hatelin, Folk Tales of Angola.

WHAT THE NEGRO WAS THINKING DURING THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

ESSAY ON NEGRO SLAVERY[1]

NO. 1

Amidst the infinite variety of moral and political subjects, proper for
public commendation, it is truly surprising, that one of the most
important and affecting should be so generally neglected. An encroachment
on the smallest civil or political privilege, shall fan the enthusiastic
flames of liberty, till it shall extend over vast and distant regions, and
violently agitate a whole continent. But the cause of humanity shall be
basely violated, justice shall be wounded to the heart, and national honor
deeply and lastingly polluted, and not a breath or murmur shall arise to
disturb the prevailing quiescence or to rouse the feelings of indignation
against such general, extensive, and complicated iniquity.--To what cause
are we to impute this frigid silence--this torpid indifference--this cold
inanimated conduct of the otherwise warm and generous Americans? Why do
they remain inactive, amidst the groans of injured humanity, the shrill
and distressing complaints of expiring justice and the keen remorse of
polluted integrity?--Why do they not rise up to assert the cause of God
and the world, to drive the fiend injustice into remote and distant
regions, and to exterminate oppression from the face of the fair fields of
America?

When the united colonies revolted from Great Britain, they did it upon
this principle, "that all men are by nature and of right ought to be
free."--After a long, successful, and glorious struggle for liberty,
during which they manifested the firmest attachment to the rights of
mankind, can they so soon forget the principles that then governed their
determinations? Can Americans, after the noble contempt they expressed for
tyrants, meanly descend to take up the scourge? Blush, ye revolted
colonies, for having apostatized from your own principles.

Slavery, in whatever point of light it is considered, is repugnant to the
feelings of nature, and inconsistent with the original rights of man. It
ought therefore to be stigmatized for being unnatural; and detested for
being unjust. Tis an outrage to providence and an affront offered to divine
Majesty, who has given to man his own peculiar image.--That the Americans
after considering the subject in this light--after making the most manly
of all possible exertions in defence of liberty--after publishing to the
world the