When I arrived at Nantucket, I inquired for Deacon Berry, of the York street, Baptist Church, and handed him my letter of recommendation. They had no preacher. When I went to the church on Sabbath morning, the house was open for preaching. The fame went abroad that a strange minister from Providence had arrived. I preached for them that Sabbath to the best of my ability. I was but a child in the Gospel.
It was my intention to leave for Providence on the following Tuesday; but the brethren prevailed on me to stay longer, and I remained several weeks. The brethren gave me a call, and being young, I accepted it. I went out to beg money to repair their house of worship, and afterwards left for Providence.
CHAPTER VI.
I will now say something of slavery. I shall say nothing but what I know to be true. Slavery is a cruel system. The effects of it are scattered abroad throughout the land. It is the reigning evil of the country; yea, the mother of all evil. Why is it the mother of all evil? I answer in the language of Holy Writ, which saith, “Do unto all men as you would have them do unto you.” It is not done. Again: “Love thy neighbor as thyself. This is the law and the prophets.” It is not done. Reader,—where is the slaveholder who would wish his slaves to do to him as he does to them? There are none. Hence, then, the enormity of the evil.
Dear reader: understand one thing. The slaves are taught ignorance as we teach our children knowledge. They are kept in darkness, and are borne down under a cruel, cruel oppression! All human rights are denied them as citizens! They are not recognized as men! My old master frequently said, “he did not believe a d——d nigger had any soul!” They are made to undergo everything as a beast. Having a full, perfect, undeniable right to stand out before God as MEN, the cruel, God-defying white man, without semblance of right, with no pretence but might, has prostituted them to the base purpose of his cupidity, and his baser beastly passions, reducing them to mere things, mere chattels, to be bought and sold like hogs and sheep! Born, like the white man, to an individual responsibility to the Father of mercies, the treatment of the white man to the poor African, unmixed with mercy, has curtained his mind to all knowledge, aye, even to the knowledge of the God of heaven and earth, and thus removed from him the accountability! But, where does this terrible accountability rest? Let the hardened slave-tyrant, when he stands quivering before the Almighty bar of retribution, answer this question! Well might Thomas Jefferson remark, when his deep, penetrating mind was reflecting upon the stupendous wrongs of slavery, “I tremble for my country, when I remember that God is just, and that his justice cannot slumber forever?” I appeal, then, to every rational, intelligent mind, if slavery be not an abomination in the sight of the Lord.
It has been said that slaves have no intellect. I deny it. God has given them minds capable of cultivation. Uncultivated ground will not bring forth fruit. All the slave requires is cultivation, for he is possessed of all the qualities of the white man.
Reader: we have heard of the wisdom of King Solomon, son of David, the grandson of ancient Jesse. The Queen of Basheba has declared that half had never been told her. History informs us that Solomon was as black as black satin, with handsome features and smooth skin.
I could refer to many of the colored race whose mental endowments are superior to many of those arrogant white men who abhor a colored man and pretend to be his superior in knowledge.