rom degradation. Do
any of you say that you and your family are free and happy and what
have you to do with wretched slaves and other people? So can I say,
for I enjoy as much freedom as any of you, if I am not quite as well
off as the best of you. Look into our freedom and happiness and see of
what kind they are composed!! They are of the very lowest kind--they
are the very _dregs!_--they are the most servile and abject kind, that
ever a people was in possession of! If any of you wish to know how
FREE you are, let one of you start and go thro' the southern and
western States of this country, and unless you travel as a slave to a
white man (a servant is a _slave_ to the man whom he serves,) or have
your free papers (which if you are not careful they will get from you)
if they do not take you up and put you in jail, and if you cannot
give evidence of your freedom, sell you into eternal slavery, I am not
a living man; or any man of color, immaterial who he is or where he
came from, if he is not the 4th from the "_Negro race_," (as we are
called,) the white christians of America will serve him the same, they
will sink him into wretchedness & degradation forever while he lives.
And yet some of you have the hardihood to say that you are free &
happy! May God have mercy on your freedom and happiness! I met a
colored man in the street a short time since, with a string of boots
on his shoulder; we fell into conversation, and in course of which I
said to him, what a miserable set of people we are! He asked
why?--Said I, we are so subjected under the whites, that we cannot
obtain the comforts of life, but by cleaning their boots and shoes,
old clothes, waiting on them, shaving them, etc. Said he, (with the
boots on his shoulders,) "I am completely happy!!! I never want to
live any better or happier than when I can get a plenty of boots and
shoes to clean!!!" Oh! how can those who are actuated by avarice only,
but think that our creator made us to be an inheritance to them
forever, when they see that our greatest glory is centered in such
mean and low objects? Understand me, brethren, I do not mean to speak
against the occupations by which we acquire enough and sometimes
scarcely that, to render ourselves and families comfortable through
life. I am subjected to the same inconvenience, as you all. My
objections are, to our _glorying_ and being _happy_ in such low
employments; for if we are men, we ought to be thankful to the Lord
f