Becoming America - An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution, 2018a

BECOMING AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD LITERATURE
proposition submitted to consideration which in the smallest degree touches
another very important and delicate question, which ought to be left as much out
of view as possible, (Negro Slavery.)”
“There is no fear, Mr. R. said that this proposition would alarm the slaveholders;
they had been accustomed to think seriously of the subject.—There was
a popular work on agriculture, by John Taylor of Carolina, which was widely
circulated, and much conded in, in Virginia. In that book, much read because
coming from a practical man, this description of people, [referring to us half free
ones] were pointed out as a great evil. They had indeed been held up as the greater
bug-bear to every man who feels an inclination to emancipate his slaves, not to
create in the bosom of his country so great a nuisance. If a place could be provided
for their reception, and a mode of sending them hence, there were hundreds, nay
thousands of citizens who would, by manumitting their slaves, relieve themselves
from the cares attendant on their possession. The great slave-holder, Mr. R. said,
was frequently a mere sentry at his own door—bound to stay on his plantation
to see that his slaves were properly treated, &c. Mr. R. concluded by saying, that
he had thought it necessary to make these remarks being a slaveholder himself,
to shew that, so far from being connected with abolition of slavery, the measure
proposed would prove one of the greatest securities to enable the master to keep in
possession his own property.”
Here is a demonstrative proof, of a plan got up, by a gang of slave-holders to
select the free people of colour from among the slaves, that our more miserable
brethren may be the better secured in ignorance and wretchedness, to work their
farms and dig their mines, and thus go on enriching the Christians with their blood
and groans. What our brethren could have been thinking about, who have left their
native land and home and gone away to Africa, I am unable to say. This country is
as much ours as it is the whites, whether they will admit it now or not, they will see
and believe it by and by. They tell us about prejudice—what have we to do with it?
Their prejudices will be obliged to fall like lightning to the ground, in succeeding
generations; not, however, with the will and consent of all the whites, for some will
be obliged to hold on to the old adage, viz: the blacks are not men, but were made
to be an inheritance to us and our children for ever!!!!!! I hope the residue of the
coloured people, will stand still and see the salvation of God and the miracle which
he will work for our delivery from wretchedness under the Christians!!!!!!
ADDITION.—If any of us see t to go away, go to those who have been for many
years, and are now our greatest earthly friends and benefactors—the English. If
not so, go to our brethren, the Haytians, who, according to their word, are bound
to protect and comfort us. The Americans say, that we are ungrateful—but I ask
them for heaven’s sake, what should we be grateful to them for—for murdering our
fathers and mothers?—Or do they wish us to return thanks to them for chaining
and handcung us, branding us, cramming re down our throats, or for keeping
us in slavery, and beating us nearly or quite to death to make us work in ignorance
and miseries, to support them and their families. They certainly think that we
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