after my
escape from slavery? I answer I have been induced to do so on account of
the increasing disposition to overlook the fact, that THE SIN of slavery
lies in the chattel principle, or relation. Especially have I felt anxious
to save professing Christians, and my brethren in the ministry, from
falling into a great mistake. My feelings are always outraged when I hear
them speak of "kind masters,"--"Christian masters,"--"the mildest form of
slavery,"--"well fed and clothed slaves," as extenuations of slavery; I am
satisfied they either mean to pervert the truth, or they do not know what
they say. The being of slavery, its soul and body, lives and moves in the
chattel principle, the property principle, the bill of sale principle; the
cart-whip, starvation, and nakedness, are its inevitable consequences to
a greater or less extent, warring with the dispositions of men.

There lies a skein of silk upon a lady's work-table. How smooth and
handsome are the threads. But while that lady goes out to make a call, a
party of children enter the apartment, and in amusing themselves, tangle
the skein of silk, and now who can untangle it? The relation between
master and slave is even as delicate as a skein of silk: it is liable to
be entangled at any moment.

The mildest form of slavery, if there be such a form, looking at the
chattel principle as the definition of slavery, is comparatively the worst
form. For it not only keeps the slave in the most unpleasant apprehension,
like a prisoner in chains awaiting his trial; but it actually, in a great
majority of cases, where kind masters do exist, trains him under the most
favourable circumstances the system admits of, and then plunges him into
the worst of which it is capable.

It is under the mildest form of slavery, as it exists in Maryland,
Virginia, and Kentucky, that the finest specimens of coloured females are
reared. There are no mothers who rear, and educate in the natural graces,
finer daughters than the Ethiopian women, who have the least chance to
give scope to their maternal affections. But what is generally the fate of
such female slaves? When they are not raised for the express purpose of
supplying the market of a class of economical Louisian and Mississippi
gentlemen, who do not wish to incur the expense of rearing legitimate
families, they are, nevertheless, on account of their attractions, exposed
to the most shameful degradation, by the young masters in the families