finally beca me too weak to work. Hybrids potentially could go as long, but they would be driven to unmanageable fleshlusts from hunger after a few weeks.
Slavery supporters argued that the zombies were well controlled, posing no danger to anyone. Statistically this was generally true. Accidents were still routine, but given the immense number of zombies in the South, they were less frequent than one might have expected. Slave owners could also have made the argument that zombies were closer to animals than their human slaves, and thus not actually slaves at all, but doing so would have been admitting there was something questionable about keeping human slaves in the first place. So zombie and human slavery remained intertwined for both slavery proponents and opponents alike.
Zombie abolitionists were faced with a fairly sizable roadblock to their cause: the million and a half zombie slaves in the South could not simply be “freed.” The ensuing human slaughter would have been legendary. Marron Ross, a Pennsylvanian Quaker and zombie abolitionist, had a similar theological take on zombies as the Roman Catholic Church in Mexico. He thought it was clear that zombies were humans stuck in a kind of limbo, but unlike the Mexicans, he thought it was our duty to send them on their way through de-animation. Ross made it the subject of a short paper he published in 1854, titled Thoughts on What to be Done With the Trouble of the Walking Damned in America . The paper and its contained philosophy were widely embraced by the abolitionist movement.
The Civil War had already been raging for two years when, in January 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, an executive order, which declared the freedom of all slaves in ten specific states of the Confederacy. The proclamation did not name the slave-holding border states of Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, or Delaware, who had never declared secession. As to what “freedom” meant for the zombies:
And be it further enacted, That all undead slaves of persons who shall hereafter be engaged in rebellion against the government of the United States, or who shall in any way give aid or comfort thereto, escaping from such persons and taking refuge within the lines of the army; and all undead slaves captured from such persons or deserted by them and coming under the control of the government of the United States; and all undead slaves of such person found or being within any place occupied by rebel forces and afterwards occupied by the forces of the United States, shall be deemed captives of war, and shall be forever free of their servitude, and mercifully put to immediate termination; may their souls rest with God.
Zombie slavery proponents laughed off Lincoln’s order, quickly dubbing it the “Emaciation Proclamation.”
John Blackburn
The living man’s happiness cannot be purchased by the dead man’s misery.
—John Blackburn, A Narrative of the Life of John Blackburn, an UnDead American, 1853
John Charles Blackburn was born in Talbot County, Maryland, in 1820, the average human son of a successful lawyer. Blackburn remained an average human, himself going into law, until July 1846, when he was attacked by a zombie-human hybrid while coming home from a tavern. Blackburn successfully fought off his attacker, but not before he was bitten. Afterward, Blackburn and his family did their best to hide his hybridity. He carried on with his burgeoning law career, drinking cups of human blood periodically to satiate his cravings—his parents or two brothers generously donating the blood.
Who knows how long things could have carried on like this, but when John’s father offered him a partnership in the family law firm, passing over John’s older brother George, an embittered George anonymously reported John to the authorities. John Blackburn was promptly arrested and sent to trial. Had Blackburn not been a lawyer, and a clever lawyer at that, he would surely
Slavery supporters argued that the zombies were well controlled, posing no danger to anyone. Statistically this was generally true. Accidents were still routine, but given the immense number of zombies in the South, they were less frequent than one might have expected. Slave owners could also have made the argument that zombies were closer to animals than their human slaves, and thus not actually slaves at all, but doing so would have been admitting there was something questionable about keeping human slaves in the first place. So zombie and human slavery remained intertwined for both slavery proponents and opponents alike.
Zombie abolitionists were faced with a fairly sizable roadblock to their cause: the million and a half zombie slaves in the South could not simply be “freed.” The ensuing human slaughter would have been legendary. Marron Ross, a Pennsylvanian Quaker and zombie abolitionist, had a similar theological take on zombies as the Roman Catholic Church in Mexico. He thought it was clear that zombies were humans stuck in a kind of limbo, but unlike the Mexicans, he thought it was our duty to send them on their way through de-animation. Ross made it the subject of a short paper he published in 1854, titled Thoughts on What to be Done With the Trouble of the Walking Damned in America . The paper and its contained philosophy were widely embraced by the abolitionist movement.
The Civil War had already been raging for two years when, in January 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, an executive order, which declared the freedom of all slaves in ten specific states of the Confederacy. The proclamation did not name the slave-holding border states of Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, or Delaware, who had never declared secession. As to what “freedom” meant for the zombies:
And be it further enacted, That all undead slaves of persons who shall hereafter be engaged in rebellion against the government of the United States, or who shall in any way give aid or comfort thereto, escaping from such persons and taking refuge within the lines of the army; and all undead slaves captured from such persons or deserted by them and coming under the control of the government of the United States; and all undead slaves of such person found or being within any place occupied by rebel forces and afterwards occupied by the forces of the United States, shall be deemed captives of war, and shall be forever free of their servitude, and mercifully put to immediate termination; may their souls rest with God.
Zombie slavery proponents laughed off Lincoln’s order, quickly dubbing it the “Emaciation Proclamation.”
John Blackburn
The living man’s happiness cannot be purchased by the dead man’s misery.
—John Blackburn, A Narrative of the Life of John Blackburn, an UnDead American, 1853
John Charles Blackburn was born in Talbot County, Maryland, in 1820, the average human son of a successful lawyer. Blackburn remained an average human, himself going into law, until July 1846, when he was attacked by a zombie-human hybrid while coming home from a tavern. Blackburn successfully fought off his attacker, but not before he was bitten. Afterward, Blackburn and his family did their best to hide his hybridity. He carried on with his burgeoning law career, drinking cups of human blood periodically to satiate his cravings—his parents or two brothers generously donating the blood.
Who knows how long things could have carried on like this, but when John’s father offered him a partnership in the family law firm, passing over John’s older brother George, an embittered George anonymously reported John to the authorities. John Blackburn was promptly arrested and sent to trial. Had Blackburn not been a lawyer, and a clever lawyer at that, he would surely
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