Evolution of Slavery in Justice

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Slavery is immoral. Why? Because we hold this truth to be self-evident: that all men are created equal? Because life, liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness are unalienable rights endowed by our Creator? (“Declaration of Independence.” 1776.) Well, not all men are created equal. At least according to our Founding Fathers, African tribes, 18th century Europeans, the ancient Romans and Greeks, and … the Bible. As a matter of fact, slavery has not been immoral from humanity’s (also to be interpreted as America’s) standpoint but for only 150 years. Why then can we so firmly and undeniably declare that slavery is immoral? The answer lies in the writings of great political visionaries like Solon, Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Marx, and Lincoln. Individually they all have differing opinions about slavery. Taken together, however, their works reveal a timeline that shows how slavery has evolved from an accepted to a depraved custom. Slavery’s immorality is not limned in a constitution. Slavery is immoral because time has proven it to be immoral.
Beginning as early as 2000 BC there have been laws protecting slaves. The Babylonian king Hammurabi enacted the Code of Hammurabi sometime during the eighteenth century BC. In the law code Hammurabi delineated three distinct levels of crime. The highest was the proverbial eye for an eye, which was the punishment for injuring a citizen. The second tier called for a fine of one gold mina if you injured a man who had been emancipated. Lowest on the totem pole was a crime committed against another man’s slave. The payment for such crime called for one-half of the slave’s value. Had an ox supplanted the slave under the same circumstances, the owner of the ox could file no claim against the man who injured h...

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...al order. (Aristotle. “Politics.” Book I.vi.) The Romans had not yet reached these moral heights. Instead, the Romans enslaved any and all peoples they conquered. Finally, after hundreds of years of uninhibited enslavement, the stoics dared to challenge the Roman philosophy of slavery. The stoics believed whole-heartedly in an egalitarian social structure. This philosophy extended to the treatment of slaves and had a profound effect on Cicero. Cicero advocated for “treat[ing] slaves as we should employees.” (Cicero. “De Oficiis.” 1.41.) His theory of justice relied heavily on the phrase suum cuique (to each his own) and beating and mistreating slaves was unjustifiable because a Roman would never treat another Roman that way. (Cicero. “De Legibus 1.8.) This theory of, “Do unto others as you would have them do to you,” is a great leap in morality from old philosophies.

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