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phere is no escaping from the fact that one- -seventh
part ‘of the people of the United States are slaves, and
~ endure all the degradation and misery which are insepar-
able from a state of slavery. There is the fact! Look
ati itt “Phink of it. Is it your duty to consider the mat-
q ter? They are your fellow-men, your fellow-countrymen,
“native: Americans, many of them, doubtless, your fellow-
‘Christians. Slavery constitutes a leading element of our
social condition, and a prominent element of our national
character. It is now so conspicuous, that no person on
; the globe, who knows anything about our country, can
& think of us, without having slavery as a part of the

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We cannot keep it out of our own thi oes will
8 agitate: us, if we do not agitate it. Slavery controls our
social life almost as absolutely as it controls our govern-
“ment. We can hardly vote for a single candidate, for
4 any. office whatever, from a President to a Pathmaster,
- without raising some question about slavery. Hardly a
- religious congregation, North or South, can choose or
_ accept, or part with a pastor, without having his mind
exercised. ies some ange connected with comma nor

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yay On SLAVERY.

territory, as slaveholding States multiply, and as slave-
holders acquire constantly a more complete control of the
government and general church-polity of, the country, it
is more dnd staotg inipossible for us‘te live’ and not con-
sider and act ‘pon this question’ °°” ca

Is it not plains that ‘there’{s a providence in all this ?
We have a duty to perform, wé ate loaded with responsi-
bility forourenslayed bréthren,as ‘well ‘ag fo® our kindred
who hqld: Saves, And sb: Heavete has rightéously decreed
that we shall think and act upon it. Truly, we ought
not to avoid the subject. It is unworthy of Americans
to shrink from inquiry as to our condition, our prospects,
and our duty. Let us meet the subject like men. Truth
will not harm us—certainly not if we obey it. Shame on
the man who thinks or admits that the free institutions
in which we glory, cannot stand the test of truth and free
inquiry. :

What is a slave ?

_A slave is a person held in slavery. We are neyer to
forget that the slaves are human beings. Their black
dole plexion and degraded condition often incline us to
overlook this fact. We talk about the African race, but
the slaves are of the human race. If all other proofs
were set aside, the unmistakable evidence that they par-
take in the consequences of Adam’s fall, would settle the
question. God selected their ancestors as one of the
four men who were preserved in Noah’s Ark, to repeople
the desolated earth, after the deluge, and Jesus Christ
eame to seek them among the lost sheep for whose salva-
tion he laid down his life. They are our brethren by
descent from the same parent, by being found in the same
general depravity, and by sharing in the mercy of the
same Savior. ‘To deny the brotherhood of the slave, is
to adopt the principles of the priest toward the man

On SLAVERY. 3

among thieves ; it is to possess the spirit of Cain, who
_ would not be his brother’s keeper ; it is to deny God our
Maker, and Christ our Savior. The people of the United
States are precluded by their Constitution, from denying
that negroes’ and even slaves are men, because it is re-
quired that they shall be numbered in the census, and
reckoned in the apportionment of Representatives, as
«« three-fifths of all other PERSONS.” The slaveholders
cannot raise this question, because they govern the coun-
try through this representation of slaves, as persons.

There is great meanness, as well as cruelty, in most of
the discussions about race, by which people too often try
to quiet their consciences in neglecting to consider this
subject. The slaves are poor, they are dependent, they
are subjected, they are helpless, and it is ‘cowardly to
taunt them with that which they cannot help. ‘‘ Who-
soever mocketh the poor reproacheth his Maker.” It is
a fearful thing to reproach God. Consider also that the
people of color are generally very sensitive on this sub-
ject. very indignity, or unkindness, or ‘injury they
experience, is like thrusting at an old sore, which has
become preternaturally irritable by prolonged suffering.
A large part, it is believed, a clear majority of the per-
sons now held as slaves, are of mixed blood, and so
partake of the pride of the Caucasian as well as the
sensitiveness of the African blood; and, it is taught by
physiologists, that this mixed race have the keenest sen-
sibilities in the world. If we would make the case our
own, or consider how tenderly we treat other classes,
who are poor, sick, bereaved, or oppressed, and not by
their own fault; and then, realize that the slaves do not
suffer less by being used to it, but are even more sensi-
tive to every injury the longer they endure it—we shall
- then take up the subject in a proper view.

4 On SLAverRy.

Slavery is not.a natural relation, nor does it exist by
any natural right, but can only be created by positive
law—so all writers and all courts hold. Ifa man is law-
fully a slave, it is because the law has made him so.
We must, therefore, go to the law to find what slavery is
by law. And here we find that the essential element is
ownership of the person. A man’s wife or child is not
his slave, although they are his own; the law gives him
a property in their society and their services, which he
may sue for in the courts, but not in their persons. The
slave is his property as a chattel, in the same sense as
his horse and his gun are property. Slavery, then, is
human chattelhood. The law makes it this and nothing
else. Take this away and you destroy slavery. You
may substitute any other form of dependence or servi-
tude, worse or better, but it is not slavery. The law of -
South Carolina gives an express definition: ‘‘ Slaves
shall be deemed, sold, taken, reputed, and adjudged in
law, to be chattels, permanent in the hands of their
owners and possessors, and their executors, administra-
tors and assigns, to all interests, constructions and pur-
poses whatsoever.”? And the law of Louisiana terribly
describes the necessary legal consequences that flow from
this condition of chattelhood: ‘A slave is one who is
in the power of a master to whom he belongs. The
-master may sell him, dispose of his person, his industry
and his labor; he can do nothing, possess nothing, nor
acquire anything but what belongs to his master.”’ It is
surprising how unreasonably and_ pertinaciously ‘many
people keep the real thing that constitutes slavery, out
of sight, when they talk about slavery, or apologize for
those who practise it. If they would have this thing before
their minds, there is not a human being on earth who
would not pronounce it ‘‘a stupendous wrong.”

On Stavery. 5

It is the plain intention of these laws to deprive the
slave of every personal right, and to dehumanize him.
There is no other despotism on earth which takes away
all the rights of its subject. The abstract principles of
the old Roman law are here carried to the extreme, with-
out any of the actual limitations which obtained in Rome
by the fact that the slaves were not regarded as a dis-
tinct race, could be made valuable by education, could
be freed without restraint, and they or their children
could become citizens. There is no other slaveholding
country which completely annihilates the rights and hopes
of the slave. In the Spanish colonies, the slave has a
right to obtain property and purchase his freedom. The
American slave cannot even sue for the freedom that has
been given him, but is dependent on some white person
to sue in his behalf, so that there may not be even an
implied acknowledgement that the slave has rights.
There are, indeed, certain laws prohibiting the maiming
or murdering of a slave, “unless by moderate correc-
tion,’ but these laws are designed chiefly for the protec-
tion of the property, or to preserve public morals, (like
our laws against cruelty to animals), and they are of
little practical use, because no colored person can testify
against a white man, and the cruelties to slaves are, of
course, committed on isolated plantations or in dwellings
where none but slaves are present. There are some cases
of white persons punished for wounding or murdering
other people’s slaves, but no known case of a slaveholder
hanged for the murder of his own slave. A solitary
ease of execution was lately reported in a Southern pa-
per, but it was expressly stated that the hanging was on
account of some special circumstances in the case.

There is this difference between cruelty to an animal
and cruelty to a slave—that the slave is known to be a

6 On SLAVERY.

human being, whose will is capable of rising higher and
higher in resistance to unjust power, while slavery re-
quires, that he should be brought into absolute subjection
to the will of his master. If aman has an unruly ox,
or an unmanageable horse, it harms no one but himself ;
but the whole slaveholding section would be convulsed if
it should be known that there was a single slave who
could not be subdued. Hence the measure of excessive
punishment, or cruelty to a slave, is not the amount of
torture inflicted, or the barbarous methods employed ;
nothing is excessive or cruel, provided it is necessary, in
order to subdue a refractory slave. It has been expressly
decided by the courts, that the services of the slave ‘‘ can
only be expected from one who has no will of his own,
who surrenders his will in implicit obedience to the will -
of another ;’’ that ‘‘such obedience is the consequence
only of uncontrolled authority over the body ;” and that
“the power of the master must be absolute, to render the
submission of the slave perfect.’’ [2 Dev. N. ©. Re-
ports, 263. |

Although the laws thus deny the rights of human na-
ture to the slave, the passions of lust and of vengeance,
are not to be controlled by these enactments. People
are provoked by the disobedience or carelessness of a
slave, who would feel ashamed to be thrown into a rage
by the waywardness of a horse. Those who are convers-
ant among slaveholders, find them always a peculiarly
irritable race, easily thrown into a towering passion, or
rendered frantic with rage, even towards their equals in
society, and especially towards mechanics and laborers.
This is because their passions are accustomed to be ex-
cited towards their slaves, and to be allowed their full
scope of gratification without restraint. Unless human
nature is annihilated in slayeholders as well as in slaves,

~-

On Suavery. 4"

it is impossible but that the carrying on of such a system
of slavery, over fifteen States, and three millions of en-
slaved persons, must be attended by an indescribable
amount of cruelty, beyond what can possibly exist in
any other state of society on earth.

The correctness of this inference is proved by the care
which is taken to prevent the exposure to the world of
the actual condition of things on the plantation. No man
is allowed to explore those terrible secrets; to make in-
quiries on the subject in a slaveholding State, would be
dangerous ; unless the person inquiring will either take
the word of the master as true, or otherwise show him-
self a friend of the system. The condition of French
exiles in Cayenne, or a Russian prisoner in Siberia, is not
so concealed as that of slaves on the plantation, from the
scrutiny of the world, or the censure of public opinion.
The manner in which slaves who run away, are described

in the newspaper advertisements, reveals something. The

Presbyterian Synod, of Kentucky, in 1834, testified that
«brutal stripes, and all the varied kinds of personal in-
dignities, are not the only species of cruelty which slavery
licenses.”’

It has been proved, by competent witnesses, that slaves
are whipped with incredible severity ; are fastened down
to the ground and whipped ; are hung up by the wrists,
or even thumbs, and whipped ; are flayed with the lash,
and then washed down with brine or red pepper-water ;
are flogged, daily, for many days in succession; are
flogged beyond measure, and kept to die unattended ;
the son is compelled to flog his mother that bore him,
the husband to flog his pregnant wife, the lover his mis-
tress, in order more effectually to humble them ; they are
cropped, their teeth drawn, their noses slit, their fingers
or toes cut off; they are branded on the cheek or breast,

8 On SLAVERY.

with hot irons; made to work, loaded with iron collars
and chains; compelled to stand and have knives thrown
into their flesh, and then to draw out the knives and re-
turn them to their tormentors, or to have the snapper of
the driver’s whip cut out bits of skin and flesh from their
bodies ; to eat and drink the most disgusting and unna-
tural substances, to endure hunger and thirst, and naked-
ness and cold; to be confined in postures that forbid
sleep ; in short, it is hardly possible for the imagination to
conceive so many forms of cruelty as have been invented
and applied by the diabolical cruelty which siavery must
necessarily engender. Said the North Carolina Supreme

Court, in the case referred to: ‘We cannot allow the

right of the master [to punish| to be brought into dis-
cussion in the courts of justice. The slave, to remain a
slave, must be made sensible that there is no appeal from
his master. The danger would be great indeed, if the
tribunals of justice should be called on to graduate the

punishment appropriate to every temper and every de-—

reliction of menial duty. No man can anticipate the
many and aggravated provocations of the master, which
the slave would be constantly stimulated, by his own
passions or the instigation of others to give; or, the con-
sequent wrath of the master, prompting him to bloody
vengeance upon the turbulent traitor—a vengeance gen-
erally practised with impunity, by reason of its privacy.”
In establishing a relation the most provoking to human
nature, the practice of cruelty is practically almost unre-
strained.

It is to be borne in mind, that mere law cannot make a
man a slave ; it can only enact that he shall be a slave.
Nature makes no slave, but the law takes him and puts
him, ag raw material, into the hand of a master, to un-

dergo the process of manufacture, by which he is made

Own SLAVERY. 9

an actual slave. And this process is the great wrong of
slavery—the subjugation of the will—the annihilation of
the moral power of the soul, wherein consists the radical
distinction of man, as accountable—the essential image
of God; which remains to our fallen nature, whereon
rests the guilt of murder—*for in the image of God
made he man.’’—Gen. ix: 6.

The act by which a man is'transferred into a slave, is
called F Overseerism,’’ because overseers are special
practitioners of it; but, every slaveholder is obliged to
learn it more or less, and to practise it if he lives sur-
rounded by slaves. Said the Court, in the above case:
‘©This dominion is essential to the value of slaves, as
property, to the security of their master, and the public
tranquility is greatly dependent on their subordination.”’
The slave has no legal right of will, and the business of
the overseer is to suppress even the natural desire? to
will—to eradicate the vitality of the moral nature, so that:
it may never even attempt to rise from its prostration.
The bodily tortures which savages inflict and endure
without shrinking, the sufferings: and triumphs of mar-
tyrs, prove that the spirit of man, when free, is capable
of rising above almost every degree of physical suffer-
ing, while the will is unbroken. The first lesson: in
slavery, is the crushing of the will, so that it may never
again re-assert its existence as an emanation from
Deity. What language can describe the'torture of the
soul, through which a man must pass before he is made
into a slave? It is this amputation of the will, which
old Homer refers to, where he says—

“Whatever day
Makes man a slave, takes half his worth away.”

A few years ago, all Europe was horror-struck with
the story that a youth named Casper Hauser, had) been
1*

TO On SLAvery.

kept for twenty years, from his birth, in a state of abso-
lute seclusion, so that not one of his powers or faculties
had grown beyond those of infancy. The jurists taxed
their learning for a definition of the crime, of thus swad-
dling the life and powers of a human being, as the
Chinese beauty bandages her feet, to suppress their na-
tural development and expansion; and they called it the
‘crime against the life of the soul.’’ Whether the story
of Casper Hauser is true or false, the definition aptly de-
scribes the guilt of those who exercise the functions of
slavery, in subduing the will of a man until he is made
into a slave. ‘To be thus despoiled of manhood, to long
for its restoration ; to be conscious that it is the work of
a fellow-man, feeling power and forgetting right, is doubt-
less the crowning misery of the slave.

Not only the laws, but even the moralists and religion-
ists of the South, are compelled to recognize the practical
annihilation of that voluntary principle in the soul of the
slave, wherein consists his responsibility to the laws of
God. Everywhere, the will of the master is considered
a valid excuse for the slave. Hence the churches do not
require slave parents to bring up their children in the
nurture and admonition of the Lord, or slave children to
honor their father and mother, or obey their parents in -
the Lord, or slave husbands to cherish and honor their
wives, or slave wives to submit to their husbands in the
Lord, or slave ministers of the Gospel to go and preach
as the Spirit of God may lead them, and his providence
open a door of acceptance, for the Word. Its moralists
argue that slaves have no right to complain at being
separated from those they love, for they know the lia-
bility of their condition, and have only themselves to
blame for having formed such attachments—thus pro-
fessedly subjecting every natural affection of the human

On Savery. ll

heart toitsiron hand. Its churches have no censures for
those who sell their slaves under any pressure of neces-
sity or convenience, even if the slaves sold are members of
the same society, and have just partaken of the same holy
communion with their master. No slave is excluded from
fellowship, because living ina connection which is not
hallowed by lawful marriage—for there is no such thing
as lawful marriage to a slave. Nor is it held to be adul-
tery, when a slave who has been sold to a great distance
from husband or wife, forms a new connection of the
same kind with that which has been broken. Slaves are
customarily advertised for sale with the recommendation
that they are pious, are exemplary Christians, are exhor-
ters or preachers, and the like. Now if you ask any re-
ligious person what made him a Christian, he will tell
you it was the Spirit of God in him, or Christ within him,
the hope of glory, and that his body is the temple of the
Holy Ghost. He who should sell a slave decorated with
earthly jewelry, would be sure to sell the jewels with the
body ; and so he who sells the slave at a higher price for
his religion, sells with his body the soul that has received
the Holy Ghost, and, Judas-like, fills his purse with the
price of his Savior. The general withholding from the
slaves of the power to read the Scriptures, and the careful
protestations of religious bodies that in promoting Christi-
anity among slaves, they employ only ‘‘oral instruction,”
is an admission of the comprehensive sweep of slave law.
«The Bible is the religion of Protestants,’’ but slavery
has reduced Romanists and Protestants to a level. Hun-
dreds of thousands of dollars have been spent in giving
the printed Bible and the means of mental cultivation to
a handful of people in the Sandwich Islands, as the in-
dispensible means of giving efficacy to the Christian faith
among them ; while the religious world is exulting in the

12 On. SLAVERY,

extension of a system of measures for Christianizing the
slaves, by withholding the Bible, putting out the eyes of
the intellect, and forbidding the means of intellectual im-
provement. Is it right for any of us to sit still and allow
such a system to continue and grow, in our own country,
without one word of remonstrance, or one effort to bring:
about its extinction: by such. means as: God has furnished,
and the Gospel of Christ ?

Slavery not only annihilates the rights and extinguishes
the soulhood of the slave; it destroys also the liberties .
of the slaveholder. No man can be free in a slavehold-
ing community. To allow freedom of the press and of
speech, freedom of public assemblies.and public orators,
freedom of conscience and. of religious action, is wholly
incompatible with the continuance of slavery, and is not
permitted in any slave State of this Union. In the out-
break of the American Revolution, Lord Chatham said,
in Parliament, that he rejoiced at the resistance of Amer-
icans, because three millions of people in America who —
were willing to be slaves, were enough to endanger the
liberties of all the rest. The slaveholder may make any
use he will, of his slave property, in the way of degra-
dation and debasement, but. he cannot render his slave
serviceable by entrusting him with arms, or by giving
him the cage of his plantation, or by teaching him to read
and write, and keep accounts as a clerk, or by. fitting»
him, as the Romans used to do, for an amanuensis or a
scrivener, or a teacher of his children. He cannot stim- —
ulate the industry of the slave by securing him a share
of his own earnings, for the benefit of himself or his
family. Much as intelligence, and morality, and re-
ligion increase the productive capacity of a man, the
slaveholder is prohibited, either by law or the fear of
such violence, from thus enhancing the money value of

On SLAVERY. 13

his property, by the means of cultivation which alone
make men intelligent and pious.

Neither the slaveholder nor the preacher, nor any other
person, is allowed to question the rightfulness of slavery,
or of any of its incidents. If aman should by any means
be convinced that slaveholding is the life of slavery, and
that the better man a slaveholder is in other respects, the
more his example supports the system, that no man can
be made to hold slaves but by his own act, as no man can
be made to worship an idol but by his own consent, or
by any reasoning should be brought to feel it his duty as
a Christian, at the peril of his soul, to give freedom to
his slaves—he is not allowed by law to doit. By a pe-
culiar refinement, he is punished for doing it, not only by
a fine or imprisonment, but more diabolically by seeing
the slave he has emancipated, diabolically despoiled of
his newly found freedom, seized by the sheriff and sold
to the highest bidder, as a slave forever. Thomas Jeffer-
son left it in his will, as a dying request to the Legisla-
ture of his idolized Virginia, that his slaves (some of
them said to be his own offspring) might be allowed to
be freed and remain in the place ‘where their families
and connections are ;’’ but the request was denied, and
the slaves were sold.

It is the law of Christian fellowship, that all who love
the Lord Jesus, are members one of another, and that
when one member suffers, all the members suffer with it.
Hence the thrilling of that cord of sympathy which has
been felt in all ages of the church, toward those who suf-
fer for conscience sake, or who are deprived of the free-
dom of worshipping God and obeying the commands of
Christ. Witness the recent meetings and the intense ex-
citement throughout the Protestant world, in regard to
the case of Francisco Madiai and his wife, imprisoned

14 | Own SLAVERY.

in Tuscany, for the crime of reading the Scriptures.
Both the slaves and the free people of color, in the slave
States, live in a constant state of persecution. They can
not learn nor teach the Scriptures without being exposed
to stripes, they cannot meet for worship, nor to preach
and hear the Gospel as their religion dictates. All their
attempts at self-cultivation or to educate their offspring,
are repressed, by a despotism more ubiquitous and all-
pervading than it is possible for the Austrians to exercise
in Italy. The essence of spiritual despotism and perse-
cution lies in the enforcement of laws, in that of Virginia,
that ‘‘any free colored person who undertakes to preach
or conduct a religious meeting, by day or night, may be
whipped. not exceeding thirty-nine lashes, at the discre-
tion of any justice of the peace.’? The pious Christians
of the South, of the North, of the whole world, are
themselves aggrieved and oppressed by such enactments ;
and when they see their fellow-Christians dragged from
the house of prayer to the calaboose, or writhing under
the lash for the offence of the Cross, must sympathize
with them, and feel that they themselves, their religion,
and their Savior, share in the cruel persecution.
Atrocious as are the statutes forbidding the master to
free his slave, and making even the attempt an offence
punishable by fine or imprisonment, there is one feature
of the laws in the slave States still more abominable ; it
is that which perpetually watches for opportunities to en-
slave the free. The legal presumption in those States is
that every colored person is somebody’s slave, and if found
going at large, that he has run away, and ought to be
captured and sent back. Hence any person may seize
and detain him, unless he carries in his pocket the legal
proofs of his freedon ; he is advertised, and if any owner
appears to claim him, he is delivered up as a slave, or if

On Savery. 15

no owner comes, he is sold for his suit fees, and so is
made hopelessly a slave. Any emancipated slave may
be seized by the sheriff, and sold. In the year 1776, a
number of Quakers, in North Carolina, became so im-
pressed with the wrongfulness of slavery, that they
emancipated their slaves, one hundred and thirty-four in
number. ‘There being then no law to prevent it, the
Legislature passed an act requiring the County Courts to
sell these persons, and when the Supreme Court declared
the sale illegal, the legislature passed another act, con-
firming the title of the purchasers, and so they and their
posterity are slaves still.

It is still an aggravating consideration that all this
terrible legislation owes its force and terror entirely to
the cowardly submission of those who live under it. The
sole pretext for its necessity is that slavery cannot be up-
held without it. Only let Christian people receive the
doctrine that slavery itself is wrong, and that there can
be no obligation on any man to support it, and then let
them act according to the dictates of conscience and the
obvious rules of Christ’s kingdom, and those unnatural
laws are instantly paralyzed. A solitary individual, or a
few scattered here and there, might be unable to sustain
themselves, and might even be subjected to penalties.
But as soon as any considerable number of Christians
openly but quietly commence preaching and teaching,
and distributing Bibles and tracts among the slaves, just
as they would among any other class of people, the exe-
cution of such laws is at once impossible—prisons could
not hold the people, nor could magistrates or sheriffs be
found to enforce such precepts. Let Christian men
emancipate their slaves, evidently for the love of God
and the safety of their own souls, continuing their care
over the freed people, until they become accustomed to

16 On SUAVERY.

take care of themselves, and doing everything for their
benefit which justice and humanity would require in the:
circumstances, and it would not be possible to re-enslave.
them—not even the professional soul-aduisers would buy:
them. And when once the work is begun, it will advance
spontaneously, with accelerating speed. ‘Thousands of.
noble hearts, at the South, are now waiting for the finger
of God to point out the man, the hour, and the place,
when the deliverance from this crushing spiritual bond=.
age will take place.

It would take too much space to explain the disastrous:
influence of slavery, upon the general prosperity of the:
nation. The power which the slaveholders have acquired
in politics is too well known, and too humiliating. It is
important to consider the effect of slavery and its institu-
tions, in weakening the safe-guards of civil liberty. By
the common law, which is the basis of our free institu-
tions, the rights of persons are always paramount to the
interests of property. But slavery has grafted the bad
principles of the Roman law upon our jurisprudence, and.
made the claims of property the foremost objects of re-
gard. As a case in point, about a dozen years ago, some
Africans escaped from slavery, in Cuba, and landed with:
the schooner Amistad, on our shore. They were taken’ ,
in custody, by the United States Marshal. Their friends
sued out a writ of habeas corpus, at common law, to
establish. their freedom, which was unquestionable, as
they were evidently just imported from Africa, and so
_ were free by Spanish law. But the Spanish purchaser
libelled them in admiralty, as, his property. Judge
Thompson, of the United States Court, decided that the
admiralty case must first be heard, to see whether those.
men were not property, before they could be allowed ta.
show that they were free men. The writ of habeas cor- ,

On Siavery. Ag

pus, which our constitution recognizes as an existing
general right prior to the constitution or the Union itself,
was devised for the express purpose of bringing the
right of personal freedom under the instant cognizance
of the courts ; and, to postpone habeas corpus to admi-
ralty proceedings, as concerning property, is destructive
to the most precious safe-guards of liberty. The methods
of proceeding in the case of alleged fugitives from slavery
are also derogatory to habeas corpus. And as neither
the constitution nor the laws of Congress say anything
about the dark complexion or African descent of the vic-
tims, the provisions of the injurious Fugitive Slave Law
are fully fitted in the hands of an oppressive administra-
tion, or a corrupt commissioner, to be employed in the
abduction or imprisonment of any person whatever.

It is found absolutely impossible to administer two such
systems of jurisprudence in harmony, as the law of lib-
erty and the law of slavery. They cannot work together.
They cannot both be executed. And certainly, of late,
we have found the principles of formal freedom so often
sacrificed and so generally made light of, that there is
ground for great alarm as to the ees

Is it not then the duty of every one of us to be i inquir-
ing how this thing is to end? Certainly, things cannot
remain as they are, but must grow either worse or better.
It is not at all natural that such an evil should cure itself.
There must be an influence brought to bear upon it from
without itself. The impulse must come from the people
of the free States, just as certainly as the impulse for the
recovery of the inebriates, came from the sober. The
actual work of emancipation must be done at the South,
and by one of two ways—by the will of the slaveholders
or by the will of the slaves. If a wise and healthful in-
fluence can be created at the North, and so kindly and

18 Own Savery.

firmly presented, as to be responded to at the South,
slavery will be abolished by voluntary surrender, at the
will of the slaveholders, according to the dictates of jus-
tice and humanity, by the force of truth, and to the glory
of God and the good of all. parties. If this influence is
not exerted at the North, or if it will not be tolerated by
the South, then the mingled influence of increasing num-
bers and intelligence among the slaves, or—by increasing
severity by the slaveholders—a purely Southern influ-
ence, will burst the chains at the will of the slaves, with
consequences more terrible than the heart can conceive.
The great multiplication of deeds of vengeance among
the slaves, since the supporters of the ‘‘ Compromise ”’
pronounced the anti-slavery movement of the North to
be dead and buried, is a warning of what would happen,
were despair of human help to become universal among
the slaves.

It is certain that the Northern advocates of emancipa-
tion are alone the true friends of the South. They stand
between the planters and their vassals. They keep back
the coming earthquake. And if they can put forth power
enough, and in season, they may well hope to avert the
calamity, and turn the threatened storm. into a calm.
Every dictate of Christianity, of humanity, of patriotism,
and sympathy with our dear friends at the South, urges
us to do something —to do everything that is in our
power, to create that influence in the North, which will
be felt and yielded to as good at the South. You ask
what you shall do.

There are two main pillars of Northern support, by
which+the system of slavery is manifestly upheld — poli-
tics and religion. The political support of slavery, by
parties and politicians, and capitalists and clergymen,
secures to the slaveholders an absolute control of the

On SLAVERY. 19

government, the appointments to office, the legislation of
Congress, diplomacy with foreign powers, and the spoils
. of the National Treasury. So long as the North submits ~
to this, you may depend upon it, Southern politicians will
cling to slavery as the sure ladder of their ambition. It
is for the people of the North to change this, by refusing
to vote for any man, to any office, who will lend his po-
litical gupport to the slave power, and then, by seizing
every opportunity of voting against such subservient
men, and elevating in their place men who will wield
official power in favor of freedom and against slavery.
When the support of slavery becomes a disqualification
rather than a passport for office at the North, and as soon
as the North can be made to act together on this plat-
form, the tide of influence will turn. As soon as the
friends of freedom shall become a well compacted body
at the North, the longing hearts at the South will be in-
spired with confidence, and will respond to every effort
in a kindred spirit and with special effect.

The moral and religious branch of this reform is more
complicated, and in some respects more difficult, on ac-
count of the great diversity of views among Christians
as to the modes of operation for the extension of the
truth. It is also more far-reaching and vastly more ef-
fective in the long run, because it looks to the general
changing of the minds of the slaveholders, by the power
of Christian suasion, until they shall joyfully ‘let the
oppressed go free.’’ In general terms, we are to counte-
nance those ministers and editors who are themselves |
faithful to truth and duty on this subject, and when prac-
ticable withdraw our patronage and countenance from
those who are wilfully perverse, and hesitate. Let char-
ity have the fullest possible scope consistent with common
sense. But charity is not a fool, nor bound to close her

20 On SLAVERY.

eyes against palpable facts. It is certainly time to re-
quire some proofs from the South, that the Gospel, as
there administered, tends to abolish and not to perpetuate
slavery. The missionary boards cannot evade that test
of the results of their labor, both among the whites and
in the Indian tribes. When-is your sort: of Christianity
going to begin to free the slaves ?

In a matter confessedly so difficult, and among a
people whose views are so diverse, it is too much to ex-
pect a unity of views among all the friends of freedom,
except upon a very few, very simple, and most directly
practical points. Let us not fall into the error of those
who forbade their neighbors casting out the devil, ‘be-
cause he followeth not with us,” in all the points of doc-
trine or practice. We should gladly commend all who
give reasonable evidence of sincerity in their endeavors.
Let them do all the good they can, as well as they know.
If we know a better way, let us follow it in a better man-
ner. Without a compromise of principle, there needs to
be an increase of mutual forbearance. But this is less
essential than a great increase of zeal. And as all de-
pends upon the wisdom of God for guidance, and upon
his blessing for success—there is one thing in which we
ean all agree—that prayer be made without ceasing unto
God in behalf of our enslaving and enslaved fellow-
countrymen, for their speedy deliverance from this stu-
pendous curse.

THE END.

AMERICAN Rerorm Tract anp Book Soctrery.

REMARKS OF THE PUBLISHING COMMITTEE.

The author of the foregoing Tract has drawn a vivid,
forcible, and, as both experience and the slave code show,
a truthful picture of slavery. ‘Terrible as it appears, it
is no fancy sketch. The system as here described, actu-
ally exists among us, and actually reduces to the condi-
tion of a herd of cattle, three millions of the American
people, while its reactive influence demoralizes other mil-
lions, and embroils and endangers the whole country.

Judged by the Word of God, or the unbiassed con-
science of man, to establish or maintain such a system is
a sin against God, of the most aggravated character.
We know how it was established, but by whom is it now
maintained ? Who is responsible before God for its con-
tinuance ? Who is involved in its guilt? These are ques-
tions which we are all bound to examine, as we hope to
be acquitted at Jehovah’s bar. The answer to these in-
quiries bears most heavily upon the Christians -of this
country, when we consider the controlling influence which
is wielded by the churches, in its favor, and remember to
what an appalling extent these churches are directly in-
volved in this sin of buying, selling, and holding, which
constitutes the stealing of men. As appears by the fol-
lowing table, believed to be within the truth, nearly onz-
rourRTH of all the slaveholding of the country rests upon
the members of our churches:

22 REMARKS OF THE PUBLISHING COMMITTEE.

Denominations. No. of Slaves.
Methodists, 00435 f.6e ou. US ee 219,563
Presbyterians, Old and New Schools........ 77,000
Baptists 05 3/55 wis sieve wie. ¢ 2 asqack hae 125,000
Disciples, or Reformed Baptists............ 101,000
Episcopalians: 2c ia. tn ss via s'eae 88,000
Other Denominations........+.. haa ole 50,000 —

Total owned by Ministers and Church members 600,563

The disposition to hold slaves has not been diminished
since this calculation was made, and we may consider the
number of slaves thus owned at the present time, as af
least seven hundred thousand, allowing the above esti-
mate as correct when made.

Who does not perceive that the almost resistless influ-
ence of the churches watchful to protect Two HUNDRED
AND EIGHTY MILLIONS OF DOLLARS thus invested by their
own members, must form the principal defence of the
slaveholding ‘ system? Political influence could not
maintain it a single year, if unsupported by the churches
themselves. Here then rests the main responsibility and
the principal guilt. Reader, how much of this responsi-
bility rests upon you? Do you belong to a church
whose members are owners of slaves, whose ministers
defend it, or refuse to class it among sins? Do you not
then belong to a slaveholding and slavetrading copart-
nership, and are you not personally involved in the guilt?
Do you support Mission Boards or other Societies that
foster slavery, or refuse to rebuke and expose it? If so,
are you not verily guilty of your brother’s blood and
tears? Does your vote sustain the system or jts sup-
porters? Are you not then guilty, and is not your name
mentioned in the cry that ascends to the throne of God?

WHAT IS TO BE DONE?

ROR Ae

The thing to be done, of which I shall chiefly speak, is
that the whole American church, of all denominations,
should unitedly come up to the noble purpose avowed by
the Presbyterian Assembly of 1818, to seek the uy-
TIRE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY THROUGHOUT AMERICA AND
_ THROUGHOUT CHRISTENDOM.

To this noble course, the united voice of Christians in
all other countries is urgently calling the American
church. Expressions of this feeling have come from
_ Christians of all denominations in England, in Scotland, in
Treland, in France, in Switzerland, in Germany, in Persia,
in the Sandwich Islands, and in China. All seem to be
animated by one spirit. They have loved and honored
this American church. They have rejoiced in the bright-
ness of her rising. Her prosperity and success have been
to them as their own, and they have had hopes that God
meant to confer inestimable blessings through her upon
all nations. The American church has been to them like
the rising of a glorious sun, shedding healing from his
wings, dispersing mists and fogs, and bringing songs of
birds and voices of cheerful industry, and sounds of glad-
ness, contentment, and peace. But lo! in this beautiful
orb is seen a disastrous spot of dim eclipse, whose gradu-
ally widening shadow threatens a total darkness. Can we
wonder that the voice of remonstrance comes to us from
those who have so much at stake in our prosperity and suc-
cess? We have sent out our missionaries to all quarters

Q4 WHAT Is to BE Done?

of the globe; but how shall they tell their heathen con.
verts the things that are done in Christianized America i
How shall our missionaries in Mahometan countries hold
up their heads, and proclaim the superiority of our elie
gion, when we tolerate barbarities which men neve re- ‘
pudiated ? ;

A missionary ¢ among the Karens, i in Age writes pice)
that his course is mah embarrassed by a suspicion that
is afloat among the Karens, that the Americans intend to
steal and sell them. He says: ‘ :

«‘T dread the time when these Karens will be able to “g
read our books and get a full knowledge of all that is go-
ing on in our country. Many of them are very inquisitive
now, and often ask me questions that I find it eee) diffi- in
cult to answer.’

No, there is no resource.” The einen of bib United
States is shut up, in the providence of God, to one work.
She can never fulfill her mission till this is done. So lang
as she neglects this, it will lie in the way of oxo ne J
else which she attempts to do. eee, ae

She must undertake it for another eee Se shies’
alone can perform the work peaceably. If this fearful pro- _

blem is left to take its course as a mere political question, to. oe
be ground out between the upper and nether millstones of
political parties, then what will avert agitation, angry vos *
lisions, and the desperate rending the Union? No, there —
is no safety but in making it a religious enterprise, and
pursuing it in a Christian spirit, and by Se uel means.— :
Hey to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, P. 250. es

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