Title page of the second edition (New York, 1821) |
The history
of African slavery is at once the disgrace and honour of America; the disgrace
she shares in common with the whole civilized world-the
honour is all her own. Surrounded by every temptation which could
seduce her to the crime, at first courted and then awed into compliance,
she openly reprobated it when all the nations of the earth wre silent,
and dared, even in her weak infancy, to brave the anger of a powerful empire
in behalf of the wretched slave who was thrown upon her shores. She
was the first country to abolish the trade; first by the laws of her separate
states, among which Virginia led the way, and secondly by the law of her
federal government. More than a dozen years before the abolition
of the trade by the British parliament, it was abolished in America by
act of congress. There is surely something to admire-something
grand, as well as beautiful, in the effect of liberty on the human heart.
Frances Wright, Views of Society
and Manners
in America (New York, 1821) , 47-48 |
Frances Wright's dedication to Lafayette in the 1822 French edition |
