“The advantage it had gained it has steadily maintained. 'This is our matter, you know', it said. 'Just please let us alone'. It was let alone. Texas was ceded for Florida, completing the sea-line of slavery; and when slavery was ready Texas was taken back again, as when, afterwards, slavery had secured its share of the bargain, the Missouri Compromise was broken. In due order came the Mexican war and its consequences, the Fugitive-slave Bill and the loud chatter about saving the Union, so incessant that every thoughtful man asked himself. Is the casket more than the gem — the body than the soul — the Union than liberty? Then came the bloody tragedy of Kansas, with its justification by the President of the United States and by the Chief Justice; and I think no one will deny that Mr. Stephens is correct in calmly congratulating himself that slavery has carried all the important objects for which it has striven.”

— George William Curtis

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

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George William Curtis 78

American writer 1824–1892

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“We've got to stay together and maintain unity. You know, whenever Pharaoh wanted to prolong the period of slavery in Egypt, he had a favorite, favorite formula for doing it. What was that? He kept the slaves fighting among themselves. But whenever the slaves get together, something happens in Pharaoh's court, and he cannot hold the slaves in slavery. When the slaves get together, that's the beginning of getting out of slavery. Now let us maintain unity.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, I've Been to the Mountaintop (1968)

“And the clergy said, 'Certainly, you're quite right; the disease is awful. Therefore, the only way is to let it alone. Amen. A contribution will now be taken up to extend Gospel privileges to the Philippine Islands'. The abolitionists retorted by declaring that you might as well let fire alone, by telling the free States that they were bound to thrust back fugitives, and were, therefore, themselves the mere bloodhounds and slaves of slavery, which could only live by expansion, and only wanted to be let alone to become impregnable.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

“From the invention of the cotton-gin slavery became a progressive system — not passively tolerated as in process of extinction, but actively striving for development and extension. It became a conscious political power. It made no offensive professions. It still deprecated itself as an evil, so difficult to deal with, and, with an adroit allusion to Ham and Onesimus, it smoothed the ecclesiastical conscience of the country and only asked to be let alone. And it was let alone. The War of 1812, and the consequent commercial confusion and renewed devotion to trade, held the country torpid upon the subject. If anybody looked at slavery inquisitively, it folded its hands demurely upon its breast and said, 'I am such a dreadful thing! How unfortunate that I should exist! What can be done with me? Just please to let me alone, that is all I want. A leper, you see; a miserable leper!”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

“Slavery is useful for early accumulation of capital, but it is too rigid for industrial development. Slaves had to be given crude non-breakable tools which held back the capitalist development of agriculture and industry. That explains the fact that the northern portions of the U. S. A. gained far more industrial benefits from slavery than the South, which actually had slave institutions on its soil; and ultimately the stage was reached during the American Civil War when the Northern capitalists fought to end slavery within the boundaries of the U. S. A. so that the country as a whole could advance to a higher level of capitalism.”

Walter Rodney book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

Source: How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972), p. 136.

“Up to this time the argument of the abolitionists, who since 1833 had been storming the national conscience — for they knew the real citadel of a nation — with the assertion that slavery was an absolute wrong, had been met by the reply, 'Yes, yes; we know all about that. Of course it's a great wrong. The South agrees to that. It's dreadful sorry about it — but it's got the nasty thing, and it says if we'll only let it alone it will settle itself. Slavery is one of those things that work out themselves. The more you talk the worse it is. Besides, it's their own affair; we've nothing to do with it. Let 'em alone! Let 'em alone!”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

“If it is necessary that slavery should fall that the Republic may continue its existence, let slavery go”

Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States

Letter to his father (27 November 1861)
1860s
Context: My inclination is to whip the rebellion into submission, preserving all Constitutional rights. If it cannot be whipped any other way than through a war against slavery, let it come to to that legitimately. If it is necessary that slavery should fall that the Republic may continue its existence, let slavery go.

“Slavery existed all over the world. The Egyptians had slaves. The Chinese had slaves. The Africans did. American Indians had slaves long before Columbus. And tragically, slavery continues today in many countries. What's uniquely Western is the abolition of slavery. And what's uniquely American is the fighting of a great war to end it.”

Dinesh D'Souza (1961) Indian-American political commentator, filmmaker, author

Documentary films, America: Imagine the World Without Her (2014)

“Up to this time, as I believe, slavery had been let alone, as it claimed to be, in good faith. Up to this time it is clear enough in our history that there was no general perception of the terrible truth that slavery was a system aggressive in its very nature, and necessarily destructive of Constitutional rights and liberties. Up to this time there had been a general blindness to the fact that, under the plea, which was allowed, that it was a local and State institution, slavery had acquired an absolute national supremacy, and if not checked would presently declare itself in national law as the national policy. I think that the eyes of the people were opened rather by the frank statements and legislative action in Congress of the slave party; by the speeches of Mr. Calhoun, filtered through lesser minds and mouths than his; at last by the events in Kansas forcing every man to consider whether, while we had let slavery alone, it had also let us alone; and forcing him to see that its hand was already upon the throat of freedom in this country. I think that by the cuts of the slave party, not by the words of the technical abolitionists, the country was at last aroused. The moral wrong and the political despotism of the system were at last perceived, and a reconstruction of political parties was inevitable. For in human society, while the individual conscience is the steam or motive power, political methods are the engine and the wheels by which progress is effected and secured.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

“I say, Archbishop, all this reforming gives a deuced deal of trouble, eh? eh? I wish they'd let it all alone…I say, Archbishop, what do you think I'd have done about this slavery business, if I'd had my own way? I'd have done nothing at all! I'd have left it all alone. It's all a pack of nonsense! Always have been slaves in all the most civilised countries; the Greeks and Romans had slaves; however, they would have their fancy, and so we've abolished slavery; but it's a great folly.”

William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne (1779–1848) British Whig statesman

E. Jane Whately (ed.), Life and Correspondence of Richard Whately, D.D. Late Archbishop of Dublin. Volume II (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1866), pp. 451-452
Attributed

“The man who thinks that the perpetuity of slavery is essential to the existence of the Union, is unfit to be trusted. The deadliest enemy the Union has is slavery — in fact, its only enemy.”

Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) American politician, 19th President of the United States (in office from 1877 to 1881)

Diary (5 June 1862)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)
Context: These semi-traitors [Union generals who were not hostile to slavery] must be watched. — Let us be careful who become army leaders in the reorganized army at the end of this Rebellion. The man who thinks that the perpetuity of slavery is essential to the existence of the Union, is unfit to be trusted. The deadliest enemy the Union has is slavery — in fact, its only enemy.

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George William Curtis 78

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