Anti-slavery

“ If every anti-slavery tongue in the nation were silent—every anti-slavery organization dissolved—every anti-slavery periodical, paper, pamphlet, book, or what not, searched out, burned to ashes, and their ashes given to the four winds of heaven, still, still the slaveholder could have no peace. ”

“ A celebrated divine who, four years ago, was for flinging his own mother or brother into the remorseless jaws of the monster slavery, lest he should swallow up the Union, now recognizes anti-slavery as a characteristic of future civilization. Signs and wonders follow this movement; and the fact just stated is one of them. Party ties are loosened by it, and men are compelled to take sides for or against it, whether they will or not. Come from where he may, or come for what he may, he is compelled to show his hand. ”

“ No slavery for man under the whole heavens.' The slave, as a man and a brother, must be the vital and animating thought and impulse of any movement which is to effect the abolition of slavery in this country. Our anti-slavery organizations must be brought back to this doctrine, or they will be scattered, and left to wander and die in the wilderness, like God's ancient people, till another generation shall come up, more worthy to go up and possess the land. ”

“ For several years past, anti-slavery truth has been spreading, and in proportion as light has shone upon the "peculiar institution," exposing to the world its crimes and blood,—enstamping upon its frontlet, "THE SUM OF ALL VILLAINIES,"—has the wrath of the impious slaveholder been kindled, and his arm outstretched to strengthen the chain, and press closer the yoke upon the helpless slave, proving conclusively that he loves darkness because his deeds are evil. ”

“ All our enemies tell us they are as much anti-slavery as we are. Yes, my friends, thousands who are helping you to bind the fetters of slavery on the negro, despise you in their hearts for doing it; they rejoice that such an institution has not been entailed upon them. ”

“ If we would escape torture and death, on visiting any of the slave States, we must stifle our conscientious convictions, bear no testimony against cruelty and tyranny, suppress the struggling emotions of humanity, divest ourselves of all letters and papers of an anti-slavery character, and do homage to the slaveholding power—or run the risk of a cruel martyrdom! These are appalling and undeniable facts. Three millions of the American people are crushed under the American Union! They are held as slaves—trafficked as merchandise—registered as goods and chattels! ”

“ The slave power must go on in its career of exactions. Give, give, will be its cry, till the timidity which concedes shall give place to courage, which shall resist. Such is the voice of experience; such has been the past, such is the present, and such will be that future, which, so sure as man is man, will come. Here I leave the subject; and I leave off where I began, consoling myself and congratulating the friends of freedom upon the fact that the anti-slavery cause is not a new thing under the sun - not some moral delusion which a few years' experience may dispel. ”

“ And when the doctrine of property in man was driven out of Europe as an exile, and found a home in this New World in the West, the ancient and time-honored anti-slavery sentiment combined all that was good in brain, heart, and civilization, and hurled itself, with righteous indignation, against the institution of slavery, the perfected curse of the ages! ”

“ Nevertheless, I have somewhat against this society, as well as against the American Anti-slavery Society. It has almost dropped the main and most potent weapon with which slavery is to be assailed and overthrown, and that is speech. At this moment, when every nerve should be strained to prevent a reaction, that society has not a single lecturing agent in the field. ”

“ There never was a more formidable combination of interests and influences than that which confronted the anti-slavery movement in its earlier stages. And what was its answer? "Whether all you say be true or false, it matters not, but slavery is wrong." ”

“ This is just what Anti-Slavery Societies are doing; they are taking away the stone from the mouth of the tomb of slavery, where lies the putrid carcass of our brother. They want the pure light of heaven to shine into that dark and gloomy cave; they want all men to see how that dead body has been bound, how that face has been wrapped in the napkin of prejudice; and shall they wait beside that grave in vain? Is not Jesus still the resurrection and the life? Did He come to proclaim liberty to the captive, and the opening of prison doors to them that are bound, in vain? ”

“ It has revealed the arrogant and overbearing spirit of Slave States towards the Free States---despising their principles, shocking their feelings of humanity, not only by bringing before them the abominations of slavery, but by attempting to make them parties to the crime. has called into exercise among the coloured people--the hunted ones - a spirit of resistance, well calculated to surround them with a bulwark of sympathy and respect hitherto unknown; for men are always disposed to respect and defend rights when the victims of oppression stand up manfully for themselves. ”

“ The mission of anti-slavery is to inspire them with rebellious thoughts and feelings, and incite them to insurrectionary words and deeds (not deeds of violence and blood) against their inhuman and godless masters. ”

“ One thing must be said of the leaders of the anti-slavery movement. They asked for nothing but justice; not justice for themselves—they were not Socratic enough to ask that,—but only justice for the slave; and to obtain that, they forsook all that human hearts most love. ”

“ But the purpose, for which we have thrown these pages before the community, is this. Some men, finding the nation unanimously deciding that the Constitution tolerates slavery, have tried to prove that this false construction, as they think it, has been foisted in upon the instrument by the corrupting influence of slavery itself, tainting all it touches. They assert that the known anti-slavery spirit of revolutionary times never could have consented to so infamous a bargain as the Constitution is represented to be, and has in its present hands become. ”

“ We should rejoice, indeed, if the evils of slavery were removed far from us, that it could be said with truth, that we have nothing to do with slavery. Our citizens have not entered its territories for the purpose of obstructing its laws, nor do we wish to do so, nor would we justify any individual in such act; yet we have been branded and stigmatized by its friends and advocates, both in the free and slave States, as incendiaries, fanatics, disorganizers, enemies to our country, and as wishing to dissolve the Union. ”

“ They awaken the sympathies for the slave, in which anti-slavery principles take root, grow up, and flourish. In addition to authors, poets, and scholars at home, the moral sense of the civilized world is with us. England, France, and Germany, the three great lights of modern civilization are with us, and every American traveller learns to regret the existence of slavery in his country. The growth of intelligence, the influence of commerce, steam, wind, and lightning are our allies. ”

“ In the very heart of humanity are garnered up, as from everlasting to everlasting, all those elementary principles whose vital action constitutes what we now term the anti-slavery movement. They are the treasure of our common storehouse. The humblest may approach, enter, and be supplied with arms to meet the ills that flesh is heir to. A thousand moral battles have been fought with them, and they are as good as ever. . Ages of oppression and iron hearted selfishness have rolled over them, and covered them with their blinding dust ”

“ In doing so I have one consolation, and that is, as I apprehend it, the anti-slavery movement is, after all, no cold abstraction, requiring a sharp and flinty intellect to analyze it. While it is a subject of surpassing dignity, and one upon which the wisest and best minds may be employed, it is, nevertheless, a subject upon which the humblest may venture to think and speak without justly being exposed to the reproach of treading upon ground which should be trodden only by men of the "superior race." ”

“ As the anti-slavery movement developed, the call for immediate liberation became more insistent and imperative. The colonization method lost credit. Slavery was coming to be regarded by its opponents not merely as a social evil to be eradicated, but as a personal sin of the slave-holder, to be renounced as promptly as any other sin. ”

“ As the result of much reading and research, and at the expenditure of no inconsiderable amount of time, labor and money, we now proceed to make known the anti-slavery sentiments of those noble abolitionists, the Fathers of the Republic, whose liberal measures of public policy have been so criminally perverted by the treacherous advocates of slavery. ”

“ One other word for my subject. A grand movement on the part of mankind, in any direction, or for any purpose, moral or political, is an interesting fact, fit and proper to be studied. It is such, not only for those who eagerly participate in it, but also for those who stand aloof from it, even for those by whom it is opposed. I take the anti-slavery movement to be such an one, and a movement as sublime and glorious in its character, as it is holy and beneficent in the ends it aims to accomplish. ”

“ You may petition, too, the different, ecclesiastical bodies of the slave states. Slavery must be attacked with the whole power of truth and the sword of the spirit. You must take it up on Christian ground, and fight against it with Christian weapons, whilst your feet are shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace. And you are now loudly called upon by the cries of the widow and the orphan, to arise and gird yourselves for this great moral conflict, with the whole armour of righteousness upon the right hand and on the left. ”

“ But what was the condition of the anti-slavery movement twenty years ago, and how came it in that condition? It is much easier to answer the first than to answer the last question. There were witnesses for freedom in the church, but the church had become comparatively dead on the subject. ”

“ Not until after the foreign slave-trade had been prohibited and the domestic trade had been developed, and not until there was a pro-slavery reaction in the South which banished from the slave States all anti-slavery propaganda, did the systematic assistance rendered to fugitive slaves assume any large proportions or arouse bitter resentment. ”

“ Nothing is more evident, than that such disclosures are a positive evil to the slaves remaining, and seeking to escape. In publishing such accounts, the anti-slavery man addresses the slaveholder, not the slave; he stimulates the former to greater watchfulness, and adds to his facilities for capturing his slave. ”

“ But how do the apologists and defenders of slavery proceed? Placing themselves amidst the arrangements and usages which grew out of the corruptions of Christianity, they make these the standard by which the gospel is to be explained and understood! Some Recorder or Justice, without the light of inquiry or the aid of a jury, consigns the negro whom the kidnapper has dragged into his presence to the horrors of slavery. As the poor wretch shrieks and faints, Humanity shudders and demands why such atrocities are endured? ”

“ Is this loving their neighbor as themselves? Oh! that such opposers of Abolitionism would put their souls in the stead of the free colored man's and obey the apostolic injunction, to "remember them that are in bonds as bound with them." I will leave you to judge whether the fear of amalgamation ought to induce men to oppose anti-slavery efforts, when they believe slavery to be sinful. Prejudice against color, is the most powerful enemy we have to fight with at the North. ”

“ The Anti-Slavery Society is, as its name imports, a society to oppose slavery--not to "make matches." Whether abolitionists are inclined to amalgamation more than anti-abolitionists are, I will not here take upon myself to decide. So far, as you and I may be regarded as representatives of these two parties, and so far as our marriages argue our tastes in this matter, the abolitionists and anti-abolitionists may be set down, as equally disposed to couple white with white and black with black--for our wives, as you are aware, are both white. ”

“ To judge correctly of the view, which our Revolutionary fathers took of oppression, we must go back and stand by their side, in their struggles against it,--we must survey them through the medium of the anti-slavery sentiment of their own times, and not impute to them the pro-slavery spirit so rampant in ours. ”

“ Who cavilled more at Anti-Slavery measures, and who more ready now to acknowledge his former blindness? Real Abolitionists know full well, that the slave never has been, and never can be, a whit the better for mere abstractions, floating in the head of any man; and they also know, that principles, fixed in the heart, are things of another sort. ”

“ Old as the everlasting hills, immovable as the throne of God, and certain as the purposes of eternal power against all hinderances, and against all delays, and despite all the mutations of human instrumentalities, it is the faith of my soul that this anti-slavery cause will yet gloriously triumph. ”