ALEXANDER HAMILTON 

on slavery

1779: “I have not the least doubt, that the negroes will make very excellent soldiers, with proper  management…It is a maxim with some great military judges, that with sensible officers soldiers can hardly be too stupid…I frequently hear it objected to the scheme of embodying negroes that they are too stupid to make soldiers.This is so far from appearing to me a valid objection that I think their want of cultivation (for their natural faculties are probably as good as ours) joined to that habit of subordination which they acquire from a life of servitude, will make them sooner became soldiers than our White inhabitants.  Let officers be men of sense and sentiment, and the nearer the soldiers approach to machines perhaps the better. The contempt that we have been taught to entertain for the blacks, makes us fancy many things that are founded neither in reason nor experience; and an unwillingness to part with property of so valuable a kind will furnish a thousand arguments to show the impracticability or pernicious tendency of a scheme which requires such a sacrifice.”(Hamilton, v2, p17-18) 

1785:  "Some of my Negroes to whom I have offered freedom have declined the Bounty, they will live with me, to some of them I already allow Wages, to all of them every proper indulgence, I will venture to say the whole are in more comfortable circumstances than any equal number of Peasantry in Europe...  the Lash is forbidden; they all understand this declaration as a Substitute-  'If you deserve whipping I shall conclude you don't love me and will sell you, otherwise I will never sell one of you, nor will I ever buy another Negro, unless it shall be to gratify a good Man who may what a Wife’...  I believe no man gets more work from his Negroes than I do, at the same time they are my Watchmen and my friends; never was an absolute Monarch more happy in his Subjects than at the present time I am." (Hamilton, v3, p606-7) 

1786:  AH and others petitioned the NY Legislature to end the slave trade: "a commerce so repugnant to humanity, and so inconsistent with the liberality and justice which should distinguish a free and enlightened people." (Hamilton, v3, p654)
 
 

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