Page:An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans.djvu/146

132 beginning to end, is a matter of mercy. They have described the Middle Passage, with its gags, fetters, and thumbscrews, as "the happiest period of a negro's life"; they say they do the slaves a great charity in bringing them from barbarous Africa to a civilized and Christian country; and on the plantation, under the whip of the driver, the negroes are so happy, that a West India planter publicly declared he could not look upon them, without wishing to be himself a slave.

In the speech above referred to, we are told, that as to any political interference, "the slave States are foreign States. We can alienate their feelings until they become foreign enemies; or, on the other hand, we can conciliate them until they become allies and auxiliaries in the sacred cause of emancipation."

But so long as the South insist that slavery is unavoidable, and say they will not tolerate any schemes tending to its abolition—and so long as the North take the necessity of slavery for an unalterable truth, and put down any discussions, however mild and candid, which tend to show that it may be done away with safety—so long as we thus strengthen each other's hands in evil, what remote hope is there of emancipation? If by political interference is meant hostile interference, or even a desire to promote insurrection, I should at once pronounce it to be most wicked; but if by political interference is meant the liberty to investigate this subject, as other subjects are investigated—to inquire into what has been done, mid what may be done—I say it is our sacred duty to do it. To enlighten public opinion is the best way that has yet been discovered for the removal of national evils; and slavery is certainly a national evil.

The Southern States, according to their own evidence, are impoverished by it; a great amount of wretchedness and crime inevitably follows in its train; the prosperity of the North is continually checked by it; it promotes feelings of rivalry between the States; it separates our interests; makes our councils discordant; threatens the destruction of our government; and disgraces us in the eyes of the world. I have often heard Americans who had been abroad, declare that nothing embarrassed