296 LIFE OF BENJAMIN SILLIMAN. 



of the Slave States that there are many instances of grate- 

 ful attachment to a master or mistress on account of kind 

 and generous treatment. Still we must regard slavery as a 

 system of oppressive coercion, violating the natural right to 

 one's own person and faculties, and the results of the labor, 

 effort, and ingenuity of the individual, and moreover his 

 right to all that belongs to the family relation of wife and 

 children. Although my father a lawyer, a deacon in 

 the church, a magistrate, and an officer in active military 

 service through the American Revolution was an owner 

 of slaves, and although I was brought up among them, I do 

 not remember the time when slavery was not detestable 

 even to my juvenile mind, and I have been expecting the 

 judgment of God upon us for this national sin : and as 

 nations do not exist in the other world, they are punished 

 in this world. We are suffering that punishment now, 

 the North measurably as having participated in the slave- 

 trade, and having participated also in the profits of invol- 

 untary labor ; the South is being punished without measure, 

 as having cherished the institution, as they chose to call 

 it, and as having waged, and as still waging, a wicked 

 and bloody war, undertaken for the perpetuation of slavery, 

 and for its extension without limit of time or space. 



The war was inaugurated, also, to gratify the ambition 

 of a few leaders who would not submit to the constitutional 

 result of a lawful election. Slavery is, therefore, the sup- 

 port and cause of this most sanguinary rebellion, and God 

 is punishing the nation while he is working its deliverance 

 from the sin, shame, and danger of holding in bondage 

 4,000,000 of human beings, born generally on our soil, and 

 entitled to all the rights and privileges of humanity. God 

 has permitted this rebellion in order to destroy slavery, and 

 we can see why He has not granted uniform success to the 

 Federal arms, and has sometimes even overshadowed us with 

 dark clouds, and those gathering again and again, but with 

 cheering sunshine between. Nothing less than this suffer- 



