Nehemiah Adams

“ There is the great fact of slavery; it is "the sum of all villanies;" men holding their fellow-men in bondage for the sake of gain; the heart naturally covetous, oppressive, and cruel, where power is unlimited. As though the law of kindness could, in such circumstances, possibly prevail and mitigate the sorrows of the bondman! The direct influence of slavery is to debase, to make barbarous, to petrify; I know as well as though I saw it that the South must be full of neglected, perishing objects, cast out to perish in their sicknesses. ”

“ He said that it was like laying "a penal bond" on children, to baptize them, and oblige them to do or be anything without their consent. O, how many such "penal bonds" I have laid on my children, already!—the more the better, I told him. "A penal bond" to love and serve God!—I mean to add my dying charge to it, and make it as binding as I can. How imperfect such a view of baptism is! It is God coming to us with his seal, not we coming with our own invention to him. I wished to have God enter into a covenant with me, who hope I love him, to be a God to my children forever. ”

“ There are hours,—no, they are more concentrated than hours,—there are moments, when the thought of a lost and loved one, who has perished out of your family circle, suspends all interest in every thing else; when the memory of the departed floats over you like a wandering perfume, and recollections come in throngs with it, flooding the soul with grief. The name, of necessity or accidentally spoken, sets all your soul ajar; and your sense of loss, utter loss, for all time, brings more sorrow with it by far than the parting scene.
She who was the sweet singer of my little Israel is no more. ”

“ Please to tell us why, in your view, any slave who is so disposed may not run away. Would you not do so, if you were a slave, and were oppressed, or thought that you could mend your condition? Where did my master get his right and title to me? God did not institute American slavery as he did slavery among the Hebrews. If I were a slave to certain masters, South or North, I should probably run away at all hazards. I should not stop to debate the morality of the act. No human being would, in his heart blame me. It would be human nature, resisting under the infliction of pain. ”

“ Every thing seems waiting, with silent but thrilling interest, for the arrival of an unknown occupant. And there is raiment of needle-work, and of fine twined linen, and gifts of cunning device, from the looms of the old world, and from graceful fingers and loving hearts here, every want being anticipated, and some wants imagined, to gratify the love of satisfying them. And now God breathes the breath of life, and a living soul begins its deathless career, amidst joys and thanksgivings, which swell through the wide circles of kindred and acquaintanceship. ”

“ Striker, are you not glad that you live in a free state, and not where, when you return like a bird to its nest at night, you may find your little one carried off, you know not where, by some man-stealer, you know not whom?—We honor your kind feelings, madam, but you are not aware, probably, what overflowing love and tender pity there is among us Northerners, toward your slaves and their children. We are disinterested, too; for we nearly forget our own black people here at the North, and more especially in Canada, to care for you and your people. ”

“ Where is the Lord God of Elijah, the God of all power and might, the God of all grace and consolation, the God of our life, and the length of our days? Banished from the world which these friends have made for themselves; an intruder into the charmed circle in which the wand of fancy has enclosed them; a dreaded power standing over them, to snatch away the only bliss which they ever expect to enjoy. ”

“ I should be called at the North "pro-slavery;" but the North is in a passion on this subject. I am not, and I never can be, an advocate for this relation, in itself, but as a present necessity.
I once heard a speaker at an anti-slavery meeting at home say, "They tell us how elevated the blacks are, how intelligent, how pious; that shows how fit they are for freedom, how wrong it is to hold such people in bondage. As much as you raise the slaves in our opinion, you deepen the guilt of the slave-holder." ”

“ O prince of angels, watchman, herald, master of the guard, at the resurrection of the just,—comptroller, now, of that treasury which receives and keeps their precious forms,—from whose lips that signal is to come which millions on millions are to hear, and live,—what images of glory and terror fill thy mind in the anticipation of that moment when thy dread commission is to be fulfilled! ”

“ If we had clear and strong faith, our joy at the thought of a glorified spirit, however necessary its presence to us here, would transcend all our sorrows; the streaming beams of sunshine would irradiate our weeping; we should think more of his happiness than of our discomfort. Instead of departed spirits falling asleep, it is we who have a spirit of slumber. O that we might walk by faith with glorified spirits before the throne, instead of remanding them,—as it seems we sometimes would do, if we could,—to the ignorance and infirmity of our condition. ”

“ When we bear in mind the intelligence and sensibilities which characterize the wives and daughters of the poorest classes equally with the richest in New England, it is most amazing that men should overlook such misery at their own doors—nay, should forsake their own kith and kin who are suffering under it—the mother who bore them, the sisters who love them with all a sister's tender and solicitous love, and run off to emancipate the fattest, sleekest, most contented and unambitious race under heaven. ”

“ The silence of the departed will, for each of us, soon, very soon, be interrupted. Entering, among breaking shadows and softly unfolding light, the border land, we shall gradually awake to the opening vision of things unseen and eternal, all so kindly revealing themselves to our unaccustomed senses as to make us say, "How beautiful!" and instead of exciting fear, leading us almost to hasten the hand which is removing the veil. Some well-known voice, so long silent, may be the first to utter our name; we are recognized, we are safe. ”

“ It is not the parting alone, but it is the horror of the grave,—the tender child alone in the far off gloomy burial-ground, the heavy earth piled on the tender little breast, the helplessness that looked to you for protection which you could not give, and the emptiness of the home to which you return when the child is gone. He who made a mother's heart and they who have borne it, alone can tell the unutterable pain of all this. ”

“ When you quote John Wesley's words and apply them to the South: "Slavery is the sum of all villanies," you unconsciously utter a fearful slander. Whatever may have been true of British slavery, in foreign plantations, in Wesley's day, the good man never would utter such words about our Southern people could he see and enjoy that which gladdens every Christian heart. If slavery be, necessarily, "the sum of all villanies," as you and many use the expression, the relation cannot exist without making each slave-holder a villain, in all the degrees of villany. ”

“ But to each of us the most perfect joy will be his own consciousness, existence being then a rapture such as we never experienced. Then the bird is winged, the jewel is set in gold, the flower blooms, the harp receives all her strings, the heir is crowned. No wonder that Paul said, looking through and beyond heaven, "If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead." ”

“ I am glad, too, that my children live in a climate favorable to labor, and are not born to be waited upon. But I am ashamed of those who erect these things into an invidious comparison, and with a supercilious, reproachful spirit. God, who made us of one blood, has fixed the bounds of our habitations. I love these Southerners as I never loved new acquaintances before. But I prefer a state of society free from slavery: yet this makes me love those to whom God has given a South country, and imposed upon it a necessity, at present at least, to employ the African race as cultivators of the soil. ”

“ But if God ordains their early translation to heaven, what can earth afford them in the way of pleasure, granting the cup to be full and unalloyed, to be compared with fulness of joy? Fair maidens in heaven,—and O, how many of them has consumption gathered in!—fair maidens there are like the white flowers, which are sacred to peculiar times and scenes. How goodly must be their array! What a perpetual spring tide of vivacious joy and delight do they create in heaven. It is pleasant to have a child among them. ”

“ There is one thought that affords a ray of consolation,—they are better off, in either condition, than they once were in Africa. It is unquestionable to my mind that their relation to the whites, even in bondage, is, as the general rule, mercy to them, while they are on the same soil with the whites. Allow it to be theoretically wrong to be a slave,—it is, under existing circumstances, protection and a blessing, compared with any arrangement which has yet been proposed. I have not sufficient patience to argue with those, North or South, who contend for slavery as a normal condition. ”

“ All else which is dear to us on earth may seem changeful, or changed; the property may have disappeared, the home may have been broken tip, the plighted faith and love may have been recalled; the whole condition of life may have been altered: but we visit that burial spot, and there is permanence; that fast-anchored isle has defied the surges and roaring currents; the grave seems beautifully constant; it has not betrayed our confidence; it is not weary of its precious charge; it has kindly staid behind to permit and encourage our griefs when all else may have fled. ”

“ There has been with us for a long time at the North, in our political and religious atmosphere, a warm, foggy, unwholesome drizzle of weak, fanatical feeling, with now and then gusts of wind and scud,—a kind of weather most abhorred by mariners. But we hope that the wind is changing, and that "fair weather cometh out of the North." God will not suffer us to live long, we earnestly hope, in this condition of misunderstanding and hatred, for it would be contrary to his established laws that we should long continue to be one nation with such feelings toward each other. ”

“ As we look on one another, and see, in each other's beauty and glory, an image of our own; as we remember how we visited the graves of loved ones, and what thoughts and feelings we had there, and then see those graves yielding forms like Christ's; as we see the Saviour's person mirrored in ours on every side, and behold the living changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, there will be an exceeding great joy, such, perhaps, as the universe had never before known. ”

“ We are constantly told,—has she not heard it?—that the slave at the South is a mere "chattel," and that a slave-child is bought and sold as recklessly as a calf, and that a parting between a slave-mother and her children, sold and separated for life, is an occurrence as familiar as the separation of animals and their young, and no more regarded by slave-holders than divorcements in the barn-yard. This being so, it must follow that when a slave-babe dies, the only sorrow in the hearts of the white owners is such as they feel when a colt is kicked to death or a heifer is choked. ”

“ O man, if you have a child in heaven, think that, among the sweet influences of divine love, there probably is no more powerful motive to draw your affections towards God, than that glimpse which you sometimes seem to have of this child's face, on which heaven has traced its lineaments of peace and bliss; or that sudden whisper of a gentle, child-like voice, now and then heard by the ear of fancy, persuading you to be a Christian. Do not let the world, or shame, or procrastination, lead you to resist such efforts of almighty love to save you. ”