Page:The black man.djvu/155

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HENRY HIGHLAND GARNETT.
151

thy children are tortured, taunted, and hurried out of life by unprecedented cruelty. Brave men, formed in the divinest mould, are bartered, sold, and mortgaged. Stripped of every sacred right, they are scourged if they affirm that they belong to God. Women, sustaining the dear relation of mothers, are yoked with the horned cattle to till the soil, and their heart-strings are torn to pieces by cruel separations from their children. Our sisters, ever manifesting the purest kindness, whether in the wilderness of their fatherland, or amid the sorrows of the middle passage, or in crowded cities, are unprotected from the lust of tyrants. They have a regard for virtue, and they possess a sense of honor; but there is no respect paid to these jewels of noble character. Driven into unwilling concubinage, their offspring are sold by their Anglo-Saxon fathers. To them the marriage institution is but a name, for their despoilers break down the hymeneal altar, and scatter its sacred ashes on the winds.

"Our young men are brutalized in intellect, and their manly energies are chilled by the frosts of slavery. Sometimes they are called to witness the agonies of the mothers who bore them, writhing under the lash; and as if to fill to overflowing the already full cup of demonism, they are sometimes compelled to apply the lash with their own hands. Hell itself cannot overmatch a deed like this; and dark damnation shudders as it sinks into its bosom, and seeks to hide itself from the indignant eye of God."

Mr. Garnett paid a second visit to England a few months since, for the purpose of creating an interest there in behalf of emigration to Central Africa.