On the record
Their argument is, that political power in the hands of the poor and laboring classes is always attended with danger, and that this danger is averted when these classes are kept in bondage.
Said by
Lewis Tappan
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gutenberg.orgLewis Tappan: “Their argument is, that political power in the hands of the poor and laboring classes is always attended with danger…”
Editor's note · Context
Tappan critiques the belief that political power in the hands of the poor is dangerous, arguing that this belief is used to justify slavery.
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More from Lewis Tappan
Slavery is maintained by you whom it impoverishes and degrades, not by those upon whom it confers wealth and influence.
When an infant will bring one hundred, and a man from four hundred to a thousand dollars in the market, slaves are not commodities to be found in the cabins of the poor.
You are told, much of the wealth is invested in negroes--yet it obviously is a wealth that impoverishes; and no stronger evidence of the truth of this assertion is needed, than the comparative price of land in the free and slave States.
The slaveholders form a powerful landed aristocracy, banded together for the preservation of their own privileges, and ever endeavoring, for obvious reasons, to identify their private interests with the public welfare.