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ferings and divided their glory. These recollections made difficult an unqualified acceptance of the doctrine of the divine nature of perpetual slavery. Reason downed sophistry, and human sympathy shamed prejudice. And against prejudice, custom, and political power, the thinking men of the South launched their best thoughts. Jefferson said: "The hour of emancipation is advancing in the march of time. It will come, and whether brought on by the generous energy of our own minds, or by the bloody process of St. Domingo, excited and conducted by the power of our present enemy [Great Britain], if once stationed permanently within our country and offering asylum and arms to the oppressed [Negro], is a leaf in our history not yet turned over." These words, written to Edward Coles, in August, 1814, were still ample food for the profound meditation of the slave-holders. In his "Notes on Virginia" Mr. Jefferson had written the following words: "Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever. That, considering numbers, nature, and natural means, only à revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events. That it may become probable by supernatural interference. The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest.

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The eloquence of Patrick Henry and the logic and philosophy of Madison and Jefferson rang in the ears of the people of the slave-holding States, and they paused to think. In forty years the Negro population of Virginia had increased 186 per cent.— from 1790 to 1830,-while the white had increased only 51 per cent. The rapid increase of the slave population winged the fancy and produced horrid dreams of insurrection; while the pronounced opposition of the Northern people to slavery seemed to proclaim the weakness of the government and the approach of its dissolution. In 1832, Thomas Jefferson Randolph, a grandson of Thomas Jefferson, lifted up his voice in the Legislature of Virginia against the institution of slavery.

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Said Mr. Jefferson ::There is one circumstance to which we are to look as inevitable in the fulness of time-a dissolution of this Union. God grant it may not happen in our time or that of our children; but, sir, it must come sooner or later, and when it does come, border war follows it, as certain as the night follows the day. An enemy upon

'Jefferson's Writings, vol. viii, p. 404.

your frontier offering arms and asylum to this population, tampering with it in your bosom, when your citizens shall march to repel the invader, their families butchered and their homes desolated in the rear, the spear will fall from the warrior's grasp; his heart may be of steel, but it must quail. Suppose an invasion in part with black troops, speaking the same language, of the same nation, burning with enthusiasm for the liberation of their race; if they are not crushed the moment they put foot upon your soil, they roll forward, an hourly swelling mass; your energies are paralyzed, your power is gone; the morasses of the lowlands, the fastnesses of the mountains, cannot save your wives and children from destruction. Sir, we cannot war with these disadvantages; peace, ignoble, abject peace, peace upon any conditions that an enemy may offer, must be accepted. Are we, then, prepared to barter the liberty of our children for slaves for them? Sir, it is a practice, and

an increasing practice in parts of Virginia to rear slaves for market. How can an honorable mind, a patriot and a lover of his country, bear to see this ancient Dominion, rendered illustrious by the noble devotion and patriotism of her sons in the cause of liberty, converted into one grand managerie, where men are to be reared for market like oxen for the shambles. Is this better, is it not worse, than the Slave- Trade, that trade which enlisted the labor of the good and the wise of every creed and every clime to abolish it?"

Mr. P. A. Bolling said:-

"Mr. Speaker, it is vain for gentlemen to deny the fact, the feelings of society are fast becoming adversed to slavery. The moral causes which produce that feeling are on the march, and will on until the groans of slavery are heard no more in this else happy country. Look over this world's wide page—see the rapid progress of liberal feelings— see the shackles falling from nations who have long writhed under the galling yoke of slavery. Liberty is going over the whole earth-handin-hand with Christianity. The ancient temples of slavery, rendered venerable alone by their antiquity, are crumbling into dust. Ancient prejudices are flying before the light of truth-are dissipated by its rays, as the idle vapor by the bright sun. The noble sentiment of Burns:

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is rapidly spreading. The day-star of human liberty has risen above the dark horizon of slavery, and will continue its bright career, until it smiles alike on all men."

Mr. C. J. Faulkner said:

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"Sir, I am gratified that no gentleman has yet risen in this hall, the advocate of slavery. Let me compare the condition of the slave-holding portion of this commonwealth, barren, desolate, and scarred, as it were, by the avenging hand of Heaven, with the descriptions which we have of this same country from those who first broke its virgin soil. To what is this change ascribable? Alone to the withering, blasting effects of slavery. If this does not satisfy him, let me request him to extend his travels to the Northern States of this Union, and beg him to contrast the happiness and contentment which prevail throughout that country-the busy and cheerful sound of industry, the rapid and swelling growth of their population, their means and institutions of education, their skill and proficiency in the useful arts, their enterprise and public spirit, the monuments of their commercial and manufacturing industry, and, above all, their devoted attachment to the government from which they derive their protection, with the division, discontent, indolence, and poverty of the Southern country. To what, sir, is all this ascribable? 'T is to that vice in the organization of society by which one half of its inhabitants are arrayed in interest and feeling against the other half; to that unfortunate state of society in which free men regard labor as disgraceful, and slaves shrink from it as a burden tyrannically imposed upon them. To that condition of things in which half a million of your population can feel no sympathy with the society in the prosperity of which they are forbidden to participate, and no attachment to a government at whose hands they receive nothing but injustice. In the language of the wise, prophetic Jefferson, you must approach this subject, YOU MUST ADOPT SOME PLAN OF EMANCIPA TION, OR WORSE WILL FOLLOW.""

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In Maryland and Delaware the Quakers were rapidly emancipating their slaves, and the strong reaction that had set in among the thoughtful men of the South began to threaten the institution. Men felt that it was a curse to the slave, and poisoned the best white society of the slave-holding States. As early as 1781, Mr. Jefferson, with his keen, philosophical insight, beheld with alarm the demoralizing tendency of slavery. "The whole commerce," says Mr. Jefferson, "between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions; the most unrelenting despotism on the one part, and degrading submission on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it--for man is an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all education in him. From his cradle to his grave he

is learning to do what he sees others do. If a parent could find no motive, either in his philanthropy or his self-love, for restraining the intemperance of passion toward his slave, it should. always be a sufficient one that his child is present. But generally, it is not sufficient. The parent storms; the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a loose tongue to the worst of passions, and, thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped with odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances. And with what execration should the statesman be loaded, who, permitting one half the citizens thus to trample on the rights of the other, transforms those into despots and these into enemies, destroys the morals of the one part, and the amor patriæ of the other!"

And what was true in Virginia, as coming under the observation of Mr. Jefferson, was true in all the other States where slavery existed. And indeed it was difficult to tell whether the slave or master was injured the more. The ignorance of the former veiled from him the terrible evils of his condition, while the intelligence of the latter revealed to him, in detail, the baleful effects of the institution upon all who came within its area. It was at war with social order; it contracted the sublime ideas of national unity; it made men sectional, licentious, profligate, cruel,—and selfishness paled the holy fires of patriotism.

But notwithstanding the profound reflection of the greatest minds in the South, and the philosophic prophecies of Jefferson, the conscience and heart of the South did not respond to the dictates of humanity. Cotton and cupidity led captive the reason of the South, and, once more joined to their idols, the slave-holders no longer heard the voice of prudence or justice in the slave marts of their "section."

'Jefferson's Writings, vol. viii, p. 403.

CHAPTER V.

ANTI-SLAVERY METHODS.

THE ANTIQUITY OF ANTI-SLAVERY SENTIMENT. BENJAMIN LUNDY'S OPPOSITION TO SLAVERY IN
THE SOUTH AND AT THE NORTH. - HE ESTABLISHES THE "GENIUS OF UNIVERSAL EMAN-
CIPATION.' "HIS GREAT SACRIFICES AND MARVELLOUS WORK IN THE CAUSE OF EMANCIPA-
TION. WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON EDITS A PAPER AT BENNINGTON, VERMONT.
HE PENS A
PETITION TO CONGRESS FOR THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. -
GARRISON THE PEERLESS LEADER OF THE ANTI-SLAVERY AGITATION, EXTRACT FROm a Speech
DELIVERED BY DANIEL O'CONNELL AT CORK, IRELAND. INCREASE OF ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIE-
TIES IN THE COUNTRY.-CHARLES SUMNER DELIVERS A SPEECH ON THE "ANTI-SLAVERY DUTIES
OF THE WHIG PARTY.".
'-MARKED EVENTS OF 1846.—SUMNER THE LEADER OF THE POLITI-
CAL PARTY. — HETERODOX ANTI-SLAVERY PARTY. -- ITS SENTIMENTS.-HOrace Greeley THE
LEADER OF THE ECONOMIC ANTI-SLAVERY PARTY. THE AGGRESSIVE ANTI-SLAVERY PARTY,
ITS LEADERS. THE COLONIZATION ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY. - -AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY.
MANUMITTED NEGROES COLONIZE ON THE WEST COAST OF AFRICA. - A Bill establishing
A LINE OF MAIL STEAMERS TO THE COAST OF AFRICA. -- IT PROVIDES FOR THE SUPPRESSION OF
THE SLAVE-TRADE, PROMOTION OF COMMERCE, AND THE COLONIZATION OF FREE NEGROES.
EXTRACTS FRom the PreSS WARMLY URGING THE PASSAGE OF THE BILL. THE UNDERGROUND
RAILROAD ORGANIZATION. ITS EFFICIENCY IN FREEING SLAVES. ANTI-SLAVERY Literature,
-IT EXPOSES THE TRUE CHARACTER OF SLAVERY. UNCLE TOM'S CABIN," BY HARRIET
BEECHER STOWE, PLEADED THE CAUSE OF THE SLAVE IN TWENTY DIFFERENT LANGUAGES. —
THE INFLUENCE OF "IMPENDING CRISIS,"

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NTI-SLAVERY sentiment is as old as the human family. It antedates the Bible; it was eloquent in the days of our Saviour; it preached the Gospel of Humanity in the palaces of the Cæsars and Antonies; its arguments shook the thrones of Europe during the Mediæval ages. And when the doctrine of property in man was driven out of Europe as an exile, and found a home in this New World in the West, the ancient and time-honored anti-slavery sentiment combined all that was good in brain, heart, and civilization, and hurled itself, with righteous indignation, against the institution of slavery, the perfected curse of the ages! And how wonderful that God should have committed the task of blotting out this terrible curse to Americans! And what "vessels of honor" they were whom the dear Lord chose "to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound!" Statesmen like Franklin, Rush, Hamilton, and Jay; divines like Hopkins, Ed wards, and Stiles; philanthropists like Woolman, Lay, and

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