The Gospel of Slavery

And the cry of a heart that is left all alone.
O master all monstrous! is conscience amiss
In dooming the sham of a wedding like this!

Certain Southern ladies claimed, not long since, that they care as tenderly for slave mothers as Northern ladies care for poor white mothers. "Possibly that is true," was the reply, "but Northern ladies do not afterwards sell the baby!" – Besides this, it is the money-interest of Southerners to look well to the increase of their property, whereas a true humanity, as a principle, underlies and quickens the charitable attention of Northern ladies, above referred to.

X Stands for Cross. By the lusts of the flesh
Men open the wounds of the Saviour afresh,
And live for the gain that is nothing but loss,
If leading away from the blood of the Cross.
Yet many there are who deliverance mock,
And corner-stone make of a Slave Trader's block.
Ignoring the grace of the One who was priced,
By daily oppression they crucify Christ,
And turn a deaf ear to the spirit that cried,
Shall the weak brother perish for whom the Lord died?

Setting aside all controversy as to the meaning or efficacy of the sacrifice of Christ, it is clear that he died for all, tasted death for every man, gave himself a ransom for all, without distinction of color, character, station or creed. Whatever allowance the Lord may make for sins of ignorance, can the great God look with complacency on any people who by Slavery count the blood of the covenant an unholy thing, and do despite unto the spirit of grace? —Hebrews x. 26 – 31.

Y Stands for Yankee. Trained up in the schools
Of rugged New England, few ever are fools,
And many have carried the virtues of home
Abroad in the earth wheresoever they roam.
But what shall we say of the renegade knaves
Who down in the South become whippers of slaves?
Into ownership, too, peradventure they fall,
By wedding plantations, and "niggers" and all,
And then, for the depths of all infamy fit,
They find in Secession the bottomless pit.

A man born and reared in barbarism is with difficulty brought into the proprieties and amenities of civilization: alas! how easy a thing it is for a man born and reared in the midst of civilization to glide into the depths of barbarism! It is said that the meanest men, and hottest secessionists, and hardest slave-drivers in the South, are of Yankee origin! Not angels at home, how is it that any of them become such unscrupulous, incarnate devils abroad?

Z Stands for Zenith. Though hell from beneath
Much struggle and suffering yet may bequeath,
The fee of the earth we shall trustfully claim
At Liberty's shrine, in Humanity's name.
The spots of the leopard shall token no sin —
No crime shall be charged to the Ethiop's skin —
And, evermore radiant, the zenith shall glow,
The light and the joy of creation below —
For perished shall then be the Slavery rod,
And man stand erect in the image of God.

"Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain; and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together; for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it." —Isaiah xl. 3-5