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Sarah M. Grimké

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The system of slavery is necessarily cruel. The lust of dominion inevitably produces hardness of heart, because the state of mind which craves unlimited power, such as slavery confers, involves a desire to use that power, and although I know there are exceptions to the exercise of barbarity on the bodies of slaves, I maintain that there can be no exceptions to the exercise of the most soul-​withering cruelty on the minds of the enslaved. All around is the mighty ruin of intellect, the appalling spectacle of the down-​trodden image of God.


Sarah M. Grimké, from An Epistle to the Clergy of the Southern States, New-​York, 12th Mo. 1836.

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