slave-proprietors

Updated: June 29, 2025

More recently the Emperor of Russia, in ordering the emancipation of the serfs, declared that all previous efforts had failed because they had been left to the spontaneous initiative of the proprietors." . . . "I assume that we shall not leave to the old slave-proprietors the maintenance of that freedom to which we are pledged, and thus break our own promise and sacrifice a race."

James Gillespie Blaine - Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 : From Lincoln to Garfield, with a Review of the Events Which Led to the Political Revolution of 1860

We contend that Government must for its own preservation go to the root of the matter. And we cannot see that there is any Constitutional difficulty. There are probably not ten slave-proprietors in the South whom it has not the right to arrest, try, and hang, for high-treason. Of course, every one can see the practical difficulty, as well as the manifest folly, of doing this.

Various - The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 54, April, 1862