CHAPTER I.

FACTS AND TESTIMONY.

We have purposely reserved the mass of facts and testimony, bearing immediately upon slavery in America, in order that we might present them together, in a condensed form. We now proceed to embody them under distinct heads. These heads, it will be perceived, consist chiefly of propositions, which are warmly contested in our country, and they may now be regarded as the hinges on which the anti-slavery cause in this republic is to turn. Will the reader examine these principles in the light of facts? Will the candid of our countrymen–whatever opinions they may hitherto have entertained on this subject–hear the concurrent testimony of numerous planters, legislators, lawyers, physicians, and merchants, who have until three years past been wedded to slavery by birth, education, prejudice, associations, and supposed interest, but who have since been divorced from all connection with the system?

In most cases we shall give the names, the stations, and business, of our witnesses; in a few instances, in which we were requested to withhold the name, we shall state such circumstances as will serve to show the standing and competency of the individuals. If the reader should find in what follows, very little testimony unfavorable to emancipation, he may know the reason to be that little was to be gleaned from any part of Antigua.