The chattels are sold. There were ninety-eight large and small articles—Christian goods—bringing to their former owner the snug little sum of $80,890. Will that sum be sufficient to buy ninety-eight souls of men, baptized in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit? Friends! eighty millions will never buy them from their Father in heaven, for they have been ‘bought with a price’—with the precious blood of the Son of God!
Surely, if we are convinced that the institution of slavery is a great wrong against humanity, and a heavy curse to Christianity, we shall seek to abolish it without delay.
But how can we do it? By what means can we induce the slaveholders in the South to give up their ‘property,’ their ‘wealth,’ their ‘merchandise,’ their ‘valuable goods?’ Shall we invade the Slave States with a large army, and liberate the slaves by means of revolvers, knives, swords, and Sharp’s or Minnie rifles? I know the Southerners too well, not to be convinced that every one of them would fight to the death—that they would lose every drop of their blood, rather than consent to give up their slaves. The Southerner is no coward; he is brave in battle, and faces death without fear. But, suppose that the whole body of the oppressed slaves should rise as one man, and strike for their liberty—would not their victory be certain? Yes, but what a victory! Streams of blood would stain the ever-blooming soil of the South, and legions of corpses would become a prey to the vultures. And whose blood would flow? That only of mean and cruel slave-drivers? Oh, no! Many thousand corpses of innocent babes would point up to heaven for vengeance! Thousands of blooming young maidens would be slaughtered, causing the blood-stained soil to remain a curse for many centuries!
No, my friends! No revolver, no rifle, no knife, no bloodshed nor slaughter shall be necessary to metamorphose slaves into freemen. No war is able to abolish the institution of slavery. There is a standard which is bound to be victorious in the hottest of battles—a standard, before the glory of which, the most stubborn of slave-drivers shall be forced to fall upon his knees, crying, ‘Lord! what shall I do to be saved?’ That standard is the Cross of the Redeemer of mankind! If the slaveholders will truly believe in the powerful supremacy of that standard, it will be impossible for them to keep any longer their colored brethren in so shameful a bondage as Slavery. If the slaveholder of the South would call himself a Christian, without being a hypocrite, he will be obliged to do away with Slave laws, Slave markets, and Slave auctions—in fact, TO ABOLISH SLAVERY.
THE CHRISTIAN SLAVE.
BY J. G. WHITTIER.
[In a publication of L. F. Tasistro, ‘Random Shots and Southern Breezes,’ is a description of a slave auction at New Orleans, at which the auctioneer recommended the woman on the stand as ‘a good Christian!’]
A Christian! going, gone!
Who bids for God’s own image?—for His grace
Which that poor victim of the market-place