hath Christ with Belial?" What union has freedom with slavery? Let us tell the inexorable and remorseless tyrants of the South that their conditions hitherto imposed upon us, whereby we are morally responsible for the existence of slavery, are horribly inhuman and wicked, and we cannot carry them out for the sake of their evil company. By the dissolution of the Union we shall give the finishing blow to the slave system; and then God will make it possible for us to form a true, vital, enduring, all-embracing Union, from the Atlantic to the Pacific-one God to be worshipped, one Saviour to be revered, one policy to be carried out-freedom everywhere to all the people, without regard to complexion or race and the blessing of God resting upon us all! I want to see that glorious day! Now the South is full of tribulation and terror and despair, going down to irretrievable bankruptcy, and fearing each bush an officer! Would to God it might all pass away like a hideous dream! and how easily it might be! What is it that God requires of the South to remove every root of bitterness, to allay every fear, to fill her borders with prosperity? But one simple act of justice, without violence and convulsion, without danger and hazard. It is this: "Undo the heavy burdens, break every yoke, and let the oppressed go free!" Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thy darkness shall be as the noonday. Then shalt thou call and the Lord shall answer; thou shalt cry, and he shall say: "Here I am." "And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places; thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of paths to dwell in.” How simple and how glorious! It is the complete solution of all the difficulties in the case. Oh, that the South may be wise before it is too late, and give heed to the word of the Lord! But, whether she will hear or forbear, let us renew our pledges to the cause of bleeding humanity, and spare no effort to make this truly the land of the free and the refuge of the oppressed! "Onward, then, ye fearless band, Heart to heart, and hand to hand; THE UNION AND SLAVERY Delivered at the Celebration of Independence Day, July 5, 1850 I AM at a loss to know what our friend Mr. Phillips meant when he said that, being a non-voter, he could not sign the petition asking the legislature of Massachusetts to decree the freedom of every fugitive slave coming into this State. I should like to hear from him somewhat more definitely on this point. For one, I intend to sign the petition and to get as many signatures to it as I can, and I, also, am a nonvoter. It is true, what we cannot do ourselves, we cannot do by another; but I can and do, as an individual, make the decree that I wish the legislature to make respecting every fugitive slave coming into this State. True, my decree will not avail much; but when the people of this Commonwealth shall add their voices to mine, their decree will be potential. Now, to their shame, they are in covenant with Southern slaveholders not to allow the trembling fugitive to find safety and freedom among them. It is a wicked covenant, and I ask them to obliterate it, and to write in the place of it: "Every fugitive slave shall be free as soon as he touches the soil of Massachusetts!" But it will probably be objected that to ask Massachusetts to make such a decree, while she stands constitutionally pledged to permit the slave-hunter to seize his victim, is to ask her to be guilty of perfidy, and is tantamount to a dissolution of the Union. Nevertheless, I say, Massachusetts is morally bound to protect every fugitive slave coming within her limits; and if the legislature shall avow to the world that she cannot do this, because of her constitutional stipulation to do just the reverse of it, that is just the confession I desire to be made "before all Israel and the sun," to convict her, out of her own mouth, of being a kidnapping State, and willing to continue such, for the sake of remaining in a slaveholding Union. If she tell me she can pass the decree for which we petition, and go out of the Union, then I say to her: "Pass it, and let the Union slide!" People of Massachusetts, before God it is your duty to "Hide the outcast and betray not him that wandereth." See that you do it, whether the Union stand or fall! |