Narrative of James Williams, an American Slave,: Who Was for Several Years a Driver on a Cotton Plantation in Alabama

"AMERICAN SLAVERY," said the celebrated John Wesley," is the vilest beneath the sun " Of the truth of this emphatic remark no other proof is required than an examination of the statute books of the American slave states. Tested by its own laws, in all that facilitates and protects the hateful process of converting a man into a "chattel personal;" in all that stamps the law-maker and law-upholder with meanness and hypocrisy, it certainly has no present rival of its " bad eminence;" and we may search in vain the history of a world's despotism for a parallel. The civil code of Justinian never acknowledged, with that our democratic despotisms, the essential equality, of man. The dreamer in the gardens of Epicurus recognized neither in himself, nor in the slave who ministered to his luxury, the immortality of the spiritual. nature. Neither Solon nor Lycursus taught the inalienability of human rights.