presents
several examples throughout his narrative of how slavery is not only injurious to slaves, but
also to the slave owners themselves. The first example arises as he explains his own parentage.
In his early years, he hardly saw his mother, a slave, because she was sent away to work; with
his father, rumored to be the plantation owner, he had no relationship.
Here, then, is the first injury: slavery allowed and even financially encouraged slave
owners to give in to their lust and sexually abuse their slaves, then take no parental
responsibility, allowing their own children to become slaves:
"The fact remains, in all its glaring odiousness, that slaveholders have ordained,
and by law established, that the children of slave women shall in all cases follow the condition
of their mothers; and this is done too obviously to administer to their own lusts, and make a
gratification of their wicked desires profitable as well as pleasurable" (21)
At the same time, such...
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