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AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY.

THIS Society held its fourth anniversary at the Broadway Tabernacle, on Tuesday morning, May 9th, ARTHUR TAPPAN, President, in the chair. Prayer, and reading the Scriptures, by Rev. LEICESTER A. SAWYER, of New Haven, Conn. The Report of the Executive Committee was read by the Corresponding Secretary, ELIZUR WRIGHT, Junr.

Abstract of the Fourth Annual Report.

The Report commences with a tribute to the memory of the venerable George Benson, one of the Society's Vice Presidents, and Thomas Shipley, and Edwin P. Atlee, two of its most active and devoted managers; which it improves as an admonition that the time is short in which we can plead the cause of the Lord's outraged and down-trodden poor. It proceeds to state that 483 new Societies have been organized during the year, making the whole number 1006. State Societies have been organized in Michigan and Pennsylvania, while those already existing in seven other states, have prosecuted their labors with increasing zeal, energy, and success. The number of presses wholly or in part devoted to the propagation of Anti-Slavery doctrines, has been greatly multiplied; while opposing presses have, in numerous instances, given marked indications of their sensibility to an approaching turn in the tide of public feeling.

The amount of funds placed in the hands of the Committee has not been as great as was expected at the last anniversary. The total receipts have been 36,567 dollars 92 cents, being an increase over the receipts of last year, of 10,701 dollars 62 cents. Of this, a much larger sum than last year has been expended on the support of living agents. The issues from the press have been as follows, viz.:

Upwards of seventy agents have been appointed during the year, sixty-five of whom have been in the service of the society for longer or shorter periods. Their success is most marked and cheering. Three of the agents have devoted themselves exclusively to encouraging our coloured brethren in the free states, in their laudable efforts to rise, by education and virtuous industry, above the cruel prejudice which is crushing them in the dust, and through their degradation, darkening the despair of the slave. The statistics of our coloured population, their grievances, and the obstacles which have opposed their advancement, have been searched out. They have been encouraged to form societies for mutual assistance and improvement, to support schools, to put their children where they can acquire trades, and to apply themselves to more independent and substantial occupations than those to which they are chiefly devoted in our large cities. In the western states they are inclined to purchase, clear and cultivate the public lands; and the good effect of their zeal and success in this

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enterprise, both upon themselves and their white neighbours, begins to be happily developed.

The agent in Ohio, who, for the sake of encouraging coloured men to become cultivators of the soil, has placed his head-quarters in the wilderness, twelve miles from any post-office, writes: "People are coming and buying every week. My wife gets new plots from the land office every now and then, that she may be able to give them directions where to look for lots." He says of the colored people of that state, whom he has laboriously searched out, "The abolition breeze that has blown over them, has been like the Spirit of God upon Adam's lifeless clay." The following, among other facts which he states, shows how the new life manifests itself. "One man (in Springfield) who was a slave till he was about forty years old, has built a school-house at his own expense, on his own lot, which is occupied by a school with 30 scholars. J. Wise (in the vicinity of Springfield) bought himself in Virginia. He rents a farm, raised a thousand bushels of corn last year, &c. I met him driving his team of four horses to the village, with a load of brick. He has two children yet in slavery.” "William Roberts also rents a farm, raised 4000 bushels of corn last year." "Nimrod Morgan, a blacksmith, owns his shop, house and lot." "I have found some very good farmers. One man, in Butler county, has taken the premium at the agricultural fair, for three years, for the best sheep. I should consider it an honour to any man to have so well cultivated a farm as his. I have noticed that such men have generally the good will and respect of the whole neighbourhood where they reside." Thus let coloured men become farmers, and strike their roots deep in our free soil, and they will infallibly rise above that prejudice which now makes us even hesitate to publish these simple facts, lest they should call forth mobocratic vengeance, to defeat the experiment.

One agent has been employed to investigate the condition and prospects of the colored people in Upper Canada, where he finds a population of about 10,000, almost entirely fugitives from American oppression. Having crossed the line with no other wealth than their bodies and souls, many of them have made themselves quite comfortable, and some of them have become even wealthy. Several schools have sprung up amongst them, by the efforts of the agent. Full and satisfactory evidence of their good behaviour and value as citizens, has been given by the highest civil authorities, and by men of standing of different sects and parties. Says the Hon. R. G. Dunlop, member of the Provincial Parliament, for the county of Huron, "There are not, in his majesty's dominions, a more loyal, honest, industrious, temperate, and independent class of citizens than the colored people of Upper Canada.' Says W. L. Makenzie, Esq., also a member of Parliament, and the well known leader of the Reform party," As a people, they are as well behaved as a majority of the whites, and perhaps more temperate. The value of this testimony will be appreciated, when it is taken into account that the blacks of Upper Canada, are, to a man, Anti-Reformers, fearing lest Republicanism should carry them back to what they suffered in the United States."

"Says John H. Dunn, Esq., Receiver General of the province, and resident in Toronto, where there is a colored population of 600 persons: Although I have been in the habit of daily contributing my assistance to a vast number of destitute poor, ever since my residence in this province, now seventeen years, I do not remember ever having been solicited for alms, by more than one or two

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people of color during the whole course of that period."-Many of these selfemancipated people are found to be very intelligent, and capable of throwing much light upon the House of Bondage from which they have escaped. Their statements of the horrors of slavery which they have felt and seen, are so full, definite, and circumstantial, with names, dates, and places, that, unless contradicted by more thana mere denial, they must command our belief.

Several flourishing and anti-slavery societies have been formed in the province, to cooperate with us in the moral warfare, and to bar out that prejudice which some of our white republicans are industriously exporting.

One agent has been exclusively devoted to the dissemination of anti-slavery principles among children and youth, and with gratifying success. On looking into our present generation of revised and improved school books, it will be seen that those faithful finger-boards, which used to point the young mind towards righteousness and liberty, and away from SLAVERY, as from a den of abominations, are mostly torn down, and in their stead, in some of the popular reading books and geographies, pleasant lanes are opened, through which "Southern institutions" look beautiful in the distance. Here is poisoning at the fountain! Had we expended ten times, nay, one hundred times, the efforts we have, to administer the antidote, we could not have been justly chargeable with overestimating the importance of the measure. Slaveholders dread the young abolitionists more than the old.

Reference is here made to the deputation sent to the West Indies, the facts respecting which have already been published. They proceed to give a tribute of commendation to the Misses Grimké, and to the labours of George Thompson, in Great Britain; and in regard to his debate with Mr. Breckenridge, the testimony of Dr. Wardlaw is given. Reference is also made to the many earnest and faithful remonstrances which have been received from British Christians. Among the cheering results of Anti-Slavery action at home, it is mentioned as peculiarly encouraging that there has been great accession to our ranks of truly religious people of every denomination of Christians, indicated by the thorough going anti-slavery resolutions passed and published by a multitude of religious bodies. Reference is also made to the action of several state legislatures, to show that the effect of Anti-Slavery operations is beginning to be felt upon large masses of the people. Nor are there wanting tokens that abolitionism is doing a good work within the bosom of the poor soul-enslaved South-kindling up thoughts which it would be death to speak now, but which, in spite of death, will burst forth anon. Many individuals, from the midst of slavery, have given the most solemn assurances that abolition principles are spreading among the white population of the South. "Don't give it up-don't bow down to slavery -you have thousands at the South, who are secretly praying for you,” said a Southern minister, on the adjournment of the New York Annual Conference of last year, to a minister who had been threatened with censure for assisting in the circulation of an abolition paper. "There is even now more of it [Abolitionism] at the South, than prudence will permit to be openly avowed," says the Watchman, a paper printed at Salisbury, North Carolina.

The Report also alludes to the present commercial distress, as having been in a great measure brought about by the great advances made by Northern and European capitalists, in advance for cotton, to enable the planters to purchase slaves; and expresses the belief that it will ultimately result in benefit to the poor slave.

After alluding to various indications of pro-slavery feeling at the North, the Report concludes: All these things show the need and the efficiency of moral means at the North. Did time permit, we might dwell on the important political measures to which Northern moral power is applicable. While abolitionists will most anxiously refrain from organizing themselves into a political party, and turning from their great work to promote the election of favorites, they will not abstain from using all their political power to accomplish such objects as the preservation of their right of petition to every human being in the land, the abolition of slavery wherever Congress has the power, the exclusion of new slave states, and especially the annexation of Texas, the removal of all political disabilities, on account of colour, the extension of the right of trial by jury, and the recognition of Haytian independence.

While reading the Report, Mr. Wright presented the celebrated remonstrance from the people of Dunbarton and the Vale of Leven, in Scotland, which was unrolled and extended up and down the orchestra, disclosing upwards of 4,000 original signatures.

REVIEW:-A Narrative of the Adventures and Escape of Moses Roper, from American Slavery. Darton, Harvey, and Darton. pp. 106.

MOSES ROPER was the son of a slave in North Carolina: his master stood, as is very frequently the case in Slave States, in the double relation of father and master; and, bearing too strong a resemblance to his father, both mother and child were sold soon after his birth. When about six or seven years old, he was sold again, and separated from his mother. His purchaser was a negro trader, who carried him southward; and after several sales and barters, he was purchased by Mr. Gooch, a cotton planter in South Carolina.

The impression which will be made upon every reader of this narrative, will be, Is it true? Those who know nothing of slavery but what they will find here, will say it is impossible; and it certainly requires a credulity almost bordering on weakness, to receive the whole as truth. That a human being should be able to endure such hardships, that he should have been able so frequently to escape the vigilance of his owners--that his tale should have been preserved with such minuteness of particulars, and that by a person who, during a great portion of the period referred to could neither read nor write, is almost beyond the bounds of belief. And yet, on the other hand, what conceivable motive can there be for deception. Before arriving on this country, whither he fled as the only place of perfect safety, he was strongly recommended by several very respectable ministers in America, to the friends of religion in Britain; he has now for some time been in constant intercourse with us. He has stood the ordeal of the most severe examination, he has been solemnly warned of the consequences of deception; how it would tend to his own injury, as well as the cause of freedom in general; in this scrutiny we have personally joined ; and cau affirm, that however incredible the tale may appear, we are perfectly unable to its statements, and can suggest no possible motive which should actuate the narrator to mislead his friends by statements which were not true. The work

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will very soon be circulated among the very people whose conduct is so fully exposed; and though we cannot expect that they will plead guilty to the charge thus brought against them, an opportunity will be afforded them of disproving them if they can; and if they cannot, perhaps it may have some effect on their hearts, when they know that enormities like those practised on this poor untunate being, are known to thousands of their fellow-professing Christians in Britain, with whom they would wish to stand on terms of friendly intercourse, and mutual respect.

"As soon as Mr. Gooch got me home, he immediately put me on his cotton plantation to work, and put me under overseers, gave me allowance of bread and meat with the other slaves, which was not half enough for me to live upon, and very laborious work; here my heart was almost broke with grief at leaving my fellow-slaves. Mr. Gooch did not mind my grief, for he flogged me nearly every day and very severely. Mr. Gooch bought me for his son-in-law, Mr. Hammans, about five miles from his residence. This man had but two slaves besides myself, he treated me very kindly for a week or two, but in summer when cotton was ready to hoe, he gave me task work connected with this department, which I could not get done, not having worked on cotton farms before. When I failed in my task he commenced flogging me, and set me to work without any shirt, in the cotton field in a very hot sun, in the month of July. In August, Mr. Condell, his overseer, gave me a task at pulling fodder; having finished my task before night, I left the field, the rain came on which soaked the fodder, on discovering this, he threatened to flog me for not getting in the fodder before the rain came. This was the first time I attempted to run away, knowing that I should get a flogging. I was then between thirteen and fourteen years of age, I ran away to the woods half naked, I was caught by a slave-holder, who put me in Lancaster Gaol. When they put slaves in gaol they advertize for their masters to own them; but if the master does not claim his slave in six months from the time of imprisonment, the slave is sold for gaol fees. When the slave runs away, the master always adopts a more vigorous system of flogging, this was the case in the present instance. After this, having determined from my youth to gain my freedom, I made several attempts, was caught and got a severe flogging each time. Mr Hammans was a very severe and cruel master, and his wife still worse, she used to tie me up and flog me while naked."

"After Mr. Hammans saw that I was determined to die in the woods, and not live with him, he tried to obtain a piece of land from his father-in-law, Mr. Gooch; not having the means of purchasing it, he exchanged me for the land.

"As soon as Mr. Gooch had possession of me again, knowing that I was averse to going back to him, he chained me by the neck to his chaise. In this manner, be took me to his home at Mac Daniel's Ferry, 'in the county of Chester, a distance of fifteen miles. After which, he put me into a swamp, to cut trees, the heaviest work which men of twenty-five or thirty years of age have to do, I being but sixteen. Here I was on very short allowance of food, and having heavy work, was too weak to fulfil my tasks. For this I got many severe floggings; and after I had got my irons off, I made another attempt at running away. He took my irons off in the full anticipation that I could never get across the Catarba River, even when at liberty. On this I procured a small Indian canoe, which was tied to a tree, and ultimately got across the river in it. I then wandered through the wilderness for several days without any food, and but a drop of water to allay my thirst, till I became so starved, that I was obliged to go to a house to beg for something to eat, when I was captured, and again imprisoned."

"Mr. Gooch having heard of me through an advertisement, sent his son after me; he tied me up, and took me back to his father. Mr. Gooch then obtained the assistance of another slave-holder, and tied me up in his blacksmith's shop, and gave me fifty lashes