On the record
Amid such evil conditions ignorance necessarily abounded and moral degradation deposited its slime, generation after generation, over the souls of masters and slaves alike.
Said by
Archibald Henry Grimké
Source
gutenberg.orgArchibald Henry Grimké: “Amid such evil conditions ignorance necessarily abounded and moral degradation deposited its slime, generation after…”
Editor's note · Context
Grimké argues that the conditions of slavery led to widespread ignorance and moral degradation across generations.
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The South does not regard the Negro laborer then as undesirable but quite the contrary--only it wants to retain possession of it on its own terms, not on those advantageous to that labor.
It should make this a day of fasting and prayer, not of boisterous merriment and idle pageantry--a day of great lamentation, not of congratulatory joy.
Under it we have the double moral standard and the double legal standard operating throughout that section with a vengeance.
He saw that they were not essentially unlike other races--that there was nothing morally or intellectually peculiar about them, and that the evil or the good which they manifested was the common property of mankind in similar circumstances.