sion, our cities stormed, our fields ravaged, our prosperity withered, our progress arrested, our sons slain, our homes turned into deserts, not for rights, not for liberty, not for a cause which humanity smiles on and God will bless, but to rivet chains on fellow-creatures, to extend the law of slavery throughout the earth? These are great questions for the free states. The duties of the free states in relation to slavery deserve the most serious regard. Let us implore Him who was the God of our fathers, and who has shielded us in so many perils, to open our minds and hearts to what is true and just and good, to continue our union at home and our peace abroad, and to make our country a living witness to the blessings of freedom, of reverence for right on our own shores and in our intercourse with all nations. THE LESSONS OF INDEPENDENCE DAY. WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. July 4, 1842. I present myself as the advocate of my enslaved countrymen, at a time when their claims cannot be shuffled out of sight, and on an occasion which entitles me to a respectful hearing in their behalf. If I am asked to prove their title to liberty, my answer is, that the fourth of July is not a day to be wasted in establishing "self-evident truths." In the name of the God who has made us of one blood, and in whose image we are created; in the name of the Messiah, who came to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of a prison to them that are bound; I demand the immediate emancipation of those who are pining in slavery on the American soil, whether they are fattening for the shambles in Maryland and Virginia, or are wasting, as with a pestilent disease, on the cotton and sugar plantations of Alabama and Louisiana; whether they are male or female, young or old, vigorous or infirm. I make this demand, not for the children merely, but the parents also; not for one, but for all; not with restrictions and limitations, but unconditionally. I assert their perfect equality with ourselves, as a part of the human race, and their inalienable right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That this demand is founded in justice, and is therefore irresistible, the whole nation is this day acknowledging, as upon oath at the bar of the world. And not until, by a formal vote, the people repudiate the declaration of independence as a false and dangerous instrument, and cease to keep this festival in honor of liberty, as unworthy of note or remembrance; not until they spike every cannon, and muffle every bell, and disband every procession, and quench every bonfire, and gag every orator; not until they brand Washington, and Adams, and Jefferson, and Hancock, as fanatics and madmen; not until they place themselves again in the condition of colonial subserviency to Great Britain, or transform this republic into an imperial government; not until they cease pointing exultingly to Bunker Hill, and the plains of Concord and Lexington; not, in fine, until they deny the authority of God, and proclaim themselves to be destitute of principle and humanity, will I argue the question, as one of doubtful disputation, on an occasion like this, whether our slaves are entitled to the rights and privileges of freemen. That question is settled irrevocably. There is no man to be found, unless he has a brow of brass and a heart of stone, who will dare to contest it on a day like this. A state of vassalage is pronounced, by universal acclamation, to be such as no man, or body of men, ought to submit to for one moment. I therefore tell the American slaves, that the time for their emancipation is come; that, their own taskmasters being witnesses, they are created equal to the rest of mankind, and possess an inalienable right to liberty; and that no man has a right to hold them in bondage. I counsel them not to fight for their freedom, both on account of the hopelessness of the effort, and because it is rendering evil for evil; but I tell them, not less emphatically, it is not wrong for them to refuse to wear the yoke of slavery any longer. Let them shed no blood-enter into no conspiracies-raise no murderous revolts; but, whenever and wherever they can break their fetters, God give them courage to do so! And should they attempt to elope from their house of bondage, and come to the north, may each of them find a covert from the search of the spoiler, and an invincible public sentiment to shield them from the grasp of the kidnapper! Success attend them in their flight to Canada, to touch whose monarchical soil insures freedom to every republican slave! Is this preaching sedition? Sedition against what? Not the lives of the Southern oppressors for-I renew the solemn injunction, "Shed no blood!"--but against unlawful authority, and barbarous usage, and unrequited toil. If slave-holders are still obstinately bent upon plundering and starving their long-suffering victims, why, let them look well to consequences! To save them from danger, I am not obligated to suppress the truth, or to stop proclaiming liberty "throughout all the land, unto all the inhabitants thereof." No, indeed. There are two important truths, which, as far as practicable, I mean every slave shall be made to understand. The first is, that he has a right to his freedom now; the other is, that this is recognized as a self-evident truth in the Declaration of Independence. Sedition, forsooth! Why, what are the American people doing this day? In theory, maintaining the freedom and equality of the human race; and in practice, declaring that all tyrants ought to be extirpated from the face of the earth! We are giving to our slaves the following easy sums for solution:—If the principle involved in a threepenny tax on tea justified a seven years' war, how much blood may be lawfully spilt in resisting the principle, that one human being has a right to the body and soul of another, on account of the color of his skin? Again, If the impressment of six thousand American seamen, by Great Britain, furnished sufficient cause for a bloody struggle with that nation, and the sacrifice of hundreds of millions of capital, in self-defence, how many lives may be taken, by way of retribution, on account of the enslavement, as chattels, of more than two millions of American laborers? Oppression and insurrection go hand in hand, as cause and effect are allied together. In what age of the world have tyrants reigned with impunity, or the victims of tyranny not resisted unto blood? Besides our own grand insurrection against the authority of the mother country, there have been many insurrections, during the last two hundred years, in various sections of the land, on the part of the victims of our tyranny, but without the success that attended our own struggle. The last was the memorable one in Southampton, Virginia, headed by a black patriot, nicknamed, in the contemptuous nomenclature of slavery, Nat Turner. The name does not strike the ear so harmoniously as that of Washington, or Lafayette, or Hancock, or Warren; but the name is nothing. It is not in the power of all the slave-holders upon earth, to render odious the memory of that sable chieftain. 'Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God," was our revolutionary motto. We acted upon that motto-what more did Nat Turner? Says George McDuffie, "A people who deliberately submit to oppression, with a full knowledge that they are oppressed, are fit only to be slaves. No tyrant ever made a slave-no community, however small, having the spirit of freemen, ever yet had a master. It does not belong to men to count the costs, and calculate the hazards of vindicating their rights, and defending their liberties." So reasoned Nat Turner, and acted accordingly. Was he a patriot, or a monster? Do we mean to say to the oppressed of all nations, in the 62d year of our independence, and on the 4th of July, that our example in 1776 was a bad one, and ought not to be followed? As a Christian nonresident, I, for one, am prepared to say so; but are the people ready to say, no chains ought to be broken by the hand of violence, and no blood spilt in defence of inalienable human rights, in any quarter of the globe? If not, then our slaves will peradventure take us at our word, and there will be given unto us blood to drink, for we are worthy. Why accuse abolitionists of stirring them up to insurrection? The charge is false; but what if it were true? If any man has a right to fight for liberty, this right equally extends to all men subjected to bondage. In claiming this right for themselves, the American people necessarily concede it to all mankind. If, therefore, they are found tyrannizing over any part of the human race, they voluntarily seal their own death-warrant, and confess that they deserve to perish. "What are the banners ye exalt ?-the deeds That raised your fathers' pyramid of fame? And talk exulting of the patriot's name- And deeper feel their sorrow and their shame, Ye double all the fetters that they wore, And press them down to earth, till hope exults no more!" But, it seems, abolitionists have the audacity to tell the slaves, not only of their rights, but also of their wrongs! That must be a rare piece of information to them truly! Tell a man who has just had his back flayed by the lash, till a pool of blood is at his feet, that somebody has flogged him! Tell him who wears an iron collar upon his neck, and a chain upon his heels, that his limbs are fettered, as if he knew it not! Tell those who receive no compensation for their toil, that they are unrighteously defrauded! In spite of all their whippings, and deprivations, and forcible separations, like cattle in the market, it seems that the poor slaves realized a heaven of blissful ignorance, until their halcyon dreams were disturbed by the pictorial representations and exciting descriptions of the abolitionists! What! have not the slaves eyes? have they not hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Are they not fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as freemen are? "If we prick them, do they not bleed? if we tickle them, do they not laugh? if we poison them, do they not die? and if we wrong them, will they not be revenged?" 46 For the slaveholders," we are told, there is no peace, by night or day; but every moment is a moment of alarm, and their enemies are of their own household "" It is the hand of a friendly vindicator, moreover, that rolls up the curtain! What but the most atrocious tyranny on the part of the masters, and the most terrible sufferings on the past of the slaves, can account for such alarm, such insecurity, such apprehensions that "even a more horrible catastrophe" than that of arson and murder may transpire nightly? It requires all the villany that has ever been charged upon Southern oppressors, and all the wretchedness that has ever been ascribed to the oppressed, to work out so fearful a result;-and that the statement is true, the most distinguished slaveholders have more than once certified. That it is true, the entire code of slave laws-whips and yokes and fettersthe nightly patrol-restriction of locomotion on the part of the slaves, except with passes-muskets, pistols, and bowie knives in the bedchambers during the hours of rest-the fear of inter-communication of colored freemen and the slaves-the prohibition of even alphabetical instruction, under pains and penalties, to the victims of wrong-the refusal to admit their testimony against persons of a white com. plexion-the wild consternation and furious gnashing of teeth exhibited by the chivalric oppressors, at the sight of an anti-slavery publication-the rewards offered for the persons of abolitionists-the whipping of Dresser, and the murder of Lovejoy-the plundering of the United States mail-the application of lynch law to all who are found▲ sympathizing with the slave population as men, south of the Potomacthe reign of mobocracy in place of constitutional law-and, finally, the Pharaoh-like conduct of the masters, in imposing new burdens and heavier fetters upon their down-trodden vassals-all these things, together with a long catalogue of others, prove that the abolitionists have not 66 set down aught in malice" against the South-that they have exaggerated nothing. They warn us, as with miraculous speech, that, unless justice be speedily done, a bloody catastrophe is to come, which will roll a gory tide of desolation through the land, and may peradventure blot out the memory of the scenes of St. Domingo. They are the premonitory rumblings of a great earthquake-the lava token of a heaving volcano! God grant, that while there is time and a way to escape, we may give heed to these signals of impending retribution! One thing I know full well. Calumniated, abhorred, persecuted as the abolitionists have been, they constitute the body-guard of the slaveholders, not to strengthen their oppression, but to shield them from the vengeance of their slaves. Instead of seeking their destruction, abolitionists are endeavoring to save them from midnight conflagration and sudden death, by beseeching them to remove the cause of insurrection; and by holding out to their slaves the hope of a peaceful deliverance. We do not desire that any should perish. Having a conscience void of offence in this matter, and cherishing a love for our race which is "without partiality and without hypocrisy," no impeachment of our motives, or assault upon our character, can disturb the serenity of our minds; nor can any threats of violence, or prospect of suffering, deter us from our purpose. That we manifest a bad spirit, is not to be decided on the testimony of the Southern slave-driver, or his Northern apologist. That our philanthropy is exclusive, in favor of but one party, is not proved by our denouncing the oppressor, and sympathizing with his victim. That we are seeking popularity, is not apparent from our advocating an odious and unpopular cause, and vindicating, at the loss of our reputation, the rights of a people who are reckoned among the offscouring of all things. That our motives are not disinterested, they who swim with the popular current, and partake of the gains of unrighteousness, and plunder the laborers of their wages, are not competent to determine. That our language is uncharitable and unchristian, they who revile us as madmen, fanatics, incendiaries, traitors, cut-throats, etc., etc., cannot be allowed to testify. That our measures are violent, is not demonstrated by the fact that we wield |