"How Can I Help to Abolish Slavery?" or, Counsels to the Newly Converted — John Shaqi
"How Can I Help to Abolish Slavery?" or, Counsels to the Newly ConvertedChapman, Maria Weston
Philosophy
"How Can I Help to Abolish Slavery?" or, Counsels to the Newly Converted
Chapman, Maria Weston
Abolitionists; American Anti-Slavery Society; Antislavery movements -- United States
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_ANTI-SLAVERY TRACTS. No. 14._
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“HOW CAN I HELP TO ABOLISH SLAVERY?”
OR,
COUNSELS TO THE NEWLY CONVERTED.
BY MARIA WESTON CHAPMAN.
Yes, my friend, I can resolve your question. Twenty years of actual
experience qualify one to reply. I have stood, as you now stand, on the
threshold of this grandest undertaking of any age—this effort to elevate
a whole people in the scale of moral being—with my head full of plans,
and my heart of devotedness, asking the same question. I really longed
for this coming of millennial glory, and therefore soon found the road
on which to go forth to meet it. My disgust was unutterable, as yours,
too, will be, if you desire the abolition of slavery more than the
temporary triumph of sect or party, at the stupid schemes by which
selfish men were then, as now, trying to make capital for themselves out
of the sacred cause of human rights—seeking to sell the gift of the Holy
Ghost for money. Hear them clamorously and meanly taking advantage of
ignorance, for the promotion of self-interest.
First, hear the agents of slavery presenting the colonization scheme as
the instrument of abolition.
“Aid the Colonization Society.” Yes; to make slavery stronger by
exalting prejudice as an ordination of divine Providence; to make
slavery safer by eliminating that dangerous element, the free black; to
make its term longer by stultifying national conscience. See that
society making the laws of slave States more cruel, the men of the free
States more obdurate, the situation of the free men of color more
difficult and insupportable, as a part of its plan. It could not, if it
would, transport three millions of souls to Africa; the navies and
revenues of the world would be insufficient. It would not, if it could;
for slavery has no intention of parting with its three millions of
victims; unless induced to free them out of generosity, it will keep
them on speculation. Its forty years of colonization labor, and its
million of gold and silver, have exiled fewer to Liberia than have
escaped into Canada in spite of it—less in that period than the monthly
increase of the slaves! It can do nothing for Christianizing Africa, for
it sends a slaveholding gospel, which is anti-Christ. Be not deceived,
then, by a tyrannical mockery like this, working to perpetuate slavery,
and not to abolish it. Aid the American Anti-Slavery Society, which
deals with the heart and conscience of this slaveholding nation,
demanding immediate, unconditional emancipation, without expatriation;
the abolition of slavery by the spirit of repentance, in conformity with
all your own principles and traditions, whether religious or political.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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