"Most fervent are our daily prayers, breathed in the sincerity of woes unspeakable; most ardent are the imbittered aspirations of our afflicted spirits, that thus it may be in deed and in truth. Although we are prisoners in a foreign land, although we are far, very far from our native homes, although our harps are hung upon the weeping willows of slavery, nevertheless America is still preferred above our chiefest joy, and the last wish of our departing souls shall be her peace, her prosperity, her liberty forever. On this day, the day of festivity and gladness, remember us, your unfortunate brethren, late members of the family of freedom, now doomed to perpetual confinement. Pray, earnestly pray, that our grievous calamities may have a gracious end. Supplicate the Father of mercies for the most wretched of his offspring. Beseech the God of all consolation to comfort us by the hope of final restoration. Implore the Jesus whom you worship to open the house of the prison. Entreat the Christ whom you adore to let the miserable captives go free.
"Reverend and Respected,—
"It is not your prayers alone, although of much avail, which we beg on the bending knee of sufferance, galled by the corroding fetters of slavery. We conjure you by the bowels of the mercies of the Almighty, we ask you in the name of your Father in heaven, to have compassion on our miseries, to wipe away the crystallized tears of despondence, to hush the heartfelt sigh of distress; and by every possible exertion of godlike charity, to restore us to our wives, to our children, to our friends, to our God and to yours.
"Is it possible that a stimulus can be wanting? Forbid it, the example of a dying, bleeding, crucified Savior! Forbid it, the precepts of a risen, ascended, glorified Immanuel! Do unto us in fetters, in bonds, in dungeons, in danger of the pestilence, as ye yourselves would wish to be done unto. Lift up your voices like a trumpet; cry aloud in the cause of humanity, benevolence, philosophy; eloquence can never be directed to a nobler purpose; religion never employed in a more glorious cause; charity never meditate a more exalted flight. O that a live coal from the burning altar of celestial beneficence might warm the hearts of the sacred order, and impassion the feelings of the attentive hearer!
"Gentlemen of the Clergy in New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia,—
"Your most zealous exertions, your unremitting assiduities, are pathetically invoked. Those States in which you minister unto the Church of God gave us birth. We are as aliens from the commonwealth of America. We are strangers to the temples of our God. The strong arm of infidelity hath bound us with two chains; the iron one of slavery and the sword of death are entering our very souls. Arise, ye ministers of the Most High, Christians of every denomination, awake unto charity! Let a brief, setting forth our situation, be published throughout the continent. Be it read in every house of worship, on Sunday, the 8th of February. Command a preparatory discourse to be delivered on Sunday, the 15th of February, in all churches whithersoever this petition or the brief may come; and on Thursday, the 19th of February, complete the godlike work. It is a day which assembles a continent to thanksgiving. It is a day which calls an empire to praise. God grant that this may be the day which emancipates the forlorn captive, and may the best blessings of those who are ready to perish be your abiding portion forever! Thus prays a small remnant who are still alive; thus pray your fellow-citizens, chained to the galleys of the impostor Mahomet.
"Signed for and in behalf of his fellow-sufferers, by
"RICHARD O'BRIEN
"In the tenth year of his captivity."
The cause in which this document was written will indispose the candid reader to any criticism of its somewhat exuberant language. Like the drama of Cervantes, setting forth the horrors of the galleys of Algiers, "it was not drawn from the imagination, but was born far from the regions of fiction, in the very heart of truth." Its earnest appeals were calculated to touch the soul, and to make the very name of slavery and slave dealer detestable.
And here I should do injustice to the truth of history, if I did not suspend for one moment the narrative of this Anti-Slavery movement, in order to exhibit the pointed parallels then extensively recognized between Algerine and American slavery. The conscientious man could not plead in behalf of the emancipation of his white fellow-citizens, without confessing in his heart, perhaps to the world, that every consideration, every argument, every appeal urged for the white man, told with equal force in behalf of his wretched colored brother in bonds. Thus the interest awakened for the slave in Algiers embraced also the slave at home. Sometimes they were said to be alike in condition; sometimes, indeed, it was openly declared that the horrors of our American slavery surpassed that of Algiers.