Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1817 edition. Excerpt: ... Without the most distant inclination to aggravate the feelings of any individual, but because "we ought not to shrink from the investigation of truth, however unpopular, nor conceal it whatever the profession of it may cost," a concise sketch will be presented, of the facts and incidents which have prompted this address. The peculiar connexion with which some of these occurrences succeeded each other, was certainly extraordinary, and to those who are not incredulous, may seem astonishing. The first opportunity that ever occurred to me, of viewing a slave plantation, was furnished by a journey during the summer of 1815, from Pittsburg to the city of Washington. In the course of my route I travelled through part of Virginia, west of the Blue Ridge, by way of Winchester, and through part of Maryland by way of Fredericktown, on the east side. My first contemplation of the magnificent edifice, towering over the surrounding clusters of huts, and the extensive fields, impressed an idea of their similarity to the castles of European princes, dukes, lords, barons, Sec. with the cottages of their tenants. But a closer consideration led me to this unavoidable conclusion: that these splendid fabrics are virtually the palaces of hereditary absolute monarchs;--that the laborers and people over whom they reign, are their lawful subjects or vassals--constituting kingdoms in miniature;--with this difference from eastern monarchies, that the king here, instead of receiving merely a revenue from his subjects, has legitimate power, (if he is disposed to avail himself of it, ) to exercise the most unlimited and tyrannical despotism! over their persons, and to extort the whole of the products of their industry, except what may be indispensible to prevent...
