Autographs for Freedom, by Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Thirty-five Other Eminent Writers
History
Autographs for Freedom, by Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Thirty-five Other Eminent Writers
Antislavery movements -- United States; Slavery -- United States
And further, cannot _consistency_ utter a plea? There is nothing,
perhaps, at which men labour more earnestly than to appear
consistent. But what fellowship can there be between liberty and
slavery? Slavery is a foul blot on the escutcheon of the United
States; and every patriotic American feels it to be so. Here, in the
land of liberty, Freedom receives her deepest wound in the house of
her vaunting friends. The enemies of tyranny over the world are
taunted with the despotism of the American democrat. The infidel of
our day draws his most potent arguments from the vices and faults of
professing Christians; and the advocates of despotism act in the
same manner, and procure their artillery from the barbarism of
American slave-holders. We must then assail this inconsistency until
the guilty parties blush and are ashamed. The continual dropping of
water will wear away stones, and the persevering reiterations of
truth shall eventually prevail, and make even slave-holders relent
and listen to the voice of consistency and humanity.
We have had among us glorious specimens of what the slave can be. To
those who talk of his inferior powers and limited rights, we point
to such men as Frederick Douglass, Wells Brown, Henson, Garnett, and
Dr. Pennington. It was our privilege to enter the hall at
Heidelberg, just as the academy conferred on Dr. Pennington his
diploma. And is this the man that the slave-holder would sell as he
would a horse or bullock? What is the reply of humanity to this
question? I need not dwell on the mind, talents, and piety of Brown,
Henson, or Garnett. The country has long since borne witness to
these. Exeter-hall has often resounded with the loftiest strains of
eloquence, but never has it listened to a more intellectual,
eloquent, and soul-stirring tongue, than that of Frederick Douglass,
and yet this is the man, on whose head the planters have set a
price, because he obeyed the voice of nature and of God in running
away from the horrors of slavery. But why advance these examples?
There is not a field of slaves, a slave-market, or a negro cabin,
but proclaims the equality of the African with the rest of the human
family. The tears, cries, and broken hearts which every separation
by the dealer occasions, proclaim that the sympathies of the slave
are equal to those of the rest of mankind. Every argument used by
these sons and daughters of bondage, every prayer they offer, every
speech they make, and every sermon they preach, prove that all the
essentials of soul belong to them in as much native richness as to
us. ’Tis true everything has been done to degrade them. The
cruelties practised by Simon the cobbler to deprave and demoralise
the Dauphin of France, and which awakened the execration of the
world, are every day being followed by the planters of America. What
if any of us had had the sphere of our knowledge contracted to the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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