Page:The Under-Ground Railroad.djvu/73

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53

members of social and civil society. No Bibles, no Tract Societies, no Bible Societies. No Sunday School Organizations. No Missionary Organizations. No Churches nor Chapels, no Ministers. This is the Rule. Exceptions there are I admit. Dwelling 17 years in the Slave States enables me to know the truth of what I state. Mothers are sold from their children, which is a literal fact. "Rachael would not be comforted, because they are not." Husbands from their wives, sons from their fathers and fathers from their sons, daughters from their mothers and mothers from their daughters. Brothers from their sisters and sisters from their brothers, and so on through the entire families of the Slaves. All this is done to furnish the houses the Owners live in, to build Chapels, Court and State Houses, with their lofty spires, (the finger of non-devotion), pointing heavenwards. To pay the salaries of Ministers, to pay the pew-rents, to buy the bread used at the Lord's Table, &c. A Fugitive Slave told me his brother was a member of a church with him, and that his master sold him, and, to his certain knowledge, a portion of the money was spent in buying plates which were used at the administration of the Lord's Supper. I ask, in the name of a God of justice and humanity, where is the equality of which the Americans boast so much?

A Slave, feeling he has a right to his freedom, peaceably walks off in the night, in search of a country in