A reply to "The affectionate and Christian address of many thousands of women of Great Britain and Ireland, to their sisters, the women of the United States of America."Stowe, Harriet Beecher
History
A reply to "The affectionate and Christian address of many thousands of women of Great Britain and Ireland, to their sisters, the women of the United States of America."
Stowe, Harriet Beecher
Slavery -- United States; United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Foreign public opinion
Is it any advantage to people to be educated in man-stealing as a
principle, to be taught systematically to rob the labourer of his
wages, and to tread on the necks of weaker races? Who among you
would wish your sons to become slave-planters, slave-merchants,
slave-dealers? And shall we leave our brethren to this fate? Better
a generation should die on the battle-field, that their children may
grow up in liberty and justice. Yes, our sons must die, their sons
must die. We give ours freely; they die to redeem the very brothers
that slay them; they give their blood in expiation of this great sin,
begun by you in England, perpetuated by us in America, and for which
God in this great day of judgment is making inquisition in blood.
In a recent battle fell a Secession colonel, the last remaining son
of his mother, and she a widow. That mother had sold eleven children
of an old slave-mother, her servant. That servant went to her and
said,—“Missis, we even now. You sold all my children. God took all
yourn. Not one to bury either of us. _Now_, I forgive you.”
In another battle fell the only son of another widow. Young,
beautiful, heroic, brought up by his mother in the sacred doctrines
of human liberty, he gave his life an offering as to a holy cause. He
died. No slave-woman came to tell _his_ mother of God’s justice, for
many slaves have reason to call her blessed.
Now we ask you, Would you change places with that Southern mother?
Would you not think it a great misfortune for a son or daughter to
be brought into such a system?—a worse one to become so perverted
as to defend it? Remember, then, that wishing success to this
slavery-establishing effort is only wishing to the sons and daughters
of the South all the curses that God has written against oppression.
_Mark our words!_ If we succeed, the children of these very men who
are now fighting us will rise up to call us blessed. Just as surely
as there is a God who governs in the world, so surely all the laws of
national prosperity follow in the train of equity; and if we succeed,
we shall have delivered the children’s children of our misguided
brethren from the wages of sin, which is always and everywhere death.
And now, Sisters of England, think it not strange, if we bring back
the words of your letter, not in bitterness, but in deepest sadness,
and lay them down at your door. We say to you,—Sisters, you have
spoken well; we have heard you; we have heeded; we have striven in
the cause, even unto death. We have sealed our devotion by desolate
hearth and darkened homestead,—by the blood of sons, husbands, and
brothers. In many of our dwellings the very light of our lives has
gone out; and yet we accept the life-long darkness as our own part
in this great and awful expiation, by which the bonds of wickedness
shall be loosed, and abiding peace established on the foundation of
righteousness. Sisters, what have _you_ done, and what do you mean to
do?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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