craven sentiment is echoed by the very men whose industry is taxed to
defray the expenses of twenty-five representatives of property, vested in
beings fashioned in the awful image of their Maker; by men whose hard
earnings aid in supporting a standing army mainly for the protection of
slaveholding indolence; by men who are liable at any moment to be called
from the field and workshop to put down by force the ever upward
tendencies of oppressed humanity, to aid the negro-breeder and the negro-
trader in the prosecution of a traffic most horrible in the eye of God,
to wall round with their bayonets two millions of colored Americans,
children of a common Father and heirs of a common eternity, while the
broken chain is riveted anew and the thrown-off fetter replaced.

I am for the abolition of this kind of slavery. It must be accomplished
before we can hope to abolish the negro slavery of the country. The
people of the free states, with a perfect understanding of their own
rights and a sacred respect for the rights of others, must put their
strong shoulders to the work of moral reform, and our statesmen, orators,
and politicians will follow, floating as they must with the tendency of
the current, the mere indices of popular sentiment. They cannot be
expected to lead in this matter. They are but instruments in the hands
of the people for good or evil:--

"A breath can make them, as a breath has made."

Be it our task to give tone and direction to these instruments; to turn
the tide of popular feeling into the pure channels of justice; to break
up the sinful silence of the nation; to bring the vaunted Christianity of
our age and country to the test of truth; to try the strength and purity
of our republicanism. If the Christianity we profess has not power to
pull down the strongholds of prejudice, and overcome hate, and melt the