But they came with broken hearts, from their beloved native land, and were doomed to unrequited toil and deep degradation. Nor did the evil of their bondage end at their emancipation by death. Succeeding generations inherited their chains, and millions have come from eternity into time, and have returned again to the world of spirits, cursed and ruined by American slavery.
Wisdom urged her solemn plea. The bleeding captive plead his innocence, and pointed to Christianity who stood weeping at the cross. Jehovah frowned upon the nefarious institution, and thunderbolts, red with vengeance, struggled to leap forth to blast the guilty wretches who maintained it.
But all was in vain. Slavery had stretched its dark wings of death over the land, the Church stood silently by the priests prophesied falsely, and the people loved to have it so. Its throne is established, and now it reigns triumphant. Nearly three millions of your fellow citizens are prohibited by law and public opinion, which in this country is stronger than law, from reading the Book of Life. Your intellect has been destroyed as much as possible, and every ray of light they have attempted to shut out from your minds.
The oppressors themselves have become involved in the ruin. They have become weak, sensual, and rapacious—they have cursed you—they have cursed themselves—they have cursed the earth which they have trod. The colonists threw the blame upon England. They said that the mother country entailed the evil upon them, and that they would rid themselves of it if they could. The world thought they were sincere, and the philanthropic pitied them. But time soon tested their sincerity.
In a few years the colonists grew strong, and severed themselves from the British Government. Their independence was declared, and they took their station among the sovereign powers of the earth.
The declaration was a glorious document. When the power of Government returned to their hands, did they emancipate the slaves? No; they rather added new links to our chains. Certainly they were not. Oh what a sentence was that! It ran from soul to soul like electric fire, and nerved the arm of thousands to fight in the holy cause of Freedom.
Among the diversity of opinions that are entertained in regard to physical resistance, there are but a few found to gainsay that stern declaration. We are among those who do not. How much misery is comprehended in that single word. What mind is there that does not shrink from its direful effects?
Unless the image of God be obliterated from the soul, all men cherish the love of Liberty. The nice discerning political economist does not regard the sacred right more than the untutored African who roams in the wilds of Congo. Nor has the one more right to the full enjoyment of his freedom than the other. Brethren, your oppressors aim to do this. They endeavor to make you as much like brutes as possible. When they have blinded the eyes of your mind when they have embittered the sweet waters of life then, and not till then, has American slavery done its perfect work.
The divine commandments you are in duty bound to reverence and obey. If you do not obey them, you will surely meet with the displeasure of the Almighty.
He requires you to love him supremely, and your neighbor as yourself—to keep the Sabbath day holy—to search the Scriptures—and bring up your children with respect for his laws, and to worship no other God but him.
But slavery sets all these at nought, and hurls defiance in the face of Jehovah. The forlorn condition in which you are placed, does not destroy your moral obligation to God. You are not certain of heaven, because you suffer yourselves to remain in a state of slavery, where you cannot obey the commandments of the Sovereign of the universe. If the ignorance of slavery is a passport to heaven, then it is a blessing, and no curse, and you should rather desire its perpetuity than its abolition.
God will not receive slavery, nor ignorance, nor any other state of mind, for love and obedience to him. Your condition does not absolve you from your moral obligation.
Brethren, it is as wrong for your lordly oppressors to keep you in slavery, as it was for the man thief to steal our ancestors from the coast of Africa.
You should therefore now use the same manner of resistance, as would have been just in our ancestors when the bloody foot prints of the first remorseless soul thief was placed upon the shores of our fatherland. Liberty is a spirit sent out from God, and like its great Author, is no respecter of persons. Brethren, the time has come when you must act for yourselves. The nations of the world are moving in the great cause of universal freedom, and some of them at least will, ere long, do you justice.
The combined powers of Europe have placed their broad seal of disapprobation upon the African slave trade. The propagators of American slavery are spending their blood and treasure, that they may plant the black flag in the heart of Mexico and riot in the halls of the Montezumas. Garnet interpreted the contested U. In contrast to those politicians who preached the hatred of Mexicans, Garnet reminded Americans that fugitive slaves regularly found sanctuary in Mexico.
After helping to recruit black soldiers to the Union Army during the Civil War—and barely escaping a vengeful white mob during the New York Draft Riots of —Garnet became the first African American to deliver a sermon to the United States Congress. On Feb. Then we shall have a Constitution that shall be reverenced by all, rulers who shall be honored and revered, and a Union that shall be sincerely loved by a brave and patriotic people, and which can never be severed.
At the end of the Civil War, Henry Garnet expressed his disappointment at what he considered to be premature celebrations of the end of slavery. At the height of Reconstruction, Garnet insisted that African Americans tie their struggles for the passage of equal-rights legislation with the Cuban liberation struggle against Spanish rule.
In , the popular minister helped to organize the Cuban Anti-Slavery Committee, which formed branches throughout Florida, Louisiana, New York, California and other states. The committee launched a national movement to demand that the United States extend support to the Cuban patriots fighting for independence from the Spanish Empire.
At a mass meeting held in Philadelphia in , Rev. Garnet expounded on the theme that the work of slavery abolitionism was incomplete. His urgings of insurrection before the war had frightened the mainstream of the abolitionist movement.
That view has led many to miss the way Garnet connected African American citizenship with the emancipation of people in other nations, and to gloss over the role he played. Contact us at letters time. The first meeting PDF of the group garnered over African American people under 20—a powerful indicator of the dedication of the younger generation to nationwide abolition.
Perhaps drawing on his studies in navigation and seamanship at the New York African Free School, Garnet made two sea voyages to Cuba in After another sea voyage in , he returned to learn that his family had separated in the hopes of escaping slave catchers. Enraged and worried, Garnet wandered up and down Broadway with a knife. Eventually friends were able to locate him and spirit him off the Long Island to hide.
Garnet is perhaps most famous for his radical speech of , " An Address to the Slaves of the United States of America.
Instead of hoping to convince free people primarily free white people, of course of the evils of slavery, Garnet speaks directly to those enslaved, urging them to rebel against their masters. Frederick Douglass, who was still committed to abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison's approach of moral suasion, spoke out against the speech, while James McCune Smith expressed admiration for it. Garnet further radicalized his position when he supported the colonization movement, which was largely unpopular among the black community.
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