It may not be amiss to cite some few examples of this, which will
serve at once to illustrate the feeling itself, and to show the
steps in its progress.
1. It was held by our highest judicial tribunal that the phrase "we
the people," in the Declaration of Independence, did not include
slaves, who were excluded from the inherent rights recited therein
and accounted divine and inalienable, embracing, of course, the
right of self-government, which rested on the others as substantial
premises.
2. The right or privilege, whichever it may be, of intermarriage
with the dominant race was prohibited to the African in all the
States, both free and slave, and, for all legal purposes, that man
was accounted "colored" who had one-sixteenth of African blood.
3. The common-law right of self-defence was gradually reduced by
legal subtlety, in the slave States, until only the merest shred
remained to the African, while the lightest word of disobedience or
gesture of disrespect from him, justified an assault on the part
of the white man.
4. Early in the present century it was made a crime in all the
States of the South to teach a slave to read, the free blacks were
disfranchised, and the most stringent restraining statutes extended
over them, including the prohibition of public assembly, even for
divine worship, unless a white man were present.
5. Emancipation was not allowed except by decree of a court
of record after tedious formality and the assumption of onerous
responsibilities on the part of the master; and it was absolutely
forbidden to be done by testament.
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