Читать книгу Benjamin Drew. The Refugee. Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada онлайн

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The South-side View of Slavery says, “The gospel which is preached to them [the slaves], so far as I heard it, is the same gospel which is preached to us.” But the prayers of the slaves [p. 54 and 55] and the hymns they selected, [p. 55] Watts’ Ps. 51, Hymns 139, B. I. and 90, B. II., seem to confirm the view we have presented; while the address of the superintendent of the colored Sabbath school, [p. 85] by no means contradicts it: nor does the hymn sung by slaves [p. 212].

To magnify the benefits which incidentally and casually grow out of the system of slavery, and to represent them as vast enough to sink its direct enormities into comparative insignificance, is, as if a man were to point to an abundant harvest of corn, on the bloodenriched field of Waterloo, as a sufficient reason for involving the world in the horrors of war.

If, as we have said, the slave’s lot is a cruel one,–if, in his best estate, the enslaved American is a man badly educated, and systematically ill-used,–if, by law he is “the property of a master to whom he belongs”–liable to be flogged, sold, and robbed of his wife and children, as the interest, or caprice, or spite of the master may dictate–it appears to us that to assist him if he endeavors to escape from bondage, is a binding duty which not all the constitutions, laws, and sophistries in Christendom can erect into a crime.