Anti-slavery bugle. [volume] (New-Lisbon, Ohio) 1845-1861, 1856-07-19
THE SLAVES CHRISTMAS.

"No picture could be more pleasant to contem-
plate than that which will this day be presented
in the Southern States. Every slave will enjoy n
holiday, and every slave will have his Christmas
dinner. The humble cabin will. blaze with light,
and resound with merry voices. The banjo will
| give out its enlivenng notes. and the fiat foot Of
the happy negro will keep time to the simple but
inspiring masc. Could the misguided Abolition
lists glance, this day, over the happy scenes that
the Southern plantations will present he would
feel and own that Southern bcnevolence has taken
the sting out of Slavery, and that the bondman is
happier than the freed man. lie would feel and
own that the poor of the North are far more the
objects of commiseration than the sleek, wcll-fed
we'll clad slaves of the th."- Washington SEN
hncl.
| The holidays of slaves are violent reactions
against the constraint and wretchedness of their
condition. Their mirth is stimulated and unnatu-
raj. The severity of their hardships may be meas
ured by the prccousness of the relief Christmas
and New Year bring. Not cotton hand in the
South can be got to labor minute during the time
made sacred to the freedom of the slave. The con.
cession, throughout the serve-labor States of a
regular period of complete exemption from all IT, c
incidents Of bondage, save that Of property, it is
of itself full acknowled gment of the unnatural
ness and unlawfulness of slavery
| That Southern slaves enjoy extravagantly the
Christmas holidays, does but prove the sim plicity
and mirthfulness, the patience and endurance of
the African race Enforce Toll anu q condition OF
bondage chafe and eat out the soul of the white
man. The Indian sickens and dies under it. The
African is not slain by the wrong, but once year
emerges from it, and, with wild vgour expands
into extrNvagant enjoyment The fact proves not
his adaptation to slavery but his superiority to it,
| 1t ill becomes Southern man to disparage the
free regro. Whatever is reprehensible in his
character, or deplorable in his condition, slavery
is responsible for. If he be idle, as is greedily al
legged, it be expected that labor, which was his
estate q bondmun, and was stimulated with the
whip will he honorable, attractive agreeable? ? II
among the free men ef Democracy, his African
complexion marks him for prejudice and unknd
distinctions, it is not the badge and remembrance
of servile condition, put upon him by the plan
ters of the South? Does not slavery spot its vic
TINS as murder marked CAIN and is not the Nor
thern prejudice against color the instructive as
scrtion of the superiority of fr .edom and mans
natural protest against the enslavement of Man?
| Will the Sentinel permit us to say that, while
throughout the North, argument in support of
slavery is respected. that which bluntly bases the
right Of white men to hold black men as property
upon sheer might and determination is the least
despised and hated The Fugitive Slave law, the
Compromises, the continuous IIegira of slave la
bour from the South to the North, give the lie to
,he stale declaration, and weak argumentative de-
ducton, that "the bondman is happier than the
freedman. ."-ADdny Ecening Journal.