Daily national era. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1854, 1854-04-20
DAILY NATIONAL ERA.
PRxrxna1so SLAVERY TO rRxHDox

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The Richmond (Va) papers specify three or
four instances in that State in which certain
manumitted slaves petitioned the Legislature
Tor permission to take masters; and then adds,
that the Anti-Slayery men Of the North are
astounded and rerplexed ut these facts
For one, we 500 nothing in them to aston
ish anybody. The slave manumitted in Vir-
ginia must leave forever its boundaries
within twelve months after his mannmisson
suppose him peculiarly ignorant and infirm,
banishment to strange land, whore people and
customs and modes Of labor he knows nothing
about, must fill him with vague terrors, deep
ened by the consciousness that he is without
friends, without means without strength. IL
It wonderful that he should ut times prefer
The ills he knows, to the unknown ills imagi-
nation magnifies? Or suppose he has wife
and children in Slavery, Punishment separates
him from them forever but banished he must
be, unless the Legislature permit him to take a
master, and remain on the soil, within sight
and hearing Of those in whom his life is bound
mp. IL il marvellous that under such circum-
stances this dread alternative ut times should
be preferred? Fear and weakness in one
case, the hottest affections Of the heart in the
other, might DO pleaded in extenuation Of the
choice: but how barbarous must be the policy
which makes the protection Of weakness, Or
tho discharge Of parental and conjugal duties,
dependent absolutely upon the debasemcnt Of
ones manhood, by tho resumption OF the
shackles of abject Slavery
II an instance can be shown in which
manumtted negro in Virginia, under no such
pressure, has Voluntarily sought to return to
bondage, that fact in itself shows what fearful
havoc the system has made of a nature created
in the image Of God:--where is the free work
ing man of the North, so degraded, vile, poor,
miserable let him be without friends, relations,
employment, home without God and without
hope in the world, who would not spurn the
iiea Of becoming the slaUe Of the rich man,
although with the certain prospect of having
oil his animal wants supplied and such pro-
lection vouchsafed to him, as we extend to
horses and cattle
Is it not strange that intelligent men should
refer to the two or three instances in which
manumitted persons, for reasons not stated,
have preferred Slavery to perpetual Danish
ment, as evidences of the genial nature of the
system, when it is notorious that in the many
thousand cases Of manumission, the subjects
of it have been glad to acquire freedom upon
any TERMS
In the year 1850, fifteen hundred slaves were
emancipated in the South, nearly all of whom
were obliged to leave their native soil; the
number within the last twelve months is prob
ably about the same, and yet the Richmond
Enquirer can find only three cases in which
Slavery was preferred to Freedom! What
tie system And while few miserable slaves
afraid to encounter the terrible competition of
white labor at the North, or unwilling to leave
their families to suffer alone the horrors of
bondage, have begged for permission to remain
in captivity with them-a fact exultantly re-
ferred to by shareholders as proof conclusive of
the blessedness Of baing q slave-hundreds OF
human beings amidst unimaginabe perils and
privations, with daring and constancy unsur-
passed, have been seeking refuge from this
blessed condition, in the icy countries and in
hospitable climes of the far North.
The Census records the escape in 1850 Of
more than ten hundred slaves What is the
testimony which their fight bears to this sys-
tenn of Slavery Do the newspapers ever re-
cord the flight Of the laborers and mechanics
Of the cold, rough North, from the oppression
Of the wages system Of labor, to the genial rico
swamps and cotton fields Of the South