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PolWritV1_201-250.indd 217 2/21/12 9:43 AM [ 19} A PENNSYLVANIAN [BENJAMIN RUSH I745-r8r3] An Address to the Inhabitants of the British Settlements in America Upon Slave-Keeping PHILADELPHIA, 1773 Dush was born on a farm in Pennsylvania, orphaned at age five, ft. but supplied with a good education, including graduation from the college that later became Princeton University. He chose medicine as a career and after doing his apprenticeship in Philadelphia was able to study for three years in Edinburgh, London, and Paris. An enduring reputation as America's leading physician in the prime of his life was his reward for this commitment. But enchantment with public events and inability to resist dabbling in public affairs were competing interests that ran second to medicine and healing by no large margin. As a member of the Second Continental Congress he signed the Declaration of Independence, and as a member of the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention of 1790, he was influential in replacing the radically democratic constitution of 1776 with a new one that comported much better with current notions ofrepublican government. He wrote pamphlets on almost everything-slavery, capital punishment , oaths, separation of Church and State, public education, the education of women, bicameral versus unicameral legislatures, etc. This essay is typical of his work in that it blends religious commitment with a practical, political eye. AN ADDRESS, &c. So much hath been said upon the subject of Slave-Keeping, that an Apology may be required for this Address. The only one I shall offer is, that the Evil still continues. This may in part be owing to the ( 2 17) PolWritV1_201-250.indd 218 2/21/12 9:43 AM ( 218} PHILADELPHIA, I773 great attachment we have to our own Interest, and in part, to the subject not being fully exhausted. The design of the following address is to sum up the leading arguments against it, several of which have not been urged by any of those Authors who have written upon it. Without entering into the History of the facts which relate to the Slave Trade, I shall proceed to combat the principal arguments which are used to support it. I need hardly say any thing in favour of the Intellects of the Negroes, or of their capacities for virtue and happiness, although these have been supposed, by some, to be inferior to [2] those of the inhabitants of Europe. The accounts which travellers give us of their ingenuity, humanity, and strong attachment to their parents, relations, friends and country, show us that they are equal to the Europeans, when we allow for the diversity of temper and genius which is occasioned by climate. We have many well-attested anecdotes of as sublime and disinterested virtue among them as ever adorned a Roman or a Christian character. But we are to distinguish between an African in his own country, and an African in a state of slavery in America. Slavery is so foreign to the human mind, that the moral faculties, as well as those of the understanding are debased, and rendered torpid by it. All the vices which are charged upon the Negroes in the southern colonies and the West-Indies, such as Idleness, Treachery, Theft, and the like, are the genuine offspring of slavery, and serve as an argument to prove that they were not intended for it. Nor let it be said, in the present Age, that their black color (as it is commonly called) either [3] subjects them to, or qualifies them for slavery~. The vulgar notion of their being descended from Cain, who was supposed to have been marked with this color, is too absurd ~ Montesquieu, in his spirit of Laws, rrears rhis argument with rhe ridicule ir deserves. "Were I co vindicate our right co make slaves of rhe Negroes, these should be my arguments. The Europeans having extirpated rhe Americans, were obliged co make slaves of rhe Africans for clearing such vast rracrs of land. Sugar would be roo dear, if rhe plants which produce ir were culrivared by any ocher than slaves. These creatures are all over black, and wirh such a tlar nose rhar rhey can scarcely be pitied. lr is hardly co be believed rhar God, who is a wise being, should place a soul, especially a good soul, in such a black ugly body. The Negroes prefer a glass necklace co rhar gold, which polite nations so [3.138.125.2] Project MUSE (2024-04-26 02:24...

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