Читать книгу Chains and Freedom: or, The Life and Adventures of Peter Wheeler, a Colored Man Yet Living онлайн

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ssss1.Yes, and there are folks, yes judges and dough faced politicians enough in the state now who would blast all the hopes that led a poor slave on from his chains; and when he was just stepping across the threshold of the temple of freedom, dash him to degradation and slavery, and pollute that threshold with his blood. Until a fugitive from tyranny shall be safe in the asylum of the oppressed and the home of liberty, let us not be told to go to the south. And who are the men who would, who have done this? Certainly not philanthropists; for the philanthropist loves to make his brother man happy, and will always strike for his freedom. Certainly not Christians; for it was one of the most explicit enactments of God, when he established his theocracy upon earth, and incorporated into the code of his government, that “Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant that is escaped from his master unto thee.” (Deut. xxii. 15.) And can a man, who respects and regards the laws of heaven, turn traitor to God, and prostrate, at one fell swoop, all the claims of benevolence the fugitive slave imposes, when he lifts his fetter-galled arms to his brother, and cries, “Oh! help me to freedom—to liberty—to heaven?”