Fugitive slaves -- United States; Hopper, Isaac T. (Isaac Tatem), 1771-1852
That many of the modern Quakers should be blinded by bales of cotton,
heaped up between their souls and the divine light, is not remarkable;
for cotton is an impervious material. But it is a strange anomaly in
their history that any one among them should have considered himself
guided by the Spirit to undertake the especial mission of discouraging
sympathy with the enslaved. A minister belonging to that branch of the
Society called "Hicksites," who usually preached in Rose-street Meeting,
New-York, had imbibed very strong prejudices against all modern reforms:
and he manifested his aversion with a degree of excitement, in language,
tone, and gesture, very unusual in that quiet sect. Those who labored
in the cause of temperance, anti-slavery, or non-resistance, he was wont
to stigmatize as "hireling lecturers," "hireling book-agents," and
"emissaries of Satan." Soon after Thomas Hughes consented to return to
the South, in consequence of the fair professions of Mr. Darg, this
preacher chimed in with the exulting tones of the pro-slavery press, by
alluding to it in one of his public discourses as follows. After
speaking of the tendency of affliction to produce humility, he went on
to say, "As a slave, who had suffered the effects of his criminal
conduct, and been thus led to calm reflection, recently chose to go back
with this master into slavery, and endure all the evils of that
condition, notwithstanding his former experience of them, rather than
stay with those hypocritical workers of popular righteousness who had
interfered in his behalf. For my own part, I commend his choice. I had a
thousand times rather be a slave, and spend my days with slaveholders,
than to dwell in companionship with abolitionists."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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