Page:The Natick resolution, or, resistance to slaveholders.djvu/29

Rh rection against them, and all that sustains them, in sentiment, in principle, in spirit, word and deed, was the watchword of the Anti-Slavery Movement. Insurrection was couched in the very name by which the enterprise was christened, i.e.,. An Anti-Slavery soul, and an Anti-Slavery life, were to be created in the North; which meant a soul and a life, an interior and exterior life, rebellious and insurrectionary against slaveholders. The souls of the Northern people were to be aroused to cease to side with the oppressors against the oppressed, (as they had ever done,) and to yield up reason and conscience, and all their sympathy, and all their powers of soul and body, to the slaves against their enslavers. Two positions were established: (1) That it is the right and duty of the enslaved and the free to resist all attempts to hold and use human beings as chattels. (2) That it is our right and duty to use all such means to free the slaves as we would use to free ourselves, if we were slaves.

These two positions were, and have been to this day, maintained by you, by Adin Ballou, by Wendell Phillips, and by all Abolitionists. "Incite the slaves to escape from slavery, and defend them against the rape, rapine, and atrocities of those who would enslave them, by the same weapons with which you would defend yourselves, your wives and children. Resist slave-catchers, in behalf of the black slaves, by the same means that you would use in behalf of white slaves." This has been the uniform teaching of Abolitionists from the beginning. Every paper, every letter, every speech, every prayer, every exhortation, has been designed to bring the souls of the people into a state of insurrection against slaveholders, and an argument to induce them to use all such means as they would use, or wish others to use, for their own protection.

As to armed or military resistance to slaveholders, or to evil-doers, my soul has ever resisted it, and ever must, as inexpedient, unjust and inhuman. Life or liberty can never be protected by killing men. is the basis of. Human liberty can never be made sacred by the taking of human life. Respect for liberty can never result from contempt for life. Liberty will be safe, only as life is reverenced. The inviolability of life is the only foundation of absolute safety to liberty.