for
more than three centuries, murdering, and treating us like brutes;
and, as Mr. Jefferson wisely said, they have never _found us
out_--they do not know, indeed, that there is an unconquerable
disposition in the breasts of the blacks, which when it is fully
awakened and put in motion, will be subdued, only with the destruction
of the animal existence. Get the blacks started, and if you do not
have a gang of lions and tigers to deal with, I am a deceiver of the
blacks and the whites. How sixty of them could let that wretch escape
unkilled, I cannot conceive--they will have to suffer as much for the
two whom they secured, as if they had put one hundred to death: if you
commence, make sure work--do not trifle, for they will not trifle with
you--they want us for their slaves, and think nothing of murdering us
in order to subject us to that wretched condition--therefore, if there
is an _attempt_ made by us, kill or be killed. Now, I ask you had you
not rather be killed than to be a slave to a tyrant, who takes the
life of your mother, wife, and dear little children? Look upon your
mother, wife and children, and answer God Almighty; and believe this,
that it is no more harm for you to kill a man, who is trying to kill
you, than it is for you to take a drink of water when thirsty; in
fact, the man who will stand still and let another murder him, is
worse than an infidel, and if he has common sense, ought not to be
pitied.--The actions of this deceitful and ignorant coloured woman, in
saving the life of a desperate man, whose avaricious and cruel object
was to drive her and her companions in miseries, through the country
like cattle, to make his fortune on their carcasses, are but too much
like that of thousands of our brethren in these states: if any thing
is whispered by one, which has any allusion to the melioration of
their dreadful condition, they run and tell tyrants, that they may be
enabled to keep them the longer in wretchedness and miseries. Oh!
coloured people of these United States, I ask you, in the name of that
God who made us, have we, in consequence of oppression, nearly lost
the spirit of man, and, in no very trifling degree, adopted that of
brutes? Do you answer, No?--I ask you, then, what set of men can you
point me to, in all the world, who are so abjectly employed by their
oppressors as we are by our _natural enemies_? How can, Oh! how can
those enemies but say that we and our children are not of the HUMAN