Here, then, are twenty-six thousand human beings, fashioned in the image
of God, the fitted temples of His Holy Spirit, held by the government in
the abhorrent chains of slavery. The power to emancipate them is clear.
It is indisputable. It does not depend upon the twenty-five slave votes
in Congress. It lies with the free states. Their duty is before them:
in the fear of God, and not of man let them perform it.
Let them at once strike off the grievous fetters. Let them declare that
man shall no longer hold his fellow-man in bondage, a beast of burden, an
article of traffic, within the governmental domain. God and truth and
eternal justice demand this. The very reputation of our fathers, the
honor of our land, every principle of liberty, humanity, expediency,
demand it. A sacred regard to free principles originated our
independence, not the paltry amount of practical evil complained of. And
although our fathers left their great work unfinished, it is our duty to
follow out their principles. Short of liberty and equality we cannot
stop without doing injustice to their memories. If our fathers intended
that slavery should be perpetual, that our practice should forever give
the lie to our professions, why is the great constitutional compact so
guardedly silent on the subject of human servitude? If state necessity
demanded this perpetual violation of the laws of God and the rights of
man, this continual solecism in a government of freedom, why is it not
met as a necessity, incurable and inevitable, and formally and distinctly
recognized as a settled part of our social system? State necessity, that
imperial tyrant, seeks no disguise. In the language of Sheridan, "What
he does, he dares avow, and avowing, scorns any other justification than
the great motives which placed the iron sceptre in his grasp."
Can it be possible that our fathers felt this state necessity strong upon
them? No; for they left open the door for emancipation, they left us the
light of their pure principles of liberty, they framed the great charter
of American rights, without employing a term in its structure to which in
aftertimes of universal freedom the enemies of our country could point
with accusation or reproach.
What, then, is our duty?
To give effect to the spirit of our Constitution; to plant ourselves upon
the great declaration and declare in the face of all the world that
political, religious, and legal hypocrisy shall no longer cover as with
loathsome leprosy the features of American freedom; to loose at once the
bands of wickedness; to undo the heavy burdens, and let the oppressed go
free.
We have indeed been authoritatively told in Congress and elsewhere that
our brethren of the South and West will brook no further agitation of the
subject of slavery. What then! shall we heed the unrighteous
prohibition? No; by our duty as Christians, as politicians, by our duty
to ourselves, to our neighbor, and to God, we are called upon to agitate
this subject; to give slavery no resting-place under the hallowed aegis
of a government of freedom; to tear it root and branch, with all its
fruits of abomination, at least from the soil of the national domain.
The slave-holder may mock us; the representatives of property,
merchandise, vendible commodities, may threaten us; still our duty is
imperative; the spirit of the Constitution should be maintained within
the exclusive jurisdiction of the government. If we cannot "provide for
the general welfare," if we cannot "guarantee to each of the states a
republican form of government," let us at least no longer legislate for a
free nation within view of the falling whip, and within hearing of the
execrations of the task-master and the prayer of his slave!
I deny the right of the slave-holder to impose silence on his brother of
the North in reference to slavery. What! compelled to maintain the
system, to keep up the standing army which protects it, and yet be denied
the poor privilege of remonstrance! Ready, at the summons of the master
to put down the insurrections of his slaves, the outbreaking of that
revenge which is now, and has been, in all nations, and all times, the
inevitable consequence of oppression and wrong, and yet like automata to
act but not speak! Are we to be denied even the right of a slave, the
right to murmur?
I am not unaware that my remarks may be regarded by many as dangerous and
exceptionable; that I may be regarded as a fanatic for quoting the
language of eternal truth, and denounced as an incendiary for
maintaining, in the spirit as well as the letter, the doctrines of
American Independence. But if such are the consequences of a simple
performance of duty, I shall not regard them. If my feeble appeal but
reaches the hearts of any who are now slumbering in iniquity; if it shall
have power given it to shake down one stone from that foul temple where
the blood of human victims is offered to the Moloch of slavery; if under
Providence it can break one fetter from off the image of God, and enable
one suffering African
"To feel
The weight of human misery less, and glide
Ungroaning to the tomb,"