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

BECOMING AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD LITERATURE
Pharisees of Jerusalem, who had nothing but the laws of Moses and the Prophets
to go by, rise up in judgment against Christian Americans, and condemn them,
who, in addition to these have a revelation from Jesus Christ the Son of the living
God? In ne, will not the Antideluvians, together with the whole heathen world of
antiquity, rise up in judgment against Christian Americans and condemn them?
The Christians of Europe and America go to Africa, bring us away, and throw us
into the seas, and in other ways murder us, as they would wild beast. The
Antideluvians and heathens never dreamed of such barbarities.—Now the
Christians believe, because they have a name to live, while they are dead, that God
will overlook such things. But if he does not deceive them, it will be because he has
overlooked it sure enough. But to return to this godly man, Bishop Allen. I do
hereby openly arm it to the world, that he has done more in a spiritual sense for
his ignorant and wretched brethren than any other man of colour has, since the
world began. And as for the greater part of the whites, it has hitherto been their
greatest object and glory to keep us ignorant of our Maker, so as to make us believe
that we were made to be slaves to them and their children, to dig up gold and silver
for them. It is notorious that not a few professing Christians among the whites,
who profess to love our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, have assailed this man and
laid all the obstacles in his way they possibly could, consistent with their profession—
and what for? Why, their course of proceeding and his, clashed exactly together—
they trying their best to keep us ignorant, that we might be the better and more
obedient slaves—while he, on the other hand, doing his very best to enlighten us
and teach us a knowledge of the Lord. And I am sorry that I have it to say, that
many of our brethren have joined in with our oppressors, whose dearest objects
are only to keep us ignorant and miserable against this man to stay his hand.—
However, they have kept us in so much ignorance, that many of us know no better
than to ght against ourselves, and by that means strengthen the hands of our
natural enemies, to rivet their infernal chains of slavery upon us and our children.
I have several times called the white Americans our natural enemies—I shall here
dene my meaning of the phrase. Shem, Ham and Japheth, together with their
father Noah and wives, I believe were not natural enemies to each other. When the
ark rested after the ood upon Mount Arrarat, in Asia, they (eight) were all the
people which could be found alive in all the earth—in fact if Scriptures be true,
(which I believe are) there were no other living men in all the earth, notwithstanding
some ignorant creatures hesitate not to tell us that we, (the blacks) are the seed of
Cain the murderer of his brother Abel. But where or of whom those ignorant and
avaricious wretches could have got their information, I am unable to declare. Did
they receive it from the Bible? I have searched the Bible as well as they, if I am not
as well learned as they are, and have never seen a verse which testies whether we
are the seed of Cain or of Abel. Yet those men tell us that we are the seed of Cain,
and that God put a dark stain upon us, that we might be known as their slaves!!!
Now, I ask those avaricious and ignorant wretches, who act more like the seed of
Cain, by murdering the whites or the blacks? How many vessel loads of human
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