prints, and, running, read such signs as these, laid before them by
the men who rule the slaves: in their own acts and under their own
hands?
Do we not know that the worst deformity and ugliness of slavery are
at once the cause and the effect of the reckless license taken by
these freeborn outlaws? Do we not know that the man who has been
born and bred among its wrongs; who has seen in his childhood
husbands obliged at the word of command to flog their wives; women,
indecently compelled to hold up their own garments that men might
lay the heavier stripes upon their legs, driven and harried by
brutal overseers in their time of travail, and becoming mothers on
the field of toil, under the very lash itself; who has read in
youth, and seen his virgin sisters read, descriptions of runaway
men and women, and their disfigured persons, which could not be
published elsewhere, of so much stock upon a farm, or at a show of
beasts:- do we not know that that man, whenever his wrath is
kindled up, will be a brutal savage? Do we not know that as he is
a coward in his domestic life, stalking among his shrinking men and
women slaves armed with his heavy whip, so he will be a coward out
of doors, and carrying cowards’ weapons hidden in his breast, will
shoot men down and stab them when he quarrels? And if our reason
did not teach us this and much beyond; if we were such idiots as to
close our eyes to that fine mode of training which rears up such
men; should we not know that they who among their equals stab and
pistol in the legislative halls, and in the counting-house, and on
the marketplace, and in all the elsewhere peaceful pursuits of
life, must be to their dependants, even though they were free
servants, so many merciless and unrelenting tyrants?
What! shall we declaim against the ignorant peasantry of Ireland,
and mince the matter when these American taskmasters are in
question? Shall we cry shame on the brutality of those who
hamstring cattle: and spare the lights of Freedom upon earth who
notch the ears of men and women, cut pleasant posies in the
shrinking flesh, learn to write with pens of red-hot iron on the
human face, rack their poetic fancies for liveries of mutilation
which their slaves shall wear for life and carry to the grave,
breaking living limbs as did the soldiery who mocked and slew the
Saviour of the world, and set defenceless creatures up for targets!
Shall we whimper over legends of the tortures practised on each
other by the Pagan Indians, and smile upon the cruelties of
Christian men! Shall we, so long as these things last, exult above
the scattered remnants of that race, and triumph in the white
enjoyment of their possessions? Rather, for me, restore the forest
and the Indian village; in lieu of stars and stripes, let some poor
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feather flutter in the breeze; replace the streets and squares by
wigwams; and though the death-song of a hundred haughty warriors
fill the air, it will be music to the shriek of one unhappy slave.
On one theme, which is commonly before our eyes, and in respect of
which our national character is changing fast, let the plain Truth
be spoken, and let us not, like dastards, beat about the bush by
hinting at the Spaniard and the fierce Italian. When knives are
drawn by Englishmen in conflict let it be said and known: ‘We owe
this change to Republican Slavery. These are the weapons of
Freedom. With sharp points and edges such as these, Liberty in
America hews and hacks her slaves; or, failing that pursuit, her
sons devote them to a better use, and turn them on each other.’
CHAPTER XVIII – CONCLUDING REMARKS
THERE are many passages in this book, where I have been at some
pains to resist the temptation of troubling my readers with my own
deductions and conclusions: preferring that they should judge for
themselves, from such premises as I have laid before them. My only