Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/143

Rh repaired at Boston in 1848, and now hails from this port. She was commanded by one "Captain Otis," and is owned by one "Salem Charles." This, I suppose, is a fictitious name, for certainly it would not be respectable in Boston to extend slavery in this way. Even Mr Winthrop is opposed to that, and thinks "a million swords would leap from their scabbards to oppose it." But it may be that there are men in Boston who do not think it any worse to steal men who were born free, and have grown up free in Africa, and make slaves of them, than to steal such as are born free in America, before they are grown up. If we have the Old Testament decidedly sustaining slavery, and the New Testament never forbidding it; if, as we are often told, neither Jesus nor his early followers ever said a word against slavery; if scarcely a Christian minister in Boston ever preaches against this national sin; if the Representative from Boston has no religious scruples against returning a fugitive slave, or extending slavery over a "hundred or a hundred thousand square miles" of new territory; if the great senator from Massachusetts refuses to vote for the Wilmot Proviso, or re-affirm an ordinance of nature, and re-enact the will of God; if he calls on us to return fugitive slaves "with alacrity," and demands of Massachusetts that she shall conquer her prejudices; if nine hundred and eighty-seven men in this vicinity, of lawful age, are thankful to him for enlightening them as to their duty, and a professor of theology comes forward to sanction American slavery in the name of religion—why, I think Mr "Salem Charles," with his "Captain Otis," may not be the worst man in the world, after all! Let us pity him also, as "A man and a brother."

Such is the crisis in our affairs; such the special issue in the general question between freedom and slavery; such the position of parties and of great men in relation to this question; such the foes to freedom in America.

On our side, there are great and powerful allies. The American idea is with us; the spirit of the majority of men in the North, when they are not blindfolded and muzzled by the demagogues of State and Church. The religion of the land, also, is on our side; the irreligion, the