They did not own the cabins they slept in or the clothes they wore or the food they ate or the tools they worked with or the air they breathed or the water they drank or the bit of ground that they were buried in at last, any more than did the cattle of those self same masters.
He illustrates the extent of the lack of ownership experienced by slaves, comparing them to cattle.
Share
More from Archibald Henry Grimké
No body of men on the face of the earth deserve their charities, and prayers, and united assistance so much as the slaves of this country; and yet they are almost entirely neglected.
I have always supposed that its spirit was directly opposed to everything in the shape of fraud and oppression.
At any rate they should hear what was resting upon his soul with the weight of a great woe, the force of a supreme command.
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.