Slavery An Unjust Institution Analysis

#4: Slavery, An Unjust Institution Having no other purpose other than entitlement to the cruel injustices, slavery proved to be a ruinous institution that tore thousands upon thousands of families apart. Or rather simply, “years have rolled on, and tens of thousands have been borne on streams of blood and tears, to the shores of eternity” (2156). Abolitionist writers such as David Walker and Henry Highland Garnet worked to defeat this corrupt institution, both through their own means of writing. While the writers may have had different methods of persuasion to goad the general slave public, they both aligned with very similar ideas concerning the hypocrisy and injustices of slavery as a whole. A most compelling evidence of the crimes committed

Garnet, essentially, uses the instances of brutality of enslaved women as a luring point for the enslaved men. It is quite clear that Garnet sees enslaved women as the primary victims of slavery. This was done to goad the men to do something, if not for the immorality of allowing themselves to be enslaved, then for the women they are obliged to protect. Garnet ridicules the enslaved men’s lack of action with the following: “Look around you, and behold the bosoms of your loving wives heaving with untold agonies! Hear the cries of your poor children! . . . Think of your wretched sisters, loving virtue and purity, as they are driven into concubinage and are exposed to the unbridled lusts of incarnate devils” (2159). This is to put shame on the slaves for being a “patient people”, for allowing themselves to be in that situation in the first place. Be that as it may, Walker decidedly chooses to point out enslaved people as a whole are the primary victims of slavery, not just one over the other. While Garnet focuses in on gender to make a luring point, Walker prioritizes the role of white people in the brutalization of slaves. He spits out that slaves are “the most degraded, wretched, and abject set of beings that ever lived since the world began”, not as a ridicule of his people, but as a testimony toward the suffering and mental abuse slaves have had to live through

He depends on pathos to appeal to their pride, to try and make them so inspired that they turn against their masters. Garnet even goes so far as to say slaves are morally obligated to rise up, that “to such Degradation it is sinful in the Extreme for you to make voluntary Submission” (2158). To be a slave is immoral; he attests that they are sinful to treat for masters like a God. These are all strategies, using morality, to boast resistance. Both writers see potential in the slaves, but also see how little motivated they are without a “helping” hand of sort. One thing both Garnet and Walker have in common is their immediacy for their message. They write as if they want to be heard, to both the literate and illiterate audience. Most significant is their apprehensive verbose: Walker asserts “are we MEN!! - I ask you, O my brethren! are we MEN? Did our creator make us to be slaves to dust and ashes like ourselves?” (2117). Garnet has a similar proclamation with “remember that you are four millions” (2163). They want the slaves to remember the strength in their number and to remind them of their basic