The horrors of the grave intimidate not even the delicate females; too many melancholy instances are recorded of their plunging into the deep, and carrying with them a tender infant at their breast; even in my own recollection, suicide has been committed in various forms by these unhappy wretches, under the blind infatuation of revising the land of their nativity.
Possessed of Christian sentiments, they fail not to exercise them when an opportunity offers. Things pleasing rejoice them, and melancholy circumstances pall their appetites for amusements.—They brook no insults, and are equally prone to forgiveness as to resentment; they have gratitude also, and will even expose their own lives, to wipe off the obligation of past favours; nor do they want any of the refinements of taste, so much the boast of those who call themselves Christians.
The talent for music, both vocal and instrumental, appears natural to them: Neither is their genius for literature to be despised; many instances are recorded of men of eminence amongst them: Witness Ignatius Sancho, whose letters are admired by all men of taste—Phillis Wheatley, who distinguished herself as a poetess—The physician of New Orleans—The Virginia calculator—Banneker, the Maryland Astronomer, and many others whom it would be needless to mention. These are sufficient to shew, that the Africans, whom you despise, whom you inhumanly treat as brutes, and whom you unlawfully subject to slavery, with the tyrannizing hands of Despots, are equally capable of improvements with yourselves.
This you may think a bold assertion, but it is not made without reflection, nor independent of the testimony of many, who have taken pains with their education.
Because you few, in comparison to their number, who make any exertions of abilities at all, you are ready to enjoy the common opinion, that they are inferior set of beings, and destined by nature to the cruelties and hardships you impose upon them.
But be cautious how long you hold such sentiments; the time may come, when you will be obliged to abandon them—consider the pitiable situation of these most distressed beings; deprived of their liberty and reduced to slavery; consider also, that they toil not for themselves, from the rising of the Sun to its going down, and you will readily conceive the cause of their inaction.
What time, or what incitement has a slave to become wise? there is no great art in hilling corn, or in running a furrow; and to do this, they know they are doomed, whether they seek into the mysteries of science, or remain ignorant as they are.
To deprive a man of his liberty, has a tendency to rob his soul of every spring to virtuous actions; and were slaves to become fiends, the wonder could not be great. Nothing more assimilates a man to a beast, says the learned Montesque, than being among freemen, himself a slave; for slavery clogs the mind, perverts the moral faculty, and reduces the conduct of man to the standard of brutes.
What right then have you to expect greater things from these poor mortals? You would not blame a brute for committing ravages upon his prey, nor ought you to censure a slave, for making attempts to regain his liberty even at the risque of life itself.