Henry Box Brown

“ It is well known that under the system of Slavery, the three great blessings of republicanism are denied to a large portion of our citizens. These are, freedom of the press, of speech and of locomotion. And will we allow ourselves to be deprived of what even Europe's despotic kings have been bestowing upon their subjects? Are we more base and abject in our submission to the South, than are the oppressed millions of the old world, in their subjection to their kingly oppressors? O what falsifiers of our own professions, and truants to our own dearly prized principles, we are! ”

“ Suffice it to say, that no slave has the least certainty of being able to retain his wife or her husband a single hour; so that the slave is placed under strong inducements not to form a union of love, for he knows not how soon the chords wound around his heart would be snapped asunder, by the hand of the brutal slave-dealer. Northern people sustain slavery, knowing that it is a system of perfect licentiousness, and yet go to church and boast of their purity and holiness!
On this plantation, the slaves were never allowed to attend church, but managed their religious affairs in their own way. ”

“ For what other earthly purpose is the army of the United States continued in existence, but to watch the bidding of the monster Slavery, and be ready to fly at a moment's warning to her assistance, in case the least attempt should be made by their victims to regain their freedom? That this is a true statement, may be seen from the fact, that all our wars for the last thirty-five years, have been waged in behalf of Slavery, and even our last war with Great Britain, is attributed by many persons to the demands of the slave power. It is certain, that no war will ever be allowed by the South. ”

“ If there is any one thing which operates as an impetus to the slave in his toilsome labors aud buoys him up, under all the hardships of his severe lot, it is this hope of future freedom, which lights up his soul and cheers his desolate heart in the midst of all the fearful agonies of the varied scenes of his slave life, as the soul of the tempest-tossed mariner is stayed from complete despair, by the faint glimmering of the far-distant light which the kindness of man has placed in a lighthouse, so as to be perceived by him at a long distance. ”

“ Many persons deprecate our plan, for fear of a civil war; and terrific ideas of rivers of blood rolling across our fields, and piles of bones heaped on our shores, startle them in their slumbers, as the rustling of a leaf fills the slaveholder’s heart with fear. In the first place, how very absurd is this idea of a civil war being the result of disunion. Can any one seriously urge it, as an objection to this movement? Look at the vast extent of territory open to the incursions of an enemy, if the North should withdraw from the South. ”

“ Marriage was not a thing of personal convenience with me, to be cast aside as a worthless garment, whenever the slaveholder’s will required it; but it{57} was a sacred institution binding upon me, as long as the God who had “joined us together,” refrained from untying the nuptial knot. What! leave the wife of my bosom for another! and while my heart was leaping from its abode, to pour its strong affections upon the kindred soul of my devoted partner, could I receive a stranger, another person to my embrace, as if the ties of love existed only in the presence of the object loved! ”

“ It is not a reform in our government that we need, but a revolution—an overthrow of the present one, and the establishment of a new one. Supposing a few individuals should be hung as traitors, would not that create a sympathy for us among the governments of the old world? and would not the universal voice of all civilized nations cry out against our immolation? Let but as many individuals unite, as signed the famous manifesto of our fathers, and armed with their Spartan spirit, pledge our lives and fortunes to the accomplishment of this end! ”

“ We love our friends more than white people love theirs, for we risk more to save them from suffering. Many of our number who have escaped from bondage ourselves, have jeopardized our own liberty, in order to release our friends, and sometimes we have been retaken and made slaves of again, while endeavoring to rescue our friends from slavery’s iron jaws.
But does not the slave love his friends! ”

“ The Northern people have it in their power to-day, to cause all this suffering of which I have been speaking to cease, and to cause one loud and triumphant anthem of praise to ascend from the millions of panting, bleeding slaves, now stretched upon the plains of Southern oppression; and yet they talk of our being destitute of fecling. "O shame, where is thy blush!"
My father and mother were left on the plantation, and I was taken to the city of Richmond, to work in a tobacco manufactory, owned by my master's son William, who now became my only master. ”

“ My tale is not, therefore, one of horrid inflictions of the lash upon my naked body; of cruel starvings and of insolent treatment; but is the very best representation of slavery which can be given; therefore, reader, allow me to inform you, as you, for aught I know, may be one of those degraded mortals who fancy that if no blows are inflicted upon the slave’s body, and a plenty of “bread and bacon” is dealed out to him, he is therefore no sufferer, and slavery is not a cruel institution; allow me to inform you, that I did not escape from such deprivations. ”

“ Ye northern pro-slavery men, do you regard this as robbery, or not? The whole of this man’s earnings had been robbed from him during his entire life, except simply his coarse food and miserable clothing, the whole expense of which, for a plantation slave, does not exceed twenty dollars a year. This is one reason why I think every slaveholder will go to hell; for my Bible teaches me that no thief shall enter heaven; and I know every slaveholder is a thief; and I rather think you would all be of my opinion if you had ever been a slave. ”

“ Are not our and the slave's grievances more unendurable than were their wrongs? A new government is what we want; and the sound should go forth from all these free hills, echoing across the plains of the far distant West, that New England and the whole North, are ready to do batile with the myrmidons of the slave power, not with the sword of steel, but with the spirit of patient submission to robbery and death, in defence of our principles. ”

“ If slavery is abolished, no one can deny that our trade, so important to Northern men, and for which they are ready to barter the welfare of three millions of human beings, would be materially increased; but for one I care not, whether this will be the case or not. I cannot, I will not argue this question. It is a sin against the Holy Ghost, to dream of balancing the matter in this way. Northern men, you are too much actuated by this spirit of Avarice! You must be converted from this accursed love for gold; for it will sink you into the lowest degradation of a life afar from Deity. ”

“ A slave owes to his master and all his family, "respect without bounds and absolute obedience." How tallies this with the unalterable law of Jehovah, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me?" Does not the system of slavery effectually shut out from the slave's heart, all true knowledge of the eternal Ged, and doom him to grope his perilous way, amid the thick darkness of unenlightened heathenism, although he dwells in a land professing much religion, and an entire freedom from the superstitions of paganism? ”

“ Shall not we be as willing to sacrifice our property and lives, as were our ancestors? Did not John Hancock hand the keys of his stores and dwelling to the authorities of the city, saying to them, "this is all of my property, but if the good of Boston requires its destruction, I freely yield in to you?" To pay taxes is to support the government, under which we live, for without this support it could not exist. These taxes are not paid of course directly, but still we eat, drink, and wear those things, on which a duty is paid, which gives the general government all its power. ”

“ It was as if the heavens themselves had fallen upon me, and the everlasting hills of God’s erecting, like an avalanche, had come rolling over my head! And what was it? “Your wife and smiling babes are gone; in prison they are locked, and to-morrow’s sun will see them far away from you, on their way to the distant South!” Pardon the utterance of my feelings here, reader, for surely a man may feel, when all that he prizes on earth is, at one fell stroke, swept from his reach! ”

“ O, to talk of our not having feelings for our friends, is to mock that Being who has created us in his own image, and implanted deep in every human bosom, a gushing fount of tender sensibilities, which no life of sin can ever fully erase. Talk of our not having feelings, and then calmly look on the scene described as taking place when my master died! Have you any feeling? Does this recital arouse those sympathetic feelings in your bosom which you make your boast of? How can white people have hearts of tenderness, and allow such scenes to daily transpire at the South? ”

“ Robbery, if committed by a bird of prey, the American eagle, is to be patiently submitted to, and indeed we call it but the tickling of an affectionate friend or child; but let the valiant lion of Old England take the value of a pin's point, or a few old pine trees and worthless rocks from us, and how the welkin rings with the sound of our abhorrence of such depredations. We are like the slaveholder, spoken of in our friend's narrative, who told the slaves it was a crime to steal from him, but none to rob his neighbors, because he reaped the benefits of the theft. ”

“ Whatever may be said of religion, it is true that God can never approve of any person, in league with slaveholders; for a just God is forever opposed to all forms of robbery and oppression. If God’s favor then is of any value, flee, I beseech thee, to the arms of liberty, and be encircled by her protecting power; so that all approach to Slavery may be dreaded by thee, as an angel dreads the polluting touch of sin. ”

“ What is a civil war of a few years’ continuance, in comparison to the seven years’ war we waged with Great Britain? Then our resources were limited, our treasury light, and we were only three millions strong. But now, we abound in resources, have become plethoric on account of our riches, and are twelve millions strong, while our enemy is less than half that number. We coped with twenty millions of British subjects, when we numbered but three millions, can we not now with twelve millions cope with five? Then has our glory departed indeed, and we are the veriest slaves in existence. ”

“ I am sometimes told. “You get used to these things; it would not do for us to experience them, but you are not constituted as we are;” to which I reply, that a slave’s friends are all he possesses that is of value to him. He cannot read, he has no property, he cannot be a teacher of truth, or a politician; he cannot be very religious, and all that remains to him, aside from the hope of freedom, that ever present deity, forever inspiring him in his most terrible hours of despair, is the society of his friends. ”

“ Slavery, and slavery abettors, seize hold of these tender scions, and cut and prune them away from both tree and arbor, as remorselessly as a gardener cuts down the briars and thorns which disturb the growth of his fair plants; but all humane, and every virtuous man, must instinctively recoil from such transactions, as they would from soul murder, or from the commission of some enormous deed of villany.
Reader, in the light of these scenes you may behold, as in a glass, your true character. Refined and delicate you may pretend to be, and may pass yourself off as a pure and virtuous person ”

“ More devoutly do we render homage to our god, Slavery, than the most pious of us adore the God of heaven, which proves that we are a very religious people, worshipping, not crocodiles, leeks and onions, snakes, and images of wood and stone, but a god, whose service is infinitely more disgusting than that of any heathen idol, but one who pays us well, for our obeisance, as we imagine. ”

“ I believe in a hell, where the wicked will forever dwell, and knowing the character of slaveholders and slavery, it is my settled belief, as it was while I was a slave, even though I was treated kindly, that every slaveholder will infallibly go to that hell, unless he repents. I do not believe in the religion of the Southern churches, nor do I perceive any great difference between them, and those at the North, which uphold them. ”

“ Far, far away, in Carolina’s swamps are they now, toiling beneath the scorching rays of the hot sun, with no husband’s voice to soothe the hardships of my wife’s lot, and no father’s kind look to gladden the heart of my disconsolate little ones. [8]
I call upon you, Sons of the North, if your blood has not lost its bright color of liberty, and is not turned to the blackened gore which surrounds the slaveholder’s polluted hearts, to arise in your might, and demand the liberation of the slaves. ”

“ So with the slave, only that he knows his chances of escape are exceedingly small, while you may very likely outlive the storm.
To this terrible apprehension we are all constantly subject. To-day, master may smile lovingly upon us, and the sound of the cracking whip may be hushed, but the dread uncertainty of our future fate still hangs over us, and to-morrow may witness a return of all the elements of fearful strife, as we emphatically “know not what a day may bring forth.” ”

“ Great Britain tried our fathers, accused of crime, away from their homes, across the waters of the ocean, and we call it a great oppression; but let one of our sons be guilty of an act in violation of Southern law, or be even suspected of it, and there is no law by which he can be tried. All law is trampled under foot, and he is doomed to waste away his life, in a gloomy prison, or to be whipped almost to death. ”

“ It is not my purpose to descend deeply into the dark and noisome caverns of the hell of slavery, and drag from their frightful abode those lost spirits who haunt the souls of the poor slaves, daily and nightly with their frightful presence, and with the fearful sound of their terrific instruments of torture; for other pens far abler than mine have effectually performed that portion of the labor of an exposer of the enormities of slavery. Slavery, like the shield discovered by the knights of olden time, has two diverse sides to it ”

“ Under the elating influence of freedom’s inspiring sound, men will labor much harder, than when forced to perform unpleasant tasks, the accomplishment of which will be of no value to themselves; but while the slave is held as such, it is difficult for him to feel as he would feel, if he was a free man, however light may be his tasks, and however kind may be his master. The lash is still held above his head, and may fall upon him, even if its blows are for a long time withheld. ”

“ Who can trace the workings of a slave mother’s soul, as she counts over the hours, the departure of which, she almost knows, will rob her of her darling children, and consign them to a fate more horrible than death’s cold embrace! ”

“ Now will any sensible person assert that five millions of Southerners, allowing all her white population to be in favor of Slavery, with an intestine foe, ready to spring upon her, as soon as the last chance of freedom presents itself, will be in danger of fighting twelve millions of free Northerners, who can call to their aid all these, and numerous other allies? Why, the idea is preposterous, and none but an insane man, can seriously entertain it. Who would fight the North, if war should be declared? At the first sound of the trumpet of war, every slave would be instantly free ”

“ Sympathize with the three millions of crushed and mangled ones who this day pine in cruel bondage, and arouse yourself to action in their behalf! This you will do, if you are not traitors to your God and to humanity. Aid not in placing in high offices, baby-stealers and women-whippers; and if these wicked men, all covered with the clotted gore of their mangled victims, come among you, scorn the idea of bowing in homage to them, whatever may be the character of their claims to your regard. No matter, if they are called presidents of your nation, still utterly refuse to honor them ”