oppressors, whose dearest objects are only to keep us ignorant and
miserable, against this man to stay his hand. However, they have kept
us in so much ignorance that many of us know no better than to fight
against ourselves, and by that means strengthen the hands of our
natural enemies, to rivet their infernal chains of slavery upon us and
our children. I have several times called the white Americans our
_natural enemies_--I shall here define my meaning of the phrase. Shem,
Ham, and Japheth, together with their father Noah and wives, I believe
were not natural enemies to each other. When the ark rested after the
flood upon Mount Arrarat in Asia, they (eight) were all the people
which could be found alive in all the earth--in fact if scriptures be
true (which I believe are) there were no other living men in all the
earth, notwithstanding some ignorant creatures hesitate not to tell
us, that we, (the blacks) are the seed of Cain, the murderer of his
brother Abel. But where those ignorant and avaricious wretches could
have got their information, I am unable to declare. Did they receive
it from the Bible? I have searched the Bible as well as they, if I am
not as well learned as they are, and have never seen a verse which
testifies whether we are the seed of Cain or of Abel.--Yet those men
tell us that we are of the seed of Cain and that God put a dark stain
upon us, that we might be known as their slaves!!! Now I ask those
avaricious and ignorant wretches, who act more like the seed of Cain,
by murdering, the whites or the blacks? How many vessel loads of human
beings have the blacks thrown into the seas? How many thousand souls
have the blacks murdered in cold blood to make them work in
wretchedness and ignorance, to support them and their
families?[23]--However, let us be the seed of Cain, Harry, Dick or
Tom!!! God will show the whites what we are yet. I say, from the
beginning, I do not think that we were natural enemies to each other.
But the whites having made us so wretched, by subjecting us to
slavery, and having murdered so many millions of us in order to make
us work for them, and out of devilishness--and they taking our wives,
whom we love as we do ourselves--our mothers who bore the pains of
death to give us birth--our fathers & dear little children, and
ourselves, and strip and beat us one before the other--chain, handcuff
and drag us about like rattle-snakes--shoot us down like wild bears,
before each other's f