Sighs must fan it, tears must water, Sweat of ours must dress the soil. Think, ye masters, iron-hearted, Lolling at your jovial boards, Think how many backs have smarted For the sweets your cane affords. Is there, as ye sometimes tell us, Is there one, who reigns on high? Has he bid you buy and sell us,
Speaking from his throne the sky? Ask him, if your knotted scourges, Fetters, blood-extorting screws, Are the means which duty urges, Agents of His will to use? Fleecy locks and black complexion Cannot forfeit nature's claim; Skins may differ, but affection
Dwells in white and black the same. By our sufferings, since ye brought us To the man-degrading mart,
All sustain'd by patience, taught us Only by a broken heart;
Deem our nation brutes no longer, Till some reason ye shall find Worthier of regard, and stronger, Than the color of our kind. Slaves of gold! whose sordid dealings Tarnish all your boasted powers, Prove that you have human feelings, you proudly question ours."
WILLIAM ROSCOE,
Offspring of love divine, Humanity! To whom, his eldest born, th' Eternal gave Dominion o'er the heart; and taught to touch Its varied stops in sweetest unison;
And strike the string that from a kindred breast Responsive vibrates! from the noisy haunts Of mercantile confusion, where thy voice Is heard not; from the meretricious glare Of crowded theatres, where in thy place Sits Sensibility, with wat❜ry eye, Dropping o'er fancied woes her useless tear ;- Come thou, and weep with me substantial ills; And execrate the wrongs that Afric's sons, Torn from their natal shore, and doom'd to bear The yoke of servitude in foreign climes, Sustain. Nor vainly let our sorrows flow, Nor let the strong emotion rise in vain ; But may the kind contagion widely spread, Till in its flame the unrelenting heart Of avarice melt in softest sympathy- And one bright blaze of universal love In grateful incense rises up to Heaven!
Form'd with the same capacity of pain, The same desire of pleasure and of ease, Why feels not man for man! When nature shrinks From the slight puncture of an insect's sting,
Faints, if not screen'd from sultry suns, and pines Beneath the hardship of an hour's delay Of needful nutriment ;-when Liberty Is priz'd so dearly, that the slightest breath That ruffles but her mantle, can awake To arms unwarlike nations, and can rouse Confed'rate states to vindicate her claims :- How shall the suff'rer man his fellow doom To ills he mourns or spurns at; tear with stripes His quiv'ring flesh; with hunger and with thirst Waste his emaciate frame; in ceaseless toils Exhaust his vital powers; and bind his limbs In galling chains! Shall he, whose fragile form Demands continual blessings to support Its complicated texture, air, and food, Raiment, alternate rest, and kindly skies, And healthful seasons, dare with impious voice To ask those mercies, whilst his selfish aim Arrests the general freedom of their course; And, gratified beyond his utmost wish, Debars another from the bounteous store!
See the dire victim torn from social life, The shrieking babe, the agonizing wife!
She! wretch forlorn, is dragg'd by hostile hands To distant tyrants, sold to distant lands, Transmitted miseries and successive chains, The sole sad heritage her child obtains ! E'en this last wretched boon their foes deny, To live together, or together die.
By felon hands, by one relentless stroke,
See the fond links of feeling nature broke!
The fibres twisting round a parent's heart,
Torn from their grasp, and bleeding as they part.
What wrongs, what injuries does Oppression plead, To smooth the crime and sanctify the deed? What strange offence, what aggravated sin? They stand convicted of a darker skin!
JAMES MONTGOMERY.
Lives there a reptile baser than the slave? Loathsome as death, corrupted as the grave. See the dull creole, at his pompous board, Attendant vassals cringing round their lord; Satiate with food, his heavy eyelids close, Voluptuous minions fan him to repose; Prone on the noonday couch he lolls in vain, Delirious slumbers rack his maudlin brain; He starts with horror from bewildering dreams, His bloodshot eye with fire and frenzy gleams, He stalks abroad; through all his wonted rounds, The negro trembles, and the lash resounds, And cries of anguish shrilling through the air, To distant fields his dread approach declare.
Mark, as he passes, every head declined; Then slowly raised, to curse him from behind. This is the veriest wretch on nature's face, Own'd by no country, spurn'd by every race; The tether'd tyrant of one narrow span, The bloated vampyre of a living man; His frame, a fungus form, of dunghill birth, That taints the air, and rots above the earth: His soul! has he a soul, whose sensual breast Of selfish passions is a serpent's nest? Who follows, headlong, ignorant, and blind, The vague brute-instinct of an idiot mind;
Whose heart, 'midst scenes of suffering, senseless grown, E'en from his mother's lap was chilled to stone; Whose torpid pulse no social feelings move;
A stranger to the tenderness of love; His motley harem charms his gloating eye, Where ebon, brown, and olive beauties vie; His children sprung alike from sloth and vice, Are born his slaves, and loved at market price. Has he a soul?-With his departing breath, A form shall hail him at the gates of death,
The spectre Conscience! shrieking through the gloom, "Man, we shall meet again beyond the tomb!"
And say, supernal Powers! who deeply scan Heav'n's dark decree, unfathom'd yet by man, When shall the world call down to cleanse her shame,
That embryo spirit, yet without a name,
That friend of Nature, whose avenging hands Shall burst the Lybian's adamantine bands? Who, sternly marking on his native soil,
The blood, the tears, the anguish, and the toil, Shall bid each righteous heart exult, to see Peace to the slave, and vengeance on the free!
Yet, yet, degraded man! th' expected day That breaks your bitter cup, is far away;
Trade, wealth, and fashion, ask you still to bleed, And holy men give scripture for the deed; Scourg'd and debas'd no Briton stoops to save A wretch, a coward; yes, because a slave!
Eternal Nature! when thy giant hand
Had heav'd the floods, and fix'd the trembling land, When life sprung startling at thy plastic call, Endless her form, and Man the lord of all! Say, was that lordly form inspir'd by thee To wear eternal chains, and bow the knee? Was man ordain'd the slave of man to toil, Yok'd with the brutes, and fetter'd to the soil; Weigh'd in a tyrant's balance with his gold? No! Nature stamp'd us in a heavenly mould! She bade no wretch his thankless labor urge, Nor, trembling, take the pittance and the scourge! No homeless Lybian, on the stormy deep, To call upon his country's name and weep!
Wrench'd the red scourge from proud Oppression's hands, And broke, curst Slavery! thy iron bands.
É'en now, c'en now, on yonder western shores Weeps pale Despair, and writhing Anguish roars; E'en now in Afric's groves with hideous yell Fierce SLAVERY stalks and slips the dogs of hell; From vale to vale the gathering cries rebound And sable nations tremble at the sound.- -Who right the injured, and reward the brave, Stretch your strong arm, for ye have power to save! Throned in the vaulted heart, his dread resort; Inexorable CONSCIENCE holds his court; With still small voice the plots of guilt alarms, Bares his masked brow, his lifted hand disarms; But, wrapp'd in night, with terrors all his own, He speaks in thunders when the deed is done. Hear him, ye Senates! hear this truth sublime, He who allows oppression shares the crime.
It is from the fatal preponderance of passion over reason, that the atrocious and damnable TRADE in HUMAN FLESH is sanctified; an act so infamous, that could all the crimes which history records be collected and consolidated into one, it would lose its nature of atrocity and become a virtue, when placed in comparison with the slave-trade, considered in its double flagitiousness of first buying the human species and then destroying them. It is inconceivable, that an assembly of a nation can be guilty of an act, that no individual who has not degraded himself below his species, and familiarized his ear to the association of his name with that of villain and scoundrel but would feel a horror of committing. Though legislative accomplices may cover his shame, and screen him from public censure, yet how, in the name of truth, if he possesses a well-organized mind and body, and but a common share of reflection, (or rather the pre-eminent and characteristic share of an Englishman,) how can he esteem himself, when conscience will ever upbraid him with the participation in an act whose flagitiousness is so great, that unless he renounces the character of man, his very share would be sufficient to sink him into the most ignominious contempt, and draw upon him more remorse than would the catalogue of all the acted and imagined crimes in nature.-The Moral State of Nations.
I pass with haste by the coast of Africa, whence my mind turns with indignation at the abominable traffic in the human species, from which a part of our countrymen dare to derive their inauspicious wealth. Sugar, it has been said, would be dear if it were not worked by blacks; as if the most laborious, the most dangerous works were not carried on in every country by freemen; in fact, they are so carried on with infinitely more advantage, for there is alacrity in a consciousness of freedom, and a gloomy, sullen indolence in a consciousness of slavery. But let sugar be as dear as it may, it is better to eat none, to eat honey, if sweetness only be palatable; better to eat aloes or coloquintida, than violate a primary law of nature, impressed on every heart not imbruted by avarice; than rob one human creature of those eternal rights of which no law upon earth can justly deprive him.
What constitutes a State?
Not high raised monuments or labor'd mound, Thick wall or moated gate;
Not cities proud, with spires and turrets crown'd; Not bays and broad arm'd ports,
Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride. Not starr'd and spangled courts,
Where low brow'd baseness wafts perfume to pride. No! men, high-minded men!
With powers as far above dull brutes endued In forest, brake, or den,
As beasts excel cold rocks and brambles rude; Men who their duties know,
But know their rights, and knowing, dare maintain, Prevent the long aim'd blow,
And crush the tyrant while they rend the chain!
These constitute a State.
It is in vain that they oppose OPINION; any thing else they may subdue. They may conquer wind, water, nature itself; but to the progress of that secret, subtile, pervading spirit, their imagination can devise, their strength can accomplish, no bar; its votaries they may seize, they may destroy; itself, they cannot touch. If they check it in one place, it invades them in another. They cannot build a wall across the whole earth; and even if they could, it would pass over its summit! Chains cannot bind it, for it is immaterial-nor dungeons enclose it, for it is universal. Over the faggot and the scaffold-over the bending bodies which they pile against its path, it sweeps on with a noiseless, but unceasing march. Do they bring
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