that of Britain’s tyrannical king, against whom your ancestors lifted
their stout arms in rebellion, and unfurled their banner of revolt, on
which was gloriously inscribed, “victory or death?” Have you forever
lost all that portion of your ancestral fire, which armed three millions
of poor and feeble men to engage in deadly combat with the richest and
most powerful nation in Christendom? Ah, has God forsaken you so
entirely, that no pulse of gladness beats in your frame, as you listen
to the stirring notes of the wild, clarion sound of freedom, coming over
these hills, and echoing from the far-distant prairies of the wide West?
Oh is there not, friends, any deep fountain of sorrow gushing up from
the inmost depths of your secret souls, for the sufferings and woes of
the three millions of your Southern brethren? Ah, is there not any
remnant of the spark of divinity which our Father in heaven has placed
in every human heart, left to warm up your frigid souls? Say, breathes
there not a particle of indignant life in your moral nature, as you
listen to the mad agonies of shrieking mothers, the victims of
remorseless tyrants who now stand defacing God’s image and stamping in
the dust the lineaments of their Creator? Oh, is there none of manhood
left in you, that the shrieks of trampled upon and bleeding innocence,
should not move you to contend with Slavery’s cruel power? But is not
your own safety a reason why you should cease to doff your beavers to
the South, and should refuse to pay homage to her any longer? Listen a
moment while I exhibit to you some more personal and selfish arguments.
At the last election, the Southern States were allowed one electoral
vote for every 7,500 voters, while at the North, it took 12,000 voters
to entitle us to _one_ elector. The number of electors, of which we were
thus deprived, was about 100, which was the same as excluding from the
privilege of the elective franchise, 750,000 voters, about the number in
all New England and Pennsylvania! Now are not these persons taxed
equally with those who have the privilege of voting? Do not all the
citizens of the North pay taxes? Yes, and much more than their true
proportion, for by far the greater portion of duty-paying goods, are
consumed at the North. Then, is not the principle which our fathers died
to oppose, fully carried out by our government, _taxation without
representation_? and yet we tamely submit to this plucking our substance
from us, by the fierce beak of our country’s eagle; while our fathers
would not so much as listen to the slight growling of the English lion,
as he shook his shaggy mane in their faces, and touched them with but
the extremities of his bloody paw! Robbery, if committed by a bird of
prey, the American eagle, is to be patiently submitted to, and indeed we
call it but the tickling of an affectionate friend or child; but let the
valiant lion of Old England take the value of a pin’s point, or a few
old pine trees and worthless rocks from us, and how the welkin rings
with the sound of our abhorrence of such depredations. We are like the
slaveholder, spoken of in our friend’s narrative, who told the slaves it
was a crime to steal from him, but none to rob his neighbors, because
he reaped the benefits of the theft. So with us. We are _rewarded_ for
our submission to this robbery, by the paltry trade of the South, and as
long as a few of us can make more money than we lose otherwise by our
connection with the South, we care not for our principles, although
every fourth of July we laud our fathers for fighting in behalf of them;
or for the losses of the mass of the people. _Taxation without
representation!_ This practice deluged the fields of our country, with
our ancestor’s and Briton’s son’s blood; and caused our prosperity, as a
nation, to be stricken to the ground, and we magnify our fathers for
their boldness, in reference to it; yet we cherish the same principle,
and press it to our bosoms as a part of our religion!
Great Britain _tried_ our fathers, accused of crime, away from their
homes, across the waters of the ocean, and we call it a great
oppression; but let one of our sons be guilty of an act in violation of
Southern law, or be even suspected of it, and there is _no_ law by which
he can be tried. All law is trampled under foot, and he is doomed to
waste away his life, in a gloomy prison, or to be whipped almost to
death. Which is the worst, being tried across the sea, by an impartial
court, or being strung up by Lynch law between the heavens and the
earth, and left dangling on the limb of a tree, or else doomed to wear
out a miserable existence in some foul dungeon?
But to make the case still more parallel. Great Britain, our fathers
complained, quartered soldiers upon them in times of peace, who eat out
their substance and corrupted the people. For what other earthly
purpose is the army of the United States continued in existence, but to
watch the bidding of the monster Slavery, and be ready to fly at a
moment’s warning to her assistance, in case the least attempt should be
made by their victims to regain their freedom? That this is a true
statement, may be seen from the fact, that all our wars for the last
thirty-five years, have been waged in behalf of Slavery, and even our
last war with Great Britain, is attributed by many persons to the
demands of the slave power. It is certain, that no war will ever be
allowed by the South, except in behalf of Slavery, for it would be
detrimental to their interests; and it is well known that she rules over
the destinies of this country, and guides its affairs of state, as
effectually as Alexander or Napoleon ruled the countries they had
conquered. Slavery rules this nation, did we say? It can hardly be
called ruling, for we are so submissive to the faintest manifestation of
her will, that she has but to glance her glowing eye towards our craven
souls, and we will prostrate our abject forms lowly on the ground, with
our faces hid in the dust, which we are truly unworthy to touch; as
submissively and reverentially, as the devout Mussulman kisses the
ground when the hour of prayer arrives, crying, “God is great.” Our God
is emphatically Slavery. To him we address our early matins, and in his
ear are uttered our evening orisons. More devoutly do we render homage
to our god, Slavery, than the most pious of us adore the God of heaven,
which proves that we are a very religious people, worshipping, not
crocodiles, leeks and onions, snakes, and images of wood and stone, but
a god, whose service is infinitely more disgusting than that of any
heathen idol, but one who _pays_ us well, for our obeisance, as we
imagine.
In this matter of a standing army, we go beyond our fathers in suffering
oppression. They were not obliged to fight for England, when the object
of the war was to enslave themselves; but it is well known that the
great object the South has in view, in all her wars, is the
aggrandizement of herself and the subjection of the North to her
complete dictation; and we are called upon to engage in these wars, and
after they are fought, we are compelled to foot the heavy bills.
But when our fathers were oppressed, they could plead in their own
behalf. If they placed their feet on England’s shores, no harm could
befal them, as long as they were guilty of no crime. They could defend
their own cause; and the thunders of a Burke’s eloquence, shook the
walls of Parliament to their foundation, and made the tyrants of England
tremble and quake with fear, as he poured forth the fervor of his
vehement eloquence in strong condemnation of the oppression of the
colonies. A William Pitt too, could frighten the British minister from
his unhallowed security, amid the multitude of fawning sycophants
surrounding him, in the height of his political power, by the thunders
of his voice, uttered in faithful rebuke of the war measures of the
government. This noble Earl, was allowed to plead in behalf of American
freedom, until his earnest spirit was claimed by the grim messenger
death, as he arose in his place in the House of Lords, to speak in our
behalf. But suffer what we may, is there any redress for us at the hands
of our government? Our property may be injured by spoliations on our
commerce, such as imprisoning our seamen, as well as by the crime of
seizing our free citizens and depriving them of their liberty; and can
we obtain the least redress? O the ignominy of our puerile connection
with the South!
It is well known that under the system of Slavery, the three great
blessings of republicanism are denied to a large portion of our
citizens. These are, freedom of the press, of speech and of locomotion.
And will we allow ourselves to be deprived of what even Europe’s
despotic kings have been bestowing upon their subjects? Are we more base
and abject in our submission to the South, than are the oppressed
millions of the old world, in their subjection to their kingly
oppressors? O what falsifiers of our own professions, and truants to our
own dearly prized principles, we are! Can an abolitionist travel
unexposed at the South? I have had some little experience in the matter,
and know that such is not the case. Men have pursued me with relentless
hate, and implements of death have been brought into requisition against
me, for no crime, only for exposing Slavery, in its own dominions. Can
we send to any part of the South those newspapers we may wish to send
there? While at the South, I was advised by a friend to conceal a paper
I had received, because of its being opposed to Slavery; and it is in
only particular portions of that ill-fated country, that anti-slavery
publications, can be introduced. It is not many years, since a man was
publicly whipped, for having an anti-slavery newspaper wrapped around a
bible, which he was offering for sale. As to liberty of speech, not half
the freedom is allowed the opponents of Slavery on the floors of
Congress, that the British Parliament allowed the opposers of the
American War. In Boston, on the day which ushered the famous _stamp act_
into existence, the bells were tolled, and a funeral procession passed
through the streets, bearing a coffin, on which the word _Liberty_ was
inscribed. “During the movement of the procession, minute guns were
fired, and an oration was pronounced in favor of the _deceased_. Similar
expressions of grief and indignation occurred in many parts of the
land;” but, friends, no funeral procession passed through our streets
when Liberty died the second time--no muffled bells sounded their
melancholy peals in the ears of a mourning people; no liberty-loving
orator was found to pronounce a requiem for the departed goddess; and
yet she was slain--and slain too, not by foreign hands, nor by the
natural allies of human oppressors, but, shall I tell the sad and dismal
tale? by those, who twenty-five years before, had shrouded their faces
in mantles of mourning, and rent the air with their expressions of
grief, at the destruction of one of liberty’s little fingers, by the
passage of the stamp act; but when Liberty lay a full length corpse, on
the floors of that Congress, which sold her to the South, as Judas
betrayed the Son of God, and for almost as small a boon, viz.: “the
carrying trade” of the South; not only were there _no_ lamentations made
over her complete departure, but she was taken by night and buried
hastily; while
“Not a drum was heard nor a funeral note,”
as her corse was deposited without a “winding sheet,” or even “a
soldier’s cloak” to wrap around her bleeding form. Clandestinely was she
hurried out of the sight of the men who murdered her; and instead of
songs of sorrow, being heard throughout the land, pæans of praise
ascended from its every corner, and honors were heaped on the heads of
her murderers. But Liberty as truly died then, as if loud lamentations
had been made in her behalf, and the descendants of those very men, who
in 1765 followed the coffin of liberty to its place of deposit, because
no business was deemed lawful unless the records of it were made on
_stamped paper_; the descendants of these very mourners of liberty, now,
do what is infinitely worse than to use the stamped paper of a British
king; they swear to support that sacrifice of Liberty upon the altar of
Southern slavery, whenever they are admitted to any offices of trust and
renown. Is not this oppressive, when we may not administer justice to
our fellow men, or exercise the most common authority, without renewing
the thrust at the departed spirit of liberty, as our fathers actually
slew her fair form?
O Liberty! didst thou draw thy keen sword
For those, whom av’rice sought to rob, and slay,
And sent its minions far, to seek its prey,
That glittering gold might its coffers fill;
While they their foes should crush, and seek to kill,
That England’s lords, their gold could steal, and hoard?
Goddess celestial, and divine, and pure,
Wert thou, the champion brave, the soldier true,
Who fought with youthful vigor, with the few,
Of Columbia’s sons, who stood, a sturdy band,
And bade their country’s foes to leave their land,
While they, to thee didst vow allegiance sure?
Insulted nymph! thy fair form shone so bright,
That kings, as thee they saw, could not reject
That face, alive with claims to their respect;
E’en they, besotted with the lust of power,
Could not refuse to yield to thee thy dower,
But ceased at thy command, their foes to fight.
But ah! the men who thee so loud did call,
The souls, whom thou hadst saved from bondage dread,
O fearful tale! _themselves on thee did tread_;
And thy fair robe was pierced with traitorous thrusts.
As Cæsar groaning fell and kissed the dust,
When ingrate Brutus’ blows on him did fall.
On the 5th of March, 1775, the Boston massacre occurred--the fearful
tragedy of State Street! All Boston was aroused, murders dreadful had
been committed by the British troops, and it was a difficult task to
allay the excitement occasioned thereby. What was the amount of this
terrible massacre? Why, three Boston citizens had been shot in the heat
of an affray with the British soldiery! What horror seemed to seize upon
the hearts of the people! Why, “our brothers are being shot down in the
face of open day, and our turn may come next.” Terrible was the
indignation of our fathers! And yet we, their descendants, calmly allow
the South to slay our citizens at their leisure. The blood of a murdered
Lovejoy, still cries out from the ground for vengeance! A Baltimore
prison, still contains the impress of a departed spirit’s feet, which
left an impression on its gloomy pavement, as he fled from an earthly
prison-house to the mansions of the blest. A C. C. Torrey still calls
for redress for his wrongs at the hands of Southern tyrants. The jail of
our own capital if it could speak, would tell of him who pined away
within its noisome walls, as he lay in that republican enclosure, a
victim to Southern tyranny. Yes, Dr. Crandall’s blood has not yet been
atoned for, by the wicked South. Here are, at least three victims who
have been slain, at the cruel dictation of Slavery’s dreadful power. But
time would fail me, to tell of a Van Zandt, of a Fairbanks, and of
numerous others, whose lives have been forfeited to the South. And yet
we submit to her dictation. Our own citizens slain, imprisoned, and
cruelly beaten, but yet we have no heart to break away from this
degrading alliance with our Southern man-stealing brethren.
But, I must bring this expostulation to a close, and proceed to show the
_consequences_ of this event, the formation of a new government. Of
these it may be said; they could not be more disastrous to the North
than Slavery has been; for like the “horse-leech’s two daughters,” she
continually cries “give, give,” and never seems to have enough. Hardly
through with the digestion of the tremendous morsel just administered to
her gormandizing appetite, she commences to lick her lips, and daintily
ask for a dessert, with which to finish the full meal which she has
already made of California and New Mexico, and as her mother deems it
her duty, never to deny any of her darling daughter’s reasonable
requests, probably the Island of Cuba, will soon be placed at her side,
for her to nibble upon at leisure.
Many persons deprecate our plan, for fear of a civil war; and terrific
ideas of rivers of blood rolling across our fields, and piles of bones
heaped on our shores, startle them in their slumbers, as the rustling of
a leaf fills the slaveholder’s heart with fear. In the first place, how
very absurd is this idea of a civil war being the result of disunion.
Can any one seriously urge it, as an objection to this movement? Look at
the vast extent of territory open to the incursions of an enemy, if the
North should withdraw from the South. There are the Islands of the West
Indies, filled with emancipated slaves, ready, some of them to join in
an effort to redeem the Southern slaves from bondage. Then there is the
long line of sea-board, entirely unprotected, which even in the last war
was devastated in part by the British army, and the capital of our
country reduced to ashes. On the Northern frontier, runs that talismanic
line, over which a slave has but to place his foot, and glorious liberty
becomes his possession. Here stand, twelve millions of freemen, ready to
fight in behalf of the panting fugitive, while nearly 20,000 sturdy
hearts beat quick to the sound of the trumpet of freedom, and are ready
to leave their homes in _Canada_, to assist their brethren. Then, there
is ill-treated and insulted Mexico, burning under a sense of the wrongs
inflicted upon her, and watching an opportunity to redress those wrongs.
Last of all, are the numerous Indian tribes, smarting under a deep sense
of the wrongs they have received at our hands. Now will any sensible
person assert that five millions of Southerners, allowing all her white
population to be in favor of Slavery, with an intestine foe, ready to
spring upon her, as soon as the last chance of freedom presents itself,
will be in danger of fighting twelve millions of free Northerners, who
can call to their aid all these, and numerous other allies? Why, the
idea is preposterous, and none but an insane man, can seriously
entertain it. Who would fight the North, if war should be declared? At
the first sound of the trumpet of war, every slave would be instantly
free; for never could the Southerners leave their homes exposed to the
fury of an insurgent population, as they would be obliged to, if an army
should be organized to fight the North.
But who are those persons who cry out “civil war, and bloodshed?” Are
they not mostly those who believe the revolutionary war to have been
right? If Slavery is wrong, to be consistent, they ought to hail any
movement which will hasten an insurrection among the Slaves. What is a
civil war of a few years’ continuance, in comparison to the seven years’
war we waged with Great Britain? _Then_ our resources were limited, our
treasury light, and we were only three millions strong. But _now_, we
abound in resources, have become plethoric on account of our riches, and
are twelve millions strong, while our enemy is less than half that
number. We coped with twenty millions of British subjects, when we
numbered but three millions, can we not now with twelve millions cope
with five? Then has our glory departed indeed, and we are the veriest
slaves in existence. But would our trade be endangered? Ah, that is
_the_ question. Said a person to me not long since, “I acknowledge there
would be benefits in a dissolution of the Union, but there are also
disadvantages.” And what are they? we inquired. “Why, our trade would be
injured.” Let it perish then! Every mother’s son of us, had better pack
up and on board our numerous vessels go on a begging expedition to
England or France, or we had better “tie millstones about our necks, and
drown ourselves in the depths of the sea;” or, we had better lay down in
the streets and perish with hunger, than to allow Slavery to continue
its existence.
The moment it is granted that a dissolution of the Union would abolish
Slavery quicker than any other course, then I think our point is gained,
and there is no necessity of proving that we shall not lose the sale of
a few hats and boots, or _slave whips_. It seems almost an insult to the
character of the Northern people to answer such an argument as this, and
yet I fear that it is the “strong reason” why this question meets with
so much opposition.
If slavery is abolished, no one can deny that our _trade_, so important
to Northern men, and for which they are ready to barter the welfare of
three millions of human beings, would be materially increased; but for
one I care not, whether this will be the case or not. I cannot, I will
not argue this question. It is a sin against the Holy Ghost, to dream of
balancing the matter in this way. Northern men, you are too much
actuated by this spirit of Avarice! You must be converted from this
accursed love for gold; for it will sink you into the lowest degradation
of a life afar from Deity. You cannot be the friends of God, while it
reigns in your hearts! You must arise, and cast it from you! You must be
converted from your selfishness, and then you will have no objections to
offer against a dissolution of the Union! If your eyes can only be
anointed with the eye-salve of humanity, and be washed in the waters of
benevolence, you will see the folly of all your objections, and will be
ready to sink all your ships with their rich cargoes, into the depths of
the sea, and to burn your well-filled stores, rather than to cause
Slavery to continue another day! O, men of the North, can ye not be
aroused to action in the slave’s behalf? Shall the purple streams of the
slave’s blood, flow ceaselessly and rapidly o’er our land, gushing forth
from every hill-side of the South, and coloring all the fair fields of
Southern industry, on account of your sustaining power? O that I could
utter some word in your ear, which would quicken your dormant
sensibilities and arouse you to action in the slave’s cause! Shall I
tell you of God, of heaven, and of hell? There is a God, and as he
descends from his abode among the stars, and essays to find an entrance
into your soul, by which he may make you “a joint heir with Christ to an
inheritance, incorruptible and undefiled and which fadeth not away,”
depend upon it, that he will be frustrated in his benevolent purpose, if
the demon of pro-slavery, lies coiled up in your heart. Whatever may be
said of religion, it is true that God can never approve of any person,
in league with slaveholders; for a just God is forever opposed to all
forms of robbery and oppression. If God’s favor then is of any value,
flee, I beseech thee, to the arms of liberty, and be encircled by her
protecting power; so that all approach to Slavery may be dreaded by
thee, as an angel dreads the polluting touch of sin.
_EXTRACT of an Address of Sam’l J. May, Unitarian Clergyman, in
Syracuse, N. Y., delivered in Faneuil Hall_.
Never will the story be forgotten in our country, or throughout the
world, of the man--whom I trust you will all be permitted to see--who,
that he might escape from Southern oppression, consented to a living
entombment. He entered the box with the determination to be free or die:
and as he heard the nails driven in, his fear was that death was to be
his portion; yet, said he, let death come in preference to slavery! I
happened to be in the City of Philadelphia--I have told the story to the
convention already, but I will tell it again--in the midst of an
excitement that was caused by the arrival of a man in a box. I measured
it myself; _three feet one inch long, two feet wide, and two feet six
inches deep_. IN THAT BOX A MAN WAS ENTOMBED FOR TWENTY SEVEN HOURS.