The first, and overarching, count in the new indictment is that slavery permitted one group of people to exercise unrestrained personal domination over another group of people.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
You got to remember that slavery's very complex. It has a lot of levels to it.
From the day of its birth, the anomaly of slavery plagued a nation which asserted the equality of all men, and sought to derive powers of government from the consent of the governed. Within sound of the voices of those who said this lived more than half a million black slaves, forming nearly one-fifth of the population of a new nation.
Slavery takes hold of few, but many take hold of slavery.
Slavery, properly so called, is the establishment of a right which gives to one man such a power over another as renders him absolute master of his life and fortune.
Slavery is something that is all too often swept under the carpet.
Slavery is a weed that grows on every soil.
Slavery in West Africa, and in Rome and in the Mediterranean, was something different than slavery in America.
There was a uniqueness to the American case of slavery. 10 million people, a conservative estimate, were brought to America... hundreds of people were set up in work camps, and hereditary-forced labor was put in place. That's a very different thing than the personal slavery that existed elsewhere.
Slavery is something that is all too often swept under the carpet. The shame doesn't even belong to us, but we still experience it because we're a part of the African race. If it happened to one, it happened to all. We carry that burden.
I can speak of slavery only so far as it came under my own observation - only so far as I have known and experienced it in my own person.