ld the last hour of December 1830,
instead of the first hour of January 1, 1831--and of children in
the same family, brothers and sisters--some of them destined to
bondage for life, and others gifted with freedom, for no other
reason than that the former were born before, and the latter
after, a particular day of a particular year--and of parents
being unjustly and inhumanly flogged in the very sight of their
offspring arbitrarily made free, while they are as arbitrarily
kept slaves--let any man but reflect on those things, and unless
the sensibilities of his heart be paralysed even to deadness, he
must surely revolt at such a cruel and cold blooded allotment in
the fortune of those little ones, and be satisfied with nothing
short of the emancipation of the whole community, without a
single exception.
'In the third place, supposing all children born after January
1, 1831, were declared free, how are they to be educated? That
they may be prepared for the enjoyment of that liberty with
which you have invested them, they must undergo a particular and
appropriate training. So say the _gradualists_. Very well; under
whom are they to get this training? Are they to be separated
from their parents? Is that dearest of natural ties to be broken
asunder? Is this necessary for your plan? And are not you thus
endeavoring to cure one species of wickedness by the
instrumentality of another? But if they are to be left with
their parents and brought up under their care, then either they
will be imbued with the faults and degeneracies that are
characteristic of slavery, and consequently be as unfit for
freedom as those who have not been disenthralled: or they will
be well nurtured and well instructed by their parents, and this
implies a confession that their parents themselves are
sufficiently prepared for liberty, and that there is no good
reason for withholding from them, the boon that is bestowed upon
their children.
'Whatever view, in short, we take of the question, the
prospective plan is full of difficulty or contradictions, and we
are made more sensible than ever that there is nothing left for
us, but to take the consistent, honest, uncompromising course of
demanding the abolition of slavery with respect to the present,
as well as to every future generation of the negroes in o
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