Henry Fairland Garnet Slavery

The Holocaust, destruction of the Twin Towers, and Trail of Tears are some of the events that most people think of when referring to some of the most awful world events. Slavery in America irrefutably holds the same amount of weight. The conditions that most slaves faced on a daily basis were inhumane and largely unjust. In “An Address to the Slaves of the United States of America” by Henry Highland Garnet, the speaker challenges the slaves passivity and inspires them to revolt such horrendous treatment from their white masters. Garnet believed an expeditious change could happen in America and he uses his condemning voice as a minister to express his opinion on the matter. Through his focus of white bigotry, his religious platform, and logical

Black people were treated like property instead of humans. In response to this issue, Garnet accentuates the hypocrisy of the white people who try to rationalize the injustice blacks faced every single day by recalling the history of America. In 1776, the colonies gained their independence through the Revolutionary War. Garnet finds this reality duplicitous because white people should display compassion for an enslaved group, considering at one point, they, too, were oppressed in a similar way. Nonetheless, quite the opposite has occurred within the last two hundred years. Blacks have been stripped of most of their entitled, basic human rights and have become a mockery to white Americans. When the colonies won back their Government, Garnet rhetorically asks, “did they emancipate the slaves?” (292). He then answers with a bold statement and says, “no; they rather added new links to [their] chairs” (292). This metaphor carries an impactful authenticity to his statement because the conditions that blacks are facing are much worse than what whites endured when they were under the British Government. With this being said, his argument is irrefutable. White slave owners are not ignorant of the standard of freedom (292). They understand what it feels like to be persecuted, so there is no acceptable excuse for their heinous crimes. Even

He quickly and strategically reaches his audience in this way. He speaks on behalf of the free men in the United States and at the time claims that they cannot “be free while [some] are enslaved” (291). This essentially means, they cannot enjoy their state of freedom until their fellow people are also free. He addresses this statement as being the fundamental reason for writing this speech, and he believes that it is time for a change. After explaining his motives, Garnet immediately starts to use Christian vernacular to further grasp his audience's’ attention, and proclaims his truth, which was shared by many of the slaves also. However, Garnet introduces a new call to action that probably alarms most of