Negro laborer then as undesirable but quite the contrary--only it wants to retain possession of it on its own terms, not on those advantageous to that labor.
And in this moral mud there bred apace bestiality and cruelty, superstition and sensuality, tyranny and fear--the black brood of man's inhumanity to man.
With unerring moral instinct he had from the start placed his reliance "on nothing but the eternal principles of justice for the speedy overthrow of slavery.