The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Part 1 of 4American Anti-Slavery Society
History
The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Part 1 of 4
American Anti-Slavery Society
Antislavery movements -- United States -- Periodicals; Slavery -- United States -- Periodicals
You would have your readers believe, that the blessings of education are
to be withheld from your slaves--only "until the storm shall be
overblown," and that you hope that "Satan's being let loose will be but
for a little season." I say nothing more about the last expression, than
that I most sincerely desire you may penitently regret having attributed
the present holy excitement against slavery to the influences of Satan.
By "the storm" you, doubtless, mean the excitement produced by the
publications and efforts of the American Anti-Slavery Society. Now, I
will not suppose that you meant to deceive your readers on this point.
You are, nevertheless, inexcusable for using language so strikingly
calculated to lead them into error. It is not yet three years since that
Society was organized: but the statute books of some of the slave States
contain laws, forbidding the instruction of slaves in reading, which
were enacted long before you and I were born. As long ago as the year
1740, South Carolina passed a law, forbidding to teach slaves to write.
Georgia did so in 1770. In the year 1800, thirty-three years before "the
storm" of the Anti-Slavery Society began to blow, South Carolina passed
a law, forbidding "assemblies of slaves, free negroes, &c., for the
purpose of mental instruction." In the Revised Code of Virginia of 1819,
is a law similar to that last mentioned. In the year 1818, the city of
Savannah forbade by an ordinance, the instruction of all persons of
color, either free or bond, in reading and writing. I need not specify
any more of these man-crushing, soul-killing, God-defying laws;--nor
need I refer again to the shocking penalties annexed to the violation of
most of them. I conclude my remarks under this head, with the advice,
that, in the next edition of your book, you do not assign the
anti-slavery excitement, which is now spreading over our land, as the
occasion of the passage of the laws in question.
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