l thy light rise obscurity, and thy darkness be as the
noon-day. And the Lord shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy
soul in drought, and make fat thy bones; and thou shalt be like a
watered garden, and like a spring of water whose waters fail not. And
they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places; thou
shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be
called, The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell
in." Yet, if I had affirmed that they ought to meet the doom of
pirates, I should have been no more personal, no more merciless, than
is the law of Congress, making it a piratical act to enslave a native
African, under whatever pretence or circumstances; for in the eye of
reason, and by the standard of eternal justice, it is as great a crime
to enslave one born on our own soil, as on the coast of Africa; and
as, in the latter case, neither the plea of having fairly purchased or
inherited him, nor the pretence of seeking his temporal and eternal
good, by bringing him to a civilized and Christian country, would be
regarded as of any weight, so, none of the excuses offered for
slaveholding in this country are worthy of the least consideration.
The act, in both cases, is essentially the same--equally inhuman,
immoral, piratical. Oppression is not a matter of latitude or
longitude; here excusable, there to be execrated; here to elevate the
oppressor to the highest station, there to hang him by the neck till
he is dead; here compatible with Christianity, there to be branded and
punished as piracy. "He that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he
be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death." So reads the
Mosaic code, and by it every American Slaveholder is convicted of a
capital crime. By the Declaration of Independence, he is pronounced a
man-stealer. As for myself, I have simply exposed his guilt, besought
him to repent, and to "go and sin no more."

What extravagant claim have I made in behalf of the slaves? Will it be
replied, "Their immediate liberation!" Then God, by his prophet, is
guilty of extravagance! Then Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the
Declaration of Independence, and all who signed that instrument, and
all who joined in the Revolutionary struggle, were deceivers in
asserting it to be a self-evident truth, that all men are endowed by
their Creator with an inalienable right to liberty! The issue is not
with me, but with them, and with God. What! is