After her narrow escape to freedom, profiled in the recent film Harriet, Harriet Tubman bravely returns to the South to free her family. During the rescue, she is pursued by her former master’s son into a remote part of the forest. Then she gets the upper hand and turns her own shotgun on him. Tubman’s frustration with the lifetime of captivity that she bore at his family’s hands comes pouring down on him. She exhorts her former captor: “God don’t mean people to own people!”

The doctrine that one person can “own” another is completely contrary to the rights enumerated in the establishment of our nation. The Declaration of Independence says, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”