Page:The Natick resolution, or, resistance to slaveholders.djvu/21

Rh incite slaves to insurrection and resistance of soul against slaveholders, and all who would enslave them. The hope was expressed that the slaveholders in Congress would bring Northern members to the test, that they might have an opportunity to affirm in Congress the sentiments they are known to entertain at home—i.e., that it is the right and duty of slaves to seek freedom by running away, and to defend themselves against all who would intercept them, and that it is the right and duty of the North to incite and aid them thus to get their freedom.

Such sentiments were uttered in that meeting in your hearing, and not one word was said by you or any one against them. And it was said that your silence would be taken for consent. Why, then, do you intimate that you were silent because you did not wish "to interrupt the proceedings"? You well know that, had you spoken, not one would have considered it an interruption. The feeling was that you were silent because your sense of justice, truth and humanity forbade you to oppose the resolution. I do not believe there were ten persons in the meeting who would have said that it is not right for slaves to run away, or that John Brown did not do right in inciting them to run away, and in helping to defend them against all who should oppose them.

It was not "curiosity," but sympathy with Brown, that brought them there. It would be difficult for you to convince your neighbors that it was not a deep interest in the life and fate of Brown that brought you there. It is true, as Iverson says, "by your silence, you gave your sanction to the resolution." You were invited to oppose it; you declined. Had you openly and earnestly sustained it, there were not probably ten in the hall, I doubt if there was one, who would not have admired you all the more for it.

I allude to this meeting, not because it is worthy of special notice in itself; for thousands like it are being held on the same subject all over the North, in which stronger sentiments, it may be, are urged without contradiction; but because you and other members of the Senate and of the House are trying to throw glamour in the eyes of Southern members, and make them think that Republicans have no sympathy with Brown and his efforts to run off slaves, and