An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South by Angelina Emily Grimke
page 21 of 62 (33%)
page 21 of 62 (33%)
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their personal safety.
9. The slave is entirely unprotected in his domestic relations. 10. The laws greatly obstruct the manumission of slaves, even where the master is willing to enfranchise them. 11. The operation of the laws tends to deprive slaves of religious instruction and consolation. 12. The whole power of the laws is exerted to keep slaves in a state of the lowest ignorance. 13. There is in this country a monstrous inequality of law and right. What is a trifling fault in the white man, is considered highly criminal--in the slave; the same offences which cost a white man a few dollars only, are punished in the negro with death. 14. The laws operate most oppressively upon free people of color. [4] Shall I ask you now my friends, to draw the parallel between Jewish _servitude_ and American _slavery_? No! For there is _no likeness_ in the two systems; I ask you rather to mark the contrast. The laws of Moses _protected servants_ in their _rights as men and women_, guarded them from oppression and defended them from wrong. The Code Noir of the South _robs the slave of all his rights_ as a _man_, reduces him to a chattel personal, and defends the master in the exercise of the most unnatural and unwarrantable power over his slave. They each bear the impress of the hand which formed them. The attributes of justice and mercy are shadowed out in the Hebrew code; those of injustice and cruelty, in the Code Noir of America. Truly it was wise in the |
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