Be assured, your bullies are timid bullies; not that they are wanting in individual courage, but because they are aware that their authority rests, not on their physical strength, but on your habits of deference and obedience.
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.
gutenberg.org
The slaveholders are not strong enough to execute their own sentences, if you resist them.
Be not afraid to speak openly of your wrongs, and of the true cause of them.
Let then your first demand be for LIBERTY OF SPEECH.
Feel then your own power; claim your rights, and exert them for the deliverance of the slave, and consequently for your own happiness and prosperity.
Without your co-operation, the slaveholders, much as they despise you, are powerless.
In breaking the chains which bind the slave, be assured you will be delivering yourselves from a grievous thraldom.
Let not, we beseech you, the freedom of the slave proceed from the armed invader of your soil, nor from his own torch and dagger--but from your peaceful and constitutional interference in his behalf.
Or the People--for they will be THE PEOPLE--may resolve to be free, and you and all you hold dear may be sacrificed in the contest.
Then, indeed, emancipation will be given, but the gift may be bathed in the blood of yourselves and of your children.
If then the fetters of the slave are not to be broken by the master, by whom is he to be liberated?
No, fellow-citizens, your great slaveholders have no idea of surrendering the personal importance and the political influence they derive from their slaves.