Note 218 — MEMOIR OF THE LIFE OF DAVID RITTENHOUSE; CONTINUED, FROM THE TIME OF HIS SETTLEMENT IN PHILADELPHIA.
Reading edition
The author of a poem, entitled, ‘The Dying Negro,’ has introduced these lines into that poem:[218a]
“Oft have I seen them, at the break of day,
“Rous’d by the lash, go forth their cheerless way.”
No man ever held the slave-trade, and the condition of the hapless people who are the objects of that nefarious traffic, in greater abhorrence, than the benevolent Rittenhouse: a passage in his Oration, fully evinces his sentiments on this subject.
In addition to this highly respectable testimony against Negro Slavery, let it be remembered, that one of the last acts, of a public nature, in which our philosopher’s predecessor[218b] was concerned, was to sanction with his name the Memorial presented to the government of the United States, on the subject of the Slave-Trade, by “The Pennsylvania Society for promoting the Abolition of Slavery, and the relief of free Negroes, unlawfully held in Bondage;” of which Society, that distinguished man was the President.