Page:An epistle to the clergy of the southern states, Grimké, 1836.djvu/18

18 patriotic duty, to nerve every faculty of your minds to the investigation of this important subject, and let not the united voices of your mothers, wives, daughters and kindred have sounded in your ears in vain."

We are cheered with the belief that mnny knees at the South are bent in prayer for the success of the Abolitionists. We believe, and we rejoice in the belief that the statement, made by a Southern Minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church, at the session of the New York Annual Conference, in June of this year, is true; "Don't give up Abolitionism—don't bow down to slavery. You have thousands at the South who are secretly praying for you."—In a subsequent conversation with the same individual, he stated. That the South is not that unit of which the pro-slavery party boast—there is a diversity of opinion among them in reference to slavery, and the alone suppresses the free expression of sentiment. That there are thousands who believe slaveholding to be sinful, who secretly wish the abolitionists success, and believe God will bless their efforts. That the ministers of the gospel and eclesiastical bodies who indiscriminately denounce the abolititionists, without doing any thing themselves to remove slavery, have, not the thanks of thousands at the South, but on the contrary are viewed as taking sides with slave holders and recreant to the principles of their own profession. Zion's Watchman, November, 1836.

The system of slavery is necessarily cruel. The lust of dominion inevitably produces hardness of heart, because the state of mind which craves unlimited power, such as slavery confers, involves a desire to use that power, and although I know there are exceptions to the exercise of barbarity on the bodies of slaves, I maintain that there can be no exceptions to the exercise of the most soul-withering cruelty on the minds of the enslaved. All around is the mighty ruin of intellect, the appalling spectacle of the down-trodden image of God. What has caused this mighty wreck? A voice deep as hell and loud as the thunders of heaven replies, ! Both worlds of spirits echo and re-echo, And yet American slavery is palliated, is defended by slave-holding ministers at the South and their coadjutors at the North. Perhaps all of you would shrink with horror from a proposal to revive the Inquisition and give to Catholic superstition the power to enforce in this country its wicked system of bigotry and despotism. But I believe if all the horrors of the Inquisition and all the cruelty and oppression exerecised by the Church of Rome, could be fully and fairly brought to view and compared with the details of slavery in the United States, the abominations of Catholicism would not surpass those of slavery, while the victims of the latter are ten fold more numerous.

But it is urged again and again, that slavery has been entailed upon us by our ancestors. We speak of this with a degree of self-complacency which seems to intimate that we would not do the deeds of our fathers. So to speak, argues an utter want of principle, as well as an utter ignorance of duty, because as soon as we perceive the iniquity of that act by which we inherit, we should surrender to the rightful owner, viz, the slave himself, a right which although legally vested in us, by the "unrighteous decrees" of our country, is vested in the slave