Here, gentlemen, the issue is tendered. Standing on your own ground of
expediency, I am ready to defend my position.

I pass from the utility to the safety of emancipation. And here,
gentlemen, I shall probably be met at the outset with your supposed
consequences, bloodshed, rapine, promiscuous massacre!

The facts, gentlemen! In God's name, bring out your facts! If slavery
is to cast over the prosperity of our country the thick shadow of an
everlasting curse, because emancipation is dreaded as a remedy worse than
the disease itself, let us know the real grounds of your fear.

Do you find them in the emancipation of the South American Republics? In
Hayti? In the partial experiments of some of the West India Islands?
Does history, ancient or modern, justify your fears? Can you find any
excuse for them in the nature of the human mind, everywhere maddened by
injury and conciliated by kindness? No, gentlemen; the dangers of
slavery are manifest and real, all history lies open for your warning.
But the dangers of emancipation, of "doing justly and loving mercy,"
exist only in your imaginations. You cannot produce one fact in
corroboration of your fears. You cannot point to the stain of a single
drop of any master's blood shed by the slave he has emancipated.

I have now given some of our reasons for opposing slavery. In my next
letter I shall explain our method of opposition, and I trust I shall be
able to show that there is nothing "fanatical," nothing
"unconstitutional," and nothing unchristian in that method.

In the mean time, gentlemen, I am your friend and well-wisher.