Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/534

 used to imply publications encouraging insurrection, and designed to excite the slaves to break their fetters, the charge is utterly and unequivocally, false. We beg our fellow-citizens to notice that this charge is made without proof, and by many who confess that they have never read our publications, and that those who make it, offer to the public no evidence from our writings in support of it

"8th. We are accused of sending our publications to the slaves, and it is asserted that their tendency is to excite insurrections. Both the charges are false. These publications are not intended for the slaves, and were they able to read them, they would find in them no encouragement to insurrection.

"9th. We are accused of employing agents in the slave states to distribute our publications. We have never had one such agent. We have sent no package of our papers to any person in those states for distribution, except to five respectable resident citizens, at their own request. But we have sent, by mail, single papers addressed to public officers, editors of newspapers, clergymen, and others. If, therefore, our object is to excite the slaves to insurrection, the masters are our agents.

"We believe slavery to be sinful, injurious to this and every other country in which it prevails; we believe immediate emancipation to be the duty of every slaveholder, and that the immediate abolition of slavery by those who have the right to abolish it, would be safe and wise. These opinions we have freely expressed, and we certainly have no intention to refrain from expressing them in future, and urging them upon the consciences and hearts of our fellow-citizens who hold slaves, or apologize for slavery.

"We believe the education of the poor is required by duty, and by a regard for the permanency of our republican institutions. There are thousands and tens of thousands of our fellow-citizens, even in the free states, sunk in abject poverty, and who, on account of their complexion, are virtually kept in ignorance, and whose instruction in certain cases is actually prohibited by law 1 We are anxious to protect the rights, and to promote the virtue and happiness of the colored portion of our population, and on this account we have been charged with a design to encourage intermarriages between whites and blacks. This charge has been repeatedly, and is now again denied, while we repeat that the tendency of our sentiments is to put an end to the criminal amalgamation that prevails wherever slavery exists.

"We are accused of acts that tend to a dissolution of the Union, and even of wishing to dissolve it. We have never 'calculated the value of the Union,' because we believe it to be inestimable, and that the abolition of slavery will remove the chief danger of its dissolution; and one of the many reasons why we cherish and will endeavor to preserve the constitution is, that it restrains congress from making any law abridging the freedom of speech or of the press.

"Such, fellow-citizens, are our principles; are they unworthy of republicans and Christians? Or are they in truth so atrocious, that in order to prevent their diffusion you are yourselves willing to surrender, at the dictation of others, the invaluable privilege of free discussion — the very birthright of Americans? Will you, in order that the abominations of slavery may be concealed