David Brion Davis Quotes

#1. Several travelers noted that American masters wanted above all to be "popular" with their slaves - a characteristically American need that was probably rare in Brazil or the Caribbean.

David Brion Davis

#2. Humans are no less eager than in the past to dominate, degrade, humiliate, and control - often in order to confirm their own sense of pride and superiority. (Adam Smith wrote in 1776 that this was the main motive for slavery.) But

David Brion Davis

#3. < ... > this Revolutionary ideology, epitomized by the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence, showed that the very idea of slavery is a fiction or fraud, since liberty and equality are fundamental rights that no one can legitimately lose.

David Brion Davis

#4. Thus the word "inhuman", in this book's title, refers to the unconscionable and unsuccessful goal of bestializing (in the form of pets as well as beasts of burden) a class of human beings.

David Brion Davis

#5. < ... > tyranny is a central theme of American history, that racial exploitation and racial conflict have been part of the DNA of American culture.

David Brion Davis

#6. < ... > black slavery was basic and integral to the entire phenomenon we call "America." This often hidden or disguised truth ultimately involves the profound contradiction of a free society that was made possible by black slave labor.

David Brion Davis

#7. For Southerners, a white skin was the distinguishing badge of mind and intellect. Black skin was the sign that a given people had been providentially designed to serve as menial laborers, as what Hammond called the "mudsill" class necessary to support every society.

David Brion Davis

#8. We must face the ultimate contradiction that our free and democratic society was made possible by massive slave labor.

David Brion Davis