Book Description

Excerpt from Slavery, or Involuntary Servitude: Does It Legally Exist in the State of New York?; Points on Argument in Court of Appeals, Opinions in Court of Appeals Gentlemen; Having been employed by you to resist demands of rent made by parties who have falsely assumed to be your landlords, we take this mode of addressing you upon that subject. We trust we have an excuse, if an excuse be necessary, in the importance of the questions involved, and the fact that so great a number are directly interested, and reside so remote from each other, that it would be exceedingly inconvenient, if not impracticable, to communicate personally, or address you individually. The immediate occasion for allowing you opportunity of information, arises from the latest decisions of the Courts. Copies of the opinions are annexed. But to read them understandingly, you should take a brief retrospect of the past. To aid you in that respect, we will direct your attention to some of the more prominent aspects which the subject has been made to assume, and the remarkable mutations which have attended its progress. The practical question forced upon you, was, whether you were persons held to service according to the laws of this State, and liable to forfeiture of your property for refusing to serve. So far the question is personal to yourselves, and comparatively unimportant to the public. But as there are no facts or circumstances pressing upon you, except such as are common to great numbers of men, and capable of extension so as to embrace every owner of land in the state, there are great public questions involved, namely; whether we have, in this State, an institution of servitude; and, if so, whether it is a relic of the past soon to wear out, or a thing just beginning life and vigor, fitted to grow and expand to an indefinite extent; whether it came from the feudal contrivances used for the oppression of labor in the Old World or is one of our own; and, if the latter, by what malign influences it was generated and nourished, and is now sustained in the midst of our free institutions. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.