four millions of liberated slaves in your midst, wreaking upon their
present masters the smothered vengeance of a servile race, who, for
generation after generation, have groaned under the lash of the negro
driver and his inhuman employer.

"'The risk of the privateer,' says the same organ of the rebel
confederacy, 'will still be trifling; but he will continue to
reap the harvest.' His risk will only be his neck, and his 'harvest'
will be a halter. But the risk, nay, the certainty of the punishment
to be visited upon the slave confederacy, will be far greater--of
infinitely greater magnitude than they can well conceive; because it
will be no more or less than the loss of all their slave property,
accompanied with the necessity of contending, hand to hand, for their
lives, with the servile race so long accustomed to the lash, and the
torture, and the branding and maiming of their inhuman masters; a
nation of robbers, who now, in the face of the civilized world,
repudiate their just debts, rob banks and mints, sell freemen
captured in an unarmed vessel into perpetual slavery, trample upon
law and order, insult our flag, capture our forts and arsenals, and,
finally, invite pirates to prey upon our commerce!

"Such a nest of pirates may do some mischief, and greatly alarm the
timid. But the men of the North know how to deal with them; and we
tell them, once for all, that, if they dare grant a solitary letter
of marque, and the person or persons acting under it venture to
assail the poorest of our vessels in the peaceful navigation of the
ocean, or the coasts and rivers of our country--from that moment
their doom is sealed, and slavery ceases to exist. We speak the
unanimous sentiment of our people; and to that sentiment all in
authority will be compelled to bow submissively. So let us hear no