On the record
It has been the policy of the slaveholders to keep entirely out of sight their own numerical inferiority, and to speak and act as if their interests were those of the whole community.
Said by
Lewis Tappan
Source
gutenberg.orgLewis Tappan: “It has been the policy of the slaveholders to keep entirely out of sight their own numerical inferiority, and to speak…”
Editor's note · Context
In this critique, Tappan accuses slaveholders of obscuring their numerical inferiority and misrepresenting their interests as those of the whole community.
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More from Lewis Tappan
Slavery moreover is monopolizing in its tendency, and leads to the accumulation of property in few hands.
Has it ever happened that the mass of any people were rich enough to keep, for their own convenience, such expensive laborers--as southern slaves?
We surely need not detain you with farther details on this head, to convince you what an enormous sacrifice of happiness and prosperity you are offering on the altar of slavery.
You both know and feel that slavery has rendered labor disgraceful among you; and where this is the case, industry is necessarily discouraged.