Slaveholder Quotes

[John C.] Calhoun was a minority spokesman in a democracy, a particularist in an age of nationalism, a slaveholder in an age of advancing liberties, and an agrarian in a furiously capitalistic country. His weakness was to be inhumanly schematic and logical, which is only to say that he thought as he lived. His mind, in a sense, was too masterful - it imposed itself upon realities. The great human, emotional, moral complexities of the world escaped him because he had no private training for them, had not even the talent for friendship, in which he might have been schooled. It was easier for him to imagine, for example, that the South had produced upon its slave base a better culture than the North because he had no culture himself, only a quick and muscular mode of thought. It may stand as a token of Calhoun's place in the South's history that when he did find culture there, at Charleston, he wished a plague upon it. ~ Richard Hofstadter

One who is a slaveholder at heart never recognizes a human being in a slave. ~ Angelina Grimke

The last slaveholder has been dead for a very long time. The last soldier to endure Valley Forge has been dead much longer. To proudly claim the veteran and disown the slaveholder is patriotism à la carte. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

He was the most contradictory of men. A champion of extending freedom and democracy to even the poorest of whites, Jackson was an unrepentant slaveholder. A sentimental man who rescued an Indian orphan on a battlefield to raise in his home, Jackson was responsible for the removal of Indian tribes from their ancestral lands. An enemy of Eastern financial elites and a relentless opponent of the Bank of the United States, which he believed to be a bastion of corruption, Jackson also promised to die, if necessary, to preserve the power and prestige of the central government. Like us and our America, Jackson and his America achieved great things while committing grievous sins. ~ Jon Meacham

There was not a single Negro slave owner who did not know dozens of Negroes just as capable of learning and efficiency as the mass of poor white people around and about, and some quite as capable as the average slaveholder. They had continually, in the course of the history of slavery, recognized such men. ~ W.E.B. Du Bois

So far from thinking that a slaveholder is bound by the immoral and unconstitutional laws of the Southern States, we hold thathe is solemnly bound as a man, as an American, to break them, and that immediately and openly ... ~ Angelina Grimke

I admit that the slave does sometimes sing, dance, and appear to be merry. But what does this prove? It only proves to my mind, that though slavery is armed with a thousand strings, it is not able entirely to kill the elastic spirit of the bondman. That spirit will rise and walk abroad, despite of whips and chains, and extract from the cup of nature, occasional drops of joy and gladness. No thanks to the slaveholder, nor to slavery, that the vivacious captive may sometimes dance in his chains, his very mirth in such circumstances, stands before God, as an accusing angel against his enslaver. ~ Frederick Douglass

The better you treat a slave, the more you destroy his value as a slave, and enhance the probability of his eluding the grasp of the slaveholder; the more kindly you treat him, the more wretched you make him, while you keep him in the condition of a slave. ~ Frederick Douglass

I am a planter - a cotton planter. I am a Southern man and a slaveholder - a kind and a merciful one, I trust - and none the worse for being a slaveholder. ~ John C. Calhoun

At this moment, I saw more clearly than ever the brutalizing effects of slavery upon the slave and slaveholder. ~ Frederick Douglass

I just called the slaveholder version of Christianity "false." I believe that. But note that in situations of conflict participants view reality differently. The more intractable the conflict, especially where both sides have the capacity to hurt each other, the more difficult it is to determine who is "victim" and who is "oppressor." Think about how nothing is quite as predictable and fruitless as hearing estranged spouses blame each other for being abusive or oppressive. Liberation theology dealt with this perceptual gulf in conflicted situations by speaking of the "epistemological privilege of the poor/oppressed." This meant: the view of the truth of a conflictual situation is clearer from the underside than from the position of power. But this assumes that we know who is on the underside and who holds the power. I am not saying that the exodus-liberation-deliverance motif is invalidated; I am saying that few situations present themselves to us in such clarity as Exod. 1-2 enslavement and infanticide do. ~ David P. Gushee

This is emphatically an age of discoveries; but I will venture the assertion, that none but an American slaveholder could have discovered that a man born in a country was not a citizen of it. ~ William Wells Brown

They who are continually shocked by slavery have some right to be shocked by the violent death of the slaveholder, but no others.Such will be more shocked by his life than by his death. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Someday Rufus would own the plantation. Someday, he would be the slaveholder, responsible in his own right for what happened to the people who lived in those half-hidden cabins. The boy was literally growing up as I watched - growing up because I watched and because I helped to keep him safe. I was the worst possible guardian for him - a black to watch over him in a society that considered blacks subhuman, a woman to watch over him in a society that considered women perennial children. I would have all I could do to look after myself. But I would help him as best I could. And I would try to keep friendship with him, maybe plant a few ideas in his mind that would help both me and the people who would be his slaves in the years to come. ~ Octavia E. Butler

Our moneyed men have ruled us for the past thirty years. Under the flag of the slaveholder they hoped to destroy our liberty. ~ Denis Kearney