Anti-slavery bugle. [volume] (New-Lisbon, Ohio) 1845-1861, 1857-10-03
SLAVERY WRONG.

Do you ask me why | dare TO say this2 Do you
ask me especially why | dare 10 coy this, when 40
many voices are ready to curse me for saying it,
and when, from the supreme tri5unal Of ou- laws,
it has just been announced that Slavery 10 q ma
tional institution, guarded and sanctioned BY the
charter Of our national government? My answer
lie, dare to say this, becauseGod says, it as surely
rs this chapter in Isaiah 10 tho word OF God. /
dare to say it, because Slavery 10 wrong wrong
hrrt, indeed, and chiefly, TO every slave, but affect.
ing in it's reach and its reaction all tho interests
of the Common " eslth a gross and outright viola
ton Of that justice for which alone society exists
Slavery is wrong, essentially and only wrong
andsno statute, no custom or tradition, no decree,
no com promise, no Constitution, can make il
otherwise than wrong. Do you ask me bow |
know it to be wrongi Then hear me. l know i.
10 be wrong Just in the same way in which you
know it to be wrong, 1t violates every instinct.
i've sentiment of justice, You can give no true
statement of what it is-true TO the facts as you
know them-tTue to the theory Of the laws by
which it is ordained and guarded-vishou, max
sense. Would you like to be .eised and sold iutu
slavery? Would that be just2 You have prop
erty. the accumulation Of your intelligence and
laborious industry. Would it be just if the law
should make you incapable Of owning even the
garments that cover your nakeduess, in any other
sense than that in which . horse may own a
blanket? You have . wife. Would il be any
thing else than a most atrocious wrong if the Law
should make your wife the absolute property OF
another man? You have a daughter in her young
bloom and joyousness. What Judgment woald
your moral sonse pronounce upon the law, il i!
should tear her from your parental love, and make
her the helpless prey of whatever rich man would
pay the most for the Ownership of her beauty
There sits at the corner OF your table a little BOY
a paragon in your partial judgments, bright, play
full, brave, and gentle; whose presence hns added
sunshine to your home whose merry laugh lie thu
Joy of the whole household whose growing in
telligence is your pride and your hops for the com
ing years when you she'll begin TO be old, and
whose death, if he should die, would pierce you
heart with wounds which time could never heal
What words could you hud to express your nor
ror at the injustice Of a law BY which thai chile
of yours could 70 taken from you and from 20 q
hone, and made a slave? And if all this, il
your case, or in the case of your wife, or of you
daughter, or of your little child, would be moth
ing less than a hideous wrong-A wrong this
might well move heaven TO wrath, and hell iisel
to p~ity-would the injustice be any the less afro
IciOus-the wrong any me less borribls-if anothe
man instead of you, and his wife and daughte
| and little child, instead Of yours, were the imne
diate sufferers2 DO you say that the spslavet
classes in this country are trained 10 bear ,hes
things, and do not suffer under them as yo
would suffer But what of that? Think wha
-, of that just make that case your own. IL 20
i had been subjected, from your birth, TO q trainin
which had extipguished your human sensibilitie'
and had brutalized your nature for the very SAX
of owning you and treating you AS = brute incap'
BILE of human rights would not that have bee
: the most fendish injustice of ala crime ia
? greater, in reality, than if you had been murders
= in your infancy, as Herod murdered the littls one
Of Bethlehem I'D. Bacon's FdSt-ddy Discours