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1 Theodore D. Weld, Persons Held to Service, Fugitive Slaves, &c. 1 (1843)

handle is hein.slavery/persvcfus0001 and id is 1 raw text is: TRACT N' 5. No.12 Persons held to Service, Fugitive Slaves, &c. BY THEODORE D. WELD. SLAVERY is the name of a certain condition. This is its whole ex- tent. It does not go beyond this, and describe actions or sufferings in that condition, nor does it assert that there are any. True, this condi- tion has its liabilities, and among these are labor, stripes, separations, sale; but these are no more slavery than, freedom from them all is slavery, which is equally a liability of that condition. Whoever is in this condition is a slave, and can no more be de- scribed as held to labor than as held to idleness, or sleep, or play ; or, on the other hand, as held to hunger, floggings, or sale at auction. Held to labor is in no sense either a legal definition or a legal de- scription of a slave. The apprentice is held to labor. Labor is the legal equivalent to his master for value received. The slave is held in slavery as property, subject to the liabilities of property. As a matter of fact, the master may compel him to labor, because the law has made him his property; but held to labor is neither in fact nor in law a description, much less a definition, of a slave. It does, however, cor- rectly describe the condition of various classes of persons in every civ- ilized community. Slavery presupposes a slave and a master -one in a certain condi- tion, the other his proprietor, by virtue of that condition. The sole relation of a slave to his master is that of property to its owner. As a slave, he is, and can be, nothing else. But the being who is, in one relation, property, and, as such, called a slave, holds another relation, in which he receives a designation descriptive of it; he is a member of civil society, and, as such, and only as such, is in law a person. As a person, he may hold relations to the government, be under legal obli- gations, or, in given cases, be discharged therefrom. As a person, obedience to law may be due from him, and due from him only as a person. To speak of him in his relation to his master, - the relation of property to its owner, -as being held by the obligations of law, or of being discharged from such obligations ; or of labor, as what he owes, what is due from him, and by virtue of which his mas- ter has a claim on him, is to deal in sheer solecisms. So to employ language as to confound the element of personality, on which is based his membership of civil society, its relations and obligations, with the legal-property-attribute, on which alone is based his relation to his master, and by and in which alone he is a slave, is to make words mock their own meaning. The slave, then, not being a member of civil society, having no civil existence, sustaining no relation to law, it follows that he is not held to labor by law: labor not being a legal duty, which he owes his master, he cannot by law be discharged from what in law is not due. True, the law makes him property, and, as such, subject to the will of his owner; but his owner's will is not law, and the slave violates none by refusal to comply with it. The lav, which makes the slave property, stops just at that point. It does not require the slave to be property, nor to co~perate with his master

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