Article I Walker headed “Our Wretchedness in Consequence of Slavery.”  A trip over the United States had convinced him that the Negroes of the country were “the most degraded, wretched and abject set of beings that ever lived since the world began.”  He quoted a South Carolina paper as saying, “The Turks are the most barbarous people in the world—­they treat the Greeks more like brutes than human beings”; and then from the same paper cited an advertisement of the sale of eight Negro men and four women.  “Are we men?” he exclaimed.  “I ask you, O! my brothers, are we men?...  Have we any other master but Jesus Christ alone?  Is He not their master as well as ours?  What right, then, have we to obey and call any man master but Himself?  How we could be so submissive to a gang of men, whom we can not tell whether they are as good as ourselves, or not, I never could conceive.”  “The whites,” he asserted, “have always been an unjust, jealous, unmerciful, avaricious and bloodthirsty set of beings, always seeking after power and authority.”  As heathen the white people had been cruel enough, but as Christians they were ten times more so.  As heathen “they were not quite so audacious as to go and take vessel loads of men, women and children, and in cold blood, through devilishness, throw them into the sea, and murder them in all kind of ways.  But being Christians, enlightened and sensible, they are completely prepared for such hellish cruelties.”  Next was considered “Our Wretchedness in Consequence of Ignorance.”  In general the writer maintained that his people as a whole did not have intelligence enough to realize their own degradation; even if boys studied books they did not master their texts, nor did their information go sufficiently far to enable them actually to meet the problems of life.  If one would but go to the South or West, he would see there a son take his mother, who bore almost the pains of death to give him birth, and by the command of a tyrant, strip her as naked as she came into the world and apply the cowhide to her until she fell a victim to death in the road.  He would see a husband take his dear wife, not unfrequently in a pregnant state and perhaps far advanced, and beat her for an unmerciful wretch, until her infant fell a lifeless lump at her feet.  Moreover, “there have been, and are this day, in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, colored men who are in league with tyrants and who receive a great portion of their daily bread of the moneys which they acquire from the blood and tears of their more miserable brethren, whom they scandalously deliver into the hands of our natural enemies.”  In Article III Walker considered “Our Wretchedness in Consequence of the Preachers of the Religion of Jesus Christ.”  Here was a fertile field, which was only partially developed.  Walker evidently did not have at hand the utterances of Furman and others to serve as a definite point of attack.  He did point out, however, the general failure of Christian ministers to live