I said to her, Dear Mrs.
Striker, are you not glad that you live in a free state, and not where,
when you return like a bird to its nest at night, you may find your
little one carried off, you know not where, by some man-stealer, you
know not whom?--We honor your kind feelings, madam, but you are not
aware, probably, what overflowing love and tender pity there is among us
Northerners, toward your slaves and their children. We are
disinterested, too; for we nearly forget our own black people here at
the North, and more especially in Canada, to care for you and your
people. And though hundreds of innocent young people are decoyed into
our Northern cities yearly from the country and are made the victims of
unhallowed passions, yet the thought that some of your young people on
those remote, solitary plantations, can be compelled by their masters to
do wrong on pain of being sold, fills us with such unaffected distress
that we think but little of voluntary or compulsory debauchery in our
own cities; but we think of dissolving the Union to rid ourselves of
seeming complicity with such wickedness as we see to be inherent in the
relation of master and slave. We at the North should all be wicked if we
had such opportunities; we know, therefore, that you must be.
Pages:
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33