University of Virginia Library

Lines,

Written on Reading Stuart's Account of The Treatment of Slaves in Charleston

Oh slavery! thou bane of human kind;
Thou tyrant o'er the body and the mind;
To all that's just, to all that's right a foe,
Thou fill'st the world with misery and woe.
Ah! many a wretch by thee is caused to mourn;
From friend, from relative, from country torn,
From all the joys that e'er his soul held dear,
Beneath thy cruel scourge is doomed to fear.
By curs't desire of gain, by thirst for gold,
The unhappy victim of thy crime is sold.
Is sold? to whom? would I could hide the shame!
To man; O traffic base, disgraceful to the name;
To man, with reason and with freedom blest,
O'er all creation placed the first, and best;
Alas! how fallen from that station he,
Who, blest with reason, proud in being free,
Can from his proper sphere a being draw,
Deprive of rights, of liberty, and law;
Deprive, (what's far more cruel than the rest,)
Of all the gifts with which himself is blest.
Would that my lips the tale could never tell,
The tale of horror, known, alas! too well.
Would that the world had never seen the day,
When man his fellow man should thus betray,
Would rather every ship that sailed the main,
For such base traffic, such degrading gain,
Had sunk with all beneath the raging sea,
Where they from slavery ever would be free:
Free from a tyrant's power, who often rends
Parent from children, friend from dearest friend;
Free from a life of wretchedness and woe,
Free from all toil and suffering here below.
Ah! who could read the story of that woe?
And who if reading half their sorrow know?
Would that by me their wrongs could half be told,
Would that their sufferings I could half unfold.
Before our God and theirs those sufferings rise,
He sees their wrongs, he hears their helpless cries:
Soon may those wrongs and sufferings have an end,
Man be not foe to man, but friend.