Please note that I’m not in any way talking about (or interested in) whether at the time (or even now) this action would be considered LEGALLY murder- I’m purely interested whether it would be considered morally/ethically murder. I’m not even interested in discussing any aftermath- I’m well aware that if a slave killed his master in 1835 or so, he would have a very tiny chance of any sort of life afterwards under normal circumstances.
I’ve been reading a lot about John Brown and the Civil War in general lately…
And I would hold that if a slave attempted to escape, and his master tried to stop him by force, that slave is justified in using deadly force to escape. Now it doesn’t necessarily mean a slave is justified in killing his master while he slept, or killing his master’s family. But it seems to me that trying to escape enslavement would justify deadly force in the same way that self defense would.
Thoughts? The considerations of that era seem so alien to me, especially considering that the time is actually not that far removed historically speaking.
No, it isn’t murder any more than killing a leopard that’s trying to eat you is murder. Slavers are predators upon people. Is is murder for a woman to kill a man raping her? Is it murder to kill a cannibal who intends to eat you? No, and no.
To me it’s pretty classic self defense. While there are different moral viewpoints regarding self defense, such as the degree to which you have to retreat, and the degree of the imposition upon you that justifies deadly force (can you shoot to defend property? Can you shoot someone who is only harming you slightly?) in this case there appears to be no question - there is no retreat possible for a slave and holding someone in slavery is pretty equivalent to killing them (it involves taking someone else’s life, just over a longer period of time). So unless your view is that killing is not justified in self defense ever, I cannot see how one could say that it would be morally equivalent to murder to kill your master if you are a slave.
Ok… how about stepping it up a notch? If a slaveowner is holding 50 slaves, is a third party morally justified in using deadly force to free them? I’m assuming the third party did this on his own initiative.
I would still say yes, I think. But maybe this one is trickier.
If there is no realistic option of freeing them otherwise, yes. As I said, slavery (as practiced in the US I assume we are talking) is morally little different if at all to murder itself; it’s just a slower way of doing it. So killing an owner to rescue 50 slaves? No problem. Killing an owner to rescue 1 slave? No real problem here either.
There would be a practical problem in the slave-holding states: the slave would continue to be property, only now of the slave-holder’s estate. So, unless you can take the slave out of reach of the new owner, you haven’t solved the problem.
Of course it matters. You aren’t trying to compare slaves with people who are actually guilty of something are you?
If you insist on comparing it to an execution, a better analogy would be a Jew being herded into a gas chamber at Auschwitz. Would you think it wrong if he managed to kill a guard and escape?
The question in the OP carefully used the word “morally”, so the answers to those questions are not based necessarily on law. They are going to depend on the morality of the situation. If it’s in a totalitarian regime, where the prisoner is only guilty of sedition against the regime, then morally it might be justified, though in practice it may be unlikely to succeed.
That’s actually an interesting set of questions. I don’t see them as comparable to a slavery, but I would have to say that a factually innocent prisoner, with no other reasonable likelihood of preventing his execution, who kills a guard in the process of escaping hasn’t committed what I would view morally as murder.
The innocence or guilt of the prisoner is important to me - though I don’t believe the death penalty is morally justified, avoiding its imposition by killing is ethically troubling.
The position of the guard is also troubling - he is more akin to an innocent bystander. Or somewhere in between - maybe a paid worker of the slave owner who is present at the slave’s attempted escape. Though, again, I don’t view the two situations as really comparable. Sorry this is so jumbled.
To be honest, I think it depends on the situation.
As abhorrent as slavery is, suppose you have a situation - as in fact has existed many, many times - where a person who is legally a slave is in a practical sense treated as an employee, and becomes a trusted one, helping his master, earning each other’s trust, and treating each other with respect. Then one day the slave shoots the master in the head just out of nowhere.
Is that morally wrong? I think so, even if it could be LEGALLY justified. To my mind it’s clearly VASTLY different from a slave killing a cruel and barbarous master in the process of escaping. A third situation, again with its own moral issues, would be if slaves were to organize and rise up in armed insurrection, in which case you’d have a situation, with enough numbers, that one must look to the laws of war for a guide to moral behaviour.
Killing people is not something you have moral carte blanche to do in any situation just because of the legalities involved.
Murder is murder is murder. Killing in self defense is one thing; killing to protect one’s family or (maybe) property is another. Plotting to kill and then acting on the plot is murder and murder is a different kettle of fish.
Premeditation and planning the act with others is consistent with self-defence, if you have no alternatives. Suppose you and two friends were captured by a group of slave-traders, who make it clear that they are going to transport you to another country where you will work as a slave until you die. It is morally permissible to secretly plan your escape with your friends, and if there’s no better plan than one which involves killing several of your captors (e.g., taking their weapons while they are asleep, and killing any that try to prevent your escape with those weapons), you can kill them in self-defence. That would be legitimate self-defense, even though the act is premeditated, if there’s no better course of action available to you.
I think it’s going to depend on the sort of slavery. If it’s chattel slavery as existed in the United States between the Dred Scott decision and 13th Amendment – in which the slave is defined as an unperson, incapable of being a citizen and having no legal recourse – then I assert that he or she may legitimately consider himself at war with all persons in that society who attempt to enforce that policy. Its immorality and manifest hostility to the slave’s rights & dignity change the equation.
If it’s slavery that exists for a set period, in which the personhood of the slave is not categorically denied, then the level of force one may use to escape it is different. I’ll have to give the matter some thought.
How much real respect can the slaveowner have for a slave? If he treats a person like property, keeping them from running away through threats of violence or other forms of punishment, and does not allow them the freedom to raise an intact, stable family, then I would look sideways at any forms of “respect” the slaveowner might have for his manservant, “boy”, kitchen skivvy, or field hand.
Sure, there were many instances when elder slaves were granted terms of endearment such as uncle and auntie and allowed to live out the rest of their days in quiet dignity. And house slaves were generally treated much better than field slaves…probably because a lot of them had massa’s blood in them. But they were still hostages, kept in their place by bullwhip and gun.
As long as you’re keeping me locked up, I don’t care how polite you are to me. All bets are off the moment I’ve got the upper hand.
Like indentured servitude? Whereby a person is sentenced to slavery because of debt or punishment, but is allowed to be free once they’ve served their time? I’d say that as long as they are treated with some decency, then they would not be justified in murdering anyone. Their condition is a consequence of their own actions (presumably). Thus, they have some choice in the matter which makes it different than chattel slavery.
I’d say a prisoner today is not morally justified to murder their captors for similar reasons. And if a prisoner is indeed innocent, they do have legal recourse in the form of appeals. Additionally, they are not held hostage to the arbitrary whims of a sole individual like slaves were. There are laws to protect the rights of prisoners. Prisoners can bring suits against the government if they feel like they are being treated unfairly. And unless they have gotten life sentences with no chance of parole, they will eventually be set free. Unlike the majority of slaves.
Comparing prisoners and slaves is wrong on so many levels, but those are the obvious differences.
This case is indiputable. Other cases are difficult. A victim may use any means necessary for their self preservation so long as those means would not result in harm to other victims or inculpables. Once those others are affected by the victim’s actions, the circumstances will determine the morality.
I also tend to agree with this. The problem with Bricker’s argument upthread is that it does not acknowledge the fundamental difference between being a prisoner in a state that has rule of law & due process, anda slave in a society that denies the pesonhood of slaves. A chattel slave is no more bound not to kill his captors in an escape attempt than a soldier in wartime is to aim for the kneecap when confronted with an enemy.
I might offer a slight qualification here. If a person is unjustly imprisoned or condemned to be executed due to a breakdown or corruption in the system, such that appeals are no longer allowed him, it’s proabably ethically permissibale for him to escape. Particularly in the case of corruption in the system. If Ann Coulter becomes President and uses her power to try to legally murder me by execution, and I personally can no longer rely on the system (as opposed to black slaves after Dred Scott, who were denied rights collectively), then I, individually, am ethically justified in escaping from custody. In that case, though, I would not be willing to kill persons not in on the conspiracy to effect my escape.
If I were a slave in a society in which chattel slavery was legal (and much more badass than I am), then, in escaping, I would consider any adult non-abolitionist in the slave society fair game when it came to escaping. I wouldn’t go out of my way to kill anyone, but if, say, I were making my way from Tennessee to Canada, and were confronted by a county sheriff in New York who personally owned no slaves but felt constrained by the Fugitive Slave Act to capture me and return me to my oppressors, then I’m going to do whatever violence is necessary to avoid that. If that means I have to kill him, I’ll kill him. (But if I don’t have to kill him, I shan’t.)