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The Slave's Argument ON HISRETURN HOME, Clayton took from the post-office a letter, which we will give to our readers. "MR. CLAYTON: I am now an outcast. I cannot show my face in the world, I cannot go abroad by daylight; for no crime, as I can see, except resisting oppression. Mr. Clayton, if it were proper for your fathers to fight and shed blood for the oppression that came upon them, why isn't it right for us? They had not half the provocation that we have. Their wives and families were never touched. They were not bought, and sold, and traded, like cattle in the market, as we are. In fact, when I was reading that history, I could hardly understand what provocation they did have. They had everything easy and comfortable about them. They were able to support their families , even in luxury. And yet they were willing to plunge into war, and shed blood. I have studied the Declaration of Independence. The things mentioned there were bad and uncomfortable, to be sure; but, after all, look at the laws which are put over us! Now, if they had forbidden them to teach their children to read,—if they had divided them all out among masters, and declared them incapable of holding property as the mule before the plough,—there would have been some sense in that revolution. "Well, how was it with our people in South Carolina? Denmark Vesey was a man! His history is just what George Washington's would have been, if you had failed. What set him in his course? The Bible and your Declaration of Independence. What does your Declaration say? 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, 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. That to secure these rights governments are instituted among men. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of any of these ends, it is the right of the people to CHAPTER XX 435 alter or to abolish it.' Now, what do you make of that? This is read to us, every Fourth of July. It was read to Denmark Vesey and Peter Poyes, and all those other brave, good men, who dared to follow your example and your precepts. Well, they failed, and your people hung them. And they said they couldn't conceive what motive could have induced them to make the effort. They had food enough, and clothes enough, and were kept very comfortable. Well, had not your people clothes enough, and food enough? and wouldn't you still have had enough, even if you had remained a province of England to this day,—much better living, much better clothes, and much better laws, than we have to-day? I heard your father's interpretation of the law; I heard Mr. Jekyl's; and yet, when men rise up against such laws, you wonder what in the world could have induced them! That's perfectly astonishing! "But, of all the injuries and insults that are heaped upon us, there is nothing to me so perfectly maddening as the assumption of your religious men, who maintain and defend this enormous injustice by the Bible. We have all the right to rise against them that they had to rise against England. They tell us the Bible says, 'Servants, obey your masters.' Well, the Bible says, also, 'The powers that be are ordained of God, and whoso resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God.'1 If it was right for them to resist the ordinance of God, it is right for us. If the Bible does justify slavery, why don't they teach the slave to read it? And what's the reason that two of the greatest insurrections came from men who read scarcely anything else but the Bible? No, the fact is, they don't believe this themselves. If they did, they would try the experiment fairly of giving the Bible to their slaves. I can assure you the Bible looks as different to a slave from what it does to a master, as everything else in the world does. "Now, Mr. Clayton, you understand that when I say you, along here, I do not mean you personally, but the generality of the community of which you are one. I want you to think these things over, and, whatever my...

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