Friday 17 February 2012

It is sometimes forgotten that there were black libertarians in the 19th and 20th centuries (see the great work by David Beito on this). Here is one to think about: Frederick Douglass (1817-1895) must have been 19 or so when he made a solemn vow as part of his New Year’s resolutions for 1836 to exercise his “natural and inborn right” to be free by escaping the “hell of horrors” which was slavery. He believed like a true libertarian that he had a natural property right to his own person and hence a right to be free. </quote/240>

“Notwithstanding,” thought I, “the many resolutions and prayers I have made in behalf of freedom, I am, this first day of the year 1836, still a slave, still wandering in the depths of a miserable bondage. My faculties and powers of body and soul are not my own, but are the property of a fellow-mortal in no sense superior to me, except that he has the physical power to compel me to be owned and controlled by him.