Page:Letters on the condition of the African race in the United States.djvu/21

Rh concern for the slave, may be classed among those erratic enthusiasts, that believe this world is to be converted to righteousness by a twist and a jerk. It is a great pity that their idiosyncrasies did not lead them, first, to wage a war against all the liars, thieves, murderers, and adulterers, in this sin-deluged world; and then, after they have accomplished the glorious work of making order out of all the confusion occasioned by the fall of Adam, after Ave have learned " to love God with all our hearts, and our neighbor as ourselves nothing will be easier than to get freedom, temporal and spiritual freedom, for the whole human race, that are now in bondage to their fellow-man, or are in the still more hopeless bondage to their own evil passions. "He that ruleth his own spirit," says the Bible, "is greater than he who taketh a city." And I am very sure, that the spirit of vain-glory, the desire to do some great thing, that induces the abolitionist to harden his heart against the miserable starving white emigrants, that surround his door in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, and then to expend his sensibility on our fat, healthy, happy slaves in the far off South, is a species of monomania, that is inherent in ambitious, but weak, unbalanced minds. If these said mob instigators would seek true Christian charity, and self abasement; if these Quixotic revolutionizes would strive to obtain that love to all of God's creatures, that is a divine gift; if they would be willing to do good in secret among all the pitiable objects of charity that are immediately thrown by Providence on their sympathies, I am very sure they would act more consistently as philanthropists, gain more of the confidence and respect of their neighbors, and realize more of the approbation of the Almighty, than if they expended every power of their mind and heart in stirring up the slaves to suspect, to hate, to fly from, or drench South Carolina in the blood of their masters.

I have just been conversing with the sons of Mr. Gorsuch, who, you know, was murdered a short time ago, near Philadelphia. They said, the first night they went in search of their fugitives, they were frustrated, and the second night they were attacked in the outskirt of the woods by eighty negroes, with pistols and clubs, three or four feet long, and as stout as a man's arm; that these negroes had been so excited by the abolitionists, that they were foaming at the mouth with fiendish passions; that they cried out to one another, "Kill them, kill them, murder them all." They aimed their blows with such deadly effect, that soon old Mr. Gorsuch fell a mangled corpse: and one of his sons, not far off, lay weltering in his own blood, utterly helpless: and when he asked a white man, standing near, who seemed to be in