Page:Letters on the condition of the African race in the United States.djvu/23

Rh slavery;—yes, he who possessed perfect wisdom and perfect love to all of God's creatures, never was known to interfere by word or deed with civil government. No. His mission was to preach the absolute necessity of holiness, to both bond and free. The master and the slave have their own relative duties clearly laid down in the Bible; and if the abolitionist would strive to teach the poor negro to prepare for a glorious immortality, by mortifying all their evil and corrupt affections, and by doing their every duty in the station in which God has placed them, they would then, indeed, be apostles of the age of progress, and deserve to be classed among the true Christian friends of Africa's benighted hosts.

Slavery or freedom for the slaves is not an open question under the present Constitution of these United States. The North must deliver to us our fugitives from labor, or must be guilty of treason against the known laws of the country. The Southern men entered this confederacy with their slaves. And so long as this Union is to hold together, so long the North has no right to decide for us, whether slavery or unlicensed freedom is best for our poor, ignorant, dependent slaves. Even should this Union be dissolved, the Southern men would not give up their property, and the North would have to wage a war of extermination against every white man in the Southern States, before any such fanatical schemes could be carried out, No sane man asks a numerous population to give up every cent of their property, and become beggars, for the sake of an impracticable abstract principle of freedom. Such absurd moon-struck theorists, not to say fools, would employ their time to a more useful purpose, by striving to find out "how many spirits can dance upon the point of a needle."

We never even can be made to believe, that their pretended love of universal freedom, is not mere canting hypocrisy, until they themselves do what they require us to do; that is, give up all their property. Yes, sell all their merchandize, and deliver up all their bank stock, and every cent they own, to the cause of liberty; the Quixotic cause of freeing our slaves. I, for one, am ready at any moment, to remove the stumbling-block of slavery out of my Northern brother's way, if he will give me the means to obtain my daily bread; that is, if he will give me six or seven hundred dollars a piece for every slave I own, and afterwards promise me to see that, as a freeman, he is as well taken care of as he was when I owned him as property. St. Paul said, "that if meat caused his brother to offend, he would eat no meat as long as the world lasted;" and, in the spirit of this beautiful sentiment, I am sure that I can promise for all real Christians