The Remarkable Happiness of American Slaves

“WE frequently hear it said, referring to the duty of removing slavery, that we must break every yoke. Many who say this reckon that in the United States there are three million two hundred and four thousand three hundred and thirteen ‘yokes,’ this being the number of slaves.

“Now, you can not pass through the south and not see that a very large number may at once be struck from this reckoning of yokes; that there are very many slaves who, if you should propose to break a ‘yoke’ for them, would not understand you. The question is not as to enslaving a new people; nor does it relate to the Antilles, nor to Guiana, nor to Mexico; it relates to these people who are here; and the proper question is not an abstract one with regard to slavery, but what is best for this people in their circumstances. The troubles which we impute to their condition are many of them like the most of our own, viz., ‘borrowed troubles;’ we make them in our thoughts bear the burdens of all the possible evils which theoretically belong to the system of slavery. Even if we take all these into view, the amount of happiness among them compares favorably with that among the same number of people elsewhere. If there are some evils to which they are exposed, there are others from which they are exempt. The feeling involuntarily arose within me at the south, and especially in the religious meetings of the slaves, Would that all Africa were here! Could villages and tribes of Africans be by any means induced to emigrate to this land, and be placed under the influences which the slaves enjoy, Ethiopia would stretch out her hands to God sooner than the most sanguine interpreters of prophecy now dare to hope. It is deeply affecting to hear the slaves give thanks in their prayers that they have not been left like the heathen who know not God, but are raised, as it were, to heaven in their Christian privileges.’