“But why did those slaves let their masters bring them into this state?  Why didn’t they fight as our forefathers did when they threw off the yoke of England’s laws?” inquires a bright-eyed lad who has just risen from the reading of a history of our Revolution.

The slaves were not reduced to their present servile condition in large bodies.  When our ancestors settled this country they felt the need of more laborers than they could hire.  Then wicked men sailed from England and other parts of Europe to the coast of Africa.  Sending their boats ashore filled with armed men, they fell upon the villages of the poor Africans, set fire to their huts, and, while they were filled with fright, seized, handcuffed, and dragged them to their boats, and then carried them aboard ship.

This piracy was repeated until the ship was crowded with negro men, women, and children.  The poor things were packed like spoons below the deck.  Then the ship set sail for the coast of America.  I cannot tell you how horribly the poor negroes suffered.  Bad air, poor food, close confinement, and cruel treatment killed them off by scores.  When they died their bodies were pitched into the sea, without pity or remorse.

After a wearisome voyage the survivors, on being carried into some port, were sold to the highest bidder.  No regard was paid to their relationship.  One man bought a husband, another a wife.  The child was taken to one place, the mother to another.  Thus they were scattered abroad over the colonies.  Fresh loads arrived continually, and thus their numbers increased.  Others were born on the soil, until now, after the lapse of some two centuries, there are nearly four millions of negro slaves in the country, besides large numbers of colored people who in various ways have been made free.

You can now see how easy it was for the masters to make the wicked laws by which the slaves are now held in bondage.  They began when the slaves were few in number, when they spoke a foreign language, and when they were too few and feeble to offer any resistance to their oppressors, as their masters did to old England when she tried to oppress them.

I want you to remember one great truth regarding slavery, namely, that a slave is a human being, held and used as property by another human being, and that it is always A sin against god to thus hold and me a human being as property!

You know it is not a sin to use an ox, a horse, a dog, a squirrel, a house, or an acre of land as property, if it be honestly obtained, because God made these and similar objects to be possessed as property by men.  But God did not make man to be the property of man.  He never gave any man the right to own his neighbor or his neighbor’s child.