We have already seen that one of the blessings which the slaveholders attribute to their favorite institution, is exemption from popular tumults, and from encroachments by the democracy upon the rights of property.
Tappan discusses how slaveholders view their institution as a safeguard against popular unrest, revealing their justification for slavery.
Share
More from Lewis Tappan
We ask your attention to the injuries inflicted upon you and your children, by an institution which lives by your sufferance, and will die at your mandate.
Or the People--for they will be THE PEOPLE--may resolve to be free, and you and all you hold dear may be sacrificed in the contest.
You both know and feel that slavery has rendered labor disgraceful among you; and where this is the case, industry is necessarily discouraged.
It, is however, worthy of remark, that its cultivation affords a livelihood to only a small proportion of the free inhabitants; and scarcely to any of those we are now addressing.