It is neither the vanity of being an author, nor a sudden and capricious gust of humanity, which has prompted this present design.  It has long been conceived and long been the principal subject of my thoughts.  Ever since an indulgent master rewarded my youthful services with freedom and supplied me at a very early age with the means of acquiring knowledge, I have laboured to understand the true principles, on which the liberties of mankind are founded, and to possess myself of the language of this country, in order to plead the cause of those who were once my fellow slaves, and if possible to make my freedom, in some degree, the instrument of their deliverance.

The first thing then, which seems necessary, in order to remove those prejudices, which are so unjustly entertained against us, is to prove that we are men—­a truth which is difficult of proof, only because it is difficult to imagine, by what argument it can be combatted.  Can it be contended that a difference of colour alone can constitute a difference of species?—­if not in what single circumstance are we different from the rest of mankind? what variety is there in our organization? what inferiority of art in the fashoning of our bodies? what imperfection in the faculties of our minds?—­Has not a negro eyes? has not a negro hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions?—­fed with the same food; hurt with the same weapons; subject to the same diseases; healed by the same means; warmed and cooled by the same summer and winter as a white man? if you prick us, do we not bleed? if you poison us, do we not die? are we not exposed to all the same wants? do we not feel all the same sentiments—­are we not capable of all the same exertions—­and are we not entitled to all the same rights, as other men?

Yes—­and it is said we are men, it is true; but that we are men, addicted to more and worse vices, than those of any other complexion; and such is the innate perverseness of our minds, that nature seems to have marked us out for slavery.—­Such is the apology perpetually made for our masters, and the justification offered for that universal proscription, under which we labour.

But, I supplicate our enemies to be, though for the first time, just in their proceedings toward us, and to establish the fact before, they attempt to draw any conclusions from it.  Nor let them imagine that this can be done, by merely asserting that such is our universal character.  It is the character, I grant, that our inhuman masters have agreed to give us, and which they have so industriously and too successfully propagated, in order to palliate their own guilt, by blackening the helpless victims of it, and to disguise their own cruelty under the semblance of justice.  Let the natural depravity of our character be proved—­not by appealing to declamatory invectives, and interested representations, but by showing that a greater proportion of crimes have been committed by the wronged slaves