The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus

by American Anti-Slavery Society

An official report of the Presbyterian Synod of South Carolina and Georgia, adopted at its session in Columbia, S.C., and published in the Charleston Observer of March 22, 1834, speaking of the slaves, says, "There are over two millions of human beings, in the condition of HEATHEN, and, in some respects, in a worse condition!" * * * "From long continued and close observation, we believe that their moral and religious condition is such, as that they may justly be considered the heathen of this Christian country, and will bear comparison with heathen in any country in the world." * * * "The negroes are destitute of the privileges of the gospel, and ever will be under the present state of things." Report, &c., p. 4.

A writer in the Church Advocate, published in Lexington, Ky., says, "The poor negroes are left in the ways of spiritual darkness, no efforts are being made for their enlightenment, no seed is being sown, nothing but a moral wilderness is seen, over which the soul sickens—the heart of Christian sympathy bleeds. Here nothing is presented but a moral waste, as extensive as our influence, as appalling as the valley of death."

The following is an extract of a letter from Bishop Andrew of the Methodist Episcopal Church, to Messrs. Garrit and Maffit, editors of the "Western Methodist," then published at Nashville, Tennessee.

"Augusta, Jan. 29, 1835.

"The Christians of the South owe a heavy debt to slaves on their plantations, and the ministers of Christ especially are debtors to the whole slave population. I fear a cry goes up to heaven on this subject against us; and how, I ask, shall the scores who have left the ministry of the Word, that they may make corn and cotton, and buy and sell, and get gain, meet this cry at the bar of God? and what shall the hundreds of money-making and money-loving masters, who have grown rich by the toil and sweat of their slaves, and left their souls to perish, say when they go with them to the judgment of the great day?"

"The Kentucky Union for the moral and religious improvement of the colored race,"—an association composed of some of the most influential ministers and laymen of Kentucky, says in a general circular to the religious public, "To the female character among the black population, we cannot allude but with feelings of the bitterest shame. A similar condition of moral pollution, and utter disregard of a pure and virtuous reputation, is to be found only without the pale of Christendom. That such a state of society should exist in a Christian nation, without calling forth any particular attention to its existence, though ever before our eyes and in our families, is a moral phenomenon at once unaccountable and disgraceful."

Rev. James A. Thome, a native of Kentucky, and still residing there, said in a speech in New York, May 1834, speaking of licentiousness among the slaves, "I would not have you fail to understand that this is a general evil. Sir, what I now say, I say from deliberate conviction of its truth; that the slave states are Sodoms, and almost every village family is a brothel. (In this, I refer to the inmates of the kitchen, and not to the whites.)"

A writer in the "Western Luminary," published in Lexington, Ky., made the following declaration to the same point in the number of that paper for May 7, 1835: "There is one topic to which I will allude, which will serve to establish the heathenism of this population. I allude to the UNIVERSAL LICENTIOUSNESS which prevails. Chastity is no virtue among them—its violation neither injures female character in their own estimation, or that of their master or mistress—no instruction is ever given, no censure pronounced. I speak not of the world. I SPEAK OF CHRISTIAN FAMILIES GENERALLY."

Rev. Mr. Converse, long a resident of Virginia, and agent of the Colonization Society, said, in a sermon before the Vt. C.S.—"Almost nothing is done to instruct the slaves in the principles and duties of the Christian religion. * * * The majority are emphatically heathens. * * Pious masters (with some honorable exceptions) are criminally negligent of giving religious instruction to their slaves. * * * They can and do instruct their own children, and perhaps their house servants; while those called "field hands" live, and labor, and die, without being told by their pious masters (?) that Jesus Christ died to save sinners."

The page is already so loaded with references that we forbear. For testimony from the mouths of slaveholders to the terrible lacerations and other nameless outrages inflicted on the slaves, the reader is referred to the number of the Anti-Slavery Record for Jan. 1837.