Now is the time, fellow-citizens, to assail the foe.
Lewis Tappan
The Public Record
Lewis Tappan was an American abolitionist who in 1841 helped to secure freedom for the enslaved Africans aboard the Amistad. He was born in Northampton, Massachusetts, into a Calvinist household.
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Up--quit yourselves like men: and may Almighty God direct and bless your efforts!
— Lewis Tappan
gutenberg.org
He is terrified by the echo of his own threats, and the very proposal to dissolve the Union and leave him to his fate, throws him into paroxysms.
Unite then, we beseech you, with one heart and one mind, for the legal, constitutional abolition of slavery.
Do you ask that your children may be rescued from the ignorance and irreligion to which they are now doomed, and that avenues may be opened for you and for them to honest and profitable employment?
Do you pant for liberty and equality, more substantial than such as is now found only in your obliterated and tattered bills of right?
Out of the slave region, patriots and philanthropists, and Christians of every name and sect abhor and execrate it.
The institution which oppresses you is suffering from the decrepitude of age, and is the scorn and loathing of the world.
You will be cheered by the approbation of your own consciences, and by the plaudits of mankind.
By abolishing slavery you will become the architects of your own fortune, and of your country's greatness.
In the place of your present contempt, and degradation, and misery, honor, and wealth, and happiness court your acceptance.
If you admit the greatest happiness of the greatest number to be the true test of national prosperity, then, beyond all controversy, the British West Indies are now infinitely more prosperous than at any previous period of their history.