Page:The duties of masters and slaves respectively (1845).djvu/8

4 grant too that these, the prime movers in all the measures of the party, whether political or religious, are few in number. These ultra abolitionists are few, but they are resolute and reckless.

With some of this class it was my lot, during my late tour at the North and East, to come in contact; and my deliberate opinion is, that they are crazy quoad hoc. They are monomaniacs; labouring, on one subject, under a delusion which renders their minds impervious to reason. In my intercourse with them, (for, to avoid them was not always possible,) I have been saluted by epithets neither flattering nor courteous. They have, publicly and privately, through the newspapers and by private letters, denounced me as a thief, a ruffian, a villain, a hypocritical oppressor of the defenceless; as one who approaches the very altar of God, to solemnize the deepest mysteries of religion, with hands stained and of the victims of a cruel oppression. And why? because, and simply because, I live in a slaveholding community; I minister to a church most of whose members hold slaves;—and instead of teaching my flock that in so doing they are guilty of grievous sin and must be all damned for ever unless they, at once, set all their slaves free, I am supposed to be myself a slaveholder, and as such, a partner and abettor of their crime. Well! at all this, bad as it is, we might calmly smile, were this the extent of the evil. But these rabid advocates of universal equality and of immediate emancipation are but a very insignificant portion of that great body of American citizens, who look upon slavery with disapprobation and abhorrence. There are thousands of thousands in our country, utterly opposed to the violent spirit of Garrison and his followers, who yet look upon this institution as evil, altogether evil,—based on wrong, and most injurious in its tendency;—who contend that it must be extirpated sooner or later, and that it ought to be removed at the earliest possible moment that shall be found compatible with safety. And among these, there are certainly some of the clearest and coolest heads, as well as of the purest hearts, that this country can boast.

Grave and learned divines, intelligent lay officers of the church, nay, dignified ecclesiastical bodies, have, by the passage of solemn resolutions entered on their permanent records, pronounced slaveholding to be a deadly sin, inconsistent with all pretensions to piety; whereupon, they expressly debar from their pulpits all slaveholding ministers, and all pastors of slaveholding churches; and they shut out from the communion-table, and from the church of God, any and every slave-holder. These men may be mistaken; but they are, beyond all question, sincere and deeply in earnest. Again and again, I myself have been shut out