In addition to the crime of treason, you have on the present occasion, displayed the vilest ingratitude. It is a melancholy truth that those servants in whom was reposed the most unlimited confidence, have been the principal actors in this wicked scheme. Reared by the hand of kindness, and fostered by a master who assumed many of the duties of a parent, you have realized the fable of the Frozen Serpent, and attempted to destroy the bosom that sheltered and protected you.
You have, moreover, committed the grossest impiety: you have perverted the sacred words of God, and attempted to torture them into a sanction for crimes, at the bare imagination of which, humanity shudders. Are you incapable of the Heavenly influence of that Gospel, all whose “paths are Peace?” It was to reconcile us to our destiny on earth, and to enable us to discharge with fidelity all our duties, whether as master or servant, that those inspired precepts were imparted by Heaven to fallen man. There is no condition of life which is not embraced by them: and if you had searched them, in the spirit of truth, you would have discovered instructions peculiarly applicable to yourselves—“Servants (says St. Paul) be obedient to them that are your masters, according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ: not with eye-service as men pleasers, but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart.” Had you listened with sincerity to such doctrines, you would not have been arrested by an ignominious death.
Your days on earth are near their close and you now stand upon the confines of eternity. While you linger on this side of the grave, permit me to exhort you, in the name of the ever-living God, whose holy ordinances you have violated, to devote most earnestly the remnant of your days, in penitence and preparation for that Tribunal, whose sentence, whether pronounced in anger or in mercy, is eternal.
The above Sentences is selected out of the many passed on this occasion, with a view, to give the reader a general idea of them.
POSTSCRIPT.
Since these sheets have been put to press, it affords him, who has been engaged in their preparation, much gratification to be able to correct one mistake, as it places the fidelity of the slave who first gave the intelligence of the intended insurrection, on much higher ground. On conferring with his master and the free man of colour, whose advice he sought, it appears that the slave in question communicated the conversation at the Market to his young master, before he consulted his friend, (the free man of colour,) and that the advice of the latter was that as “his young master was a youth, that it would be best for him immediately, without delay, to tell his mistress, that his master might receive the information the instant he came to town.” Vide page [5].
PRINTED AND SOLD BY A. E. MILLER, NO. 4, BROAD-STREET.
Price 25cts. each; discount by the hundred.