AP Success - AP English Language: Speech: Slavery Experiences

More than twenty years of my life were consumed in a

state of slavery. My childhood was environed by the baneful

peculiarities of the slave system. I grew up to manhood in the

presence of this hydra headed monster—not as a master—not

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as an idle spectator—not as the guest of the slaveholder—but

as A SLAVE, eating the bread and drinking the cup of slavery

with the most degraded of my brother-bondmen, and sharing

with them all the painful conditions of their wretched lot. In

consideration of these facts, I feel that I have a right to speak,

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and to speak strongly. Yet, my friends, I feel bound to speak

truly…

First of all, I will state, as well as I can, the legal and

social relation of master and slave. A master is one—to speak

in the vocabulary of the southern states—who claims and

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exercises a right of property in the person of a fellow-man.

This he does with the force of the law and the sanction of

southern religion. The law gives the master absolute power

over the slave. He may work him, flog him, hire him out,

sell him, and, in certain contingencies, kill him, with perfect

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impunity. The slave is a human being, divested of all rights—

reduced to the level of a brute—a mere “chattel” in the eye of

the law—placed beyond the circle of human brotherhood—

cut off from his kind—his name, which the “recording angel”

may have enrolled in heaven, among the blest, is impiously

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inserted in a master’s ledger, with horses, sheep, and swine.

In law, the slave has no wife, no children, no country, and no

home. He can own nothing, possess nothing, acquire nothing,

but what must belong to another….He toils that another

may reap the fruit; he is industrious that another may live in

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idleness; he eats unbolted meal that another may eat the bread

of fine flour; he labors in chains at home, under a burning sun

and biting lash, that another may ride in ease and splendor

abroad; he lives in ignorance that another may be educated;

he is abused that another may be exalted; he rests his toilworn limbs on the cold, damp ground that another may repose

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on the softest pillow; he is clad in coarse and tattered raiment

that another may be arrayed in purple and fine linen; he is

sheltered only by the wretched hovel that a master may dwell

in a magnificent mansion; and to this condition he is bound

down as by an arm of iron…

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We are sometimes told of the contentment of the slaves,

and are entertained with vivid pictures of their happiness.

We are told that they often dance and sing; that their masters

frequently give them wherewith to make merry; in fine, that

they have little of which to complain. I admit that the slave

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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 stings, 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

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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.