It is an outrage upon the soul, a war upon the immortal spirit, and one for which you must give account at the bar of our common Father and Creator.{336} The responsibility which you have assumed in this regard is truly awful, and how you could stagger under it these many years is marvelous.

Your mind must have become darkened, your heart hardened, your conscience seared and petrified, or you would have long since thrown off the accursed load, and sought relief at the hands of a sin-forgiving God.
How, let me ask, would you look upon me, were I, some dark night, in company with a band of hardened villains, to enter the precincts of your elegant dwelling, and seize the person of your own lovely daughter, Amanda, and carry her off from your family, friends, and all the loved ones of her youth--make her my slave--compel her to work, and I take her wages--place her name on my ledger as property--disregard her personal rights--fetter the powers of her immortal soul by denying her the right and privilege of learning to read and write--feed her coarsely--clothe her scantily, and whip her on the naked back occasionally; more, and still more horrible, leave her unprotected--a degraded victim to the brutal lust of fiendish overseers, who would pollute, blight, and blast her fair soul--rob her of all dignity--destroy her virtue, and annihilate in her person all the graces that adorn the character of virtuous womanhood?
I ask, how would you regard me, if such were my conduct?
Oh! the vocabulary of the damned would not afford a word sufficiently infernal to express your idea of my God-provoking wickedness.

Yet, sir, your treatment of my beloved sisters is in all essential points precisely like the case I have now supposed.

Damning as would be such a deed on my part, it would be no more so than that which you have committed against me and my sisters.
I will now bring this letter to a close; you shall hear from me again unless you let me hear from you.

I intend to make use of you as a weapon with which to assail the system of slavery--as a means of concentrating public attention on the system, and deepening the horror of trafficking in the souls and bodies of men.