Page:The Under-Ground Railroad.djvu/72

52 that needs no evidence; it is a self-evident truth, founded in the very nature of man, every way congenial to the nature of things "that all men are created free." A free will, free mind, free use of his intellectual faculties, yet the Slave cannot will himself practically free; his will is subject to the will of his master. He cannot will to have a wife, unless it is the will of his master, and should the master he willing, he has no will in living with her, and their continuing together rests entirely on the will and interest of the owner. He has no will in the education of his children; his intellectual powers are dormant and stultified; his moral perceptibilities blunted by not being educated. The white man can be educated for a lawyer or judge, a senator, a minister, a president, &c. The black man is educated only as a "hewer of wood and a drawer of water." The children of the latter are sold to pay for the education of the former, and, strange to say, they are even sold to contribute towards evangelizing the world. I remember seeing, during my youthful days, in the State of South Carolina, a girl sold to contribute to a mission in China. Is this what the Americans mean by all men being, created free? "Where is their equality? The term Slave indicates inequality,—4,000,000 are in the prison-house of bondage this day; deprived of their natural rights and privileges as citizens, as men, as Christians, and as