ORIGINAL: Slave-Grown Produce.

ORIGINAL: Slave-Grown Produce.

The golden rule of our Divine Law, giver, is, "Do unto others as ye would they should do unto you." Were this precept carried out practically, justice and mercy would be observed towards every human being, and a strict regard to the rights, physical, mental and religious, of every intelligent creature, irrespective of sect, sex, color, or clime. To this truth we sometimes yield a ready assent, and we liberally censure those who, through the influence of a misguided education, assume the title of ownership in man, who would reduce to chattles, created intelligencies formed like ourselves to glorify the Creator, subjecting their fellow beings to cruelties and indignities and legalized injustice at which humanity shudders, and revoltes. and mourns for the degeneracy of her race. The system of American Slavery is justly styled by the pious Wesley, the sum of all villainies, the fruitful source of innumerable vices and crimes, a system that would blight every thing lovely in the moral world, that tramples under foot God's holy law of love, and threatens to destroy our country with its pestilential, withering influence. How shall this enormous evil be met? Shall we arry physical force against it? By no means, says the disciple of the Prince of Peace, this would only be adding sin to iniquity. Let moral suasion, let the potency of Truth, be our most efficient weapons in the moral warfare, seeking for ability and strength from Him, who is mighty to direct our energies and talents in the way most consonant with His will, for its overthrow--slavery is sinful because opposed to the attributes of love and mercy. If it be a truism that what we do by another we do ourselves" are not the slave owner, the [?] of the southern plantation, virtually employed by the consumer of slave grown produce to furnish a supply of sugar, rice, cotton and tobacco? and commissioned in our stead to inflict the scorugings, extort the overtasks requisite to produce what we eat or wear of the unrequitted toil of our fellow beings. Let us imagine those who toil beneath the scorching rays of a southern sun to produce those luxuries or comforts to be bone fo our bone, flesh of our flesh. Then think ye we could unhesitatingly partake of or indulge in the consumption of articles purchased by the sighs and tears of our kindred? No, far from it, every feeling would revolt at the bare idea of the fact. To illustrate, a colored woman residing in Cincinnati, who had herself been a slave on a cotton plantation, in a conversation with a devoted and consistent Abolitionist, said, "I would never put on another speck of cotton if I could help it. Dont think I am proud Honey, it aint because I want to dress in silk, but I know how my poor sisters were whipped to make them do their tasts. They whipped my Mother to death, and my little sister they beat and pounded her head till they made her right foolish. Often have I wished that every white person who wore a speck of cotton that was stained with my blood, would drop down dead. I now know it was wicked, but many is the time I've had this wish." This woman's neck and shoulders bore the marks of the IRON COLLAR and the WHIP. And yet in this enlightened period of Anti-slavery agitation, is it not surprising to see what apathy, what indifference pervade even professed Abolitionists to the subject of abstinence from slave-grown produce? Are we not by such consumption furnishing the means for perpetuating a complicated system of inquity? Yes, a system that subjects woman, not only to cruel stripes, (but to what is infinitely more revolting to the pure spirit) to the gross indignities, to the irresponsible will of the sensual and unprincipled? Can we, in view of these dreadful realities, these undeniable truths that force themselves on us? Can we, dear friends, guiltlessly partake of their unpaid labor? Can we longer stifle the conviction of truth and justice in the secret of our suls, in relation to our poor oppressed fellow creatures? Can we consistently ask or expect the slave-owner to emancipate his slaves, in whom, perhaps the greater part of his wealth or possessions consist without any renumerations? Can we ask of him this pecuniary sacrifice, when we abolitionists, are so unwilling to make, even a trifling sacrifice in a pecuniary way, in procuring articles of paid labor? By uniformly purchasing free labor commodities, we are advancing the principles of love, justice, and mercy, and wash our hands in innocency from a participation in sustaining this unrighteous trafic. A system we are professedly associated to abolish. Let us not then occupy the absurd position of attempting to pull down with one hand, while with the other we supply all the master asks, viz. pecuniary aid to sustain and extend to an interminable period, this system of attrocities.

Well may the slaveholder exclaim, "I care not for your idle denunciations so long as you furnish a market for my commodities" and laugh to scorn the hollow profession, of anti-slavery allegiance. Is it not time we should awake from our lethargy and examine the bearing this question has, not only on human rights but human life itself, and see that we are not involved in blood-guiltiness in relation to the vast expenditure of human life as is set forth by the following authentic report exhibited in a letter of David Lee Child, a distinguished Lawyer of Mssachusetts, to wit: "In 1831 the Secretary of the Treasury made a report to the House of Representatives, embracing the statements of a great number of sugar plantations of Louisiana, and other states concerning the expenses and profits of their business. There was a statement by the contral committee of the sugar-planters of Louisiana, one by a committee of the parish county of Plaquemine, containing an immense table of the expenditures and products of 20 plantations in that parish; one from the Agricultural Society of Baton Rouge; several from individuals, including the Hon. J.S. Johnson then a Senator from Louisiana in the Congress of the United States. All these with the exception of Baton Rouge society, set down the annual loss of slave property on the sugar plantations at 5 per cent. That society says 2 1/2 per cent.; but this answer in form relates to "slave property" in general, and is not confined to sugar estates. On the other hand, I have been informed that some sugar planters have admitted that they "use up" seven per cent. of their hands every year. The loss to which I refer is placed in the Secretary's report and in the communications from Louisiana, under the head of risks, decreased value, death and deterioration. The chasms thus made, are to be filled up with new cargoes and coffles from Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, Kentucky and Tennessee. In order to apreciate and apply these admissions of the adversary, it is necessary to consider that the annual increase of the population of the United States is about 4 per cent. in other words, the vacancies caused by death, are supplied and 4 per cent. nett gain is added, therefore on the sugar plantations of the South, a positive loss of 5 per cent. must be added to the negative loss of 7, making an outright waste of human life, or downright massacre of nine slaves to every hundred every year! The amount on the sugar plantations of Louisiana, to pass over those of Florida, Arkansas, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi, is 3150 per annum. These are just as much murdered as if they were shot or massacred, and indeed more inhumanly, inasmuch as death by torture is more terrible."

Issued by direction of the Green Plain Anti-slavery Society, 12th mo. 28th 1842.
JOSEPH A. DUGDALE, Cor. Sec.

Joseph A. Dugdale

A Philanthropist 7:21, p. 1

1.18.1843