The Underground Railroad
thus related, that all unite to illustrate the single fact of the
South's steady increase of power, her tightening grasp about the throat
of government, and her buffets of threat to the North when a weedling
palm failed to palsy fast enough. It warns northern voters of the
undertow that is drawing them, and adjures them, by every consideration
of political common sense, not to cast their ballots for either of the
pro-slavery candidates presented. The conclusion of this address is as
follows:
OUR OBJECT.
"And now, fellow-citizens, you may ask, what is our object in
thus exhibiting to you the alarming influence of the slave
power? Do we wish to excite in your bosoms feelings of hatred
against citizens of a common country? Do we wish to array the
Free states against the Slave states in hostile strife? No,
fellow-citizens. But we wish to show you that, while the slave
states are inferior to us in free population, having not even
one half of ours; inferior in morals, being the region of bowie
knives and duels, of assassinations and lynch law; inferior in
mental attainments, having not one-fourth of the number that can
read and write; inferior in intelligence, having not one-fifth
of the number of literary and scientific periodicals; inferior
in the products of agriculture and manufactures, of mines, of
fisheries, and of the forest; inferior, in short, in everything
that constitutes the wealth, the honor, the dignity, the
stability, the happiness, the true greatness of a nation,--it is
wrong, it is unjust, it is absurd, that they should have an
influence in all the departments of government so entirely
disproportionate to our own. We would arouse you to your own
true interests. We would have you, like men, firmly resolved to
maintain your own rights. We would have you say to the
South,--if you choose to hug to your bosom that system which is
continually injuring and impoverishing you; that system which
reduces two millions and a half of native Americans in your
midst to the most abject condition of ignorance and vice,
withholding from them the very key of knowledge; that system
which is at war with every principle of justice, every feeling
of humanity; that system which makes man the property of man,
and perpetuates that relation from one generation to another;
that system which tramples, continually, upon a majority of the
commandments of the Decalogue; that system which could not live
a day if it did not give one party supreme control over the
persons, the health, the liberty, the happiness, the marriage
relations, the parental authority and filial obligations of the
other;--if you choose to cling to such a system, cling to it;
but you shall not cross our line; you shall not bring that foul
thing here. We know, and we here repeat it for the thousandth
time to meet, for the thousandth time, the calumnies of our
enemies, that while we may present to you every consideration of
duty, we have no right, as well as no power, to alter your State
laws. But remember, that slavery is the mere creature of local
or statute law, and cannot exist out of the region where such
law has force. 'It is so odious,' says Lord Mansfield, 'that
nothing can be suffered to support it but _positive_ law.'
"We would, therefore, say to you again, in the strength of that
Constitution under which we live, and which no where
countenances slavery, you shall not bring that foul thing here.
You shall not force the corrupted and corrupting blood of that
system into every vein and artery of our body politic. You shall
not have the controlling power in all the departments of our
government at home and abroad. You shall not so negotiate with
foreign powers, as to open markets for the products of slave
labor alone. You shall not so manage things at home, as every
few years to bring bankruptcy upon our country. You shall not,
in the apportionment of public moneys, have what you call your
'property' represented, and thus get that which, by no right,
belongs to you. You shall not have the power to bring your
slaves upon our free soil, and take them away at pleasure; nor
to reclaim them, when they, panting for liberty, have been able
to escape your grasp; for we would have it said of us, as the
eloquent Curran said of Britain, the moment the slave touches
our soil, 'The ground on which he stands is holy, and
consecrated to the Genius of UNIVERSAL EMANCIPATION.'
"Thus, fellow-citizens, we come to _the great object of the
Liberty Party_: ABSOLUTE AND UNQUALIFIED DIVORCE OF THE GENERAL
GOVERNMENT FROM ALL CONNECTION WITH SLAVERY. We would employ
every _constitutional_ means to eradicate it from our entire
country, because it would be for the highest welfare of our
entire country. We would have liberty established in the
District, and in all the Territories. * * We would have
liberty of speech and of the press, which the Constitution
guarantees to us. We would have the right of petition most
sacredly regarded. We would secure to every man what the
Constitution secures, 'The right of trial by jury.' We would do
what we can for the encouragement and improvement of the colored
race, and restore to them that inestimable right of which they
have been so meanly, as well as unjustly, deprived, the RIGHT OF
SUFFRAGE. We would look to the best interests of the country,
and the _whole_ country, and not legislate for the good of an
Oligarchy, the most arrogant that ever lorded it over an
insulted people. We would have our commercial treaties with
foreign nations regard the interests of the Free states. We
would provide safe, adequate, and permanent markets for the
produce of free labor. And, when reproached with slavery, we
would be able to say to the world, with an open front and a
clear conscience, our General Government has nothing to do with
it, either to promote, to sustain, to defend, to sanction, or to
approve.
"Thus, fellow-citizens, you see our objects. You may now ask, by
what means we hope to attain them. We answer, by POLITICAL
ACTION. What is political action? It is _acting in a manner
appropriate to those objects which we wish to secure through the
agency of the different departments of Government_. * * The
only way in which we can act _constitutionally_, is to go to the
ballot-box, and there, silently and unostentatiously, deposit a
vote for such men as will do what they can to carry out those
principles which we have so much at heart.
* * * * *
"Come, then, men of Pennsylvania, come and join us in this good
work. Join us, to use such moral means as to correct public
sentiment throughout the region where slavery exists, and to
impress upon the people of the Free states a manly sense of
their own rights. Join us, to place "just men" in all our public
offices; men whose example a whole people may safely imitate.
Join us to free our General Government from the ignominious
reproach of slavery; to restore to our country those principles
which our fathers so labored to establish; and to hand these
principles down afresh to successive generations. It is the
cause of truth, of humanity, and of God, to which we invite your
aid. It is a cause of which you never need be ashamed. Living,
you may be thankful, and dying, you may be thankful, for having
labored in it. We have, as co-laborers with us, the noblest
allies that man can wish. Within, we have the deepest
convictions of conscience, the clearest deductions of reason;
and, all over the world, wherever man is found, the first, the
most ardent longings of the human soul. Without, we have the
happiness of nearly three millions of the human race; the honor,
as well as the best interests of our whole country; and the
universal consent of all good men whose moral vision is not
obscured by the mist of a low, misguided selfishness: while we
seem to hear, as it were, the voices of the great and the good,
the patriot and the philanthropist, of a past generation,
calling to us and cheering us on. But, above all these, and
beyond all these, we have with us the highest attributes of God,
Justice and Mercy. With such allies, and in such a cause, who
can doubt on which side the victory will ultimately rest.
"May He who guides the destinies of nations, and without whose
aid 'they labor in vain that build,' so incline your hearts to
exert your whole influence to place in all our public offices
just and good men, that our country may be preserved, her best
interests advanced, and her institutions, free in reality as in
name, handed down to the latest posterity."
Is not the love of God and man ingrained in every line of this writing?
Yet let us see how it was received by the most Christian (?) body in
this city.
I need hardly say that my father's mind had been largely impressed, from
earliest manhood, with the highest subject human thought can touch. His
library records his wide religious reading; but he could not see an
honest path towards the profession of any definite views till 1836. The
change wrought in him then, can best be gathered from his own simple
words (under date, 1842) written in a fly-leaf of "The Unitarian
Miscellany:" "Though I humbly trust that God made my trials in 1836 the
means of bringing me to true repentance, yet I have kept these books as
monuments of what I once was, and to remind me how grateful I should be
to Him for having snatched me as a 'brand from the burning,'" Such a
faith as this, born of the spiritual travail of years, what a life it
always has for the heart that forms it! It tells not of a persuasion,
but of a conviction; a disproof of skepticism through the gathered
forces of the soul; a struggle, through epochs of doubt and dismay, into
an attitude of positive vital faith. Its process is the only one that
gives real right to ultimate peace. In comparison with the method and
measure of such a conviction, what matters its specific form? Self-truth
is the point,--the fact for starting, the line for guiding; and as for
result, this lonely and solemn rally on the deepest within us, as it is
continuously unfolded, must lead to a glad and solemn union with the
Highest without us. Who can know unfailing inward energy except through
this new birth? It proved an ever-fresh spring of vigor to my father,
and because of it he was chosen, in 1839, president of "The Philadelphia
Bible Society." What changes were wrought in the policy of the Society,
what numerous plans were devised and executed for multiplying its
operations, how it was made a cordial alliance of all denominations,
will presently appear. This is now to be said: that, after filling his
office for five years, he found that his Anti-slavery testimony had
engendered in the managers a bitterness that would seize the address of
1844 for pretext, and make retaliation in his sacrifice. Thankful, for
the thousandth time, to be a sacrifice for the cause he loved, he sent
in his resignation in a letter full of Christian kindness and sorrow. A
short extract will show its tone:
"One whose great heart wishes the best for humanity calls to us
from the West: 'When your Society propose to put a Bible into
every family, and yet omit all reference to the slaves; and
when, giving an account of the destitution of the land, they