ARTICLE II: Our Wretchedness in Consequence of Ignorance.
Ignorance, my brethren, is a mist, low down into the very dark and almost impenetrable abyss in
which, our fathers for many centuries have been plunged. The Christians, and enlightened of
Europe, and some of Asia, seeing the ignorance and consequent degradation of our fathers,
instead of trying to enlighten them, by teaching them that religion and light with which God had
blessed them, they have plunged them into wretchedness ten thousand times more intolerable,
than if they had left them entirely to the Lord, and to add to their miseries, deep down into which
they have plunged them tell them, that they are an inferior and distinct race of beings, which
they will be glad enough to recall and swallow by and by. Fortune and misfortune, two
inseparable companions, lay rolled up in the wheel of events, which have from the creation of the
world, and will continue to take place among men until God shall dash worlds together.
When we take a retrospective view of the arts and sciences--the wise legislators--the Pyramids,
and other magnificent buildings--the turning of the channel of the river Nile, by the sons of
Africa or of Ham, among whom learning originated, and was carried thence into Greece, where it
was improved upon and refined. Thence among the Romans, and all over the then enlightened
parts of the world, and it has been enlightening the dark and benighted minds of men from then,
down to this day. I say, when I view retrospectively, the renown of that once mighty people, the
children of our great progenitor I am indeed cheered. Yea further, when I view that mighty son
of Africa, Hannibal, one of the greatest generals of antiquity, who defeated and cut off so many
thousands of the white Romans or murderers, and who carried his victorious arms, to the very
gate of Rome, and I give it as my candid opinion, that had Carthage been well united and had
given him good support, he would have carried that cruel and barbarous city by storm. But they
were dis-united, as the coloured people are now, in the United States of America, the reason our
natural enemies are enabled to keep their feet on our throats.
Beloved brethren--here let me tell you, and believe it, that the Lord our God, as true as he sits on
his throne in heaven, and as true as our Savior died to redeem the world, will give you a
Hannibal, and when the Lord shall have raised him up, and given him to you for your possession,
O my suffering brethren! Remember the divisions and consequent sufferings of Carthage and of
Hayti. Read the history particularly of Hayti, and see how they were butchered by the whites,
and do you take warning. The person whom God shall give you, give him your support and let
him go his length, and behold in him the salvation of your God. God will indeed, deliver you
through him from your deplorable and wretched condition under the Christians of America. I
charge you this day before my God to lay no obstacle in his way, but let him go.
The whites want slaves, and want us for their slaves, but some of them will curse the day they
ever saw us. As true as the sun ever shown in its meridian splendor, my colour will root some of
them out of the very face of the earth. They shall have enough of making slaves of, and
butchering, and murdering us in the manner which they have. No doubt some may say that I
write with a bad spirit, and that I being a black, wish these things to occur. Whether I write with
a bad or a good spirit, I say if these things do not occur in their proper time, it is because the
world in which we live does not exist, and we are deceived with regard to its existence.--It is
immaterial however to me, who believe, or who refuse--though I should like to see the whites
repent peradventure God may have mercy on them, some however, have gone so far that their
cup must be filled.
But what need have I to refer to antiquity, when Hayti, the glory of the blacks and terror of
tyrants, is enough to convince the most avaricious and stupid of wretches--which is at this time,
and I am sorry to say it, plagued with that scourge of nations, the Catholic religion; but I hope
and pray God that she may yet rid herself of it, and adopt in its stead the Protestant faith;also, I hope that she may keep peace within her borders and be united, keeping a strict look out
for tyrants, for if they get the least chance to injure her, they will avail themselves of it, as true as
the Lord lives in heaven. But one thing which gives me joy is, that they are men who would be
cut off to a man, before they would yield to the combined forces of the whole world--in fact, if
the whole world was combined against them, it could not do anything with them, unless the Lord
delivers them up.
Ignorance and treachery one against the other--a groveling servile and abject submission to the
lash of tyrants, we see plainly, my brethren, are not the natural elements of the blacks, as the
Americans try to make us believe; but these are misfortunes which God has suffered our fathers
to be enveloped in for many ages, no doubt in consequence of their disobedience to their Maker,
and which do, indeed, reign at this time among us, almost to the destruction of all other
principles: for I must truly say, that ignorance, the mother of treachery and deceit, gnaws into our
very vitals. Ignorance, as it now exists among us, produces a state of things, Oh my Lord! too
horrible to present to the world. Any man who is curious to see the full force of ignorance
developed among the coloured people of the United States of America, has only to go into the
southern and western states of this confederacy, where, if he is not a tyrant, but has the feelings
of a human being, who can feel for a fellow creature, he may see enough to make his very heart
bleed! He may see there, a son take his mother, who bore almost the pains of d**h to give him
birth, and by the command of a tyrant, strip her as naked as she came into the world, and apply
the cow-hide to her, until she falls a victim to d**h in the road! He may see a husband take his
dear wife, not infrequently in a pregnant state, and perhaps far advanced, and beat her for an
unmerciful wretch, until his infant falls a lifeless lump at her feet! Can the Americans escape
God Almighty? If they do, can he be to us a God of Justice? God is just, and I know it--for he has
convinced me to my satisfaction--I cannot doubt him. My observer may see fathers beating their
sons, mothers their daughters, and children their parents, all to pacify the pa**ions of unrelenting
tyrants. He may also, see them telling news and lies, making mischief one upon another. These
are some of the productions of ignorance, which he will see practiced among my dear brethren,
who are held in unjust slavery and wretchedness, by avaricious and unmerciful tyrants, to whom,
and their hellish deeds, I would suffer my life to be taken before I would submit. And when my
curious observer comes to take notice of those who are said to be free, (which a**ertion I deny)
and who are making some frivolous pretentions to common sense, he will see that branch of
ignorance among the slaves a**uming a more cunning and deceitful course of procedure.--He
may see some of my brethren in league with tyrants, selling their own brethren into hell upon
earth, not dissimilar to the exhibitions in Africa, but in a more secret, servile and abject manner.
Oh Heaven! I am full!!! I can hardly move my pen!!! and as I expect some will try to put me to
d**h, to strike terror into others, and to obliterate from their minds the notion of freedom, so as
to keep my brethren the more secure in wretchedness, where they will be permitted to stay but a
short time (whether tyrants believe it or not)--I shall give the world a development of facts,
which are already witnessed in the courts of heaven.My observer may see some of those ignorant and treacherous creatures (coloured people)
sneaking about in the large cities, endeavoring to find out all strange coloured people, where they
work and where they reside, asking them questions, and trying to ascertain whether they are
runaways or not, telling them, at the same time, that they always have been, are, and always will
be, friends to their brethren; and, perhaps, that they themselves are absconders, and a thousand
such treacherous lies to get the better information of the more ignorant!!! There have been and
are at this day in Boston, New-York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, coloured men, who are in
league with tyrants, and who receive a great portion of their daily bread, of the moneys which
they acquire from the blood and tears of their more miserable brethren, whom they scandalously
delivered into the hands of our natural enemies!
To show the force of degraded ignorance and deceit among us some farther, I will give here an
extract from a paragraph, which may be found in the Columbian Centinel of this city, for
September 9, 1829, on the first page of which, the curious may find an article, headed "Affray
And Murder." Portsmouth, (Ohio) Aug.22, 1829.
"A most shocking outrage was committed in Kentucky, about eight miles from this place, on
14th inst. A Negro driver, by the name of Gordon, who had purchased in Maryland about sixty
Negroes, was taking them, a**isted by an a**ociate named Allen, and the wagoner who conveyed
the baggage, to the Mississippi. The men were hand-cuffed and chained together, in the usual
manner for driving those poor wretches, while the women and children were suffered to proceed
without encumbrance. It appears that, by means of a file the Negroes, unobserved, had succeeded
in separating the iron which bound their hands, in such a way as to be able to throw them off at
any moment. About 8 o'clock in the morning, while proceeding on the state road leading from
Greenup to Vanceburg, two of them dropped their shackles and commenced a fight, when the
wagoner (Petit) rushed in with his whip to compel them to desist. At this moment, every negro
was found to be perfectly at liberty; and one of them seizing a club, gave Petit a violent blow on
the head, and laid him dead at his feet; and Allen, who came to his a**istance, met a similar fate,
from the contents of a pistol fired by another of the gang. Gordon was then attacked, seized and
held by one of the negroes, whilst another fired twice at him with a pistol, the ball of which each
time grazed his head, but not proving effectual, he was beaten with clubs, and left for dead. They
then commenced pillaging the wagon, and with an axe split open the trunk of Gordon, and rifled
it of the money, about $2,400. Sixteen of the negroes then took to the woods; Gordon, in the
mean time, not being materially injured, was enabled, by the a**istance of one of the women, to
mount his horse and flee; pursued, however, by one of the gang on another horse, with a drawn
pistol; fortunately he escaped with his life barely, arriving at a plantation, as the negro came in
sight; who then turned about and retreated."
"The neighborhood was immediately rallied, and a hot pursuit given--which, we understand, has
resulted in the capture of the whole gang and the recovery of the greatest part of the money.
Seven of the negro men and one woman, it is said were engaged in the murders, and will be
brought to trial at the next courts in Greenupsburg."
Here my brethren, I want you to notice particularly in the above article, the ignorant and
deceitful actions of this coloured woman. I beg you to view it candidly, as for eternity!!!! Here a
notorious wretch, with two other confederates had sixty of them in a gang, driving them like
brutes--the men all in chains and hand-cuffs, and by the help of God they got their chains and
hand-cuffs thrown off, and caught two of the wretches and put them to d**h, and beat the other
until they thought he was dead, and left him for dead; however, he deceived them, and rising
from the ground, this servile woman helped him upon his horse, and he made his escape.
Brethren, what do you think of this? Was it the natural fine feelings of this woman, to save such a
wretch alive? I know that the blacks, take them half enlightened and ignorant, are more humane
and merciful than the most enlightened and refined European that can be found in all the earth.
Let no one say that I a**ert this because I am prejudiced on the side of my colour, and against the
whites or Europeans. For what I write, I do it candidly, for my God and the good of both parties:
Natural observations have taught me these things; there is a solemn awe in the hearts of the
blacks, as it respects murdering men: which is the reason the whites take the advantage of us.
Whereas the whites, (though they are great cowards) where they have the advantage, or think
that there are any prospects of getting it, they murder all before them, in order to subject men to
wretchedness and degradation under them. This is the natural result of pride and avarice. But I
declare, the actions of this black woman are really insupportable. For my own part, I cannot
think it was anything but servile deceit, combined with the most gross ignorance: for we must
remember that humanity, kindness and the fear of the Lord, does not consist in protecting devils.
Here is a set of wretches, who had sixty of them in a gang, driving them around the country like
brutes, to dig up gold and silver for them, (which they will get enough of yet.) Should the lives
of such creatures be spared? Are God and Mammon in league? What has the Lord to do with a
gang of desperate wretches, who go sneaking about the country like robbers--light upon his
people wherever they can get a chance, binding them with chains and hand-cuffs, beat and
murder them as they would rattle-snakes? Are they not the Lord's enemies? Ought they not to be
destroyed? Any person who will save such wretches from destruction, is fighting against the
Lord, and will receive his just recompense. The black men acted like blockheads. Why did they
not make sure of the wretch? He would have made sure of them, if he could. It is just the way
with black men--eight white men can frighten fifty of them; whereas, if you can only get courage
into the blacks, I do declare it, that one good black man can put to d**h six white men; and I
give it as a fact, let twelve black men get well armed for battle, and they will k** and put to flight
fifty whites. The reason is, the blacks, once you get them started, they glory in d**h. The whites have had us
under them for more than three centuries, murdering, and treating us like brutes; and, as Mr.
Jefferson wisely said, they have never found us out--they do not know, indeed, that there is an
unconquerable disposition in the breasts of the blacks, which, when it is fully awakened and put
in motion, will be subdued, only with the destruction of the animal existence. Get the blacks
started, and if you do not have a gang of tigers and lions to deal with, I am a deceiver of the
blacks and of the whites. How sixty of them could let that wretch escape unsk**ed, I cannot
conceive--they will have to suffer as much for the two whom, they secured, as if they had put
one hundred to d**h: if you commence, make sure work--do not trifle, for they will not trifle
with you--they want us for their slaves, and think nothing of murdering us in order to subject us
to that wretched condition--therefore, if there is an attempt made by us, k** or be k**ed. Now, I
ask you, had you not rather be k**ed than to be a slave to a tyrant, who takes the life of your
mother, wife, and dear little children? Look upon your mother, wife and children, and answer
God Almighty; and believe this, that it is no more harm for you to k** a man, who is trying to
k** you, than it is for you to take a drink of water when thirsty; in fact, the man who will stand
still and let another murder him, is worse than an infidel, and, if he has common sense, ought not
to be pitied. The actions of this deceitful and ignorant coloured woman, in saving the life of a
desperate wretch, whose avaricious and cruel object was to drive her, and her companions in
miseries, through the country like cattle, to make his fortune on their carca**es, are but too much
like that of thousands of our brethren in these states: if anything is whispered by one, which has
any allusion to the melioration of their dreadful condition, they run and tell tyrants, that they may
be enabled to keep them the longer in wretchedness and miseries. Oh! coloured people of these
United States, I ask you, in the name of that God who made us, have we, in consequence of
oppression, nearly lost the spirit of man, and, in no very trifling degree, adopted that of brutes?
Do you answer, no?--I ask you, then, what set of men can you point me to, in all the world, who
are so abjectly employed by their oppressors, as we are by our natural enemies? How can, Oh!
how can those enemies but say that we and our children are not of the human family, but were
made by our Creator to be an inheritance to them and theirs forever? How can the slaveholders
but say that they can bribe the best coloured person in the country, to sell his brethren for a
trifling sum of money, and take that atrocity to confirm them in their avaricious opinion, that we
were made to be slaves to them and their children? How could Mr. Jefferson but say (see his
notes on Virginia, page 213).
" I advance it therefore as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or
made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of
body and mind?"--It," says he, "is not against experience to suppose, that different species of the
same genius, or varieties of the same species, may possess different qualifications." [Here, my
brethren, listen to him.] "Will not a lover of natural history, then, one who views the gradations
in all the races of animals with the eye of philosophy, excuse an effort to keep those in the
department of man as distinct as nature has formed them?"
I hope you will try to find out the meaning of this verse--its widest sense and all its bearings:
whether you do or not, remember the whites do. This very verse, brethren, having emanated from
Mr. Jefferson, a much greater philosopher the world never afforded, has in truth injured us more,
and has been as great a barrier to our emancipation as anything that has ever been advanced
against us. I hope you will not let it pa** unnoticed. He goes on further, and says: "This
unfortunate difference of colour, and perhaps of faculty, is a powerful obstacle to the
emancipation of these people. Many of their advocates, while they wish to vindicate the liberty
of human nature are anxious also to preserve its dignity and beauty. Some of these, embarra**ed
by the question, 'What further is to be done with them?' join themselves in opposition with those
who are actuated by sordid avarice only." Now I ask you candidly, my suffering brethren in time,
who are candidates for the eternal worlds, how could Mr. Jefferson but have given the world
these remarks respecting us, when we are so submissive to them, and so much servile deceit
prevail among ourselves--when we so meanly submit to their murderous lashes, to which neither
the Indians nor any other people under Heaven would submit? No, they would die to a man,
before they would suffer such things from men who are no better than themselves, and perhaps
not so good. Yes, how can our friends but be embarra**ed, as Mr. Jefferson says, by the question,
"What further is to be done with these people?" For while they are working for our emancipation,
we are, by our treachery, wickedness and deceit, working against ourselves and our children--
helping ours, and the enemies of God, to keep us and our dear little children in their infernal
chains of slavery!!! Indeed, our friends cannot but relapse and join themselves "with those who
are actuated by sordid avarice only!!!!" For my own part, I am glad Mr. Jefferson has advanced
his positions for your sake; for you will either have to contradict or confirm him by your own
actions, and not by what our friends have said or done for us; for those things are other men's
labours, and do not satisfy the Americans, who are waiting for us to prove to them ourselves, that
we are MEN, before they will be willing to admit the fact; for I pledge you my sacred word of
honour, that Mr. Jefferson's remarks respecting us, have sunk deep into the hearts of millions of
the whites, and never will be removed this side of eternity.--For how can they, when we are
confirming him every day, by our groveling submissions and treachery? I aver, that when I look
over these United States of America, and the world, and see the ignorant deceptions and
consequent wretchedness of my brethren, I am brought of times solemnly to a stand, and in the
midst of my reflections I exclaim to my God, "Lord didst thou make us to be slaves to our
brethren, the whites?" But when I reflect that God is just, and that millions of my wretched
brethren would meet d**h with glory--yea, more, would plunge into the very mouths of cannons
and be torn into particles as minute as the atoms which compose the elements of the earth, in
preference to a mean submission to the lash of tyrants, I am with streaming eyes, compelled to
shrink back into nothingness before my Maker, and exclaim again, thy will be done, O Lord God
Almighty.
Men of colour, who are also of sense, for you particularly is my appeal designed. Our more
ignorant brethren are not able to penetrate its value. I call upon you therefore to cast your eyes
upon the wretchedness of your brethren, and to do your utmost to enlighten them--go to work
and enlighten your brethren!--Let the Lord see you doing what you can to rescue them and
yourselves from degradation. Do any of you say that you and your family are free and happy,
and what have you to do with the wretched slaves and other people? So can I say, for I enjoy as
much freedom as any of you, if I am not quite as well off as the best of you. Look into our
freedom and happiness, and see of what kind they are composed!! They are of the very lowest
kind--they are the very dregs!--they are the most servile and abject kind, that ever a people was
in possession of! If any of you wish to know how free you are, let one of you start and go
through the southern and western States of this country, and unless you travel as a slave to a
white man (a servant is a slave to the man whom he serves) or have your free papers, (which if
you are not careful they will get from you) if they do not take you up and put you in jail, and if
you cannot give good evidence of your freedom, sell you into eternal slavery, I am not a living
man: or any man of colour, immaterial who he is, or where he came from, if he is not the fourth
from the negro race!! (as we are called) the white Christians of America will serve him the same
they will sink him into wretchedness and degradation for ever while he lives. And yet some of
you have the hardihood to say that you are free and happy! May God have mercy on your
freedom and happiness!! I met a coloured man in the street a short time since, with a string of
boots on his shoulders; we fell into conversation, and in course of which, I said to him, what a
miserable set of people we are! He asked, why?--Said I, we are so subjected under the whites,
that we cannot obtain the comforts of life, but by cleaning their boots and shoes, old clothes,
waiting on them, shaving them &c. Said he, (with the boots on his shoulders) "I am completely
happy!!! I never want to live any better or happier than when I can get a plenty of boots and
shoes to clean!!!" Oh! how can those who are actuated by avarice only, but think, that our
Creator made us to be an inheritance to them forever, when they see that our greatest glory is
centered in such mean and low objects? Understand me, brethren, I do not mean to speak against
the occupations by which we acquire enough and sometimes scarcely that, to render ourselves
and families comfortable through life. I am subjected to the same inconvenience, as you all.--My
objections are, to our glorying and being happy in such low employments; for if we are men, we
ought to be thankful to the Lord for the past, and for the future. Be looking forward with thankful
hearts to higher attainments than wielding the razor and cleaning boots and shoes. The man
whose aspirations are not above, and even below these, is indeed, ignorant and wretched enough.
I advance it therefore to you, not as a problematical, but as an unshaken and forever immoveable
fact, that your full glory and happiness, as well as all other coloured people under Heaven, shall
never be fully consummated, but with the entire emancipation of your enslaved brethren all over
the world. You may therefore, go to work and do what you can to rescue, or join in with tyrants
to oppress them and yourselves, until the Lord shall come upon you all like a thief in the night.
For I believe it is the will of the Lord that our greatest happiness shall consist in working for the
salvation of our whole body.
When this is accomplished a burst of glory will shine upon you, which will indeed astonish you
and the world. Do any of you say this never will be done? I a**ure you that God will accomplish
it--if nothing else will answer, he will hurl tyrants and devils into atoms and make way for his
people. But O my brethren! I say unto you again, you must go to work and prepare the way of
the Lord.
There is a great work for you to do, as trifling as some of you may think of it. You have to prove
to the Americans and the world, that we are MEN, and not brutes, as we have been represented,
and by millions treated. Remember, to let the aim of your labours among your brethren, and
particularly the youths, be the dissemination of education and religion. Never mind what the
ignorant ones among us may say, many of whom when you speak to them for their good, and try
to enlighten their minds, laugh at you, and perhaps tell you plump to your face, that they want no
instruction from you or any other Niger, and all such aggravating language. Now if you are a
man of understanding and sound sense, I conjure you in the name of the Lord, and of all that is
good, to impute their actions to ignorance, and wink at their follies, and do your very best to get
around them some way or other, for remember they are your brethren; and I declare to you that it
is for your interests to teach and enlighten them.
It is lamentable, that many of our children go to school, from four until they are eight or ten, and
sometimes fifteen years of age, and leave school knowing but a little more about the grammar of
their language than a horse does about handling a musket--and not a few of them are really so
ignorant, that they are unable to answer a person correctly, general questions in geography, and
to hear them read, would only be to disgust a man who has a taste for reading; which, to do well,
as trifling as it may appear to some, (to the ignorant in particular) is a great part of learning.
Some few of them, may make out to scribble tolerably well, over a half sheet of paper, which I
believe has hitherto been a powerful obstacle in our way, to keep us from acquiring knowledge.
An ignorant father, who knows no more than what nature has taught him, together with what
little he acquires by the senses of hearing and seeing, finding his son able to write a neat hand,
sets it down for granted that he has as good learning as anybody; the young, ignorant grump,
hearing his father or mother, who perhaps may be ten times more ignorant, in point of literature,
than himself, extolling his learning, struts about, in the full a**urance, that his attainments in
literature are sufficient to take him through the world, when, in fact, he has scarcely any learning
at all!
I promiscuously fell in conversation once, with an elderly coloured man on the topics of
education, and of the great prevalence of ignorance among us: Said he, "I know that our people
are very ignorant but my son has a good education: I spent a great deal of money on his
education: he can write as well as any white man, and I a**ure you that no one can fool him," &c.
Said I, what else can your son do, besides writing a good hand? Can he post a set of books in a
mercantile manner? Can he write a neat piece of composition in prose or in verse? To these
interrogations he answered in the negative.
Said I, did your son learn, while he was at school, the width and depth of English Grammar? To
which he also replied in the negative, telling me his son did not learn those things. Your son, said
I, then, has hardly any learning at all--he is almost as ignorant, and more so, than many of those
who never went to school one day in all their lives. My friend got a little put out, and so walking
off, said that his son could write as well as any white man. Most of the coloured people, when
they speak of the education of one among us who can write a neat hand, and who perhaps knows
nothing but to scribble and puff pretty fair on a small scrap of paper, immaterial whether his
words are grammatical, or spelt correctly, or not; if it only looks beautiful, they say he has as
good an education as any white man--he can write as well as any white man, &c. The poor,
ignorant creature, hearing, this, he is ashamed, forever after, to let any person see him humbling
himself to another for knowledge but going about trying to deceive those who are more ignorant
than himself, he at last falls an ignorant victim to d**h in wretchedness. I pray that the Lord may
undeceive my ignorant brethren, and permit them to throw away pretensions, and seek after the
substance of learning. I would crawl on my hands and knees through mud and mire, to the feet of
a learned man, where I would sit and humbly supplicate him to instill into me, that which neither
devils nor tyrants could remove, only with my life--for colored people to acquire learning in this
country, makes tyrants quake and tremble on their sandy foundation. Why, what is the matter?
Why, they know that their infernal deeds of cruelty will be made known to the world. Do you
suppose one man of good sense and learning would submit himself, his father, mother, wife and
children, to be slaves to a wretched man like himself, who, instead of compensating him for his
labours, chains, hand-cuffs and beats him and family almost to d**h, leaving life enough in
them, however, to work for, and call him master? No! No! He would cut his devilish throat from
ear to ear, and well do slave-holders know it. The bare name of educating the coloured people,
scares our cruel oppressors almost to d**h. But if they do not have enough to be frightened for
yet, it will be, because they can always keep us ignorant, and because God approbates their
cruelties, with which they have been for centuries murdering us. The whites shall have enough of
the blacks, yet, as true as God sits on his throne in Heaven.
Some of our brethren are so very full of learning, that you cannot mention any thing to them
which they do not know better than yourself!!--nothing is strange to them!!--they knew every
thing years ago!--if anything should be mentioned in company where they are, immaterial how
important it is respecting us or the world, if they had not divulged it; they make light of it, and
affect to have known it long before it was mentioned and try to make all in the room, or
wherever you may be, believe that your conversation is nothing!!--not worth hearing! All this is
the result of ignorance and ill-breeding; for a man of good-breeding, sense and penetration, if he
had heard a subject told twenty times over, and should happen to be in company where one
should commence telling it again, he would wait with patience on its narrator, and see if he
would tell it as it was told in his presence before--paying the most strict attention to what is said,
to see if any more light will be thrown on the subject: for all men are not gifted alike in telling, or
even hearing the most simple narration. These ignorant, vicious, and wretched men, contribute almost as much injury to our body as
tyrants themselves, by doing so much for the promotion of ignorance amongst us; for they,
making such pretensions to knowledge, such of our youth as are seeking after knowledge, and
can get access to them, take them as criterions to go by, who will lead them into a channel,
where, unless the Lord blesses them with the privilege of seeing their folly, they will be
irretrievably lost forever, while in time!!!
I must close this article by relating the very heart-rending fact, that I have examined school-boys
and young men of colour in different parts of the country, in the most simple parts of Murray's
English Grammar, and not more than one in thirty was able to give a correct answer to my
interrogations. If anyone contradicts me, let him step out of his door into the streets of Boston,
New-York, Philadelphia, or Baltimore, (no use to mention any other, for the Christians are too
charitable further south or west!)--I say, let him who disputes me, step out of his door into the
streets of either of those four cities, and promiscuously collect one hundred school-boys, or
young men of colour, who have been to school, and who are considered by the coloured people
to have received an excellent education, because, perhaps, some of them can write a good hand,
but who, notwithstanding their neat writing, may be almost as ignorant, in comparison, as a
horse.--And, I say it, he will hardly find (in this enlightened day, and in the midst of this
charitable people) five in one hundred, who, are able to correct the false grammar of their
language.--The cause of this almost universal ignorance among us, I appeal to our schoolmasters
to declare. Here is a fact, which I this very minute take from the mouth of a young
coloured man, who has been to school in this state (Ma**achusetts) nearly nine years, and who
knows grammar this day, nearly as well as he did the day he first entered the school-house, under
a white master. "This young man says: "My master would never allow me to study grammar." I
asked him, why? "The school committee," said he "forbid the coloured children learning
grammar"--they would not allow any but the white children "to study grammar." It is a notorious
fact, that the major part of the white Americans, have, ever since we have been among them,
tried to keep us ignorant, and make us believe that God made us and our children to be slaves to
them and theirs. Oh! my God, have mercy on Christian Americans!!!