ment."

He is compassed about with the iron bands of prejudice,— he fancies that to break the fetters of his slaves would be to insure his own ruin. But it is the purchasers of his ill-gotten produce who have woven around him the filmy web of prejudice. Let them but make it his interest to be just, and his moral perceptions will be clear as the daylight. Emancipation will no longer appear to him a visionary scheme, ruinous and impracticable. His opinions will be grounded on wiser and juster reasoning, and he will make haste to render back their liberty to those from whom he has so long withheld it. He who clings with so tenacious a grasp to his gathered stores of human wealth, while we hate his crime, may claim our pity for his self-delusion and his unhappy situation. But what have those to advance in behalf of their heartless conduct, who, with the full light of conviction around them, obstinately persist to abet him in his error? Nothing, absolutely nothing, beyond the miserable and even criminal plea of self-convenience, or a disinclination to encounter a trivial portion of salutary self-denial! And, they who can so lightly weigh their own gratification against the intolerable anguish of their sister's lot, who count the sacrifice of a few paltry luxuries, too vast a ransom for the redemption of thousands and tens of thousands of their fellow-creatures from a state of servitude and darkness, are the good, the amiable, and the gentle of the earth. Such a maze of inconsistency is the human heart! We could fling away the pen, and weep in very shame and bitterness for the hard-heartedness of our sex. One would suppose that the bare knowledge of the terrible price at which those cherished comforts have been procured, would cause a woman to turn shuddering and loathingly away, as though they were infected with a taint of blood. And the curse of blood is upon them! Though the dark red stain may not be there visibly, yet the blood of all the many thousands of the slain, who have died amid the horrors and loathsomeness of the slave-ship-been hurled by capricious cruelty to the yawning wave, or sprang to its bosom in the madness of their proud despair of those who have pined away to death beneath the slow tortures of a broken heart, who have perished beneath the tortures of inventive tyranny, or on the ignominious gibbet-all this lies with a fearful weight upon this most foul and unnatural system, and that insatiable thirst for luxury and wealth in which it first originated, and by which it is still perpetuated.

Think of our country's glory,

All dimm'd with Afric's tears-
Her broad flag stain'd and gory
With the hoarded guilt of years!

Think of the frantic mother,
Lamenting for her child,
Till falling lashes smother
Her cries of anguish wild!

Think of the prayers ascending,
Yet shriek'd, alas! in vain,
When heart from heart is rending,
Ne'er to be joined again.

MRS. L. H. SIGOURNEY.

Shall we behold, unheeding,

Life's holiest feelings crush'd?
When woman's heart is bleeding,
Shall woman's voice be hush'd?

Oh, no! by every blessing
That Heaven to thee may lend-
Remember their oppression,

Forget not, sister, friend."

E. M. Chandler's Works.

TO PRUDENCE CRANDALL.

Heaven bless thee, noble lady,

In thy purpose, good and high!

Give knowledge to the thirsting mind,
Light to the asking eye;
Unseal the intellectual page,

For those from whom dark pride,
With tyrant and unholy hands,
Would fain its treasures hide.

Still bear thou up unyielding,
'Gainst persecution's shock,
Gentle as woman's self, yet firm
And moveless as a rock;
A thousand spirits yield to thes
Their gushing sympathies,
The blessing of a thousand hearts
Around thy pathway lies.

E. M. C.

MRS. L. H. SIGOURNEY.

We have a goodly clime,

Broad vales and streams we boast,
Our mountain frontiers frown sublime,
Old ocean guards our coast;

Suns bless our harvest fair,
With fervid smile serene,

But a dark shade is gathering there!-
What can its blackness mean?

We have a birthright proud,
For our young sons to claim,
An eagle soaring o'er the cloud,
In freedom and in fame;
We have a scutcheon bright,

By our dear fathers bought-
A fearful blot distains its white!-
Who hath such evil wrought?

Our banner o'er the sea

Looks forth with starry eye,
Emblazoned, glorious, bold, and free,
A letter on the sky.

What hand, with shameful stain,
Hath marred its heavenly blue?

The yoke! the fetters! and the chain!
Say, are these emblems true?

95

This day* doth music rare

Swell through our nation s bound,
But Afric's wailing mingles there,
And Heaven doth hear the sound!
O God of power! we turn

In penitence to thee,

Bid our loved land the lesson learn-
To bid the slave be free.

WILLIAM B. TAPPAN.

Lift ye my country's banner high,
And fling abroad its gorgeous sheen;
Unroll its stripes upon the sky,
And let its lovely stars be seen.

Blood, blood, is on its spangled fold,
Yet from the battle comes it not;
God! all the seas thy channels hold,
Cannot wash out the guilty spot.

These glorious stars and stripes that led
Our lion-hearted fathers on,

Vailed only to the honored dead

Beaming where fields and fame were won :

These symbols that to kings could tell
Our young republic's rising name,
And speak to falling realms, the knell
Of glory past, of future shame :
Dishonor'd shall they be by hands,
On which a sacrament doth lie?
The light that heralded to lands
Immortal glory-must it die ?

No! let the earthquake-utterance be
From thousand swelling hearts-not so!
And let one voice from land and sea,
Return indignant answer-No!

Up then! determine, dare and do,

What justice claims, what freemen may; What frowning heaven demands of you While yet its muttering thunders stay;

That thou, for ever from this soil

Bid SLAVERY'S withering blight depart;

And to the wretch restore the spoil,

Though thou may'st not the broken heart;

That thou thy brother from the dust

Lift up, and speak his spirit free!

That millions whom thy crime hath curst,
May blessings plead on thine and thee.

Then to the universe wide spread
Thy glorious stars, without a stain

Bend from your skies, illustrious dead!
The world ye won is free again.

* Fourth of July.

JOHN PIERPONT-LYDIA MARIA CHILD.

JOHN PIERPONT.

Quench, righteous God, the thirst,
That Congo's sons hath curs'd-
The thirst for gold!

Shall not thy thunders speak,
Where Mammon's altars reek,
Where maids and matrons shrieks,
Bound, bleeding, sold?

Cast down, great God, the fanes,
That, to unhallowed gains,
Round us have risen-
Temples, whose priesthood pore
Moses and Jesus o'er,

Then bolt the black man's door,

The poor man's prison!

97

LYDIA MARIA CHILD.

In order to show the true aspect of slavery among us, I will state distinct propositions, each supported by the evidence of actually existing laws.

1. Slavery is hereditary and perpetual, to the last moment of the slave's earthly existence, and to all his descendants, to the latest posterity.

2. The labor of the slave is compulsory and uncompensated; while the kind of labor, the amount of toil, and the time allowed for rest, are dictated solely by the master. No bargain is made, no wages given. A pure despotism governs the human brute; and even his covering and provender, both as to quantity and quality, depend entirely on the master's discretion.

3. The slave being considered a personal chattel, may be sold, or pledged, or leased, at the will of his master. He may be exchanged for marketable commodities, or taken în execution for the debts, or taxes, either of a living, or a deceased master. Sold at auction, "either individually, or in lots to suit the purchaser," he may remain with his family, or be separated from them for ever.

4. Slaves can make no contracts, and have no legal right to any property, real or personal. Their own honest earnings, and the legacies of friends, belong, in point of law, to their masters.

5. Neither a slave, nor free colored person, can be a witness against any white or free man, in a court of justice, however atrocious may have been the crimes they have seen him commit: but they may give testimony against a fellow-slave, or free colored man, even in cases affecting life.

6. The slave may be punished at his master's discretion-without trial-without any means of legal redress,-whether his offence be real, or imaginary: and the master can transfer the same despotic power to any person, or persons, he may.choose to appoint.

7. The slave is not allowed to resist any free man under any circumstances: his only safety consists in the fact that his owner may bring suit and recover the price of his body, in case his life is taken, or his limbs rendered unfit for labor.

8. Slaves cannot redeem themselves, or obtain a change of masters, though cruel treatment may have rendered such a change necessary. for their personal safety.

9. The slave is entirely unprotected in his domestic relations.

10. The laws greatly obstruct the manumission of slaves, even where the master is willing to enfranchise them.

11. The operation of the laws tends to deprive slaves of religious instruction and consolation.

12. The whole power of the laws is exerted to keep slaves in a state of the lowest ignorance.

13. There is in this country a monstrous inequality of law and right. What is a trifling fault in a white man, is considered highly criminal in the slave; the same offences which cost a white man a few dollars only, are punished in the negro with death.

14. The laws operate most oppressively upon free people of color.Appeal in favor of that class of Americans called Africans.

SARAH M. GRIMKÉ ANGELINA E. GRIMKÉ.
Reasons for action at the North.

I. Slavery now exists in the District of Columbia, over which, according to the constitution of the United States, congress has power" to exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever."

II. Slave-traders in the District of Columbia, by the payment of $400 apiece, are licensed by congress to buy and sell American citizens, and this "price of blood" is thrown into the coffers of the nation.

III. Northern members of congress are striving to perpetuate slavery in the District of Columbia. It was only last year that they referred certain petitions and resolutions respecting the abolition of slavery in the District to a select committee with instructions to report, "That in the opinion of this House, congress ought not in any way to interfere with slavery in the District of Columbia." And the present congress have treated them with contempt. Even the expresident who so zealously contends for the right of petition, has "declared himself adverse to the abolition of slavery in the District."

IV. In the District of Columbia the prisons which were built with northern as well as southern money, are continually thrown open to receive innocent men, women, and children, who are lodged in their gloomy cells until the slave-trader has made the necessary arrangements for dragging them into hopeless bondage. "One keeper of the jail in Washington stated, that in five years 450 colored persons had been lodged there for safe keeping," i. e., until they could be dis