“A valuable report or document recently published in the city of New York, by the Southern Aid Society, sets forth many valuable and important truths upon the condition of the Southern slaves, and the utility of moral and religious instruction, apart from a knowledge of books. I recommend the careful perusal of it to all whose opinions concur with your own. It shows that a system of catechetical instruction, with a clear and simple exposition of Scripture, has been employed with gratifying success; that the slave population of the South are peculiarly susceptible of good religious influences. Their mere residence among a Christian people has wrought a great and happy change in their condition: they have been raised from the night of heathenism to the light of Christianity, and thousands of them have been brought to a saving knowledge of the Gospel.
“Of the one hundred millions of the negro race, there cannot be found another so large a body as the three millions of slaves in the United States, at once so intelligent, so inclined to the Gospel, and so blessed by the elevating influence of civilization and Christianity. Occasional instances of cruelty and oppression, it is true, may sometimes occur, and probably will ever continue to take place under any system of laws: but this is not confined to wrongs committed upon the negro; wrongs are committed and cruelly practised in a like degree by the lawless white man upon his own color; and while the negroes of our town and State are known to be surrounded by most of the substantial comforts of life, and invited both by precept and example to participate in proper, moral and religious duties, it argues, it seems to me, a sickly sensibility towards them to say their persons, and feelings, and interests are not sufficiently respected by our laws, which, in effect, tend to nullify the act of our Legislature passed for the security and protection of their masters.
“The law under which you have been tried and found guilty is not to be found among the original enactments of our Legislature. The first legislative provision upon this subject was introduced in the year 1831, immediately succeeding the bloody scenes of the memorable Southampton insurrection; and that law being found not sufficiently penal to check the wrongs complained of, was re-enacted with additional penalties in the year 1848, which last mentioned act, after several years trial and experience, has been re-affirmed by adoption, and incorporated into our present code. After these several and repeated recognitions of the wisdom and propriety of the said act, it may well be said that bold and open opposition to it is a matter not to be slightly regarded, especially as we have reason to believe that every Southern slave State in our country, as a measure of self-preservation and protection, has deemed it wise and just to adopt laws with similar provisions.
“There might have been no occasion for such enactments in Virginia, or elsewhere, on the subject of negro education, but as a matter of self-defence against the schemes of Northern incendiaries, and the outcry against holding our slaves in bondage. Many now living well remember how, and when, and why the anti-slavery fury began, and by what means its manifestations were made public. Our mails were clogged with abolition pamphlets and inflammatory documents, to be distributed among our Southern negroes to induce them to cut our throats. Sometimes, it may be, these libelous documents were distributed by Northern citizens professing Southern feelings, and at other times by Southern people professing Northern feelings. These, however, were not the only means resorted to by the Northern fanatics to stir up insubordination among our slaves. They scattered far and near pocket handkerchiefs, and other similar articles, with frightful engravings, and printed over with anti-slavery nonsense, with the view to work upon the feeling and ignorance of our negroes, who otherwise would have remained comfortable and happy. Under such circumstances there was but one measure of protection for the South, and that was adopted.
“Teaching the negroes to read and write is made penal by the laws of our State. The act imposes a fine not exceeding one hundred dollars, to be ascertained by the jury, and imprisonment not exceeding six months, to be fixed and ascertained by the Court. And now, since the jury in your case has in my opinion properly settled the question of guilt, it devolves on me, under the law, to ascertain and decide upon the quantum of imprisonment under the circumstances of your trial and I exceedingly regret, that in being called onfor the first timeto act under the law in question, it becomes my duty to impose the required punishment upon a female, apparently of fair and respectable standing in the community. The only mitigating circumstance in your case, if in truth there be any, according to my best reason and understanding of it, is that to which I have just refered, namely, you being a female. Under the circumstances of this case, if you were of a different sex, I should regard the full punishment of six months imprisonment as eminently just and proper. Had you taken the advice of your friends and of the Court, and had employed council to defend you, your case no doubt, would have been presented in a far more favorable light both to the Court and to the jury. The opinions you advanced, and the pertinacity and zeal you manifested in behalf of the negroes, while they indicated perfect candor and sincerity on your part, satisfied the Court, and must have satisfied all who heard you, that the act complained of was the settled and deliberate purpose of your mind, regardless of consequences, however dangerous to our peace.
“In conformity with these views, I am impelled by a feeling of common honesty, to say that this is not a case in which a mere formal judgment should be announced as the opinion of the Court. Something more substantial under the circumstances of this case, I think, is demanded and required. The discretionary power to imprison for the term of six months or less, in good sense and sound morality, does not authorise a mere minimum punishment, such as imprisonment for a day or week, in a case in which the question of guilt is free from doubt, and there are many facts and circumstances of aggravation. A judgment of that sort, therefore, in this case, would doubtless be regarded by all true advocates of justice and law as mere mockery. It would be no terror to those who acknowledge no rule of action but their own evil will and pleasure, but would rather invite to still bolder incendiary movements. For these reasons, as an example to all others in like cases disposed to offend, and in vindication of the policy and justness of our laws, which every individual should be taught to respect, the judgment of the Court is, in addition to the proper fine and costs, that you be imprisoned for the period of one month in the jail of this city.”
It is hardly necessary for me to dwell upon my feelings when I received this unexpected sentence. They were of course more interesting to me than to my readers. My narrative of the history of the case here properly terminates, it being only necessary for me to state that I was immediately incarcerated, and spent the month within the walls of a prison, one week of which was passed in sickness. I received every allowable attention from the jailor and his amiable wife, and even remained with them a day or two after my sentence expired.
All social ties that bound me to the people of Virginia were sundered by this act; I was free from any obligation due to their laws, and felt that I could be of no farther service to any one, whether white or colored. I therefore gathered together my little household goods, and, in the month of February last, removed with my daughter to the City of Philadelphia, where we are now quietly residing, happy in the consciousness that it is here no crime to teach a poor little child, of any color, to read the Word of God.
My readers will naturally expect from me sundry reflections in connection with my personal narrative. The subject itself naturally induces them, and I should be untrue to myself if I, a Southern woman, did not address the Southern people in terms which the occasion and circumstances justify. My remarks will be desultory and disconnected, as I am merely to record such thoughts as have occurred to me not only during the time that has passed since my conviction, but which had been previously forced upon me by carefully examining the condition of the Southern people in all their relations.
Many laws in Virginia, as elsewhere, have becomedead-letters. Even in Norfolk itself, as well as generally throughout the State, the particular law infringed unknowingly by me, had long been held as such, and was violated daily and hourly by those who were regarded as leaders in society, in morals and in religion. But the opportunity was so good a one to makemea victim, a sacrifice in expiation of all past offences and offenders, that it could not be overlooked. Caught and bound, I was laid upon the altar of the law, but did not experience the good fortune of Isaac. There was the fire and the wood—heartless judge and quibbling lawyers, and I was immolated. Was not such justice chivalrous? Were not such lawyers magnanimous?
Here is presented a somewhat singular state of things to exist in a State professing to be the most gallant and dignified of the whole Confederacy. A large number of negroes, amounting in value to between fifty and one hundred thousand dollars, have, within a short time, made their escape from Norfolk to a Northern port. This is a grievously sore evil, and decidedly practical loss. But what is the plan pursued? Why, after failing to secure a portion of them, all further efforts to obtain them are given up, and pure listlessness and indifference take the place of an active interest in favor of recovering or protecting their property. A meeting, advertised to call together slave-owners to suggest some plan of redress, meets with but a meagre and partial response, and the matter ends by permitting the whole outrage and grievance to die away among the idlest trifles of the day.
On the other hand, aladyis caught, detected, entrapped, following in the wake of others, teaching a few free negroes to spell and read their Sunday lessons, and upon proof thereof, is put into a felon’s prison, and the ignominy, disgrace, and infamy even of a base criminal are said to be hers, by the bench and the press. If Northern vessels bear away the slaves of Norfolk, the height of revenge and recrimination seem to be found in venting upon aSouthern lady’shead the vindictiveness of individuals and the violence of the law. If Northern marshals refuse to perform their duties as slave-catchers under the Fugitive law, the whole matter, after a little feeling, is allowed to be forgotten; but, let a Southern lady presume to obey some of the gentlest and purest instincts of her nature and the teachings of charity, by instructing a few free black urchins of both sexes to read their Bibles, and the penalties of the law are visited upon her head, without any compunctions of conscience, any attention to the monitions of gallantry, or any regard to the restraints of a refined delicacy. Alas! for the boasted honor and honesty of the old Virginia nobility!
Here is a view of the case that may not be unworthy of attention: It is the energy of the white man that has made this country what it is, and hisalonethat will make it what it is to be. To the sinew, the nerve, the strong arm, the moral and physical courage, and the genius of the Anglo-Saxon race, is the world indebted for the grand spectacle we now present as a great, happy and prosperous people; and to the same ennobling elements and excellencies in the composition of the white man will the vast republican empire, now spreading its arms over the whole earth, be indebted for its existence and perpetuation. Holding this view, it cannot be then said that I was educating negroes as rivals or competitors of my brothers and sisters of a superior race. Holding to this opinion, with a tenacity that is as inseparable from my judgment as is color from the Ethiopian,—knowing, as I do, from all history as well as all cotemporary observation and record, that the Caucasian race are the “most godlike,” and the authors of all in the arts and sciences that contributes most to man’s more refined tastes, pleasures, and ambition. I am sure that I could not, South nor North, attempt to change the “Ethiopian’s skin” in the vain endeavor to make him an equal—socially, politically, or even morally—with my own race. No such thing, however, was charged upon me. My offence consisted in teaching a few poor colored children, free by the laws of their own State, to read the Bible, the very book on which the institutions of our land are based. Common charity, then, would have attributed to me only a feeling of sympathy for a lower order of society; common charity, as had been the case before, in Virginia, would have looked with a lenient eye upon whatthe want of all charityconstrued into a crime!
I feel impelled here to review briefly the decision of Judge Baker, in my case, and to make such remarks upon it as may seem pertinent. It will be seen that the letter requesting a copy of the decision for publication is signed by a number of the most respectable citizens of Norfolk, and an attempt has been made to identify them as entertaining the same opinions, and possessing the same want of sympathy, as the Judge himself. I am happy, however, to inform my readers that such is not the case. They, in common with the rest of the sensible portion of the community, were astounded by the decision, and merely desired to have on record the exact language and sentiments of this strange dispenser of justice, in order that they might know henceforth in what light to regard him. That he insulted the good sense and generous nature of the community in which he lived by so cowardly and unmanly a decision, and especially by his needless and uncalled for tirade addressed to me on passing sentence, he now well knows. The community have already placed the proper estimate upon him, and he is writhing under the double infliction of their contempt, and the stings of his own conscience. I have already stated the sudden and mysterious death ofMr.Davis, one of my bitterest persecutors, and am also informed that Judge Baker, since the rendering of his decision in my case, “has never been of exactly as equable and pleasant a frame of mind, but much more morose, snarlish, and nervous.” Poor man! He certainly has sufficient cause to be so.
The Judge admits in his decision, that there are persons in that community opposed to the policy of the law in question, and who believe that universal intellectual culture is necessary to religious instruction and education, and that such culture is suitable to a state of slavery. He, however, embraces the opportunity to state that he regards such opinions as “manifestly mischievous.” Hear, oh Earth! A Judge, in the most enlightened country in the world, and in the nineteenth century, believes that the intellectual culture of human beings is a crime! He professes to hold the Bible to be the word of God, and the very bulwark of our institutions—from it he derives the right to hold a portion of human beings in bondage—in it he sees the Divine command to every human soul to “search the Scriptures,” and yet says that a certain portion of the world must not obey this command, and that it is a crime to teach them to do so! Admirable logic! Oh, most righteous Judge! His real character may be better seen revealed in a subsequent sentence, wherein he argues that there is more respect for the law and for moral and religious conduct and behavior in those sections of Virginia, where even among the whites one-fourth or more are entirely without a knowledge of letters. Why, this man’s avowed principles would do away with education of any kind for any class of people! He would see his own State, proud and haughty Virginia, return to a state of barbarism, and completely shrouded in a pall of mental darkness! This is the inevitable conclusion from his own words. Is Norfolk, that little corner of the great Commonwealth, so far behind the age as to desire a state of things so earnestly deprecated in other sections of the State? Or is this sapient Judge alone the entertainer of such sentiments? Does he not know that the people throughout the old Commonwealth have become alarmed at their rapid degradation, and are petitioning their Legislature to devise measures to stop the downward tendency to utter ignorance? Has he never seen this short but momentous sentence, originally published in the RichmondWhigof April 3d, 1854, viz:
“Every decade exhibits a rapid and fearful increase of this mass of ignorance. In 1840, the number of the unlettered in Virginia amounted to sixty thousand. In 1850, it exceeded eighty thousand. At this rate, it will not require many centuries to extinguish all knowledge of letters in the State.”
Here is a fact that every Virginian should ponder well. There is no doubt as to the data, and less as to the result, unless something is done at once to stay this doward current. Let them study thereal causeof this state of things, and not attribute it to any but the right one. Is the way to remove the evil properly commenced by imprisoning a woman for teaching a few little children to read? Again I say, oh, most righteous Judge!
But the hardihood of Judge Baker was evinced in his using the language quoted, when he knew that his most intimate friends, and even members of his own family had been and were engaged in doing with impunity what in me was a crime. How he can reconcile his treatment of me with his conscience, when he remembers this fact, is best known to himself. Probably his usual admirable logic will help him out of the dilemma. I am sure I cannot.
The learned Judge grows remarkably religious as he proceeds. He admits that “the slave population of the South are peculiarly susceptible of good religious influences.” He even dares to say that “their mere residence among a Christian people has wrought a great and happy change in their condition: they have been raised from the night of Heathenism to the light of Christianity, and thousands of them have been brought to a saving knowledge of the Gospel. Of the one hundred millions of the negro race, there cannot be found another so large a body as the three millions of slaves in the United States, at once so intelligent, so inclined to the Gospel, and so blest by the elevating influences of civilization and Christianity.” Allow me, oh wonderful judge! to ask you one simple question, which I much fear even your logic will be puzzled to answer. If such be the character and condition of the slave population, and the more, (as by your own showing,) they become acquainted with the principles of the Gospel, the more they conform to them, how is it that you regard as a crime, the giving them the instruction necessary to accomplish this purpose? Which horn of this dilemma will your Honor choose to be impaled upon? Sorry am I to be compelled to contradict a professed gentleman, but your Honor knew that you were telling an untruth when you uttered that sentence, and you knew also thecauseof the misery and degradation among Southern slaves, producing as it does a state of things which may well lead you to fear to have them instructed in any thing. I know that cause, also, and I am going to tell it boldly to my Southern brothers and sisters before I close my present labor.
You are pleased to term the exercise of the commonest dictates of humanity in me a “sickly sensibility” towards the colored race. Be it so. But I require the aid of no physician to heal me, and rather, would to God that my disease were contagious, and that I could therewith infect the entire South. A little portion of thevirusmight perhaps not be unavailable even in your veins. If it be a “sickly sensibility” to yearn to impart to immortal souls, that instruction necessary to guide them through life and upwards towards heaven, I confess that I am guilty. This is the head and front of my offending—no less—no more.
The decision admits that the enactment under which I suffered was not to be found in the original code of Virginia, but the result of the experience and wisdom of the later inhabitants of that State. Certainly, the framers of the original laws of the old Commonwealth were men of too much sense and foresight, too Christian, too civilized, too human, to incorporate such a disgraceful law into their rules of government. That task was left to their degenerate sons of the present decade, and even then it could not be accomplished until eighty thousand of them had returned into that mental obscurity that characterized the dark ages. The law, on its very face, indicates that it was not the offspring of men of intelligence or common prudence. Any law declaring that any portion of human beings shall be denied the benefits of education, must spring from ignorance and error, and must inevitably lead to the same results universally. The defender of such a law voluntarily classes himself with those who made it, and those against whom it especially operates. Such a man is the Honorable Richard H. Baker.
The next paragraph of this venerable decision is so strangely constructed that I hardly know what to say of it. The Judge literally foams at the mouth and presents sad symptoms of hydrophobia. The expressions “Northern incendiaries,” “anti-slavery fury,” “inflammatory documents,” “cut-throats,” “Northern fanatics,” “anti-slavery nonsense,” &c., make up the entire paragraph. His Honor grows pale over a poor little inoffensive piece of muslin, with a picture upon it which he denominates “frightful.” He succeeds in working himself into a perfect fury, and about what? With nothing that I can see with which I, or the question before him, had anything to do.Iwas not a Northern incendiary or fanatic, nor did I distribute any inflammatory documents or anti-slavery nonsense. I was a Southern woman, in every sense of the word, and he knew it. I used no books, except the Bible, or those which illustrated it, and he knew this also. The only escape for his honor is that he denounces the Bible as an inflammatory or incendiary document, and as such must not be taught to the slaves.
The Judge next regrets that I am a woman, for the modicum of gentlemanly honor and dignity which he has left, prevents him from exercising the full bent of his inclinations, and inflicting upon me the full penalty of the violated law. It is a pity he remembered that I was of the weaker sex, and I feel that I have no thanks to offer him for his proposed lenity, for, under the circumstances of the case, an imprisonment for six months would have been no severer than the one for thirty days. He admits that the jury had the power to regulate the amount of the fine, but claims that it was his prerogative to name the term of my imprisonment. The jury, it will be seen, made the fine merely nominal, thus attesting in the most emphatic manner their appreciation of the merits of the case. There was not a man on that jury who was not fully as capable of judging of right and wrong, as was he who occupied the bench. And yet he, this one man, had the hardihood to set his judgment over theirs, and virtually insult the whole twelve, by inflicting a punishment so severe that it was no charity to me not to have exercised his power to the fullest extent. He admits that I was of fair and respectable standing in the community, and knew from the evidence, as well as from his own knowledge, that I had abundant precedents for what I had done, and that, knowing the law, I had no intention of again violating it; also, that the feeling of the entire community was in my favor, and yet he wantonly, needlessly, and inhumanly exercised the authority with which he was clothed, in order to make an example of me, when I, by my forbearance, had refused to place scores of respectable ladies and gentlemen of Norfolk, and some of them members of his own family, in the unpleasant position which I then occupied. He even twitted me because I had not deemed it proper to employ counsel to defend me, intimating that my case would have been presented in a more favorable light to the Court and jury thereby. This shows the very blackness of his malice, for the jury did all they could, and I do not entertain the least feeling of anger towards one of them. They could not do otherwise than find me guilty of a violation of the law, as it stood, but they did all in their power to render its penalty nominal, by imposing upon me the lowest fine it recognized. It was the Judge himself who insulted the jury by virtually telling them their judgment was erroneous, and then he turns to me and says my case might have been more favorably presented if I had employed counsel!
The conclusion is obvious, that he was actuated, not by a desire to uphold the law and administer justice, but by some motive alike discreditable to him as a Judge and a man. With this conclusion, I leave him to settle with his own conscience. I have no disposition to call him hard names. He has done me all the injury he could, and though I may forgive him, I am satisfied that he never can forgive himself, or escape from the doom to which he has already been sentenced by every sensible and right thinking person in the community. Honorable Richard H. Baker, Judge of the Circuit Court of the City of Norfolk, I bid you an affectionate farewell.
I will here give to my readers a verbatim copy of the law under which I was prosecuted and convicted. It is copied from the code of Virginia, passed by the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia, in the month of August, 1849, and will be found on page 747, chapter 198. It reads as follows:—
“Section 31. Every assemblage of negroes for the purpose of religious worship, when such worship is conducted by a negro, and every assemblage of negroes for the purpose of instruction in reading or writing, or in the night-time for any purpose, shall be an unlawful assembly: any Justice may issue his warrant to any officer, or other person, requiring him to enter any place where such assemblage may be, and seize any negro therein; and he, or any other Justice, may order such negro to be punished with stripes.
“Sec. 32. If a white person assemble with negroes for the purpose of instructing them to read or write, or ifheassociate with them in an unlawful assembly,heshall be confined in jail not exceeding six months, and fined not exceeding one hundred dollars; and any Justice may requirehimto enter into a recognizance, with sufficient security, to appear before the Circuit, County, or Corporation Court, where the offence was committed, at its next term, to answer therefor; and in the meantime, to keep the peace and be of good behavior.”
It will be seen from this, that in the enlightened State of Virginia, it is a crime for one portion of human beings to worship their Maker! Comment is unnecessary. Those men, whose moral sense was so blunted, so destroyed, that they could pass such a law as that, could not be expected to find much difficulty in enacting one subjecting to fine and imprisonment any one who taught negro children their letters. The old law, for which this is a substitute, was exceedingly explicit in this respect, but had become a dead letter. The new one is very loose in its language. It will be seen that the expressions “he” and “him” are used, allowing the Judge and jury the opportunity of a strict construction of the law, in case a lady should be concerned. Since my trial and conviction, I have been advised by one of the most eminent counsel in Virginia, that the Norfolk Court exceeded its powers, and violated the law by not construing the act literally in my case. It is possible that I may yet hold all the parties concerned responsible for their unlawful course. At any rate, it utterly demolishes the nice theory of Judge Baker, that he was bound to sustain the law, and leaves him without an excuse for his unnecessary severity towards me.
I now approach a subject vitally connected with the interests of the South and the welfare of humanity. In doing so, I have no rancor or malice to serve, but boldly speak my mind, and tell my Southern sisters a truth which, however they may have learned it by sad experience, has probably never been thus presented to them before.In this truth is to be found the grand secret of the opposition to the instruction of the colored race.It therefore becomes important in connection with my narrative. In this truth also lies the grand secret of the discontent and rebellion among the slaves. Knowing this, it is easy to perceive why such strenuous efforts are made to keep the colored population in darkness and ignorance. As it is, nature herself often rebels against what instinct teaches even the most degraded negro to be inhuman and devilish, and if to this were added the light of intelligence afforded by even the commonest instruction, wo to the darling system of this offspring of the institution of slavery. This subject demands the attention, not only of the religious population, but of statesmen and law-makers. It is the one great evil hanging over the Southern slave States, destroying domestic happiness and the peace of thousands. It is summed up in the single word—amalgamation. This, and this only, causes the vast extent of ignorance, degradation, and crime that lies like a black cloud over the whole South. And the practice is more general than even Southerners are willing to allow. While even the Northern libertine usually revolts from the intimate society of those in whose veins courses a drop of black blood, the Southerngentlemantakes them to his very bosom and revels in their fancied charms, until satiety disgusts him, when he deliberately sells them into lower degradation as he would a disabled horse.
It is impossible to deny that this unnatural custom prevails to a fearful extent throughout the South. The testimony is of too positive and personal a character to be overcome. Neither is it to be found only in the lower order of the white population. It pervades the entire society. Its followers are to be found among all ranks, occupations, and professions. The white mothers and daughters of the South have suffered under it for years—have seen their dearest affections trampled upon—their hopes of domestic happiness destroyed, and their future lives embittered even to agony, by those who should be all in all to them as husband, sons and brothers. I cannot use too strong language in reference to this subject, for I know that it will meet with a heartfelt response from every Southern woman. I would deal delicately with them if I could, but they know the fact, and their hearts bleed under its knowledge, however they may have attempted to conceal their discoveries. Southern wives know that their husbands come to them reeking with pollution from the arms of their tawny mistresses. Father and son seek the same sources of excitement, and alike gratify their inhuman propensities, scarcely blushing when detected, and recklessly defying every command of God and every tie of morality and human affection. They have not even the paltry excuse that ordinary liberties sometimes make, that their love is real, though illicit—the whole practice is plainly, unequivocally, shamelesslybeastly. Is there any wonder then that people addicted to these habits are rapidly returning to a state of semi-barbarism?
Is it to be supposed that the ordinary teachings of nature do not tell the sable sons and daughters of the South that this custom is inhuman and ungodly? Is not chastity a natural instinct, even among the worst savage nations of the earth? Will not the natural impulses rebel against what becomes with them a matter of force? The female slave, however fair she may have become, by the various comminglings of her progenitors, or whatever her mental and moral acquirements, knows that she is a slave, and as such, powerless beneath the whims or fancies of her master. If he casts upon her a desiring eye, she knows that shemustsubmit. There is no way of escape, and her only thought is, that the more gracefully she yields the stronger and longer hold she may, perchance, retain upon the brutal appetite of her master. Still, shefeelsher degradation, and so do others with whom she is connected. She has parents, brothers and sisters, a lover perhaps, all of whom suffer through and with her, and in whose hearts spring up roots of bitterness which are destined to grow into trees whose branches will sooner or later overshadow the whole land.
How important, then, for these Southern sultans, that the objects of their criminal passions should be kept in utter ignorance and degradation. They must not read the Bible because that teaches them of the sin of their masters. They must not worship God, for the effect thereof would be to imbue them with a deeper horror of this great wickedness. They must not learn to read and write, for every mental and moral improvement only tends to bring out and improve those feelings and emotions that already repel this gross system of sensuality and licentiousness. Were the negroes instructed in their duties to themselves and to each other, their obligations to their masters and their God, and were these instructions exemplified by the consistent lives of their masters, with the natural religious tendencies of the negro race, the South would become the very garden of the Lord. Instead of becoming discontented and rebellious, the very reverse would be the case. There would be no fear of insurrections, for there would be no inducement. But when a man, black though he be, knows that, at any moment, he is compelled to hand over his wife, his sister, or his daughter, to the loathsome embraces of the man whose chains he wears, how can it be expected that he will submit without the feelings of hatred and revenge taking possession of his heart?
I have no desire to pursue this subject farther, at present. I give it, as thecauseof the discontent and rebellion among the Southern slaves, and also as thecauseof the creation of that disgraceful law, which now stands like a great black blot on the code of Virginia, and under whose unjust application I have been made to suffer. The subject is one that will not be suffered to rest, for I know my Southern sisters well enough to believe that they will not much longer rest tamely under the influences of this damning curse. I have told them plainly of theevil—theremedyis in their own hands.