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Show 316 UNCLE TOM'S CADJN : OR, ship-owners of Maino,-is this a thing for you to countenance and encourage1 Brave and generous men of New York, farmers of rich and joyous Ohio, and yo of the wide prairie states, -answer, is this a thing for you to protect and countenance1 And you, mothers of America,- you, who have learned, by the cradles of your own children, to love and feel for all mankind,- by the sacred love you bear your child; by your joy in his beautiful, spotless infancy; by the motherly pity and tenderness with which you guide his growing years; by tho anxieties of his education; by the prayers you breathe for his soul's eternal good;- I beseech you, pity the mother who has all your affections, and not ono legal right to protect, guide, or educate, the child of her bosom ! By the sick hour of your child; by those dying eyes, which you can never forget; by those last cries, that wrung your heart when you could neither help nor save; by tho desolation of that empty cradle, that silent nursery,- I beseech you, pity those mothers that aro constantly made childless by the American slave-trade! And say, mothers of America, is this a thing to be defended, sympathized with, passed over in silence 1 Do you say that the people of the free states have nothing to do with it, and can do nothing? Would to God this were true! But it is not true. The people of the free states have defended, encouraged, and participated; and are more guilty for it, before God, than the South, in that they have not the apology of education or custom. If the mothers of the free states had all felt as they should, in times past, the sons of the free states would not have been the holders, and, proverbially, the hardest masters of slaves; the sons of the free states would not have connived at the extension of slavery, in our national body; the sons of the free states would not, as they do, trade the souls and bodies of men LIFE AMONG THE LOWLY. 317 as an equivalent to money, in their mercantile dealjngs. There are multitudes of slaves temporarily owned, and sold again, by merchants in northem cities; and shall the whole guilt or obloquy of slavery fall only on the South 1 Northern men, northern mothers, northern Christians, have something more to do than denounce their brethren at the South; they have to look to the evil among themselves. But, what can any individual do 1 Of that, every individual can judge. There is one thing that every individual can do,- they can sec to it that they feel1'ight. An atmosphere of sympathetic influence encircles every human being; and tho man or woman who feels strongly, healthily and justly, on the great interests of humanity, is a constant benefactor to the human race. See, then, to your sympathies in this matter ! Are they in harmony with the sympathies of Christ 1 or are they swayed and perverted by the sophistries of worldly policy 1 Christian men and women of the North! still further,you have another power ; you can pray! Do you believe in prayer 1 or has it become an indistinct apostolic tradition? You pray for the heathen abroad; pray also for the heathen at home. And pray for those distressed Christians whose whole chance of religious improvement is an accident of trade and sale; from whom any adherence to the morals of Christianity is, in mn.ny cases, an impossibility, unless they hn.ve given them, from above, the courage and grace of martyrdom. But, still more. On the shores of our free states are emerging the poor, shattered, broken remnants of families,men and women, escaped, by miraculous providences, from tho surges of slavery,- feeble in knowledge, and, in many cases, infirm in moral constitution, from a system ·which confounds and confuses every principle of Christianity and morality. YOL. II. 27* |