From: Danielle Ayers
Date: 3/29/00
Time: 8:24:16 PM
Remote Name: 155.247.229.65
Danielle Ayers History 67 3/27/00
Primary Source Assignment: 1) How are slaveholders portrayed? What effect has slavery had on them? 2) How is the North portrayed? What is the effect of slavery on it?
Slaveholders are portrayed as having no rights as long as slavery exists. It was thought that one race would destroy the other unless slavery would be abolished. This speech was made by Charles James Faulkner, in the Legislature of Virginia, on the Nat. Turner Insurrection. Later, Henry C. Wright responded in a letter about the things that the Hon. Henry Wilson and Republican party know about. He states that slaveholders get no respect from any man, black or white. He feels very strongly that it is wrong to follow any laws that give rights to individual slave-holders and slave-traders. He believes that these people do not have the right to receive any kind of moral treatment because they do not practice these rights on others. Dr. Adam Clarke said, “Who carry on the traffic in human flesh and blood, and who buy stolen men and women, no matter of what color or country.” Wright states that a slaveholding state cannot have rights that another state has to respect. He calls slaveholding states pirates because they take what is not theirs and expect to still receive rights. The North is portrayed as being the moral states. Wright believes they should not respect any of the Southern slave-holding state’s laws because they act as assassins. They take people’s lives and enslave families, continuing the practice for generations. Wright said, “…that it is the duty of the North to incite the slaves of the south to assert and maintain their freedom.” All the laws that forbid others to interfere with the condition of the slaves should be null and void because they are based upon a practice that violates people and consigns them to a living death, said Wright. Wright also said that slavery should have a huge effect on the North. They should treat the slaves of the South as they would treat their own families and, in effect, rescue them immediately.