Report of the Committee on Slavery, to the Convention of Congregational Ministers of Massachusetts; Presented May 30 1849

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1849 Excerpt: ... The neighboring powers of Tyre and Sidon, at one period, had sold many of the Hebrews to the Greeks. From what is said of them in the Book of Joel, it is evident, that this traffic in men had been pursued in the most reckless and revolting manner. In the terrible retribution which was denounced, the avenging God of " the children of Judah " declared: " I will raise them out of the place whither ye have sold them, and will return recompense upon your own head. And I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hand of the children of Judah, and they shall sell them to the Sabeans, to a people far off: for the Lord hath spoken it." (Ch. iii.) The fulfillment of this prophecy is among the well authenticated memorials of they age of Alexander. Many of those who had been sold into Greece were set at liberty; while the Tyrians and Sidonians who had sold them, were doomed to slavery by the conquerors, and were purchased by some of the Jews, who sold them to the Sabeans and Arabians. A part of those purchased, it is very likely, were sold to Jews, or were retained by the purchasers in their own families. In the three centuries following the age of Alexander, there was no diminution of the slave-holding spirit among the Gentiles, either of Asia, Europe or Africa. And we are not able to affirm, that, at any time previous to the Christian era, the Jews had no slaves among them. But the manner in which the slave-merchants are alluded to, who came with the armies of Syria in the wars of the Maccabees, very plainly shows how such a commerce, as that in men, was regarded by those noble champions of Hebrew liberty. (1 Mac. iii. 41, &c.; 2 Mac. viii. 10, 11, 34-36.) And such, in general, was the public sentiment, or the various influence of divers causes, that, when the ...