dwelling as your own. I have an industrious and neat companion, and four
dear children--the oldest a girl of nine years, and three fine boys, the
oldest eight, the next six, and the youngest four years old. The three
oldest are now going regularly to school--two can read and write, and
the other can spell, with tolerable correctness, words of two syllables.
Dear fellows! they are all in comfortable beds, and are sound asleep,
perfectly secure under my own roof. There are no slaveholders here
to rend my heart by snatching them from my arms, or blast a mother's
dearest hopes by tearing them from her bosom. These dear children are
ours--not to work up into rice, sugar, and tobacco, but to watch over,
regard, and protect, and to rear them up in the nurture and admonition
of the gospel--to train them up in the paths of wisdom and virtue, and,
as far as we can, to make them useful to the world and to themselves.
Oh! sir, a slaveholder never appears to me so completely an agent of
hell, as when I think of and look upon my dear children. It is then
that my feelings rise above my control. I meant to have said more with
respect to my own prosperity and happiness, but thoughts and feel{335}
ings which this recital has quickened, unfit me to proceed further in
that direction. The grim horrors of slavery rise in all their ghastly
terror before me; the wails of millions pierce my heart and chill my
blood. I remember the chain, the gag, the bloody whip; the death-like
gloom overshadowing the broken spirit of the fettered bondman; the
appalling liability of his being torn away from wife and children,
and sold like a beast in the market. Say not that this is a picture of
fancy. You well know that I wear stripes on my back, inflicted by your
direction; and that you, while we were brothers in the same church,
caused this right hand, with which I am now penning this letter, to be
closely tied to my left, and my person dragged, at the pistol's mouth,
fifteen miles, from the Bay Side to Easton, to be sold like a beast
in the market, for the alleged crime of intending to escape from your
possession. All this, and more, you remember, and know to be perfectly
true, not only of yourself, but of nearly all of the slaveholders around
you.

At this moment, you are probably the guilty holder of at least three of
my own dear sisters, and my only brother, in bondage. These you regard
as your property. They are recorded on your ledger, or perhaps have