We expect, generally, that the progress of Christianity in a country will certainly, however gradually, undermine and overthrow customs and usages, superstitions and prejudices, of an unchristian character. That this contempt of the Negro is unchristian, perhaps I shall be excused from stooping to argue. But, alas! pari passu with the spread of what the pulpit renders current as Christianity in my native country, is the growth, diffusion, and perpetuity of hatred to the Negro; indeed, one might be almost tempted to accredit the words of one of the most eloquent of Englishmen, who, more than twenty years ago, described it in few but forcible terms—“the Negro-hating Christianity.” Religion, however, should be substituted for Christianity; for while a religion may be from man, and a religion from such an origin may be capable of hating, Christianity is always from God, and, like him, is love. “He who hateth his brother abideth in darkness.” “Love is the fulfilling of the law.” Surely it is with no pleasure that I say, from experience, deep-wrought conviction, that the oppression and the maltreatment of the hapless descendant of Africa is not merely an ugly excrescence upon American religion—not a blot upon it, not even an anomaly, a contradiction, and an admitted imperfection, a deplored weakness—a lamented form of indwelling, an easily besetting, sin; no, it is a part and parcel of it, a cardinal principle, a sine quâ non, a cherished defended keystone, a corner-stone, of American faith—all the more so as it enters into the practice, the everyday practice, of an overwhelming majority (equal to ninety-nine hundredths) of its professors, lay and clerical, of all denominations; not excepting, too, many of the Quakers! How these people will get on in Heaven, into which sovereign, abounding, divine mercy admits blacks as well as whites, I know not; but Heaven is not the only place to which either whites or blacks will enter after the judgment!

In view of such a conclusion, what is anti-slavery labour? Manifestly the refutation of all this miserable nonsense and heresy—for it is both. How is this to be done? Not alone by lecturing, holding anti-slavery conventions, distributing anti-slavery tracts, maintaining anti-slavery societies, and editing anti-slavery journals, much less by making a trade of these, for certain especial pets and favourites to profit by and in which to live in luxury; but, in connection with these labours, right and necessary in themselves, effective as they must be when properly pursued, the cultivation of all the upward tendencies of the coloured man. I call the expert black cordwainer, blacksmith, or other mechanic or artisan, the teacher, the lawyer, the doctor, the farmer, or the divine, an anti-slavery labourer; and in his vocation from day to day, with his hoe, hammer, pen, tongue, or lancet, he is living down the base calumnies of his heartless adversaries—he is demonstrating his truth and their falsity: indeed, all the labour which falls short of this—much more, such as does not tend in this direction—must, from the nature of the case and the facts and demands of the cause, be defective, lamentably defective, to use no stronger term. I shall be understood, I hope, then, if I include the chief facts of my life, whether in the editorial chair, in the pulpit, on the platform, pleading for this cause or that, in my anti-slavery labours. God helping me wherever I shall be, at home, abroad, on land or sea, in public or private walks, as a man, a Christian, especially as a black man, my labours must be anti-slavery labours, because mine must be an anti-slavery life.

I SHALL not inflict the dry details of a journal upon my readers. Treating of my labours in the American States, in this part I shall briefly speak of the incidents which in Providence led to my entering upon the lecturing field, those connected with my settlement in the ministry, and some events occurring in the course of both, and the reasons for the termination of those labours.

That the announcement of a meeting for the formation of an anti-slavery society should create a sensation among the coloured people of New York no one will wonder. Having been abused, and befooled, and slandered, disparaged, ridiculed, and traduced, by the Colonizationists, we could not but look on, first, with very great distrust upon any persons stepping forward with schemes professedly for our good. But a young printer had suffered imprisonment in Baltimore, for exposing there what Clarkson had long before exposed in Liverpool—viz., the paraphernalia of a systematic, authorized, lucrative slave trade; and this young man being released through the munificence of one of our then wealthiest Pearl Street merchants, we could not doubt the real motives of either of these. Garrison would not suffer imprisonment in our behalf, insincerely; Arthur Tappan would not liberate Garrison from imprisonment, on such a charge, at the cost of one thousand dollars, insincerely; indeed, we know too well that no white man would suffer for our sakes, without more than ordinary philanthropy. These gentlemen deserved, and they received, our confidence. In 1830 I heard, in New Haven, Connecticut, at the Temple Street Coloured Congregational Church, the Rev. Simeon S. Jocelyn preach. I learned that, when a young man, a bank-note engraver by trade, he studied theology and entered the ministry, on purpose to serve the coloured people. When a lecture was announced to be delivered on the subject of slavery by that gentleman, I was but too glad to hear him. I learned to love him as a child; I now have the honour of his friendship as a man. His was the first anti-slavery lecture I ever heard, and it was delivered in 1834. In the spring of the same year Professor E. Wright, jun., who had been in the enjoyment of a Professorship in a Western College, but relinquished it, and with it surrendered a salary of eleven hundred dollars for one of four hundred, that he might be at liberty to serve the anti-slavery cause, lectured upon the same subject. I was among his many delighted auditors. The same gentleman is now E. Wright, Esq., of Boston, the Douglas Jerrold of America. A lawyer well known to fame, David Paul Brown, Esq., of Philadelphia, was always ready to render his peerless services in defence of any person claimed as a slave. On the fourth day of July, 1834, this gentleman was invited to deliver an anti-slavery oration in Chatham Chapel, and, of course, the coloured people mustered in strong array to hear so well known a champion of freedom; but the meeting was dispersed by a mob, gathered and sustained by the leading commercial and political men and journals of that great city. It was Independence Day—a day, of all days, sacred to freedom. What Mr. Brown came to tell us was, that the principles, enunciated in few words, in the Declaration of Independence—“We hold these truths to be self-evident truths, that all men are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”—applied as well to black men as to white men. This the aristocracy of New York could not endure; and therefore, just fifty-eight years from the very hour that the Declaration of 1776 was made, the mob of the New York merchants broke up this assembly.

On the 7th of the same month the coloured people held a meeting in the same place, to listen to an address from one of the ablest of their number, Benjamin F. Hughes, Esq. That meeting was dispersed by a mob led by a person holding a lucrative political office in the city. This gentleman (I like to indulge in poetry sometimes) thought to do as he pleased with the blacks, kicking them about at will; and while Mr. Hughes was speaking, ordered other parties to come in and occupy the building. Seeing resistance made by some of the coloured people, and fearing he might receive a blow for a kick, he elevated a chair over his head, and stood witnessing the mêlée himself had begun, when Mr. Jinnings knocked him over with a well-aimed missile. Leaving his men to fight or run, as might seem wisest, this general of the mob escaped from a window 22 feet from the ground, injuring himself so as to keep his house for a fortnight—in his own person the leader of the mob and the only man injured in the affray. The blacks were victors; every white man was driven from the place. But while a few of us lingered, a reinforcement of the white belligerents came, and, finding some few lads of us in the place, they drove us out with a rush to the door. Then they commenced beating us in the most cowardly manner. The public watchman arrested the parties beaten instead of those committing the assault, and it was my lot to be among the former number. For the crime of being publicly assaulted by several white persons, I was locked up in the watchhouse throughout the night. Shortly after my imprisonment, four others were brought into the same cell by the officers of peace and justice, for the same crime. In the meantime the mob went to the house of Lewis Tappan, Esq., broke it open, sacked it, and burned the furniture. Mr. Tappan was brother and partner of the gentleman who liberated Garrison; he also believed in the Declaration of Independence; hence the mutilation and burning of his property. My oath of allegiance to the anti-slavery cause was taken in that cell on the 7th of July, 1834. In the morning we were brought before the police magistrate, with other prisoners. Those against whom no one appeared, or whom no one charged with any offence, were discharged. None appeared against us. The watchman who arrested us had no charge to bring: he simply said, in the chaste diction of a New York official, “Thur was a row in Chatham Chapel last night, and these niggers was there.” The magistrate, a sample specimen of the New York Dogberry, abused us, and, instead of discharging us according to law and custom, remanded us to Bridewell, to give parties an opportunity of appearing against us. I never knew the same course taken in any other case. To Bridewell we went, and were put into a cell with nineteen others. In a most filthy state was that cell. All the occupants, besides my four companions, were charged with crime—one with killing a man; and though we were searched before we were incarcerated, this man had, and showed us, the knife with which he had inflicted the murder. The murderer, Johnson, had been fettered in the same cell, and we saw the chain by which he had been fastened to the floor. When the prison cup was offered us to drink from, and when the prison food was brought us, feeling our innocence and our dignity (lads of seventeen seldom lack the latter), we refused both. About ten o'clock, my father and G. A. Ward, Esq., procured my liberation, by paying the turnkey. As an innocent subject, unrighteously doomed to a felon's prison, without either accuser or trial, when liberated, I should have gone out free. My fellow prisoners were liberated soon after. That imprisonment initiated me into the anti-slavery fraternity.

In July, 1837, I was selected to deliver an oration before a Literary Society of which I was a member. It was my first public attempt at public speaking. Among those present was Lewis Tappan, Esq. In August of the same year I was invited to speak in the Broadway Tabernacle. In 1839 I was engaged in Poughkeepsie, as teacher of the Coloured Lancasterian School. Anxious to pursue further studies, I applied to one or two gentlemen for aid. One of them confessed himself but a beginner in one of the branches in which I had made some progress; and he soon after gave me a deeper wound, and more severe discouragement, than any other man ever did. A debate upon the peace question was to occur, in a hall of which this gentleman and I were joint proprietors for the time. I had another engagement to speak, at some distance from home, within a day or two of the time of the debate. This gentleman urged my return in time to participate in the discussion. I complied, went to the hall. A few only attended; and after a little conversation instead of a debate, it was concluded to form a Literary Society. My friend was requested to pass a paper for the names of such persons present as would enter such a society. He did not solicit my name. He came to me after the proceeding had terminated, and said, “ Mr. Ward, you must have noticed that I did not hand the paper to you for your signature. I omitted you on purpose, because I saw that if your name was taken several of those present would bolt.” Then, thought I, what is the use of my acting uprightly, seeking to win fame, and gaining it, if in this country a professed friend, a man who goes with me to the house of God, hearing me preach, visits my house, after all treads upon me to please his neighbours? My determination was formed to leave the country. I accordingly wrote to Mr. Burnley, of the Trinidad Legislature, a relation of the late Joseph Hume, Esq., M.P., who kindly encouraged my going to that island. I wrote also to Rev. Joshua Leavitt, asking for letters of recommendation. Mr. L. deprecated my leaving America, thinking I might be of some service to the anti-slavery cause. I wrote him again, bitterly stating my utter despair of doing anything for myself or my people amid so many discouragements. The reply I received was an appointment as agent of the American Anti-Slavery Society, to travel and lecture for them. I accepted the appointment, my commission being signed by Henry B. Stanton, Esq., who was then, and Hon. James Gillespie Birney, who yet professes to be, an abolitionist; these gentlemen being secretaries of that Society; in the same capacity they came to London, to attend the World's Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840. Thus was I introduced into the anti-slavery agency.

IN November, 1839, I made my début as a lecturer. It cost me a great deal of effort and self-denial. My youthful wife and my infant boy I must leave, to go hundreds of miles, travelling in all weathers, meeting all sorts of people, combatting some of the most deeply seated prejudices, and in the majority of instances denied the ordinary courtesies of civilized life. I suffered more than can be here described. At length I considered that every Christian has not only a cross to bear, but his peculiar cross; and that God, not man, must judge and decide in what shape that cross must come: aye, and he too would give grace to bear it. Thus fortified, I went forth; and from that day to this I have never been able to see this travelling, homeless, wandering part of the work in any other light than a cross. No place can be a substitute for home, though the latter be a hovel, the former a palace. No observer can enter into one's inner feelings, live over again one's life, as does the loving wife. In sickness, in sorrow, to be away from home adds mountain weights to what the wanderer's bosom must bear; and I may as well add, that the poisoned tongue of censure—cool, deliberate, granite-hearted censure—censure from unbridled but professedly Christian tongues, to be found alike on both sides of the Atlantic, even among brethren and others—doth not diminish the rigour of the cross.

Still, with God's blessing I went forth, making my first speech at a private house, and afterwards speaking in public places until I become accustomed somewhat to the sound of my own voice, and a little skilled in the handling of the subject, receiving kind encouragement from one friend and another; until, being transferred to the service of the New York State Society in December 1839, I had the unspeakable pleasure of making the acquaintance of some of its most distinguished members and officers, and, at the same time, of avoiding official connection with the quarrels which divided the Anti-Slavery Society in 1840, and the subsequent dissensions among them.

This same December, 1839, was eventful as the month in which I became personally acquainted with Hon. Gerrit Smith, Rev. Beriah Green, and William Goodell, Esq.—three men whose peers are not to be found in New York or any other State.

Gerrit Smith had not then been sent to Congress, but he had shown himself every way qualified for the highest seat in any legislature, for the highest office in the gift of any people. Not that office would adorn or ennoble him, but that, in office as everywhere else, the majestic dignity of his mien, the easy, graceful perfection of his manners, his highly cultivated intellect, his rich and varied learning, his profoundly instructive conversation, his princely munificence, the natural stream springing in and flowing from a most benevolent heart—and, above all, his sweet, childlike, simple, earnest, constant piety, pervading his whole life and sparkling in all he says or does—these traits would have shed lustre upon any office, and have made their possessor the most admired and most attractive as they make him one of the very best of men. In spite of all that was said of this gentleman by his enemies during his short career in Congress, fourteen years after the time I speak of, the very bitterest of his foes—or, what is tantamount, the falsest of his professed friends—were obliged to acknowledge him to be one of the noblest of earth's noble sons.

Never shall I forget the first time I heard that model man speak. Standing erect, as he could stand no other way, with his large, manly frame, graceful figure and faultless mannerism, richly but plainly dressed, with a broad collar and black ribbon upon his neck (his invariable costume, whatever be the prevailing fashion), his look, with his broad intellectual face and towering forehead, was enough to charm any one not dead to all sense of the beautiful; and then, his rich, deep, flexible, musical voice, as capable of a thunder-tone as of a whisper—a voice to which words were suited, as it was suited to words; but, most of all, the words, thoughts, sentiments, truths and principles, he uttered—rendered me, and thousands more with me, unable to sit or stand in any quietness during his speech. This was in May, 1838. Mr. Smith was speaking against American Negro-hate. He is a descendant of the Dutch, who have distinguished themselves as much for their ill nature towards Negroes as for anything else. He belonged by wealth and position to the very first circles of the old Dutch aristocracy; he was the constant and admired associate of the proudest Negro-haters on the face of the earth; he had for years been a member of that most unscrupulous band of organized, systematic, practical promulgators of Negro-hate, the Colonization Society: and yet, in Broadway Tabernacle, upon an antislavery platform, in the city of New York (the worst city, save Philadelphia, since the days of Sodom, on this subject), Gerrit Smith stood up before four thousand of his countrymen to denounce this their cherished, honoured, they believe Christianized vice. To mortal man it is seldom permitted to behold a sight so full of or so radiant with moral power and beauty. Among the things he said, I may attempt to recall one sentiment—he asserted that, in ordinary circumstances, a person does not and cannot know how or what the Negro, the victim of this fiendish feeling, has to endure. Englishmen coming to America at first look upon it as a species of insanity. We are not all conscious of what we are doing to our poor coloured brother. “The time was, Mr. Chairman,” said this prince of orators, “when I did not understand it; but when I came to put myself in my coloured brother's stead—when I imagined myself in his position—when I sought to realize what he feels, and how he feels it—when, in a word, I became a COLOURED MAN—then I understood it, and learned how and why to hate it.”

To enforce his personal illustration there was one great fact. Mr. Smith had read of One “who made himself of no reputation,” and he chose to imitate Him. Long, long before the anti-slavery question agitated the American mind, Mr. Smith and his excellent lady had concluded that, by whomsoever they might be visited, no coloured person should be slighted or treated with any less respect in their mansion because of his colour. Mr. and Mrs. Smith knew that they were visited by some of the first families of the land—they were such; their relatives were such; and no inconsiderable number of them were slaveholders. They knew what would be said; but they also knew what was right, and upon that principle had Mr. Smith invariably acted—scorning, spurning, and trampling upon the vile demon of Negro-hate for twenty years before he made that ever memorable speech. Such was his qualification to make such a speech, in such a presence. Now, a man of no position, a mere mechanic or artisan, who makes himself by means of his cause, and who earns his bread by his philanthropy, may talk cheaply enough about what he dares and suffers for the poor slave; but one who, in Mr. Smith's position, gives untold wealth in lands and money, must be judged otherwise. Mr. Smith has given 120,000 acres of land to coloured people—has sacrificed his position, and, from sympathy with the coloured people, has identified himself with them. Here then we see philanthropy, real, pure, self-sacrificing —philanthropy, indeed, such as very few in any country exhibit, and fewer still in that country. But, God be praised, Gerrit Smith belongs to that few. The honour and pleasure of making that gentleman's acquaintance was mine in 1839, at his house, in Peterborough. No honour I ever enjoyed do I esteem more highly than that I may call the Honourable Gerrit Smith my personal friend. Of him I say, sometimes, he is the Shaftesbury of America; and those who enjoy the pleasure of knowing both know that I honour the noble Earl in nothing more highly than in speaking of his Lordship as the Gerrit Smith of England, of Europe.

The Rev. Beriah Green, President of Oneida Institute (the alma mater of several of my dear schoolfellows, among them Henry Highland Garnet and Alexander Crummell), was among the acquaintances I had the privilege of making in 1839. Few clergymen, of any denomination, in any country, equal the profound, the learned, the original Beriah Green. His love for humanity, especially the poorest of the poor, is of the most ardent type. Upon its altar he will lay salary, name, place, reputation, not only, but submit to all manner of abuse and misrepresentation, and toil at any kind of hard labour, “for dear humanity's sake,” to use his own beautiful, expressive, emphatic phrase. Such was this devoted philanthropist, sixteen years ago; such is he now, in spite of increasing years and undiminished sacrifices. I never knew a person who put a higher estimate upon simple manhood, and who relied upon the simple truth more fully, than he. In argument, in analyzing principles, in applying metaphysical tests, I never saw nor read of his equal.

IT is a matter of surprise to people in England that the Americans should profess so loudly the Christian religion, and insist so strongly upon republicanism as the only proper form of government, and yet hold slaves and treat Negroes, as they do, in the directest possible opposition both to republicanism and Christianity. The opposition which the citizens of the United States, of both the North and the South, make to the anti-slavery cause, is, to Europeans, an inexplicable mystery. Far be it from me to attempt a solution of it. I will endeavour to state the real issue betwixt anti-slavery men and their opponents; and, in doing so, I fear I shall make the matter more, instead of less, mysterious.

Those who recollect, or who have read of, the opposition Clarkson, Wilberforce, and Buxton had to encounter in their day, on the subject of the slave trade, in the British senate, and from Englishmen interested in the slave trade, know what class of arguments were used against the measures of righteousness advocated by them. Precisely the same class of arguments have been made against the abolition of slavery in the United States, by American senators, and by American merchants, theologians, and politicians: indeed, I have seen where the very words used by His Royal Highness the Duke of Clarence, against the abolition of the slave trade, were uttered in the American Senate against the abolition of slavery there. When the abolition of West India slavery was urged by Brougham, Stanley, and others, they in their turn were assailed with the same sort of opposition which their anti-slavery fathers, so to speak, met; and just such opposition have Sumner, Wilson, Seward, Giddings, and others, to overcome in the American Senate now. We explain the opposition of British slaveholders and slave traders to abolition, on the ground of interest, long continued use and abuse of authority, degenerating into petty tyranny and worse than brutal cruelty. These, however, sailed under no flag of boasted freedom. They did not clamour for the equality of all men. They found no fault with other than republican forms of government. They did not set themselves up as universal reformers. They said but little—wisely—about religion, for they had but little religion to talk about; and such as they had, judging from their lives, was more honoured by silence than profession.

In America the case was different. Parties having the least to do with the South, or with slavery, are among the fiercest opposers of the anti-slavery cause. Ladies— save the mark!—and gentlemen of the most amiable and benevolent dispositions, such as contribute to every local charity, listen to all the cries of misery from the Old World, and honour all drafts made upon them for the spread of the gospel among the distant heathen, are the most active and, from their high religious position, the most powerful abettors and defenders of the slave system—not as it was in some ancient country two thousand years ago, but as it is now in the United States. Northern pulpit orators defend slavery from the Bible, the Old Testament and the New; and this is not true of one here and there only, it is so of the most learned, most distinguished of them, of all denominations. The very men who cater for British popularity, are the loudest declaimers in favour of this “domestic institution.” Another class of them maintain the most studious silence concerning it. If they speak at all, they condemn only “slavery in the abstract,” and condemn abolition in the concrete. They neither hold nor treat slavery as sinful; and when pressed, declare that “some sins are not to be preached against.” Such was the teaching of a distinguished theological professor to his class in a “school of the prophets” in New York State. Besides, all the machinery of the benevolent societies is so framed, and set, and kept at work, as not only not to interfere with slavery, but to pander to it. The American Tract Society not only publishes no tract against slavery, but they favour that abominable system in the two following ways:—1. If an English work which they republish has a line in it discountenancing slavery, however indirectly, it is either taken out, or so altered as to lose its force in that particular direction. Their emasculation of “Gurney on the Love of God” is notorious. 2. They refuse to publish a tract on the subject, when other acknowledged Christians and Christian ministers propose to write and prepare one, and defray the expense of publishing the same. No, poor slave: dumb as thou art, dumb shalt thou ever be, so far as this Society is concerned.

The American Bible Society distributes no Bibles among the slave population. To do so, it is freely admitted, were contrary to law in some States—not in all. It is so in nine of the fifteen Slave States, but not in the other six; and some of these laws were framed, and all of them are upholden, and many of them administered and executed, by members, friends, and patrons of this Society. Not one word ever escapes the lips of that Society, as such, against these anti-Protestant laws! In 1841 I knew of an agent of an auxiliary to that Society who was distributing Bibles in Louisiana, and, being ignorant of the laws upon the subject, asked a free coloured man if he could read, with the intention of giving or selling him a Bible if he could. Some one overheard him, and informed against him. He was arrested, tried, found guilty, but leniently discharged, on account of his ignorance of the law which he had violated. Slaveholders and their abettors belong to and are officers of the American Bible Society, and they control it. That slavery forbids the searching of the Scriptures, which Christ enjoins, is to them not even a matter of complaint. Albeit, they pledge themselves to give the Christian Scriptures to every family in the Union.

The American Sunday-school Union stands in precisely the same category, and is controlled by precisely the same influences; and the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions is, and always has been, both in its policy and its officers, of the very same character. The several religious bodies, with their respective branches, of all denominations, except the Quakers and the Free-Will Baptists (although the majority of their numbers are Northern men), are completely subject to the control of their slaveholding members. But the most lamentable fact is, that in Congregational New England the sons of Puritan sires are as guilty as the guiltiest enemies of the down-trodden slave. Such was the state of the case in 1839, when my labours began; such, I regret to say, continues the case at this moment: and here I will take the liberty of saying that, although my connection with the New York State Anti-Slavery Society dissevered me from the division of the abolitionists in 1840, and although I never belonged to the Garrison branch of the abolitionists, so-called, I will do them the justice to record, that the least, slightest tendency towards infidelity, or even of impatience with the Churches, was never seen or suspected in them until after the New England clergy, as a body, had taken ground distinctly and openly against the anti-slavery cause (vide Goodall's “History of the Anti-Slavery Cause”).

What reason is given for this strange action on the part of religious denominations, benevolent institutions, theological professors, and individual clergymen? I will state it as fairly as I can.

Their chief reason is, that it will disturb their existing harmony so to take up, discuss, and consider this question, as, it seems to abolitionists, its importance demands. In the Churches, while they maintain silence upon it, or ignore it altogether, they have nothing to cause disagreement. This question would be an apple of discord, as brethren of equal piety would range themselves on opposite sides of it. So it would be in the benevolent societies. Harmony, peace, are sought in that country by religious people, at almost any expense; slaveholders are members of the different religious denominations; in fact, one sixth of all the slaveholders belong to Methodists, Baptists, Episcopalians, and Presbyterians. To treat slavery as sinful, would offend these brethren; and what is the use of that? They are good Christians; they treat their slaves well; and so long as they give signs of piety, are regular in their standing, pious in conversation, sound in doctrine, and correct in other matters, save the one of slavery, why should they be disturbed? why offend them?

Some deny the sinfulness of slaveholding; others shelter themselves behind the faults of the abolitionists; others defend slaveholding from the Bible; but I think their love of harmony is their chief alleged reason for their present attitude. Let it not be forgotten, however, that behind all this—and going very far, I think, to explain it—is the contempt they all alike maintain towards the Negro. Surely, if they believed him to be an equal brother man, such miserable pretexts for, and defences of, the doing of the mightiest wrongs against him, would never for a moment be thought of.

IN like manner, the abolitionists, such as those with whom it was my honour to be associated, inquired how far they could wield their political powers, with the parties of the day, innocently. About the time to which I was referring—viz., 1839-40—they began to see the great fact, that the political parties of the country departed as widely from the old maxims of democracy and republicanism as did the Churches from the gospel. They saw the North divided into two great parties, wielding two thirds of the votes of the nation, each of these having Southern members who controlled them, and both of them catering for the largest share of the Southern vote, which was about one third of the entire suffrage. They saw the best, highest offices, given freely to Southern men, on purpose to propitiate the South; while the South demanded and accepted this unnatural, undue, and disproportioned amount of power and emolument, both as the price of their aid to the party giving them, and as a means of securing the interests of slavery. Hence it was that the diplomatic agents of the country were sure to be Southerners, or pro-slavery men. Who ever knew any other character at the Court of St. James, or the Court of St. Cloud? Hence it was, too, that ere a Northern man could be qualified for any post of honour in the national gift, he must prove himself to have been always entirely free from the least taint of abolitionism, or to have been thoroughly purged of it, if he had ever been so much as reasonably suspected of it. At the same time, in Northern localities the friends and members of these parties sought to cajole and seduce abolitionists into voting with one or the other of them, under the plea that it was more favourable to the anti-slavery cause than its opposite, while manifestly both were the tools and the props of the slave powers. Abolitionists did not fail to see, that to vote with either of these parties was alike repugnant to their cherished principles and to their self-respect. Then, they must do one of two things; either refrain from voting altogether, or concentrate their votes upon candidates of their own selection—in other words, form a political party upon anti-slavery principles. They adopted, wisely, the latter. That party was formed in August, 1840, at Syracuse. I then became, for the first time, a member of a political party. With it I cast my first vote; to it I devoted my political activities; with it I lived my political life—which terminated when, eleven years subsequently, I left the country.

As the abolitionists saw the Churches were trampling under foot the fundamental principles of Christianity, touching slavery, so they saw the Government and the political parties to be false to their own sworn principles of freedom and democracy. They departed from the constitution, which was made “to secure the blessings of liberty,” and which ordained that “no man shall be deprived of liberty without due process of law.” The Whigs denied the faith of their revolutionary fathers, whose Whiggism was but another name for self-sacrificing love of liberty. The Democrats, claiming Jefferson as their father and boasting of his having written the Declaration of Independence, hated nothing so intensely as Jefferson's writings against slavery—and that very Declaration of Independence, when, among “ALL MEN” in it declared to be entitled by God to the unalienable right to liberty, Negroes were said to be included. Both professed to be admirers of the great Washington; but neither of them, like him, coveted the opportunity of using his political power against slavery in his native State. What the abolitionists then demanded, and now contend for, is the simple application of the principles of the Declaration of Independence to the black as well as the white, and that the former should share the benefits secured by the constitution as well as the latter. Believing just what the Declaration of Independence says, that the right of man to liberty is unalienable, they hold that no enactments, no constitutions, no consent of the man himself, no combinations of men, can alienate that which is by God's fiat made unalienable. They agree with England's greatest living jurist, Brougham, that the idea that man can be the property of man is to be rejected as a “wild and guilty phantasy”: neither overlooking nor neglecting other great questions with which governments and parties have to do, they make their basis principle the unalienable right of man “to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” It was to the promulgation of these political principles, and of those religious principles to which I referred in the preceding pages, that, as an agent of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society, it was my duty and my pleasure to devote myself. This duty brought me into contact with all classes of the enemies of the cause— made me familiar with all the different objections urged against it on the one hand; and it gave me the ever-to-be-remembered pleasure of meeting all classes of abolitionists, profiting by their suggestions, accepting their hospitalities, rejoicing in their sympathies, and sharing their devotions. A truer, a more discerning set of men, America does not hold. They are fully alive to the issue before them. They see that, if the principle be admitted that a black man may be legally, righteously enslaved, so may any other man; that slavery is altogether regardless of the colour of its victims: that its encroachments upon the right of petition, the freedom of the press, the freedom of speech—its whipping, tarring and feathering, and lynching, white abolitionists at the South—its enslavement of the light-coloured children of white men—its unscrupulous, insatiate demands, nature, character—all make it the enemy of any and every class opposing it, willing to jeopard and to destroy the liberties of any whom it can crush as its victims. They see that the real political issue is, not whether the black man's slavery shall be perpetuated, but whether the freedom of any Americans can be permanent. Blessings on the men who, at all hazards, are prepared to welcome and to meet that issue, with all its sacrifices and all its consequences! Whether they succeed or not, whether there is sufficient soundness and vitality in the republic to admit of its being saved or not, they, let the worst come, will ever bear in their bosoms the satisfaction of having done their duty in times of the utmost trial. Yea, blessings on that fearless band!

Allow me once more to state, what I fear Englishmen but too seldom and too slightly consider—1. The religious issue betwixt the American antislavery men and their opposers is deep, radical, vital, involving the religious weal or woe of the American Church. 2. The political issue is as deep, radical, and vital, in its kind: involving the safety, the stability—not the unity alone, but the very existence, of the republic. It is not like the emancipation question in Great Britain, or the corn-law question, or the reform question. It is not, What are the powers and scope of the Government, to what limit do they extend, to what classes do they apply, and of what improvements are they capable? It is a question affecting all classes, involving the fate of the whole people, undermining the basis of their best institutions, lying at the root of all constitutional government, and in its grasp including the whole range of American rights.

IT was while journeying through Western New York, promulgating such doctrines as the above, that I went by appointment to the township of Butler, in the county of Wayne, on a certain Saturday in February, 1841. The meeting was attended by some steady honest farmers and others, with their wives and daughters. It was holden in the Congregational Church. As was and still is the custom in that region, the lecturer was invited to tea by a gentleman of prominence in the neighbourhood—George Candee, Esq., who had a heart warm in the anti-slavery cause. At the invitation of several members of the Church, I remained and preached the following day in the forenoon, having an engagement seven miles distant in the evening.

As they were without either a pastor or a supply, several members of the Church accompanied me to Wolcott in the evening. On the way, one of the number said something about my settling with them. Thinking it a matter which would not survive the excitement of the moment, I simply gave them the liberty to write to me at Peterborough, my residence. In a few days a letter came; and shortly after, another, from Clarendon Campbell, Esq., M.D., the postmaster, one of the most pious and intelligent members of the Church, inviting me formally and officially to settle.

I went to visit them in April, and a series of meetings began which was not discontinued until several persons were converted to God, through Christ's redemption, and I had been called and had agreed to become their pastor.

The Church and congregation were all white persons save my own family. It was “a new thing under the sun” to see such a connection. The invitation was unanimous and cordial; and not one incident occurred during my settlement, on the part of any living members, to make it even seem to be otherwise. Having spoken elsewhere touching this relation, I choose not here to repeat myself; but I will add, the novelty of such a settlement attracted a great deal of notice, and a great many remarks pro and con. I understood it to be a matter of vast importance, how I should demean myself in so responsible a position; for I felt it to be such, in two very important points of view— first, in regard to the anti-slavery cause generally; and secondly, in reference to the coloured people especially. If I should acquit myself creditably as a preacher, the anti-slavery cause would thereby be encouraged. Should I fail in this, that sacred cause would be loaded with reproach. So, if I were successful or unsuccessful in this charge would encouragement or discouragement come to the people of colour. In the one case, the traducers and disparagers of the Negro would say, “Said we not truly when we affirmed that nothing could be made of, or done with, the Negro? Such a one was actually placed in such a position; but so inveterate and unconquerable were the degrading tendencies of the Negro, that he could not sustain himself.” Then whoever pleaded for Negro equality would be pointed to my failure as a perfect refutation of his doctrine, and a complete and triumphant answer to his argument. On the other hand, if I did succeed, some other young black would feel encouraged to qualify himself for a position of usefulness among his own people; but while appropriately serviceable to them, he might also be so situated as to do good to others and for his own class. I was not willing to do mischief to the dear anti-slavery cause, nor to that of my beloved people. I hope God spared me from either—from both. Or, at any rate, among the many things wherewithal I have been reproached, this is not one of them.

HAVING given a sketch of the nature and character of my labours in the United States, it remains that I now speak of the events which led to their termination. It is well known, that in defiance of law and custom, and what seemed to some the provisions of the constitution, the abolitionists refused to aid in the capture of a fugitive slave; they rendered him all manner of assistance in effecting his escape; they would secure for him a place of safety; they would aid him on his way to Canada; they would legally and otherwise protect him, if he remained among them; they would help and encourage him in resisting his pursuers: in fact, they would do for him just what they would have him do for them in an exchange of circumstances. This was both illegal and unchristian, in the view of the great majority of the American people, especially the lawmakers and the religious teachers. There was, indeed, a regularly organized society, distinct as an organization from the Anti-Slavery Society, to aid fugitives; and that society, called the Vigilance Committee, at its head quarters, New York, annually published its report, held platform meetings, &c. So effective was this action, that it became almost needless for a slave to go further north than the Border States. In Boston, it was boasted, a slave could not be captured. There were men who said the same of numerous other towns: attempts to take them often proved utter failures. Before the anti-slavery movement, a slaveholder or a kidnapper could take any man he pleased, where he pleased and when he pleased. This had been done in every State but Vermont, and any justice of the peace was quite competent to settle for ever the grave question of a man's right to liberty. Now, though the law was not altered, such was the state of public feeling, generated by the abolitionists, that a slave could escape, go into an adjoining State, tell his story publicly, state who his master was, where he lived, how his escape was effected, through what places he passed, who aided him, and all about it; and the whole community would say to him, “Remain here; you are safe.” Doubtless this partook somewhat of the Yankee habit of boasting; it was a profession of freedom and a promise of protection that needed some severe testing, to prove its real strength: but that such was the public feeling, that men really and truly meant what they said, there never was the least reason to doubt.

The South became exasperated: their chattels, among which were persons inheriting the blood and the lineage of their masters (this strange-sounding medley is no more incongruous than true) were escaping from them; each carried off in his own person from 400 to 2,000 dollars. There was no telling what amount of property had thus been abstracted—or, rather, stolen itself: but certain it was, that every morning some planter found, or rather did not find, some slave or slaves—they had fled. They were constantly going; and what made the matter more awkward was, when once gone, they would not return of their own accord, or for the sake of anybody else. The South knew that there is a clause in the Federal Constitution, providing for the extradition of “persons held to service or labour.” They knew that a great majority of the people had been but too successfully taught the false and foolish doctrine, that those described as “persons,” meant slaves. They knew as well, that Congress, in 1793, passed a law for the enforcement of this clause of the constitution, with this strange interpretation. They knew also that all the courts held the same view. In 1842 a decision was rendered in the Supreme Court to the same effect—i.e., that “persons held to service or labour” included slaves. The anti-slavery, or rather the strictly legal and common-sense, objection to that interpretation, is, that in law slaves are not “persons,” but “chattels”—that inasmuch as the clause described them as “persons,” they had no right under that clause to capture them as “chattels.” As persons and chattels were neither identical nor similar in law, but opposites, and as the clause in question calls them the former, it could not at the same time intend to describe them as the latter. A law must not be interpreted to mean the converse of what it says!

But what of this? Were not the Supreme Court judges appointed by a President and a senate always subservient to slavery? Were not a number of the judges themselves slaveholders? Were not those judges who were non-slaveholders among the bitterest and most cringing slaveocrats in the nation? and were they not made judges in view of that fact? Could they have been made judges without it? Then, as Congress men (the majority of whom are lawyers), and inferior judges, and lawyers, and almost everyone else, took their legal opinions from the Supreme Court, what it held to be law was law, of course. This the South, who are the real rulers of the nation, very well knew; and knowing their advantage, they followed it up, and maintained it. They demanded that the law of 1793 should be enforced —that this anti-slavery sentiment should be suppressed, and that further agitation of the question should cease. The constitution must be understood as they understood it; and therefore slaves escaping must be given up. Anti-slavery sentiment was not suppressed, nor in any one thing were these demands complied with. At last, adopting a twofold expedient, which never yet failed when once faithfully and vigorously applied—viz., threatening to walk out of the Union, if their demands were not yielded; and appealing to the cupidity, fears and ambition, of leading Northern politicians—they received a promise that something should be done. Accordingly, such Northern men as Daniel Webster and Daniel S. Dickinson (how the name ‘Daniel’ can be perverted!) set themselves about the work of seeking to persuade Northern men to yield.

It should have been mentioned, that so powerful had become the hostility to the extradition of fugitive slaves, that, taking advantage of the Supreme Court decision in 1842, to the effect that States need not aid in the capture of runaway slaves, but that the duty of doing so rested entirely with the federal officers, some eleven States passed solemn laws forbidding any of their officers from aiding in this horrible business, any of the judges from sitting upon such cases; forbidding the use of any of their jails or public buildings for the detention of a fugitive slave, or any of their citizens doing any of these things, directly or indirectly. Mr. Webster, and the men of his class, sought to persuade the people of the North to “conquer their prejudices” against slave-catching. He advised them to perform “the disagreeable duty” of playing the human bloodhound. “Any one,” he said, “could perform an agreeable duty.” The demands of the South, the practical masters of the nation, must be complied with. So in 1850 a law was passed, called the Fugitive Slave Law, providing most minutely, most perfectly, for the catching and the delivery of fugitives, by processes the loosest, the most summary, most contrary to all the old law standards and maxims of the last five centuries. Its provisions abolished the inviolability of a man's house, person, and papers—the right to life, liberty, and property, without due process of law—the right of being confronted with one's accusers—the writ of habeas corpus—the necessity of a particular description of the place to be searched and the person to be seized—the right of trial by jury, and the right of appeal: each of which is solemnly and emphatically guaranteed by the constitution. It was most despotic law, passed by despots and their tools, for the most despotic of purposes—the replunging of an American citizen, who had escaped therefrom, into the hell of American slavery; and the prohibition of American freemen from doing aught to aid a flying brother man, threatened with re-enslavement!

In the Senate, when this Act passed, there were as many Northern as Southern senators: in the House of Representatives there was a clear decided majority of Northern representatives. This law of barbarism was passed, therefore, by Northern men. It was taken to the President, for his signature. He too was a Northern man—Millard Fillmore, of New York. He had the right to veto it. He was sworn conservator of the constitution. It violated more principles, provisions, and express clauses, of the constitution, than any law ever framed since the constitution was adopted; it was, in fact, a revolutionary, a treasonable measure. No one knew this better than Millard Fillmore. But, pshaw! the South must be served. M. Fillmore owed his elevation to them; they, not the constitution, must be looked after; and, with eager “hot and hurried haste,” he signed it, on the eighteenth day of September, lacking but one day of six hundred and twenty-four years and three months from the signing of Magna Charta—and it became a law. Now, if a fugitive go to New York, he may be followed and brought back. If any man “harbour or conceal him, or aid and abet in his escape, or hinder or obstruct the claimant, or rescue him or attempt to rescue him,” it shall cost him a thousand dollars; if he does all four of these, four times as much. Nor is this all: “for either of said offences he shall be imprisoned a term not exceeding six months.” Nor is this all: after suffering and paying the above, he shall also “forfeit and pay a sum not exceeding one thousand dollars, to be collected in an action of debt.”—(Section VII.)

Five thousand dollars—in that dollar-loving country—and two years' imprisonment, for what one might do in behalf of one poor fugitive! My mother was then living, and a fugitive. Gladly should I have done all four of these prohibited things, in her dear behalf.

But the passing of this law, striking a fell blow as it did at white men's liberties, as well as black men's, was not the worst of it. Though strong and high indignation had been expressed against the law— though the impossibility of enforcing it was insisted on and declared by numerous meetings in almost every part of the country—yet, at the bidding of the slave power, through the Northern politicians, the law was enforced: victim after victim was yielded up on the altar of this bloody Moloch. It is done until this very day.

Still, this was not the worst. The most popular pulpits of the North, of Puritan New England, even rang with preachments favouring it, and urging the people to obey it, and advising Negroes to submit to it. One doctor of divinity*

* Rev. O. Dewey, D.D. The Rev. Dr. Spring says, “a mans running away from slavery is primá facie evidence of his being a bad man.”

I am come to the darkest page in my native country's history: I am chronicling her deepest degradation. But so it is: it stands out there, in bold relief, a part of her history. Whether she can ever be recovered from this deep, foul, chosen disgrace, or not, is beyond my humble ken. But that darkness was relieved by some most merciful tokens. In this time of yielding principle, forswearing faith, and succumbing to the slave power, which did more than anything ever before to debauch American morals and blacken American character—in this time when priest and Levite walked on the other side, neglecting the poor wounded man by the wayside—while these classes were horrifying all Europe, and drawing maledictions upon their country from all honest hearts—there stood a host of faithful men and women, prepared for the trial and enduring it; ready for the sacrifice, and making it. Having put their hands to the plough, they could not turn back. They loved the slave, the fugitive, the suffering black, and their Heaven-derived anti-slavery principles, more than money, office, caste, or honours; and now that “the furnace was heated seven times hotter than it was wont to be heated,” they were blessed with the grace of constancy to refuse, even more resolutely than before, to bow before the golden image to which the great majority paid obeisance. If trials do not make men, they maydevelope what they are; and, what is more, they will prove who can endure the stern demands of principle, in the hour of suffering. And, blessed be the God of the poor! not a few were there, in that day, in my native country, in the senate chamber, the hall of representatives, on the judicial bench, the ministerial office, the pulpit, and in private walks, who, having counted the cost, were not only unflinching, unwavering, but “waxed valiant in the fight.” John Parker Hale, William H. Seward, and Salmon P. Chase, were in the Senate; Joshua R. Giddings, George W. Julian, and a few others, were in the House of Representatives; and so long as time shall last, so long shall the brave minority opposition given by these gentlemen to this infamous measure be remembered with delight and gratitude. These persons have not been without their successors. Charles Sumner—the learned, classic, elegant, manly, heroic Charles Sumner (whom Lord Elgin told me he regards as a personal friend, because of his anti-slavery principles, as well as high character and shining talents)—has since adorned that Senate; so has Henry Wilson, the self-made (another name for God-made) champion of freedom; and Gerrit Smith, Channey L. Knapp, and others in the House, enough to keep the voice of manly remonstrance ever sounding in the ears of the guilty nation.

While, too, the religion of the country had become, if possible, more corrupt than even its politics—while its reverend doctors of divinity, venerable in years and in learning, were counselling obedience to this satanic law (many of whom, by the way, would like to pass, and, unfortunately, with too much complacency and too little scrutiny, do pass, as acceptable anti-slavery men in England)—there were, in a few scattered pulpits from one end of the land to the other, as if God would have the leaven well diffused, some who ceased not day nor night, in good or evil report, to lift up their voices against these crying abominations—slavery, the Fugitive Slave Law; the yielding of the press, the legislature, the courts, and the pulpit, to these demands against God and man. They were for “obeying God rather than man.” They had learned that such obedience, even in a free Christian country, might cost something: they were prepared for the cost, even though they should be called upon “To weary torturers, and to rejoice in fire.”

This brilliant galaxy of God-fearing men, shining as stars of the first magnitude in the moral firmament of the country, and shining all the brighter, with a light all the more welcome, in contrast with the surrounding blackness, included some honoured names which, to be associated with, is akin to the associations of patriarchs, apostles, and martyrs. Honoured of God, they shall be honoured of men, while virtuous constancy, unpurchasable integrity, and heroic devotion to principle and truth, shall be admired of mortals or angels. My pen leaps to name some of them: I cannot mention all. To name some, and omit others, were invidious in any man, but especially ungracious in so humble a coadjutor—follower and admirer, rather—of them, as myself. I will, however, name one; one whom all the others delight to honour, the chief though not the oldest of his family, a standing living rebuke to the men of his class and profession, but honour to the profession itself— the bold, the honest, the self-sacrificing, the amiable, Henry Ward Beecher.

As an humble advocate of anti-slavery principles, it was my duty, under the guidance of the great chiefs of the cause, to adapt myself to those forms and phases of slavery's progress and demands which arose from time to time to public view—to drag out to the light secret plots and mischievous though hidden machinations of the slave power—to preach the gospel of deliverance to the captives—and to aid, counsel and encourage, my own, the black people, in what was needed in their peculiar circumstances. Thus, when the annexation of Texas was on the tapis, that must be exposed and denounced; when the war with Mexico was conceived and brought forth, on purpose to lengthen the cords and strengthen the stakes of slavery, that must be made a prominent topic; when the admission of new Slave States, as Florida and Texas, was sought, opposition to that was the duty of the day; when, as in New York State, in 1846, it was proposed to continue the odious clause of State constitution by which black men were disallowed to vote on terms of equality with whites, the iniquity of that proposition must be holden up; when it was the intention of slaveocratic politicians to give slavery “aid and comfort” by electing to the Presidential chair some such arrant slaveholder as Henry Clay, or some such convenient, subservient instrument of slavery as Millard Fillmore, and to seduce abolitionists into voting for them, facts in the long, dark, pro-slavery and slaveholding history of these men must be “kept before the people”; when the Methodist, the Episcopalian, the Presbyterian or the Baptist Church, or some of their benevolent organizations, did as they never failed to do, annually deliver themselves of some additional pro-slavery religious progeny, the testimony God's Word must be uttered against these; and when the Fugitive Slave Law began to cast the darkness of its shadow upon us, threatening its coming self, the country must be warned against this; and finally, when it had passed, the twofold duty of putting on record, upon the roll of infamy, for the gaze of an indignant posterity, the names of the conspirators against liberty who passed it, signed it, enforced it, and executed it, and those worst of all others, who gave it pulpit sanction; and of giving it our heartiest opposition, at all hazards and under all circumstances—must be performed. To what effect, if any, I performed my humble share in this work, it is not for me to say: that I laboured honestly and with good purpose, I trust few will deny who honour me with their acquaintance.

In the summer of 1851, business called me to travel in various parts of the country. I visited numerous districts of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Indiana, as well as Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. Smarting as we were under the recently passed Fugitive Law—and irritations being inflamed and aggravated by the dragging of some poor victim of it from some Northern town to the South and to slavery, every month or so—of course this law became the theme of most I said and wrote. In October, Mrs. Ward accompanied me in a tour through Ohio. We were about finishing that tour, when we saw in the papers an account of the Gorsuch case, in Christiana, Pennsylvania. That was a case in which the Reverend Mr. Gorsuch went armed to the house of a Negro, in the suburbs of the town named, in search of a slave who had escaped from him. The owner of the house denied him admittance. Several Negroes, armed, stood ready inside the house to defend it against the reverend slave-catcher and his party—the latter declaring his slave was in that house, avowing his determination to have him, if he went to h—ll after him; and, intending to intimidate the Negroes, fired upon the house with a rifle. Fortunately none of the besieged party were killed; but, they returned Mr. Gorsuch's fire, and he dropped a corpse!

The authorities arraigned these poor Negroes for murder. They seemed determined to have their blood. Upon reading this, I handed the paper containing the account to my wife; and we concluded that resistance was fruitless, that the country was hopelessly given to the execution of this barbarous enactment, and that it were vain to hope for the reformation of such a country. At the same time, my secular prospects became exceedingly involved and embarrassed; and willing as I might be to be one of a forlorn hope in the assault upon slavery's citadel, I had no reasonable prospect of doing so, consistently with my duty to my family. The anti-slavery cause does not, cannot, find bread and education for one's children. We then jointly determined to wind up our affairs, and go to Canada; and, with the remnant of what might be left to us, purchase a little hut and garden, and pass the remainder of our days in peace, in a free British country.

Such was our conclusion on Monday, the 29th of September, 1851. Residing then at Syracuse, we went home, arriving on Wednesday, the first day of October. We found the whole town in commotion and excitement. We soon learned the cause. A poor Mulatto man, named Jerry, at the suit of his own father had been arrested under the Fugitive Law, had been before the Negro-catcher's court, had escaped, had been pursued and retaken, and was now being conveyed to prison. I went to the prison, and, in company with that true sterling friend of the slave, the Reverend Samuel J. May, was permitted to go in and see the man. He had fetters on his ankles, and manacles on his wrists. I had never before, since my recollection, seen a chained slave. He was a short, thick-set, strongly built man, half white though slave born. His temperament was ardent, and he was most wonderfully excited. Though chained, he could not stand still; and in that narrow room, motioning as well as he could with his chained, manacled hands, and pacing up and down as well as his fetters would allow, fevered and almost frenzied with excitement, he implored us who were looking on, in such strains of fervid eloquence as I never heard before nor since from the lips of man, to break his chains, and give him that liberty which the Declaration of Independence assumed to be the birthright of every man, and which, according to the law of love, was our duty towards a suffering brother.

I cannot recall the ipsissima verba of his eloquent pleading. As far as I can revive his sentences in my memory, he exclaimed—“Gentlemen, behold me, and these chains! Why am I bound thus, in a free country? Am I not a man like yourselves? Do you not suppose I feel as other men feel? Oh, gentlemen, what have I done to deserve this cruel treatment? I was at my work, like an honest industrious man. I was trying to act the part of a good citizen; but they came upon me, and accused me of crime. I knew I was innocent; but I felt it my duty to go before the court, to declare and to prove my innocence. For that reason I let that little Marshal, I think you call him, put handcuffs on me. You know, gentlemen, handcuffs don't hurt an innocent man! But after they put the irons on me, they told me they were taking me as a runaway slave! Didn't I tell you I was innocent? They confessed I was. If I had known what they were about, do you think I should have let that little ordinary man put irons on me? No, indeed! I have told you how deceitfully they took me. When I saw a good chance, I thought it was not wrong to break away from them. I watched my opportunity: I dashed out of the door; I ran like a man running for his freedom; but they overtook me, and brought me back, and here I am like a wild beast, chained and caged.

“Gentlemen, is this a free country? Why did my fathers fight the British, if one of their poor sons is to be treated in this way? I beseech you, gentlemen, as you love your own liberty, break these chains of mine; yes, and break the chains that bind my brethren in the South, too. Does not the Bible say, ‘Break every yoke, and let the oppressed go free’? Don't you believe the Bible? I can't read it as some of you can, but I believe what it says, and I ask you, gentlemen, to do for me what that book commands. Suppose that any one of you were in my position. What would you wish me to do? I beg of you, gentlemen, to do for me what you would wish, were you where I am. Are not all men born free and equal? How is it, then, that I must wear these chains? Give me, O give me, gentlemen, that freedom which you say belongs to all men, and it is all I ask. Will you who are fathers, and brothers, see a man dragged in chains to the slavery of Tennessee, which I know is worse than death itself? In the name of our common nature—in the name of the Declaration of Independence —in the name of that law in the Bible which says, “do as you would be done by”—in the name of God, our common Father—do break these chains, and give me the freedom which is mine because I am a man, and an American.”

What a sight! and what sounds! A slave, in a free Northern city chained as no felon would be chained, with the blood of Anglo-Saxons in his veins. Still, a slave; the son of a wealthy planter in Tennessee, and still a slave; arrested by a United States officer and several assistants, who were sworn to support the glorious Federal Constitution, serving under the freest government under the sun, the land of liberty, the refuge for the oppressed of all the world! And for what was he arrested? What was his crime? A love of that liberty which we all declared to be every man's inalienable right! And this slave was quoting the Declaration of Independence in chains! He was not the subject of some Czar, some, “Turbaned Turk or fiery Russ:” no, he was an American by birth, and a slave as well; so said the chains upon him: and on his lips were liberty's and religion's great watchwords! I never saw extremes so meet. I never saw how hollow a mockery was our talk about liberty, and our professions of Christianity. I never felt how really we were all subject to the slave power; I never felt before the depth of degradation there is in being a professed freeman of the Northern States. Daniel Webster had, a few months before, predicted the execution of the Fugitive Law in that very town. The people laughed him to scorn. We now felt, however, how much better he knew the depths to which Northern men can sink than we did. While these thoughts were galloping through our brains, this manacled son of a white man proceeded with his oration in his chains, and we felt dumb and powerless. A great crowd gathered about the door; and after looking on and drinking in as much of the scene as my excitable nature would allow, I turned to go away, and at that moment the crowd demanded a speech of me. I spoke. I ceased; but I I never felt the littleness of my always little speeches, as I did at that moment. Jerry had made the speech of the occasion, and all I could say was but tame and spiritless in comparison with his “Words that breathed and thoughts that burned.”

The substance of what I said is as follows:— “Fellow citizens! we are here in most extraordinary circumstances. We are witnessing such a sight as, I pray, we may never look upon again. A man in chains, in Syracuse! Not a felon, yet in chains! On trial, is this man, not for life, but for liberty. He is arrested and held under a law made by ‘Us the People’—pursuant, we pretend, to a clause in the constitution. That constitution was made ‘to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.’ Here is a man one of ‘ourselves’; and the colour he bears shows that he belongs not altogether to my race, but that he is one of the ‘posterity’ of those who framed and adopted our Federal constitution. So far are we from ‘securing’ to him the ‘blessings of liberty,’ that we have arrested him, confined him, and chained him, on purpose to inflict upon him the curses of slavery.

“They say he is a slave. What a term to apply to an American! How does this sound beneath the pole of liberty and the flag of freedom? What a contradiction to our ‘Declaration of Independence’! But suppose he be a slave: is New York the State to recognize and treat him as such? Is Syracuse the city of the Empire State in which the deeds which make this a day unfortunately memorable, should be perpetuated? If he be not a slave, then, he is the most outraged man we ever saw.

“What did our fathers gain by the seven years' struggle with Great Britain, if, in what are called Free States, we have our fellow citizens, our useful mechanics and skilful artisans, chained and enslaved? How do foreign nations regard us, when knowing that it is not yet three short months since we were celebrating the Declaration of Independence, and to-day we are giving the most palpable denial to every word therein declared?

“But I am told that this is a legal transaction. That it is wrong and unwise to speak against a judicial proceeding, not yet completed: I admit it all. I make no pretensions to speak wisely. I have heard a speech from Jerry. I feel for him, as for a brother; and under that feeling, I may not speak quite so soberly as I ought. ‘Oppression maketh a wise man mad.’ I feel oppressed in a twofold sense. Yonder is my brother, in chains. Those chains press upon my limbs. I feel his sufferings, and participate his anguish. I feel, and we may all feel, oppressed in another sense. Here are certainly five-and-twenty hundred of us, wild with excitement in behalf of our chained brother, before our eyes, and we are utterly powerless to help him! We hear his strong, thrilling appeals, until our hearts sicken and our heads ache; but there is none among us that has the legal power to lift a hand in his defence, or for his deliverance. Of what advantage is it that we are free? What value is there in our freedom, while our hands are thus tied?

“Fellow citizens, whatever may be the result of these proceedings—whether our brother leaves the court, a declared freeman or a chained slave—upon us, the voters of New York State, to a very great extent, rests the responsibility of this Fugitive Slave Law. It is for us to say whether this enactment shall continue to stain our statute books, or be swept away into merited oblivion. It is for us to say whether the men who made it, and those who execute it before our faces, shall receive our votes, or shall by those votes be indignantly rebuked. Tell me, ye sturdy working men of Onondago, shall your votes be consecrated to the latter, or prostituted to the former? Do you swear fealty to freedom this day? Do you promise, so help you God! so to vote, as that your sanction never more shall be given to laws which empower persons to hunt, chain, and cage, MEN, in our midst? (cries of ‘yes, yes.’) Thank you, fellow citizens, in the name of our brother in prison! thank you for your bold, manly promise! May we all abide by it, until deeds of darkness like the one we now lament shall no longer mar our institutions and blacken our history.”

But the crowd felt rightly. They saw Gerrit Smith and me go off arm in arm to hold a consultation, and, two and two, they followed us. Glorious mob! unlike that of 1834, they felt for the poor slave, and they wished his freedom. Accordingly, at nine o'clock that evening, while the court was in session trying Jerry for more than his life, for his liberty, the mob without threw stones into the window, one of which came so near to the judge that, in undignified haste, he suddenly rose and adjourned the courts. In an hour from that time, the mob, through certain stalwart fellows whom the Government have never had the pleasure of catching, broke open the door and the side of the building where Jerry was, put out the lights, took him out in triumph, and bore him away where the slave-catchers never after saw him.

The Marshal of the United States, who had him in custody, was so frightened that he fled in female attire: brave man! According to the Fugitive Law, he had to pay Jerry's master one thousand dollars; for so the law expressly ordains.

An assistant Marshal, who was aiding this one, fired a pistol when entrée was first made. He injured no one, but a stout stick struck his arm and broke it. Escaping out of a window soon after, he broke the same arm again, poor man! These two were not like a Marshal in Troy, in the same State, who, rather than capture a slave, resigned his office.

The papers in the interest of the Government, in publishing an account of this affair, connected my name with it in a most prominent manner. The Marshal with broken arm was especially commended to my tender regard. The Government, under the advice of Daniel Webster (whose Christianity, I find, is highly lauded in this country; it was always a res non in his own), ordered all the parties, directly or indirectly engaged in the rescuing of Jerry, to be put on trial for treason! For it was the doctrine of Mr. Webster and Mr. Fillmore, that opposition to the Slave Law was “treason, and drew after it all the consequences of treason.” I knew enough to understand that one of the “consequences drawn after treason” is a hempen rope. I had already become hopeless of doing more in my native country; I had already determined to go to Canada. Now, however, matters became urgent. I could die; but was it duty? I could not remain in that country without repeating my connection with or participating in such an affair as I was then guilty of. If I did my duty by my fellow men, in that country, I must go to prison, perhaps; certainly, if the Government had their way, to the gallows. If I did not, I must go to perdition. Betwixt the two, my election was made. But then, what must become of my family, both as to their bread in my then circumstances, and as to their liberty in such a country? Recollecting that I had already my wife's consent (without which I could not take any important step of the sort) to go to Canada, I concluded that I must go immediately. I went; and a month or two after, my family followed: since which time we have each and severally been, con amore, the most loyal and grateful of British subjects.

Jerry lived at Kingston, Canada, until the latter part of 1853, when he died, a free man, by virtue of living in British soil. The courts would not entertain the charge of treason against those accused in this case, from its manifest absurdity. They did hold, however, that they had broken the Fugitive Law, and must be tried for that. Luckily, but one person who was accused was ever convicted. He died before the court, in its mercilessness, could wreak its full vengeance upon him. He was innocent; I know.

When the accused were summoned to Auburn, twenty-six miles from Syracuse, to attend trial, the Railway Company provided carriages for the accused and their wives, gratis. Returning from Auburn, several of those ladies were in the large carriage into which the Government prosecutor entered. They unanimously requested his departure. They afterwards made up a purse of thirty pieces of silver, of the smallest coin of the country, and presented to him—wages of iniquity and treachery. The chains (which I helped to file off) of Jerry were packed in a neat mahogany box, and sent to President Fillmore. The Hon. W. Seward voluntarily became bail for the accused. He has been Governor of his native State. He is now one of its senators. This, however, is his highest honour. So he esteems it.

In conclusion I beg to say, that the passage of the Nebraska Bill, and the outrages following it under sanction of the Government in Kansas, but confirms the opinion I formed four years ago, as to the impossibility—by any means now extant, and they are as wise as human ingenuity can invent—of reforming that country. The Government is too much at the mercy of 62,000 slaveholders; the people are too well content to let things remain as they are—the Churches, generally, cling with too great tenacity to their time-honoured pollutions to admit of any prospect of reformation at present, while the gloomiest future seems to overhang the country. The only hopeful spot in the American horizon is the growing, advancing attitude of the black people. From the whites, as a whole, I see no hopes. In the blacks I see some precious vigorous germs springing from seeds formerly sown, watered by many cries and tears, nourished by many prayers—the seed-sowing of Richard Allen and John Gloucester, Thomas Sipkins, Peter Williams, George Hogarth, Samuel Todd and William Hamilton, James Forten and Theodore Sedgewick Wright, among the departed; of Jehiel C. Beeman, Samuel E. Cornish, James William Charles Pennington, Christopher Rush, William Whipper, Timothy Eato, M. M. Clarke, Stephen Smith, and others, among the older living; the latter of whom have been permitted to outlive the darkness of a past and see the light enjoyed by the present generation.

God grant that right may prevail, and that all things shall further his glory!