https://productsoffreelabor.com/files/original/f1f12d3b0cfd980a5c982abc7f4d82eb.jpeg 2a568e0265da67e892037d035f18f30a Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Articles, Letters to the Editors, etc. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Free Labor Movement (Article) Description An account of the resource One of the saddest features of American Slavery, is its mournful reaction upon the whole country, both north and south. Its influence surrounds us like the atmosphere; we gather around the social board, and one of the first things which meets our gaze, is some luxury wrung from the reluctant, trembling hands of the crushed and weary slave. We enter the wardrobe and the sighs and groans of the slave are lingering around the seams of our clothes, and floating amid the folds of our garments. But who will say, when Carolina's rice, with snowy whiteness, tempts the taste, perhaps the hands that gathered this were severed form some loved and lost embrace? Who will gaze upon the manufactured cotton, and see the stain, the stain of blood and tears upon its warp and woof? Who will look beneath the delicate proportions of the sugar cane, and see the stinging ad clotted lash, and on their surface, trace the agony of years? Our moral influence against slavery must be weakened, our testimony diluted, if, while we denounce slavery as robbery of the basest kind, oppression of the most shameful stamp, an aggression upon the very citadel of life, robbing a human heart of its liberty and fights, its energies and manhood, we are constantly demanding rice from the swaps, cotton form the plantations and sugar from the deadly mills, even if every rood and acre, on which they grew, had been the scene of outrage, injustice, and crime, even if the soil on which they were raised, were red with blood and wet with servile tears, even if desolate bosoms were trampled upon to produce them, bleeding, or weary hearts crushed to procure them. Taking this view of the matter, we may hail the free labor movement, as a harbinger of hope, and ensign of progress, and a means of proving the consistency of our principles, and the earnestness of our zeal. By so-doing we may prove to the south, that we not only denounce slavery as robbery and piracy, but we are endeavoring to shake our hands from sharing in its spoils, and participating in its crimes. By so doing may we not set influences at work to girdle the deadly upas of slavery, and compel it to wither and die, for want of sustenance and support? And under the auspices of free and intelligent labor , the south may yet blossom and bloom like the rose, and slavery cease to write upon the land, cursed is the ground for my sake. FRANCIS ELLEN WATKINS. LEWISTON, Me., 1855. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <em>Frederick Douglass' Paper</em> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 6.29.1855