Children, you are free and happy. Kind parents watch over you with
loving eyes; patient teachers instruct you from the beautiful pages of
the printed book; benign laws, protect you from violence, and prevent
the strong arms of wicked people from hurting you; the blessed Bible is
in your hands; when you become men and women you will have full liberty
to earn your living, to go, to come, to seek pleasure or profit in any
way that you may choose, so long as you do not meddle with the rights of
other people; in one word, _you are free children_! Thank God! thank
God! my children, for this precious gift. Count it dearer than life. Ask
the great God who made you free to teach you to prefer death to the loss
of liberty.

But are all the children in America free like you? No, no! I am sorry to
tell you that hundreds of thousands of American children are _slaves_.
Though born beneath the same sun and on the same soil, with the same
natural right to freedom as yourselves, they are nevertheless SLAVES.
Alas for them! Their parents cannot train them as they will, for they
too have MASTERS. These masters say to them:

"Your children are OURS--OUR PROPERTY! They shall not be taught to read
or write; they shall never go to school; they shall not be taught to
read the Bible; they must submit to us and not to you; we shall whip
them, sell them, and do what else we please with them. They shall never
own themselves, never have the right to dispose of themselves, but shall
obey us in all things as long as they live!"

"Why do their fathers let these masters have their children? My father
wouldn't let anybody have me," I hear one of my little free-spirited