Antislavery movements -- United States; Slavery -- United States
History unanswerably demonstrates that the negro does feel, keenly
feel, the wrongs inflicted upon him by his unrighteous enslavers,
and that his mind, barren as it has been rendered by hard usage, and
desolated with misery, is not unwatered by the pure and gentle streams
of natural affection. Yet the lordly oppressors remain unmoved by the
sad condition of the negro, contemplate with indifference his bodily
and mental sufferings, and still dare to postpone to an indefinite
period the termination of his oppression and of their own guilt.
But thanks be to God! there _is_ some counteracting influence to this
feeling, and that it is on the advance. The night has been long and
dark,--already the horizon brightens; the day of freedom dawns.
Go on, then, my friend; I say, go on! in the good cause thou hast
espoused. Labor, and faint not. “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do,
do it with all thy might.” My kind regards to Frederick Douglass; may
he, and all others also, be strengthened and encouraged to labor in
the great work of human freedom; that so, by gradual increase, like
the mighty surge, they may become strong enough to overpower and drown
the oppressor, and be enabled to devise and execute measures of mercy
and justice, which may avert the judgments of the Almighty from their
guilty land. For surely some signal display of Divine displeasure must
await America, unless she repent, and undo the heavy burdens of her
THREE MILLION SLAVES.
Are not the signs of the times calculated to remind us forcibly of this
language of Isaiah, “Behold, the Lord cometh out of his place to punish
the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity; the earth also shall
disclose her blood, and no more cover her slain.” Do we not hear already
“----the wheels of an avenging God,
Groan heavily along the distant road?”
Assuredly, he comes to judge the earth. “Who shall abide the day of his
coming; who shall stand when he appeareth?”
Thy Friend, very truly,
Wilson Armistead
IMPROMPTU STANZAS,
SUGGESTED BY THE WORKING OF THE FUGITIVE SLAVE ACT, AS ILLUSTRATED IN
THE CASE OF REV. DOCTOR PENNINGTON.
BY THE WORK-SHOP BARD.
Bring out the handcuffs, clank the rusted gyves;
Rain down your curses on the doomed race;
Hang out a terror that shall haunt their lives,
In every place.
Unloose the bloodhounds from oppression’s den;
Arm every brigand in the name of law,
And triple shield of pulpit, press, and pen,
Around them draw.
Ho! politicians, orators, divines!
Ho! cotton-mongers of the North and South!
Strike now for slavery, or our Union’s shrines
Are gone forsooth!
Down from their glory into chaos hurled,
Your thirty States in shivered fragments go,
Like the seared leaves by autumn tempests whirled
To depths below.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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