Tens of
thousands of them, now, are not slaves in any such sense, and they never
can be; they could not be recklessly sold at auction; the owners would
revolt at it, and those in want of servants would meet with great
competition in obtaining such as these. A church-member who should
separate husband and wife for no fault, would be disciplined at the
South as surely as for inhumanity at the North. But oh, we say at the
North, only to think, that all those fine-looking people whom Hattie saw
from the barouche, that Monday afternoon, were liable on Tuesday morning
to have their kid gloves and finery taken from them, and to be marched
off to the auction-block! Hence our commiseration. And it is a most
groundless commiseration.
One thing is especially impressed on my mind. There being sins and evils
in slavery, as all confess, there are men and women here who are
perfectly competent to manage them without our help. There is nothing
that seems to me more offensive than our self-righteousness, as I must
call it, at the North, in exalting ourselves above our fathers and
brethren of all Christian denominations at the South; as though there
were no conscience, no Christian sensibility, no piety here, but it must
all be supplied from the North.
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