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

BECOMING AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD LITERATURE
and do continue to treat us more cruel than any heathen nation ever did a people it
had subjected to the same condition that you have us. Now let us reason—I mean
you of the United States, whom I believe God designs to save from destruction,
if you will hear. For I declare to you, whether you believe it or not, that there are
some on the continent of America, who will never be able to repent. God will surely
destroy them, to show you his disapprobation of the murders they and you have
inicted on us. I say, let us reason; had you not better take our body, while you
have it in your power, and while we are yet ignorant and wretched, not knowing but
a little, give us education, and teach us the pure religion of our Lord and Master,
which is calculated to make the lion lay down in peace with the lamb, and which
millions of you have beaten us nearly to death for trying to obtain since we have been
among you, and thus at once, gain our aection while we are ignorant? Remember
Americans, that we must and shall be free and enlightened as you are, will you wait
until we shall, under God, obtain our liberty by the crushing arm of power ? Will
it not be dreadful for you ? I speak Americans for your good. We must and shall
be free I say, in spite of you. You may do your best to keep us in wretchedness and
misery, to enrich you and your children, but God will deliver us from under you.
And wo, wo, will be to you if we have to obtain our freedom by ghting. Throw away
your fears and prejudices then, and enlighten us and treat us like men, and we will
like you more than we do now hate you, and tell us now no more about colonization,
for America is as much our country, as it is yours.—Treat us like men, and there is
no danger but we will all live in peace and happiness together. For we are not like
you, hard hearted, unmerciful, and unforgiving. What a happy country this will be,
if the whites will listen. What nation under heaven, will be able to do any thing with
us, unless God gives us up into its hand? But Americans, I declare to you, while you
keep us and our children in bondage, and treat us like brutes, to make us support
you and your families, we cannot be your friends. You do not look for it, do you?
Treat us then like men, and we will be your friends. And there is not a doubt in my
mind, but that the whole of the past will be sunk into oblivion, and we yet, under
God, will become a united and happy people. The whites may say it is impossible,
but remember that nothing is impossible with God.
The Americans may say or do as they please, but they have to raise us from
the condition of brutes to that of respectable men, and to make a national
acknowledgement to us for the wrongs they have inicted on us. As unexpected,
strange, and wild as these propositions may to some appear, it is no less a fact, that
unless they are complied with, the Americans of the United States, though they
may for a little while escape, God will yet weigh them in a balance, and if they are
not superior to other men, as they have represented themselves to be, he will give
them wretchedness to their very heart’s content.
And now brethren, having concluded these four Articles, I submit them,
together with my Preamble, dedicated to the Lord, for your inspection, in language
so very simple, that the most ignorant, who can read at all, may easily understand—
of which you may make the best you possibly can. Should tyrants take it into their
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