Let me, therefore, be acquitted of presumption, when I express a hope, that, trifling as is the present work, yet, as the leading events it records are not the creations of fancy, but realities that have passed; that they have not been collected for effect, or uselessly to awaken the feelings; but having been actually presented in the pursuit of a disgraceful and cruel commerce, are now offered to the view of my young readers, [[viii]]in order to confirm the great truths, that cruelty and oppression encouraged, soon brutalize the nature of man; divesting him of every distinguishing trait which unites him with superior intelligences, and sinking him in the scale of being far below the ravening wolf and insatiate tiger; and that the slave-trade, more especially, never fails effectually to destroy all the sympathies of humanity, and so far to barbarize those who are concerned in it, as assuredly to cause civilized man to resume the ferocity of the savage whom he presumes to despise.
The Author. [[x]]
“Offspring of love divine, Humanity!
—— —— —— —— ——
Come thou, and weep with me substantial ills,
And execrate the wrongs that Afric’s sons,
Torn from their native shore, and doom’d to bear
The yoke of servitude in foreign climes,
Sustain. Nor vainly let our sorrows flow,