When I hear these Southern ministers
preach and pray, and see them laboring for the colored people, and then
think of our designation of ourselves at the North, "friends of the
slave," and remember that all our anti-slavery influence has been
positively injurious to the best interests of the slave at the South, I
have frequently been led to exclaim, What an inestimable blessing it
would be to this colored race, and to our whole land, if anti-slavery,
in the offensive sense of that word, could at once and forever cease!
and I have as often questioned in my own mind whether slavery has not
been, and is not now, the occasion of more sin at the North than at the
South, and whether we at the North are not more displeasing in the sight
of God for the things which are said and done there, in connection with
anti-slavery, than the South with all the sins and evils incident to
slave-holding. I am coming to this belief.
The people who most frequently excite my commiseration are the free
blacks. They are "scattered and peeled." The Free States dread their
coming; they cannot rise in the Slave States. Even the slaves look down
upon them, sometimes. "Who are you?" said a slave to a free black, in my
hearing; "you don't belong to anybody!" Some States have given them
notice to quit, within a specified time, or they must be sold.
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