r
plantations, and the ministers of Christ especially are debtors to the
whole slave population. I fear a cry goes up to heaven on this subject
against us; and how, I ask, shall the scores who have left the ministry
of the Word, that they may make corn and cotton, and buy and sell, and
get gain, meet this cry at the bar of God? and what shall the hundreds
of money-making and money-loving masters, who have grown rich by the
toil and sweat of their slaves, and _left their souls to perish_, say
when they go with them to the judgment of the great day?"

"The Kentucky Union for the moral and religious improvement of the
colored race,"--an association composed of some of the most influential
ministers and laymen of Kentucky, says in a general circular to the
religious public, "To the female character among the black population,
we cannot allude but with feelings of the bitterest shame. A similar
condition of moral pollution, and utter disregard of a pure and virtuous
reputation, is to be found only _without the pale of Christendom_. That
such a state of society should exist in a Christian nation, without
calling forth any particular attention to its existence, though ever
before our eyes and in our families, is a moral phenomenon at once
unaccountable and disgraceful."

Rev. James A. Thome, a native of Kentucky, and still residing there,
said in a speech in New York, May 1834, speaking of licentiousness among
the slaves, "I would not have you fail to understand that this is a
_general_ evil. Sir, what I now say, I say from deliberate conviction of
its truth; that the slave states are Sodoms, and almost every village
family is a brothel. (In this, I refer to the inmates of the kitchen,
and not to the whites.)"

A writer in the "Western Luminary," published in Lexington, Ky., made
the following declaration to the same point in the number of that paper
for May 7, 1835: "There is one topic to which I will allude, which will
serve to establish the heathenism of this population. I allude to the
UNIVERSAL LICENTIOUSNESS which prevails. _Chastity is no virtue among
them_--its violation neither injures female character in their own
estimation, or that of their master or mistress--no instruction is ever
given, _no censure pronounced_. I speak not of the world. I SPEAK OF
CHRISTIAN FAMILIES GENERALLY."

Rev. Mr. Converse, long a resident of Virginia, and agent of the
Colonization Society, said, in a sermon before the Vt. C.S.--"Almo