should awaken every sensibility of our common nature; but those of their
descendants who are freemen even in the non-slaveholding States, occupy
the very same position politically, religiously, civilly and socially,
(with but few exceptions,) as the bondman occupies in the slave States.

In those States, the bondman is disfranchised, and for the most part so
are we. He is denied all civil, religious, and social privileges, except
such as he gets by mere sufferance, and so are we. They have no part nor
lot in the government of the country, neither have we. They are ruled
and governed without representation, existing as mere nonentities among
the citizens, and excrescences on the body politic--a mere dreg in
community, and so are we. Where then is our political superiority to the
enslaved? none, neither are we superior in any other relation to
society, except that we are defacto masters of ourselves and joint
rulers of our own domestic household, while the bondman's self is
claimed by another, and his relation to his family denied him. What the
unfortunate classes are in Europe, such are we in the United States,
which is folly to deny, insanity not to understand, blindness not to
see, and surely now full time that our eyes were opened to these
startling truths, which for ages have stared us full in the face.

It is time that we had become politicians, we mean, to understand the
political economy and domestic policy of nations; that we had become as
well as moral theorists, also the practical demonstrators of equal
rights and self-government. Except we do, it is idle to talk about
rights, it is mere chattering for the sake of being seen and heard--like
the slave, saying something because his so called "master" said it, and
saying just what he told him to say. Have we not now sufficient
intelligence among us to understand our true position, to realise our
actual condition, and determine for ourselves what is best to be done?
If we have not now, we never shall have, and should at once cease
prating about our equality, capacity, and all that.

Twenty years ago, when the writer was a youth, his young and yet
uncultivated mind was aroused, and his tender heart made to leap with
anxiety in anticipation of the promises then held out by the prime
movers in the cause of our elevation.

In 1830 the most intelligent and leading spirits among the colored men
in the United States, such as James Forten, Robert Douglass, I. Bowers,