The white man thinks that because he holds
us in his infernal chains of slavery that
we wish to be white.
Well he is dreadfully deceived.
We wish to be just as our Creator made us
and no avaricious, unmerciful wretch has any
business to hold us in slavery or to make
slaves of us.
However, any man that will not fight under
our Lord in the glorious and heavenly cause
of freedom ought to be kept along with his
children, all his family, as a slave, or in
chains to be butchered by his cruel enemies.
Colored people of America, have we in consequence
of oppression nearly given up the spirit of
men and adopted that of brutes?
And do you answer me, no?
Well then, I ask you, what set of men can
you point to who are so abjectly employed
by their oppressors as we are by our natural
enemies?
And how can these enemies but say that we
and our children are not of the human family,
but were made by the Creator to be an inheritance
to them and theirs?
How can the slaveholder but say that he can
bribe the best colored person in this country
to sell his brethren for a trifling sum of
money?
How can Mr. Thomas Jefferson but write, “I
have advanced it, as a suspicion only, that
the blacks, whether originally a distinct
race or made distinct by time and circumstance,
are inferior to whites in areas of both mentality
and physically.
It is this difference that makes it so hard
to emancipate these people.”
Well I’m happy that Mr. Jefferson advanced
his theories for your sake.
Why you will either have to contradict or
confirm him by your own actions, not by what
our white friends have said and done for us.
This country is more ours’ than it is the
whites.
We have enriched it with our blood and our
tears.
I ask your attention to these words found
in our own Declaration of Independence.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident,
that all Men are created equal, and that they
are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable rights, and that among these are
Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”
