The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Part 4 of 4American Anti-Slavery Society
Philosophy
The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Part 4 of 4
American Anti-Slavery Society
Antislavery movements -- United States -- Periodicals; Slavery -- United States -- Periodicals
4. They are emphatically "in prison," restrained by chains, goaded
with whips, tasked, and under keepers. Not a wretch groans in any
cell of the prisons of our country, who is exposed to a confinement
so vigorous and heartbreaking as the law allows theirs to be
continually and permanently.
5. And then they are emphatically, and peculiarly, and exclusively,
STRANGERS--_strangers_ in the land which gave them birth. Whom
else do we constrain to remain aliens in the midst of our free
institutions? The Welch, the Swiss, the Irish? The Jews even?
Alas, it is the _negro_ only, who may not strike his roots into
our soil. Every where we have conspired to treat him as a
stranger--every where he is forced to feel himself a stranger. In
the stage and steamboat, in the parlor and at our tables, in the
scenes of business and in the scenes of amusement--even in the
church of God and at the communion table, he is regarded as a
stranger. The intelligent and religious are generally disgusted
and horror-struck at the thought of his becoming identified with
the citizens of our republic--so much so, that thousands of them
have entered into a conspiracy to send him off "out of sight," to
find a home on a foreign shore!--and justify themselves by openly
alleging, that a "single drop" of his blood, in the veins of any
human creature, must make him hateful to his fellow
citizens!--That nothing but banishment from "our coasts," can
redeem him from the scorn and contempt to which his "stranger"
blood has reduced him among his own mother's children!
Who, then, in this land "of milk and honey," is "hungry and athirst,"
but the man from whom the law takes away the last crumb of bread and
the smallest drop of water?
Who "naked," but the man whom the law strips of the last rag of
clothing?
Who "sick," but the man whom the law deprives of the power of
procuring medicine or sending for a physician?
Who "in prison," but the man who, all his life, is under the control
of merciless masters and cruel keepers!
Who a "stranger," but the man who is scornfully denied the cheapest
courtesies of life--who is treated as an alien in his native country?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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