JOHN PIERPONT. Quench, righteous God, the thirst, That Congo's sons hath curs'd- Shall not thy thunders speak, Cast down, great God, the fanes, Round us have risen- Then bolt the black man's door, The poor man's prison! LYDIA MARIA CHILD. In order to show the true aspect of slavery among us, I will state distinct propositions, each supported by the evidence of actually existing laws. 1. Slavery is hereditary and perpetual, to the last moment of the slave's earthly existence, and to all his descendants, to the latest posterity. 2. The labor of the slave is compulsory and uncompensated; while the kind of labor, the amount of toil, and the time allowed for rest, are dictated solely by the master. No bargain is made, no wages given. A pure despotism governs the human brute; and even his covering and provender, both as to quantity and quality, depend entirely on the master's discretion. 3. The slave being considered a personal chattel, may be sold, or pledged, or leased, at the will of his master. He may be exchanged for marketable commodities, or taken in execution for the debts, or taxes, either of a living, or a deceased master. Sold at auction, "either individually, or in lots to suit the purchaser," he may remain with his family, or be separated from them for ever. 4. Slaves can make no contracts, and have no legal right to any property, real or personal. Their own honest earnings, and the legacies of friends, belong, in point of law, to their masters. 5. Neither a slave, nor free colored person, can be a witness against any white or free man, in a court of justice, however atrocious may have been the crimes they have seen him commit: but they may give testimony against a fellow-slave, or free colored man, even in cases affecting life. 6. The slave may be punished at his master's discretion-without trial-without any means of legal redress,-whether his offence be real, or imaginary: and the master can transfer the same despotic power to any person, or persons, he may choose to appoint. 7. The slave is not allowed to resist any free man under any circumstances: his only safety consists in the fact that his owner may bring suit and recover the price of his body, in case his life is taken, or his limbs rendered unfit for labor. 8. Slaves cannot redeem themselves, or obtain a change of masters, though cruel treatment may have rendered such a change necessary for their personal safety. 9. The slave is entirely unprotected in his domestic relations. 10. The laws greatly obstruct the manumission of slaves, even where the master is willing to enfranchise them. 11. The operation of the laws tends to deprive slaves of religious instruction and consolation. 12. The whole power of the laws is exerted to keep slaves in a state of the lowest ignorance. 13. There is in this country a monstrous inequality of law and right. What is a trifling fault in a white man, is considered highly criminal in the slave; the same offences which cost a white man a few dollars only, are punished in the negro with death. 14. The laws operate most oppressively upon free people of color.Appeal in favor of that class of Americans called Africans.. SARAH M. GRIMKÉ ANGELINA E. Grimké. Reasons for action at the North. I. Slavery now exists in the District of Columbia, over which, according to the constitution of the United States, congress has power" to exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever." II. Slave-traders in the District of Columbia, by the payment of $400 apiece, are licensed by congress to buy and sell American citizens, and this "price of blood" is thrown into the coffers of the nation. III. Northern members of congress are striving to perpetuate slavery in the District of Columbia. It was only last year that they referred certain petitions and resolutions respecting the abolition of slavery in the District to a select committee with instructions to report, "That in the opinion of this House, congress ought not in any way to interfere with slavery in the District of Columbia." And the present congress have treated them with contempt. Even the expresident who so zealously contends for the right of petition, has "declared himself adverse to the abolition of slavery in the District." IV. In the District of Columbia the prisons which were built with northern as well as southern money, are continually thrown open to receive innocent men, women, and children, who are lodged in their gloomy cells until the slave-trader has made the necessary arrangements for dragging them into hopeless bondage. "One keeper of the jail in Washington stated, that in five years 450 colored persons had been lodged there for safe keeping," i. e., until they could be dis posed of in the course of the slave-trade; besides nearly 300 who had been taken up and lodged there as runaways. In 1834, there were at one time, thirteen incarcerated in this prison, who claimed that they were entitled to their freedom. V. Slavery now exists in the territory of Florida, which is under the exclusive jurisdiction of congress. VI. The inter-state slave-trade, which is productive of an enormous amount of misery and crime, might be regulated or abolished by congress; for the constitutional power to legislate on this subject is vested in that body. VII. According to the constitution of the United States, northern men are pledged to put down servile insurrections at the South; their physical strength is pledged to support this system of oppression and cruelty, heathenism and robbery. VIII. Northern votes in congress have admitted seven new slave states into the Union since the constitution was adopted. In this way northern men have enlarged "the place of the tent of slavery, stretched forth the curtains of her habitation, lengthened her cords and strengthened her stakes." IX. Conformably to the constitution of the United States, the northern states deliver up the fugitive slave into the hands of his master. But this is not all; the colored man who is taken up on suspicion that he has no right to his own body, is denied a trial by a jury, and is thrown into northern prisons until his claimant is ready to return him into abject slavery. And furthermore, Pennsylvania and New Jersey have gratuitously passed laws to secure the slaveholder his unnatural but legal right to his slave for six months after he has voluntarily brought that slave under their jurisdiction. New York has been even more obsequious to southern convenience, and extended the term to nine months. Indeed, so exceedingly lax are the laws of the northern states with regard to colored persons, that they are constantly liable to be kidnapped. We know that they often are, the free as well as the bond, and that many a free citizen of color has been stolen and reduced to bondage, and sold on southern vendue tables. X. Northern churches receive slaveholders to their communion tables, and slaveholding ministers into their pulpits, whilst at the same time they close their pulpits against anti-slavery ministers, who are pleading the cause of the dumb. XI. Northern ministers go to the South and close their lips on the subject of slavery. They will not preach the truth to the people of their charge: many of them become slaveholders, and thus strengthen the hands of the oppressor by their examples. XII. Northern men go to the South to make their fortunes, they frequently become slaveholders, and very often harder masters, than those who have been born and bred at the South. XIII. Northern men are themselves slaveholders, and in the city of New York alone, the merchants hold mortgages on the southern plantations and slaves to the amount of $10,000,000. This fact was ascertained last spring. And furthermore, a person interested in the Texas insurrection, told Judge Jay, that there were two merchants in New York, ready to engage in the African slave-trade, to supply that country with slaves under the specious name of indented apprentices, if it was wrested from Mexico. Look at the fact that the brig Latona of New York, which sailed for St. Thomas, last autumn, was afterwards sent to Cuba to be sold as a Guineaman. This vessel was the property of a New-York merchant. XIV. Northern manufacturers, merchants, and consumers, are constantly lending their aid to support the system of slavery, by purchasing a large amount of the products of the unrequited labor of the slave. XV. Northern prejudice against color is grinding the colored man to the dust in our free states, and this is strengthening the hands of the oppressor continually. When the slaveholders hear that the colored citizens of the North are not permitted to erect a college at New Haven; that their schools at Canterbury and Canaan are broken up; that they are continually subject to great inconveniences and great indignities in travelling from place to place, because the pride of northern aristocracy cannot bear a colored person at the same table, in the same boat cabin, in the same rail car with the whites, or to sit side by side with them even in the temples of God :—when they hear that a Presbyterian minister was, at the last anniversary of the alumni of Princeton college, actually kicked out of the chapel because he wore a darker skin than their own, thinkest thou they cannot discern in these things the very same spirit which leads them to degrade and brutalize their colored brethren at home? We now feel prepared to present our correspondent with "the definite, practicable means by which Northerners can put an end to slavery in the South." Let them petition congress unceasingly to abolish slavery and the slave-trade in the District of Columbia, and let them vote for no senators and representatives who will not assert the right of their constituents to petition, and the duty of congress to receive and hear those petitions, and refer them to a committee for solemn consideration and judicious action. Let them protest against the use of the national prisons for the iniquitous purpose of confining slaves, and free people of color taken up on suspicion of being runaways.Let Northerners petition for the abolition of slavery in the territory of Florida, and the entire breaking up of the inter-state slave-trade. Let them respectfully ask for an alteration in that part of the constitution by which they are bound to assist the South in quelling servile insurrections. Let them see to it that they send no man to congress who would give his vote to the admission of another slave state into the national Union. Let them protest against the injustice and cruelty of delivering the fugitive slave back to his master, as being a direct infringement of the Divine command. Deut. xxiii, 15, 16. Let them petition their different legislatures to grant a jury trial to the friendless, helpless runaway, and for the repeal of those laws which secure to the slaveholder his legal right to his slave, after he has voluntarily brought him within the verge of their jurisdiction, and for the enactment of such laws as will protect the colored man, woman, and child, from the fangs of the kidnapper, who is constantly walking about in the northern states, seeking whom he may devour. Let the northern churches refuse to receive slaveholders at their communion tables, or to permit slaveholding ministers to enter their pulpits. Let those northern ministers who go to the South "Cry aloud and spare not, lift up their voices like a trumpet and show the people their transgressions, and the house of Jacob their sins ;"-let them refuse to countenance the system of slavery by owning slaves themselves. Let northern men who go to the South to make their fortunes, see to it, that those fortunes are not made out of the unrequited labor of the slave. Let northern merchants refuse to receive mortgages or take slaves, seeing that this is a virtual acknowledgment that man can hold man as property. Let them carefully avoid participating in any way in the African slave-trade. Let northern manufacturers refuse to purchase the cotton for the cultivation of which the laborer has received no wages. Let the grocer refuse to buy the sugar and rice of the South, so long as "the hire of the laborers who have reaped down their fields is kept back by fraud." Let the merchant refuse to receive the articles manufactured out of slave-grown cotton, and let the consumer refuse to purchase either the rice, sugar, or cotton articles, to produce which has cost the slave his unpaid labor, his tears, and his blood. Every Northerner may in this way bear a faithful testimony against slavery at the South, by withdrawing his pecuniary support. DECLARATION OF THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONVENTION, Assembled at Philadelphia, December 4, 1833. The Convention, assembled in the city of Philadelphia, to organize a National Anti-Slavery Society, promptly seize the opportunity to promulgate the following DECLARATION OF SENTIMENTS, as cherished by them in relation to the enslavement of one-sixth portion of the American people. More than fifty-seven years have elapsed since a band of patriots convened in this place, to devise measures for the deliverance of this country from a foreign yoke. The corner stone upon which they founded the TEMPLE OF FREEDOM was broadly this" that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, LIBERTY, and the pursuit of happiness." At the sound of their trumpet-call, three millions of people rose up as from the sleep of death, and rushed to the strife of blood; deeming it more glorious to die instantly as freemen, than desirable to live one hour as slaves. They were few in number-poor in resources; but the honest conviction that TRUTH, JUSTICE, and RIGHT, were on their side, made them invincible. We have met together for the achievement of an enterprise, without which, that of our fathers is incomplete; and which, for its magnitude, solemnity, and probable results upon the destiny of the world, as far transcends theirs, as moral truth does physical force. In purity of motive, in earnestness of zeal, in decision of purpose, in intrepidity of action, in steadfastness of faith, in sincerity of spirit, we would not be inferior to them. Their principles led them to wage war against their oppressors, and to spill human blood like water, in order to be free. Ours forbid the doing of evil that good |