STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS

Charles Sumner; his complete works, volume 5 (of 20)

Copyright, 1900,

BY

LEE AND SHEPARD.

Statesman Edition.

Limited to One Thousand Copies.

Of which this is

Norwood Press:
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

CONTENTS OF VOLUME V.

THE ANTISLAVERY ENTERPRISE:

ITS NECESSITY, PRACTICABILITY, AND DIGNITY;
WITH GLANCES AT
THE SPECIAL DUTIES OF THE NORTH.

Address before the People of New York, at the Metropolitan Theatre, May 9, 1855.

The principles of true politics are those of morality enlarged; and I neither now do nor ever will admit of any other.—Burke, Letter to the Bishop of Chester: Correspondence, Vol. I. p. 332.

True politics I look on as a part of moral philosophy, which is nothing but the art of conducting men right in society, and supporting a community amongst its neighbors.—John Locke, Letter to the Earl of Peterborough: Life, by Lord King, Vol. I. p. 9.

Malus usus abolendus est.—Law Maxim.

All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them; for this is the Law and the Prophets.—Matthew, viii. 12.

You have among you many a purchased slave,

Which, like your asses, and your dogs, and mules,

You use in abject and in slavish parts,

Because you bought them.

Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice.

From Guinea’s coast pursue the lessening sail,

And catch the sounds that sadden every gale.

Tell, if thou canst, the sum of sorrows there;

Mark the fixed gaze, the wild and frenzied glare,

The racks of thought, and freezings of despair!

But pause not then,—beyond the western wave,

Go, view the captive bartered as a slave!

Rogers, Pleasures of Memory.

Through the influence of the late Dr. James W. Stone, an indefatigable Republican, a course of lectures was organized in Boston especially for the discussion of Slavery. This course marks the breaking of the seal on the platform. Mr. Sumner undertook to open this course, which was to begin in the week after his address before the Mercantile Library Association; but he was prevented by sudden disability from a cold. His excuse was contained in the following letter.

“Hancock Street, 23d November, 1854.

“My dear Sir,—An unkindly current of air is often more penetrating than an arrow. From such a shaft I suffered on the night of my address to the Mercantile Library Association, more than a week ago, and no care or skill has been efficacious to relieve me. I am admonished alike by painful consciousness and by the good physician into whose hands I have fallen, that I am not equal to the service I have undertaken on Thursday evening.

“Fitly to inaugurate that course of lectures would task the best powers in best health of any man. Most reluctantly, but necessarily, I must lose sight of the inspiring company there assembled in the name of Freedom to sit in judgment on Slavery, and postpone till some other opportunity what I had hoped to say. You, who know the effort I have made to rally for this occasion, will appreciate my personal disappointment.

“It is my habit to keep my engagements. Not for a single day have I been absent from my seat in the Senate during the three sessions in which duty has called me there; and never before, in the course of numerous undertakings to address public bodies, at different times and in different places, has there been any failure through remissness or disability on my part.

“Pardon these allusions, which I make that you may better understand my feelings, now that I am compelled to depart for the moment from a cherished rule of fidelity.

“Ever faithfully yours,

“Charles Sumner.

“Dr. Stone.”

Failing to open the course, Mr. Sumner closed it, on his return from Washington in the spring, with the following address, which he was called to repeat in the same hall a few days later. Yielding to friendly pressure, he consented to repeat it at several places in New York, among which was Auburn, the residence of Mr. Seward, by whom he was introduced to the audience in the following words.

“Fellow-Citizens,—A dozen years ago I was honored by being chosen to bring my neighbors residing here to the acquaintance of a statesman of Massachusetts who was then directing the last energies of an illustrious life to the removal of the crime of Human Slavery from the soil of our beloved country,—a statesman whose course I had chosen for my own guidance,—John Quincy Adams, ‘the old man eloquent.’

“He has ascended to heaven: you and I yet remain here, in the field of toil and duty. And now, by a rare felicity, I have your instructions to present to you another statesman of Massachusetts, him on whose shoulders the mantle of the departed one has fallen, and who more than any other of the many great and virtuous citizens of his native Commonwealth illustrates the spirit of the teacher whom, like us, he venerated and loved so much,—a companion and friend of my own public labors,—the young ‘man eloquent,’—Charles Sumner.”

In the city of New York the same address formed the last of an Antislavery course. It was delivered in the Metropolitan Theatre, before a crowded audience, May 9, 1855. Mr. Sumner had never before spoken in New York. He was introduced by Hon. William Jay, in the following words.

“Ladies and Gentlemen,—I have been requested, on the part of the Society, to perform the pleasing, but unnecessary, office of introducing to you the honored and well-known advocate of Justice, Humanity, and Freedom, Charles Sumner. It is not for his learning and eloquence that I commend him to your respectful attention; for learning, eloquence, and even theology itself, have been prostituted in the service of an institution well described by John Wesley as the sum of all villanies. I introduce him to you as a Northern Senator on whom Nature has conferred the unusual gift of a backbone,—a man who, standing erect on the floor of Congress, amid creeping things from the North, with Christian fidelity denounces the stupendous wickedness of the Fugitive Law and the Nebraska Perfidy, and in the name of Liberty, Humanity, and Religion demands the repeal of those most atrocious enactments. May the words he is about to utter be impressed on your consciences and influence your conduct.”

The reception of the address attested the change in the public mind. Frederick Douglass, who was present, wrote:—

“Metropolitan Theatre was literally packed, and, for two hours and a half, the vast audience, with attention unwearied, and with interest rising with every sentence which dropped from the speaker, indorsed sentiments which many of the same parties would five years ago have stoned any one for uttering.”

The Tribune said:—

“Mr. Sumner’s speech last night was the greatest oratorical and logical success of the year, and was most enthusiastically praised by the largest audience yet gathered in New York to hear a lecture.”

The interest was such, that he was constrained, much against his own disposition, to repeat it in Brooklyn, where he was introduced by Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, and then again at Niblo’s Theatre, New York, where he was introduced by Joseph Blunt, Esq. The concluding words of Mr. Beecher were as follows.

“I am to introduce to you a statesman who follows a long train of representatives and statesmen who were false to the North, false to Liberty; and then they made a complaint that there was no North! It was because the North lost faith in her recreant children. It lost faith in its traitors, and not in Liberty. But now, if the haughty Southerners wish to engage in any more conflicts of this kind, I think they will have to find some other than the speaker to-night with whom to break a lance. [Loud cheers.] I do not wish merely to introduce to you the ‘honorable gentleman’ sent from Massachusetts as a United States Senator; my wish is to do better than that; I wish to introduce to you the MAN,—Charles Sumner. [Loud applause.]”

The Tribune spoke thus of these meetings:—

“That a lecture should be repeated in New York is a rare occurrence. That a lecture on Antislavery should be repeated in New York, even before a few despised ‘fanatics,’ is an unparalleled occurrence. But that an Antislavery lecture should be repeated night after night to successive multitudes, each more enthusiastic than the last, marks the epoch of a revolution in popular feeling; it is an era in the history of Liberty. Niblo’s Theatre was crowded last evening long before the hour of commencement. Hundreds stood through the three hours’ lecture. We give a full report of the words, but only of the words.”

Other newspapers were enthusiastic in their comments.

The National Era, at Washington, in printing the address, said of its delivery in Metropolitan Hall:—

“Mr. Sumner closed, as he had continued, amid loud and protracted applause. Especially at the point when he said that the Fugitive Slave Bill must be made a dead letter, the audience seemed wild with enthusiasm. Handkerchiefs waved from fair hands, and reporters almost forgot their stolid unconcern.”

Such extracts might be multiplied. Beyond these was the testimony of individuals gratified at the hearing obtained for cherished sentiments. One wrote from Philadelphia as follows.

“I cannot forbear, not for your gratification, but for my own, to testify my unbounded sympathy and satisfaction in the Three Days’ Ovation of May that you have enjoyed in New York, in reward of your faithful sentinelship on the ramparts of Liberty in that sin-beleaguered fortress, the Capitol at Washington, faithfully supporting the cause of the weak against insolence and haughty vulgarity.… You have gloriously and faithfully withstood obloquy and reproach: the hour of triumph is now well assured.”

Another wrote from Albany:—

“I have never read anything so magnificent as your Lecture in the Independent. How I wish I could have heard it! Letters from judges in such matters inform me that no speech in New York for many years has produced such a sensation.”

Count Gurowski, writing from Brattleboro’, Vermont, expressed his enthusiastic sympathy, and at the same time predicted the adverse feeling among slave-masters.

“I have just finished the reading of your admirable Oration. I am en extase. I was near to cry.… But you have thrown the gauntlet once more to the ‘gentlemen from the South,’ bravely, decidedly, and pitilessly. Do not be astonished, if they shall send you, covered with laurels as you are, to Coventry. This undoubtedly they will do.”

These extracts show something of public sentiment at this stage of the great contest with Slavery. From this time forward the discussion broadened and deepened.

ADDRESS.

History abounds in vicissitudes. From weakness and humility, men ascend to power and place. From defeat and disparagement, enterprises are borne on to recognition and triumph. The martyr of to-day is gratefully enshrined on the morrow. The stone that the builders rejected is made head of the corner. Thus it always has been, and ever will be.

Only twenty years ago, in 1835, the friends of the slave in our country were weak and humble, while their great undertaking, just then showing itself, was trampled down and despised. Small companies, gathered together in the name of Freedom, were interrupted and often dispersed by riotous mobs. At Boston, a feeble association of women, called the Female Antislavery Society, sitting in a small room of an upper story in an obscure building, was insulted and then driven out of doors by a frantic crowd, politely termed at the time “gentlemen of property and standing,” which, after various deeds of violence and vileness, next directed itself upon William Lloyd Garrison,—known as the determined editor of the “Liberator,” and originator of the Antislavery Enterprise in our day,—then ruthlessly tearing him away, amidst savage threats and with a halter about his neck, dragged him through the streets, until, at last, guilty only of loving liberty, if not wisely, too well, this unoffending citizen was thrust into the common jail for protection against an infuriate populace. Nor was Boston alone. Even villages in remote rural solitude broke out in similar outrage,—while large towns, like Providence, New Haven, Utica, Worcester, Alton, Cincinnati, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York, became so many fiery craters overflowing with rage and madness. What lawless violence failed to accomplish was urged next through forms of law. By solemn legislative acts, the Slave States called on the Free States “promptly and effectually to suppress all those associations within their respective limits purporting to be Abolition Societies”;[1] and Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and New York basely hearkened to the base proposition. The press, too, with untold power, exerted itself in this behalf, while pulpit, politician, and merchant conspired to stifle discussion, until the voice of Freedom was hushed to a whisper, “alas! almost afraid to know itself.”

Since then, in the lapse of few years only, a change has taken place. Instead of those small companies, counted by tens, we have now this mighty assembly, counted by thousands; instead of an insignificant apartment, like that in Boston, the mere appendage of a printing-office, where, as in the manger itself, Truth was cradled, we have this Metropolitan Hall, ample in proportion and central in place; instead of a profane and clamorous mob, beating at our gates, dispersing our assembly, and making one of our number the victim of its fury, we have peace and harmony at unguarded doors, ruffled only by generous competition to participate in this occasion; while Legislatures openly declare their sympathies, villages, towns, and cities vie in the new manifestation, and the press itself, with increased power, heralds, applauds, and extends the prevailing influence, which, gushing from every fountain, and pouring through every channel, at last, by quickening power of pulpit, politician, and merchant, swells into an irresistible tide.

Here is a great change, worthy of notice and memory, for it attests the first stage of victory. Slavery, in all its many-sided wrong, still continues; but here in this metropolis—ay, Sir, and throughout the whole North—freedom of discussion is at length secured. And this, I say, is the first stage of victory,—herald of the transcendent future.

“Hark! a glad voice the lonely desert cheers:

Prepare the way! a God, a God appears!

A God! a God! the vocal hills reply:

The rocks proclaim the approaching Deity.”

Nor is there anything peculiar in the trials to which our cause has been exposed. Thus in all ages is Truth encountered. At first persecuted, gagged, silenced, crucified, she cries out from the prison, the rack, the stake, the cross, until at last her voice is heard. And when that voice is really heard, whether in martyr cries, or in earthquake tones of civil convulsion, or in the calmness of ordinary speech, such as I now employ, or in that still, small utterance inaudible to the common ear, then is the beginning of victory! “Give me where to stand and I will move the world,” said Archimedes; and Truth asks no more than did the master of geometry.

Viewed in this aspect, the present occasion rises above any ordinary course of lectures or series of political meetings. It is the inauguration of Freedom. From this time forward, her voice of warning and command cannot be silenced. The sensitive sympathies of property, in this commercial mart, may yet again recognize property in man; the watchful press itself may falter or fail; but the vantage-ground of free discussion now achieved cannot be lost. On this I take my stand, and, as from the Mount of Vision, behold the whole field of our great controversy spread before me. There is no point, topic, fact, matter, reason, or argument, touching the question between Slavery and Freedom, which is not now open. From these I might aptly select some one, and confine myself to its development. But I should not in this way best satisfy the seeming requirement of the occasion. According to the invitation of your Committee, I was to make an address introductory to the present course of lectures, but was prevented by ill-health. And now, at the close of the course, I am to say what I failed to say at its beginning. Not as Caucus or as Congress can I address you; nor am I moved to undertake a political harangue or constitutional argument. Out of the occasion let me speak, and, discarding any individual topic, aim to exhibit the entire field, in its divisions and subdivisions, with metes and bounds.

My subject will be The Necessity, Practicability, and Dignity of the Antislavery Enterprise, with Glances at Special Duties of the North. By this enterprise I do not mean the efforts of any restricted circle, sect, or party, but the cause of the slave, in all its forms and under all its names,—whether inspired by pulpit, press, economist, or politician,—whether in the early, persistent, and comprehensive demands of Garrison, the gentler tones of Channing, or the strictly constitutional endeavors of others now actually sharing the public councils of the country. To carry through this review, under its different heads, I shall not hesitate to meet the objections urged against it, so far at least as I am aware of them. As I speak to you seriously, I venture to ask your serious attention even to the end. Not easily can a public address reach that highest completeness which is found in mingling the useful and the agreeable; but I desire to say that it will be my effort to cultivate that highest courtesy of a speaker which is found in clearness.

I.

I begin with the NECESSITY of the Antislavery Enterprise. In the wrong of Slavery, as defined by existing law, this necessity is plainly apparent; nor can any man within the sound of my voice, who listens to the authentic words of the law, hesitate in my conclusion. A wrong so grievous and unquestionable should not be allowed to continue. For the honor of human nature, and the good of all concerned, it must at once cease. On this simple statement, as corner-stone, I found the necessity of the Antislavery Enterprise.

I do not dwell, Sir, on the many tales which come from the house of bondage: on the bitter sorrows undergone; on the flesh galled by manacle, or spurting blood beneath the lash; on the human form mutilated by knife, or seared by red-hot iron; on the ferocious scent of bloodhounds in chase of human prey; on the sale of fathers and mothers, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, little children, even infants, at the auction block; on the practical prostration of all rights, all ties, and even all hope; on the deadly injury to morals, substituting concubinage for marriage, and changing the whole land of Slavery into a by-word of shame, only fitly pictured by the language of Dante, when he called his own degraded country a House of Ill Fame;[2] and, last of all, on the pernicious influence upon master as well as slave, showing itself too often, even by his own confession, in rudeness of manners and character, and especially in that blindness which renders him insensible to the wrongs he upholds. On these things I do not dwell, although volumes are at hand of unquestionable fact, and also of illustrative story so just and germane as to vie with fact, out of which I might draw, until, like Macbeth, you had “supped full with horrors.”

All these I put aside,—not because I do not regard them of moment in exhibiting the true character of Slavery, but because I desire to present this argument on grounds above all controversy, impeachment, or suspicion, even from slave-masters themselves. Not on triumphant story, not even on indisputable fact, do I now accuse Slavery, but on its character, as revealed in its own simple definition of itself. Out of its own mouth do I condemn it. By the Law of Slavery, man, created in the image of God, is divested of the human character, and declared to be a mere chattel. That this statement may not seem to be put forward without precise authority, I quote the law of two different States. The Civil Code of Louisiana thus defines a slave:—

“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 must belong to his master.”[3]

The law of another polished Slave State gives this definition:—

“Slaves shall be deemed, sold, taken, reputed, and adjudged in law to be chattels personal, in the hands of their owners and possessors, and their executors, administrators, and assigns, to all intents, constructions, and purposes whatsoever.”[4]

And a careful writer, Judge Stroud, in a work of juridical as well as philanthropic merit, thus sums up the law:—

“The cardinal principle of Slavery, that the slave is not to be ranked among sentient beings, but among things, is an article of property, a chattel personal, obtains as undoubted law in all of these [Slave] States.”[5]

Sir, this is enough. As out of its small egg crawls forth the slimy, scaly, reptile crocodile, so out of this simple definition crawls forth the whole slimy, scaly, reptile monstrosity by which a man is changed into a chattel, a person is converted into a thing, a soul is transmuted into merchandise. According to this very definition, the slave is held simply for the good of his master, to whose behest his life, liberty, and happiness are devoted, and by whom he may be bartered, leased, mortgaged, bequeathed, invoiced, shipped as cargo, stored as goods, sold on execution, knocked off at public auction, and even staked at the gaming-table on the hazard of a card or die. The slave may seem to have a wife; but he has not, for his wife belongs to his master. He may seem to have a child; but he has not, for his child is owned by his master. He may be filled with desire of knowledge, opening to him the gates of joy on earth and in heaven; but the master may impiously close all these gates. Thus is he robbed, not merely of privileges, but of himself,—not merely of money and labor, but of wife and children,—not merely of time and opportunity, but of every assurance of happiness,—not merely of earthly hope, but of all those divine aspirations that spring from the Fountain of Light. He is not merely restricted in liberty, but totally deprived of it,—not merely curtailed in rights, but absolutely stripped of them,—not merely loaded with burdens, but changed into a beast of burden,—not merely bent in countenance to the earth, but sunk in law to the level of a quadruped,—not merely exposed to personal cruelty, but deprived of his character as a person,—not merely compelled to involuntary labor, but degraded to a rude thing,—not merely shut out from knowledge, but wrested from his place in the human family. And all this, Sir, is according to the simple Law of Slavery.

And even this is not all. The law, by cumulative provisions, positively forbids that a slave shall be taught to read. Hear this, fellow-citizens, and confess that no barbarity of despotism, no extravagance of tyranny, no excess of impiety can be more blasphemous or deadly. “Train up a child in the way he should go” is the lesson of Divine Wisdom; but the Law of Slavery boldly prohibits any such training, and dooms the child to hopeless ignorance and degradation. “Let there be light” was the Divine behest at the dawn of Creation,—and this commandment, travelling with the ages and the hours, still speaks with the voice of God; yet the Law of Slavery says, “Let there be darkness.”

But it is earnestly averred that slave-masters are humane, and slaves are treated with kindness. These averments, however, I properly put aside, precisely as I have already put aside the multitudinous illustrations from the cruelty of Slavery. On the simple letter of the law I take my stand, and do not go beyond what is there nominated. The masses of men are not better than their laws, and, whatever may be the eminence of individual virtue, it is not reasonable to infer that the body of slave-masters is better than the Law of Slavery. And since this law submits the slave to their irresponsible control, with power to bind and to scourge, to shut the soul from knowledge, to separate families, to unclasp the infant from a mother’s breast, and the wife from a husband’s arms, it is natural to conclude that such enormities are sanctioned by them, while the supplementary denial of instruction gives conclusive evidence of their full complicity. And this conclusion must exist unquestioned, just so long as the law exists unrepealed. Cease, then, to blazon the humanity of slave-masters. Tell me not of the lenity with which this cruel law is tempered to its unhappy subjects. Tell me not of the sympathy which overflows from the mansion of the master to the cabin of the slave. In vain you assert these instances. In vain you show that there are individuals who do not exert the wickedness of the law. The law still endures. Slavery, which it defines and upholds, continues to outrage Public Opinion, and, within the limits of our Republic, more than three millions of human beings, guilty only of a skin not colored like your own, are left the victims of its unrighteous, irresponsible power.

Power divorced from right is devilish; power without the check of responsibility is tyrannical; and I need not go back to the authority of Plato, when I assert that the most complete injustice is that erected into the form of law. But all these things concur in Slavery. It is, then, on the testimony of slave-masters, solemnly, legislatively, judicially attested in the very law itself, that I now arraign this institution as an outrage upon man and his Creator. And herein is the necessity of the Antislavery Enterprise. A wrong so transcendent, so loathsome, so direful, must be encountered, wherever it can be reached; and the battle must be continued without truce or compromise, until the field is entirely won. Freedom and Slavery can hold no divided empire; nor can there be any true repose, until Freedom is everywhere established.

To the necessity of the Antislavery Enterprise there are two, and only two, main objections,—one founded on the alleged distinction of race, and the other on the alleged sanction of Christianity. All other objections are of inferior character, or are directed logically at its practicability. Of these two main objections let me briefly speak.

1. I begin with the alleged distinction of race. This objection assumes two different forms,—one founded on a prophetic malediction in the Old Testament, and the other on professed observations of recent science. Its importance is apparent in the obvious fact, that, unless such distinction be clearly and unmistakably established, every argument by which our own freedom is vindicated, every applause awarded to the successful rebellion of our fathers, every indignant word ever hurled against the enslavement of white fellow-citizens by Algerine corsairs, must plead trumpet-tongued against the deep damnation of Slavery, black as well as white.

It is said that Africans are the posterity of Ham, son of Noah, through Canaan cursed by Noah, to be the servant of his brethren, and that this malediction has fallen upon all his descendants, including the unhappy Africans,—who are accordingly devoted by God, through unending generations, to unending bondage. Such is the favorite argument at the South, and more than once directly addressed to myself. Here, for instance, is a passage from a letter recently received. “You need not persist,” says the writer, “in confounding Japheth’s children with Ham’s, and making both races one, and arguing on their rights as those of man broadly.” And I have been seriously assured, that, until this objection is answered, it will be vain to press my views upon Congress or the country. Listen now to the texts of the Old Testament which are so strangely employed.

“And he [Noah] said, Cursed be Canaan: a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. And he said, Blessed be the Lord God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem, and Canaan shall be his servant.”[6]

That is all; and I need only read these words in order to expose the whole—transpicuous humbug. I am tempted to add, that, to justify this objection, it is necessary to maintain at least five different propositions, as essential links in the chain of the African slave: first, that by this malediction Canaan himself was actually changed into a chattel,—whereas he is simply made the servant of his brethren; secondly, that not merely Canaan, but all his posterity, to the remotest generation, was so changed,—whereas the language has no such extent; thirdly, that the African actually belongs to the posterity of Canaan,—an ethnographical assumption absurdly difficult to establish; fourthly, that each descendant of Shem and Japheth has a right to hold an African fellow-man as chattel,—a proposition which finds no semblance of support; and, fifthly, that every slave-master is truly descended from Shem or Japheth,—a pedigree which no anxiety or assurance can prove. This plain analysis, which may fitly excite a smile, shows the fivefold absurdity of an attempt to found this revolting wrong on any

“successive title, long and dark,

Drawn from the mouldy rolls of Noah’s ark.”[7]

The small bigotry which finds comfort in these texts has been exalted lately by the voice of Science, undertaking to suggest that the different races of men are not derived from a single pair, but from several distinct stocks, according to their several distinct characteristics; and it is haughtily argued, that the African is so far inferior as to lose all title to that liberty which is the birthright of the lordly white. Now I have neither time nor disposition, on this occasion, to discuss the question of the unity of races; nor is it necessary to my present purpose. It may be that the different races of men proceeded from different stocks; but there is but one great Human Family, in which Caucasian and African, Chinese and Indian, are all brothers, children of one Father, and heirs to one happiness,—alike on earth and in heaven. “Star-eyed Science” cannot shake this everlasting truth. It may exhibit peculiarities in the African, by which he is distinguishable from the Caucasian. In his physical form and intellectual character it may presume to find the stamp of permanent inferiority. But by no reach of learning, no torture of fact, no effrontery of dogma, can any science show that he is not a man. And as a man he stands before you an unquestionable member of the Human Family, entitled to all the rights of man. You can claim nothing for yourself, as man, which you must not accord to him. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, which you proudly declare to be your own inalienable, God-given rights, and to the support of which your fathers pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor, are his by the same immortal title that they are yours.

2. From the objection founded on alleged distinction of race, I pass to that other founded on alleged sanction of Slavery by Christianity. Striving to be brief, I shall not undertake to reconcile texts often quoted from the Old Testament, which, whatever their import, are all absorbed in the New; nor shall I stop to consider the precise interpretation of the familiar phrase, Servants, obey your masters, nor seek to weigh any such imperfect injunction in the scales against those grand commandments on which hang all the Law and the Prophets. Surely, in the example and teachings of the Saviour, who lifted up the down-trodden, who enjoined purity of life, and overflowed with tenderness even to little children, human ingenuity can find no apology for an institution which tramples on man, which defiles woman, and sweeps little children beneath the hammer of the auctioneer. If to any one these things seem to have the license of Christianity, it is only because they have first secured a license in his own soul. Men are prone in uncertain, disconnected texts to find confirmation of their own personal prejudices or prepossessions. And I—who am no theologian, but only a simple layman—make bold to say, that whoever finds in the Gospel any sanction of Slavery finds there merely a reflection of himself. On a matter so irresistibly clear authority is superfluous; but an eminent character, who as poet makes us forget his high place as philosopher, and as philosopher makes us forget his high place as theologian, exposes the essential antagonism between Christianity and Slavery in a few pregnant words, which, by recalling the spirit of our Faith, are more satisfactory than whole volumes of ingenious discussion. “By a principle essential to Christianity,” says Coleridge, “a person is eternally differenced from a thing; so that the idea of a Human Being necessarily excludes the idea of property in that Being.”[8]

With regret, though not with astonishment, I learn that a Boston divine has sought to throw the seamless garment of Christ over this shocking wrong. But I am patient, and see clearly how vain is his effort, when I call to mind, that, within this very century, other divines in another country sought to throw the same sacred vesture over the more shocking slave-trade,—and that, among many publications, a little book was then put forth by a reverend clergyman, with the title, “The African Trade for Negro Slaves shewn to be consistent with Principles of Humanity and with the Laws of Revealed Religion.”[9] Thinking of these things, I am ready to say, with Shakespeare,—

“In religion,

What damnèd error, but some sober brow

Will bless it, and approve it with a text?”

In support of Slavery, it is the habit to pervert texts and to invent authority. Even St. Paul is vouched for a wrong which his Christian life rebukes. Much stress is now laid on his example, as it appears in the Epistle to Philemon, written at Rome, and sent by Onesimus, a servant. From the single chapter constituting the entire epistle I take the following ten verses, most strangely invoked for Slavery.

“I beseech thee for my son Onesimus, whom I have begotten in my bonds; which in time past was to thee unprofitable, but now profitable to thee and to me; whom I have sent again. Thou, therefore, receive him, that is, mine own bowels: whom I would have retained with me, that in thy stead he might have ministered unto me in the bonds of the gospel; but without thy mind would I do nothing; that thy benefit should not be as it were of necessity, but willingly. For perhaps he therefore departed for a season that thou shouldest receive him forever; not now as a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved, specially to me, but how much more unto thee, both in the flesh and in the Lord! If thou count me, therefore, a partner, receive him as myself. If he hath wronged thee, or oweth thee aught, put that on mine account: I Paul have written it with mine own hand, I will repay it: albeit I do not say to thee how thou owest unto me even thine own self besides.”[10]

Out of this affectionate epistle, where St. Paul calls the converted servant, Onesimus, his son, precisely as in another epistle he calls Timothy his son, Slavery is elaborately vindicated, and the great Apostle to the Gentiles made the very tutelary saint of the Slave-Hunter. Now, without invoking his real judgment of Slavery from his condemnation on another occasion of “men-stealers,” or what I prefer to call slave-hunters, in company with “murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers,” and without undertaking to show that the present epistle, when truly interpreted, is a protest against Slavery and a voice for Freedom,—all of which might be done,—I content myself with calling attention to two things, apparent on its face, and in themselves an all-sufficient response. First, while it appears that Onesimus had been in some way the servant of Philemon, it does not appear that he was ever held as chattel; and how gross and monstrous is the effort to derive such a wrong out of words, whether in the Constitution of our country or in the Bible, which do not explicitly, unequivocally, and exclusively define this wrong! Secondly, in charging Onesimus with this epistle to Philemon, the Apostle recommends him as “not now a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved,” and he enjoins upon his correspondent the hospitality due to a freeman, saying expressly, “If thou count me, therefore, a partner, receive him as myself”: ay, Sir, not as slave, not even as servant, but as brother beloved, even as the Apostle himself. Thus, with apostolic pen, wrote Paul to his disciple, Philemon. In these words of gentleness, benediction, and equal rights, dropping with celestial, soul-awakening power, there can be no justification for a conspiracy, which, beginning with the treachery of Iscariot and the temptation of pieces of silver, seeks, by fraud, brutality, and violence, through officers of the law armed to the teeth, like pirates, and amidst soldiers who degrade their uniform, to hurl a fellow-man back into the lash-resounding den of American Slavery; and when any one thus perverts this beneficent example, allow me to say that he gives too much occasion to doubt his intelligence or his sincerity.

Certainly I am right in stripping from Slavery the apology of Christianity, which it has tenaciously hugged; and here I leave the first part of my subject, asserting, against every objection, the Necessity of our Enterprise.

II.

I am now brought, in the second place, to the Practicability of the Enterprise. And here the way is easy. In showing its necessity, I have already demonstrated its practicability; for the former includes the latter, as the greater includes the less. Whatever is necessary must be practicable. By a decree which is a proverb of tyranny, the Israelites were compelled to make bricks without straw; but it is not according to the ways of a benevolent Providence that man should be constrained to do what cannot be done. Besides, the Antislavery Enterprise is right; and the right is always practicable.

I know well the little faith of the world in the triumph of principles, and I readily imagine the despair with which our object is regarded; but not on this account am I disheartened. That exuberant writer, Sir Thomas Browne, breaks into ecstatic wish for some new difficulty in Christian belief, that his faith may have a new victory; and an eminent enthusiast went so far as to say, “I believe because it is impossible,”—Credo quia impossibile. No such exalted faith is now required. Here is no impossibility; nor is there any difficulty which will not yield to faithful, well-directed endeavor. If to any timid soul the Enterprise seems impossible because it is too beautiful, then do I say at once that it is too beautiful not to be possible.

Descending from these summits, let me show plainly the object it seeks to accomplish; and here you will see and confess its complete practicability. While discountenancing all prejudice of color and every establishment of caste, the Antislavery Enterprise—at least so far as I may speak for it—does not undertake to change human nature, or to force any individual into relations of life for which he is not morally, intellectually, and socially adapted; nor does it necessarily assume that a race, degraded for long generations under the iron heel of bondage, can be taught at once all the political duties of an American citizen. But, Sir, it does confidently assume, against all question, contradiction, or assault whatever, that every man is entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and, with equal confidence, it asserts that every individual who wears the human form, whether black or white, should be recognized at once as man. When this is done, I know not what other trials may be in wait for the unhappy African; but this I do know, that the Antislavery Enterprise will then have triumphed, and the institution of Slavery, as defined by existing law, will no longer shock mankind.

In this work, the first essential, practical requisite is, that the question shall be openly and frankly confronted. Do not put it aside. Do not blink it out of sight. Do not dodge it. Approach it. Study it. Ponder it. Deal with it. Let it rest in the illumination of speech, conversation, and the press. Let it fill the thoughts of the statesman and the prayers of the pulpit. When Slavery is thus regarded, its true character will be recognized, as a hateful assemblage of unquestionable wrongs under sanction of existing law, and good men will be moved to apply the remedy. Already even its zealots admit that its “abuses” should be removed. This is their word, not mine. Alas! alas! Sir, it is these very “abuses” that constitute its component parts, without which it would not exist,—even as the scourges in a bundle with the axe constituted the dread fasces of the Roman lictor. Take away these, and the whole embodied outrage disappears. Surely that central assumption—more deadly than axe itself—by which man is changed into a chattel, may be abandoned; and is not this practicable? The associate scourges by which that transcendent “abuse” is surrounded may, one by one, be subtracted. The “abuse” which substitutes concubinage for marriage, the “abuse” which annuls the parental relation, the “abuse” which closes the portals of knowledge, the “abuse” which tyrannically usurps all the labor of another, now upheld by positive law, may by positive law be abolished. To say that this is not practicable, in the nineteenth century, is a scandal upon mankind, and just in proportion as these “abuses” cease to have the sanction of law will the institution of Slavery cease to exist. The African, whatever may be then his condition, will no longer be the slave over whose wrongs and sorrows the world throbs at times fiercely indignant, and at times painfully sad, while with outstretched arms he sends forth the piteous cry, “Am I not a man and a brother?”

In pressing forward to this result, the inquiry is often presented, To what extent, if any, shall compensation be allowed to slave-masters? Clearly, if the point be determined by absolute justice, not the masters, but the slaves, are entitled to compensation; for it is the slaves who, throughout weary generations, have been deprived of the fruits of their toil, all constantly enriching their masters. Besides, it seems hardly reasonable to pay for the relinquishment of disgusting “abuses,” which, in their aggregation, constitute the bundle of Slavery. Pray, Sir, by what tariff, price-current, or principle of equation, shall their several values be estimated? What sum shall be counted out as the proper price for the abandonment of that pretension—more indecent than the jus primæ noctis of the feudal age—which leaves woman, whether in the arms of master or slave, always a concubine? What bribe shall be proffered for restoration of God-given paternal rights? What money shall be paid for taking off the padlock by which souls are fastened down in darkness? How much for a quit-claim to labor now meanly exacted by the strong from the weak? And what compensation shall be awarded for the egregious assumption, condemned by reason and abhorred by piety, which changes man into a thing? I put these questions without undertaking to pass upon them. Shrinking instinctively from any recognition of rights founded on wrongs, I find myself shrinking also from any austere verdict which shall deny any means necessary to the great consummation. Our fathers, under Washington, did not hesitate, by Act of Congress, to appropriate largely for the ransom of white fellow-citizens enslaved by Algerine corsairs; and, following this example, I am disposed to consider the question of compensation as one of expediency, to be determined by the exigency of the hour and the constitutional powers of the Government,—though such is my desire to see the disappearance of Slavery, that I could not hesitate to build a Bridge of Gold, if necessary, for the retreating fiend.

The Practicability of the Antislavery Enterprise is constantly questioned, often so superficially as to be answered at once. I shall not take time to consider the allegation, founded on assumptions of economy, which audaciously assumes that Slave Labor is more advantageous than Free Labor, that Slavery is more profitable than Freedom, for this is all exploded by official tables of the census,—nor that other futile argument, that the slaves are not prepared for Freedom, and therefore should not be precipitated into this condition, for this is no better than the ancient Greek folly, where the anxious mother would not allow her son to enter the water until he had learned to swim.

As against the Necessity of the Antislavery Enterprise there were two chief objections, so also against its Practicability there are two,—the first founded on alleged danger to the master, and the second on alleged damage to the slave himself.

1. The first objection, founded on alleged danger to the master, most generally takes the extravagant form, that the slave, if released from his present condition, would “cut his master’s throat.” Here is a blatant paradox, which can pass for reason only among those who have lost their reason. With absurdity having no parallel except in the defences of Slavery, it assumes that the African, when treated justly, will show a vindictiveness he does not exhibit when treated unjustly,—that, when elevated by the blessings of Freedom, he will develop an appetite for blood never manifested when crushed by the curse of bondage. At present, the slave sees his wife ravished from his arms,—sees his infant swept away to the auction-block,—sees the heavenly gates of knowledge shut upon him,—sees his industry and all its fruits unjustly snatched by another,—sees himself and his offspring doomed to servitude from which there is no redemption; and still his master sleeps secure. Will the master sleep less secure when the slave no longer smarts under these revolting atrocities? I will not trifle with your intelligence, or with the quick-passing hour, by arguing this question.

There is a lofty example, brightening the historic page, by which the seal of experience is affixed to the conclusion of reason; and you would hardly pardon me, if I failed to adduce it. By a single Act of Parliament the slaves of the British West Indies were changed at once to freedmen; and this great transition was accomplished absolutely without personal danger of any kind to the master. And yet the chance of danger there was greater far than among us. In our broad country the slaves are overshadowed by a more than sixfold white population. Only in two States, South Carolina and Mississippi, do the slaves outnumber the whites, and there not greatly, while in the entire Slave States the whites outnumber the slaves by millions. It was otherwise in the British West Indies, where the whites were overshadowed by a more than sixfold population. The slaves were 800,000, while the whites numbered only 131,000, distributed in different proportions on the different islands. And this disproportion has since increased rather than diminished, always without danger to the whites. In Jamaica, the largest of these possessions, there are now upwards of 400,000 Africans, and only 15,000 whites; in Barbadoes, the next largest, 120,000 Africans, and only 16,000 whites; in St. Lucia, 24,000 Africans, and only 900 whites; in Tobago, 14,000 Africans, and only 160 whites; in Montserrat, 7,000 Africans, and only 150 whites; and in the Grenadines, upwards of 6,000 Africans, and only about 60 whites.[11] And yet the authorities in all these places attest the good behavior of the Africans. Sir Lionel Smith, Governor of Jamaica, in a speech to the Assembly, declares that their conduct “amply proves how well they have deserved the boon of Freedom”;[12] the Governor of the Leeward Islands dwells on “the peculiarly rare instances of the commission of grave or sanguinary crimes amongst the emancipated population of these islands”;[13] and the Queen of England, in a speech from the throne, has announced that the complete and final emancipation of the Africans had “taken place without any disturbance of public order and tranquillity.”[14] In this example I find new confirmation of the rule, that the highest safety is in doing right; and thus do I dismiss the objection founded on alleged danger to the master.

2. I am now brought to the second objection, founded on alleged damage to the slave. It is common among partisans of Slavery to assert that our Enterprise has actually retarded the cause it seeks to promote; and this paradoxical accusation, which might naturally show itself among the rank weeds of the South, is cherished here on our Northern soil among those who look for any fig-leaf with which to cover indifference or tergiversation.

This peculiar form of complaint is an old device, instinctively employed on other occasions, until it ceases to be even plausible. Thus, throughout all time, has every good cause been encountered. The Saviour was nailed to the cross with a crown of thorns on his head, as a disturber of that peace on earth which he came to declare. The Disciples, while preaching the Gospel of forgiveness and good-will, were stoned as preachers of sedition and discord. The Reformers, who sought to establish a higher piety and faith, were burnt at the stake as blasphemers and infidels. Patriots, in all ages, striving for their country’s good, have been doomed to the scaffold or to exile, even as their country’s enemies. Those brave Englishmen, who, at home, under the lead of Edmund Burke, espoused the cause of our fathers, shared the same illogical impeachment, which was touched to the quick by that orator statesman, when, after exposing its essential vice, in “attributing the ill effect of ill-judged conduct to the arguments which had been used to dissuade us from it,” he denounced it as “absurd, but very common in modern practice, and very wicked.”[15] Ay, Sir, it is common in modern practice. In England it has vainly renewed itself with special frequency against Bible Societies,—against the friends of education,—against the patrons of vaccination,—against the partisans of peace,—all of whom have been openly arraigned as provoking and increasing the very evils, whether of infidelity, ignorance, disease, or war, which they benignly seek to check. To bring an instance precisely applicable to our own,—Wilberforce, when conducting the Antislavery Enterprise of England, first against the Slave-Trade, and then against Slavery itself, was told that those efforts, by which his name is now consecrated forevermore, tended to increase the hardships of the slave, even to the extent of riveting anew his chains. Such are precedents for the imputation to which our Enterprise is exposed; and such, also, are precedents by which I exhibit the fallacy of the imputation.

Sir, I do not doubt that the Enterprise produces heat and irritation, amounting often to inflammation, among slave-masters, which to superficial minds seems inconsistent with success, but which the careful observer will recognize at once as the natural and not unhealthy effort of a diseased body to purge itself of existing impurities; and just in proportion to the malignity of the concealed poison will be the extent of inflammation. A distemper like Slavery cannot be ejected like a splinter. It is too much to expect that men thus tortured should reason calmly, that patients thus suffering should comprehend the true nature of their case and kindly acknowledge the beneficent cure; but not on this account can it be suspended. Nor, when we consider the character of Slavery, can it be expected that men who sustain it will be tranquil. Conscience has its voice, and will be heard in awful warning hurrying to and fro in the midnight hour. Its outcry is more natural than silence.

In the face of this complaint, I assert that the Antislavery Enterprise has already accomplished incalculable good. Even now it sweeps the national heart, compelling it to emotions of transforming power. All are touched,—the young, the middle-aged, the old. There is a new glow at the household hearth. Mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters are aroused to take part in the great battle. There is a new aspiration for justice on earth, awakening not merely a sentiment against Slavery, such as prevailed with our fathers, but a deep, undying conviction of its wrong, and a determination to leave no effort unattempted for its removal. With the sympathies of all Christendom as allies, already it encompasses the slave-masters by a moral blockade, invisible to the eye, but more potent than navies, from which there can be no escape except in final capitulation. Thus it has created the irresistible influence which itself constitutes the beginning of success.

Already are signs of change. In common speech, as well as in writing, among slave-masters, the bondman is no longer called slave, but servant,—thus, by soft substitution, concealing and condemning the true relation. Newspapers, even in the land of bondage, blush at the hunt of men by bloodhounds,—thus protesting against an unquestionable incident of Slavery. Other signs appear in the added comfort of the slave,—in the enlarged attention to his wants,—in the experiments now beginning, by which the slave is enabled to share in the profits of his labor, and thus finally secure his freedom,—and, above all, in the consciousness among slave-masters that they dwell now, as never before, under the keen observation of an ever-wakeful Public Opinion, quickened by an ever-wakeful Public Press. Nor is this all. Only lately propositions were introduced into the Legislatures of different States, and countenanced by Governors, to mitigate the existing Law of Slavery; and almost while speaking, I have received drafts of two different memorials, one to the Legislature of Virginia, and the other to that of North Carolina, asking for the slave three things, which it will be monstrous to refuse, but which, if conceded, will take from Slavery its existing character: I mean, first, the protection of the marriage relation; secondly, the protection of the parental relation; and, thirdly, the privilege of knowledge. Grant these, and the girdled Upas tree soon must die. Sir, amidst these tokens of present success, and the auguries of the future, I am not disturbed by complaints of seeming damage. “Though it consume our own dwelling, who does not venerate fire, without which human life can hardly exist on earth?” says the Hindoo proverb; and the time is even now at hand, when the Antislavery Enterprise, which is the very fire of Freedom, with all its incidental excesses and excitements, will be hailed with similar regard.

III.

It remains to show, in the third place, that the Antislavery Enterprise, which stands before you at once necessary and practicable, is commended by inherent Dignity. Here reasons are obvious and unanswerable.

Its object is benevolent; nor is there in the dreary annals of the Past a single enterprise more clearly and indisputably entitled to this character. With unsurpassed and touching magnanimity, it seeks to benefit the lowly whom your eyes have not seen, and who are ignorant even of your labors, while it demands and receives a self-sacrifice calculated to ennoble an enterprise of even questionable merit. Its true rank is among works properly called philanthropic,—the title of highest honor on earth. “I take goodness in this sense,” says Lord Bacon in his Essays, “the affecting of the weal of men, which is that the Grecians call Philanthropia, … of all virtues and dignities of the mind the greatest, being the character of the Deity; and without it, man is a busy, mischievous, wretched thing, no better than a kind of vermin.”[16] Lord Bacon was right, and perhaps unconsciously followed a higher authority; for, when Moses asked the Lord to show him his glory, the Lord said, “I will make all my goodness pass before thee.”[17] Ah! Sir, Peace has trophies fairer and more perennial than any snatched from fields of blood, but, among all these, the fairest and most perennial are the trophies of beneficence. Scholarship, literature, jurisprudence, art, may wear their well-deserved honors; but an enterprise of goodness deserves, and will yet receive, a higher palm than these.

In other aspects its dignity is apparent. It concerns the cause of Human Freedom, which from earliest days has been the darling of History. By all the memories of the Past, by the stories of childhood and the studies of youth, by every example of magnanimous virtue, by every aspiration for the good and true, by the fame of martyrs swelling through all time, by the renown of patriots whose lives are landmarks of progress, by the praise lavished upon our fathers, are you summoned to this work. Unless Freedom be an illusion, and Benevolence an error, you cannot resist the appeal. Who can doubt that our cause is nobler even than that of our fathers? for is it not more exalted to struggle for the freedom of others than for our own?

Its practical importance at this moment gives to it additional eminence. Whether measured by the number of beings it seeks to benefit, by the magnitude of the wrongs it hopes to relieve, by the difficulties with which it is beset, by the political relations which it affects, or by the ability and character it enlists, the cause of the slave now assumes proportions of grandeur which dwarf all other interests in our broad country. In its presence the machinations of politicians, the aspirations of office-seekers, and the subterfuges of party, all sink below even their ordinary insignificance. For myself, Sir, I see among us at this time little else by which an honest man, wishing to leave the world better than he found it, can be tempted out upon the exposed steeps of public life. I see little else which can afford any of those satisfactions an honest man should covet. Nor is there any cause so surely promising final success:—

“Oh! a fair cause stands firm and will abide;

Legions of angels fight upon her side!”[18]

It is written that in the last days there shall be scoffers, and even this Enterprise, thus philanthropic, does not escape their aspersions. As the objections to its Necessity were twofold, and the objections to its Practicability twofold, so also are the aspersions twofold,—first, in the form of hard words, and, secondly, by personal disparagement of those engaged in it.

1. The hard words are manifold as the passions and prejudices of men; but they generally end in the imputation of “fanaticism.” In such a cause I am willing to be called “fanatic,” or what you will; I care not for aspersions, nor shall I shrink before hard words, either here or elsewhere. They do not hurt. “My dear Doctor,” said Johnson to Goldsmith, “what harm does it do any man to call him Holofernes?” From that great Englishman, Oliver Cromwell, I have learned that one cannot be trusted “who is afraid of a paper pellet”; and I am too familiar with history not to know that every movement for reform, in Church or State, every endeavor for Human Liberty or Human Rights, has been thus assailed. I do not forget with what facility and frequency hard words are employed: how that grandest character of many generations, the precursor of our own Washington, without whose example our Republic might have failed, the great William, Prince of Orange, founder of the Dutch Republic, the United States of Holland,—I do not forget how he was publicly branded as “a perjurer and a pest of society”; and, not to dwell on general instances, how the enterprise for the abolition of the slave-trade was characterized on the floor of Parliament, by one eminent speaker as “mischievous,” and by another as “visionary and delusive”; and how the exalted characters which it enlisted were arraigned by still another eminent speaker,—none other than that Tarleton, so conspicuous as commander of the British horse in the Southern campaigns of our Revolution, but more conspicuous in politics at home,—“as a junto of sectaries, sophists, enthusiasts, and fanatics”; and yet again were arraigned by no less a person than a prince of the blood, the Duke of Clarence, afterwards William the Fourth of England, as “either fanatics or hypocrites,” in one of which categories he openly placed William Wilberforce.[19] Impartial History, with immortal pen, has redressed these impassioned judgments; nor has the voice of the poet been wanting:—

“Thy country, Wilberforce, with just disdain,

Hears thee by cruel men and impious called

Fanatic, for thy zeal to loose the inthralled

From exile, public sale, and slavery’s chain.”[20]

But the same impartial History will yet re-judge the impassioned judgments of this hour.

2. Hard words have been followed by personal disparagement, and the sneer is often raised that our Enterprise lacks the authority of names eminent in Church and State. If this be so, the more is the pity on their account; for our cause is needful to them more than they are needful to our cause. Alas! it is only according to example of history that it should be so. It is not the eminent in Church and State, the rich and powerful, the favorites of fortune and of place, who most promptly welcome Truth, when she heralds change in the existing order of things. It is others in poorer condition who open hospitable hearts to the unattended stranger. This is a sad story, beginning with the Saviour, whose disciples were fishermen, and ending only in our own day. Each generation has its instances. But the cause cannot be judged by any such indifference. Strong in essential truth, it awaits the day, surely at hand, when all will flock to its support. As the rights of man are at last recognized, the scoffers, now so heartless, will forget to scoff.

And now, Sir, I present to you the Antislavery Enterprise vindicated, in Necessity, Practicability, and Dignity, against all objection. If there be any which I have not answered, it is because I am not aware of its existence. It remains that I should give a practical conclusion to this whole matter, by showing, though in glimpses only, your Special Duties as Freemen of the North. And, thank God! at last there is a North.

Mr. President, it is not uncommon to hear persons among us at the North confess the wrong of Slavery, and then, folding the hands in absolute listlessness, ejaculate, “What can we do about it?” Such we encounter daily. You all know them. Among them are men in every department of human activity,—who perpetually buy, build, and plan,—who shrink from no labor,—who are daunted by no peril of commercial adventure, by no hardihood of industrial enterprise,—who, reaching in their undertakings across ocean and continent, would promise to “put a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes”; and yet, disheartened, they can join in no effort against Slavery. Others there are, especially among the youthful and enthusiastic, who vainly sigh because they were not born in the age of Chivalry, or at least in the days of the Revolution, not thinking that in this Enterprise there is opportunity for lofty endeavor such as no Paladin of Chivalry or chief of the Revolution enjoyed. Others there are who freely bestow means and time upon distant, inaccessible heathen of another hemisphere, in islands of the sea; and yet they can do nothing to mitigate our graver heathenism here at home. While confessing that it ought to disappear from the earth, they forego, renounce, and abandon all effort to this end. Others there are still (such is human inconsistency!) who plant the tree in whose full-grown shade they can never expect to sit,—who hopefully drop the acorn in the earth, trusting that the oak which it sends upward to the skies will shelter their children beneath its shade; but they do nothing to plant or nurture the great tree of Liberty, that it may shield with its arms unborn generations of men.

Others still there are, particularly in large cities, who content themselves with occasional contribution to the redemption of a slave. To this object they give out of ample riches, and thus seek to silence the monitions of conscience. I would not discountenance any activity by which Human Freedom, even in a single case, may be secured; but I desire to say that such an act—too often accompanied by pharisaical pretension, in contrast with the petty performance—cannot be considered essential aid to the Antislavery Enterprise. Not in this way can impression be made on an evil so vast as Slavery,—so widely scattered, and so exhaustless in its unnatural supply. The god Thor, of Scandinavian mythology, whose power surpassed that of Hercules, was once challenged to drain dry a simple cup. He applied it to his lips, and with superhuman capacity drank, but the water did not recede even from the rim, and at last the god abandoned the trial. The failure of even his extraordinary prowess was explained, when he learned that the cup communicated, by invisible connection, with the whole vast ocean behind, out of which it was perpetually supplied, and which remained absolutely unaffected by the effort. And just so will these occasions of charity, though encountered by the largest private means, be constantly renewed; for they communicate with the whole Black Sea of Slavery behind, out of which they are perpetually supplied, and which remains absolutely unaffected by the effort. Sir, private means may cope with individual necessities, but they are powerless to redress the evils of a wicked institution. Charity is limited and local; the evils of Slavery are infinite and everywhere. Besides, a wrong organized and upheld by law can be removed only through change of the law. Not, then, by occasional contribution to ransom a slave can your duty be done in this great cause, but only by earnest, constant, valiant effort against the institution, against the law, which makes slaves.

I am not insensible to the difficulties of this work. Full well I know the power of Slavery. Full well I know all its various intrenchments in the Church, the politics, and the prejudices of the country. Full well I know the wakeful interests of property, amounting to many hundred millions of dollars, which are said to be at stake. But these things can furnish no motive or apology for indifference, or any folding of the hands. Surely the wrong is not less wrong because gigantic; the evil is not less evil because immeasurable; nor can the duty of perpetual warfare with wrong and evil be in this instance suspended. Nay, because Slavery is powerful, because the Enterprise is difficult, therefore is the duty of all more exigent. The well-tempered soul does not yield to difficulties, but presses onward forever with increased resolution.

But the question recurs, so often pressed in argument, or in taunt, What have we at the North to do with Slavery? In answer, I might content myself by saying, that, as members of the human family, bound together by cords of common manhood, there is no human wrong to which we can be insensible, nor is there any human sorrow which we should not seek to relieve; but I prefer to say, on this occasion, that, as citizens of the United States, anxious for the good name, the repose, and the prosperity of the Republic, that it may be a blessing and not a curse to mankind, there is nothing among all its diversified interests, under the National Constitution, with which, at this moment, we have so much to do; nor is there anything with regard to which our duties are so irresistibly clear. I do not dwell on the scandal of Slavery in the national capital, of Slavery in the national territories, of the coastwise slave-trade on the high seas beneath the national flag,—all of which are outside State limits, and within the exclusive jurisdiction of Congress, where you and I, Sir, and every freeman of the North, are compelled to share the giant sin and help to bind its chain. To dislodge Slavery from these usurped footholds, and thus at once relieve ourselves from grievous responsibility, and begin the great work of Emancipation, were an object worthy an exalted ambition. But before even this can be commenced, there is a great work, more than any other important and urgent, which must be consummated in the domain of national politics, and also here at home in the Free States. The National Government itself must be emancipated, so that it shall no longer wear the yoke of servitude; and Slavery in all its pretensions must be dislodged from a usurped foothold in the Free States themselves, thus relieving ourselves from serious responsibility at our own door, and emancipating the North. Emancipation, even within the national jurisdiction, can be achieved only through emancipation of the Free States, accompanied by complete emancipation of the National Government. Ay, Sir, emancipation at the South can be reached only through emancipation of the North. And this is my answer to the interrogatory, What have we at the North to do with Slavery?

But the answer may be made yet more irresistible, while, with mingled sorrow and shame, I portray the tyrannical power which holds us in thraldom. Notwithstanding all its excess of numbers, wealth, and intelligence, the North is now the vassal of an OLIGARCHY, whose single inspiration comes from Slavery. According to official tables of our recent census, the slave-masters, all told, are only THREE HUNDRED AND FORTY-SEVEN THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FIVE;[21] and yet this small company now dominates over the Republic, determines its national policy, disposes of its offices, and sways all to its absolute will. With a watchfulness that never sleeps and an activity that never tires, the SLAVE OLIGARCHY asserts its perpetual and insatiate masterdom,—now seizing a broad territory once covered by a time-honored ordinance of Freedom,—now threatening to wrest Cuba from Spain by violent war, or hardly less violent purchase,—now hankering for another slice of Mexico, merely to find new scope for Slavery,—now proposing once more to open the hideous, Heaven-defying Slave-Trade, thus replenishing its shambles with human flesh,—and now, by the lips of an eminent Senator, asserting an audacious claim to the whole group of the West Indies, whether held by Holland, Spain, France, or England, as “our Southern islands,”[22] while it assails the independence of Hayti, and extends its treacherous ambition even to the distant valley of the Amazon.

For all this tyranny there must be tools, and these are found through a new test for office, where Slavery is the shibboleth. Nobody, throughout this Republic, who cannot repeat the hateful word, is taken,—nobody, unless faithful to Slavery, is accepted for any post under the National Government. Yes, let it be proclaimed, that now at last, not honesty, not capacity, not fidelity to the Constitution is the test for office, but unhesitating support of Slavery. This is fidelity, this is loyalty, according to the new dispensation. And thus the strength of the whole people is transfused into this oligarchy. The Constitution, the flag itself, and everything we call our own, is degraded to this wicked rule.

And this giant strength is used with giant heartlessness. By cruel enactment, which has no source in the Constitution, which defies justice, tramples on humanity, and rebels against God, the Free States are made the hunting-ground for slaves, and you and I and all good citizens are pressed to join in the loathsome and abhorred work. Your hearts and judgments, swift to feel and to condemn, will not require me to expose here the abomination of the Fugitive Slave Bill, or its unconstitutionality. Elsewhere I have done this, and never been answered. Nor will you expect that an enactment so entirely devoid of all just sanction should be called by the sacred name of law. History still repeats the language in which our fathers persevered, when they denounced the last emanation of British tyranny which heralded the Revolution, as the Boston Port Bill; and I am content with this precedent. I have said, that, if any man finds in the Gospel any support of Slavery, it is because Slavery is already in himself; so do I now say, if any man finds in the Constitution of our country any support of the Fugitive Slave Bill, it is because that bill is already in himself. One of our ancient masters—Aristotle, I think—tells us that every man has a beast in his bosom; but the Northern citizen who has the Fugitive Slave Bill there has worse than a beast,—a devil! And yet in this bill, more even than in the ostracism at which you rebel, does the Slave Oligarchy stand confessed,—heartless, grasping, tyrannical,—careless of humanity, right, or the Constitution,—whose foundation is a coalition of wrong-doers, without even the semblance of decency,—while it degrades the Free States to the condition of a slave plantation, under the lash of a vulgar, despised, and revolting overseer.

Surely, fellow-citizens, without hesitation or postponement, you will insist that this Oligarchy shall be overthrown; and here is the foremost among the special duties of the North, now required for the honor of the Republic, for our own defence, and in obedience to God.

In urging this comprehensive duty, I ought to have hours rather than minutes; but in a few words you shall see its comprehensive importance. With the disappearance of the Slave Oligarchy, the wickedness of the Fugitive Slave Bill will drop from the statute-book,—Slavery will cease at the national capital,—Freedom will become the universal law of the national territory,—the Slave-Trade will no longer skulk along our coast beneath the national flag,—the Slave-marriage of the nation will be dissolved,—the rule of our country will be Freedom instead of Slavery,—the North will no longer be trampled on by the South,—the North will at last be allowed its just proportion of office and honor. Let all this be done, and much more will follow. With the disappearance of the Slave Oligarchy, you will possess the master-key to unlock the whole house of bondage. Oh, Sir! prostrate the Slave Oligarchy, and the gates of Emancipation will be open at the South.

Without waiting for this consummation, there is another special duty here at home, on our own soil, which must be made free in reality, as in name. And here I shall speak frankly, though not without a proper sense of the responsibility of my words. I know that I cannot address you entirely as a private citizen; but I shall say nothing here which I have not said elsewhere, and which I shall not be proud to vindicate everywhere. “A lie,” it has been declared, “should be trampled out and extinguished forever”; and surely you will do nothing less with a tyrannical and wicked enactment. The Fugitive Slave Bill, while it continues unrepealed, must be made a dead letter,—not by violence, not by any unconstitutional activity or intervention, not even by hasty conflict between jurisdictions,—but by an aroused Public Opinion, which, in its irresistible might, shall blast with contempt, indignation, and abhorrence all who consent to be its agents. Thus did our fathers blast all who became agents of the Stamp Act; and surely their motive was small, compared with ours. The Slave-Hunter who drags his victim from Africa is loathed as a monster; but I defy any acuteness of reason to indicate the moral difference between his act and that of the Slave-Hunter who drags his victim from our Northern free soil. A few puny persons, calling themselves Congress, with titles of Representatives and Senators, cannot turn wrong into right, cannot change a man into a thing, cannot reverse the irreversible law of God, cannot make him wicked who hunts a slave on the burning sands of Congo or Guinea, and make him virtuous who hunts a slave over the pavements of Boston or New York. Nor can any acuteness of reason distinguish between the original bill of sale from the kidnapper, by which the unhappy African was transferred in Congo or Guinea, and the certificate of the Commissioner, by which, when once again in Freedom, he is reduced anew to bondage. The acts are kindred, and should share a kindred condemnation.

One man’s virtue becomes a standard of excellence for all; and there is now in Boston a simple citizen whose example may be a lesson to Commissioners, Marshals, Magistrates, while it fills all with the beauty of a generous act. I refer to Mr. Hayes, who resigned his place in the city police rather than take part in the pack of the Slave-Hunter. He is now the door-keeper of the public edifice honored this winter by the triumphant lectures on Slavery. Better be a door-keeper in the house of the Lord than a dweller in the tents of the ungodly. Has he not chosen well? Little think those now doing the work of Slavery that the time is near when all this will be dishonor and sadness. For myself, long ago my mind was made up. Nothing will I have to do with it. How can I help to make a slave? The idea alone is painful. To do this thing would plant in my soul a remorse which no time could remove or mitigate. His chains would clank in my ears. His cries would strike upon my heart. His voice would be my terrible accuser. Mr. President, may no such voice fall on your soul or mine!

Yes, Sir, here our duty is plain and paramount. While the Slave Oligarchy, through its unrepealed Slave Bill, undertakes to enslave our free soil, we can only turn for protection to a Public Opinion worthy of a humane, just, and religious people, which shall keep perpetual guard over the liberties of all within our borders. On this from the beginning I have relied. On this I now rely. Wherever it is already strong, I would keep it so; wherever it is weak, I would strengthen it, until of itself it is an all-sufficient protection, with watch and ward surrounding the fugitive, surrounding all. And this Public Opinion, with Freedom as its countersign, must proclaim not only the overthrow of the Slave Bill, but also the overthrow of the Slave Oligarchy behind,—the two pressing duties of the North, essential to our own emancipation; and believe me, Sir, while they remain undone, nothing is done.

Mr. President, far already have I trespassed upon your generous patience; but there are other things pressing for utterance. Something would I say of the arguments by which our Enterprise is commended; something also of the appeal it makes to people of every condition; and something, too, of union, as a vital necessity, among all who love Freedom.

I know not if our work will be soon accomplished. I know not, Sir, if you or I shall live to see in our Republic the vows of the Fathers at length fulfilled, as the last fetter falls from the last slave. But one thing I do know, beyond all doubt or question: that this Enterprise must go on; that, in its irresistible current, it will sweep schools, colleges, churches, the intelligence, the conscience, and the religious aspiration of the land, while all who stand in its way or speak evil of it are laying up sorrow and shame for their children, if not for themselves. Better strive in this cause, even unsuccessfully, than never strive at all. The penalty of indifference is akin to the penalty of opposition,—as is well pictured by the great Italian poet, when, among the saddest on the banks of Acheron, rending the air with outcries of torment, shrieks of anger, and smiting of hands, he finds the troop of dreary souls who had been ciphers in the great conflicts of life:—

“Mingled with whom, of their disgrace the proof,

Are the vile angels, who did not rebel,

Nor kept their faith to God, but stood aloof.”[23]

There is no weapon in the celestial armory of Truth, no sweet influence from the skies, no generous word from human lips, which may not be employed. Ours, too, is the argument alike of the Conservative and the Reformer; for our cause stands on the truest conservatism and the truest reform. It seeks the conservation of Freedom itself, and of kindred historic principles; it seeks also the reform of Slavery, and of the kindred tyranny by which it is upheld. Religion, morals, justice, economy, the Constitution, each and all, may be invoked; and one person is touched by one argument, while another person is touched by another. You do not forget how Christopher Columbus won Isabella of Spain to his enterprise of discovery. He began with the temptation of extending her dominions; but she hearkened not. Next he promised the dazzling wealth of the Indies; and still she hearkened not. When, at last, to her pious imagination were pictured poor heathen with souls to be saved, then the youthful Queen poured her royal jewels into the lap of the Genoese adventurer, and at her expense went forth that small fleet which gave to Spain and to mankind a New World.

As in this Enterprise there is a place for every argument, so also is there a place for every man. Even as on the broad shield of Achilles, sculptured by divine art, was wrought every form of human activity, so in this cause, which is the very shield of Freedom, whatever man can do by deed or speech will find its place. One may act in one way, and another in another way; but all must act. Providence is felt through individuals; the dropping of water wears away the rock; and no man can be too humble or poor for this work, while to all the happy in genius, fortune, or fame it makes a special appeal. Here is room for the strength of Luther and the sweetness of Melancthon, for the wisdom of age and the ardor of youth, for the judgment of the statesman and the eloquence of the orator, for the grace of the scholar and the aspiration of the poet, for the learning of the professor and the skill of the lawyer, for the exhortation of the preacher and the persuasion of the press, for the various energy of man and the abounding sympathy of woman.

And still one thing more is needed, without which Liberty-loving men, and their arguments, will fail in power,—even as without charity all graces of knowledge, speech, and faith are said to profit nothing. I mean that Unity of Spirit—in itself a fountain of strength—which, filling the people of the North, shall make them tread under foot past antipathies, decayed dissensions, and those irritating names which now exist only as tattered ensigns of ancient strife. It is right to be taught by the enemy; and with their example before us, and their power brandished in our very faces, we cannot hesitate. With them Slavery is the mainspring of political life, and the absorbing centre of political activity; with them all differences are swallowed up by this one idea, as all other rods were swallowed up by the rod of Aaron; with them all unite to keep the National Government under the control of slave-masters: and surely we should not do less for Freedom than they do for Slavery. We, too, must be united. Among us at last mutual criticism, crimination, and feud must give place to mutual sympathy, trust, and alliance. Face to face against the Slave Oligarchy must be rallied the UNITED MASSES of the North, in compact political association,—planted on the everlasting base of justice,—knit together by instincts of a common danger and holy sympathies of humanity,—enkindled by love of Freedom, not only for themselves, but for others,—determined to enfranchise the National Government from degrading thraldom,—and constituting the BACKBONE PARTY, powerful in numbers, wealth, and intelligence, but more powerful still in an inspiring cause. Let this be done, and victory will be ours.

NEW OUTRAGE FOR THE SAKE OF SLAVERY.

Letter to Passmore Williamson, in Moyamensing Prison, August 11, 1855.

Mr. Sumner occupied several weeks of this summer in a tour to the West, ascending the Mississippi to St. Paul, and then, from Detroit, visiting Lake Superior. While on board a steamer in Lake Superior, he learned by the newspapers that Passmore Williamson, an excellent citizen of Philadelphia, had been flung into prison for the offence of reminding a person claimed as slave, that, being brought to Philadelphia voluntarily by her pretended master, she was free, according to well-known principles of jurisprudence. The indignation of Mr. Sumner found expression in the following letter, which he addressed to the new victim of Slavery.

This remarkable case will be found in a volume published at Philadelphia, in 1856, with the following title: “Case of Passmore Williamson. Report of the Proceedings on the Writ of Habeas Corpus issued by the Hon. John K. Kane, Judge of the District Court of the United States for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, in the Case of the United States of America ex rel. John H. Wheeler vs. Passmore Williamson, including the several Opinions delivered, and the Arguments of Counsel, reported by Arthur Cannon, Esq., Phonographer.” From this it appears that John H. Wheeler, of Virginia, in a petition to Hon. John K. Kane, Judge of the District Court of the United States for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, dated July 18, 1855, sets forth, that he is “the owner of three persons held to service or labor by the laws of the State of Virginia, said persons being respectively named Jane, aged about thirty-five years, Daniel, aged about twelve years, and Isaiah, aged about seven years, persons of color, and that they are detained from the possession of your petitioner by one Passmore Williamson, resident of the city of Philadelphia, and that they are not detained for any criminal or supposed criminal matter,” and asks a writ of Habeas Corpus commanding Mr. Williamson to bring before the Judge the bodies of the said Jane, Daniel, and Isaiah. The writ was at once allowed, and the next day followed by another, to which Mr. Williamson made return, that “the within named Jane, Daniel, and Isaiah, or by whatsoever names they may be called, nor either of them, are not now, nor was at the time of the issuing of said writ or the original writ, or at any other time, in the custody, power, or possession of, nor confined nor restrained their liberty by him, the said Passmore Williamson. Therefore he cannot have the bodies of the said Jane, Daniel, and Isaiah, or either of them, before your Honor, as by the said writ he is commanded.”

In the course of the proceedings, Mr. Williamson, who was Secretary to the Acting Committee of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, testified as follows.

“I was informed that three slaves were at Bloodgood’s Hotel, who wished to assert their right to freedom; I went to the hotel, and saw a yellow boy on the steps fronting on Walnut Street; I made inquiry of him, and he stated that such was the case, but referred me up stairs to one of the waiters for further information; the latter informed me that the slaves, with their master, had just gone on board the steamboat at the end of Walnut Street wharf, for the purpose of going to New York in the five o’clock line. I went on board the boat, looked through the cabin, and then went up on the promenade deck; I saw that man” (pointing to Mr. Wheeler) “sitting sideways on the bench on the farther side; Jane was sitting next to and three or four feet from him; the two children were sitting close to her. I approached her and said, ‘You are the person I am looking for, I presume’; Wheeler turned towards me and asked what I wanted with him; I replied, Nothing, that my business was entirely with this woman; he said, ‘She is my slave, and anything you have to say to her you can say to me.’ I then said to her, ‘You may have been his slave, but you are now free; he brought you here into Pennsylvania, and you are now as free as either of us; you cannot be compelled to go with him, unless you choose; if you wish your liberty, all you have to do is to walk ashore with your children.’ Some five minutes were consumed in conversation with Wheeler, Jane, and a stranger, when the bell rang, and I told her, if she wished to be free, she would have to act at once, as the boat was about starting. She took one of her children by the hand and attempted to rise from her seat; Wheeler placed his hands upon her shoulders and prevented her; I then, for the first time, took hold of her arm and assisted her to rise; the colored people who had collected around us seized hold of the two children, and the whole party commenced a movement towards the head of the stairs leading to the lower deck, Mr. Wheeler having at the start clinched Jane, and during the progress repeatedly and earnestly entreated her to say she wished to stay with him; at the head of the stairway I took Wheeler by the collar and held him to one side. The whole company passed down and left the boat, proceeding peacefully and quietly to Dock and Front Streets, where Jane and her children, with some of her friends, entered a carriage and were driven down Front Street; I returned to my office. After the colored people left Dock Street in the carriage, I saw no more of them, have had no control of them, and do not know where they are. My whole connection with the affair was this.”

At the conclusion of Mr. Williamson’s cross-examination, he declared to the Court “that in the proceedings he had not designed to do violence to any law, but supposed that he had acted throughout in accordance with the law, and the legal rights of the respective parties.”

On his return to the writ of Habeas Corpus, Mr. Williamson was held to bail in the sum of $5,000 for perjury, and subsequently committed, without bail, for contempt,—the alleged contempt being the declaration that the parties were never in his custody. In the course of the hearing, the Judge remarked that “the conduct of those who interfered with Mr. Wheeler’s rights was a criminal, wanton, and cruel outrage.” His final decree, July 27, 1855, was as follows: “Let Mr. Williamson, the respondent, be committed to the custody of the marshal without bail or mainprise, as for a contempt of the Court in refusing to answer to the writ of Habeas Corpus, heretofore awarded against him at the relation of Mr. Wheeler.” On the motion looking to a committal for perjury the Judge “withheld an expression of opinion,” observing, that, “Mr. Williamson being under arrest, he may be charged at any time by the grand jury.”

The respondent attempted to regain his freedom by an application to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. After solemn hearing, the application was refused, the Hon. J. S. Black, afterwards a member of President Buchanan’s cabinet, giving the opinion of the Court. The State Court was in obvious sympathy with the National Court, and both were sympathetic with Slavery. Meanwhile Mr. Williamson continued a prisoner, until, at last, November 3, 1855, his case was again presented to the Judge who committed him, when, in reply to formal interrogatories, he declared: “I did not seek to obey the writ by producing the persons therein mentioned before the Court, because I had not, at the time of the service of the writ, the power over, the custody, or control of them, and therefore it was impossible for me to do so.… I sought to obey the writ by answering it truly; the parties not being in my possession or control, it was impossible for me to obey the writ by producing them.” The Judge announced the contempt purged and the party released from custody.

While the immediate object of this proceeding was to compel Mr. Williamson to produce the bodies of Jane, Daniel, and Isaiah, claimed as slaves in Philadelphia by a person who had voluntarily brought them there, it is impossible to explain the action of the Judge except by his desire to establish the protection of the National Government over slave-masters travelling with their slaves in Free States. The claimant, at the discharge of Mr. Williamson, stated by his counsel that he “sought an adjudication, by the highest judicial tribunal of the country, of the questions, whether Mr. Wheeler was entitled to pass over the soil of Pennsylvania with his property? and whether or not a wrong had been committed in the forcible abduction thereof?”[24]

Mr. Williamson was in the Moyamensing Prison from July 27th to November 3, 1855.

Lake Superior, On Board the North Star,
Saturday, August 11, 1855.

MY DEAR SIR,—With astonishment and indignation I have learned the story of your imprisonment; and now, from this distant retreat, where I am for the moment, make haste to send you my sympathy.

From beginning to end, from side to side, and in every aspect, this transaction can be regarded only as a clear, indubitable, and utterly unmitigated outrage. The new-fangled doctrine, that a slave-master can voluntarily import his alleged slave—of course with all the revolting incidents of Slavery—into the Free States, is not more odious than preposterous. It is scouted by reason, and disowned by universal jurisprudence. You were right in disregarding it. In stepping forward to remind persons claimed as slaves on this pretext that all such claim is baseless, you did a good work. It was this knowledge which filled them with confidence to regain their God-given liberty. And for this it appears that you have been brought before a man, “dressed in a little brief authority,” who has cast you into prison.

This outrage is rendered more outrageous by the way in which it was done. It was perpetrated through perversion of the great writ of Habeas Corpus. This writ of freedom and deliverance, which in England is often styled the Palladium of the Constitution, which is recognized as a distinctive feature of Constitutional Government, which finds no place in despotism, and which is the very master-key appointed to unlock prison-doors and let the oppressed go free, has been made in your case, by a hocus-pocus without precedent, the instrument of imprisonment and oppression.

Strange and disgraceful as all this is, it must be considered the natural fruit of Slavery. Any person, whosoever he may be, whether simple citizen or magistrate, who undertakes to uphold this wrong, seems forthwith to lose his reason. He may be just, humane, and decent in other things, but in the support of Slavery he becomes unjust, inhuman, and indecent,—often in obvious unconsciousness of his degradation. The blindness which makes him insensible to wrong so transcendent naturally makes him insensible to the lesser wrong by which it is maintained. What is the writ of Habeas Corpus, the trial by jury, the privilege of debate, or your liberty or mine, in the estimation of a person who has already screwed himself to the pitch of injustice necessary for the vindication of an institution which separates parent and child, which stamps woman as a concubine, which shuts the gates of knowledge, and which snatches from the weak all the hard-earned fruits of incessant toil?

But there must be an end to these things; and as Shakespeare found a jewel in the toad’s head, so do I find a cheering omen even in the injustice which has made you its victim. There is an old saying, handed down from distant antiquity, that “whoso the gods wish to destroy they first make mad”; and I have often of late been impressed by its truth. The Slave Oligarchy is mad, and their overflowing madness runs through every agent and tool. In all that they do—especially in the Fugitive Slave Bill and its cruel enforcement, the Nebraska Bill and its felonious administration, and now in the imprisonment of an unoffending citizen—I rejoice to believe that there is unmistakable evidence of that madness which precedes a fall. Verily the day is at hand when returning justice will once more bear sway; then, among the triumphs of Freedom, will be a reckoning with unjust judges.

Meanwhile accept my congratulations on the portion of responsibility and dignity which is yours. It is a privilege to suffer for truth; and I envy not the meanness of that soul which would hesitate to prefer your place within the stone walls of a prison to the cushioned bench of the magistrate by whose irrational and tyrannical edict you have been condemned.

Believe me, my dear Sir, with much regard,

Very faithfully yours,

Charles Sumner.

Passmore Williamson, Esq., Moyamensing Prison, Philadelphia.

THE PEN BETTER THAN THE SWORD.

Letter to Committee of Publishers in New York, September 26, 1855.

Boston, 26th September, 1855.

MY DEAR SIR,—Constrained by other things, I renounce with much reluctance the opportunity which you offer me of partaking in the splendid hospitality prepared by the Publishers for the Authors of our country.

The occasion will be of special interest. It would be pleasant to sit at feast with so many, who, as Authors, adorn our national name. And it would be pleasant also to be the guest of those active, enlightened, and generous Publishers who do so much for Authors. But I must forego this luxury. Only in “bare imagination” can I enjoy it.

At your table there will be an aggregation of various genius and talent constituting a true Witenagemote, which may justly gratify an honest pride of country. Grateful as this may be as a token of power, it will be more grateful still as a token of that concord growing among men in all the relations of life. The traditional feud between Authors and Publishers promises to lose itself in your Festival, even as the traditional feud between England and France is absorbed in the welcome of Victoria by Louis Napoleon. This is beautiful. And the whole scene, where differing Authors commingle under auspices of differing Publishers, will be an augury of that permanent coöperation and harmony which will secure to the pen its mightiest triumphs.

It is in honor of the pen that the company will be gathered together. If any word of mine be expected, please let me offer the following sentiment.

The Pen of the Author,—Exposing error, defending truth, instructing the ignorant, cheering the unhappy, while charming and animating all, it can do better than the Sword, and will yet receive from the world a higher praise.

Believe me, dear Sir,

Very faithfully yours,

Charles Sumner.

G. P. Putnam, Esq.

THE REPUBLICAN PARTY IN NEW YORK.

Letter to a New York Committee, October 7, 1855.

Boston, October 7, 1855.

GENTLEMEN,—Your summons addressed to me at Newport was forwarded to me at this place.

I wish I could be at your proposed meeting, but I cannot. Accept my best wishes for the Republican party of New York, which you represent. Among the multitudes already rallying spontaneously in this bodyguard of Freedom my presence cannot be needed.

The infant Hercules strangled the serpents in his cradle, and the new party, just born, gives token of a like precocious strength.

Believe me, Gentlemen, very respectfully yours,

Charles Sumner.

E. D. Morgan, Luman Sherwood, Charles W. Elliott, Esqrs., Committee, &c.

THE REPUBLICAN PARTY OFFSPRING OF THE
AROUSED CONSCIENCE OF THE COUNTRY.

Letter to a Boston Committee, October 8, 1855.

Hancock Street, 8th October, 1855.

MY DEAR SIR,—Your invitation for to-night, after a journey to Newport and back, reached me only yesterday. It finds me already engaged, so that I cannot join my fellow-citizens in the proposed ratification at Faneuil Hall of the nominations lately made by the Republican Party of Massachusetts.

In my heart I have already ratified those nominations. On some other occasion I hope for an opportunity at Faneuil Hall to do the same by public speech.

Meanwhile accept my Godspeed for the good cause which we seek to promote, and for the Republican Party which is its organ. The cause is blessed alike in itself and in its influence on all who espouse it. No man can exert himself for Freedom without feeling better than before. The party is so entirely in harmony with prevailing opinion, it is such a natural and inevitable expression of the existing state of things, it is so clearly the offspring of the aroused conscience of the country, that it begins with auguries of success. Already it draws into its ranks good men from all sides, who, forgetting the things that are behind, press on to the things that are before.

Believe me, dear Sir, very faithfully yours,

Charles Sumner.

William Brigham, Esq.

POLITICAL PARTIES AND OUR FOREIGN-BORN POPULATION.

Speech at a Republican Rally in Faneuil Hall, November 2, 1855.

Immediately before the election there was a Republican Rally at Faneuil Hall, with the following officers: Richard H. Dana, Jr., Esq., President; Dr. Edward Reynolds, Ezra Lincoln, William Pope, Josiah W. Butler, Aaron Bancroft, Samuel Johnson, James P. Whitney, Prince Hawes, Daniel Kimball, Charles M. Ellis, N. Davies Cotton, Frederick A. Sumner, John G. Webster, George S. Winslow, Henry W. Farley, of East Boston, William P. Houston, of South Boston, Henry Slade, of Chelsea, Francis B. Fay, of Chelsea, and James L. Jones, of Chelsea, Vice-Presidents; John D. W. Joy, E. Baker Welch, Franklin W. Smith, Samuel W. Lane, Secretaries.

On taking the chair, Mr. Dana made an able speech especially in reply to one recently made by Mr. Choate, in the course of which he said that the Republicans repudiated the charge of ignoring the Constitution or menacing the Union.

Mr. Sumner was then introduced, and spoke for two hours and a quarter, with the marked attention of a very large audience. This speech was reported at length in the papers, and was afterwards printed in a pamphlet. It particularly discussed the Slave Oligarchy and its usurpations,—the outrages in Kansas,—the different political parties,—the rights of our foreign-born population,—and the Republican party. Several of these topics, being treated in other speeches, are omitted here. The part relating to our foreign-born population attracted attention at the time, and has been often quoted since. Among the audience were many persons of the Know-Nothing party, pledged against the foreign-born, who were there to create difficulty; but Mr. Sumner was allowed to proceed uninterrupted. The papers speak of “rapturous applause.” In this vindication of our foreign-born population, he acted only according to his convictions and all his votes in the Senate. Although the Know-Nothing party prevailed in Massachusetts, Mr. Sumner refused all association with it; and yet, such was the recklessness of misrepresentation, that the Richmond Enquirer announced him as “the head of the Northern Know-Nothing party.” The following speech is sufficient answer to this assertion.

In the course of this speech Mr. Sumner gives his personal testimony as to Slavery, founded on what he saw in a short journey he had made through Kentucky as far as Nashville in Tennessee.

Fellow-citizens of Boston:—

Are you for Freedom, or are you for Slavery? This is the question which you are to answer at the coming election. Above all other questions, national or local, it lifts itself directly in the path of every voter. There it is. It cannot be avoided. It cannot be banished away. It cannot be silenced. Forever sounding in our ears, it has a mood for every hour,—stirring us at times as with the blast of a trumpet, then visiting us in solemn tones, like the bell which calls to prayer, and then again awaking us to unmistakable duty, like the same bell, when at midnight it summons all to stay the raging conflagration.

And yet there are persons among us who seek to put this great question aside. Some clamor for financial reform, and hold up a tax-bill; others clamor for a modification of the elective franchise, and they hold up the Pope; some speak in the name of old parties, calling themselves Democrats or Whigs; others in the name of a new party, which shall be nameless at present. Surely the people of Massachusetts will not be diverted from the true issue, involving Freedom for broad territories and Freedom for themselves, by holding up a tax-bill or by holding up the Pope. The people of Massachusetts are intelligent and humane.

…

But above all these is heard the great question, which will not be postponed, Are you for Freedom, or are you for Slavery? “Under which king, Bezonian? Speak or die!” Are you for Freedom, with its priceless blessings, or are you for Slavery, with its countless wrongs and woes? Are you for God, or are you for the Devil?

Fellow-Citizens, I speak plainly; nor can words exhibiting the enormity of Slavery be too plain, whether it be regarded simply in the legislative and judicial decisions by which it is upheld, or in the unquestionable facts by which its character is revealed. It has been my fortune latterly to see Slavery face to face in its own home, in the Slave States; and I take this early opportunity to offer my testimony to the open barbarism which it sanctions. I have seen a human being knocked off at auction on the steps of a court-house, and, as the sale went on, compelled to open his mouth and show his teeth, like a horse; I have been detained in a stage-coach, that our driver might, in the phrase of the country, “help lick a nigger”; and I have been constrained, at public table, to witness the revolting spectacle of a poor slave, yet a child, almost felled to the floor by a blow on the head from a clenched fist. Such incidents were not calculated to shake my original convictions. The distant slaveholder, who, in generous solicitude for that truth which makes for Freedom, feared, that, like a certain Doctor of Divinity, I might, under influence of personal kindness, be hastily swayed from these convictions, may be assured that I saw nothing to change them one tittle, but much to confirm them,—while I was entirely satisfied that here in Massachusetts, where all read, the true character of Slavery is better known than in the Slave States themselves, where ignorance and prejudice close the avenues of knowledge.

And now, grateful for the attention with which you honor me, I venture to hope that you are assembled honestly to hear the truth,—not to gratify prejudice, to appease personal antipathies, or to indulge a morbid appetite for excitement, but with candor and your best discrimination to weigh facts and arguments in order to determine the course of duty. I address myself particularly to the friends of Freedom, Republicans, on whose invitation I appear to-night; but I make bold to ask you of other parties, who now listen, to divest yourselves, for the time, of partisan constraint,—to forget, for the moment, that you are Whigs or Democrats, or however called, and to remember only that you are men, with hearts to feel, with heads to understand, and with consciences to guide. Then only will you be in condition to receive the truth. “If men are not aware of the probable influence of party over them, they are so much the more likely to be blindly governed by it.” Such is the wise remark of Wilberforce.[25] And I fear that among us there are too many unconsciously governed by such bias. There are men, who, while professing candor, yet show that the bitterness of party has entered into their whole character and lives, as the bitterness of the soil in Sardinia is said to appear even in its honey.

…

There are honorable responsibilities belonging to Massachusetts, as an early and constant vindicator of Freedom, which she cannot renounce. “If the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?” The distant emigrant, the whole country, awaits the voice of our beloved Commonwealth in answer to the question, Are you for Freedom, or are you for Slavery? So transcendent, so exclusive, so all-absorbing at the present juncture is this question, that it is vain to speak of the position of candidates on other things. To be doubtful on this is to be wrong, and to be wrong on this is to be wholly wrong. Passing strange it is that here in Massachusetts, in this nineteenth century, we should be constrained to put this question; passing strange, that, when it is put, there should be any hesitation to answer it, by voice and vote, in such way as to speak the loudest for Freedom.

…

But, without exposing the game of political sweepstakes which the Slave Oligarchy has perpetually played,—interesting as it would be,—I prefer to hold up for one moment the assumptions, aggressions, and usurpations by which, in defiance of the Constitution, it has made Slavery national, when it is in reality sectional. Here is a brief catalogue.

…

Fellow-citizens, I have said enough to stir you; but this humiliating tale is not yet finished. An oligarchy seeking to maintain an outrage like Slavery, and drawing its inspirations from this fountain of wickedness, is naturally base, false, and heedless of justice. It is vain to expect that men who have brought themselves to become propagandists of this enormity will be constrained by any compromise, compact, bargain, or plighted faith. As the less is contained in the greater, so there is no vileness of dishonesty, no denial of human rights, that is not plainly involved in the support of an enormity which begins by changing man, created in the image of God, into a chattel, and consigns little children to the auction-block. A power which Heaven never gave can be maintained only by means which Heaven can never sanction. And this conclusion of reason is confirmed by late experience.

And here I approach the special question under which the country now shakes from side to side. The protracted struggle of 1820, known as the Missouri Question, ended with the admission of Missouri as a slaveholding State, and the prohibition of Slavery in all the remaining territory west of the Mississippi and north of 36° 30´. Here was a solemn act of legislation, called at the time a compromise, a covenant, a compact, first brought forward by the Slave Oligarchy, vindicated by it in debate, finally sanctioned by its votes,—also upheld at the time by a slaveholding President, James Monroe, and his cabinet, of whom a majority were slaveholders, including Mr. Calhoun himself,—and made the condition of the admission of Missouri, without which that State could not have been received into the Union. Suddenly, during the last year, without any notice in the public press or the prayer of a single petition, after an acquiescence of thirty-four years, and the irreclaimable possession by the Slave Oligarchy of its special share in the provisions of this Compromise, in violation of every obligation of honor, compact, and good neighborhood, and in contemptuous disregard of the outgushing sentiments of an aroused North, this time-honored Prohibition, in itself a Landmark of Freedom, was overturned, and the vast region now known as Kansas and Nebraska was opened to Slavery: and this was done under the disgraceful lead of Northern politicians, and with the undisguised complicity of a Northern President, forgetful of Freedom, forgetful also of his reiterated pledges that during his administration the repose of the country should receive no shock.

And all this was perpetrated under pretences of popular rights. Freedom was betrayed by a kiss. In defiance of uninterrupted prescription down to our day, early sustained at the South as well as the North, leaning at once on Jefferson and Washington, sanctioned by all the authoritative names of our history, and beginning with the great Ordinance by which Slavery was prohibited in the Northwest,—it was pretended that the people of the United States, who are the proprietors of the national domain, and who, according to the Constitution, may “make all needful rules and regulations” for its government, nevertheless were not its sovereigns, that they had no power to interdict Slavery there, but that this eminent dominion resided in the few settlers, called squatters, whom chance or a desire to better their fortunes first hurried into these places. To this precarious handful, sprinkled over immense spaces, it was left, without any constraint from Congress, to decide whether into these vast unsettled lands, as into the veins of an infant, should be poured the festering poison of Slavery, destined, as time advances, to show itself in cancers and leprous disease, or whether they should be filled with all the glowing life of Freedom. And this great power, transferred from Congress to these few settlers, was hailed by the new-fangled name of Squatter Sovereignty.

It was fit that the original outrage perpetrated under such pretences should be followed by other outrages perpetrated in defiance of these pretences. In the race of emigration the Freedom-loving citizens of the North promised to obtain the ascendency, and, in the exercise of the conceded sovereignty of the settlers, to prohibit Slavery. The Slave Oligarchy was aroused to other efforts. Of course it stuck at nothing. On the day of election, when this vaunted popular sovereignty was first invoked, hirelings from Missouri, having no home in the Territory, entered it in bands of fifties and hundreds, and, assuming an electoral franchise to which they had no claim, trampled under foot the Constitution and laws. Violently, ruthlessly, the polls were possessed by these invaders. The same Northern President, who did not shrink from unblushing complicity in the original outrage, now assumed another complicity. Though prompt to lavish the Treasury, the Army, and the Navy of the Republic in hunting a single slave through the streets of Boston, he could see the Constitution and laws which he was sworn to protect, and those popular rights which he had affected to promote, all struck down in Kansas,—and then give new scope to these invaders by the removal of the faithful Governor, who had become obnoxious to the Slave Oligarchy because he would not become its tool, and the substitution of another, who vindicated the dishonest choice by making haste, on his first arrival there, to embrace the partisans of Slavery. The Legislature, which was constituted by the overthrow of the electoral franchise, proceeded to overthrow every safeguard of Freedom. At one swoop it adopted all the legislation of Missouri, including its Slave Code; by another act it imposed unprecedented conditions upon the exercise of the electoral franchise; and by still another act it denounced the punishment of death no less than five times against as many different forms of interference with the alleged property in human flesh, while all who but write or speak against Slavery are adjudged to be felons. Yes, fellow-citizens, should any person there presume to print or circulate the speech in which I now express my abhorrence of Slavery, and deny its constitutional existence anywhere within the national jurisdiction, he would become liable under this act as a felon. And this overthrow of all popular rights is done in the name of Popular Sovereignty. Surely its authors follow well the example of the earliest Squatter Sovereign,—none other than Satan,—who, stealing into Eden, was there discovered by the celestial messengers just beginning his work: as Milton tells us,—

“Him there they found

Squat like a toad, close at the ear of Eve.”

Would you know the secret of this unprecedented endeavor, beginning with the repeal of the Prohibition of Slavery, down to the latest atrocity? The answer is at hand. It is not merely to provide new markets for slaves, or even to guard Slavery in Missouri, but to build another Slave State, and thus, by the presence of two additional Slaveholding Senators, to give increased preponderance to the Slave Oligarchy in the National Government. As men are murdered for the sake of their money, so is this Territory blasted in peace and prosperity in order to wrest its political influence to the side of Slavery.

But a single usurpation is not enough to employ the rapacious energies of our Oligarchy. At this moment, while the country is pained by the heartless conspiracy against Freedom in Kansas, we are startled by another effort, which contemplates not merely the political subjugation of the National Government, but the actual introduction of Slavery into the Free States. The vaunt is made that slaves will yet be counted in the shadow of the monument on Bunker Hill, and more than one step has been taken towards this effrontery. A person of Virginia has asserted his right to hold slaves in New York on the way to Texas; and this claim is still pending before the highest judicial tribunal of the land. A similar claim has been asserted in Pennsylvania, and thus far been sustained by the court. A blameless citizen, who, in obedience to generous impulses, and in harmony with received law, merely gave notice to a person held as a slave in a Free State that she was in reality free, has been thrust into jail, and now, after the lapse of months, still languishes there, the victim of this pretension; while—that no excess might be wanting in the madness of this tyranny—the great writ of Habeas Corpus, proudly known as the writ of deliverance, has been made the instrument of his imprisonment.[26] Outrage treads upon outrage, and great rights pass away to perish. Alas! the needful tool for such work is too easily found in places low and high,—in the lanes and cellars of Boston, on the bench of the judge, in the chair of the President. But it is the power behind which I impeach. The Slave Oligarchy does it; the Slave Oligarchy does it all.

To the prostration of this Oligarchy we are bound by a threefold cord of duty: first, as we would secure Freedom for ourselves; secondly, as we would uphold Freedom in distant Kansas; and, thirdly, as we would preserve the Union in its early strength and integrity. The people of Kansas are, many of them, from Massachusetts,—bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh; but as fellow-citizens under the Constitution they are bound to us by ties which we cannot disown; nay, more,—by the subtile cord which connects this embryo settlement with the Republic, they are made part of us. The outrage which touches them touches us. What galls them galls us. The fetter which binds the slave in Kansas binds every citizen in Massachusetts. Thus are we prompted to their rescue, not only to save them, but also to save ourselves. The tyranny which now treads them down has already trampled on us, and only awaits an opportunity to do it again. In its complete overthrow is the only way of safety. Indeed, this must be done before anything else can be done.

…

In the choice of men we are driven to the organization of parties; and here occurs the practical question on which hinges immediate duty,—By what political party can our desire be accomplished? There are individuals in all parties, even the Democratic, who hate Slavery, and say so; but a political party cannot be judged by the private opinions of some of its members. Something else, more solid and tangible, must appear. The party that we select to bear the burden and honor of our great controversy should be adapted to the work. It must be a perfect machine. Wedded to Freedom for better or for worse, and clinging to it with a grasp never to be unloosed, it must be clear, open, and unequivocal in its declarations, and should admit no other question to divert its energies. It must be all for Freedom, and, like Cæsar’s wife, above suspicion. But besides this character which it should sustain in Massachusetts, it must be prepared to take its place in close phalanx with the united masses of the North, now organizing through all the Free States, junctæque umbone phalanges, for the protection of Freedom and the overthrow of the Slave Oligarchy.

Bearing these conditions in mind, there are three parties which we may dismiss, one by one, as they pass in review. Men do not gather grapes from thorns, nor figs from thistles; nor do they expect patriotism from Benedict Arnold. A party which sustains the tyrannies and perfidies of the Slave Oligarchy, and is represented by the President, through whom has come so much of all our woe, need not occupy our time; and such is the Democratic party. If there be within the sound of my voice a single person, professing sympathy with Freedom, who still votes with this party, to him I would say: The name of Democrat is a tower of strength; let it not be the bulwark of Slavery; for the sake of a name do not sacrifice the thing; for the sake of party do not surrender Freedom.

According to familiar rule, handed down from distant antiquity, we are to say nothing but good of the dead. How, then, shall I speak of the late powerful Whig party, by whose giant contests the whole country was once upheaved, but which has now ceased to exist, except as the shadow of a name? Here in Massachusetts, a few who do not yet know that it is dead have met together and proffered the old allegiance. They are the Rip Van Winkles of our politics. This respectable character, falling asleep in the mountains, drowsed undisturbed throughout the war of the Revolution, and then, returning to his native village, ignorant of all that had passed, made haste to declare himself “a loyal subject of the King, God bless him!” But our Whigs are less tolerant and urbane than this awakened sleeper. In petulant and irrational assumption they are like the unfortunate judge, who, being aroused from slumber on the bench by a sudden crash of thunder, exclaimed, “Mr. Crier, stop the noise in Court!” The thunder would not be hushed; nor will the voice of Freedom, now reverberating throughout the land. Some there are among these who openly espouse the part of Slavery, while others, by indifference, place themselves in the same unhappy company. If their position at this moment were of sufficient importance to justify grave remark, they should be exhibited as kindred in spirit and isolation to the Tories of our Revolution, or at least as the Bourbons of Massachusetts,—always claiming everything, learning nothing, forgetting nothing, and at last condemned by an aroused people for disloyalty to Freedom. Let no person who truly loves Freedom join this company, tempted by its name and old associations.

There is still another party claiming your votes, but permit me to say, at this crisis, with little reason. I am at a loss to determine the name by which it may be called. It is sometimes styled the Know Nothing party, sometimes the American party; but it cannot be entitled to these designations,—if they be of any value,—for it does not claim to belong to the organization which first assumed and still retains them. It is an isolated combination, peculiar to Massachusetts, which, while professing certain political sentiments, is bound together by the support of one of the candidates for Governor.[27] At this moment this is its controlling idea. It is therefore a personal party; and I trust that I shall not be considered as departing from that courtesy which is with me a law, if I say, that, in the absence of any appropriate name, expressive of principles, it may properly take its designation from the candidate it supports.

Of course such a party wants the first essential condition of the organization which we seek. It is a personal party, whose controlling idea is predilection for a man, and not a principle. Whatever may be the private sentiments of some of its members, clearly it is not a party wedded to Freedom for better and for worse, and clinging to it with a grasp never to be unloosed. While professing opposition to Slavery, it also arraigns Catholics and foreigners, and allows the question of their privileges to disturb its energies. It is not all for Freedom; nor is it, like Cæsar’s wife, above suspicion. Besides, even as party of Freedom, it is powerless from its isolation; for it stands by itself, and is in no way associated with that great phalanx now rallying throughout the North. In this condition should it continue to exist, it will, in the coming Presidential contest, from natural affinity, lapse back into the American party of the country, which is ranged on the side of Slavery. Of course, as a separate party, it is necessarily short-lived. Cut off from the main body, it may show a brief vitality, as the head of a tortoise still bites for some days after it is severed from the neck; but it can have no permanent existence. Surely this is not the party of Freedom which we seek.

The incompetency of this party, as organ of our cause, is enhanced by the uncongenial secrecy in which it had its origin and yet shrouds itself. For myself let me say, that on the floor of the Senate I have striven by vote and speech, in conjunction with my distinguished friend Mr. Chase, to limit the secret sessions of that body, under shelter of which so much of the public business is transacted; and I have there presented, as the fit model for American institutions, the example of that ancient Roman who bade his architect so construct his house that all that he did might be seen by the world.[28] What I urged there I now urge here. But the special aims which this party proposes are in harmony with the darkness in which it begins. Even if justifiable on any ground of public policy, they should not be associated with our cause: but I am unwilling to allude to them without expressing my frank dissent.

It is proposed to attaint men for religion, and also for birth. If this object can prevail, vain are the triumphs of Civil Freedom in its many hard-fought fields, vain is that religious toleration which we profess. The fires of Smithfield, the tortures of the Inquisition, the proscriptions of Non-Conformists may all be revived. Mainly to escape these outrages, dictated by a dominant religious sect, was our country early settled: in one place by Pilgrims, who sought independence; in another by Puritans, who disowned bishops; in another by Episcopalians, who take their name from bishops; in another by Quakers, who set at nought all forms; and in yet another by Catholics, who look to the Pope as spiritual father. Slowly among the struggling sects was evolved that great idea of the equality of all men before the law without regard to religious belief; nor can any party now organize a proscription merely for religious belief, without calling in question this well-established principle.

But Catholics are mostly foreigners, and on this account are condemned. Let us see if there be any reason in this; and here indulge me with one word on foreigners.

With the ancient Greeks a foreigner was a barbarian, and with the ancient Romans he was an enemy. In early modern times the austerity of this judgment was relaxed; but, under the influence of feudalism, different sovereignties, whether provinces or nations, were kept in a condition of isolation, from which they have gradually passed, until now provinces are merged in nations, and nations are giving signs that they too will yet combine in one. In our country a new example is already displayed. From all nations people commingle here. As in ancient Corinth, by accidental fusion of all metals, accumulated in the sacred temples, a peculiar metal was produced, better than any individual metal, even silver or gold,—so, perhaps, in the order of Providence, by fusion of all races here, there will be a better race than any individual race, even Saxon or Celt. Originally settled from England, the Republic has been strengthened and enriched by generous contributions of population from Scotland, Ireland, Switzerland, Sweden, France, and Germany; and the cry is, Still they come! At no time since the discovery of the New World has the army of emigrants pressed so strongly upon us. More than one quarter of a million are annually landed on our shores. The manner in which they shall be received is a problem of national policy.