Besides, how did people know that God made black
people to be slaves? Did they go up in the sky and learn it? or,
did He come down and tell them so? All was dark here. It was
some relief to my hard notions of the goodness of God, that,
although he made white men to be slaveholders, he did not make
them to be _bad_ slaveholders, and that, in due time, he would
punish the bad slaveholders; that he would, when they died, send
them to the bad place, where they would be "burnt up."
Nevertheless, I could not reconcile the relation of slavery with
my crude notions of goodness.
Then, too, I found that there were puzzling exceptions to this
theory of slavery on both sides, and in the middle. I knew of
blacks who were _not_ slaves; I knew of whites who were _not_
slaveholders; and I knew of persons who were _nearly_ white, who
were slaves. _Color_, therefore, was a very unsatisfactory basis
for slavery.
Once, however, engaged in the inquiry, I was not very long in
finding out the true solution of the matter. It was not _color_,
but _crime_, not _God_, but _man_, that afforded the true
explanation of the existence of slavery; nor was I long in
finding out another important truth, viz: what man can make, man
can unmake.
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