In 1843 Henry Highland Garnett spoke at the National Negro Convention and addressed the slaves of the New World. It would take an additional twenty years until slaves receive their freedom through the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. Garnet’s “An Address to the Slaves of the United States of America” provides its audience with imperative particulars urging slaves to take their freedom by resistance. Garnett proclaims, “Brethren, the time has come when you must act for yourselves. It is an old and true saying that, if hereditary bondmen would be free, they must themselves strike the blow” (Manning 61). The following consists of a summary and an evaluation of H.H. Garnett’s speech “An Address to the Slaves of the United States.” In the beginning of his speech, H. H. Garnet shows compassion, understanding and empathy for his brothers of slavery. Garnett ensures the slaves that they are not alone and…show more content… The time for resistance is now. The time for freedom and justice is always now. Garnett instructs slaves on how to get their freedom by not boosting the sins of their oppressors to the world because the white man has already cursed himself. It has taken two hundred-twenty seven years to come to this point in the New World because the oppressors have prevented slaves to read, write, and learn the bible. This will no longer be an excuse. H. H. Garnett renounces, “God will not receive slavery, nor ignorance, nor any other state of mind, for love and obedience to him. Your condition does not absolve you from your moral obligation” (60). It is up to the slave to look within their own ancestral heritage and find the resistance spirit of Denmark Veazie, Nathaniel Turner, Joseph Cinque, and Madison Washington. I proclaim that there was no question in these heroes mind rather to “choose Liberty or death”