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SLAVERY DESCRIBED BY
A NUMBER OF CONGRESS
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" To what depths of
degradation can slavery reduce the immortal mind.
It blots out the intellect, and reduces man, created in
the image of his God, to the level of the brutes.
In Alabama no one dare teach his slaves to read the Word
of God. It would subject him to punishment in the
penitentiary, were he to do it. Nor need we go to
Alabama to find such laws. If, Sir, you pass over
the river (Potomac) lying before our windows, and on its
southern bank attempt to kindle in the dormant intellect
of a slave the hope of a future life, by teaching him to
read the Scriptures, you will be liable to an
incarceration in the penitentiary. Yes, it s
regarded as a crime to teach a slave to read the
Bible in this Christian land - this land of
Sabbaths, and ministers, and Bibles, and slaves. . . . .
. . . What is slavery, and what are its effects? A
gentleman, once a member in the other end of the
Capitol, and a slaveholder, of accurate information,
some years since stated, that the average life of
slaves, after entering the sugar plantations, was only
five years, and upon the cotton plantations only seven
years. That is to say, they are driven so hard at
labour as to destroy the lives of the whole of them
every five and seven years upon an average. Now is
it not as much murder to destroy the life of our
fellow-man, by a torture of five or seven years, as it
would be to strike him down at a blow? Yea, is not
this prolonged torture a refinement in cruelty? I
have no time to refer to the licentiousness, or indeed
to the almost total obliteration of moral sentiment, to
be found not only among slaves, but among all
slaveholding communities.
"It is said, and I believe with perfect truth, to be no
unusual thing for slaveholders to sell their own
children as slaves. Brothers traffic in the bodies
of their fathers, sons, and daughters. Such crimes
have no names. Well might Wesley denounce
slavery as the sum of all villanies; for it is so in
fact."
Leeds Anti-slavery
Series. No. 2.
Sold by W. and F. G. CASH, 5,
Bishopsgate Street, London; and by JANE JOWETT, Friends'
Meeting Yard, Leeds, at 1s. 2. per 100.
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