Historical voices

The whole movement on the part of the States bears unmistakable evidence of having one origin, of emanating from one head, and urged forward by one power.

They dared to ask them to unite with them in a war upon free speech, upon conscience, and to drive the Almighty presence from the councils of the nation.

The key-stone to the arch of this grand union of forces of the slave party is the so-called Compromise of 1850.

Well, the head of the slave power being in power it is natural that the pro-slavery elements should cluster around his administration, and that is rapidly being done.

For the present the best representative of the slavery party is the Democratic party.

It is evident that there is in this country a purely slavery party, a party which exists for no other earthly purpose but to promote the interest of slavery.

In a few simple words he had embodied the thought of the loyal nation, and indicated the character fit to lead and guide the country amid perils present and to come.

No wonder that the friends of freedom saw in this plain man of Illinois the proper standard-bearer of all the moral and political forces which could be united and wielded against the slave power.

Pregnant words were now spoken on the side of freedom, words which went straight to the heart of the nation.

This more than all else told the thoughtful people of the North the kind of civilization to which they were linked, and how plainly it foreshadowed a conflict on a larger scale.

Shocking and scandalous as was this attack, the spirit in which the deed was received and commended by the community, was still more disgraceful.

The more open, flagrant, and impudent the slave power, the more firmly it was confronted by the rising anti-slavery spirit of the North.

Those who cared nothing for the slave, and were willing to tolerate slavery inside the slave States, were nevertheless not quite prepared to find themselves and their children excluded from the common inheritance of the nation.

The presence of slavery in a territory would certainly exclude the sons and daughters of the free States more effectually than statutes or yellow fever.

The people of the North had been accustomed to ask, in a tone of cruel indifference, “What have we to do with slavery?” and now no labored speech was required in answer.

Every body, however dull, could see that this was a phase of the slavery question which was not to be slighted or ignored.

There are many respectable colored men, fathers of large families, having boys nearly grown up, whose minds are tossed by day and by night with the anxious inquiry, what shall I do with my boys?

Indeed, even those who cherish the bitterest feelings towards us have admitted that the apprehension that negroes might be employed in their stead, dictated the policy of excluding them from trades altogether.

There is no question in the mind of any unprejudiced person that the Negro is capable of making a good mechanic.

The most telling, the most killing refutation of slavery, is the presentation of an industrious, enterprising, thrifty, and intelligent free black population.

I have long felt that too little attention has been given by our truest friends in this country to removing this stumbling block out of the way of the slave’s liberation.

It must be confessed that the most powerful argument now used by the southern slaveholder, and the one most soothing to his conscience, is that derived from the low condition of the free colored people of the north.

Now firmly believing, as I do, that there are skill, invention, power, industry, and real mechanical genius, among the colored people, which will bear favorable testimony for them, and which only need the means to develop them, I am…

I have during the last dozen years denied before the Americans that we are an inferior race; but this has been done by arguments based upon admitted principles rather than by the presentation of facts.