Slavery -- United States; United States -- Politics and government -- 1849-1853
But, sir, the stranger from the north visits the courts of justice
in this city; he goes into halls set apart and consecrated, even
in the dark and half-heathenish periods of English history, to the
investigation of truth and the administration of justice; but if he
sees any specimens of the colored race there, he sees them only as
menials. They cannot go there as witnesses. However atrocious the
wrongs they may suffer in their own person and character, or in the
person and character of wife or children, they cannot appeal to the
courts to avenge or redress them. If introduced there at all, it is as
a bale of goods is introduced, or as an ox or a horse is brought within
their purlieus, for the purpose of trying some disputed question of
identity or ownership. They go not as suitors, but as sacrifices. In
the courts of law; in the temples with which all our ideas of justice,
of right between man and man, are associated; where truth goes to be
vindicated, where innocence flies to be avenged,--in these courts,
an entire portion of the human race are known, not as men, but as
chattels, as cattle. Where, for them, is the Magna Charta that the old
barons wrested from King John? Is a whole race to be forever doomed to
this outlawry? Are they forever to wear a “wolf’s head,” which every
white man may cut off when he pleases? Sir, it cannot be that this
state of things will last forever. If all the rights of the black race
are thus withheld from them, it is just as certain as the progress of
time that they, too, will have their Runnymede, their Declaration of
Independence, their Bunker Hill, and their Yorktown.
Such, sir, are the sights that molest us when we come here from the
north,--that molest us in the hotels, that molest us in the streets,
that molest us in the courts, that molest us every where. But the
week passes away, and the Sabbath comes,--the day of rest from
worldly toils, the day set apart for social worship, when men come
together, and, by their mutual presence and assistance, lift up the
hearts of each other in gratitude to God. But where now are the colored
population, that seemed to be so numerous every where else? Have they
no God? Have they no interest in the Savior’s example and precepts?
Have they no need of consolation, of faith in the Unseen, to help them
bear up under the burdens and anxieties of life? Is their futurity so
uncertain or so worthless that they need no guide to a better country,
or that they can be turned off with a guide as ignorant and blind as
themselves?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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