A Childs Anti-Slavery Book

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Title: A Child's Anti-Slavery Book
Containing a Few Words About American Slave Children and Stories
of Slave-Life.
Author: Various
Release Date: December 15, 2003 [EBook #10464]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
0. START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A CHILD'S
ANTI-SLAVERY BOOK ***
Produced by Audrey Longhurst and PG Distributed Proofreaders.
[Illustration: A SLAVE FATHER SOLD AWAY FROM HIS
FAMILY.]
THE CHILD'S ANTI-SLAVERY BOOK
CONTAINING A
Few Words about American Slave Children.
AND

STORIES OF SLAVE-LIFE.
TEN ILLUSTRATIONS.
CONTENTS.
A FEW WORDS ABOUT AMERICAN SLAVE CHILDREN
LITTLE LEWIS--THE STORY OF A SLAVE BOY
MARK AND HASTY
AUNT JUDY'S STORY--A STORY FROM REAL LIFE
ME NEBER GIVE IT UP
Illustrations.
A SLAVE FATHER SOLD AWAY FROM HIS FAMILY.
LITTLE LEWIS SOLD.
WHIPPING A SLAVE.
HUNTING RUNAWAY SLAVES.
HASTY'S GRIEF.
AUNT JUDY'S HUSBAND CAPTURED.
HANDCUFFING JUDY'S HUSBAND.
WAITING TO BE SOLD.
AUNT JUDY.
"ME NEBER GIB IT UP!"
A FEW WORDS ABOUT AMERICAN SLAVE CHILDREN.

Children, you are free and happy. Kind parents watch over you with
loving eyes; patient teachers instruct you from the beautiful pages of
the printed book; benign laws, protect you from violence, and prevent
the strong arms of wicked people from hurting you; the blessed Bible is
in your hands; when you become men and women you will have full
liberty to earn your living, to go, to come, to seek pleasure or profit in
any way that you may choose, so long as you do not meddle with the
rights of other people; in one word, you are free children! Thank God!
thank God! my children, for this precious gift. Count it dearer than life.
Ask the great God who made you free to teach you to prefer death to
the loss of liberty.
But are all the children in America free like you? No, no! I am sorry to
tell you that hundreds of thousands of American children are slaves.
Though born beneath the same sun and on the same soil, with the same
natural right to freedom as yourselves, they are nevertheless SLAVES.
Alas for them! Their parents cannot train them as they will, for they too
have MASTERS. These masters say to them:
"Your children are OURS--OUR PROPERTY! They shall not be taught
to read or write; they shall never go to school; they shall not be taught
to read the Bible; they must submit to us and not to you; we shall whip
them, sell them, and do what else we please with them. They shall
never own themselves, never have the right to dispose of themselves,
but shall obey us in all things as long as they live!"
"Why do their fathers let these masters have their children? My father
wouldn't let anybody have me," I hear one of my little free-spirited
readers ask.
Simply, my noble boy, because they can't help it. The masters have
banded themselves together, and have made a set of wicked laws by
which nearly four millions of men, women, and children are declared to
be their personal chattels, or property. So that if one of these slave
fathers should refuse to let his child be used as the property of his
master, those wicked laws would help the master by inflicting cruel
punishments on the parent. Hence the poor slave fathers and mothers
are forced to silently witness the cruel wrongs which their helpless

children are made to suffer. Violence has been framed into a law, and
the poor slave is trodden beneath the feet of the powerful.
"But why did those slaves let their masters bring them into this state?
Why didn't they fight as our forefathers did when they threw off the
yoke of England's laws?" inquires a bright-eyed lad who has just risen
from the reading of a history of our Revolution.
The slaves were not reduced to their present servile condition in large
bodies. When our ancestors settled this country they felt the need of
more laborers than they could hire. Then wicked men sailed from
England and other parts of Europe to the coast of Africa. Sending their
boats ashore filled with armed men, they fell upon the villages of the
poor Africans, set fire to their huts, and, while they were filled with
fright, seized, handcuffed, and dragged them to their boats, and then
carried them aboard ship.
This piracy was repeated until the ship was crowded with negro men,
women, and children. The