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uncontrolled power to abuse? Why do our instinctive feelings revolt at the bare thought of becoming slaves ourselves, or of having our wives and children in that condition? Why do not slaveholders themselves submit to the patriarchal institution, and thus bask in its ineffable beatitudes? I need not say that such questions more than answer such arguments.

I have time to refer to only one additional argument. The same writer, as I have already stated, regards slavery as a grand missionary institution for the conversion of the heathen. He tells us that in the course of more than fifty years, all the missionary societies of our country, of all denominations, have converted some fifty thousand heathen to Christianity, in various parts of the world. He then computes that American slavery has converted more than ten times that number; that is to say, more than half a million of slaves in the Southern States. He says, "I have good reason to suppose that more than half a million of the slaves of the South are regular members of Christian congregations." What a peculiar argument! Five hundred thousand men and women converted to Christianity by an institution which robs them during life of the fruits of their labor, sells them on the auction-block like so much cotton or tobacco, separates husbands and wives, parents and children, blots out of its vocabulary family, home, kindred; tramples the institution of marriage under foot, scatters licentiousness and concubinage over the land, and closes the Bible against them as a sealed book! I submit that this is not so much a conversion of heathen, as a heathen conversion; for certainly the heathenism preponderates strongly on the side of the missionary. Consider this argument. If it be sound, instead of raising money to defray the expense of transporting our free colored men to Liberia, we should enslave them at home, and expend our spare funds in hiring slaveholders to go there and establish their missionary institution. Why have a free colony in Liberia, when slavery is so much better fitted to Christianize the heathen of the African Continent? To carry on this great work efficiently the civilized nations of the world should unite in repealing their laws making the slave-trade piracy, and place it on a permanent basis, encour. aging it by bounties, and fostering it by every means in their power. As charity should begin at home, every Christian nation should introduce domestic slavery as its home missionary establishment; and as this would give life to the foreign slave-trade, it would answer the purpose of a foreign establishment also. Instead of sending missionaries to the heathen, we could then, as the

"National Era" has observed, bring the heathen to the missionary. Our present expensive operations might be abandoned, as Mr. Hooker tells us they are not doing a tenth part of the service to the Christian world which American slavery alone is rendering. All our Northern States, of course, should introduce slavery forthwith; and when this nation, coöperating with others, shall have planted this great missionary power in every part of the known world, the millennium will be "a fixed fact."

Mr. Hooker's book is truly a sublime and blessed performance. Whilst our country is threatened with the horrors of universal agitation, and our pro-slavery friends, quaking with the dread of "Uncle Tom," are ready to cry out "What shall we do to be saved?" it bursts upon their affrighted vision with a discovery which brings peace to their souls, solves the vexed riddle of slavery, and scourges the Uncle Tom literature from the world. Shall we not rejoice? We "fanatics" can now understand many things which before were shrouded in darkness. We can see why President Pierce says in his inaugural that he believes slavery is recognized in the Constitution, and that the compromise laws are to be "unhesitatingly" and "cheerfully" carried out. He is doubtless prompted by the piety which wells up in his great Christian heart, by his desire to see the heathen soundly converted through this divinely ordained missionary. We can understand perfectly why the Bible should not be given to three millions of slaves. It would obviously hinder their conversion to Christianity, by impairing the efficiency of its grand missionary agency. We can see how wicked it is for slaves to run away from their masters. It is simply running away from their missionaries. It shows them to be stiff-necked barbarians, stubbornly resisting the touches of divine grace, as well as of the slave-whip, whilst it enjoins it upon. us, as we love the cause of religion, to unite with alacrity in sending them back to the tender mercies of an institution so abundantly able to convert their heathen souls. It reconciles us to the fine and imprisonment meted out to us, if we feed or shelter the fugitive. In such infidel acts we grossly offend religion, by obstructing the propagation of the Gospel. It explains the law lately enacted in Illinois, which offers a bribe of twenty-five dollars to any of her white saints who will engage in the missionary work of enslaving any free man of color who may enter the State. This zeal for the spread of Christianity in that great commonwealth, awakened through our missionary institution, is without a parallel, even in Indiana. Illinois is now far in the van of all her North

ern sisters in her practical sympathy for the heathen without her gates.

Mr. Hooker, of course, would brand "Uncle Tom's Cabin " as unutterably wicked. It must be the enemy of souls. It is an infidel book, because it stabs Christianity to the heart by destroying its chosen missionary weapon. In writing it Mrs. Stowe must have been given over to hardness of heart, and wholly taken captive by the devil; for her book is altogether wanting in that real, missionary, "evangelical" unction, in which Mr. Hooker's labors seem to have been baptized. His theory likewise elucidates the principle upon which the Free Democratic members of the United States Senate must have been excluded from its business committees. Senator Jesse D. Bright, whose fervent desire for the salvation of souls it would, perhaps, be impious to question, publicly pronounced these Senators "outside of any healthy political organization." This, no doubt, was prompted by the godly yearning of his soul for the conversion of the African heathen. He himself, I believe, is rearing and converting quite a number on his Kentucky plantation. He was therefore interested both as a saint and a sinner in the grand missionary institution. Hale, and Chase, and Sumner, did not believe in missions. They lacked faith in "the preservation, propagation, and perpetuation of slavery," as a divine scheme for converting the heathen world. And although no man could say aught in derogation of their talents, their patriotism, or the purity of their lives, yet as they did not believe in the propagation of the gospel according to St. Jesse, they were unorthodox outsiders, and must be excommunicated as unclean! Who that knows anything of our distinguished Senator could ever have comprehended this without the pious solution of Mr. Hooker? Let us profoundly thank him both for his piety and his logic; and let us thank all the foes of freedom for the glaring sophisms to which they have been compelled to resort by the blows we have dealt.

My friends, I must not detain you longer. Were it right to do so, I could refer to many other facts prophetic of the triumph of our cause. Calhoun, Clay, and Webster, the idolized leaders of the great hosts of slavery, have all gone to their reckoning. The mad and mercenary cry of "danger to the Union" has been shamed into silence by the sober second thought of the people. The multitudinous heaps of "lower law" sermons, scattered through the land two or three years ago by atheistical doctors of divinity, have gone down to a grave of infamy from which there

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can be no resurrection. And our Fugitive Slave Act itself, with all its villainy, not only has the credit of giving birth to "Uncle Tom, but of extending and vitalizing a great system of subterranean railroads, all the lines of which are now striking larger dividends than at any time since the formation of the government. In view, of such facts, upon which I cannot now enlarge, and of the glorious future toward which they are hastening us, suffer me to exhort you to courage, constancy, and an unfaltering faith. Let us remember that the beautiful horizon of light which now salutes our vision has been educed from a season of darkness and gloom; and whilst we feel encouraged by our progress thus far, by the justice of our cause, and by the smiles of our Maker, let us consecrate ourselves anew to the great service which lies before us.

*OXFORD*

LIBRARY

THE SLAVERY QUESTION IN ITS PRESENT RELATIONS TO AMERICAN POLITICS.

DELIVERED AT INDIANAPOLIS, JUNE 29, 1855.

[The final disruption of the Whig party, followed by the repeal of the Missouri Compromise and the simultaneous birth of Know Nothingism, inaugurated a strange political dispensation with which the speech here reprinted deals unsparingly. It appeared at the time in the "National Era," and "Facts for the People," and was addressed especially to the anti-slavery men of Indiana, whose policy it rebuked; but its fearless arraignment of the Know Nothing movement, and of the slippery tactics of the "Anti-Nebraska" leaders, gave still further and more general offense. The madness of the times, however, soon passed away, and the speech is now submitted as its own best vindication.]

MR. PRESIDENT AND FELLOW-CITIZENS, I confess to some degree of embarrassment in approaching the discussion of the slavery question at this crisis in its history. It has assumed an attitude so novel and peculiar in its relations to American politics, and is so complicated with strange and alien elements, that I can scarcely hope to present my views of present duty without giving offense to some, and perhaps arousing a certain antagonism among those who have heretofore walked together as brethren. My task is a delicate one, and I regret, sincerely, the causes that have made it so. I shall, however, in the exercise of free speech, and with that plainness which I am accustomed to employ, give utterance to my own deliberate convictions, holding no man or party responsible for them, and only asking, in their behalf, such consideration as they may be entitled to receive at your hands. I desire to address myself, to-day, to anti-slavery men; and I begin by remarking that the grand obstacle to the spread of free principles is the lack of a just comprehension of our movement. It is not only grossly misconceived by the great body of the people, but many, I fear, who are set apart by common consent as its peculiar friends, either do not understand, or perceive but dimly, its real magnitude. The cause of Human Rights is not one to be dragged down to the level of our current politics, and confounded with the strife of parties and the schemes of place-hunters. It is not to be hawked about in the political market, and advocated with a zeal

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