er in
Heaven, for the forgiveness of his brutal enemy. We hear, and from our
inmost hearts repeat the affecting interrogatory of the aged slave,
_"How long, Oh Lord! how long!"_

The editor has written out the details of this painful narrative with
feelings of sorrow. If there be any who feel a morbid satisfaction in
dwelling upon the history of outrage and cruelty, he at least is not one
of them. His taste and habits incline him rather to look to the pure and
beautiful in our nature--the sunniest side of humanity--its kindly
sympathies--its holy affections--its charities and its love. But, it is
because he has seen that all which is thus beautiful and excellent in
mind and heart, perishes in the atmosphere of slavery: it is because
humanity in the slave sinks down to a level with the brute and in the
master gives place to the attributes of a fiend--that he has not felt at
liberty to decline the task. He cannot sympathize with that abstract and
delicate philanthropy, which hesitates to bring itself in contact with
the sufferer, and which shrinks from the effort of searching out the
extent of his afflictions. The emblem of Practical Philanthropy is the
Samaritan stooping over the wounded Jew. It must be no fastidious hand
which administers the oil and the wine, and binds up the
unsightly gashes.

Believing, as he does, that this narrative is one of truth; that it
presents an unexaggerated picture of Slavery as it exists on the cotton
plantations of the South and West, he would particularly invite to its
perusal, those individuals, and especially those professing Christians
at the North, who have ventured to claim for such a system, the sanction
and approval of the Religion of Jesus Christ. In view of the facts here
presented, let these men seriously inquire of themselves, whether in
advancing such a claim, they are not uttering a higher and more
audacious blasphemy than any which ever fell from the pens of Voltaire
and Paine. As if to cover them with confusion, and leave them utterly
without excuse for thus libelling the character of a just God, these
developments are making, and the veil rising, which for long years of
sinful apathy has rested upon the abominations of American Slavery.
Light is breaking into it's dungeons, disclosing the wreck of buried
intellect--of hearts broken--of human affections outraged--of souls
ruined. The world will see it as God has always seen it; and when He
shall at length make inquisiti