Anti-slavery Convention of American Women

“ All of us have some idea what slavery is: we have formed some faint conceptions of the horrors of a system based on irresponsible power, violence, and injustice; but to know what slavery is, we must see it worked out in practice—we must see the heart-strings severed one by one, and witness all the refinement of cruelty which is exercised on the body, soul, and mind of the enslaved. ”

“ We stand before the world as a nation of hypocrites, and you are equally concerned, as American citizens, to labor to bring your country to a sense of her crimes. You are equally concerned to do all that can be done, to arrest the progress of the spirit of colonization, which takes our countrymen from their native land without their consent, by giving them the cruel alternative of slavery or banishment, breaks up the tenderest ties of nature and casts [pg 23] them on a foreign soil. And what is our international slave trade, but compulsory colonization. ”

“ We are aware that few of our colored brethren and sisters are actively, or directly promoting the continuation of slavery; we mourn indeed that a single instance can be adduced, of one colored person betraying another into the fangs of those merciless wretches who go about seeking whom they may devour; we mourn, not because the act is more diabolical on account of the complexion, but because our enemies seize every such instance of moral delinquency, to prove that the people of color are lost to the feelings of humanity for each other. ”

“ We behold them manacled and guarded by officers armed with weapons of death—guiltless of crime and accused of none, but forced to prove that they are men and not beasts. We marvel, as we behold these reproachful scenes, that the God of Justice has held back his avenging sword.—"Thus saith the Lord—execute judgment in the morning, and deliver him that is spoiled out of the hand of the oppressor, lest my fury go out like fire that none can quench it, because of the evil of your doings." ”

“ We must not, therefore, compare the situation of slaves in the United States with that of the slaves of heathen Greece and Rome, where equal laws never existed, and where the beams of liberty and Christianity never shone; but to form a correct judgment of the miseries endured by our slaves, we must compare them with the laboring class of our population in the free states, and we may then comprehend the debasing influence of a system which produces such dreadful results as are exhibited on almost every Southern plantation, where the lash is the principal, if not the only stimulus. ”

“ Slavery is the master sin of our country; it is twined around the horns of the altar—it is couched beneath the table on which are laid the sacramental elements—it rises rampant in our pulpits—its spirit may be seen stalking with unblushing effrontery through almost every temple of benevolence, every seminary of learning, [2] every Church of God where the white and the colored are as carefully separated as though the one was washed and made white in the blood of the Lamb, and the other was an unclean thing, whose very touch was contamination. ”

“ We, therefore, deprecate the departure of every free colored American, unless impelled by a sense of duty, because it is injurious to the interests of the slave and contributes to foster in the bosoms of their white fellow-citizens that prejudice which Satan created and which he is now using as one of the most powerful engines to prevent the elevation of the free and the enfranchisement of the enslaved. ”

“ Our hearts have been filled with sorrow at the transactions which have lately disgraced the city of New York; the forcible seizure and consigning to cruel bondage native American citizens. In the emporium of our commerce, in a city filled with Bibles and with churches, we behold the revolting spectacle of rational and immortal beings, arraigned before their fellow men, not for any crimes which they have committed, but because they dare to call their vital breath their own, and to take possession of that body, soul, and mind, which their Creator gave them. ”

“ Shall we not then do as the Apostles did, shall we not in view of the two millions of heathen in our very midst, in view of the souls that are going down in an almost unbroken phalanx to utter perdition, continue in prayer and supplication that God will grant us the supplies of his Spirit to prepare us for that work which he has given us to do. Shall not the wail of the mother as she surrenders her only child to the grasp of the ruthless kidnapper, or the trader in human blood, animate our devotions. ”

“ Is it not the fear and the idolatry of man which makes so many of those who fill the sacred office of ministers of Jesus Christ stand dumb on the watch-tower; so many unclose their sacrilegious lips to stigmatize the God of Love as the founder of the system of American slavery—what but the deep corruption of the church could tempt her to cast over this bloody moloch her broidered garment, and try by snatching a few jewels to adorn her diadem from Ceylon and the Sandwich Islands, from Burmah, and from the Rocky Mountains, to turn away the public gaze from the leprosy which consumes her vitals. ”

“ On the rising generation depends in a great measure the success of that enterprise, which aims at establishing Christian and Republican equality among the citizens of these United States. Let us then labor to implant in the minds of our children a love for useful learning, to imbue them thoroughly with religious feeling, to train them to habits of thinking, of industry and economy, to lead them to the contemplation of noble and benevolent objects, that they may regard themselves as responsible beings upon whom high and holy duties devolve. ”

“ Let the language of every one amongst you be, "Oh my soul, come not thou into their secret, unto their assembly mine honor, be not thou united." Sometimes in these scenic representations, your "countrymen in chains" are held up to the scorn and derision of an unfeeling multitude; the poor slave is introduced to be the object of heartless mirth. ”

“ Had we not been blinded by interest and by prejudice, our reason might have taught us that as long as the republic of the U. S. is a mart where human flesh and souls of men are bought and sold, so long will European and American cupidity furnish human merchandise for this detestable commerce. Thousands of slaves have been introduced into the United States through the island of Cuba, since the slave trade was declared piracy by our national legislature. ”

“ But for the dignified opposition which you manifested—but for the developments which you made of the real designs and fearful consequences of colonization, your guilty country would probably have added to her manifold transgressions against the descendants of Africa, the transcendant crime of banishing from her shores those whom she has deeply injured, and whom she is bound by every law of justice and of mercy to cherish with peculiar tenderness. ”

“ Nor can we pass by unnoticed the noble conduct of our sister in Ohio, who, when her father proposed to bring her to the North, where she might pass for a white woman, and settle upon her a comfortable independence, replied that she would never forsake her people—that she would rather suffer with them than enjoy all the advantages he promised. We do homage to the virtue which preferred to endure affliction with the oppressed, rather than to bask in the sunshine of worldly prosperity and popular favor. ”

“ Nothing will contribute more to break the bondman's fetters, than an example of high moral worth, intellectual culture and religious attainments among the free people of color—living epistles known and read of all men—a standard of exalted piety, of dedication to the works of righteousness, of humble-mindedness, of Christian charity; to which abolitionists may confidently point, and ask those who are forging the manacles of hopeless servitude for our countrymen, what they can answer to the Judge of all the earth for thus robbing him of his immortal creatures ”

“ In contemplating the abolition of slavery, we feel that you are equally concerned with ourselves, and we entreat your co-operation, believing that you can and will labor in it as efficiently as any portion of the community. ”

“ You may examine with a philosophic and impartial eye, the baneful effect of all these influences upon our white population, and as you rise from under the unhallowed prejudice which now crushes you to the earth, remember the solemn responsibilities which rest upon you and keep yourselves unspotted from the world, that your praise may be of God and not of men. ”

“ Sacred history bears ample testimony to the learning of the Egyptians. "Solomon's wisdom excelled the wisdom of all the children of the East country and all the wisdom of Egypt." Even in our own country, under the oppressive system which slavery and prejudice have reared to crush the people of color, the superiority which occasionally shines out, notwithstanding all the disabilities by which we have surrounded them, proves beyond dispute that they are the gifted children of our Heavenly Father. ”

“ To the toil-worn slave, it will minister unspeakable consolation, to hear, while bending over the rice, or sugar, or cotton field, and writhing under the lash, that his friends at the North feel a sympathy so deep for his sufferings, that they cannot partake of the proceeds of his unrequited toil. ”

“ But although we believe that the accumulated wrongs of our colored friends are had in remembrance before God, and that he will assuredly visit this nation in judgment unless she repent, yet we entreat you in the name of the Lord Jesus, to forbear any attempts violently to rescue your brethren. Such attempts can only end in disappointment; they infuriate public sentiment still more against you, and furnish your blood-thirsty adversaries with a plausible pretext, to treat you with cruelty. ”

“ Things are estimated by comparison; and the man who is deprived of every natural, civil, and social right, while all around him are basking in the sunshine of freedom, must feel the fangs of slavery much more poignantly than the one who, though subjected to similar privations, beholds his lot but little below that of those who surround him. ”

“ We know, and we rejoice in the knowledge, that the gift of intellect is co-extensive with the human race, and that our brethren and sisters, who are writhing under the lash of worse than Egyptian taskmasters—whose minds are beclouded by ignorance and enfeebled by suffering, need only to have the same advantages which Europeans and their descendants have enjoyed, triumphantly to refute the unfounded calumny that they are inferior in the powers of intellect, and less susceptible of mental improvement. ”

“ May he strengthen us to pursue our holy purposes with the zeal of the Apostles and the spirit of the Martyrs, consecrating ourselves to this work of faith, and labor of love, "that we may be found in Christ, not having our own righteousness which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ—the righteousness which is of God by Faith." ”

“ A large proportion of you are obliged to obtain a subsistence by your daily labor; some of you are filling the responsible office of teachers, and it is of great consequence that you expend in the most judicious and profitable manner what is thus hardly earned, and that you set an example of Christian moderation and simplicity to your companions and your pupils.
Another reason for the practice of Christian economy in all your expenditures, is, that extravagance either in living or in apparel, has a deleterious influence on the poorer classes of our community, both colored and white ”

“ But for your virtuous and uncompromising hostility to the Colonization Society, a portion of our countrymen might never have been disabused of the idle and fallacious expectation, that this scheme would cure the moral evil of slavery, and put an end to the horrible slave traffic carried on on the coast of Africa. You saw that the root of the evil was in our own land, and that the expatriation [pg 22] of the best part of our colored population, so far from abolishing slavery, would render the condition of the enslaved tenfold more hopeless. ”

“ The sympathy we feel for our oppressed fellow-citizens who are enslaved in these United States, has called us together, to devise by mutual conference the best means for bringing our guilty country to a sense of her transgressions; and to implore the God of the oppressed to guide and bless our labors on behalf of our "countrymen in chains." ”

“ The right to the enjoyment of liberty is one of those perfect, inherent, and inalienable rights which pertain to the whole human race, and of which they can never be divested, except by an act of gross injustice." If we would rightly estimate the wretchedness in which the perpetration of this "act of gross injustice" has involved one sixth part of the population of Republican America, we must compare the condition of our slaves with that of the freemen of their own age and country. ”

“ We can readily believe this testimony to the physical sufferings of the slave: we apprehend these most easily, because all of us are alive to bodily pain, whilst few comparatively appreciate the mental and spiritual degradation [pg 4] to which our oppressed brethren are subjected; yet this is the most appalling feature of American bondage. Slavery seizes a rational and immortal being crowned by Jehovah with glory and honor, and drags him down to a level with the beasts that perish. ”