Excerpt from An Address to Free Colored Americans
Nothing will contribute more to break the bondman’s fetters, than an example of high moral worth, intellectual culture and religious attainments among the free people of color - living epistles known and read of all men - a stan dard of exalted piety, of dedication to the works of right eousness, of humble-mindedness, of Christian charity; to which abolitionists may confidently point, and ask those who are forging the manacles of hopeless servitude for our countrymen, what they can answer to the Judge of all the earth for thus robbing him of his immortal creatures and demand of them, in view of what their slaves might be, to restore their victims to themselves, to the human family, and to God.
We know, and we rejoice in the knowledge, that the gift of intellect is co-extensive with the human race, and that our brethren and sisters, who are writhing under the lash of worse than Egyptian taskmasters - whose minds are beclouded by ignorance and enfeebled by suffering, need only to have the same advantages which Europeans and their descendants have enjoyed, triumphantly to refute the unfounded calumny that they are inferior in the pow ers of intellect, and less susceptible of mental improve ment. We maintain, that the people of color are not in any respect inferior to the white man, and that under fa vorable circumstances they would rise again to the rank they formerly held.
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