Ebenezer Davies

“ Take another,—"A free negro may be arrested, and put in jail for 3 months, on suspicion of being a runaway; and if he is not able to prove his freedom in 12 months, he is to be sold as a slave TO PAY HIS JAIL FEES!" Are there not hundreds of free men, both black and white, who could not prove their freedom under such circumstances? Yet, for this crime, they are reduced to perpetual bondage by authority of Congress. And all this the North upholds!
Washington, the capital, thus governed, is but the great mart of the national man-trade. ”

“ I would rather see it, if need be, showing the wild rough strength, the naturalness and fervour of the extreme West, equally prepared to liquor with a stranger or to fight with him, than to see it clad in the gay but filthy garments of the saloons of Paris. Nay more, much as every right mind abhors and detests such things, I would sooner behold our literature holding in one hand the murderous Bowie knife, and in the other the pistol of the duellist, than to see her laden with the foul secrets of a London hell, or the gaming-houses of Paris. ”

“ Writers on slavery, however they differed on other points, were all agreed on this,—that the withholding of the Sabbath from the slaves in the West Indies, together with the other cruelties inflicted upon them, had materially shortened their lives! (How telescopic, by the way, are our views with regard to evils at a distance! West India slavery never wore the hideous features which slavery presents in the Southern States of America. Slavery even in Cuba, with all its horrors, is far milder than in the United States.) ”

“ Delaware, the smallest of all the States except Rhode Island, we entirely crossed. A few days before, Delaware had well nigh done herself great honour. Her House of Representatives carried, by a majority, a vote for the abolition of slavery within her boundaries; but the measure was lost in her Senate by a majority of one or two. The State legislature will not meet again for two years. All parties are confident that the measure will then be triumphantly carried through. In America, however, the abolition of slavery in any State does not always mean freedom to the slaves. ”

“ While I was taking a last glance at my trunks in the luggage-van, at the Baltimore station, about half-a-dozen very clean and respectable coloured ladies came up, and made for the said van as a matter of course. It was the only accommodation that would be allowed them, though they paid the same fare as other people! They were ladies to whom any gentleman in England would have been proud to resign a seat. But in the land of equality, they were consigned to the cold, dark, and dirty regions of the luggage-van. ”

“ And the author of "Cincinnati in 1841," in speaking of those very schools from which these fair children were excluded, says, "These schools are founded not merely on the principle that all men are free and equal, but that all men's children are so likewise; and that, as it is our duty to love our neighbour as ourselves, it is our duty to provide the same benefits and blessings to his children as to our own. These establishments result from the recognition of the fact also, that we have all a common interest—moral, political, and pecuniary—in the education of the whole community." ”

“ O Christian! will you send me back?
"I seek a home where man is man,
If such there be upon this earth,—
To draw my kindred, if I can,
Around its free though humble hearth.
The hounds are baying on my track;
O Christian! will you send me back?"
March 7.—This being the Sabbath, we went in the morning to worship at Mr. Boynton's church. The day was very wet, and the congregation small. His text was, "Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned." ”

“ There is no national system of education in America. Congress does not interfere in the matter, except in the "Territories" before they become "States." The States of the Union are so many distinct Republics, and, in the matter of education, as in all their internal affairs, are left entirely to take their own measures. With regard to education, no two States act precisely alike. If we glance at the States of Massachusetts, New York, and Ohio, we shall, however, discover the three great types of what in this respect generally prevails throughout the States. ”

“ This clause pledges the North, not only to refuse an asylum to the fugitive slave, but also to deliver him up to his unrighteous and cruel task-master,—a deed which the law of God expressly condemns, and which the best impulses of our nature repudiate with loathing and contempt. The article before us constitutes all the free States of the Union a slave-hunting ground for the Southern aristocracy. Talk of the game laws of England! Here is a game law infinitely more unjust and oppressive. ”

“ May not these "snags" serve to remind us of certain characters and circumstances with which we meet on the voyage of life? Who cannot call to mind many snags—men, rugged, stubborn, and contentious,—snags by all means to be avoided? D'Israeli was the snag of Peel—Russia was the snag of Napoleon—Slavery is the snag of the Evangelical Alliance.
On board our steamer was a fine black young man, who acted as barber, waiter, and man-of-all-work. Curious to know whether he was a slave or not, I requested my friend from Maine to sound him. "To whom do you belong?" said the Baptist. ”

“ Darkness had set in when we approached it; yet the numerous lights on shore, rising row above row to a great elevation, gave it a lively and interesting appearance. But, alas! Natchez also is a great slave market; and I can never think of it without remembering the sufferings of poor Mary Brown. Let me narrate her painful story. It may waken in some breast a feeling of sympathy for the American slave.
Mary Brown, a coloured girl, was the daughter of free parents in Washington city—the capital of the freest nation under heaven! ”

“ It is always worth knowing how we appear to the eyes of others, and what impression the first sight of us is apt to produce; and this knowledge none can communicate but the stranger, the tourist, the passer-by. What faults and failings soever we may have in England, and their "name is legion," by all means let them be unsparingly exposed by every foreign tourist that treads upon our soil. Let us be satirized, ridiculed, laughed at, caricatured, anything, so that we may be shamed out of all that is absurd and vicious in our habits and customs. ”

“ However they may be settled, the great fact will remain essentially the same, that the two continents of this Western Hemisphere shall yet bear up a stupendous social, political, and religious structure, wrought by the American mind, moulded and coloured by the hues of American thought, and animated and united by an American soul. ”

“ Think of a Sabbath in New Orleans! Curious to know how people did really pray and preach, with slavery and slave-trading in their vilest forms around them, I set off in search of the "First Presbyterian Church." It is a beautiful building; seldom, if ever, had I seen a place of worship the exterior of which I liked so much. Being a quarter of an hour too soon, I had opportunity for some preliminary researches. Wishing to see whether there was a "Negro Pew," I went into the gallery, and took a seat on the left side of the organ. The "church" I found as beautiful inside as out. ”

“ Let him be ever so skilled in mechanics, up starts prejudice, and says, 'I won't work in the shop if you do.' Here he is scourged by prejudice, and has to go back, and sink down to some of the employments which white men leave for the most degraded. He hears of the death of a child from home, and he goes in a stage or a steam-boat. His money is received, but he is scourged there by prejudice. If he is sick, he can have no bed, he is driven on deck: money will not buy for him the comforts it gets for all who have not his complexion. ”

“ When therefore these various influences have been thoroughly wrought into the national soul, there will be such a correspondence between man and the works of God about him, that our music, our poetry, our eloquence, our all, shall be our own, individual and peculiar, like the Amazon and the Andes, the Mississippi and Niagara, alone in their strength and glory. ”

“ The United States pledge themselves to the observance of the obligation; but the territory which they at present occupy was formerly secured to them by the most solemn oaths of Anglo-American faith. The American Government does not, indeed, rob them of their land, but it allows perpetual incursions to be made upon them. In a few years the same white population which now flocks around them, will track them to the solitudes of the Arkansas: they will then be exposed to the same evils, without the same remedies ”

“ She is a woman of a strong mind and great piety, and a thorough hater of slavery and oppression in all their forms. Her own principles she endeavoured to instil into the minds of her sons, sparing no efforts to fit them for acting a useful and honourable part in society. William was brought up to the law, and Evan to commerce. And now, in the evening of her days, the pious old Welsh-woman has the gratification of seeing Evan an enterprising and successful merchant in New York, while William enjoys the highest honour that his fellow-citizens of Ohio can confer upon him! ”

“ As a minister, I have been called to pass often up and down the North River in steam-boats. Many a night I have walked the deck, and not been allowed to lie down in a bed. Prejudice would even turn money to dross when it was offered for these comforts by a coloured man. Thus prejudice scourges us from the table; it scourges us from the cabin, from the stage-coach, from the bed. Wherever we go, it has for us bolts, bars, and rods. ”

“ It leads thoughtful and devout men to ask, whether, when the State, assuming to be the instructor of its subjects, establishes schools, and puts Protestant Bibles, or any other, or none into them by law, they have not thenceforth Protestantism, Popery, or Infidelity so far by law established; and whether it is not better that the State should restrict itself to its proper function as the minister of justice, leaving secular instruction, like religious, to the spontaneous resources of the people. ”

“ Measures for the abolition of slavery in any part of America do not arise from sympathy with the negro, and from a wish to improve his condition and promote his happiness, but from aversion to his presence, or perhaps from a conviction that the system of slavery is expensive and impolitic. ”

“ Not so act the Americans. They indulge in the grossest licentiousness with coloured women, but would shudder at the idea of marrying one of them; and, instead of giving any property to their coloured offspring, they do not scruple to sell them as slaves! Had I gone to the Roman Catholic cathedral in that city, which is attended chiefly by the French and their descendants, I should have found no negro pew, but persons of all colours intermingled together in religious observances. ”

“ From individual instances like this, one may form a clearer notion of the internal slave-trade of America. Thousands every year are thus brought down the Mississippi to supply the Natchez and New Orleans markets. "Those who are transported down the Mississippi," says a manual of American slavery, "are stowed away on the decks of steam-boats, males and females, old and young, usually chained, subject to the jeers and taunts of the passengers and navigators, and often by bribes or threats, or by the lash, made subject to abominations not to be named." ”

“ Plummer? It was Dr. Plummer late of Richmond, in Virginia. "Richmond," says Dr. Reed, "is still the great mart of slavery; and the interests of morality and religion suffer from this cause. Several persons of the greatest wealth, and therefore of the greatest consideration in the town, are known slave-dealers; and their influence, in addition to the actual traffic, is of course unfavourable. The sale of slaves is as common, and produces as little sensation, as that of cattle. It occurs in the main street, and before the door of the party who is commissioned to make the sale." ”

“ In the afternoon of my first Sabbath at Baltimore I found, after much inquiry, a congregation of coloured people, who were some sort of Methodists. My wife and I were the only white people in the place. We were treated with great politeness, and put, not in a pew apart by ourselves, but in one of the best places they could find, in the very midst of the congregation. A serious-looking coloured man opened the service, with great propriety of manner and expression. He was the regular pastor. A black man, a stranger as I understood, preached. ”

“ Thus the same law prevents the slaves of the South from coming to the Northern States, and drives those of the North to the South. The want of free hands is felt in a State in proportion as the number of slaves decreases. But, in proportion as labour is performed by free hands, slave labour becomes less productive; and the slave is then a useless or an onerous possession, whom it is important to export to those Southern States where the same competition is not to be feared. ”

“ Wisconsin was organized but twelve years ago, and has now a population of not less than 200,000. One portion of its territory, 33 miles by 30, which ten years before was an unbroken wilderness, numbered even in 1846 87,000 inhabitants; and the emigration to the "Far West" is now greater than ever. A giant is therefore growing up there, who will soon be able and disposed to rule the destinies of the United States. The Church of Rome is straining every nerve to have that giant in her own keeping, and already shouts the song of triumph. ”