Heathens

CLERICAL BEREAVEMENT.—The papers are reporting the story that on the night of the 2d inst., a lot of negroes, twenty-five in number, ran away from their owners in Boone County , Kentucky, and what is most shocking to relate, among those thus suddenly bereft of their property are two ministers of the Gospel . Think of that! What benighted heathens those slaves must have been, to absolutely run out from under the droppings of the sanctuary! The editor of the Banner, published at Aurora, gives us the “Key” to this unparalleled proceeding by saying that some weeks previous to their departure, one of the slaves procured and read to his comrades, Uncle Tom's Cabin, and it is supposed that the beauties of Canadian freedom, as pictured by Mrs. Stowe, were the inducements to run away. Really, what a state of things are we coming to, when a single copy of an “exaggerated fiction” can overturn all the pious counsels of a couple of the Ministers of the Gospel!

National Anti-Slavery Standard, May 12, 1853