OCR Text |
Show 90 newly set free. Here no such control can be exercised. Freedom at the South, to work well, must be the gift of the masters. Emancipation must be their own act anrl deed. It must spring from goodwill and sense of justice, or at least from a sense of interest, and not be extorted by a foreign power; and with this origin, it will be more successful even than the experiment in the West Indies. In those islands, especially in Jamaica, the want of cordial co-operation on the part of the planters has continually obstructed the beneficial working of freedom, and still throws a doubtfulness over its complete success. I have said, that the free States cannot rightfully use the power of their own legislatures or of Congress, to abolish slavery in the States where it is established. Their first duty is to abstain from such acts. Their next and more solemn duty is to abstain from all action for the support of slavery. lf they are not to subvert much less are they to sustam 1t. There is some excuse for communities, when, under a generous impulse, they espouse the cause of the oppressed in other states, and by force restore their rights ; but they are without excuse in aiding other states in binding on men an unrighteous yoke. On this subject, our fathers, in framing the constitution, swerved from the ri ~ht . We, their 91 children, at the end of half a century, see the path of duty more clearly than they, and must walk in it. To this point the public mind has long been tending, and the time has come for looking at it fully, dispassionately, and with manly and Christian resolution. T his is not a question of Abolitionism. It has nothing to do with putting down slavery. We are simply called as communities, to withhold support from it, to stand aloof, to break off all connection with this criminal institution. The free States ought to say to the South, " Slavery is yours not ours, and on you the whole responsibility of it must fall. We wash our bands of it wholly. We shall exert no power against it; but do not call on us to put forth the least power in its behalf. w· e cannot, directly or indirectly, become accessories to this wrong. We cannot become jailers, or a patrol, or a watch, to keep your slaves under the yoke. You must guard them yourselves. If they escape, we cannot send them back. Our soil makes whoever touches it, free. On this point you must manage your own concerns. You must guard your own frontier. In case of insurrection we cannot come to you, save as friends alike of bond and free. Neither in our separate legislatures, nor in the national legislature, can we touch slavery to sustain it. On this point you are foreign communities. You have often said, that you need not our protection; and we must take you at your word. In so |