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THE LIBERATOR
IS PUBLISHED
EVERY FRIDAY MORNING,
AT THE ANTI-SLAVERY OFFICE, 21 CORNHILL.
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ROBERT F. WALLCUT, GENERAL AGENT.
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[[image: hand pointing right]] TERMS--Two dollars and fifty cents per annum, in advance.
[[image: hand pointing right]] Five copies will be sent to one address for TEN DOLLARS, if payment be made in advance.
[[image: hand pointing right]] All remittances are to be made, and all letters relating to the pecuniary concerns of the paper are to be directed, (POST PAID,) to the General Agent.
[[image: hand pointing right]] Advertisements making less than one square inserted three times for 75 cents-one square for $1.00.
[[image: hand pointing right]] The Agents of the American, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Ohio Anti-Slavery Societies are authorised to receive subscriptions for the Liberator.
[[image: hand pointing right]] The following gentlemen constitute the Financial Committee, but are not responsible for any of the debts of the paper, viz. :-FRANCIS JACKSON, ELLIS GRAY-LORING, EDMUND QUINCY, SAMUEL PHILBRICK, and WENDELL PHILLIPS.
[[image: hand pointing right]] In the columns of The Liberator, both sides of every question are impartially allowed a hearing.
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[[image: line drawings in three parts; 
 left part - slave market, with well-dressed white men standing or on horseback, one white man standing on platform, platform with U.S. flag, sign reads "SLAVES. HORSES, & OTHER CATTLE IN LOTS TO SUIT PURCHASE", black women and men interspersed with horses wait beside the platform;
 center part - circular seal, Christ-figure with upraised arm and holding a tall thin cross, black man wearing only pants and kneeling with arms raised in supplication, white man fallen on his knees having dropped a whip, words around the top reading "I COME TO BREAK THE BONDS OF THE OPPRESSOR.", small text of "HARTWELL" on the ground; 
right part - multiple figures of black men, women, and children outside a building, all pointing to a crowd of people and flags in front of a gate reading "EMANCIPATION"
[[/image]]
[[banner]]THOU SHALT LOVE THY NEIGHBOR AS THY SELF[[/banner]]

[[title][THE LIBERATOR.[[/title]]

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[[Title]]No Union with Slaveholders![[/Title]]
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[[Sub-Title]]THE U.S. CONSTITUTION IS 'A COVENANT WITH DEATH AND AN AGREEMENT WITH HELL.'[[/Sub-Title]]
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[[image: hand pointing right]] 'Yes ! IT CANNOT BE DENIED-the slaveholding lords of the South prescribed, as a condition of their assent to the Constitution, three special provisions TO SECURE THE PERPETUITY OF THEIR DOMINION OVER THEIR SLAVES.  The first was the immunity, for twenty years, of preserving the African slave trade, the second was THE STIPULATION TO SURRENDER FUGITIVE SLAVES-an engagement positively prohibited by the laws of God, delivered from Sinai ; and, thirdly, the exaction, fatal to the principles of popular representation, of a representation for SLAVES-for articles of merchandize, under the name of persons ..... in fact, the oppressor representing the oppressed!... To call government thus constituted a democracy, is to insult the understanding of mankind.  It is doubly tainted with the infection of riches and slavery.  Its reciprocal operation upon the government of the nation is to establish an artificial majority in the slave representation over that of the free people, in the American Congress ; AND THEREBY TO MAKE THE PRESERVATION, PROPAGATION AND PERPETUATION OF SLAVERY THE VITAL AND ANIMATING SPIRIT OF THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT,' [[italics]]John Quincy Adams[[/italics]]   
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WM. LLOYD GARRISON, Editor.
Our Country is the World, our Countrymen are all Mankind.
J. B. YERRINTON & SON, PRINTERS.
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VOL. XXIII. NO. 7.
BOSTON, FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 1853.
WHOLE NUMBER 1152.
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THE LIBERATOR.
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SPEECH of WENDELL PHILLIPS AT THE Annual Meeting of the Massachusetts A.S. Society, Thursday Evening, Jan. 27, 1853.
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     WENDELL PHILLIPS came forward and was received with loud cheering.  He presented, from the Business Committee, the following resolution :-

     Resolved, That the object of this Society is now, as it has always been, to convince our countrymen, by arguments addressed to their hearts and consciences, that slaveholding is a heinous crime, and that the duty, safety and interest of all concerned, demand its immediate abolition, without expatriation.

    I wish, Mr. PRESIDENT, to notice some objections that have been made to our course, ever since Mr. GARRISON began his career, and some of which have been lately urged again, with considerable force and emphasis, in the columns of the LONDON LEADER, the able organ of a very respectable and influential class in England.  I hope, Sir, you will-not think it waste of time to bring such a subject before you.  I know these objections have been made a thousand times; that they have been often answered; though we have generally submitted to them in silence, willing to let results speak for us.  But there are times when justice to the slave will not allow us to be silent.  There are many in this country, many in England, who have had their attention turned, recently, to the anti-slavery cause.  They are asking, 'which is the best and most efficient method of helping it?'  Engaged ourselves in an effort for the slave, which time has tested and success hitherto approved, we are, very properly, desirous that they should join us in our labors, and pour into this channel the full tide of their new zeal and great resources.  Thoroughly convinced ourselves that our course is wise, we can honestly urge others to adopt it.  Long experience gives us a right to advise.  The fact that our course, more than all other efforts, has caused that agitation which has awakened these new converts, gives us a right to counsel them.  They are our spiritual children : for their sakes, we would free the cause we love and trust from every seeming defect and plausible objection.  For the slave's sake, we reiterate our explanations, that he may lose no tittle of help by the mistakes or misconceptions of his friends. 
     All that I have to say on these points will be to you, Mr. President, very trite and familiar; but the facts may be new to some, and I prefer to state them here, in Boston, where we have lived and worked, because if our statements are incorrect, if we claim too much, our assertions can be easily answered and disproved.
     The charges to which I refer are these : That in dealing with slaveholders and their apologists, we indulge in fierce denunciations, instead of appealing to their reason and common sense by plain statements and fair argument;-that we might have won the sympathies and support of the nation, if we would have submitted to argue this question with a manly patience; but instead of this, we have outraged the feelings of the community by attacks, unjust an unnecessarily severe, on its most valued institutions, and gratified our spleen by indiscriminate abuse of leading men, who were often honest in their intentions, however mistaken in their views;- that we have utterly neglected the ample means that lay around us to convert the nation, submitted to no discipline, formed no plan, been guided by no foresight, but hurried on in childish, reckless, blind and hot-headed zeal-bigots in the narrowness of our views, and fanatics in our blind fury of invective, and malignant judgment of other men's motives.
     There are some who come upon our platform, and give us the aid of names and reputations less burdened than ours with popular odium, who are perpetually urging us to exercise charity in our judgments of those about us, and to consent to argue these questions.  These men are ever parading their wish to draw a line between themselves and us, because [[italics]] they must be permitted [[/italics]] to wait--to trust more to reason than feeling--to indulge a generous charity--to rely on the sure influence of simple truth, uttered in love, &c. &c.  I reject with scorn all these implications that [[italics]] our [[/italics]] judgments are uncharitable,-- that[[italics]]we[[/italics]] are lacking in patience,--that [[italics]]we[[/italics]] have any other dependence than on the simple truth, spoken with Christian frankness yet with Christian love.  These lectures, to which you, Sir, and all of us, have so often listened, would be impertinent, if they were not rather ridiculous for the gross ignorance they betray of the community, of the cause, and of the whole course of its friends.
     The article in the LEADER to which I refer is signed 'ION,' and may be found in THE LIBERATOR of December 17, 1852. The writer is cordial and generous in his recognition of Mr. Garrison's claim to be the representative of the anti-slavery movement, and does entire justice to his motives and character.  The criticisms of ION were reprinted in the CHRISTIAN REGISTER, of this city, the organ of the Unitarian denomination.  The Editors of that paper, with their usual Christian courtesy, love of truth and fair-dealing, omitted all ION'S expressions of regard for Mr. GARRISON and appreciation of his motives, and reprinted only those parts of the article which undervalue his sagacity and influence, and endorse the common objections to his method and views.  You will see in a moment, Mr. President, that it is with such men and presses, ION thinks Mr. GARRISON has not been sufficiently wise and patient in winning them to help the anti-slavery cause.  Perhaps, were he on the spot, it would tire even his patience and puzzle even his sagacity to make any other use of them than that of the drunken Helot--a warning to others how disgusting mean vice is.  Perhaps, were he here, he would see that the best and only use to be made of them is to let them unfold their own characters, and then show the world how rotten our Politics and Religion are, that they bear naturally such fruit.  ION quotes Mr. GARRISON'S original declaration, in THE LIBERATOR:-
     'I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I [[italics]]will[[/italics]] be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. I am in earnest--I will not equivocate--I will not excuse--I will not retreat a single inch--AND I WILL BE HEARD.
     It is [[italics]]pretended[[/italics]] that I am retarding the cause of emancipation by the coarseness of my invective, and

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the precipitancy of my measures. [[italics]] The charge is not true.[[/italics]] On this question, my influence, humble as it is, is felt at this moment to a considerable extent, and shall be felt in coming years--not perniciously, but beneficially--not as a curse, but as a blessing; and posterity will bear testimony that I was right. I desire to thank God that he enables me to disregard 'the fear of man which bringeth a snare,' and to speak his truth in its simplicity and power.'

     He then goes on to say:-

     'This is a defence which has been generally accepted on this side of the Atlantic, and many are the abolitionists among us whom it has encouraged in honesty and impotence; and whom it has converted into conscientious hindrances. * * * * 

     'We would have Mr. Garrison to say, 'I will be as harsh as [[italics]] progress, [[/italics]] as uncompromising as [[italics]] success.' [[/italics]] If a man speaks for his own gratification, he may be as 'harsh' as he pleases ; but if he speaks for the downtrodden and oppressed, he must be content to put a curb upon the tongue of holiest passion, and speak only as harshly as is compatible with the amelioration of the evil he proposes to redress. Let the question be again repeated: Do you seek for the slave vengeance or redress? If you seek retaliation, go on denouncing. But distant Europe honors Wm. Lloyd Garrison, because it credits him with seeking for the slave simply redress. We say, therefore, that 'uncompromising' policy is not to be measured by absolute justice, but by practical amelioration of the slave's condition. Amelioration as fast as you can get it--absolute justice as soon as you can reach it.' 

  He quotes the sentiment of Confucius, that he would choose for a leader 'a man who would maintain a steady vigilance in the direction of affairs ; who was capable of forming plans, and of executing them,' and says:-- 'The philosopher was right in placing wisdom and executive capacity above courage; for down to this day, our popular movements are led by heroes who [[italics]]fear[[/italics]] nothing, and who [[italics]]win[[italics]] nothing. ***

  'There is no question raised in these articles as to the work to be done, but only as to the mode of [[italics]]really [[/italics]] doing it. The platform resounds with announcements of principle, which is but [[italics]] asserting [[/italics]] a right, while nothing but contempt is showered on policy which is the [[italics]] realization [[/italics]] of right. The air is filed with all high cries and spirited denunciations; indignation is at a premium ; and this is called advocacy. **** But to calculate, to make sure of your aim, is to be decried as one who is too cold to feel, too genteel to strike.'

  Further on, he observes:--

  'If an artillery officer throws shell after shell which never reach the enemy, he is replaced by some one with a better eye and a surer aim. But in the artillery battle of opinion, [[italics]] to mean [[/italics]] to hit is quite sufficient ; and if you have a certain grand indifference as to whether you hit or not, you may count on public applause.'**
  'A man need be no less militant, as the soldier of facts, than as the agent of swords. But the arena of argument needs discipline no less than that of arms. It is this which the anti-slavery party seem to me not only to overlook, but to despise. They do not put their valor to drill. Neither on the field nor the platform has courage any inherent capacity of taking care of itself.'

  The writer then proceeds to make a quotation from Mr. EMERSON, the latter part of which I will read:-
  'Let us withhold every [[italics]] reproachful, [[/italics]] and, if we can, every [[italics]] indignant [[/italics]] remark. In this cause, we must renounce our temper and the risings of pride. If there be any man who thinks the ruin of a race of men a small matter compared with the last decorations and completions of his own comfort--who would not so much as part with his ice-cream to save them from rapine and manacles--I think I must not hesitate to satisfy [[italics]] that [[/italics]] man, that also his cream and vanilla are safer and cheaper by placing the negro nation on a fair footing than by robbing them. If the Virginian piques himself on the picturesque luxury of his vassalage, on the heavy Ethiopian manners of his house servants, their silent obedience, their hue of bronze, their turbaned heads, and would not exchange the more intelligent but precarious hired service of whites, I shall not refuse to show [[italics]] him [[/italics]] that when their free papers are made out, it will still be their interest to remain on his estates; and that the oldest planters of Jamaica are convinced that it is cheaper to pay wages than to own slaves.'
  The critic takes exception to Mr. Garrison's approval of the denunciatory language in which Daniel O'Connell rebuked the giant sin of America, and concludes his articles with this sentence:-
  'When Wm. Lloyd Garrison praises the great Celtic Monarch of invective for this dire outpouring, he acts the part of the boy who fancies that the terror is in the war-whoop of the savage, unmindful of the quieter muskets of the civilized infantry, whose unostentatious execution blows whoop and tomahawk to the devil.'
  Before passing to a consideration of these remarks of ION, let me say a word in relation to Mr. EMERSON. I do not consider him as endorsing any of these criticisms on the Abolitionists. His services to the most radical anti-slavery movement have been generous and marked. He has never shrunk from any odium which lending his name and voice to it would incur. Making fair allowance for his peculiar taste, habits and genius, he has given a generous amount of aid to the anti-slavery movement, and never let its friends want his cordial 'God-speed.'
  ION's charges are the old ones, that we abolitionists are hurting our own cause-that, instead of waiting for the community to come up to our views, and endeavoring to remove prejudice and enlighten ignorance, by patient explanation and fair argument, we fall at once, like children, to abusing every thing and every body-that we imagine zeal will supply the place of common sense-that we have never shown any sagacity in adapting our means to our ends, have never studied the national character, or attempted to make use of the materials which lay all about us, to influence public opinion, but by blind, childish, obstinate fury and indiscriminate denunciation, have become 'honestly impotent and conscientious hindrances.'
  These, Sir, are the charges which have uniformly been brought against all reformers in all ages. ION thinks the same faults are chargeable on the leaders of all the 'popular movements' in England, which, he says, 'are led by heroes who [[italics]] fear [[/italics]] nothing, and who [[italics]] win [[/italics]] nothing.'  If the leaders of popular movements in Great Britain for the last fifty years have been [[italics]] losers, [[/italics]] I should be curious to know what party, in ION's opinion, have won? My Lord Derby and his friends seem to think Democracy has made and is making dangerous headway. If the men who, by popular agitation, outside of Parliament, wrung from a powerful oligarchy Parliamentary Reform, and the Abolition of the Test Acts, of high Post Rates, of Catholic Disability, of Negro Slavery and the Corn Laws, did 'not win any thing,' it would be hard to say what winning is. If the men who, without the ballot, made Peel their tool and conquered the Duke of Wellington, are considered unsuccessful, pray what kind of a thing would success be? Those who now, at the head of that same middle class, demand the separation of Church and State, and the Extension of the Ballot, may well guess, from the fluttering of the Whig and Tory dovecotes, that soon 

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they will 'win' that same 'nothing.' Heaven grant they may enjoy the same [[italics]] ill success [[/italics]] with their predecessors! On our own side of the ocean, too, we ought deeply to sympathise with the leaders of the Temperance movement in their entire want of success! If ION's mistakes about the anti-slavery cause lay as much on the surface as those I have just noticed, it would be hardly worth while to reply to him; for as to these, he certainly exhibits only 'the extent and variety of his mis-information.'
  His remarks upon the anti-slavery movement are, however, equally inaccurate. I claim, before you who know the true state of the case, I claim for the anti-slavery movement with which this Society is identified, that, looking back over its whole course, and considering the men connected with it in the mass, it has been marked by the soundest judgment, the most unerring foresight, the most sagacious adaptation of means to ends, the strictest self-discipline, the most thorough research, and an amount of patient and manly argument addressed to the conscience and intellect of the nation, such as no other cause of the kind, in England or this country, has ever offered. I claim, also, that its course has been marked by a cheerful surrender of all individual claims to merit or leadership-the most cordial welcoming of the slightest effort, of every honest attempt to lighten or to break the chain of the slave.I need not waste time by repeating the superfluous confession that we are men, and therefore do not claim to be perfect. Neither would I be understood as denying that we use denunciation, and ridicule, and every other weapon that the human mind knows. We must plead guilty, if guilt it be, not to to be able to separate the sin from the sinner. With all the fondness for abstractions attributed to us, we are not yet capable of that. We are fighting a momentous battle at desperate adds-one against a thousand. Every weapon that ability or ignorance, wit, wealth, prejudice or fashion can command, is pointed against us. The guns are shotted to their lips. The arrows are poisoned. We cannot afford to confine ourselves to any one weapon. The cause is not ours, so that we might, rightfully, postpone or put in peril the victory by moderating our demands, stifling our convictions, or filing down our rebukes, to gratify any sickly taste of our own, or to spare the delicate nerves of our neighbor. Our clients are three million of slaves, standing dumb suppliants at the threshold of the Christian world. They have no voice but ours to utter their complaints, or demand justice. The press, the pulpit, the wealth, the literature, the prejudices, the political arrangements, the present self-interest of the country, are all against us. God has given us no weapon but the truth, faithfully uttered, and addressed, with the old prophets' directness, to the conscience of the individual sinner. The elements which control public opinion, and mould the masses, are against us. We can but pick off here and there a man from the triumphant majority. We have facts for those who think--arguments for those who reason; but he who cannot be reasoned out of his prejudices, must be laughed out of them; he who cannot be argued out of his selfishness, must be shamed out out of it by the mirror of his hateful self held up relentlessly before his eyes. We live in a land where every man makes broad his phylactery, inscribing thereon, 'All men are created equal'-'God hath created of one blood all the nations of men.' It seems to us that in such a land there must be, on this question of slavery, sluggards to be awakened as well as doubters to be convinced. Many more, we verily believe, of the first, than of the last. There are far more dead hearts to be quickened than confused intellects to be cleared up-more dumb dogs to be made to speak, than doubting consciences to be enlightened. (Loud cheers.) We have use, then, sometimes, for something beside argument.
 What is the denunciation with which we are charged? It is endeavoring, in our faltering human speech, to declare the enormity of the sin of making merchandise of men-of separating husband and wife-taking the infant from its mother, and selling the daughter to prostitution-of a professedly Christian nation denying, by statute, the Bible to every sixth man and woman of its population, and making it illegal for 'two or three' to meet together, except a white man be present! What is this harsh criticism of motives with which we are charged? It is simply holding the intelligent and deliberate actor responsible for the character and consequences of his acts. Is there anything inherently wrong in such denunciation or such criticism? This we may claim--we have never judged a man but out of his own mouth. We have seldom, if ever, held him to account, except for acts of which he and his own friends were proud. All that we ask the world and thoughtful men to note are the principles and deeds on which the American pulpit and American public men plume themselves. We always allow our opponents to paint their own pictures. Our humble duty is to stand by and assure the spectators, that what they would take for a knave or a hypocrite is really, in American estimation, a Doctor of Divinity or Secretary of State. 
 The South is one great brothel, where half a million of women are flogged to prostitution, or, worse still, are degraded to believe it honorable. The public squares o. half our great cities echo to the wail of families torn asunder at the auction-block-no one of our fair rivers that has not closed over the negro seeking in death a refuge from a life too wretched to bear-thousands o. fugitives skulk along our highways, afraid to tell their names, and trembling at the sight of a human being-free men are kidnapped in our streets, to be plunged into that hell of slavery, and now and then one, as if by miracle, after long years, returns to make men aghast with his tale. The Press says, 'It is all right'; and the Pulpit cries, 'Amen.' We print the Bible in every tongue in which man utters his prayers--and get the money to do so, by agreeing never to give the book, in the language our mother taught us, to any negro, free or bond, South of Mason and Dixon's line. The Press says, 'It is all right'; and the Pulpit cries, 'Amen.' The slave lifts up his imploring eyes, and sees in every face, but ours, the face of an enemy. Prove to me now that harsh rebuke, indignant denunciation, scathing sarcasm, and pitiless ridicule, are wholly and always unjustifiable, else we dare not, in so desperate a case, throw away any weapon which ever broke up the crust of an ignorant prejudice, roused a slumbering conscience, shamed a proud sinner, or changed, in any way, the conduct of a human being. Our aim is to alter public opinion. Did we live in a market, our talk should be of dollars and cents, and w 

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would seek to prove only that slavery was an unprofitable investment. Were the nation one great, pure Church, we would sit down and reason of 'righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come.' Had slavery fortified itself in a College, we would load our cannons with cold facts, and wing our arrows with arguments. But we happen to live in the world--the world made up of thought and impulse of self-conceit, and self-interest, of weak men and wicked. To conquer, we must reach all. Our object is not to make every man a Christian or philosopher, but to induce every one to aid in the abolition of slavery. We expect to accomplish our object long before the nation is made over into saints, or elevated into philosophers. To change public opinion, we use the very tools by which it was formed. That is, all such as an honest man may touch.
  All this I am not only ready to allow, but I should be ashamed to think of the slave, or to look into the face of my fellow-man, if it were otherwise. It is the only thing that justifies us to our own consciences, and makes us able to say we have done or at least tried to do our duty.
  So far, however you distrust my philosophy, you will not doubt my statements. That we have denounced and rebuked with unsparing fidelity will not be denied. Have we not also addressed ourselves to that other duty of arguing our question thoroughly-of using due discretion and fair sagacity in endeavoring to promote our cause? Yes, we have. Every statement we have made has been doubted. Every principle we have laid down has been denied by overwhelming majorities against us. No one step has ever been gained but by the most laborious research and the most exhausting argument. And no question has ever, since Revolutionary days, been so thoroughly investigated or argued here, as that of slavery. Of that research and that argument, of the whole of it, the old-fashioned, fanatical, crazy, Garrisonian anti-slavery movement has been the author. From this band of men has proceeded every important argument or idea that has been broached on the anti-slavery question from 1830 to the present time. (Cheers.) I am well aware of the extent of the claim I make. I recognize as fully as any one can the ability of the new laborers-the eloquence and genius with which they have recommended this cause to the nation, and flashed conviction home on the conscience of the community. I do not mean, either, to assert that they have in every instance borrowed from our treasury their facts and arguments. Left to themselves, they would probably have looked up the one and originated the other. As a matter of fact, however, they have generally made use of the materials collected to their hands. But there are some persons about us, sympathizers, to a great extent, with ION, who pretend that the anti-slavery movement has been hitherto mere fanaticism, its only weapon angry abuse. They are obliged to assert this, in order to justify their past indifference or hostility. At present, when it suits their purpose to give it some attention, they endeavor to explain the charge by alleging that now it has been taken up by men of thoughtful minds, and its claims are urged by fair discussion and able argument. My claim, then, is this: that neither the charity of the most timid of sects, the sagacity of our wisest converts, nor the culture of the ripest scholars, though all have been aided by our twenty years' experience, has yet struck out any new method of reaching the public mind, or originated any new argument or train of thought, or discovered any new fact bearing on the question. When once brought fully into the struggle, they have found it necessary to adopt the same means, to rely on the same arguments, to hold up the same men and the same measures to public reprobation, with the same bold rebuke and unsparing invective that we have used. All their conciliatory bearing, their pains-taking moderation, their constant and anxious endeavor to draw a broad line between their camp and ours, have been thrown away. Just so far as they have been effective laborers, they have found, as we have, their hands against every man, and every man's hand against them. The most experienced of them are ready to acknowledge that our plan has been wise, our course efficient, and that our unpopularity is no fault of ours, but flows necessarily and unavoidably from our position. 'I should suspect,' says old Fuller, 'that his preaching had no salt in it, if no galled horse did wince.' Our friends find, after all, that men do not so much hate us as the truth we utter and the light we bring. They find that the community are not the honest seekers after truth which they fancied, but selfish politicians and sectarian bigots, who shiver, like Alexander's butler, whenever the sun shines on them. Experience has driven these new laborers back to our method. We have no quarrel with them--would not steal one wreath of their laurels. All we claim is, that if they are to be complimented as prudent, moderate, Christian, sagacious, statesmanlike reformers, we deserve the same praise, for they have done nothing that we, in our measures, did not attempt before. (Cheers.)
  I claim this, that the cause, in its recent aspect, has put on nothing but timidity.  It has taken to itself no new weapons of recent years; it has become more compromising-that is all!  It has neither become more persuasive, more learned, more Christian, more charitable, nor more effective, than for the twenty years preceding.  Mr. Hale, the head of the Free Soil movement, after a career in the Senate that would do honor to any man-after a six years' course which entitles him to the respect and confidence of the anti-slavery public-can put his name, within the last month, to an appeal from the city of Washington, signed by a Houston and a Cass, for a monument to be raised to Henry Clay!  If that be the test of charity and courtesy, we cannot give it to the world.  (Loud cheers.)  Some of the leaders of the Free Soil party of Massachusetts, after exhausting the whole capacity of our language to paint the treachery of Daniel Webster to the cause of liberty, and the evil they thought he was able and seeking to do;--after that, could feel it in their hearts to parade themselves in the funeral procession got up to do him honor! In this we allow we cannot follow them.  The deference which every gentleman owes to the proprieties of social life, that self-respect and regard to consistency which is every man's duty, these, if no deeper feelings, will ever prevent us from giving such proofs of this newly-invented Christian courtesy.  (Great cheering.)  We do not [[italics]]play[[/italics]] politics; anti-slavery is no half-jest with us; it is a terrible earnest, with life or death, worse than life or death, on the issue. It is no law-suit, where it matters not to the good feeling of opposing counsel which way the verdict goes, and where advocates can 

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clasp hands after the decision as pleasantly as before.  When we look upon such a man as Henry Clay, his long life, his mighty influence cast always into the scale against the slave; of that irresistible fascination with which he moulded every one to his will; when we remember that, his conscience acknowledging the justice of our cause, and his heart open on every other side to the gentlest impulses, he could sacrifice so remorselessly his convictions and the welfare of millions to his low ambition; when we think how the slave trembled at the sound of his voice, and that, from a multitude of breaking hearts, there went up nothing but gratitude to God when it pleased Him to call that great sinner from this world,-we cannot find it in our hearts, we could not shape our lips to ask any man to do him honor.  (Great sensation.)  No amount of eloquence, no sheen of official position, no loud grief of partisan friends, would ever lead us to ask monuments or walk in fine processions for pirates; and the sectarian zeal or selfish ambition which gives up, deliberately and in full knowledge of the facts, three million of human beings to hopeless ignorance, daily robbery, systematic prostitution and murder, which the law neither can nor undertakes to prevent or avenge, is more monstrous, in our eyes, than the love of gold which takes a score of lives with merciful quickness on the high seas.  Haynau on the Danube is no more hateful to us than Haynau on the Potomac.  Why give mobs to one, and monuments to the other?
     If these things be necessary to courtesy, I cannot claim that we are courteous.  We seek only to be honest men, and speak the same of the dead as of the living.  If the grave that hides their bodies could swallow also the evil they have done and the example they leave, we might enjoy at least the luxury of forgetting them.  But the evil that men do lives after them, and Example acquires tenfold authority when it speaks from the grave.  History, also, is to be written.  How shall a feeble minority, without weight or influence in the country, with no jury of millions to appeal to,- denounced, vilified and contemned,- how shall we make way against the overwhelming weight of some colossal reputation, if we do not turn from the idolatrous Present, and appeal to the Human Race; saying to your idols of to-day, 'Here we are defeated, but we will write our judgment with the iron pen of a century to come, and it shall never be forgotten, if we can help it, that you were false in your generation to the claims of the slave'!  (Loud cheers.)
     At present, our leading men, strong in the support of large majorities, and counting safely on the prejudices of the community, can afford to despise us.  They know they can overawe or cajole the present; their only fear is the judgment of the future.  Strange fear, perhaps, considering how short and local their fame!  But however little, it is their all.  Our only hold upon them is the thought of that bar of posterity, before which we are all to stand.  Thank God! there is the elder brother of the Saxon race across the water-there is the army of honest men to come!  Before that jury we summon you.  We are weak here- out talked, out voted.  You load our names with infamy, and shout us down.  But our words bide their time.  We warn the living that we have terrible memories, and that their sins are never to be forgotten.  We will gibbet the name of every apostate so black and high that his children's children shall blush to bear it. Yet we bear no malice--cherish no resentment. We thank God that the love of fame, 'that last infirmity of noble mind,' is shared by the ignoble.  In our necessity, we seize this weapon in the slave's behalf, and teach caution to the living by meting out relentless justice to the dead.  How strange the change death produces in the way a man is talked about here!  While leading men live, they avoid as much as possible all mention of slavery, from fear of being thought abolitionists.  The moment they are dead, their friends rake up every word they ever contrived to whisper in a corner for liberty, and parade it before the world; growing angry, all the while, with us, because we insist one explaining these chance expressions by the tenor of a long and base life.  While drunk with the temptations of the present hour, men are willing to bow to any Moloch.  When their friends bury them, they feel what bitter mockery, a hundred years hence, any epitaph will be, if it cannot record of one living in this era, some service rendered to the slave!  These, Mr. Chairman, are the reasons why we take care that 'the memory of the wicked shall rot.'
     I have claimed that the anti-slavery cause has, from the first, been ably and dispassionately argued, every objection candidly examined, and every difficulty or doubt any where honestly entertained, treated with respect. Let me glance at the literature of the cause, and try not so much, in a brief hour, to prove this assertion, as to point out the sources from which any one may satisfy himself of its truth.
     I will begin with certainly the ablest and perhaps the most honest statesman who has ever touched the slave question.  When JOHN QUINCY ADAMS first broke ground on the Texas Question, he confessed his debt to the full and able exposure of the Texas Plot prepared by Benj. Lundy.  Every one acquainted with those years will allow that the North owes its earliest knowledge and first awakening on that subject to Mr. Lundy, who made long journeys and devoted years to the investigation. His Labors have this attestation, that they stirred the zeal and strengthened the hands of such men as Adams.
[[indent]]Look next at the Right of Petition.  Long before any member of Congress had opened his mouth in its defence, the abolition presses and lecturers had examined and defended the limits of this right, with profound historical research and eminent constitutional ability. So thoroughly had the work been done, that all classes of the people had made up their minds about it, long before any speaker of eminence had touched it in Congress.  The politicians were little aware of this.  When Mr. Adams threw himself so gallantly into the breach, it is said he wrote anxiously home to know whether he would be supported in Massachusetts; little aware of the outburst of popular gratitude that the Northern breeze was even then bringing him, deep and cordial enough to wipe away the old grudge Massachusetts had borne him so long.  Mr. Adams himself was only in favor of receiving the petitions, and advised to refuse their prayer, which was the abolition of slavery in the District.  He doubted the power of Congress.  His doubts were examined by Mr. William Goodell, in two letters of most able and acute logic, and of masterly

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ability.  If Mr. Adams still retained his doubts, it is certain, at least, that he never expressed them afterward.  When Mr. Clay paraded the same objections, the whole question of the power of Congress over the District was treated by T. D. Weld, in the fullest manner, and with the widest research : indeed, leaving nothing to be added.  No answer was ever attempted.  The best proof of its ability is, that no one since has presumed to doubt the power.  Lawyers and statesmen have tacitly settled down into its full acknowledgement.
[[indent]]The influence of the Colonization Society on the welfare of the colored race was the first question our movement encountered.  To the close logic, eloquent appeals and fully sustained charges of Mr. Garrison's Letters on that subject, no answer was ever made.  Judge Jay followed with a work full and able, establishing every charge by the most patient investigation of facts.  It is not too much to say of these two volumes, that they left the Colonization Society hopeless at the North.  It dares never show its face before the people, and only lingers in some few nooks of sectarian pride, so secluded from the influence of present ideas as to be almost fossil in their character.
[[indent]]The practical working of the slave system, the slave laws, the treatment of slaves, their food, the duration of their lives, their ignorance and moral condition, and the influence of Southern public opinion on their fate, have been spread out in a detail and with a fullness of evidence which no subject has ever received before in this country.  Witness the works of Phelps, Rankin, Grimke, the 'Anti-Slavery Record,' and, above all, that encyclopedia of facts and storehouse of arguments, the 'Thousand Witnesses' of Mr. T. D. Weld.  Unique in anti-slavery literature is Mrs. Child's 'Appeal,' one of the ablest of our weapons, and one of the finest efforts of her rare genius.
  The Princeton Review, I believe, first challenged the abolitionists to an investigation of the teachings of the Bible on slavery.  That field had been somewhat broken by our English predecessors.  But in England, the pro-slavery party had been soon shamed out of the attempt to drag the Bible into their service, and hence the discussion there had been short and somewhat superficial.  The pro-slavery side of the question has been eagerly sustained by Theological Reviews and Doctors of Divinity without number, from the half way and timid faltering of Wayland up to the unblushing and melancholy recklessness of Stuart.  The argument on the other side has come wholly from the abolitionists.  For neither Dr. Hague nor Dr. Barnes can be said to have added any thing to the wide research, critical acumen and comprehensive views of T. D. Weld, Beriah Green, J. G. Fee, and the old work of Duncan.

   On the constitutional questions which have at various times arisen,-the citizenship of the colored man, the soundness of the 'Prigg' decision, the constitutionality of the old Fugitive Slave Law, the true construction of the slave code,- nothing has been added, either in the way of fact or argument, to the works of Jay, Weld, Alvan Stewart, E. G. Loring, S. E. Sewall, Richard Hildreth, W. I. Bowditch, the masterly Essays of the [[italics]]Emancipator[[/italics]] at New York, and the [[italics]]Liberator[[/italics]] of Boston, and the various addresses of the Massachusetts and American Societies for the last twenty years.  The idea of the anti-slavery character of the Constitution--the opiate with which Free Soil quiets its conscience for voting under a pro-slavery government- I heard first suggested by Mr. Garrison in 1838.  It was elaborately argued in that year in all our anti-slavery gatherings, both here and in New York, and sustained with great ability by Alvan Stewart, and in part by T. D. Weld.  If it has either merit or truth, they are due to no legal learning recently added to our ranks, but to some of its old and well known pioneers.  This topic has received the fullest investigation from Mr. Lysander Spooner, who has urged it with all his unrivalled ingenuity, laborious research, and close logic.  He writes as a lawyer, and has no wish, I believe, to be ranked with any class of anti-slavery men.
   
   The influence of slavery on our government has received the profoundest philosophical investigation from the pen of Richard Hildreth, in his invaluable essay on 'Despotism in America,'- a work which deserves a place by the side of the ablest political disquisitions of any age.  
   Mrs. Chapman's survey of 'Ten Years of Anti-Slavery Experience,' was the first attempt at a philosophical discussion of the various aspects of the anti-slavery cause, and the problems raised by its struggles with sect and party.  You, Mr. Chairman, [EDMUND QUINCY, Esq.,] in the elaborate Reports of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society for the last ten years, have followed in the same path, making to American literature a contribution of the highest value, and in a department where you have few rivals and no superior.  Whoever shall write the history either of this movement, or any other attempted under a Republican Government, will find no where else so clear an insight and so full an acquaintance with the most difficult part of his subject.

   Even the vigorous mind of Rantoul, the ablest man, without doubt, of the Democratic party, and perhaps the ablest politician in New England, added little or nothing to the storehouse of anti-slavery argument.  The grasp of his intellect and the fullness of his learning every one will acknowledge  He never trusted himself to speak on any subject till he had dug down to its primal granite.  He laid a most generous contribution on the altar of the anti-slavery cause.  His speeches on one question, too short and too few, are remarkable for their compact statement, iron logic, bold denunciations, and the wonderful light thrown back upon our history. Yet how little do they present which was not familiar for years in our anti-slavery meetings !

   Look, too, at the last great effort of the idol of so many thousands, Mr. Senator Sumner ; a discussion of a great national question, of which it has been said that we must go back to Webster's Reply to Hayne, and Fisher Ames on the Jay Treaty, to find its equal in Congress;- praise which we might perhaps qualify, if any adequate report were left us of some of those noble orations of Ames.  No one can be blind to the skillful use he has made of his materials, the consummate ability with which he has marshalled them, and the radiant glow which his genius has thrown over [[obscured]]all.[[/obscured]] Yet, with the exception of his reference to the a[[obscured]]nti-sla[[/obscured]]very debate in Congress in 1817, there is n[[obscured]]o train of[[/obscured]] thought or argument, and no single fact [[obscured]]in the whole[[/obscured]] speech, which has not been familiar [[obscured]]in our meetings[[/obscured]] and essays for the last ten years.

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Transcription Notes:
The page was folded when the digital image was made, so the bottom five or six lines are missing some words. The missing text -- marked with [[obscured]] tags -- was completed by using a copy of this speech on Hathitrust from a LOC copy: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/loc.ark:/13960/t9k35x578?urlappend=%3Bseq=22