I have felt that I was handling a paper picked out of
the public gutters, a leaf from the gospel of the gambling-house,
the groggery, and the brothel, harmonizing with the gospel of the
Merchants' Exchange.
The majority of the men of the North, and of the South and East
and West, are not men of principle. If they vote, they do not send men
to Congress on errands of humanity; but while their brothers and
sisters are being scourged and hung for loving liberty, while- I might
here insert all that slavery implies and is- it is the mismanagement
of wood and iron and stone and gold which concerns them. Do what you
will, O Government, with my wife and children, my mother and
brother, my father and sister, I will obey your commands to the
letter. It will indeed grieve me if you hurt them, if you deliver them
to overseers to be hunted by bounds or to be whipped to death; but,
nevertheless, I will peaceably pursue my chosen calling on this fair
earth, until perchance, one day, when I have put on mourning for
them dead, I shall have persuaded you to relent. Such is the attitude,
such are the words of Massachusetts.
Rather than do thus, I need not say what match I would touch, what
system endeavor to blow up; but as I love my life, I would side with
the light, and let the dark earth roll from under me, calling my
mother and my brother to follow.
I would remind my countrymen that they are to be men first, and
Americans only at a late and convenient hour.


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