Elizabeth Cady Stanton Speeches and Writings File Speech: Speech in Orleans, CO 1861 and Speech on slavery Manuscript of Speech Elizabeth Cady Stanton delivered in 1861 Speech in "Orleans County" (see back of page 2) after the mobbing of the Buffalo, N.Y. meetings in 1861. [see History of Women Suffrage edited by Stanton, Anthony & Gage vol. 1 p. 461. ] 1 As I sat in St James Hall Buffalo a few days since & watched the development of an infuriated mob, I could not help philosophizing on the future of this republic. The rioters were chiefly young men led on by few older heads. As I marked the bold defiance of those boys - the total absence of respect either for themselves - the rights of others is the authority of their Chief Magistrate I said to myself if are such as these to be our future Judges, Senators, Presidents - the & are such as theres to be the legal representatives of woman, the mouth piece of her civil & political rights, & must my five sons [*some already in the threshold of manhood*] to whose education I have given the hey-day of my existence, in whose young hearts I have endeavored to instil the finest principles of democracy; when I look round & see brave strong men swamped in the whirlpool of numbers I tremble for the noble boys who must soon be actors in public affairs, must they to stand at all be false to God, to man, & to themselves, turn their backs on Freedom, justice, & free speech or be martyrs too, to whom the rights of freemen will be denied expounders of our constitutional law, the Fathers of our Republic? Alas, what an education for the grave responsibility of self government!! X How is it possible for men of age & experience rank & respectability to be so heedless & indifferent of the example & precept they are giving those who soon shall fill their vacant places, In the hurry of live do they never pause & think of the glorious principles of republicanism & the abundant materials our young civilization has fermented for the experiment. Do the several sins of the Pilgrims so be it then. I would rather see them all martyrs, hung as high as the immortal John Brown than to see them slaves. Cheerfully I will bear all that may come to me of life's hard lessons, but to see my sons cowards or slaves. Are there no brave true women in Orleans county, that their sons tremble to hear of liberty, & would choke her [down?] at the [?] of justice. 3. already repudiate the divine faith of their Fathers in self government Will they thus recklessly crush the hopes of [truthless?] nations, who in [?] wait our triumph, who in our success behold the redemption of the race , & from our fair Temple of liberty transmit to our children a slaveholding despotism- & precipitate in their hearts the fearful responsibilities of a government where the rights of persons & of speech are under the jurisdiction of mob law. If it were permissible thus to cut the jugular vein of abolitionism it would be at a fearful cost, for once admit 4 the principle that one man may hold anothers right of speech, & its sacredness is gone. - at the mercy of any set of men who may institute themselves a tribunal to judge [in all cases] what it is wise & prudent to say or not to say under all circumstances whatsoever. Once establish the principle of mob law & though it crushes me to day it will as surely crush you tomorrow. Remember it is a fearful self [deciding?] force, it seeks no adjudication of the case in hand, no deliberate & fruitful investigations, the justice it meets out is quick 5. & [?] - it asks no judge or juror bench or bar. - it's motive power is violence - it's [q ? tating] law is death. - Give to the [? tive] nill. - the blind purpose [? mply] to move on & on, [militant?] the knowledge or power of self direction As that fearful iron horse with full steam on goes snorting & puffing by! who would not tremble at the thought of all that precious freight of life & hope rushing to swift destruction, with no hand to govern no knowledge to direct. Can we be indifferent spectators when a nations destiny is hurried on, by those who neither think or 6. care for God or man. Every true lover of his country should by example & principal teach our young men the soundness of individual rights. Take care of the pennies, the dollars will take care of themselves, is an old saying, full of truth. Take care of individual rights, the nation will take care of itself, is an old item, full of wisdom. If such law is to be sanctioned north as well as south the step between insult & death is not a long one. If to day respectable people stand silent by & see christian men & women insulted & their meetings broken up [blank page] 7. a few [blows?] to narrow need and surprize them. If drunken northern [workers?] with southern principles may shake their fists & canes in the face of a woman pleading in the forum for justice & mercy to the oppressed in Buffalo on the 5th day of January, they may try the full force of a blow on the head of their Chief Magistrate on the 4th of March in Washington. If the union must be saved no matter whose rights are violated so that the south is happy in the embrace of slavery, it could not be more effectually done than by such a blow at the heart of the nation. .8. The world would not place a very high evaluation on the sacrifice of one poor abolitionist. Do you hope to appease the worth of your southern idols with such offerings The smoke of your incense is far more likely to blacken yourselves than to tickle their nostrils. Let them who by word or look encourage such law, our lawyers doctors & merchants who smile at their first aggressions at their not & ribaldry, our editors who in the same hour ridicule & misrepresent those whom the mob attack. Let them go down to the gulf states & see their principles 9 triumphantly carried out. I say their principles because if the respectable people of Buffalo had chosen to do their duty the mob could not have triumphed. If Mr. Jessell[?] the republican editor had been opposed to the mob why did he not use the one whole column in his paper he devoted to [interesting?] us - for a manly defense of free speech - a stern rebuke of them who violated it, or an earnest call on the true men - the lovers of order & justice, to come out in their power & protect the constitutional rights of freemen? Why 10. because they all wanted the arbitrary sentiment at the north choked down Rest assured it cannot be choked down, nor hissed down, nor stomped down, for truth is mighty & most certainly prevail, & in spite of mobs fluster & threats, freedom shall triumph & crush the [?] slavery beneath her feet. 11. Is the North as silly as to suppose that the southern superior movement will be influenced the weight of a feather that here and there two or three abolitionists have been mobbed . In their present excited state they have something else to think about than the salient feats of northern rioters. If they did condescend to notice the fact that some northern union men were trying to smooth down their ruffled feathers in this small way, they would see through your game as clearly as you do yourselves. .12. Do you suppose with the thousands of their property we have helped will Canada. With John Brown's expedition stuck in their memories. With a Republican President in prospect that your petty efforts can lull them to sleep, no they are wiser than you. They know that liberty & slavery cannot dwell together in peace. & equality we on the other mind be dominant. They now say to all of whose ears are not so full of cotton that they cannot hear we [now] here take your goddess of Freedom, so any prostrate in the dust & set her up on your family altars, --your temples of liberty -- your cathedral domes 13. & worship her, but leave us alone to our idols - let these worship the true God who will as to us & ours we will serve the calf of cotton & gold forever & ever. If we had heard any self-respect - any true love of liberty, any just appreciation of the blood bought rights left us by our fathers we should ourselves have secceeded long ago from these heathen idolators, who have set all laws both human & divine as defiance - these cannibals who sell babies by the pound & feed on their flesh - these polygamists who have many .14. wives & sell their own children these hunters whose game is men who make beasts of burden of the princes & nobles of Africa stolen from their country by American pirates who fear not God nor keep his commandments nor acknowledge him in all their ways. The God of Thunder says to us in words not to be misunderstood, came out oh! my people from the land of Egypt & the house of bondage, build ye up a nation such as my soul loveth in the land of Freedom where the bondmen may dwell .15. in safety, & be there a haven of rest for those who flee before the pursuer. But say you this is a bad time to agitate the slavery question! Perhaps it is, but it seems to be the grand national topic, south & north east & west in church & state. in the nursery the parlor the exchange in the conflicts of our state & nation Our Rhetts Yancey's [Quernns?] [Yorbe?], Keitt, Chesnutts Dun's. the Sennids Hales Wades Wilsons Fenendens & Summons are all talking about it. James 16. Buchanan is fasting & praying & crying over it. The O'Neils like faithless nurses are on all sides giving their people anodynes that they may sleep over it. The rowdies in all our northern towns & cities stand ready to bluster & swear for it. Gen. Scott & Major Anderson are pledged to fight for it, the south declare they will die for it, merchants bankers, & brokers are trembling for it, in fine it is the national epidemic - now why in the name of sense should we be the only people forbidden to open our lips on the subject? .17. Perhaps you think as we have occupied the rostrum thirty years on this question, we should immediately retire & let the nation have their day. Inasmuch as a Republican President is rolled into power by such an overwhelming majority of tried & true friends of freedom, could not the old soldiers lay aside their armour & rest? while 100,000 wide awakes with their lanterns all trimmed & burning stand ready to watch [the] & defend the bulwarks of Freedom? For weeks & weeks we stand 18. silent & anxious on the outposts to see what the mighty hosts encamped round about the thrones of the Pharaoh's would do, but we soon perceived that while in the enemies camp all was life bustle & preparation, our armies had fallen into a deep deep sleep from which I fear that nothing short of the archangels trump sounding through or another Presidential campaign can arouse them. .19. But you do not object so much to all this agitation as you do to the particular view we take. Now having just gone through a political campaign in which five sides of this question has been freely presented, with the grand national kaleidiscope we have had the Lincoln & Hamlin Douglass & Johnson Breckenridge & Lane Bell & Everitt Smith, M [views] presentation of the picture. whilst five distinct views have thus been permitted to all may we not claim the poor privilege of[ts] giving the kaleidoscope just one shake more, to take the view we like best of all? .20. No that is the very view that is so bad for the union! What ails the union! What is the disturbing force! You all acknowledge it is slavery. and will it not ever be a disturbing force. are not the very elements of slavery and freedom eternally antagonistic. But why do you [???] us. We say no more than Washington and Jefferson the dec. of Independence and the Constitution said. All their sayings did not emancipate the slaves nor break up the union. Why are you afraid to have us repeat them. Why in those days Freedom was stronger than slavery, and the cunning wolf and had to put on the guise .21. of the lamb, to be permitted to lie down in the green pastures of the union, but in time the wolf waxed stronger & stronger & multiplied & as he grew in numbers little by little he began to devour the lambs & encroach on the borders of Freedom. at last the Shepherds & their faithful dogs began to watch the lambs & drive back the wolves. who threatened to devour the shepherds & watch dogs & all the [justice?] in Freedom's borders To their own [frustrations?] into the land of barbarism & now their howls of disappointment go up in the ears of the nation. Now that we have thrown up strong high fortifications [surround?] about the territories of freedom, may [scurulists?] - not be allowed to [pressure?] .22. the work all very good? The position of the union at this hour is indeed very peculiar. In the foreground of the picture behold freedom & slavery linked in a stern fraternal embrace, not a kind & loving embrace like that between Jonathan & David but more like the deadly wrestling of Cain & Abel. On one side stand the northern secessionists, urging Freedom to cease her struggle & sunder her monstrous & unnatural union with sin of death. Arrayed in pure white robes with crowns of right & glory on their brows, they are pleading for justice & mercy, for [???ness] & fierce 23. Angels are hovering over them mid chords of dazzling radiance, from whose [?????] [there] a voice seems to [come] say [a voice] Come ye out from [arming??] them. On the left stand the southern [sea??????????] cup-a-pie in scarlet and steel, through that armor no [arm????] of mercy can penetrate. Mid the din of arms and the smoke of booming cannons flying serpents will [??????] of fire and hisses of flame [????] their [??????] on to deadly conflict In the whole back ground on the hill top and in the valley stand millions of [?able] men, anxious but intent spectators of the fearful scene. .23. angels are hovering over them mid chords of dazzling radiance, from whose midst [there] a voice seems to [come] say [a voice] Come ye out from among them. On the left stand the southern secessionists cap-a-pie in scarlet & steel, through that armor no arrow of mercy can penetrate. mid the din of arms & the smoke of booming cannon flying serpents with tongues of fire & hisses of flame urge[ing] their victims on to deadly conflict In the whole back ground on the hill top & in the valley stand millions of sable men, anxious but silent spectators of the fearful scene. 24 This is no fancy sketch but the living fact of this hour. Brought into the smallest possible [print?] & daguerotyped on paper. Where do each of you choose to take your place in the picture With those who would sternly fasten the deadly fangs of slavery on the very vitals of this young republic With those who would stand to parley, [wistle?], make confusion & concessions with the grunts friend and falsehood, until the most sacred rights of freemen are all bartered away for an ignoble & uncertain peace? Or with those who stand at 25. God's right hand, with the angels & the archangels & the spirits of the just made perfect. With Christ & his church, with all those who believe in the golden rule, in the prophets of Jesus, the Bible, & the our glorious Declaration of Independence. Then join us and help to rouse a nation's heart to a lively love of liberty a firm abiding faith in the everlasting principles of justice This has ceased to be a question of the black man's rights- With us at the north it has resolved itself into the question of free speech a sure way to test this right is to talk about something people 26. People do not wish to hear what is the use of agitating this question; slavery must eventually die. "Your idea that agitation is needless, is like the [?] in the old classic play two thousand years ago who seeing a man bring down with an arrow an eagle floating in the blue ether above said "You need not have wasted your arrow the fall would have killed him." 1 The first slave I ever saw was a girl of peerless beauty for whom her master had just paid three thousand dollars. She was his bride's dressing maid & had been visiting a few weeks with them in Syracuse. One of the waiters at the Hotel being a runaway & seeing the girl often in tears comprehended the nature of her grief, & asked one day if she would not like to be free?. oh !yes! said she, I would do anything; run any risk; never to see that man again. It was soon arranged that she should 2 ship off to Petersboro the first opportunity. One evening her master & mistress having gone to ball, she quietly departed & reached the home of Gerrit Smith in safety. It was there in my girlhood, from the life of [that] a beautiful female slave I learned a. b. c. of human rights. I read the first dark chapter of woman's life, the most damning page in that white system of outrage & oppression. The intense interest with which the young girls who were visiting there at that time gathered round her, & plied her with questions. Their ejaculations of pity, wonder & disgust; as she gave us her bitter experience I shall never forget. In that hour my soul was all on fire with antislavery enthusiasm, & it has burned with one steady heat ever since. I was so thoroughly convicted & converted, that no constitutional or Bible arguments have ever blinded my moral sense one moment, no Doctors of divinity or law, no systems of Theology of Jurisprudence, of statesmanship, or political or domestic economy, could ever outweigh with me, the testimony of that one lone girl .4. We met soul to soul & her mountain of sorrows has pressed on my heart ever since, which no time is argument can relieve so long as I know that one helpless woman is under the curse of slavery Are you ignorant of the fact, oh! women of New York, that girls as fair & beautiful as many among us, some refined & educated in whose veins flows the best & proudest blood of southern chivalry, are sold on the auction block; for purposes most revolting & humiliating to the soul of woman It is said, Jefferson sold 5 his own daughters!! alas! it is one thing to have an intellectual perception of a sublime truth & quite another to feel its grandeur & power in our heart of hearts. It is one thing to say all men are created free & equal & quite another to see in the trembling slave girl the priceless jewel, bought by the blush of Christ. No constitution or statute law could tempt me to surrender such a fugitive to any marshall, master, or man, & if I had a Husband be he democrat or republican , lawyer or priest statesman or Bishop who We never can have a better time [than now] to settle forever this question of slavery. If we have not the courage to meet it, now how can we hope our children will & if not, are you willing to see our republican institutions our constitution, & glorious destructive of independence, all trampled in the dust by a slaveholding despotism .6. would shut his door or turn his back on a helpless girl flying from a tyrants lust. My love would freeze to hate. I would turn my back on him & go forth with the slave to hide my blushes beneath a monarch's throne. x Talk not of northern concessions, of repealing personal liberty bills, of amending our constitutions & statute laws to make slave property more secure. Unless you can change the constitution of the universe, all this avails nothing If you had the power to chain 7. the souls of men, drill them in platoons to step & time, to fix their bounds, -- to limit all their hopes & fears, their thoughts & aspirations, there might be some sense in making laws to teach men what to think & say [& do] but inasmuch as man is God whose thoughts can take in all Earth & Heaven, & Hell, the mighty universe with all its systems of light & heat & motive, [that] who can chain the lightening & prescribe the orbits of planetary worlds, it is in vain to hope by human law to transform the royal sons, 8. & daughters of the living God, into slave hounds to hunt their fellow men to death. In times like these when our Fathers, brothers, Husbands and sons stand looking into each others faces, anxiously inquiring as to the future of this republic, as with census tables and unrolled maps they trace out the boundaries of the several nations into which our vast domain, may soon be divided, is it possible for the daughters of our Pilgrims Fathers to remain listless & ignorant spectators of the mighty revolution 9 -tion slowly but surely coming upon us. No doubt many of you think as I once did that governments like the solar system were established by God, that all human affairs would continue to move on with the same regularity, stability to the end. There is a blissful (?) in believing all things fixed or unchangeable, a fearful waking up, when suddenly with open eyes one beholds for the first time the panorama of natural existence. The success, failure, the change, progress of all man's 10 experiments from the family in Paradise, to republicanism on the western continent. As one [the] reads the history of the race, life seems but the reacting on a larger scale of childhood in the nursery & school room & on the play ground. They who but yesterday played with dolls & marbles, with hoops & balls, who built baby houses & snow forts, must now assume the responsibilities of the family & the nation of government in church & state, & at the fireside. Think you women of New York that with your 11 childhood ends your activity that with your outdoor life you should give up your outside power & centre all your influence on home & pleasure. No! you have a share in national responsibility, in the preservation of republican institutions. It is immensely important that at this hour every woman should understand the true position of this nation & give the whole force of her intellect & moral power in the right direction. "true woman has nothing to do with cliques & parties with 32 Their avengers & in that fearful hour the black man present his credentials to manhood sure & [?? ndering] nations echoed back his humanity. Yes, let them weigh anchor & drift off in the sea of civilization, where the waves of christianity shall without ceasing beat upon their shores & if in the blaze of light & liberty & love, the tyrants -learn such justice & mercy, the black man with no outside power .39. to fear will himself write out then show in characters of blood & the God of pity will veil his face until the avenging angel has done what we shall all feel just. As we look over the history of the past & study the causes of the decline & fall of the republics of the old world we are filled with wonder at the apathy & indifference of the people as one by one those powerful nations passed into oblivion 40. They all had their faithful watchmen on the towers who warned them of the coming ruin -- their senators who in their national councils showed a true patriotism -- a holy love of liberty, -- they had their orators & poets who worshiped at the shrine of freedom & we have ours -- Faithful watchmen, brave senators, eloquent orators, divine poets, all warning us of the fatal principles already 41 incorporated & intertwined into every branch of our government. Shall we heed their warning & in haste buckle on the armour of righteousness & bravely struggle once more for Freedom, or like the republicans of old shall we too in turn give place to Popes & Emperors to monarchs [autocrats] & czars.? 12. Republicans & Democrats, with politics in place, we are a power outside of all this & the question for us to decide is, shall we counsel these whom we may influence, to christian forbearance or brute force, to peace or war, Woman is too apt to underrate her influence, & her capacity to understand the affairs of state. It requires no great breadth of mind to know what is justice. One need not go through college, * law school & spend years at the bat & on the bench, to learn what is right, any christian woman who has .13. been the merest satellite of the dinner pot & the cradle all her days is better able to decide a question of human rights, than all the judges on the bench of the supreme court at this hour, if she may judge from their decisions Take for example the Dred Scott case. Nine of the most just men in the land, I suppose they were just for men, for the people chose them from the nation & in the official volumes of the Reports of the Supreme court [Inc? Jne?] they are all called Mr Justice & Tanney the chief of just men. 14. Well these nine just men & their chief included argued this case twice over & gave an elaborate opinion. They occupied days in discussing the whole question of human rights & laws & constitutions An abridged report of all they said fills a volume of near seven hundred pages & [after all] notwithstanding all the this & the paraphanalia of sheriffs marshalls witnesses jurors Plaintiffs Defendants Counsels & Judges, of writs pleas briefs opinions, cross questionings authories said & aforesaid, red tape, & papers after all, they got the cart before the horse, the citizen before the man 15. & the chief of the mine just men gave the sum & substance of his decision, occupying 55 pages in these words. "Black men are not citizens therefore they have no rights that white men are bound to respect." Could not any woman in this house have decided that question far better without ever reading an authority. I could & have written my decision in two minutes. It would have run thus. Dred Scott's a man & therefore has all the rights that Chief Justice Tawney has in every part of Gods universe. Now I leave the matter to this audience which [.16.] decision sounds best, that from the lips of Mr. Justice, or Mrs. Justice? Mr. Justice places the citizen above the man. -- Mrs. Justice places the man above all human contrivances. One of the most learned Judges & lawyers in this state would frequently ask the opinion of his wife & children on cases he was about to argue. He often remarked that they never failed to see what was right & just. Being asked by a little during this one day if that was all that they had to do in court, he laughingly remarked, yes [17.] you might as well sit on the bench as I. you know what is right & just as well as I do. Why said she you told me the other day in your library that you studied all these books to find out what was right. Yes said he but I still tell you that my little girl twelve years old understands justice as well as the most learned judge on the bench, without ever seeing a book on jurisprudence. On much authority I claim that it is the duty of every woman to interest herself in public justice & give to the world the moral laws [18.] for the government of nations, for man is so absorbed in outward improvements & material gains that the everlasting principles of right, have been lost sight of buried as they are beneath heaps of gold dust & cotton. The family is but the nation in miniature & every wise mother knows that brute force never developed the christian graces that passionate selfish Fathers never secure the love & admiration of wife & children. If we have a hot headed willful boy, who does not like the family relation, who longs to see the world & is determined to go off [and that in case of insurrection the whole power of the federal government shall be brought to bear on the victims of their tyranny & oppression] and [sell/sett?] up for himself, nice parents give him plenty of clothes & good advice & let him go forth in peace knowing that one sulky dissatisfied child in an house held there by force mars the happiness & peace of all the rest. Now let us treat South Carolina with the same wisdom. Her back is evidently up -- her feathers are decidedly ruffled, she wants to cut lose from the old Federal Father & Mother. why not pack her trunk, give her what little she [owes us] has & let her go in peace. When a parent or school master whips one child they sense the spirit [20.] of rebellion in all the rest. I cannot recall an occasion in my life when the spectacle of a man or a woman whiping a child did not move me to resistance. Better far let Carolina repudiate her debts, violate our national constitution, & set a bad example to her sisters, those that we ourselves should be involved in civil war; our sons subjected to all the immorality & license; of the camp & [vitory?]. & the nation set back years in the march of civilization & christianity. It is said that the skulls of all children born in France just I want the negro to have the glory of striking off his own shackles. There is a development in freeing one'self, that comes not when the work is done by another! In his position resistance to tyranny is his highest duty to God. With him the watchword must be liberty or death & right skillfully he will use the tools his maker has given him for self defence, so soon as we no longer stand pledged to interfere. And for ourselves, I hope we northern people stand too high in the moral scale of being to need to fight for further development. Let us an our brains & hearts & leave those who must to depend on arms & while [.21.] after that bloody revolution were unusually developed in the times the animal organs such as combativeness & destructiveness & to this hour the French nation reaps the penalty of their activity. It is a short sighted looking that looks alone to the present hour. Some abolitionists even are in [farms/forms?] of coercion & civil war, because say they we thus end slavery with a blow Suppose by now you do crush what you call southern despotism, & set four millions of Africans free. Does the vote of New York but two months ago show that she will recognize tyranny reap what they have sown let us gather up the harvests of terrible lessons -- to teach our children & grandchildren in all coming time, that man cannot hold property in man. [.22.] The freedom of the coloured man Better spend our money & our time to educate ourselves in the sacred lessons of human rights. Where are the limits now of Mercy? Is it all south of Mason's & Dixon's line The slave from the everglades of Florida will tell you, that not until the sound of horsemen & harvest & gun, of republicanism law gospel & constitution are silenced in Niagra's roar, does he feel safe & not until he plants his foot in English soil does he feel free. Slavery like a tyrannical Husband holds Freedom in subjection from Maine to California from 23. [Flerintee?] to Oregon. He bids her keep silence in the churches to leave to him the government the management of commerce politics & war,- to him belong the Presidential chair the judges bench, the muse the epistette. What knows Freedom of glory[inest] & & of war:- Feebly she said & then protests - she humbly petitions for the time feminist rights if person & of speech. Behold at noon day in the Senate chamber of our national capital in [the person of a] what are the rights of person. Massachusetts Senator & in old Faneuil Hall what are now the rights of speech, Sumner & Phillips can .24. tell us how freedom writhes beneath the tyrants back. Free speech in South Carolina is tar & feathered exiled & hung. In Washington it is subject to bluster, threat, insult & ridicule these grave & reverent senators with gladiatorial exhibitions of [pickts?] & bowie knives play football with its rights & brains. In Boston the very springs of Fashion choke it down with perfume & soft resolutions in favour of what it suffered south of the line. Yes under the very shadow of Bunker Hill where 25 black men and white fought side by side against a British tyrant a black man - may not talk of freedom now, nor preach the gospel on the sabbath day in peace. If to hold South Carolina in this union the slaveholder is to have the right. to crack his whip over black men one day & northern freemen the next -- if the brains of a Sumner are to be hammered in the [councils?] of the nation with as little hesitation as chattleized humanity on a plantation, if New York must be hunting ground for fugitives in the name of all that is holy [26] & just & true let the union be dissolved. Many of you stand appalled at the idea of breaking up this union, Which I ask you is better, to be a mighty distrusted nation filled with strife & violence or a smaller christian republic with clean hands, & pure hearts, all of one mind, lovers of liberty loyal both to God & man Is it possible to make a union of liberty & slavery? Has not the experience been fully tried & its failure made apparent to all philosophical observers? The most skillful chemist cannot make a compound [27.] of oil & water -- by continual stirring he makes an apparent mixture but the moment he stops the mixture resolves itself into its original elements. Designing politicians & stock jobbers may keep the republic so thoroughly stirred up that we cannot tell liberty from slavery the free from the slave states, those who were rocked in the cradle of liberty from those who have cradled freedom in a manger, but just as soon as we are wise enough to let the unnatural mixture settle, we too shall resolve ourselves into our original elements & the cream of the nation [must?] rise [28] to the top. No objection is made by abolitionists to letting the south and her institutions alone We cannot be said to interfere with a nation or people when we simply mutely say what we think of their government institutions. Their civil & social privileges. Let them make such constitutions and statute laws, such codes of morals & honor such a Bible, priesthood & God as suits then best & thre leave the two races to settle their rights themselves. And now in Justice let us claim the same rights for ourselves we do willingly accrue to them. Bible, preiesthood, and God as suits them best [29] If they have a right in their constitutions to say a man is a chattel. We have a right here to make a man a man. If there a black man has no rights of citizenship. Here we may secure to him all the rights privileges & immunities of a citizen. If in their borders they claim the right to make immortal beings fair game for hunter & hound. We have the right to make our soil free that when the slave shall touch our borders his chains must fall The union once dissolved we [30] shall have right to a God a Priesthood, a Bible & a religion that shall teach morality- the golden rule - the precepts of Jesus that will not deny to immortal beings the blessings of education the right to life liberty & happiness that will not abrogate the sabbath of marriage & outrage all that is sacred in human affections. We shall then have a right to breathe through our orators poets educators, newspapers & school books, a love of liberty, We shall no longer sing him, talk feebly & get our expurgated editing. [31] of every thought & aspiration for Carolina's ears. for she will have no right to meddle with our institutions. The price we now pay for the Federal union is to be slaves ourselves for the south claim more than to be let alone. They insist that we shall think as they think, say what they say & that the statute laws of the northern states shall match their own in barbarism.[* & that in case of insurrection the whole power of the federal government shall be brought to bear in the victims of their tyranny of oppression.*] We have ever welcomed exiles from all lands here. Neither Austrian nor Russian nor Italy have ever tar & feathered 32. & bring American citizens because we had not sent their rebels back, why make an exception to our uniform hospitality in case of African exiles from the southern despotism !!? Why not let the south carry out the programme they propose which Mr. Bell tells us is not a plan of to day. 1st the declaration of Independence & the Constitution which has kept our great men so busy for years promoting & expounding will be left north of the line, .33. then Cuba & Mexico will be annexed, & the African slave trade reopened, thus with new & endless supplies of land & labourers they will be able to perpetuate the divine institution of slavery [throug?] all time. Moreover they [are] propose then to encourage New England immigration, confining the slaves to agriculture, & thus become a great manufacturing people. How vain such devices to circumvent the immutable laws of mind. Do they not [.34.] know that with every northern labourer they will import a little of the spirit of freedom & with every piece of machinery marked in alphabetic characters a little history of northern industry intelligence & art? Necessity & profit will compel them now & then to employ their slaves in the menial offices, where but little skill is required. Will the slave in this new school not learn the letters in his iron spelling book & [wilt?] his fellow labourer study 35 the geography of Lowell Salem & New York, & from his superior thrift learn the back economy of hard work & no wages. From the known pertinacity of woman's tongue; in circumstances such as these how long think you it would before dame Freedom would whisper some revolutionary sentiments even under the Palmetto flag? Look too what a grand Canada we northern states would be liberty would not then skulk 36. through our [birders?] to seek protection beneath a womans crown. Our trusting vessels would then be free to take all passengers who came on board, from any part Take Cuba & Mexico not quite so fast brave southern chivalry with Allied France & England we would soon nip that purpose in the bud & still worse the Federal Fathers will never give the rebels one single inch of our vast territories of the 1400, 000 000 of acres which shall be a heritage to Freedom in all 37 coming home. Would it not be better thus to instate this southern despotism! leave these petty tyrants to the scorn of the civilized world! than to give them one drop of our hearts blood. Could we not thus as effectually kill slavery by christian means, by sound policy as we could by civil war. One thing must forget not that the slave is still a man. Remember St. Domingo the ocean washed her shores as men & shut the tyrants up to Transcribed and reviewed by volunteers participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.