A Childs Anti-Slavery Book | Page 2

poor things were packed like spoons below
the deck. Then the ship set sail for the coast of America. I cannot tell
you how horribly the poor negroes suffered. Bad air, poor food, close
confinement, and cruel treatment killed them off by scores. When they
died their bodies were pitched into the sea, without pity or remorse.
After a wearisome voyage the survivors, on being carried into some
port, were sold to the highest bidder. No regard was paid to their
relationship. One man bought a husband, another a wife. The child was
taken to one place, the mother to another. Thus they were scattered
abroad over the colonies. Fresh loads arrived continually, and thus their
numbers increased. Others were born on the soil, until now, after the
lapse of some two centuries, there are nearly four millions of negro
slaves in the country, besides large numbers of colored people who in
various ways have been made free.
You can now see how easy it was for the masters to make the wicked
laws by which the slaves are now held in bondage. They began when
the slaves were few in number, when they spoke a foreign language,
and when they were too few and feeble to offer any resistance to their

oppressors, as their masters did to old England when she tried to
oppress them.
I want you to remember one great truth regarding slavery, namely, that
a slave is a human being, held and used as property by another human
being, and that it is always_ A SIN AGAINST GOD to thus hold and me
a human being as property_!
You know it is not a sin to use an ox, a horse, a dog, a squirrel, a house,
or an acre of land as property, if it be honestly obtained, because God
made these and similar objects to be possessed as property by men. But
God did not make man to be the property of man. He never gave any
man the right to own his neighbor or his neighbor's child.
On the contrary, he made all men to be free and equal, as saith our
Declaration of Independence. Hence, every negro child that is born is
as free before God as the white child, having precisely the same right to
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, as the white child. The law
which denies him that right does not destroy it. It may enable the man
who claims him as a slave to deprive him of its exercise, but the right
itself remains, for the wicked law under which he acts does not and
cannot set aside the divine law, by which he is as free as any child that
was ever born.
But if God made every man, woman, and child to be free, and not
property, then he who uses a human being as property acts contrary to
the will of God and SINS! Is it not so, my children?
Yet that is what every slaveholder does. _He uses his slaves as
property_. He reckons them as worth so many dollars, just as your
father sets a certain money value on his horse, farm, or merchandise.
He sells him, gives him away, uses his labor without paying him wages,
claims his children as so many more dollars added to his estate, and
when he dies wills him to his heirs forever. And this is SIN, my
children--a very great sin against God, a high crime against human
nature.
Mark what I say! the sin of slavery does not lie merely in whipping,

starving, or otherwise ill-treating a human being, but in using him as
property; in saying of him as you do of your dog: "He is my property.
He is worth so much money to me. I will do what I please with him. I
will keep him, use him, sell him, give him away, and keep all he earns,
just as I choose."
To say that of a man is sin. You might clothe the man in purple, feed
him on manna from heaven, and keep him in a palace of ivory, still, if
you used him as your property, you would commit sin!
Children, I want you to shrink from this sin as the Jews did from the
fiery serpents. Hate it. Loathe it as you would the leprosy. Make a
solemn vow before the Saviour, who loves the slave and slave children
as truly as he does you, that you will never hold slaves, never apologize
for those who do. As little Hannibal vowed eternal hatred to Rome at
the altar of a false god, so do you vow eternal enmity to slavery at the
altar of the true and living Jehovah. Let your purpose be, "I will rather
beg my