An Address to Free Coloured Americans

Beloved Brethren and Sisters—

The sympathy we feel for our oppressed fellow-citizens who are enslaved in these United States, has called us together, to devise by mutual conference the best means for bringing our guilty country to a sense of her transgressions; and to implore the God of the oppressed to guide and bless our labors on behalf of our "countrymen in chains."

All of us have some idea what slavery is: we have formed some faint conceptions of the horrors of a system based on irresponsible power, violence, and injustice; but to know what slavery is, we must see it worked out in practice—we must see the heart-strings severed one by one, and witness all the refinement of cruelty which is exercised on the body, soul, and mind of the enslaved. "Let any man of feeling," says a Southern gentleman, "cast his thoughts over this land of slavery, think of the nakedness of some, the hungry yearnings of others, the wailings and wo, the bloody cut of the keen lash, and the frightful scream that rends the very skies—and all this to gratify lust, pride, avarice, and other depraved feelings of the human heart. THE WORST IS NOT GENERALLY KNOWN. Were all the miseries and horrors of slavery to burst at once into view, a peal of seven-fold thunder could scarce strike greater alarm." (Swain's Address, 1830.)

We can readily believe this testimony to the physical sufferings of the slave: we apprehend these most easily, because all of us are alive to bodily pain, whilst few comparatively appreciate the mental and spiritual degradation [pg 4] to which our oppressed brethren are subjected; yet this is the most appalling feature of American bondage. Slavery seizes a rational and immortal being crowned by Jehovah with glory and honor, and drags him down to a level with the beasts that perish. It makes him a thing, a chattel personal, a machine to be used to all intents and purposes for the benefit of another, without reference to the good, the happiness, or the wishes of the man himself. It introduces violence and disorder, where God established harmony and peace. It would annihilate the individual worth and responsibility conferred upon man by his Creator. It deprives him of the power of self-improvement, to which he is bound by the unchangeable laws of his Maker. It prevents him from laboring in a sphere to which his capacities are adapted. It abrogates the seventh commandment, by annulling the obligations of marriage, and obliging the slaves to live in a state of promiscuous intercourse, concubinage, and adultery; thus setting at nought an institution established by Jehovah himself, and designed to promote the happiness and virtue of his creatures. It dooms its victims to ignorance, and consequently to vice. "I think I may safely assert," says Mr. Moore, "that ignorance is the inseparable companion of slavery, and that the desire of freedom is the inevitable consequence of implanting in the human mind any useful degree of intelligence: it is therefore the policy of the master that the ignorance of his slaves should be as profound as possible; and such a state of ignorance is wholly incompatible with the existence of any moral principles or exalted feeling in the breast of the slave. (Speech of Mr. Moore, House of Delegates, Va., 1832.)

"How horrible must be that system which demands as the necessary condition of its existence, that knowledge should be shut out from the minds of those who live under it—that they should be reduced as nearly as possible to the level of brutes, or living machines—that the powers of their souls should be crushed! Let each one of us ask, Can such a system be aided, or even tolerated, without deep criminality?" (Ad. to the Pres. of Ken. by a committee of the synod of Kentucky.)

But even if slavery could be divested of all its horrible accompaniments, its ignorance, licentiousness, and other [pg 5] nameless abominations, we should still regard the circumstance of man holding his brother man as property as one of the blackest crimes which corrupt human nature ever invented. Mr. Moore, in the speech from which we have already quoted, is compelled to acknowledge the iniquity of this system. "It cannot be denied," he says, "as a general principle, that it is an act of tyranny, injustice, and oppression, to hold any part of the human race in bondage against their consent.... The right to the enjoyment of liberty is one of those perfect, inherent, and inalienable rights which pertain to the whole human race, and of which they can never be divested, except by an act of gross injustice." If we would rightly estimate the wretchedness in which the perpetration of this "act of gross injustice" has involved one sixth part of the population of Republican America, we must compare the condition of our slaves with that of the freemen of their own age and country.