Do we seek to abolish the glorious moral and intellectual attributes which God has given to his children, and thus, as far as it lies in our power, make the facts of slavery conform to the law of slavery, by obliterating the distinction…

Do we abolish the marriage covenant; and instead of saying, with the apostle, that wives shall submit themselves to their husbands, command them to submit themselves to any body, and to their master as husband over all?

Do we ruthlessly tear asunder the sacred ties of affection by which God has bound the parent to the child and the child to the parent?

Do we seek to abolish all those noble instincts of the human soul, by which it yearns for improvement and progress; and do we quench its sublime aspirations after knowledge and virtue?

A stranger would suppose, from hearing the epithets of contumely that are heaped upon us, that we were abolitionists of all truth, purity, knowledge, improvement, civilization, happiness, and holiness.

On this subject, perversion of language and of idea has been reduced to a system, and the falsehoods of our calumniators exclude truth with the exactness of a science.

But if the word “Abolitionist” is to be used in a reproachful and contumelious sense, does it not more properly belong to those who would extend a system which in its very nature abolishes freedom, justice, equity, and a sense of human…

Compare the condition of these three million slaves with the condition of the three million colonists.

The conduct of that sovereign who was denounced before earth and heaven as having committed all the atrocities that could “define a tyrant,” was mercy and loving-kindness compared with the wrongs and privations of three millions of our…

If we are abolitionists, then, we are abolitionists of human bondage; while those who oppose us are abolitionists of human liberty.

We would prevent the extension of one of the greatest wrongs that man ever suffered upon earth; they would carry bodily chains and mental chains,--chains in a literal and chains in a figurative sense,--into realms where even the…

We would avert the impending night of ignorance and superstition; they would abolish the glorious liberty wherewith God maketh his children free.

In using this word, therefore, to calumniate us, they put darkness for light, and light for darkness; good for evil, and evil for good.

Under the name of liberty, he enters a path that terminates in bondage.

He reminds one of the man who denied the existence of future punishment, and, when pressed with arguments drawn from the deserts of men, and from the justice of God, he suddenly arrested his antagonist by denying the existence of a God!

But what renders the argument of General Cass still more extraordinary is the fact, that, according to his own doctrine, he has spent the greater part of his political life in violating the constitution, while constantly repeating his oath…

Of their own accord, they have excluded slavery from their borders by their fundamental law.

Is not the command to “hallow the fiftieth year,” as a year of jubilee, and to “proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof,” contained in the same code, and in the same chapter of the same code, with that…

If the Bible is your commission, why do you not follow the terms of the commission, observing its limitations as well as its powers?

This is the fiftieth year of the century,--the very year of jubilee itself; and yet, instead of “returning every man unto his possession, and every man unto his family,” this is the chosen year for subjugating new realms to bondage.

It is not to be “hallowed,” as a year of jubilee, but to be profaned as a year of captivity and mourning.

Torture the hallowed pages of the Bible, To sanction crime, and robbery, and blood, And, in oppression’s hateful service, libel Both man and God.

And now, this authority is cited, not to disprove a law of physical nature merely, but to deny a great law of the human soul,--a law of human consciousness,--a law of God, written upon the tablet of every man’s heart, authenticating and…

If the Bible has crossed the Atlantic to spread slavery over a continent where it was unknown before, then the Bible is a book of death, and not a book of life.

So far from facilitating the increase of individual or national wealth, slavery retards both.