Laws forbid us to be taught even to read, and severe penalties are inflicted on those who teach us. The natural right of the parent over the child is wholly taken away; our children are systematically kept in profound ignorance, and are worked or sold like brutes, at the will of slave-holders. We can acquire no property, and are kept in utter and perpetual pauperism, dependent on the mere caprice or selfishness of other men for subsistence. If we attempt peaceably to emigrate from this land of oppression, we are hunted by bull-dogs, or shot down like beasts,--dragged back to perpetual slavery without trial by jury. We are exposed to the most degrading and revolting punishments, without judge or trial, at the passion, caprice, or cruelty of the basest overseers. When our wives and daughters are seduced or ravished, we are forbidden to appeal to the courts of justice. Whatever outrage may be perpetrated on ourselves or our families, we have no redress. We are compelled to work without wages; the fruits of our labor are systematically extorted from us. Many thousands of our people are annually collected by slave-traders, and sold to distant States; by which means families are broken up, and the most frightful debasement, anguish, and outrage is inflicted on us. We have no access to courts of justice, no voice in the election of rulers, no agency in making the laws,--not even the miserable remnant of liberty, in choosing the despot who may have absolute power over us. We are hopelessly consigned to that condition most revolting and loathsome to one in whom the least vestige of manly or womanly feeling is left,--that of absolute slavery. The laws treat us not as human beings, but “as _chattels personal_, to all intents, constructions, and purposes whatsoever.” Great numbers of our people, in, addition to all these enormities, endure unutterable bodily sufferings, from the cruelty and torturing punishments inflicted on us.