from An Oration Delivered at the Fourth Anniversary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade
Little biographical information survives about Adam Carman (fl. 1810–1811), except that he was an African American orator and activist in the New York African Methodist Episcopal Church. Along with his colleagues Peter Williams Jr. and Henry Johnson, he participated in the annual commemorations of the abolition of the slave trade in 1810 and 1811, and probably other years as well. This excerpt from his 1811 oration is remarkable for its swelling cadences and his pointed address to “my youthful brethren,” called upon to preserve the memory of the slave trade.
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Thus, my brethren, we became viewed and considered as commercial commodities; thus we became interwoven into the system of commerce, and the revenue of nations: hence the merchant, the planter, the mortgagee, the manufacturer, the politician, the legislators, and the cabinet minister, all strenously advocated the continuance of the Slave Trade. Therefore the poor unfortunate African was placed in a situation truly deplorable; no one to look to for redress or remedy, no one to soothe his sorrows; all the artillery in the world apparently against him: the laws of Christendom consigned his fate, and their votaries tore him from his home, his family relatives and friends, dragged him on board the slave ship destined to a distant land, from her whom he had lived with for series of years in the utmost reciprocal affection, she that could cheer the gloomy hours of his life, soften his cares and relieve his burdens; the delight of his soul, the first and greatest of all earthly comforts, the greatest and best of all mortal blessings: his life becomes odious, he is inconsolate, his tranquility is murdered, his liberty has come to a period, all his future days are marked out for the most tormenting and degrading despotism that ever existed—and while the stately ship spreads her canvass to the breeze, and was receding from his native land, he takes the last mournful look on the land of his nativity; there he beholds his beloved consort, surrounded with their juvenile posterity, dressed in the gloomy veil of tears, deploring the loss of his protecting arm, exposed to the indignation of the next merciless crew of assassins of tranquility; and while she casts her eyes around her, looking on her juvenile infants with maternal sensibility and sympathetic commiseration, she becomes almost frantic. Avarice has made her a widow, and doomed her progeny to eternal orphanage, while he survives who should be her shield and defence in the hour of dangers. Good God, this tragic scene pierced him to his very heart with a dagger that can never be eradicated, it haunts and preys upon his very vitals through his future existence; although much are his miseries augmented in his transportation from Africa to America, yet far is his sufferings from its maturity. When arrived to their destined land, he is there exposed to the public market, and considered and viewed as a vendible article, and is driven away from thence by the command of the highest bidder, to be assassinated on his plantation; not instantaneously, it would be far less cruel was it the case, but he is not afforded that blessing; he is to be murdered corporally by sure and slow degrees, by three powerful weapons peculiar to the lands of slavery, viz. the lash, extreme hunger, and incessant hard labour, which lengthens out his mangled life, and makes his journey to the emancipating grave a dismal one.
My beloved brethren, this has not been the cruel situation of one individual family! would to God it was; cruel as it would be, I would not have called it into notice on this occasion; but suffer me to say, millions and millions of our forefathers and brethren have been dragged from home in the same or similar way, and sacrificed to the same or similar fate as above delineated, without the least regard to their nuptial rights, or the ties of consanguinity; whilst thousands of others, when arrived into America and the British West-India islands, have been shot, hung, drowned in cold blood; although many attempted to escape such horrid tragedies by eloping into the gloomy forests, but were pursued, hunted down, and devoured by blood hounds. Thousands of others doomed to the mines, to end their days in those cimmerian caves, those dreadful recesses from all the world. Such unexampled debasement would have disgraced the most savage nation of antiquity. Good God! when I reflect upon the disorders, confusions, desolations, and havocs, which that nefarious trade has been the sire of, I must exclaim in language unreserved, that it hath not its rival in all the history that ever came in the range of my observation. Ancient Jerusalem, that city blackened with crimes, and steeped in the blood of martyrs, at which cruel scene the Son of God wept on mount Olives, is not its rival. All the deleterious effects of superstitious paganism, popery, and mahometanism; or all the enthusiasms of the ecclesiastical impostors, who have spread desolation wherever they have prevailed in any considerable degree, terminating the existence of millions; oft compelling the saints to famish in dungeons and wander in exile, is not its parallel: in a word, it has not its competition in all history, from the inspired Moses to the present day. The greatest symbolation it hath, was in that dread hour when the terrific drapery was thrown around the great theatre of nature for the space of three hours, which signalized great wickedness in the earth.
Think not, my youthful brethren, that I am exaggerating the tragic tale of our wrongs; no, no—I presume I need not enter into any range of argument to identify the validity or cogency of these assertions or sentiments: I therefore, fathers, salute you upon this all important occasion; you can authenticate these assertions, you can substanciate the veracity of what has been said; you can say, All the amplitude of language or phraseology it is possible for a man to be master of, is too weak, too trivial to develope the horrors attendant on the Slave Trade, and may be considered as mere imaginations to its realities; you can exclaim with our noble brother Hamilton, it baffles description.
Then if so full of evils, so replete with miseries as to be void of description, what an inestimable blessing is its annihilation; to Africans and descendants, it ought to be the most copious source of our joy. I know not, my brethren, how we can sufficiently express what we ought to feel on this occasion; it addresses itself to our finest feelings, and commands of us individually a tribute of congratulation. He that has the least drop of African blood flowing through his veins, and does not witness the warm emotions of gratitude on this auspicious and exalted occasion, he is degenerated from his country, and the sable race disowns him.
(1811)