" His
imagination has been wandering through the regions of heaven, where,
he is fully satisfied, there is no objection to a black face. God
has made a great opening in his eyes and heart just now. He sees and
believes such things as he neither saw nor believed before; they
pass like clouds before his eyes, never, never to be erased from his
memory. Never before has he thought much about repentance; but now
that he sees heaven on one side and hell on the other, all that once
seemed right in bartering and selling the bodies and souls of men,
vanishes. There, high above all, is the vengeance of heaven written
in letters of blood, execrating such acts, and pointing to the
retribution. It is a burning consciousness of all the suffering he
has inflicted upon his negroes. Death, awful monitor! stares him in
the face; it holds the stern realities of truth and justice before
him; it tells him of the wrong,--points him to the right. The
unbending mandates of slave law, giving to man power to debase
himself with crimes the judicious dare not punish, are being
consumed before Omnipotence, the warning voice of which is calling
him to his last account.
And now the wounded man is all condescension, hoping forgiveness!
His spirit has yielded to Almighty power; he no longer craves for
property in man; no, his coarse voice is subdued into softest
accents. He whispers "coloured man," as if the merchandise changed
as his thoughts are brought in contact with revelations of the
future.
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