Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/30

18 but speak to you, as Americans and as men, addressing my thoughts to all the citizens of the Slave States and the Free. I am to speak of a great evil, long established, wide spread, deeply rooted in the laws, the usages, and the ideas of the people. It affects directly the welfare of three millions of men, one sixth part of the nation: they are slaves. It affects directly half the States; they are slave-holders. It has a powerful influence on the other half, though more subtle and unseen. It affects the industry, laws, morals, and entire prosperity of the whole nation to a degree exceeding the belief of men not familiar with its history and its facts. The evil increases with a rapid growth; with advancing flood it gains new territory, swells with larger volume; its deadly spray and miasma gradually invade all our institutions. The whole nation is now legally pledged to its support ; the public legislation for the last sixty years has made slavery a federal institution. Your revenue boats and your navy are bound to support it; your army acts for its defence. You have fought wars, spending money and shedding blood, to gain new soil wherein to plant the tree of slavery. You have established it in your districts and your territories. You have recently annexed to your realm a new, territory as large as the kingdom of France, and extended slavery over that soil whence a semi-barbarous people had expelled it with ignominy. You are now fighting a war in behalf of slavery, a war carried on at great cost of money and of men. The national capital is a great slave market; in her shambles your brothers are daily offered for sale. Your flag floats over the most wicked commerce on earth—the traffic in men and women. Citizens of the United States breed youths and maidens for sale in the market, as the grazier oxen and swine.

The Bey of Tunis has abolished slavery as a disgrace to Africa and the Mahometan religion. Your Constitution of the United States supports this institution, and binds it upon the free States; the South fondly clings to it; he free men of the North bend suppliant necks to this yoke. With a few exceptions, your representatives and senators in Congress give it their countenance and their vote; their hand and their heart. Your great and famous men