HOPE THOU IN GOD.

Are there any prospects that the long and dreary night of American despotism will speedily end in a joyous morning?

If we turn our eye towards the political horizon we shall find it overspread with heavy clouds portentous of evil to the oppressed. The government of the United States is intensely pro-slavery. The great political parties, with which the masses of the people act, vie with each other in their supple and obsequious devotion to the slaveocracy. The wise policy of the fathers of the Republic to confine slavery within very narrow limits, so that it would speedily die out and be supplanted by freedom, has been abandoned; the whole spirit of our policy has been reversed—and our national government seems chiefly concerned for the honor, perpetuation and extension of slavery.

The powerful religious denominations have been following in the wake of the state. Their ancient and bold testimony against slavery[Pg 220] has been expurgated from their confessions and disciplines, or completely neutralized.—Slavery as it is receives their unqualified sanction. The giant Christian publication societies of the day so completely ignore the question of slavery that a reader of all their books would not suspect that millions of slaves are groaning under an iron yoke in this country. Dark as a starless, moonless midnight, is the aspect presented by the heavens of the popular religious denominations.

American prejudice is yet very powerful. The polite, educated, and talented free colored traveler is exposed, in most parts of the union, to the coarsest insults from this gaunt demon. He feels everywhere its hellish power. One who was more than twenty years a slave presents in the following eloquent language a true picture of the present anomalous condition of the children of Ham in the midst of the general joy of freedom:

“The Hungarian, the Italian, the Irishman, the Jew and the Gentile, all find in this goodly land a home; and when any of them, or all of them, desire to speak, they find willing ears, warm hearts, and open hands. For these people, the Americans have principles of justice, maxims of mercy, sentiments of religion, and feelings of brotherhood in abundance. But[Pg 221] for my poor people, (alas, how poor!)—enslaved, scourged, blasted, overwhelmed, and ruined, it would appear that America had neither justice, mercy, nor religion. She has no scales in which to weigh our wrongs, and no standard by which to measure our rights.... Here, upon the soil of our birth, in a country which has known us for two centuries, among a people who did not wait for us to seek them, but who sought us, found us, and brought us to their own chosen land,—a people for whom we have performed the humblest services, and whose greatest comforts and luxuries have been won from the soil by our sable and sinewy arms,—I say, sir, among such a people, and with such obvious recommendations to favor, we are far less esteemed than the veriest stranger and sojourner.... We are literally scourged beyond the beneficent range of both authorities—human and divine. We plead for our rights, in the name of the immortal declaration of independence, and of the written constitution of government, and we are answered with imprecations and curses. In the sacred name of Jesus we beg for mercy, and the slave-whip, red with blood, cracks over us in mockery.... We cry for help to humanity—a common humanity, and here too we are repulsed. American[Pg 222] humanity hates us............