Notwithstanding this express provision, there are in almost every slave State, if not in all, laws for seizing, imprisoning, and then selling as slaves for life, citizens having black or yellow complexions, entering within their borders.
Lewis Tappan: “Notwithstanding this express provision, there are in almost every slave State, if not in all, laws for seizing…”
Editor's note · Context
Tappan highlights the laws in slave states that unjustly target free individuals based on their race.
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In a community so unenlightened as yours, it is a matter of course, that the arts and sciences must languish, and the industry and enterprise of the country be oppressed by a general torpor.
It cannot be, therefore, the interest or the inclination of the sagacious and reflecting among them, to promote the intellectual improvement of the inferior class.
Education elevates the inferior classes of society, teaches them their rights, and points out the means of enforcing them.
You are moreover aware that the great capitalists of the South have their wealth chiefly invested in plantations and slaves, and not as with us in commerce and manufactures.