Slaveholders, and the apologists of slavery, have eagerly seized upon this little passage of scripture, and held it up as the masters' Magna Charta, by which they were licensed by God himself to commit the greatest outrages upon the defenceless victims of their oppression.
Grimké critiques how slaveholders misuse scripture to justify their actions against enslaved individuals.
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More from Angelina Emily Grimké
I was among those who thought (and honestly too) that there was no more moral guilt attached to the holding our fellow beings in bondage, regarding them as property, than to the holding of a mule or an ox.
Thy remarks on the subject of prejudice, show but too plainly how strongly thy own mind is imbued with it, and how little thy colonization principles have done to exterminate this feeling from thy own bosom.
The fact is, the South is enraged, because we have exposed her horrible hypocrisy to the world.
So far from thinking slavery a sin, or that I had no right to own the slaves inherited from my father, I thought no one could venture to dispute that right, any more than he could my right to his land or his stock.