Page:The Barbarism of Slavery.djvu/55

 of La Roy Sunderland, a clergyman of the Methodist Church at New-York.

These manifestations are not without prototype in the history of the Anti-Slavery cause in other countries. From the beginning, Slave-masters have encountered argument by brutality and violence. If we go back to the earliest of Abolitionists, the wonderful Portuguese preacher, Vieyra, we shall find that his matchless eloquence and unquestioned piety did not save him from indignity. After a sermon exposing Slavery in Brazil, he was seized and imprisoned, while one of the principal Slave-masters asked him, in mockery, where were all his learning and all his genius now, if they could not deliver him in this extremity? He was of the Catholic Church. But the spirit of Slavery is the same in all churches. A renowned Quaker minister of the last century, Thomas Chalkley, while on a visit at Barbadoes, having simply recommended charity to the slaves, without presuming to breathe a word against Slavery itself, was first met by disturbance in the meeting, and afterward, on the highway, and in open day, was fired at by one of the exasperated planters, with "a fowling-piece loaded with small shot, ten of which made marks, and several drew blood." Even in England, while the slave-trade was under discussion, the same spirit appeared. Wilberforce, who represented the cause of Abolition in Parliament, was threatened with personal violence; Clarkson, who represented the same cause before the people, was assaulted by the infuriate Slave-traders, and narrowly escaped being hustled into the dock; and Roscoe, the accomplished historian, on his return to Liverpool from his seat in Parliament, where he had signalized himself as an opponent of the Slave-trade, was met at the entrance of the town by a savage mob, composed of persons interested in this traffic, armed with knives and bludgeons, the distinctive arguments and companions of Pro-Slavery partisans.

And even in the Free States the partisans of Slavery have, from the beginning, acted under the inspiration of violence. The demon of Slavery has entered into them, and under its influence they have behaved like Slave-masters. Public meetings for the discussion of Slavery have been interrupted; public halls, dedicated to its discussion, have been destroyed or burned to the ground. In all our populous cities the great rights of speech and of the press have been assailed precisely as in the