cation and utter subversion of that which has been their producing cause. Nothing short of this can or will reach the difficulty. The present wicked rebellion is purely a rebellion of the slaveholding portion against the rule of the majority, and against the principles which lie at the foundation of all purely democratic institutions. It can be brought to an end only by earnest and well-directed blows at that which is the real root of the evil. It is no time for compromises or sedatives. The black and bloody hand of African servitude is upon the throat of this nation, and we must break that arm, or it will strangle us. There can be no compromise with this gigantic wrong. There can be no peace, no division of territory, no safe and permanent adjustment of any kind while this system continues. We are one nation, one territory, and we ought and shall remain one people, from Maine to the Gulf of Mexico-one from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Such are our profound convictions, our deliberate opinions; and entertaining these sentiments, we can not, as a Convention of pastors and delegates representing the Congregational Churches of the several Northwestern States, consent to disperse without first bearing our united testimony to the truths which we have uttered, and which we more definitely express in the following resolutions :

"Resolved, That the fearful strife in which our Government is now engaged with the armed traitors who have risen up against it, involving, as it does, the defense of all that is dear to us as citizens and patriots, and of the principles that underlie all free institutions, is, in our view, a just and righteous war; that we are bound, by every interest of Christian patriotism and civilization, to prosecute this contest with vigor, and, as speedily as possible, bring it to a triumphant conclusion; and that, in the efficient prosecution of this war, the Government has our profoundest sympathy, our most cordial support, and our most earnest prayers.

"Resolved, That the present rebellion is, in our view, the direct and legitimate result of the system of American slavery, which is at once the radical cause and the main strength of the whole evil; and that, consequently, the conflict can never be brought to a successful end till that system shall also forever terminate.

Resolved, That we can not but view, in the present war, the hand of Providence, that divine Arbiter and Ruler of nations, opening the way for the termination of this accursed system, this gigantic wrong; and we pray God that the heart of this great people and of this Government may be brought to the fixed determination that that which

has brought this war upon us, shall itself be brought to a perpetual end; (2) and that wherever our armies go, and our flag waves, under the whole heavens, there shall also go freedom and universal emancipation."

REMARKS ON THE PRECEDING ARTICLES.

(1) We have here a very apt illustration indeed. The framers of our Constitution found a barbarous people in their midst, totally unfitted for the rights of citizenship, and held in servitude under pre-existent customs and laws. Slavery, under the Constitution, was declared to be the "forbidden fruit," which was to remain untouched by the nation at large. The declaration, on this point, virtually was, "in the day thou eatest thereof, dying, thou shalt die." The serpent of abolition entered the "garden of liberty," at the Northern gate, and beguiled the inhabitants "into sin and ruin." From the day that abolitionism put forth its hand, from New England, in disobedience to the commands of the Constitution, to pluck the fruit of "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil;" from that day, briars and thorns have been springing up, wherever the serpent's trail has left its slime; and the ruin now resting upon our Eden is traceable, directly, to those who, adopting abolition sentiments, taught treason to the Constitution in reference to the institution of slavery.

(2) Abolitionism being at the foundation of our national troubles, every true patriot can unite in the sentiment expressed by the Chicago resolutions, in the prayer to God, "that the heart of this great people and of this Government may be brought to the fixed determination that that which has brought this war upon us, shall itself be brought to a perpetual end;" that abolitionism shall be crushed into non-existence, and secessionism forced to lay down its arms of rebellion, so that the Union may once more arise in its glory and its power; and that, under our beneficent Constitution, the dominant race may continue to rise upward, and progress onward in intelligence and civilization, and the lowly continue to advance in personal comfort and Christian knowledge, until the millennial day shall find the whole human race redeemed from its long years of degradation.

CHAPTER X.

SECTION 1.-RISE OF POLITICAL ABOLITIONISM AND THE UNCONSTITUTIONAL TEACHINGS OF ITS LEAders.

WE have seen that the early clerical anti-slavery writers, in discussing the question of slavery, as it affected the moral standing of church-members, believed they could thereby transfer the agitation of the subject to the arena of politics, and thus array the legislation of the country against the institution. It is true, that this party, in its efforts at religious reform, professed to have only in view the purification of the Church; but the opinions propagated, and the measures adopted, served as a most efficient basis for the organization of the Abolition party. The example of the Apostles, in their teachings on slavery, had been pronounced an insufficient guide to the people of this age, and a doubt was thus thrown over the Scriptures as an infallible rule of moral conduct. A higher law than the Bible, as heretofore interpreted, was demanded for the exigencies of the times. As anticipated, the ecclesiastical legislation prepared puble sentiment for political action, by creating an intense anti-slavery feeling among a portion of the members of the Church, who were ready to be roused into energetic effort for the overthrow of slavery, whenever an opportunity offered. But for the votes that could be secured at the polls, from the ranks of the religious anti-slavery men, no political party would ever have made the slavery question a plank in its platform. In this fact is contained the demonstration of the proposition, that the Churches are responsible for the political agitation of this subject, and for much of its deplorable consequences.

It was from the action of the Churches, almost exclusively, that Southern statesmen originally took the alarm, in relation to

Northern interference with their institutions. But in organizing an opposition to this interference, they did not base their resistance upon the true grounds of their alarm-the fear of forcible emancipation. Other issues at first were made, so that an avowal of the real source of their fears could be avoided. This is apparent from the testimony of competent witnesses then residing in the slave States, one of whom we quote below. No political

The following interesting extracts, descriptive of the condition and tendencies of Abolitionism, at the period when it had fully manifested its general character, are from the pen of JEREMIAH HUBBARD, Clerk of the Yearly Meeting of Friends in North Carolina, to a Friend in England. We copy from the Christian Intelligencer, of June, 1834:

"But I need not dwell much on the subject of universal emancipation, in stating the best or worst, or most probable results of such a measure, because the Southern people have no more idea of the general emancipation of slaves, without colonizing them, than the Northern people have of admitting the few among them to equal rights and privileges. Not even the friends of humanity here think that a general emancipation, to remain here, would better their condition; and if they did, I believe that none of the slave States' laws admit of emancipation without sending them out of the State. And the ultra slaveholders are as much opposed to the Colonization Society as the Northern manumissionists are, and have, for several years past, been viewing its growing popularity, and the Northern policy in Congress, with great jealousy; which keeps them upon the ground of nullification and the verge of rebellion, though they have other pretexts for it, such as the tariff, etc. But it is evident that slavery, or rather the general anticipation of its being abolished, is the primary cause of their discontent. . . . It is a little singular, that the hardened slaveholders and the Northern manumissionists are so decidedly and bitterly opposed to each other as to threaten a dangerous collision, and a political division of this government, and, at the same time, are offering and urging the same reasons for abolishing the Colonization Society. But here we will leave the slaveholders inclosed in their chariots of iron, with an iron grasp upon their slaves, bidding defiance to the denunciations and imprecations of the New England anti-slavites, and watching, with a jealous eye, the mild, gradually increasing influence of the Colonization Society, and take a view of the plan of the Colonizationist, and that of the Universal Manumissionist, without colonization, and see which of the two is likely to abolish slavery in America.

"The primary object of the latter appears to be that of producing such a revolution in public sentiment as to cause the national legislation to be brought to bear directly on the slaveholders, and compel them to emancipate their slaves. And in order to effect this, they have formed themselves into a society, that they

We omit here his remarks in relation to Colonization, and the disposition of a few to meliorate the condition of the slaves by that means, etc.

organizations for the overthrow of slavery had been effected in the North, when the hostility to a Protective Tariff, and the advocacy of the Nullification doctrines were first heard of at the South. But the action there, to guard against the evils of emancipation, by arresting all tendencies toward its adoption, only served to stimulate the efforts at the North for the promotion of that object. The anti-slavery men claimed that they had a right to use moral means for the removal of so great an evil as human bondage; and that in so doing, either by Church action or indi

call the New England Anti-slavery Society; where they write and print a great many things against the evils of slavery, and against slaveholders and the Colonization Society, in a style and manner that savors more of the spirit of those who would ask for fire to come down from heaven to consume their enemies, than of those that would feed them if they were hungry, and if they were thirsty, give them drink. Their principal intrenchment appears to be in Boston, from whence they issue their periodicals, which, I suppose, they circulate pretty generally through the free States; but whenever one of the papers called the Liberator, edited by W. L. Garrison, chances to alight in any of the slave States, it is counted incendiary, and immediately proscribed. Their orators travel and lecture in the free States; there they propagate their doctrines or opinions of universal emancipation, coercion, etc., with much zeal and fluency, and, no doubt, with sincerity on the part of many of them; but mark, my friend, they are too discreet, or too timid, to travel and attempt to propagate these views, and harangue in the slave States. The general course of their efforts, of late, puts me in mind of what Young says about working the ocean into a tempest, 'to waft a feather or to drown a fly. . . . The plan of the Northern antislavites, instead of softening, appears to be hardening the slaveholders. I would give thee a little specimen of Garrison's style and manner of writing; in his opinion of the Colonization Society, he says: 'The superstructure of the Colonization Society rests upon the following pillars: 1st. Persecution; 2d. Falsehood; 3d. Cowardice; 4th. Infidelity. If I do not prove the Colonization Society to be a creature without heart, without brains, eyeless, unnatural, hypocritical, relentless, unjust, then nothing is capable of demonstration!' His language to slaveholders, or of slaveholders, is, 'They are hypocrites, manstealers; and such as hold offices in the United States,' he says, 'are guilty of corrupt perjury, and unless they repent, will have their part in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone.' This kind of language is not at all calculated to make good impressions on the minds of slaveholders, even on those of whom it may be true."

One thing worthy of note is said by this venerable Quaker. The primary cause of discontent in the South, in 1834, was the general anticipation that slavery would be forcibly abolished by Northern influence. What was true in 1834 was equally true in 1860.