Columbia, Pa., Oct. 27, 1848.
Messrs. Editors:ー
I closed a former letter by stating, that American Protestantism has changed the divine right of kings to the divine right of complexion. I now claim your attention by stating that one of the effects produced by the American Revolution, was to change the power of national sovereignty from an individual birthright to rule, vested in the Magna Charta of King John, to a community right, founded on a complexional tariff, and secured by the Constitution of the United States to all those who are born on this soil, and congregate from the different portions of the globe, who are distinguished by the "flickering shade of white." So far as we are concerned, the effect of this arrangement has been to change the ruling power from one to many monsters.
American Republicanism now presents the strange anomaly of seventeen millions of sovereign rulers, to three millions of subjects. For seventy-two years this inequality in the rights, privileges and condition of a portion of the people of this country, has received the moral and religious sanction of the people, both in church and state, until the primitive doctrine of the natural equality of man has nearly become obsolete. The right to enjoy liberty and pursue happiness, that formed the basis of physical resistance; to the mother country, has been excluded from universality in our persons, and the unnatural and sacrilegious robbery has been sustained and defended by the popular religion of the country.
The true history of the Protestant religion of this country towards the colored population, is a history of wrong and outrage, for which, as believers in future rewards and punishments, its professors must answer at the bar of God. They have inscribed on the soil of our ignorance an idolatrous love for a religion which true light and knowledge will teach us to loathe and execrate. As translators and interpreters of the Old Scriptures, they have turned the Bible against usーthey have pointed us to their divine authority to purchase and enslave the heathen; and then turning to us, exclaim, that "You are the heathen." They have taught our people to believe in their God, and their translators and commentators of the scriptures; and thus, by their superior wisdom, power and authority, have been successful in making us the ignorant dupes of a folly that desecrates our manhood, by making us become the obstinate defenders of a system of religion which vindicates our own degradation, and for which we can never hope to obtain the approbation of the wise and good in the present or succeeding ages.
The Protestant sects, who wield and guide the popular religion of this country, have, through their highest instructors, bishops, clergy, and laymen, as well as their religious presses, not only apologized for, but defended the rightfulness of American slavery. So important a foothold has this doctrine obtained among the sects, that Anti-Slavery has been denounced as heretical.ーHow then can we expect any but a pro-slavery religion to be prevalent among the colored people, since their forms, doctrines, and ceremonies, are but the daguerreotype likeness of the religion of their oppressors? It is true we have distinct houses for worship, to suit the prejudices of the public taste; but we have no distinct religion calculated to vindicate our natural equality with the nations of the earth, before God and the world. Northern prejudice, combined with our own action, has so far separated us from the white churches, that but little opportunity is afforded us of learning their higher virtues. The religion we have, came almost as directly from the "sunny South" as rain falls from the clouds of heaven. It has for the most part been heralded forth by men from the South, whose habits and education taught them to bend the knee to the "dark spirit of slavery." Such a religion to us is not a blessing, but a curse. Its ministers, in the place of spreading truth, knowledge and true happiness, are involving us in darkness, misery, pain and degredation. Our religion is but the reflecting shadow of the creative genius of our oppressors. Their orthodoxy is ours. When they denounce the friends of freedom, so do we. We assist them in spreading a sanctimonious influence over the right of the oppressor to multiply lithographic scars on the bodies of our fellow-men.
This state of things will naturally continue until we become religiously divorced from the doctrines, practices and precepts of the predominant religion of the sects. Our religious institutions were planted on slave-cursed soil; they are nourished by its power, and inhale its baleful atmosphere; and they can never be made to suit the genius and spirit of a free people, until they are raised to the ground, and others erectedーnot on their ruins, but created by the great universal spirit, the common Father of all, who, with an eye of impartial justice, regards all mankind as one common family, and entitled by the manutability of His laws to a common destiny.
W. W.Whipper, William

William Whipper (1804-76) first became known for his "free labor and temperance" grocery in Philadelphia. During the 1830s Whipper attended the annual National Negro Conventions regularly, and in 1835 he helped found the American Moral Reform Society and served as the editor of its journal, the National Reformer. That same year, Whipper moved to Pennsylvania's interior, where he became involved in the lumber business and in the Underground Railroad. Initially Whipper rejected the idea of racially based reform movements, but late in life he came to accept African American organizations as necessary for the attainment of racial equality. Because he desired the "moral elevation" of African Americans within American society, he often agreed with Douglass's approach to political and social reform. During the 1850s Whipper supported the emigrationist movement, but the outbreak of the Civil War prevented him from moving himself and his family to Canada. Instead, he returned to Philadelphia after the war and worked as a cashier for the Freedman's Bank, which failed in 1873. Richard P. McCormick, "William Whipper: Moral Reformer," Pennsvlvania History, 43:23-48 (January 1976); Jack Salzman, David L. Smith, and Cornel West, eds., Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History, 5 vols. (New York, 1996), 5:2817-18; DANB, 643.