PREFACE

The following is the unpretending narrative of the life of a remarkable and meritorious woman — a life which has been checkered by strange vicissitudes, severe hardships, and singular adventures. Born a slave, and held in that brutal condition until the entire abolition of slavery in the State of New York in 1827, she has known what it is to drink to the dregs the bitterest cup of human degradation. That one thus placed on a level with cattle and swine, and for so many years subjected to the most demoralizing influences, should have retained her moral integrity to such an extent, and cherished so successfully the religious sentiment in her soul, shows a mind of no common order , while it heightens the detestation that is felt in every humane bosom, of that system of oppression which seeks to cripple the intellect, impair the understanding, and deprave the hearts of its victims — a system which has subjected to its own foul purposes, in the United States, all that is wealthy, talented, influential, and reputedly pious, in an overwhelming measure ! 

O the “fantastic tricks” which the American people are playing before high Heaven! 'O their profane use of the sacred name of Liberty! O their impious appeals to the God of the oppressed, for his divine benediction, while they are making merchandise of his image! Do they not blush? Nay, they glory in their shame! Once a year, they take special pains to exhibit themselves to the world, in all their republican deformity and Christian barbarity, insanely supposing that they thus excite the envy, admiration and applause of mankind. The nations are looking at the dreadful spectacle with disgust and amazement. However sunken and degraded they may be, they are too elevated, too virtuous, too humane to be guilty of such conduct. Their voice is heard, saying — Americans! we hear your boasts of liberty, your shouts of independence, your declarations of hostility to every form of tyranny, your assertions that all men are created free and equal, and endowed by their Creator with an inalienable right to liberty, the merry peal of your bells, and the deafening roar of your artillery; but, mingling with all these, and rising above them all, we also hear the clanking of chains! the shrieks and wailings of millions of your own countrymen, whom you wickedly hold in a state of slavery as much more frightful than the oppression which your fathers resisted unto blood, as the tortures of the Inquisition surpass the stings of an insect! We see your banner floating proudly in the breeze from every flag- staff and mast-head in the land; but its blood red stripes are emblematical of your own slave driving — cruelty, as you apply the lash to the flesh of your guiltless victim, even the flesh of a wife and mother, shrieking for the restoration of the babe of her bosom, sold to the remorseless slave speculator! We catch the gleam of your illuminated hills, every where blazing with bonfires; we mark your gay processions; we note the number of your orators ; we listen to the recital of your revolutionary achievements; we see you kneeling at the shrine of Freedom, as her best, her truest, her sincerest worshippers! Hypocrites! liars! adulterers! tyrants! men — stealers! atheists! Professing to believe in the natural equality of the human race — yet dooming a sixth portion of your immense population to beastly servitude, and ranking them among your goods and chattels! Professing to believe in the existence of a God — yet trading in his image, and selling those in the shambles for whose redemption the Son of God laid down his life! Professing to be Christians — yet withholding the Bible, the means of religious instruction, even the knowledge of the alphabet, from a benighted multitude, under terrible penalties! Boasting of your democracy — yet determining the rights of men by the texture of their hair and the color of their skin! Assuming to be the land of the free and the home of theb rave,— yet keeping in chains more slaves than any other nation, not excepting slave-cursed Brazil! Prating of your morality and honesty — yet denying the rites of marriage to three millions of human beings, and plundering them of all their hard earnings! Affecting to be horror — struck in view of the foreign slave trade — yet eagerly pursuing a domestic trafic equally cruel and unnatural, and reducing to slavery not less than seventy thousand new victims annually! Vaunting of your freedom of speech and of the press — your matchless Constitution and your glorious Union — yet denouncing as traitors, and treating as outlaws, those who have the courage and fidelity to plead for immediate, untrammelled, universal emancipation! Monsters that ye are! how can ye expect to escape the scorn of the world , and the wrath of Heaven? Emancipate your slaves, if you would redeem your tarnished character — if you would obtain forgiveness here, and salvation hereafter! Until you do SO, “there will be a stain upon your national escutcheon, which all the waters of the Atlantic cannot wash out!” It is thus that, as a people, we are justly subjected to the reproach, the execration, the derision of mankind, and are made a proverb and a hissing among the nations. We cannot plead not guilty; every accusation that is registered against us is true; the act of violence is in our hands ; the stolen property is in our possession; our fingers are stained with blood; the cup of our iniquity is full.

Just God! and shall we calmly rest, 

The Christian’s scorn — the Heathen’s mirth —

Content to live the lingering jest 

And by-word of a mocking earth? 

Shall our own glorious land retain 

That curse which Europe scorns to bear? 

Shall our own brethren drag the chain, 

Which not even Russia’s menials wear?'

It is useless, it is dreadful, it is impious for this nation longer to contend with the Almighty. All his attributes are against us, and on the side of the oppressed. 

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NARRATIVE OF SOJOURNER TRUTH.

NARRATIVE OF SOJOURNER TRUTH, A NORTHERN SLAVE, EMANCIPATED FROM BODILY SERVITUDE BY THE STATE OF NEW YORK, IN 1828. WITH А PORTRAIT.

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https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Truth_Narrative_1850_edition.pdf

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