Anti-Slavery History
Welcome to the book, The Brotherhood of Thieves, or, A True Picture of the American Church and Clergy (1843), by Rev. Stephen S. Foster.
This site is one in a series on the abolitionists from before the 1861-1865 Civil War. This site presents a book by one of them, Rev. Stephen S. Foster (1809-1898).
Slavery violated the common law, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and multiple Bible doctrines! So who was guilty, responsible for propagandizing for slavery? “Christian” clergy!
Abolitionists showed slavery to be a sin, in writings by, e.g.,
  • Rev. Beriah Green,
  • Harriet Beecher Stowe,
  • Rev. Theo. D. Weld,
  • Rev. Geo. B. Cheever, etc.
    But many, even “most,” U.S. clergymen were pro-slavery, Rev. Parker Pillsbury would later remind readers, in his book, Acts, p 374.
    “If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong,” said Abraham Lincoln. But many U.S. clergy were for it. So when Lincoln gave credit to slaverys' enders, he knew who to credit: abolitionists and the Union Army! not the clergy! not the Churches!
    Rev. Stephen S. Foster (1809-1881) had written this book in 1843 to expose the moral deterioration, corruption, immorality, lust, and depravity of American Churches and clergy (modern term, the "religious right") on the slavery issue.
    Foster cited Bible precedents for exposing clergy immorality, pp 5-6.
    Foster reveals Southern clergy motive for pretending the Bible is pro-slavery, concubines-for-clergy, pp 71-73.
    Slavery was aided and abetted by 9/10 of Baptists, p 58; ultimately by 100% of U.S. churches, p 32, the Presbyterian-Congregationalists being the worst, p 43.
    Eight years later, Rev. John G. Fee would say that “ninety-nine hundredths of the Christian ministry in our land claim that it [slavery] is at least tolerated by the Bible” (Sinfulness of Slavery, 1851), p 3.
    "The church is responsible for the persistence of slavery. It has shamelessly given the sanction of religion and the Bible to the whole slave system. They have taught that man may, properly, be a slave; that the relation of master and slave is ordained of God; that to send back an escaped bondman to his master is clearly the duty of all the followers of the Lord Jesus Christ; and this horrible blasphemy is palmed off upon the world for Christianity," said Frederick Douglas (1852).
    “Southern clergymen were mainly responsible for prolonging the [South's] futile struggles [in the Civil War that] contributed to the million casualties and 600,000 dead,” says Paul Johnson, A History of Christianity (New York: Atheneum, 1987), Part 7, p 438. Examples:
  • Dr. Thornwell, one of the leading Presbyterian divines in the South said, "The triumph of Lincoln's [pro-freedom] principles is the death-knell of slavery. . . . Let us crush the serpent in the egg."
  • The Reverend Dr. Smythe of Charleston said, "The war is a war against slavery, and is therefore treasonable rebellion against the Word, Providence and Government of God!"
  • In view of their having such outlandish immoral beliefs, the so-called religious denomination of the entire South, united in an complaint to Christians throughout the world early in 1863, saying, "The recent [emancipation] proclamation of the President of the United States, seeking the emancipation of the slaves of the South, is in our judgment occasion of solemn protest on the part of the people of God."
    Clearly, in view of their said bizarre beliefs, pro-slavery clergymen “had simply no moral sense,” said Kentucky clergyman Rev. Robert J. Breckinridge, p 9. Their scandalous behavior was the “acmé of piratical turpitude,” says Lewis Tappan, Address (1843), p 19.
    Abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison observed, "American Christianity is the main pillar [supporter] of American slavery." Rev. Parker Pillsbury noted, "We had almost to abolish the Church before we could reach the dreadful institution [slavery] at all." Reason: "It has come to be a mere truism that the firmest pillars [supporters] of the bloody Moloch [slavery] are the professed ministers of Jesus Christ," cited at p 374 of his book, Acts of the Anti-Slavery Apostles (1883).
    “It is difficult today to comprehend the psychosis of the southern mind. . . .” says Prof. Clement Eaton, The Freedom-of-Thought Struggle in the Old South (Duke Univ Press, 1940, and New York: Harper & Row, 1964), p 384. A 1784 South Carolinian, Thomas T. Tucker (cited by Edward C. Rogers, Slavery Illegality (1855), p 85), had earlier made this same point, “such is the fatal influence of slavery on the human mind, that it almost wholly effaces from it even the boasted characteristic of rationality.”
    Lewis Tappan, Address (1843), p 13, cited slavery as “a moral pestilence which they [Southerners] insanely regard as a blessing and not a curse.”
    Rev. Beriah Green noted likewise in 1839: “They [slavers] have lost the use of reason. They are not to be argued with. They belong to the mad-house.”—Rev. Beriah Green, The Chattel Principle (1839), p 13.
    Rev. George B. Cheever, D.D., On the Subject of the Iniquity of the Extension of Slavery (1856), p 16, concluded "that a man must be an idiot or a madman who undertakes to deny it [wrongfulness of slavery]" and p 36, behaving "as if seized with a fit of national lunacy."
    Foster quotes a pro-slavery clergyman, Rev. Smylie, admitting three-fourths of many alleged Christians are “of the devil” (pp 14-15). No doubt, in view of slavery's purpose, p 57, including selling women into prostitution, p 41, and advocating lynching of opponents of this, p 46.
    Rev. George B. Cheever, Pulpit (1856), p 10, cited the Bible law that if such false clergy had heeded, would have prevented these abuses.
    For Bible corroboration of the prevalence of abuses in Christianity's name, see
  • Matthew 7:13-23, there are few real Christians, many (most) are fakes, merely professing
    Christianity
  • Matthew 23:15, 24:4-5, 24:23-24; 2 Corinthians 11:13-15, there are many fraudulent clergymen
    pretending to be Christian
  • Matthew 16:18, there would be so few real Christians that it would seem that Christianity had
    been exterminated in the first couple centuries.
    Note 1 Kings 18:19, citing at Elijah's time, an 800:1 ratio of lying vs honest clergy, sadly a continuing dilemma, 1 Corinthians 10:6 and 2 Corinthians 11:13-15. As the foregoing references establish, almost all "Christian" clergymen are in reality, ministers of Satan. While there are various evidences of same, one obvious evidence of a minister being of Satan is, of course, his/her preaching that the Bible supports or condones slavery. Most ministers so preached then, and most continue to do so now.
    "If there is a decay of conscience, the pulpit is responsible for it. If the public press lacks moral discernment, the pulpit is responsible for it. If the church is degenerate and worldly, the pulpit is responsible for it. If the world loses its interest in Christianity, the pulpit is responsible for it. If Satan rules in our halls of legislation, the pulpit is responsible for it. If our politics become so corrupt that the very foundations of our government are ready to fall away, the pulpit is responsible for it," said Rev. Charles G. Finney (1792-1875), Second President of Oberlin College, 1851 – 1866.
    Rev. Foster rebuts pro-slavery “eisegesis” (making up one's mind in advance, imposing one's predetermined meaning) as opposed to “exegesis” (impartially deducing word meaning from the original langauge and context) with respect to the Bible. Pro-slavers did “eisegesis,” i.e., imposed their pre-determined 'minds-made-up-in-advance' pro-slavery views on the Bible.
    Foster's colleague Rev. Parker Pillsbury reprinted this 1843 book by Rev. Foster, in 1884. By then, many Americans had forgotten the events leading to that war. Pro-South disinformation was being circulated instead, to conceal the immoral role of the clergy, the "Bible-Belt," the "religious right." This was in two contradictory styles:
  • claims the Bible is FOR slavery (i.e., anti-abolitionist attitude), and
  • claims that "Christian" churches had fought against slavery.
    Telling two different stories at the same time is classic fraud. Both stories cannot be true! But both stories may be false, as in this situation.
    The real truth was,
  • the Bible was ANTI-slavery, but
  • pretended Christians had flouted actual Bible teachings, falsely
    pretended it is pro-slavery, and en masse SUPPORTED slavery and
    LIED about the Bible.
    Evil clergy had even supported U.S. wars of conquest, e.g., stealing Texas from Mexico, in a war of aggression, see Pillsbury's book, pp 81 and 381. Pretended "Christian" clergy and churches generally supported that war of U.S. aggression against Mexico, p 68.
    Numbers of so-called "Christian" clergymen lie, pretend many wars are for the pretextual "righteous" reasons politicians profess, whereas the fact is, wars are lusts-motivated. Though the Bible (James 4:1-2) clearly says this, such clergy refuse to preach that! lie to their congregations! cite and aid and abet the politician pretexts and lusts! To find the truth, you must read others, e.g., Charles Sumner's 1840's-1870's expositions, and history of the subject-matter.
    This is not to mention other Southern evils cited by other abolitionists, and later killing hundreds of thousands of people.
    Pro-slavery clergy admitted that there were few Christians in the South, says Pillsbury, p 21. The South was mostly heathen, not 'Bible-belt,' as the myth has it!
    “[N]othing . . . has done so much to tolerate and perpetuate the sin in our midst, as the practice [tradition] of the Church.”—Rev. John G. Fee, Anti-Slavery Manual (1851), p 69.
    Abolitionists observed that "in regard to the existence of slavery . . . the clergy stand wickedly preeminent, and ought to be unsparingly exposed and reproved before the people."—New England Anti-Slavery Convention (May 1841). Others there said "That the Church and clergy of the United States, as a whole, constitute a great BROTHERHOOD OF THIEVES, inasmuch as they countenance the highest kind of theft, i.e., man-stealing."
    Others saw "That the sectarian organizations called Churches are combinations of thieves, robbers, adulterers, pirates, and murderers, and as such form the bulwark of American slavery."—Abby Kelly, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Tenth Annual Report (1842), Appendix, p. 8.
    William Lloyd Garrison, in view of the rampant evils, therefore deemed the South filled “with thoroughly demonized spirits,” say Wendell and Francis Garrison (sons), William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879 (NY: The Century Co, 1885), Vol IV, p 25.
    Foster appeals to readers to come out, leave, exit, depart from, cancel membership in, evil denominations, p 78.
    The Islamic example was better, lamented Rev. William S. Patton, in his Slavery, the Bible, Infidelity (August 1846), p 11, as the false Christians, the “religious right,” were sabotaging real Christianity.
    Pretended Christians had opposed Lincoln. Note this view of the May 1860 nomination process of Lincoln for the Presidency: that it “was not 'eminently respectable,' nor distinguished for its 'dignity and decorum.' On the other hand, the satanic element was very strongly developed.”—Quoted on page 245 of The Glorious Burden: The American Presidency (New York: Harper & Row, 1968) by Stejan Lorant.
    Pretended Christians were now, 1884, altering, falsifying history, p 76, pretending that clergy and Churches had done more than the abolitionists to end slavery. Many aboli-tionists were by then dead; Lincoln was dead—not alive to set the record straight.
    So Rev. Pillsbury, by then age 74, reprinted Foster's 1843 book, to set the record straight, and to remind Americans of the fakes, pretenders, whom Pillsbury had excommunicated, 1841, p 374, and of their ultimate fate, p 28.
    Pillsbury had excommunicated the vile clergy, the vast majority, as he notes in his book, Acts, p 374. He, and the few real Christians (Protestant and Catholic, as shown in this series), a mere half-million in all the U.S., had fought slavery.
    The vile pro-slavery clergy
  • lacked the gift of a sound mind, 2 Tim. 1:7,
  • had a reprobate mind, Rom. 1:28,
  • reprobately resisted truth, 2 Tim. 3:8,
  • reprobately opposed good works, Titus 1:16,
  • seared their conscience, 1 Tim. 4:2
  • all leading to systemic, wide-spread heresies
  • all contrary to Matthew 25:41-46.
    Such depraved "Christian" churches and clergy were
  • (1) creating pagans and infidels by their bad examples and doctrines, said Rev. William W. Patton
    (4 August 1846); and thus
  • (2) were enabling, aiding and abetting, supporting vile politicians.
    For background on effects and history of what had happened to "Christianity" (via the Diocletian-Constantine-Augustine combination that eliminated Original Christianity), see
  • Rev. William Goodell, Slavery and Anti-Slavery (1852), pp 135-139
  • the Ed. Note in Rev. Parker Pillsbury's book Acts, p 377.
    One of America's Founding Fathers had warned: “Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded project.”—James Madison (1 April 1774). So-called "Christians" are generally weak-minded, unable to competently analyze data, say Paul and Jesse Ventura. See details below.
    U.S. slavery was unconstitutional. Rev. John Wesley recognized the Bible-Belt's slavery as “the vilest that ever [existed].” The Party of Lincoln, the Republican Party, was founded to oppose the "Bible-Belt," the "religious right" — their ultra-depravities.
    Such history is vital now, in 2007, as the fakes, pretended Christians, continue. Most still say the Bible is FOR slavery, at least condones it; others pretend to have 'repented' of their predecessors having been pro-slavery!
    Neither group (the deniers of slavery-being-a-sin, and the pretenders-of-repentance) bring forth "fruits meet for repentance [Luke 3:8]." They bring forth
  • no reconciliation,
  • no restitution (reparations),
  • no opposition to continuing slaver revenge,
  • no opposition to the ongoing re-enslavement via law manipulations. Such clergymen are
    ministers of Satan as aforesaid.

    • The Brotherhood of Thieves:
    or,
    A True Picture of the
    American Church and Clergy:
    A Letter
    to
    Nathaniel Barney,
    of Nantucket.
    by
    Rev. Stephen S. Foster
    (New-London: William Bolles Pub, 1843;
    reprinted, Concord, N.H.:
    Parker Pillsbury, 1884)

    Table of Contents
    Introduction3
    Background
    		5
    Christ's Example
    		5
    Analysis of Reaction to Charges
    		6
    I. Villainies of Slavery8
    1. Theft
    		9
    2. Adultery
    		9
    3. Man-stealing
    		10
    4. Piracy
    		11
    5. Murder
    		11
    Overview12
    Slave-holding Defined
    		12
    Church Role
    		13
    Government Role
    		15
    South Opposition to Secession
    		16
    Domestic Slave-Trade
    		21
    Current Presidency
    		24
    Politics and Clergy
    		27
    Temperance Example
    		29
    Churches - Clergy In Own Words33
    Methodist Episcopal Church
    		34
    The Presbyterian and Congregational Church
    		42
    The General Assemblies, Old and New Schools
    		49
    The Baptist Church
    		51
    The Protestant Episcopal Church
    		58
    The Unitarian and Universalist Churches
    		61
    The Free-Will Baptists and the Society of Friends
    		61
    Miscellaneous Groups
    		63
    Clergy Upholding Brutality64
    Evidence from Newspapers
    		64
    Burning
    		68
    Drowning
    		68
    Burning
    		69
    II. Methodist Episcopal Church Worse Than Brothel71
    III. Clergy Want Concubines for Themselves71
    IV. Church Filled with Disgraceful Enormities73
    Conclusion74
    Note by the Publisher76

    ESTEEMED FRIEND:

    In the early part of last autumn [1842], I received a letter from you, requesting me to prepare an article for the press, in vindication of the strong language of denunciation of the American church and clergy, which I employed at the late Anti-Slavery Convention on your island, and which was the occasion of the disgraceful mob, which disturbed and broke up that meeting.

    In my answer, I gave you assurance of prompt compliance with your request; but, for reasons satisfactory to myself, I have failed to fulfill my promise up to the present time.

    The novelty of the occasion has now passed away; the deep and malignant passions which were stirred in the bosoms of no inconsiderable portion of your people, have, doubtless, subsided; but the important facts connected with it are yet fresh in the memories of all; and, as the occasion was one of general, not local, interest, and the spirit which was there exhibited was a fair specimen of the general temper and feeling of our country towards the advocates of equal rights and impartial justice, I trust it will not be deemed amiss in me to make it a subject of public notice, even at this late period.

    But in the remarks which I propose to make, it will be no part of my object to vindicate myself in the opinion of the public, against the foul aspersions of those whose guilty quiet my preaching may have disturbed.

    Indeed, to tell the truth, I place a very low estimate on the good opinions of my countrymen—quite as low, I think, as they do on mine, if I may judge from their very great anxiety to have me speak well of them, which I positively never can, so long as their national capital is a human flesh-mart, and their chief magistrate [President John Tyler (1841-1845)] is a slave-breeder.

    The most that I can do is to pledge myself never to mob them, nay, that I will not even be displeased with them, for speaking ill of me, while their character remains what it now is [vile].

    My opponents, among whom rank most of the

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    church and clergy of the country, have disturbed a majority of the meetings which I have attended, within the last nine months, by drunken, murderous mobs, and in several instances, they have inflicted severe injury upon my person; but I value this violence and outrage as proof of their deep conviction of the truth and power of what I say.

    I deem the reproach of such men sufficient praise. [Matt. 5:10-12].

    And I here tender them my thanks for the high compliment they have so often paid to my opinions, in the extreme measures to which they have resorted to compel me to speak in their praise.

    But so long as their character remains [vile] such that I can bestow no commendations, I shall ask none in return.

    Nor is it my intention in this letter, to weaken, by explanations, the force of my testimony against the popular religion of our country, for the purpose of allaying the bloody spirit of persecutiou which has of late characterized the opposition to my course.

    True, my life is in danger, especially whenever I attempt to utter my sentiments in houses dedicated to what is called the worship of God; but He who has opened to my view other worlds, in which to reap the rewards and honors of a life of toil aud suffering in the cause of truth and human freedom in this has taught me to

    "be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do." ]Luke 12:4].

    Hence I have no pacificatory explanations to offer, no coward disclaimers to make.

    But I shall aim to present to the comprehension of the humblest individual, into whose hands this letter may chance to fall, a clear and comprehensive view of the intrinsic [vile] moral character of that class of our countrymen who claim our respect and veneration, as ministers and followers of the Prince of Peace.

    I am charged with having done them great injustice in my public lectures, on that and various other occasions.

    Many of those, who make this charge, doubtless, honestly think so. To correct their error—to reflect on their minds the light which God has kindly shed on mine—to break the spell in which they are now held by the sorcery of a designing priesthood, and prove that priesthood to be a "Brotherhood of Thieves" and the "Bulwark of American Slavery"—is all that I shall aim to do.

    But I ought, perhaps, in justice to those who know nothing of my religious sentiments, except from the misrepresentations of my enemies, to say, that I have no feelings of personal hostility towards any portion of the church or clergy of our country. As children of the same
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    Father, they are endeared to me by the holiest of all ties: and I am as ready to suffer, if need be, in defence of their rights, as in defence of the rights of the Southern slave.

    My objections to them are purely conscientious. I am a firm believer in the Christian religion, and in Jesus, as a divine being, who is to be our final Judge. I was born and nurtured in the bosom of the church, and for twelve years was among its most active members.

    At the age of twenty-two [c. 1831], I left the allurements of an active business life, on which I had just entered with fair prospects, and for seven successive years [c. 1831-1838], cloistered myself within the walls of our literary institutions, in "a course of study preparatory to the ministry."

    The only object I had in view in changing my pursuits, at this advanced period of life, was to render myself more useful to the world, by extending the principles of Christianity, as taught and lived out by their great Author.

    In renouncing the priesthood and an organized church, and laboring for their overthrow, my object is still the same.

    I entered them on the supposition that they were, what from a child I had been taught to regard them, the enclosures of Christ's ministers and flock, and his chosen instrumentalities for extending his kingdom on the earth.

    I have left them from an unresistible conviction, in spite of my early [pro-church] prejudices, that they are a "hold of every foul spirit [Rev. 18:2]," and the devices of [vile] men to gain influence and power.

    And, in rebuking their [deceived] adherents as I do, my only object is to awaken them, if possible, to a sense of their guilt and moral degradation, and bring them to repentance, and a knowledge of the true God, of whom most of them are now lamentably ignorant, as their lives clearly prove.

    The remarks which I made at your Convention were of a most grave and startling character. They strike at the very foundation of all our popular ecclesiastical institutions, and exhibit them to the world as the apologists and supporters of the most atrocious system of oppression and wrong, beneath which humanity has ever groaned.

    They reflect on the church the deepest possible odium, by disclosing to public view
  • the chains and hand-cuffs,

  • the whips and branding-irons,

  • the rifles and bloodhounds,
    • with which her ministers and deacons bind the limbs and lacerate the flesh of innocent men and defenceless women.

    They [the accusations] cast upon the [U.S.] clergy the same dark shade which Jesus threw over [exposed the underlying sinfulness of] the ministers of his day, when he tore away the veil beneath which they had successfully concealed their diabolical schemes of personal aggrandizement and power, and denounced them before all the

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    people,
  • as a "den of thieves [Matt. 21:13; Mark 11:17; Luke 19:46],"

  • as "fools and blind [Matt. 23:17, 19],"

  • "whited sepulchres [Matt. 23:27],"

  • "blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel [Matt. 23:24],"

  • "hypocrites, who devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make long prayers [Matt. 23:14, Mark 12:40; Luke 20:47],"

  • "liars [John 8:44, 55],"

  • "adulterers [Matt. 12:38-39; Matt. 16:1, 4; Mark 8:38],"

  • "serpents [Matt. 23:33],"

  • "a generation of vipers [Matt. 3:7; Matt. 12:34; Matt. 23:33; Luke 3:7],"

  • who could not "escape the damnation of hell [Matt. 23:33; Mark 3:29; 12:40]."

    • But, appalling and ominous as they [the charges against U.S. clergy, I, II, III, and IV] were, I am not aware that I gave the parties accused, or their mobocratic [white trash] friends, any just cause of complaint.

    They [the charges] were all spoken in public, in a free meeting, where all who dissented from me were not only invited, but warmly urged, to reply.

    I was an entire stranger among you, with nothing but the naked truth and a few sympathizing friends to sustain me, while the whole weight of popular sentiment was in their favor.

    Was the controversy unequal on their part? Were they afraid to meet me with the same honorable weapons which I had chosen?

    Conscious innocence seldom consents to tarnish its character by a dishonorable defence. Had my charges been unfounded, a refutation of them, under the circumstances, would have been most easy and triumphant.

    My opponents, had they been innocent, could have acquitted themselves honorably, and overwhelmed their accuser in deep disgrace, without the necessity of resorting to those arguments which appeal only to one's fears of personal harm, and which are certain to react upon their authors, when the threatening danger subsides.

    But if all that I have alleged against them be true, it was obviously my right, nay, my imperative duty, to make the disclosures which I did, even though it might be, as you well know it was, at the peril of my life, and the lives of my associates.

    In exposing the deep and fathomless abominations of those pious thieves, who gain their livelihood by preaching sermons and stealing babies, I am not at liberty to yield to any intimidations, however imposing the source front whence they come.

    The right of speech—the liberty to utter our own convictions freely, at all times and in all places, at discretion, unawed by fear, unembarrassed by force—is the gift of God to every member of the family of man, and should be preserved inviolate; and for one, I can consent to suriender it to no power on earth, but with the loss of life itself.

    Let not the petty tyrants of our land, in charch or state, think to escape the censures which their crimes deserve, by hedging themselves about with the frightful penalties of human law, or the more frightful violence of a drunken and murderous mob.

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    There live the men who are not afraid to die, even though called to meet their fate within the gloomy walls of a dismal prison, with no kind hand to wipe the cold death-sweat from their sinking brow; and they scorn a fetter on limb or spirit. They know their rights, and know how to defend them, or to obtain more than an equivalent for their loss, in the rewards of a martyr to the right.

    While life remains, they will speak, and speak freely, though it be in "A Voice from the Jail;" nor will they treat the crimes and vices of slave-breeding priests, and their consecrated abettors of the North, with less severity than they do the crimes and vices of other marauders on their neighbors' property and rights.

    Nor should the friends of freedom be alarmed at the consequences of this faithful dealing with "spiritual wickedness [depravity, malice, plots, sins] in high places [Eph. 6:12]." The mobs which it creates [which clergy incite, e.g., against abolitionist Rev. Lovejoy and others] are but the violent contortions of the patient, as the deep gashes of the [surgeon] operator's knife sever the infected limb from his sickly and emaciated body.

    The fact that my charges against the religious sects [denominations] of our country were met with violence and outrage, instead of sound arguments and invalidating testimony, is strong presumptive evidence of their trath. The innocent never find occasion to resort to this disgraceful mode of defence [mob violence].

    If our clergy and church were the ministers and church of Christ, would their reputation be defended by drunken and murderous mobs? Are brickbats and rotten eggs the weapons of truth and Christianity? Did Jesus say to his disciples,

    "Blessed are ye when the mob shall speak well of you, and shall defend you?" [Matt. 5:11].

    The church, slavery, and the [white trash] mob, are a queer trinity! And yet that they are a trinity—that they all "agree in one"—cannot be denied. [1 John 5:8].

    Every assault which we have made on the bloody slave system, as I shall hereafter show, has been promptly met and repelled [denied] by the [American emperor-worshipping] church, which is herself the claimant of several hundred thousand slaves; and whenever we have attempted to expose the guilt and hypocrisy of the church, the [white trash] mob has uniformly been first and foremost in her defence.

    But I rest not on presumptive evidence, however strong and conclusive, to sustain my allegations [I, II, III, and IV] against the American church and clergy.

    The proof of their identity with slavery, and of their consequent deep and unparalleled criminality, is positive and overwhelming, aud is fully adequate to sustain the gravest charges, and to justify the most denunciatory language that has ever fallen from the lips of their most inveterate opponents.

    -7-
    I said at your meeting, among other things,
  • that the American church and clergy, as a body, were thieves, adulterers, man-stealers, pirates, and murderers [details];

  • that the Methodist Episcopal church was more corrupt and profligate than any house of ill-fame in the city of New York [details];

  • that the Southern ministers of that body were desirous of perpetuating slavery for the purpose of supplying themselves with concubines from among its hapless victims [details];

  • and that many of our clergymen were guilty of enormities that would disgrace an Algerine pirate [details]!!

    • These sentiments called forth a burst of holy indignation from the pious and dutiful advocates of the church and clergy, which overwhelmed the meeting with repeated showers of stones and rotten eggs, and eventually compelled me to leave your island, to prevent the shedding of human blood.

    But whence this violence and personal abuse, not only of the author of these obuoxious sentiments, but also of your own unoffending wives and daughters, whose faces and dresses, you will recollect, were covered with the most loathsome filth?

    It is reported [in Acts 7:51-52, 58] of the ancient Pharisees and their adherents, that they stoned Stephen to death for preaching doctrines at war with the popular religion of their times, and charging them with murder of the Son of God; but their successors of the modern church, it would seem, have discovered some new principle in theology, by which it is made their duty not only to stone the heretic himself, but all those also who may at any time be found listening to his discourse without a permit from their priest.

    Truly, the church is becoming "terrible as an army with banners."

    This violence and outrage on the part of the [vile, pseudo] church were, no doubt, committed to the glory of God and the honor of religion, although the connection between rotten eggs and holiness of heart is not very obvions.

    It is, I suppose, one of the mysteries of religion which laymen cannot understand without the aid of the [vile] clergy; and I therefore suggest that the pulpit make it a subject of Sunday discourse.

    But are not the charges here alleged against the [vile] clergy strictly and literally true?

    I maintain that they are true to the very letter; that the clergy and their adherents are literally, and beyond all controversy, a "brotherhood of thieves;" and, in support of this opinion, I submit the following considerations:—

    [I. Villainies of Slavery]

    You will agree with me, I think, that slaveholding involves the commission of all the crimes specified in my first charge, viz., theft, adultery, man-stealing, piracy, and murder. But should you have any doubts on this subject,

    -8-
    they will be easily removed by analyzing this atrocious outrage on the laws of God, and the rights and happiness of man, and examining separately the elements of which it is composed. [Rev. John] Wesley [1703-1791], the celebrated founder of the Methodists, once denounced it [slavery] as the "sum of all villanies."

    Whether it be the sum of all villanies, or not, I will not here express au opinion; but that it is the sum of at least five, and those by no means the least atrocious in the catalogue of human aberrations, will require but a small tax on your patience [a short summary] to prove.

    [1. Theft]

    1. Theft [Exod. 20:15; Deut. 5:19]. To steal, is to take that which belongs to another, without his consent. Theft and robbery are, morally, the same act, different only in form. Both are included under the command, "Thou shalt not steal [Exod. 20:15; Deut. 5:19];" that is, thou shalt not take thy neighbor's property.

    Whoever, therefore, either secretly or by force, possesses himself of the property of another, is a thief.

    Now, no proposition [doctrine] is plainer than that every man owns his own industry [labor, work-time]. He who tills the soil has a right to its products, and cannot be deprived of them but by an act of felony. This principle furnishes the only solid basis for the right of private or individual property; and he who denies it, either in theory or practice, denies that right, also.

    But every slaveholder takes the entire industry [labor, work-time] of his slaves, from infancy to gray hairs; they dig the soil, but he receives its products.

    No matter how kind or humane the master may be, —he lives by plunder. He is emphatically a freebooter; and, as such, he is as much more despicable a character than the common horse-thief [hanged in that era], as his depredations are more extensive.

    [2. Adultery]

    2. Adultery [Exod. 20:14; Deut. 5:18]. This crime [sin] is disregard for the requisitions of marriage. The conjugal relation has its foundation deeply laid in man's nature, and its strict observance is essential to his happiness. Hence Jesus Christ
  • has thrown around it the sacred sanction of his written law [Exod. 20:14; Deut. 5:18],

  • and expressly declared that the man who violates it, even by a lustful eye, is an adulterer. [Matt. 5:28.]

    • But does the slave-holder respect this sacred relation? Is he cautious never to tread upon forbidden ground? No! His very position makes him the minister of unbridled lust.

    Ed. Note: Thomas Jefferson elaborated.

    By converting woman into a commodity to be bought and sold, and used by her claimant as his avarice or lust may dictate, he totally annihilates the marriage institution, and transforms the wife into what he very significantly terms a "BREEDER," and her children into "STOCK."

    This change in woman's condition, from a free moral agent to a chattel, places her domestic relations entirely

    -9-
    beyond her own control, and makes her a mere instrument for the gratification of another's desires. The master claims her body as his property, and, of course, employs it for such purposes as best suit his inclinations,—demanding free access to her bed; nor can she resist his demands but at the peril of her life.

    Ed. Note: Due to demonized Southern clergy constantly insisting, "Servants, obey your masters in all things," resistance was non-existent, per 1860 census data, 588,000 mulatto women.

    Thus is her chastity left entirely uuprotected, and she is made the lawful prey [by Southern politicians] of every pale-faced libertine who may choose to prostitute her.

    To place woman in this situation, or to retain her in it when placed there by another, is the highest insult that any one could possibly offer to the dignity and purity of her nature; and the wretch who is guilty of it deserves an epithet compared with which adultery is spotless innocence. Rape is his crime! death his desert,—if death be ever due to criminals!

    Am I too severe?

    Let the offence [rape] be done to a sister or daughter of yours; nay, let the [vile] Rev. Dr. Witherspoon, or some other ordained miscreant from the South, lay his vile hands on your own bosom companion, and do to her what he has done to the companion of another,—and what Prof. [Moses] Stuart [1780-1852] and Dr. Fisk say he may do [rape], "without violating the Christian faith,"—and I fear not your reply.

    Ed. Note: See
  • rebuttal of Prof. Moses Stuart's material, by Rev. Beriah Green, The Chattel Principle (1839), starting at page 7
  • example of Dr. Witherspoon's pro-slavery action at a Church Convention, by Rev. William Goodell, Slavery and Anti-Slavery (1852), p 155.

    • None but a moral monster ever consented to the enslavement of his own daughter, and none but fiends incarnate ever enslave the daughter of another.

    Indeed, I think the demons in hell would be ashamed to do to their fellow-demons what many of our clergy do to their own church members.

    [3. Man-stealing]

    3. Man-stealing. [Exod. 21:16; details.] What is it to steal a man? Is it not to claim him as your property?—to call him yours?

    God has given to every man an inalienable right to himself,—a right of which no conceivable circumstance of birth, or forms of law [human tradition], can [morally] divest him; and he who interferes with the free and unrestricted exercise of that right, who, not content with the proprietorship of his own body, claims the body of his neighbor, is a man-stealer.

    This truth is self-evident. Every man, idiots and the insane only excepted, knows that he has no possible right to another's body; and he who persists, for a moment, in claiming it, incurs the guilt of man-stealing.

    The plea of the slave-claimant, that he has bought, or inherited, his slaves, is of no avail. What right had he, I ask, to purchase, or to inherit, his neighbors?

    The purchase, or inheritance of them as a legacy, was itself a crime of no less enormity than the original act of kidnapping. But every slave-holder, whatever his profession or standing in society may be, lays his felonious hands on the body and

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    soul of his equal brother, robs him of himself, couverts him into an article of merchandise, and leaves him a mere chattel personal in the hands of his claimants. Hence he is a kidnapper, or man-thief.

    [4. Piracy]

    Piracy. The American people, by an act of solemn legislation, have declared the enslaving of human beings on the coast of Africa to be piracy, and have affixed to the crime the penalty of death.

    And can the same act be piracy in Africa [anywhere on ocean], and not be piracy in America? Does crime change its character by changing longitude? Is killing, with malice aforethought, no murder, where there is no human enactment against it? Or can it be less piratical and Heaven-daring to enslave our own native countrymen, than to enslave the heathen sons of a foreign and barbarous realm?

    If there be any difference in the two crimes, the odds is in favor of the foreign enslaver. Slaveholding loses none of its enormity by a voyage across the Atlantic, nor by baptism into the Christian name.

    It is piracy in Africa; it is piracy in America [and ocean between]; it is piracy the wide world over; and the American slave-holder, though he possess all the sanctity of the ancient Pharisees, and make prayers as numerous and long, is a pirate still; a base, profligate adulterer, and wicked contemner of the holy institution of marriage; identical in moral character with the African slave-trader, aud guilty of a crime which, if committed on a foreign coast, he must expiate on the gallows [be hanged].

    [5. Murder]

    5. Murder. [Exodus 20:13; Deut 5:17.] Murder is an act of the mind, and not of the hand.

    "Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer." [1 John 3:15].

    A man may kill,—that is his hand may inflict a mortal blow,—without committing murder. On the other hand, he may commit murder without actually taking life. The intention constitutes the crime [Prov. 23:7].

    He who, with a pistol at my breast, demands my pocket-book or my life, is a murderer, whichever I may choose to part with.

    And is not he a murderer, who, with the same deadly weapon, demands the surrender of what to me is of infinitely more value than my pocket-book, nay, than life itself—my liberty—myself—my wife and children—all that I possess on earth, or can hope for in heaven?

    But this is the crime [sin] of which every slaveholder is guilty.

    He maintains his ascendency over his victims, extorting their unrequited labor, and sundering the dearest ties of kindred, only by the [extortionate] threat of extermination.

    With the slave, as every intelligent person knows, there is no alternative. It is submission or death, or, more frequently, protracted torture more horrible than death [Example].

    Indeed, the South

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    never sleeps, but on dirks, and pistols, and bowie knives, with a troop of blood-hounds standing sentry at every door!

    Ed. Note: Like Communists and Nazis, with barriers, walls, "Iron Curtains," to keep people in.

    What, I ask, means this splendid enginery of death, which gilds the palace of the tyrant master?

    It tells the story of his guilt. The burnished steel which waits beneath his slumbering pillow, to drink the life-blood of outraged innocence, brands him as a murderer. It proves, beyond dispute, that the [extorted] submission of his victims is the only reason why he has not already shed their blood.

    Ed. Note: See also Alvan Stewart's 1845 Ten Commandments overview.
    Be aware that slavers' sins en masse (Theft, Adultery, Rape, Piracy, Man-stealing, Murder) result from adaptation of doctrines of
  • 'saved by grace,'
  • 'grace alone,'
  • 'just believe in Jesus,'
  • 'come as you are,'
  • no repentance, no fruits
  • no behavior change needed,
  • you can stay as you are
  • nothing for you to do
  • God does it all
  • God is in charge (a heresy freeing you of responsibility for your acts)
  • repentance and fruits thereof are mere 'works of the law,' unnecessary,
  • you are under 'liberty,' free to sin unrestrained,
  • calling for moral behavior is "legalism,"
  • requiring morality is "legalism" under the "curse of the law."
    Naturally, such outlandish doctrines in disregard of, e.g., the sin-banning concepts of, e.g., Romans 6:1-2, 12-13, 15, 23, lead to rampant sins.
    Moreover, pro-sin clergymen reject
  • Peter's citing the first step as 'repentance' (Acts 2:38);
  • John's saying to 'bring fruits worthy of repentance' (Matthew 3:8)
  • Christ's saying to deal with the unrepentant as heathen (Matt. 18:17);
  • Paul's 1 Cor. 5:1, 5 example of disfellowshipping an habitual sinner.
    Southern clergy's rejecting such Bible doctrines freed people en masse in the so-called Bible-Belt" to in fact live a life of habitual sin and ultra-depravity.
    Clergy even re-define terms and words, deny their meaning, deleting from the definition of sin, whatever acts they and members commit!
    Naturally, rejecting such doctrines leads to even more wide-spread sins.
    Rev. John Fee wrote a book in 1849 recommending following Paul's guidance to excommunicate habitual unrepentant sinners.
    Since most "Christian" clergy and churches in America were in reality heathen, there was general non-compliance.
    In reaction to U.S. clergy's widespread doctrines aiding and abetting moral depravity, making them accessories and partakers [contrary to Bible commands in, e.g., Ephesians 5:22, 1 Timothy 5:22, and Revelation 18:4], abolitionist Rev. Parker Pillsbury excommunicated most U.S. clergy.

    • [Overview]

    By this brief analysis of slavery, we stamp upon the forehead of the slaveholder, with a brand deeper than that which marks the victim of his wrongs, the infamy of theft, adultery, man-stealing, piracy, and murder.

    We demonstrate, beyond the possibility of doubt, that he who enslaves another—that is, robs him of his right to himself, to his own hands, and head, and feet, and transforms him from a free moral agent into a mere brute, to obey, not the commands of God, but his claimant—is guilty of every one of these atrocious crimes.

    And in doing this, we have only demonstrated what, to every reflecting mind, is self-evident. Every man, if he would but make the case of the slave his own, would feel in his inmost soul the truth and justice of this charge.

    But these are the crimes which I have alleged against the American church and clergy. Hence, to sustain my charge against them, it only remains for me to show that they are slaveholders.

    That they are slaveholders—party to a conspiracy against the liberty of more than two millions of our countrymen, and, as such, are guilty of the crimes of which they stand accused—I affirm, and will now proceed to prove.

    [Slave-Holding Defined]

    It may be necessary for me first, however, to show what constitutes slaveholding, as there seems to be no little confusion in the minds of many on this point.

    And here let me say, the word itself, if analyzed, will give an accurate description of the act. It is to hold one in slavery—to keep him in the condition of a chattel.

    But slave-holding, in all cases, is necessarily a social crime. A man may commit theft or murder alone, but no single individual can ever enslave another. It is only when several persons associate together [partake as accessory principals], and combine their influence against the liberty of an individual, that he can be deprived of his freedom, and reduced to slavery.

    Hence connection with an association [modern term, "continuing criminal enterprise"—18 USC § 1961, et seq.], any part of whose object is to hold men in slavery, constitutes one a slaveholder.

    Nor is the nature or criminality of his offence altered or affected by the number of persons connected [partaking] with him in

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    such an association. If a million of people conspired together to enslave a solitary individual, each of them is a slaveholder, and no less guilty than if he were alone in the crime.

    It is no palliation of his offence to say, that he is opposed to slavery. The better feelings of every slaveholder are opposed to slavery.

    But if he be opposed to it, why, I ask, is he concerned in it? Why does he [partake,] countenance, aid, or abet, the infernal system? The fact of his opposition to it, in feeling, instead of mitigating his guilt, only enhances it, since it proves, conclusively, that he is not unconscious of the wrong he is doing. [Romans 14:23].

    It is a common but mistaken opinion, that, to constitute one a slaveholder, he must be [personally] the claimant of slaves. That title belongs alike to the slave-claimant, and all those who, by their [partaking or accessory role,] countenance or otherwise, lend their influence to support the slave system.

    If I aid or countenance another in stealing, I am a thief, though he receive all the booty.

    The Knapps, it will be recollected [of that then-recent case], were hung as the murderers of Mr. White, though Crowninshield gave the fatal blow, and that, too, while they were at a distance from the bloody scene.

    It matters little who does the mastery, and puts on the drag-chain and hand-cuffs, whether it be James B. Gray, the Boston Police, Judge Story, or some distinguished Doctor of Divinity of the South; the guilt of the transaction consists in authorizing or allowing it to be doue.

    Hence all who, through their political or ecclesiastical connections, aid or countenance the master in his work of death, are slaveholders, and, as such, are stained with all the moral turpitude which attaches to the man who, by their sanction, wields the bloody lash over the heads of his trembling victims, and buries it deep in their quivering flesh.

    Ed. Note: When Ancient Judah was punished for committing slavery, this was the Bible view. All were punished, the entire nation, all went into captivity. See Rev. George Cheever, God Against Slavery (1857), pp 72-81.

    Nay, the human hounds which guard the plantation, ever eager to bark on the track of the flying fugitive, are objects of deeper indignation and abhorrence than even its lordly proprietor.

    [Church Role]

    How stands this matter, then, in regard to the American church and clergy? Is it true of them that they are either claimants of slaves or watch-dogs of the plantation? Such I regret to say, is the shameful and humiliating fact.

    It is undeniably true, that, with comparatively few exceptions, they occupy one of these two positions in relation to the "peculiar institution."

    Thousands of the ministers, and tens of thousands of the members of the different sects [denominations], are actually claimants of slaves. They buy and sell, mortgage and lease, their own "brethren in the Lord," not unfrequently breaking up

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    families, and scattering their bleeding fragments over all the land,) never to be gathered again till the archangel's trump shall wake then slumbering ashes into life.

    In confirmation of this statement, if proof be asked, I submit the following testimony of Rev. Samuel Heuston late of Utica, N. Y., an accredited minister of the Methodist Episcopal church, who formerly resided at the South In reply to several questions by Rev. George Storrs, of the same church, Mr. H. says,—

    "I know that members of the M. E. church sell slaves at auction [break up families], to the highest bidder; and it is not considered a disciplinary offence.

    "I know of Methodist preachers buying slaves with no apparent design to better their condition, but evidently for the sake of [covetous] gain [profit].

    "I should think nearly one half, at least, of the ministers of our church hold slaves and trade in them, and nearly all the members, who are able to own slaves, not only hold them but buy and sell them.

    "I know an official member of the M. E. church, Col.————, that bought in one purchase about fifty thousand dollars' worth of slaves.

    "Esq. ————, of ————, S. C., an official member of the M. E. church, who made it a business to buy and sell slaves in lots to suit the purchasers, has become rich by his speculation in them, and still continues his [Rev. 18:13] trade in human beings—trading not only for himself, but as an agent for others. His house is head-quarters for Methodists—a home for the preachers. He is a chief man in the church; very benevolent."

    The opinion of Mr. Heuston as to the extent to which the Methodists are engaged in breeding and trafficking in slaves, is corroborated by the testimony of Rev. James [H.] Smylie, a Presbyterian clergyman of Mississippi, who affirms the same thing of all the other large denominations.

    In a pamphlet which he [Smylie] published in defence of slavery, in 1838, I think it was [when Foster saw it], we find the following passage:—

    "If slavery be a sin, and if advertising and apprehending slaves with a view to restore them to their masters is a direct violation of the divine law [Deut. 23:15-16], and if the buying, selling, or holding a slave, FOR THE SAKE OF GAIN, is a heinous sin and scandal, then, verily, THREE FOURTHS OF ALL THE EPISCOPALIANS, METHODISTS, BAPTISTS, and PRESBYTERIANS, in ELEVEN STATES OF THE UNION, are of the devil.

    Ed. Note: Even nearly 100%.
    Slavers "have turned rebels against Infinite Justice [God] and have joined the enemy of all mankind [the devil] in subjecting Humanity to beastly servitude."--Edward C. Rogers, Slavery Illegality in All Ages and Nations (Boston: Bela Marsh, 1855), p 13.

    "They 'hold,' if they do not buy and sell slaves, and, with few exceptions, they hesitate not to 'apprehend and restore' runaway slaves when in their power [contrary to Deut. 23:15-16].

    Ed. Note: The full citation of Smylie's book is: Rev. James H. Smylie, A Review of a Letter From the Presbytery of Chillicothe, to the Presbytery of Mississippi, on the Subject of Slavery (Woodville, Miss.: Wm. A. Norris and Co., 1836).
    A rebuttal was made by Gerrit Smith [1797-1874], Letter of Gerrit Smith to Rev. James Smylie of the State of Mississippi (New York: American Anti-Slavery Society, 1837).

    The statements of these individuals [Heuston and Smylie] apply to the South only. It is only in that portion of the country that Mr. S. says, and says truly, that if slavery be a sin (and no

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    man doubts that it is), three fourths of all the Episcopalians, Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians are of the devil.

    Ed. Note: Thus, "the Christian population is so very small a part of the South"—Rev. Groff (1843), quoted by Rev. Parker Pillsbury, Forlorn Church (1847), p 21.
    Moral people fled the South, moved out, moved North, e.g., depopulation, white flight, from the slave state of Virginia, cited by Alvan Stewart, Legal Argument For the Deliverance of 4,000 Persons from Bondage (1845), pp 49-50.

    Rev. John Rankin, Letters on American Slavery (1823), gave context, p 64.

    Sen. Charles Sumner, "Barbarism of Slavery" (1860), cited background reasons, p 143.

    Harriet Beecher Stowe, Key (1853), gave examples at pp 129 and 184.

    Abraham Lincoln, Peoria Speech (1854), noted this aspect as well, p 232.

    Re "the effect that slavery produces on society. On the right bank of the Ohio [river] everything is activity, industry; labor is honoured; there are no slaves. Pass to the left bank [of the river] and the scene changes so suddenly [a contrast like passing from West to East Germany during the Cold War] that you think yourself on the other side of the world; the enterprising spirit is gone."

    "There [in the South], work is not only painful; it's shameful [Southern slavers were lazy], and you degrade yourself in submitting yourself to it [working for a living]. To ride, to hunt, to smoke like a Turk in the sunshine: there is the destiny of the white. To do any other kind of manual labor is to act like a slave."

    "You see few churches, no schools." "Society [in the South], like the individual, seems to provide for nothing."

    "Every day the [North] grows more wealthy and densely pop-ulated while the South is stationary or growing poor." "The first result of this disproportionate growth is a violent change in the equilibrium of power and political influence. Powerful [Southern] states become weak [by white flight], territories without a name [in the North] become [populated] states . . . . Wealth, like population, is displaced [by slavery]. These changes cannot take place without injuring [vested immoral] interests, without exciting violent passions."—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), Democracy in America (1835).

    Lewis Tappan, Address (1843), pp 11-14, noted likewise.

    But as the Northern branch of the church is much larger than the Southern, a large majority of the ministers and church members of the whole country hold no property in slaves.

    But while it is true they are not claimants of slaves, it is equally true that they are the [accessories and partaker] apologists and supporters of the system.

    [Government-Role]

    For the sake of union with the South, the Northern church and clergy, in concert with non-professors [non-Christians], have made their respective states hunting-grounds for Southern kidnappers, and themselves the hounds.

    Ed. Note: For a modern parallel, see Nazi-era Jew-hunting data by Prof. Daniel J. Goldhagen, Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996), or at least, an excerpt.

    They have covenanted with the South that whenever one of her slaves shall make his escape to Massachusetts, [Supreme Court] Judge [Joseph] Story [1779-1845] and the United States marshal, with his posse comitatus, shall dog him down, secure [capture] his person, and in due time deliver him up to the original kidnapper.

    Nor is this all. They [clergy] have consented to become the body-guard of the slave-master, and have pledged themselves to protect him against every attempt of his slaves to throw off their chains.

    It is to this union, and pledge of protection from the North, that the slave system owes its perpetuity to the present time.

    Such, at least, is the opinion of the slave-claimants themselves.

    Hence they shriek out in dismay at the first proposition of the [Garrisonian] abolitionists to dissolve the Union, and leave them alone in the enjoyment of their peculiar institutions.

    Such, too, is the opinion of every man of sense who knows anything of the past history or present condition of our slave population.

    The North, as he very well knows, are emphatically the slaveholders. They are the soldiers [U.S. Army troops blindly following Southerners' orders] who level the musket, as the South gives the word of command.

    Indeed to satisfy himself of this, the humblest and most uninformed of our citizens needs but little reflection on the facts already within his knowledge.

    Ed. Note: See history of the South dominating America, using the military in wars of aggression.

    Who does not know that in this country are two and a half millions of people who are doomed to a state of

    "bondage one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which our fathers [ancestors] rose in rebellion to oppose?"

    Confederated with them are not less than half a million of abolitionists, and free people of color, who believe in the right and duty of self defence, and who are ready to join in every feasible [rescue] measure to secure their liberty.

    Now I ask by whose [accessory / partaker] agency this vast people [then about three million slaves] are kept in their present horrible condition.

    To say that they [the many slaves] are held [only] by their [few] claimants, would be to talk like one bereft of his reason.

    They [slavers] are but a mere handful of men, at most, less than three hundred

    -15-
    thousand, or, on an average, about one to every ten slaves.

    From this vast inequality in numbers it is certain that their masters are not alone concerned in their enslavement.

    To keep a million of robust, athletic men and women in a state of abject servitude, requires a force far beyond what they are competent to furnish. Whence, then, comes that force?

    Who are the allies and abettors [partaking] of these horrible   tyrants, who live upon the blighted hopes of prostrate millions? Are they the crowned despots [monarchs] of the old world [Europe]? Have Algiers and Constantinople disgorged themselves, and sent forth swarms of troops to form a living, impregnable bulwark around these execrable monsters, and shield them from the righteous indignation of outraged humanity?

    [South Opposition to Secession]

    The South herself shall answer this question. She shall speak, and disclose her accomplices [partaking] in this work of death.

    Says the editor of the Maryville (Tenn.) Intelligencer, in an article on the character and condition of the slave population,—

    "We of the South are emphatically surrounded by a dangerous class of beings,—degraded, stupid savages,—who, if they could but once entertain the idea that immediate and unconditional death would not he their portion, would react [accomplish] the St. Domingo [Haiti] tragedy [free themselves as per that precedent].

    "But the consciousness, with all their stupidity, that a tenfold force [U.S. Army], superior in discipline if not in barbarity, would gather from the four corners of the United States, and slaughter them, keeps them in subjection.

    "But to the non-slaveholding states, particularly, we are indebted for a permanent safeguard against insurrection.

    "Without their assistance, the white population of the South would be too weak to quiet that innate desire for liberty which is ever ready to act itself out with every rational creature [as the Founders did in 1776 when oppressed less so, by George III]."

    Ed. Note: The South was therefore anti-secession, as it controlled the federal government. It denounced abolitionists such as Foster, who advocated dissolving the Union for the purpose of ending federal army support of slavery.
    The South later secedes only after it expected that it might no longer, with Lincoln, be able to keep the federal government continuing to aid and abet slavery. The South feared that Lincoln would begin enforcing the Constitution.

    In a debate in Congress on the resolution to censure [Congressman] John Quincy Adams [1767-1848] for presenting a [First Amendment citizen] petition for the dissolution of the Union, Mr. Underwood of Kentucky made the following very just confession—a confession which concedes all that I have ever claimed in regard to the guilt of the North, and which the church and the clergy must disprove, or admit all that I have alleged against them.

    In speaking of the effect of a repeal [dissolution] of the Union on slavery, Mr. U. said,—

    "They (the South) were the weaker portion, were in the minority. The North could do what they pleased with them; they could adopt their own measures.

    "All he asked was, that they would let the South know what those measures were.

    "One thing he knew well—that the state which he in part represented, had perhaps a deeper interest in this subject than any other,

    -16-
    cept Maryland and a small portion of Virginia. And why?

    "Because he knew that to dissolve the Union, and separate the different states composing this confederacy,—making the Ohio river, and Mason and Dixon's line, the boundary line,—he knew as soon as that was done, slavery was done, in Kentucky, Maryland, and a large portion of Virginia, and it [emancipation] would extend to all the states south of this line.

    "The [abolitionist-proposed] dissolution of the Union was the dissolution of slavery.

    "It had been the common practice for Southern [congress] men to get up on this [U.S. House of Representatives] floor, and say, 'Touch this subject, and we will dissolve this Union as a remedy.'

    "Their remedy was the destruction of the thing which they wished to save, and any sensible man could see it.

    "If the Union were dissolved into two parts, the slave would [rescue himself as per precedent] cross the line, and then turn round and curse his master from the other shore."

    This confession of Mr. Underwood [Congressman from Kentucky], as to the entire dependence of the slave masters on the citizens of the nominally free states to guard their plantations and secure them against desertion, is substantially confirmed by Thomas D. Arnold, of Tennessee, who, in a speech on the same subject, assures us that they are equally dependent on the North for personal protection against their slaves.

    In assigning his reasons for adhering to the Union, Mr. Arnold makes use of the following remarkable language:

    "The free states had now a majority of 44 in that [U.S.] house [of representatives].

    "Under the new census they [Northern states] would have 53.

    Ed. Note, the "white flight" issue.

    "The cause of the slaveholding states was getting weaker and weaker, and what were they to do?

    "He would ask his Southern friends what the South had to rely on, if the Union were dissolved?

    "Suppose the dissolution could be peaceably effected (if that did not involve a contradiction of terms), what had the South to depend upon?

    "All the crowned heads [European monarchs] were against her. A million of slaves were ready to rise and strike for freedom at the first tap of the drum.

    "They were cut loose from their friends at the North (friends they ought to be, and without them the South had no friends), whither were they [Southerners] to look for protection?

    "How were they to sustain [repel] an assault from England, or France, with that cancer at their vitals?

    "The more the South reflected, the more clearly she must see that she had a deep and vital interest in maintaining the Union."

    Testimony to the same effect, might be multiplied to an indefinite extent. But more is unnecessary.

    Every person, acquainted with the politics of the country, knows that slavery is [according to dishonest judges] incorporated into the constitution of our government [contrary to the Constitution's actual words], and is made a part of its settled policy.

    I have already said [p 12] that slaveholding was, necessarily, a social crime; that it was only by means of a social organization, by which the power of a whole community could

    -17-
    be combined and concentrated on a given point, at a given time, that the liberty of an individual could be crushed.

    The federal and state governments, linked together as they now are, constitute such an organization.

    The protection of the slave system was [slavers allege] one of the objects for which the Union was formed.

    Ed. Note: See other abolitionists' analyses, e.g.,
  • Frederick Douglass, Constitutional Law Lecture (1860), p 14
  • Lysander Spooner, Unconstitutionality of Slavery (1845), pp 90-94
  • Alvan Stewart, Anti-Slavery Speech (1849), p 40
  • Benj. Shaw, Constitutional Law Speech (1846), p 4

    • By the [South's version of the] terms of the federal compact [the U.S. Constitution], the citizens of every state in the Union are required and pledged to protect the slave-claimants, in each of the states where slavery exists, against any attempt of their slaves to regain their liberty by a resort to arms.

    The army, the navy, and the militia, of the whole country, are placed at the bidding of the slave power; and every officer in them, from the highest to the lowest, is put under oath to fight the battles of slavery at the master's call.

    Already have the United States' troops been [unconstitutionally] twice employed (at South Hampton, Ya., and at Wilmington, N. C.), to suppress insurrection among the slaves; and a call is now made upon the country for a large increase of the navy, for the better protection of the "peculiar institution."

    The Florida war also furnishes another and more recent instance in which the nation, as such, has unsheathed the sword [U.S. Army] in defence of slavery. The sole object of that war, which has cost the country more than 7000 lives, and exhausted its treasury of $40,000,000, be it remembered, was the recapture of fugitive slaves, and to prevent further escapes.

    And the same mighty [slave-power] influence which has exterminated the poor [Seminole] Indian in the everglades of Florida for making his rude wigwam a refuge and home for the panting fugitive, is now waiting to "gather in tenfold force from the four corners of the United States, and slaughter" the pining bondmen of the South, should they attempt to throw off their chains, and assert their right to liberty.

    The [alleged] guaranty of personal security against their slaves, [allegedly] given by the North to the slave-claimants, is the very life-blood of the slave system.

    Divested of the protection of Northern bayonets, the slave power could not sustain itself a single hour, as the South herself is forced to admit.

    "Suppose the Union to be dissolved, what has the South to depend upon?

    "All the crowned heads [monarchs] are against her.

    "A million of slaves are ready to rise and strike for freedom at the first tap of the drum."

    And why, I ask, do they [the slaves] not now rise [revolt as the 1776 Founders had done]?

    Not, surely, because, in a country like ours [having ourselves revolted in 1776], such a step would be deemed morally wrong.

    The doctrine taught in all our pulpits, and received by the church universally, is, that

    "resistance to tyrants is obedience to God." [Acts 5:29].

    Our clergy tell us that self-defence,

    -18-
    and the protection of our families, is a duty which we may not innocently neglect, while they denounce non-resistance [pacifism] as the "doctrine of devils."

    Why, then, do not the slaves assert their freedom, and meet [resist] the invaders [violators] of their rights in mortal combat, as our [founding] fathers did [in 1776]?
  • Why is not [slave] Madison Washington, [acting like] George Washington?

  • And why are not [blacks] Charles Remond and Frederic Douglass and Lundsford Lane, the Henrys and Hancocks and Adamses of a second American Revolution?

    • But [only] one answer can be given to this question, and that is the one already given [p 16] by the Maryville Intelligencer.

    The consciousness that, in a controversy with their masters, they [slaves] must meet [defeat] the combined forces, military and naval, of the whole country, alone deters them from such a movement.

    It is not the lily-fingered aristocracy of the South that they fear, as the South herself tells us, but the "white slaves" of the North, who have basely sold themselves for scullions to the slave power, and who are always ready to do the bidding of their haughty proprietors, whatever service they may require at their hands.

    The slaves know too well, that, should they unfurl the banner of freedom, and demand the recognition of their liberty and rights at the point of the bayonet,
  • the Northern pulpit, aghast with holy horror at the incendiary measure, would raise the maddening cry of insurrection—

  • the Northern church, animated by a kindred spirit, and echoing the infamous libel, would pour forth her sons in countless hordes, and

  • a mighty avalanche of Northern soldiery, well disciplined for their work of death by long experience in Northern mobs,

  • would rush down upon them from our Northern hills
    • in exterminating wrath, and sweep away, in its desolating ruins, the last vestige of their present "forlorn hope!"

    Do I misrepresent the vile, demonized, heathen American "Christian"] church and clergy?

    No!

    You, at least, know that this would be but to redeem their plighted faith. They stand before the world and before high Heaven sworn to proect every slave-breeder in the land in his lawful business of rearing men and women for the market; nor have they, as a body, ever shown any symptoms of intention to violate the requirements of their oath.

    They [clergy] preach and practice allegiance to a government which is based upon the bones and sinews, and cemented with the blood, of millions of their countrymen, and hold themselves in readiness to execute its every decree, at the point of the bayonet.

    Thus emphatically are they the holders of the slaves—the bulwarks of the bloody slave system—and as such, at their hands, if there be any truth in Christianity, will God require the blood of every slave in our land.

    -19-
    And, for one, so long as they continue in their present position, I deem it the duty of every friend of humanity to brand them as a Brotherhood of thieves, adulterers, man-stealers, pirates, and murderers, and to prove to the world that, in sustaining the slave system, they do actually commit all these atrocious crimes [sins].

    The Federal Compact [allegedly] contains another provision, as I have already intimated, which, in its operation [misinterpretation by corrupt judges], is no less fatal to the liberties of our enslaved countrymen than that which we have just considered; and one which implicates every friend and supporter of the Union [false interpretion] in all the guilt and moral turpitude of slaveholding.

    I refer to that article of the Constitution which [some say] requires the surrender of fugitive slaves.

    Ed. Note: Others denied it, e.g,
  • Frederick Douglass, pp 12-13
  • Joel Tiffany, pp 67-83
  • Benjamin Shaw, p 10 and 12
  • L. Spooner, 67-73, 279-289
  • Wm. Goodell, 227-231

    • If the Northern States were really free, the slaves would forthwith escape into them, and slavery would soon become extinct by emigration, as Mr. Underwood has well said [pp 16-17].

    But what is now the fact? Is there liberty for the slave anywhere within the borders of the United States? When he steps upon the soil of Pennsylvania, or New York, or Massachusetts, do his shackles fall? Can he stand erect, and say, "I am free?"

    No. He is still a crouching slave—still clanks his chains, and starts affrighted at the crack of the driver's whip.

    Hotly pursued by the human hounds, which, like the fabled vulture of Prometheus, have long gorged themselves upon his vitals, he reaches forth his imploring hands to the professed ministers and followers of the meek and loving Saviour, and, with looks that would draw tears from adamant, beseeches them by all that is endearing in the ties of our common nature, and by all that is horrible in the doom of a recaptured slave, to save him from the fangs of these terrible monsters.

    But what is their [clergy] reply?

    "Go back"—shame, shame on the church!—"Go back, and wear your chains!

    "True, 'all men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness [Declaration of Independence];'

    "and God said, 'Thou shalt not deliver to his master the servant which is escaped from his master unto thee' [Deuteronomy 23:15-16]—

    "but—but—but we have covenanted with the wretcbes who have robbed you of these rights, never to give you shelter, nor protection; but to return you, if found within our borders, again into their power."

    This is no picture of the fancy [imagination], as thousands of our unhappy countrymen would testify from sad experience, if they could but speak.

    Indeed, it is the language of every citizen of the North who holds any other relation to the Federal Compact than that which George Wash-

    -20-
    ington and the first American Congress held to the colonial edicts of George III; for that instrument [the Constitution], as [wrongly] interpreted by the Supreme Court, pledges all who assent to it, to withhold protection from every man who is claimed as a fugitive slave, aad allow him to be dragged back into bondage.

    Ed. Note: The U.S. Supreme Court is the world's worst in terms of interpreting the Constitution, says Joel Tiffany, Unconstitutionality of Slavery, (1849), pp 49-50.
    Not until a century later was it admitted in court, that the Constitution means what it says, not what government practice or courts, even the Supreme Court, pretend it means.

    But have the Northern church and clergy ever refused to fulfill the requisitions of this infamous [interpretation of the] compact with Southern man-stealers? Have they trampled its provisions under their feet, and indignantly demanded its repeal?

    Never!

    On the contrary, with comparatively few exceptions, they have ranged themselves in one of the two great political parties which have long vied with each other in their support of slavery, and at the same time have waged an exterminating warfare against every movement in favor of universal freedom.

    In connection with these parties, they have kidnapped and returned into slavery vast numbers of those who, at different periods, had been so fortunate as to escape from the power of their masters; and in more instances than one have they indicted and imprisoned abolitionists for giving them succor.

    Thus have the [vile, demonized, immoral] church and clergy of the North voluntarily consented to become the watch-dogs of the plantation; and from long and intimate acquaintance with their fidelity in this service, I have no hesitation in recommending them to their Southern masters, as worthy candidates for the honors of a brass collar.

    And if I were to specify cases of extraordinary merit in this regard, I should name Chief Justice Shaw and Judge Story, and the clergy generally of the city of Boston, as especially entitled to remembrance by James B. Gray, for their prompt and cordial acquiescence in his recent claim of [fugitive slave] George Latimer. It would be but an acfc of justice in Mr. G. to expend a part of the money for which he sold George in collars, inscribed with the initiais of his own name, for these distinguished kidnappers. Their conduct on that occasion, as I can testify from personal observation, richly entitles them to some such lasting memento of their loyalty to the slave power.

    [Domestic Slave-Trade]

    There is another view of this subject, which presents the guilt of the Northern church and clergy in a still more glaring light.

    It is this: To legalize crime, and throw around it the sanction of statutory enactments, is, undeniably, an act of much greater wickedness than to perpetrate it after it has been made lawful.

    Ed. Note: See Bible chastisement of Ancient Israel for legalizing sin, liberating people to sin, cited by Rev. George B. Cheever, D.D., God Against Slavery (1857), Chapters I-III, pp 9-34.
    See also Nazi enabling act data.

    Thus the members of a legislative body, which should [who vote to] enact a law [a liberating, enabling act like the Reichstag did under Hitler and Goering] authorizing theft or murder, would more deserve the penitentiary, or gallows, than the man who merely steals,

    -21-
    or, in a fit of anger, takes his neighbor's life. The former justify crime, aud make it honorable, and thus obliterate all distinction between virtue and vice; the latter merely commits it, when legalized, but attempts no justification of his offence.

    But the religious professions of the country have [unconstitutionally] legalized slavery, and the infernal slave trade, in the District of Columbia, and in the Territory of Florida!

    They have made their national capital [Washington, D.C.] one of the greateat slave marts on the globe; and they now hold in slavery, by direct legislation, more than thirty thousand humau beings, whom they have sternly refused to emancipate.

    No sect can claim exemption from this charge.

    Ed. Note: See Rev. Pillsbury's explanation.

    In whatever else they differ, they have all united, [accessories and partakers] without exception, by the almost unanimous voice of their members,
  • in opposing the abolition of slavery in those places where they have the [unconstitutional] power to emancipate,

  • and have declared to the world, by their vote (the most effective way in which they could speak on the subject), that it was their sovereign will and pleasure that the traffic in human beings, which they have branded as piracy on the coast of Africa, should be lawful and honorable commerce in the United States;

  • and that the capital of this land of boasted freedom should be the Guinea Coast of America.

    • Not a mother has been robbed of her babe within the District of Columbia, not a solitary woman has been sold there, without the [unconstitutional] legal sanction of more than seven eighths of every religious sect of the North.

    Even the Free-Will Baptists and the Quakers, with all their professed abhorrence of slavery, and their numerous public testimonies against it, in consideration of the paltry sum of four hundred dollars paid into their national treasury, license the auctioneer in human flesh in the city of Washington [D.C.].

    I charge this offence upon these denominations, because the immediate agents in granting these licenses are men of their own choice, and men, too, who were selected with the full knowledge of the fact that they were in favor of legalizing the slave-trade, and, if elected to office, would license it in the District of Columbia.

    The abolitionists have long and earnestly besought the pretended ministers and followers of Christ, of the different sects [denominations], to elect men to office who would abolish all legal enactments in favor of slavery, wherever they had the power to do it; but their entreaties have been totally disregarded, and themselves treated with the most profound coutempt.

    The nature and enormities of the domestic slave-trade which is now carried on in the District of Columbia, on

    -22-
    an extensive scale, under the legal sanction of nearly the entire body of the church and clergy, may be seen in the following eloquent and just description of it from a Southern pen.

    The language is severe, but it is the severity of truth. The only fault I find with it is, that its heaviest strokes are not aimed at those who have thrown the shield of government around this infernal traffic, and [unconstitutionally] made it lawful and honorable commerce. I copy it:

    From the Millennial Trumpeter, Tenn.
    "Droves of negroes, chained together in dozens and scores, and hand-cuffed, have been driven through our country in numbers far surpassing any previous year.

    "And these vile slave-drivers and dealers are swarming like buzzards round a carrion throughout this country.

    "You cannot pass a few miles in the great [main] roads without having every feeling of humanity insulted and lacerated hy this spectacle.

    "Nor can you go into any county, or any neighborhood, scarcely, without seeing or hearing of some of these despicable creatures, called negro-drivers.

    "WHO IS A NEGRO-DRIVER? One whose eyes dwell with delight on lacerated bodies of helpless men, women, and children; whose soul feels diabolical raptures at the chains, and handcuffs, and cart-whips, for inflicting tortures on weeping mothers torn from helpless habes, and on husbands and wives torn asunder forever.

    "Who is a negro-driver? An execrable demon, who is only prevented by want [lack] of power, fellow-citizens, from driving your wives, and sons, and daughters, in chains and hand-cuffs, with the blood-stained cart-whip to market.

    Ed. Note: Actually, there were white slaves. Remember, 1843 was pre-media (television, radio). The evidence did not become widely known until Harriet Beecher Stowe published it! in 1853.

    "Yea, his hardened heart would make but little difference, whether he made his ill-gotten gain by selling them to a merciless cotton or sugar grower [more commonly, to tobaccoists], or by sending them directly to the flames of hell.

    "Is your insulted humanity, ye sons of Tennessee, your insulted sense of right and wrung, your abused conviction of the rights of man, satisfied by saying the tears, and groans, and blood, of these human droves are not the tears, and groans, and blood, of our wives, children, brothers, and fathers; or these 'blood-snuffing vultures' of hell should not set their polluted tread on our soil with impunity?

    "Their lives should atone for their audacity.

    "And is the fountain of your sympathies dried up for the poor oppressed African, merely because he is helpless and defenceless?

    "Is the hand of efficient aid drawn back, merely because the enchained, bleedmg victim cannot help himself?

    "Is not the African thy brother? Is he not a man, with all the sympathies and sensibilities of our nature? Was he not made in the image of God? Did not Christ die to redeem him?

    "And shall we suffer these miscreant fiends [slave-drivers] to drive our fellow-men in chains before our eyes, as brutes are driven to market?

    "The laws, you say, protect these ruffians in their nefarious traffic.

    "Yea, the laws are often made by wretches [politicians] whose char-

    -23-
    acters are frequently a facsimile of these negro-drivers, whose moral picture would darken the black canvass of the pit [Hell].

    "There are, at this very time, miscreants engaged in this trade, who once polluted our legislative halls.

    "But suppose villains enough of the right hue get into the legislature, and pass laws that one order of society may violate the honor of your wives and daughters; would such a law on the pages of our statute-book secure the perpetrator from condign [appropriate] punishment?

    "What can the dead letter of a statue-book do, in opposition to the public opinion of an enlightened and virtuous community?"

    [Current Presidency]

    Ed. Note: Former Virginia Governor John Tyler, a slaver, was then President, 1841-1845.

    Dark and revolting as is the picture which I have here drawn, there yet remains to be added another shade of still deeper hue.

    Through whose agency [vote] was it, I ask, that a thief now fills the presidential chair?

    John Tyler, the present head and representative of the federal government, is a veteran slave-breeder—a negro-thief of the old Virginia school, who has long supported his own family in princely luxury by desolating the domestic heartstones of his defenceless neighbors, and whose crimes in this regard, had they been perpetrated North instead of South, of Mason's and Dixon's line, would have consigned him to the state's prison for at least two centuries, or until released by death from his ignominious confinement.

    Of Mr. Tyler's cabinet, a majority are negro thieves—five of the jndges of the Supreme Court are negro thieves—the president of the United States Senate is a negro thief—the speaker of the House of Representatives is a negro thief—the officer first in command in the V. S. army is a negro thief—a majority of all our ministers [ambassadors] to foreign courts [governments] are negro thieves.

    And yet these men were all elected to office by the votes, direct or indirect, of the great body of the Northern church and clergy.

    But why have the clergy and their adherents shown this preference for thieves to rule the nation, and shape its destinies? Doubtiess, because they are a "brotherhood of thieves," as like always seeks its like.

    Away, then, with all their pretentions to Christianity, or even common honesty.

    The man who votes with either of the great political parties [then, 1843, Whigs and Southern Democrats] does necessarily and inevitably [unconstitutionally] legalize slavery, both of these parties being pledged
  • not only to execute all [Supreme Court wrong interpretations of] the provisions of the Constitution in favor of slavery,

  • but to go even farther, and perpetuate the system, with all its abominations, in the District of Columbia.
    • The man who [unconstitutionally] legalises slavery. and throws around it the protecting shield of the government, is the most guilty and atrocious of slaveholders; and every slaveholder, as I have already shown, is guilty of the crimes of theft,

    -24-
    adultery, man-stealing, piracy, and murder.

    It follows, then, as a legitimate and certain conclusion, that, as the ministers and members of the Northern church, with comparatively few exceptions,
  • have ranged themselves in the ranks of the Whig or Democratic party,

  • and have thus not only voluntarily formed a political alliance with the slave-claimants, in all the different states of the Union, guaranteeing their personal security, and the return of their fugitive slaves,

  • but have also given their direct sanction to slavery, by [supposedly] legalizing it [absent laws-in-fact],

  • and refusing to emancipate those whom they have a constitutional right to set free,

    • they are slaveholders in the most odious sense of this term, and, as such, are guilty of all the crimes alleged against them in my first charge.

    From the conclusion to which we have here arrived there is no possible escape. Two and a half millions of our countrymen, now loaded with chains and fetters, demand their liberty at our hands. Shall they be free?

    What say the Northern church and clergy?
  • By voting for men to rule the country who are known to be the uncompromising opponents of abolition, they answer—No!

  • By refusing to annul that portion of the Federal Compact which [supposedly] requires them to return fugitives from slavery, and put down the slaves, should they attempt to regain their liberty by a resort to arms, they answer—No!

  • By stifling the voice of free discussion, and stirring up mobs against the abolitionists, they answer—No!
    • Whatever influence they [clergy] possess, as citizens, is all thrown into the scale of slavery.

    They [clergy] looked upon John Tyler [1790-1862] as he robbed the frantic mother of her babe, and forthwith made him president of the United States [1841-1845]!

    They [clergy] have seen Henry Clay [1777-1852] John C. Calhoun [1782-1850] tear the tender and confiding wife from the fond embrace of her husband, and sell her to a stranger, and they are now eager to confer on them the same splendid honors!

    Ed. Note: Clay was elected a U.S. representative (congressman), Speaker of the House, Senator. He was endorsed for President.
    Calhoun was elected Vice-President, and Senator.
    Tyler, after leaving White House, was elected to the Confederate Congress.

    And at this very moment, they [clergy] stand, with sword in hand, ready to thrust it into the heart of the slave, should he assert his freedom, and extend the hand of protection to his insulted and outraged wife and daughters!

    Should these charges chance to meet the eye of the guilty authors of this wrong, they will doubtless ask,

    "Is thy servant a dog that he should do this great [terrible] thing?" [2 Kings 8:13].

    YES, I answer, emphatically, ye [clergy] are dogs—the watch-dogs of your Soutern masters, whose plantations ye guard—and as such, ye are more brutal and inhuman than the [2 Kings 8:13] servant [Hazael] of the Syrian king [Benhadad].

    Ye daily rob more than three hundred of your own country-women of their new-born

    -25-
    babes, and doom those babes to a fate more horrible than death, breaking the mother's heart!

    Ye have
  • recklessly trampled under foot the sacred institution of marriage,

  • consigned every sixth woman in the country to a life of hopeless concubinage and adultery, and

  • turned your famous Ten-Miles-Square into a mart where the rich aristocrat may lawfully sell the poor man's wife for purposes of prostitution, thus legalizing violence on female chastity in its most horrible and disgusting forms.

    • Think, ye fathers and mothers, against whom I bring these tremendous charges; O, think of your own daughters on the block of the auctioneer, to be sold to any vile and loathsome wretch who may choose to purchase them, to pander to his beastly lusts!

    See your own darling son, in the person of George Latimer, kidnapped in open day [light], in the heart of New England's metropolis, and under the very eye of her pulpit: behold him manacled in open court, and dragged in chains through the streets of that proud city, not by a drunken mob, but by the police, with the city marshal at their head; and finally immured with felons in a dismal cell, there to wait, for weeks, with trembling anxiety, the horrible doom of a recaptured slave—and tell me if they are not dogs, nay, fiends incarnate, who perpetrate such outrages!

    But remember, "Thou art the man!" [Matt. 26:25].

    What I have here supposed to be done to thy son and daughters, thou [accessory / partaker] hast doue to the son and daughters of another!

    No intelligent person, man or woman, who is in concert with the Whig or Democratie party, or who votes for any other than an uncompromising abolitionist for civil office, or silently countenances such voting, can say, in truth, he is innocent of these crimes. It is impossible!

    Sooner will Pontius Pilate shake from his spotted robes the blood of the murdered Jesus [Matt. 27:24]; sooner, far sooner, will the infatuated Jew, who cried,

    "Away with him, away with him, let him be crucified [John 19:15],"

    stand acquitted before the bar of his final Judge, than such a man exculpate himself from the guilt of slavery.

    In imitation of the Roman judge [Pontius Pilate], he may wash his hands [Matt. 27:24] before the people by passing resolves against slavery, or excluding slave-claimants from his communion table, and say,

    "I am innocent of the blood of the slave;"

    but it is of no avail. Still in his "skirts is found the blood of the souls of the poor innocents." [Jeremiah 2:34].

    For private ends, he continues to sustain, by vote, a system which, in words, he has repudiated, as the supple tool of the envious Pharisees [Matt. 27:18; Mark 15:10] condemned to death the man whom he [Pilate] had previousiy pronounced without

    -26-
    fault [Luke 23:4, 14; John 18:38; John 19:4, 6]; and hence, in his ecclesiastical condemnation of slavery he only adds to the crime of slaveholding, the guilt of base hvpocrisy. [Romans 14:23].

    So long as a solitary slave shall leave his foot-prints on our soil, or clank his chains in our ears, no position can be innocent, nor safe, but that of uncompromising hostility to whatever is in fellowship or alliance with the slave power; and they alone who have assumed this position, can justly claim exemption from the charge of slaveholding.

    I might pursue the political aspect of this subject still farther, and bring together a great amount of additional proof in support of my positions. But it is needless. Tndeed more evidence would only lumber and confuse the mind, instead of aiding its conclusions. I will, therefore, conclude with a single additional consideration.

    [Politics and Clergy]

    The remark which I wish to add is this: The clerical and lay members, with few exceptions, of all the various religious sects [denominations] in the country, are identified with one of the two great political parties [then, 1843, Whigs and Southern democrats] which administer and control the government, either by actually voting for their candidates, or by a silent acquiescence in, and approval of, their measures.

    Those clergymen, who absent themselves from the polls, but fail to rebuke the members of their respective churches for voting with those parties in support of slavery, are as responsible for their votes as they would be, had they deposited them in the ballot-box with their own hands.

    This, at least, is the doctrine of ancient [Bible] prophet:

    "When I say unto the wicked, O wicked man, thou shalt surely die; if thou dost not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine hand." [Ezekiel xxxiii, 8.]

    Hence, politically, the sects [their voters] are Whig and Democrat; and up to this hour [1843], they have gone all lengths with these parties, in their "Tippecanoe and Tyler, too," [William H. Harrison and John Tyler] and "Kinderhook" [Martin van Buren] conventions for the election of slave-masters, and "Northern men with Southern principles [dough-faces]," to fill the highest offices in the gift of the people.

    Now, I ask, were their own children in slavery, would they be found in the ranks of these parties?
  • If you say, yea; then I reply, would they honor with the highest offices in the government the men who had debauched their own daughters, and sold the flesh, and bones, and blood, of their sons in human shambles.

  • If you say, nay; then, without further argument, are they individually convicted of knowingly and intentionally contributing of their influence to support the slave system—a system that robs two and a half millions of our country-

    • -27-
    men of every right and privilege which renders life a blessing; and therefore they must answer to God, not for the enslavement of one or two individuals merely, but of every victim of our country's wrongs who now pines in his chains.

    And if Christianity be not a fable,

    Christ will say to them in the day of judgment,
  • not only for what they have actually done to sustain slavery,

  • but for what they have neglected to do for its overthrow,

    • "I was hungered, and ye gave me no meat;
    I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink;
    I was a stranger, and ye took me not in;
    naked, and ye clothed me not;
    sick and in prison,"—    down on the plantations of the South—"and ye visited me not."
    "Depart from me, ye cursed, into ever-lasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels."
    For, "Verily I say unto you; inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me." [Matthew 25:41-46].

    In the former part of my letter, I have shown that slavery is an American and not a Southern institution, and that the North and South are leagued together politically in its support.

    I have also shown, both by reference to facts, and from the testimony of distinguished men at the South [pp 16-17],
  • that the slave power could not sustain itself a single hour, without the [accessory, partaker] aid and protection of the general [federal, U.S.] government, but must fall at once before the avenging arm of its outraged victims; and,

  • consequently, that all who sustain the [U.S.] government in its present [unconstitutional] pro-slavery character, do thereby sustain the slave system, and should be held responsible [as accessories and partakers] for all the guilt and misery which it involves.

    • But while the federal government, that is, the electors of the country, are the direct and visible agents on whose authority and fostering care slavery depends for support and perpetuity, there is, in this case, as in most others of a like nature, "a power behind the throne greater than the throne itself;" for in a country like ours, civil government is of no force, any than it is sustained by popular sentiment.

    The will of the people for the time being is the supreme law of the land, the legislative aud executive departments of the government being nothing more than a mere echo of the popular will.

    Hence the power which controls public opinion does, in fact, give laws to our country, and is, therefore, preëminently responsible for the vices which are sanctioned by those laws.

    That power in this, is the priesthood [clergy], backed up and supported by the church.

    They are the manufacturers of our public sentiment; and, consequently, they hold in their hand the key to the great prison-house of Southern despotism, and can

    "open and no man shut, and shut and no man open."

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    There are [in 1843] in our country more than twenty thousand of this class of men, scattered over every part of the land, and at the same time so united in national and local associations as to act in perfect harmony, whenever concert is required.

    They constitute what may properly be termed a religious aristocracy.

    Among the exclusive privileges which they claim and enjoy, is the right to administer the ordinances of religion [sacraments], and to lead in all our religious services.

    The ear of the nation is open to them every seventh day of the week, when they pour into it just such sentiments as they choose. And not only are they in direct and constant contact with the people in their public ministrations, but in their parochial visits, at the sick bed, at weddings, and at funerals, all of which are occasions when the mind is peculiarly tender, and susceptible of deep and lasting impressions.

    Amply supsported by the contributions of the church, their whole time is devoted to the work of moulding and giving character to public sentiment; and with the advantages which they enjoy over all other classes of society, of leisure, the sanctity of their office, and direct and constant contact with the people as their "spiritual guides," their power has [1843] become all-controlling.

    It is in a finite sense omnipresent in every section of the country and is absolutely irresistible, wherever their claims are allowed.

    Hence, what they countenance [allow], it will be next to an impossibility to overthrow, at least till their order itself be overthrown; and whatever system of evil they oppose, must melt away like snow beneath the warm rays of an April sun.

    [Temperance Example]

    To illustrate the strength of their power more fully, I will suppose a case. The car of temperance rolls back its ponderous wheels [alcoholism spreads], and we become a nation of drunkards.

    Midnight gloom covers the whole land. The voice of the reformer is no longer heard in stern rebuke against the general debauch which is now rife in every rank and grade of society.

    The traffic in intoxicating drinks is legalized in all parts of the country, and by a law of Congress for the District of Columbia, every person who visits the seat of government [Washington, D.C.] on business, or for pleasure, may be compelled to drink to intoxication, on penalty of thirty-nine lashes on his bare back, inflicted at discretion of the rum-sellers of the district.

    In this state of things, suddenly some daring spirit starts up, and with the watchword of reform gathers around him a little band of fearless coadjutors [fellow activists], who with himself pledge their lives, their fortunes, and their

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    sacred honor, to the glorious work of delivering the country from the scourge and curse of intemperance.

    Struck with the sanctity of their professions, they naturally look to the priesthood [clergy] and church for aid and cooperation.

    But to their surprise, they find that thousands of the clergy are not only the victims but the apologists, and advocates, of this degrading vice and crime; many of them among the best customers of the rum-seller; they often go reeling and staggering from the grog-shop to the meeting-house, and are obliged to ascend the pulpit on borrowed feet; and it not unfrequently occurs, during the divine services of the Sabbath, that the sentiments of melting tenderness which flow forth in supplication from the pious heart of the officiating priest, are interrupted in their passage by a sudden explo