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July, 1861. DOUGLASS' MONTHLY. 485 [[line across page]] [[3 columns]] [[column 1]] SUBSTANCE OF A LECTURE DELIVERED BY FREDERICK DOUGLASS, AT ZION CHURCH, SUNDAY, JUNE 16. [[short line]] I am not surprised, my respected hearers, though I am most deeply gratified by the continued interest which you have manifested in these now somewhat protracted anti-slavery lectures. The subject of slavery is a most fruitful one, and it seems impossible to exhaust it. I seldom retire from this place without thinking of something left unsaid, which might have been said to profit. More than thirty years of earnest discussion has augmented rather than diminished the interest which surrounds this subject. Tongues the most eloquent, and pens the most persuasive, the highest talent and genius of the country have been arduously employed in the attempt to unfold the matchless and measureless abominations comprehended in that one little word--slavery. Yet those who have succeeded best, own that they have fallen far short of the terrible reality. You, yourselves, have read much, thought much, and have felt much respecting the slave system, and yet you come up here and crowd this church every Sunday to hear the subject further discussed. Vain as I may be, I have not the vanity to suppose that you come here because of any eloquence of mine, or any curiosity to hear a colored man speak--for I have been speaking among you more or less frequently nearly a score of years; and I recognize among my hearers to-day some of those kind friends who greeted me the first time I attempted to plead the cause of the slave in this city. No--the explanation of this continued, and I may say increasing interest, is not to be found in your humble speaker; nor can it be ascribed altogether to the temper of the times and the mighty events now transpiring in the country. We shall find it in the deep significance, the solemn importance and unfathomable fullness of the subject itself. It sweeps the whole horizon of human rights, powers, duties and responsibilities. The grand primal principles which form the basis of human society, are here. Those who love peace more than justice; those who prefer grim and hoary oppression to agitation and liberty, condemn the discussion of slavery because it is an exciting subject. They cry, away with it; we have had enough of it; it excites the people, excites the Church, excites Congress, excites the North, excites the South and excites everybody. It is, in a word, an exciting subject. I admit it all. The subject is, indeed, an exciting one. Herein is one proof of its importance. Small pots boil quick; empty barrels make the most noise when rolled; but that which has the power to stir a nation's heart, and shake the foundations of Church and State, is something more than empty clamor. Individual men of excitable temperament may be moved by trifles; they may give to an inch the importance of a mile--elevate a mote to the grandeur of a mountain--but the masses of men are not of this description.--Only mighty forces, resting deep down among the foundations of nature and life, can lash the deep and tranquil sea of humanity into a storm, like that which the world is now witnessing. The human mind is so constructed as that, when left free from the blinding and hardening power of selfishness, it bows reverently [[/column 1]] [[column 2]] to the mandates of truth and justice. It becomes loyal and devoted to an idea. Good men, once fully possessed of this loyalty, this devotion, have bravely sacrificed fortune, reputation, and life itself. All the progress towards perfection ever made by mankind, and all the blessings which are now enjoyed, are ascribable to some brave and good man, who, catching the illumination of a heaven-born truth, has counted it a joy, precious and unspeakable, to toil, suffer, and often to die for the glorious realization of that heaven-born truth. Hence the excitement. Cold water added to cold water, makes no disturbance. Error added to error causes no jar. Selfishness and selfishness walk together in peace, because they are agreed; but when fire is bro't in direct contact with water, when flaming truth grapples with some loathsome error, when the clear and sweet current of benevolence sets against the foul and bitter stream of selfishness, when mercy and humanity confront iron-hearted cruelty, and ignorant brutality, there cannot fail to be agitation and excitement. Men have their choice in this world. They can be angels, or they may be demons. In the apocalyptic vision, John describes a war in heaven. You have only to strip that vision of its gorgeous Oriental drapery, divest it of its shining and celestial ornaments, clothe it in the simple and familiar language of common sense, and you will have before you the eternal conflict between right and wrong, good and evil, liberty and slavery, truth and falsehood, the glorious light of love, and the appalling darkness of human selfishness and sin. The human heart is a seat of constant war. Michael and his angels are still contending against the infernal host of bad passions, and excitement will last while the fight continues, and the fight will continue till one or the other is subdued. Just what takes place in individual human hearts, often takes place between nations, and between individuals of the same nation. Such is the struggle now going on in the United States. The slaveholders had rather reign in hell than serve in heaven. What a whirlwind, what a tempest of malignant passion greets us from that quarter! Behold how they storm with rage, and yet grow pale with terror! Their demonstrations of offended pride are only equaled by their consummate impudence and desperate lying. Let me read you a paragraph from a recent speech of Mr. HENRY A. WISE, as a specimen of the lies with which the leaders of this slaveholding rebellion inflame the base passions of their ignorant followers. He lyingly says of the Northern people: "Your political powers and rights, which were enthroned in the Capital when you were united with them under the old constitutional bond of the Confederacy, have been annihilated. They have undertaken to annul laws within their own limits that would render your property unsafe within those limits. They have abolitionized your border, as the disgraced North-West will show. They have invaded your moral strongholds, and the rights of your religion, and have undertaken to teach you what should be the moral duties of men. They have invaded the sanctity of your homes and firesides, and endeavored to play master, father and husband for you in your households." Such lies answer themselves at the North, but do their work at the South. The strong and enduring power which anti-slavery truth naturally exercises upon the minds of men, when earnestly presented, is [[/column 2]] [[column 3]] explained, as I have already intimated, not by the cunning arts of rhetoric, for often the simplest and most broken utterances of the uneducated fugitive slave, will be far more touching and powerful than the finest flights of oratory. The explanation of the power of anti-slavery is to be found in the inner and spontaneous consciousness, which every man feels of the comprehensive and stupendous criminality of slavery. There are many wrongs and abuses in the world that shock and wound the sensibilities of men. They are felt to be narrow in their scope, and temporary in their duration, and to require little effort for their removal. But not so can men regard slavery. It compels us to recognize it, as an ever active, ever increasing, all comprehensive crime against human nature. It is not an earthquake swallowing up a town or city, and then leaving the solid earth undisturbed for centuries. It is not Vesuvius which, belching forth its fire and lava at intervals, causes ruin in a limited territory; but slavery is felt to be a moral volcano, a burning lake, a hell on earth, the smoke and stench of whose torments ascend upward forever. Every breeze that sweeps over it comes to us tainted with its foul miasma, and weighed down with the sighs and groans of its victims. It is a compendium of all the wrongs which one man can inflict upon a helpless brother. It does not cut off a right hand, nor pluck out a right eye, but strikes down at a single blow the God-like form of man. It does not merely restrict the rights, or lay heavy burdens upon its victims, grievous to be borne; but makes deliberate and constant war upon human nature itself, robs the slave of personality, cuts him off from the human family, and sinks him below even the brute. It leaves nothing standing to tell the world that here was a man and a brother. In the eye of the law of slavery, the slave is only property. He cannot be a father, a husband, a brother, or a citizen, in any just sense of these words. To be a father, a husband, a brother and a citizen, implies the personal possession of rights, powers, duties and responsibilities, all of which are denied the slave. Slavery being the utter and entire destruction of all human relations, in opposing it, we are naturally enough bound to the consideration of a wide range of topics, involving questions of the greatest importance to all men. But for the universal character of the anti-slavery question, it would have been impossible to have held the public mind suspended upon this discussion during the space of thirty years. The best informed men have candidly confessed that anti-slavery meetings have been the very best schools of the nation during the last quarter of a century.--The nation has been taught here, as nowhere else, law, morals, and Christianity. Untrammelled by prescription, unrestrained by popular usage, unfettered by mouldy creeds, despising all the scorn of vulgar prejudice, our anti-slavery speakers and writers have dared to call in question every doctrine and device of man, which could strengthen the hands of tyrants, and bind down the bodies and souls of men. The manhood of the slave has been the test of all our laws, customs, morals, civilization, governments, and our religions.--With a single eye here, the whole anti-slavery body has been full of light. With the golden rule, they have measured American Christianity, and found it hollow--its votaries doing precisely unto others that which they would shoot, stab, burn and devour others for doing [[/column 3]]
Transcription Notes:
Reviewed - fixed a couple of typos