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

BECOMING AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD LITERATURE
holds in chains and in hand-cus—men, women and children, all together!! O!
save us, we pray thee, thou God of Heaven and of earth, from the devouring hands
of the white Christians!!!
Oh! thou Alpha and Omega!
The beginning and the end.
Enthron’d thou art, in Heaven above,
Surrounded by Angels there:
Front whence thou seest the miseries
To which we are subject;
The whites have murder’d us, O God!
And kept us ignorant of thee.
Not satised with this, my Lord!
They throw us in the seas:
Be pleas’d, we pray, for Jesus’ sake,
To save us from their grasp.
We believe that, for thy glory’s sake,
Thou wilt deliver us;
But that thou may’st eect these things,
Thy glory must be sought.
In conclusion, I ask the candid and unprejudiced of the whole world, to search
the pages of historians diligently, and see if the Antideluvians—the Sodomites—the
Egyptians—the Babylonians—the Ninevites—the Carthagenians—the Persians—
the Macedonians—the Greeks—the Romans—the Mahometans—the Jews—or
devils, ever treated a set of human beings, as the white Christians of America do
us, the blacks, or Africans. I also ask the attention of the world of mankind to the
declaration of these very American people, of the United States.
A declaration made July 4, 1776.
It says, “When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one
people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and
to assume among the Powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which
the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them. A decent respect for the opinions
of mankind requires, that they should declare the causes which impel them to the
separation.—We hold these truths to be self evident—that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights: that among
these, are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that, to secure these rights,
governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent
of the governed; that when ever any form of government becomes destructive of
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