Letter XXVIII (April 1820) Views of Society and Manners in America (1821)
Context: The Virginians are said to pride themselves upon the peculiar tenderness with which they visit the sceptre of authority on their African vassals. As all those acquainted with the character of the Virginia planters, whether American or foreigners, appear to concur in bearing testimony of their humanity, it is probable that they are entitled to the praise which they claim. But in their position, justice should be held superior to humanity; to break the chains would be more generous than to gild them; and whether we consider the interests of the master or the slave, decidedly more useful. To give liberty to a slave before he understands its value is, perhaps, rather to impose a penalty than to bestow a blessing; but it is not clear to me that the southern planters are duly exerting themselves to prepare the way for that change in the condition of their black populations which they profess to think not only desirable but inevitable.
Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 168
“To be a poet is a condition rather than a profession.”
Reply to questionnaire, "The Cost of Letters" in Horizon (September 1946).
General sources
From The Declaration upon taking up Arms, before Congress, July 6th, 1775: as cited in A Conspectus of American Biography, Volume 1, ed. George Derby, J. T. White (1906), p. 239
2000s, The American Founding as the Best Regime (2002)
2000s, The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate (2002), The South was a Closed Society
Context: There were eight of them that had laws trying to protect black people who were free from being kidnapped as slaves, because under the law of 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act. If a Southerner came across from Virginia to Pennsylvania and saw a black man that he thought he would like to have as a slave, he had to say, 'Well, that’s my runaway slave', and this runaway slave would then be arrested and confined, and then there would be a hearing before a federal commissioner. And the would-be slave owner could summon witnesses—as many as he wanted. The man accused of being a slave could summon no witnesses, had no counsel. And if the federal commissioner decided he was a slave, he was paid $10, and if he decided he was a free man, he was paid $5. It’s hard to imagine any law passed in either Nazi Germany or Stalin's Russia that was more inconsistent with the principles of civil liberty than the Fugitive Slave Act.
“Liberty … is one of the most valuable blessings that Heaven has bestowed upon mankind.”
Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part II (1615), Book III, Ch. 58.
Claude Monet, 1891; as cited in: National Gallery of Australia, Michael Lloyd, Michael Desmond (1992), European and American paintings and sculptures 1870-1970 in the Australian National Gallery, p. 75
1890 - 1900
Source: Ages in Chaos (2003), Chapter 8, “A cursed country where one has to shape everything out of a block” (p. 68)
