APPEAL. DEAR BRETHREN— Ir any apology be necessary for our troubling you in this manner, we trust a sufficient one may be found in the importance of the subject upon which we address you. It is a command of the infinite God, that we should open our mouths and plead a righteous judgment for the poor and the needy, who are dumb, and appointed to destruction (Prov. xxxi. 9); and it is in obedience to this command that we now appeal to you in the behalf of more than two millions of our fellow citizens, who, we know, are made poor and needy by the bondage which they are compelled to suffer, and who are dumb in a most affecting sense, inasmuch as they are not, and never have been, permitted to speak for themselves. On the subject of Negro Slavery, as its exists in the United States, we think we can say that we have bestowed the most serious attention for a number of years past. It has interested our sincerest sympathies and prayers, both for the enslaver and the enslaved; nor are we conscious of having neglected any means which might serve to afford us a consistent and enlightened view of the question which we now wish to propose for you consideration. But it is not the cause of two millions five hundred thousand slaves that we plead merely, nor yet the millions of their posterity which are yet to live and endure the evils of an unjust and violent bondage; but we plead for the Methodist Episcopal Church, of which we are, unworthy indeed, but we trust devoted members. We feel that we should prove ourselves utterly unfit for the relation which we sustain to this church, either as members or ministers, were we longer to keep silence and do nothing to avert the dreadful evils with which Slavery threatens, so evidently, her peace and prosperity. We cannot look on with indifference and see some of the plainest rules of her discipline outraged and set at defiance, though we were to leave out of the account the part which so many of her members and ministers have taken in the unnatural and anti-Christian work of Slavery. In approaching this subject, we are conscious of no unkind feelings towards any who may differ from us in opinion; we wish to "speak the truth in love," to discharge a solemn duty which we owe to God our maker, to the church of which we are members, and to the thousands of the poor slaves from whose minds the lights of science and religion are shut out, and who are held in a bondage more oppressive and cruel in many respects, than any other of the kind which ever prevailed among men. THE QUESTION stated. 1. It is not necessary that we should here enter into a detailed account of the evils of Slavery, or that we should attempt a particular discussion of its principles; nor is it our design to answer all the apologies which have been made by professing Christians and Christian ministers for the system. We wish simply to mention some of the most prominent features of the system of Slavery as it exists in the Methodist Episcopal Church, and to lay before you some of the reasons which force upon our minds the solemn conviction, that as a church and as individuals, we are far behind our duty in relation to this thing; that no man has, or can have, a right to hold a fellow man for one moment in bondage as a piece of merchantable PROPERTY, to take the hire of his labor against his will, or to refuse him the means of social, moral and intellectual improvement; that personal liberty, that is, liberty to enjoy the fruits of one's own labor, is the inalienable gift of the infinite God to every human being; therefore, to take away this liberty where no crime has been committed, is a direct violation of a right which belongs to God alone. Hence, every American citizen who retains a fellow being in bondage as a piece of PROPERTY, and takes the price of his labor without his consent, is guilty of a crime which cannot be reconciled with the spirit of the Christian religion; and it is the more criminal for a professing Christian or Christian minister to do this, because they thus afford their support to an unjust and violent system of oppressions; a system which always has been, is now, and always will be, the unyielding enemy of virtue, knowledge and religion; a system which leaves more than one-sixth part of the citizens of these United States without any adequate protection for their persons; a system which opens the way for and fosters the worst of passions and crimessuch as prostitution, adultery, murder, discord, theft, insurrections, indolence, insensibility to the claims of justice and mercy, pride, and a wicked contempt for the rights and feelings of a large proportion of our fellow men. Its natural tendency upon all who become the victims of its oppression, is to benumb the sensibilities of the mind, to corrupt and deaden the conscience, and to kill the soul. Hence we say the system is wrong, it is cruel and unjust, in all its parts and principles, and that no Christian can consistently lend his influence or example for one moment in support of it, and consequently it should be abandoned Now and FOREVER. THE DIFFERENT KINDS OF TESTIMONY BY WHICH WE PRove, THAT THIS KIND OF SLAVE-HOLDING IS A SIN AGAINST GOD. 2. In this view of the subject we shall show you that we are not alone, but we are most firmly supported by the Bible, by the Discipline of the Methodist Episcopal Church, by the opinions of Wesley, of Dr. Clarke, of Watson, and by the testimony of the British Conference, and the unanimous voice of the Wesleyan Connection in England, including the whole of the preachers and people. We choose to confine ourselves to the above named testimonies, not indeed because there are not a multitude of other collateral ones, but rather because we wish to examine the subject in its connection with the Methodist Episcopal Church. Hundreds of her ministers and thousands of her members are enslavers of their fel low men, as they have been for years. They hold the bodies and the souls of men, women and children,—many of whom are meinbers of the same church with themselves,-in abject slavery, and still retain their standing without any censure on this account. THE BIBLE CONDEMNS THIS KIND OF SLAVERY. 3. We say, then, that the testimony of the infinite God is against the system of Slavery. And he that stealeth a man and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death. Exodus, xxi. 16. "By this law," says Dr. A. Clarke, " every man-stealer, and every receiver of the stolen person, should lose his life: no matter whether the latter stole the man himself or gave money to a slave-captain or negro-dealer to steal him for him." Here the enslaver of the human species is pronounced worthy of death, and those who affect to justify this crime by the various excuses which they make for it, do but show thereby that, they have some apprehension of the justice of the above law; else why attempt to excuse it in any way? It is true, that a certain kind of servitude was permitted by the Jewish economy, but God never gave the Jews nor any other nation or individual the permission to steal men, nor any thing like a permission for any one to buy or sell those or their posterity who had been stolen. Concerning the Slavery which existed among the Jews, the pious and learned commentator above quoted remarks:--"They certainly had privileges which did not extend either to sojourners or to hired servants; therefore their situation was incomparably better than the situation of the slaves under different European governments, of whose souls their pitiless possessors, in general, take no care, while they themselves venture to profess the Christian religion, and quote the Mosaic law in vindication of their system of Slavery.-How pre posterous is such conduct! and how intolerable!" But there was no such thing as involuntary, unending Slavery among the Jews; nor indeed was there any kind of Slavery tolerated by their law, which bears any resemblance for its cruelty and oppression to that which prevails among professing Christians in these United States. 4. If a man be found stealing any of his brethren of the children of Israel, and maketh merchandise of him, or selleth him; then that thief shall die; and thou shalt put evil away from among you. Deut. xxiv. 7. Now just as sure as any man in the United States can prove that his slaves are his merchantable property, just so sure the word of God pronounces that property stolen, and the possession of it a crime for which any Israelite was doomed to suffer death. 5. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Matt. xxii. 39. By this command we are obligated not only to pity a fellow creature when we see him in distress, but also to do the utmost in our power to give him the same instruction which we enjoy ourselves, and to promote, as far as possible, his temporal and spiritual felicity. But how can it be shown that those Christians, those Methodist ministers, love their neighbors as themselves, when they have had slaves in their families and on their plantations for years, and the profits of whose labors they have been reaping, and yet they never have furnished them with a Bible, nor suffered them to learn |