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Show 60 gro character. It may be doubted, whether any other race would have borne this trial, as well as they. Before the day of freedom came, the West Indies and this country foreboded fearful consequences from the sudden transition of such a multitude from bondage to liberty. Revenge, massacre, unbridled lust, were to usher in the grand festival of Emancipation, which was to end in the breaking out of a new Pandemonium on earth. Instead of this, the holy day of liberty was welcomed by shouts and tears of gratitude. The liberated negroes did not hasten as Saxon serfs in like circumstances might have done, to haunts of intoxication, hut to the house of God. Their rude churches were thronged. Their joy found utterance in prayers and hymns. History contains no record more touching, than the account of the religious, tender thankfulness which this vast boon awakened in the negro breast. And what followed ? Was this beautiful emotion an evanescent transport, soon to give way to ferocity and vengeance ? It was natural for masters, who had inflicted causeless stripes, and filled the cup of the slaves with bitterness, to fear their rage after liberation. But the overwhelming joy of freedom having subsided, they returned to labor. Not even a blow was struck in the excitement of that vast change. No violation of the peace required the interposition of the magistrate. The new relation 61 was assumed easily, quietly, without an act of violence; and, since that time, in the short space of two years, how much have they accomplished? Beautiful villages have grown up. Little li·eeholds have been purchased. The marriage tie has become sacred. The child is educated. Crime has diminished. There are islands, where a greater proportion of the young are trained in schools, than among the whites of the slave States. I ask, whether any other people on the face of the earth, would have received and used the infinite blessing of liberty so well. The history of West Indian Emancipation teaches us, that we are holding in bondage one of the best races of the human family. The negro is among the mildest, gentlest of men. He is singularly susceptible of improvement from abroad. His children, it is said, receive more rapidly than ours the elements of knowledge. How far he can originate improvements, time only can teach. His nature is affectionate, easily touched ; and hence he is more open to religious impression than the white man. The European race have manifested more courage, enterprise, invention; hut in the dispositions which Christianity particularly honors, how inferior are they to the African! When I cast my eyes over our Southern region, the land of Bowie knives, lynch law, and duels, of "chivalry," honor, and revenge; and 6 |
