For someone to lay a price on something so sacred as human life... that was a sin that was unforgivable.
—Lily, The Night Unfurls
Cutler Beckett: I contracted you to deliver cargo on my behalf. You chose to liberate it.
Jack Sparrow: People aren't cargo, mate.
"You cannot own a human being! Sooner or later, someone pushes back!"
—Miss Giddy, Mad Max: Fury Road
"Even on Barrayar," he said mildly, "no human being can own another..."
"All are free under Heaven. If gods deny this, bury them beneath the river. If kings deny this, chop them into four quarters. If slavers deny this, hang them with iron chains."
—Song Ren, speaking the creed of Tianxia, Pale Lights
In Gaffney, people called it the ‘War of Northern Aggression.' I personally take no pride in the Confederacy: Avoid wars you can’t win, and never raise your flag for an asinine cause like slavery.
— Frank Underwood on his southern heritage, House of Cards (US)
Once, in what seems like another lifetime, I remember I was scribe to the Burgomeister of Marienburg. It is with trembling hands that I now put pen to paper. Much of my soul they destroyed, but my ability to write, they could not vanquish that. Not without severing my hands, but I would not have been able to labour night and day for them, toiling without nourishment or rest. Who are the faceless "they" I talk of? They are evil incarnate, they are fear in its purest form. This I write in order that others may learn of them. They must be stopped. Who has the power to defeat them, I cannot say.
—Hargan, Warhammer: Dark Elves Army Book (6th Edition)
Those scumbag Slavers way over in Paradise Falls have one big ole bee on their bonnet. Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz! Gasp! But what's this? The bothersome bumblebee looks suspiciously like a certain kid, from a certain Vault... You heard it here first, faithful listeners. The Wanderer showed up at slaver central and bad guys started dropping left and right. Did they sell her/him a bum slave and then refuse the refund, or was it some elaborate rescue operation? But more importantly - does it even matter worth a damn? Slavers are dead, slaves are free. That's a win-win if you ask me, children.
—Three Dog on the Galaxy News Radio, Fallout 3
Hoyt Volker: I'm very Disappointed in You, Jason. You haven't checked up on your little brother, Riley.
Jason Brody: WHERE IS HE?!
Hoyt: Don't worry, I sold him to someone very special in Yemen. He likes them young.
Jason: I'll Kill You!
Hoyt: I have very powerful friends who will hunt you down!
Jason: THEY WON'T FIND ANYTHING LEFT OF YOU!!
Jason Brody: WHERE IS HE?!
Hoyt: Don't worry, I sold him to someone very special in Yemen. He likes them young.
Jason: I'll Kill You!
Hoyt: I have very powerful friends who will hunt you down!
Jason: THEY WON'T FIND ANYTHING LEFT OF YOU!!
Imagine for a second a situation in your own life where you don't have that much personal agency. This might be an easier mental exercise for some of us than others, but it could be at work, or at school, just anywhere where you don't have that much control. Your boss wants you to do your job a certain way; your teacher wants that assignment in by Wednesday, and oh, by the way, it has to be double-spaced. The good news is that in our lives, at least here in the developed world, when your shift ends, when the bell rings, you're back in control; free to go to the bar and vent to your friends about your idiot boss and all the crap you had to go through at work. Even in the most benevolent of circumstances, American slaves never had that. Take that feeling, that feeling of a lack of agency, of control, and imagine that you have it every moment of every day; that you were born with it, that you will die with it. Then you'll have some tiny inkling of what it might have been like to be an American slave.
A god that sanctions slavery is unworthy of any kind of reverence or respect or devotion.
— Matt Dillahunty, in The Atheist Experience
The law of nations knows of no distinction of color, and if an enemy of the United States should enslave and sell any captured persons of their army, it would be a case for the severest retaliation, if not redressed upon complaint.
The United States cannot retaliate by enslavement; therefore death must be the retaliation for this crime against the law of nations.
The United States cannot retaliate by enslavement; therefore death must be the retaliation for this crime against the law of nations.
—Lieber Code
(1863)
(1863)I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse.
— Ulysses S. Grant about Lee's Surrender.
As time passes, people, even of the South, will begin to wonder how it was possible that their ancestors ever fought for or justified institutions which acknowledged the right of property in man.
Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of General U. S. Grant (1885)
Once you are enslaved, you have no moral obligation to the people who have enslaved you. In enslaving you they have freed you of all moral obligation because the nature of their enslavement of you says that you are without humanity, without manhood, without womanhood, without dignity and anything you do to get those things back is morally justified.
— Dr. John Henrik Clarke
I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever. Commerce between master and slave is despotism. Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free.
If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.
—Abraham Lincoln (1864)
