from Reflections on the Slavery of the Negroes, Addressed to the Conscience of Every American Citizen
Signing himself cryptically as “L.B.C.” of Arlington in Bennington County, Vermont, and publishing his verses in The Rural Magazine: or, Vermont Repository for July 1796, this poet seems to be a voice out of nowhere. Vermont abolished slavery in its founding constitution in 1777. Yet this passionate Vermonter was stirred to address his fellow Americans on what he saw as the country’s most urgent issue.
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Reason, Columbians, we assert, prevails,
Presides and smiles o’er all our fed’rate realms;
And, uncontroul’d religion, from on high,
In pristine purity, reigns all around;
Our governments and laws, we likewise say
Have nature, truth, and virtue for their base,
Our tongues and pens to earth around declare
That men of ev’ry climate, name, and hue,
Are equal all, and all ought to be free:
But let’s preach on however long and true,
And rant about celestial reason’s sway,
And boast our justice, truth, and righteous laws,
And our great love for universal man—
Still we are hypocrites, and traitors base,
To reason, justice, charity, and truth.
Behold these shameful scenes round southern states;
See kindred beings of each sex and age,
Like bestial herds, whipt to their cruel toil,
Tir’d, naked, hungry, thirsty, and abus’d;—
See, as they move with weary limbs along
With woe worn hearts, and pensive cheerless meins,
Their tears fast pour and wet the clods they tread—
Their sighs ascend, and join the passing gale—
Their flowing blood pursues th’ inhuman stroke,
Inflicted without cause by Christians vile,
And blent with sweat pursue, the earth disdain.
Should wise Columbians be what wisdom scorns?
Should their wise senates tolerate such wrongs?
Should myriads of them, deem’d unright and just,
Supremely civiliz’d, humane, and free,
Derive their pleasures, substance, and support,
From brethren’s anguish, sorrow, sighs, and tears?
Should such impiety pollute our soil,
Which fling disgrace on all Columbia’s sons?
Should human flesh be ’slav’d, and bought, and sold,
Here where pure liberty exalts her throne,
Th’ asylum calm of persecuted man?
Is it because they’re ignorant, and poor,
Unfriended, helpless, innocent, and weak,
That Afric’s children should be Christians’ slaves?
Is it because they’re of the Pagan race,
Untutor’d in the Bible’s sacred love?
Our ancestors throughout Europa’s climes,
Were Painims too, ere they the gospel heard.—
For reason potent, needless to explain,
Columbians should before all nations else,
Disclaim all property in fellow men,
And set the long insulted Negro free.
A soul he has immortal as our own;
And flesh and blood as rich as monarchs boast;
And precious in the sight of God as ours:
His birth, feelings, passions, powers, and wants,
Decline, and death, to ours are similar.
(1796)