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Show 94 The object now proposed, is to be effected by amendments of the constitution, and these should be sought in good faith ; that is, not as the means of abolishing slavery, but as a means of removing us from a participation of its guilt. The free States should take the high ground of duty ; and to raise them to this height, the press, the pulpit, and all religious and upright men should join theit• powers. A people under so pure an impulse, cannot fail. Such arrangements should be made, that the word slavery need not be heard again in Congress or in the local legislatures. On the principle now laid down, the question of abolition in the District of Columbia should be settled. Emancipation at the seat of Government ought to be insisted on, not for the purpose of influencing slavery elsewhere, but because what is done there is done by the whole people, because slavery sustained there is sustained by the free States. It is said, that the will of the citizens of the District is to be consulted. Were this true, which cannot be granted, the difficulty may easily be surmounted. Let Congress resolve to establish itself where it will have no slavery to control or uphold, and the people of the District of Columbia will remove the obstacle to its continuance where it is, as fast as can be desired. The great difficulty in the way of the arrangement now proposed, is the article of the constitu- \ 95 tion requiring the surrender and return of fugitive slaves. A State, obeying this, seems to me to contmct as great guilt as if it were to bring slaves from Africa. No man, who regards slavery as among the greatest wrongs, can in any way reduce his fellow creatures to it. The flying slave asserts the first right of a man, and should meet aid rather than obstruction. Who that has the heart of a freeman, or breathes the love of a Christian, can send him back to his chain ? On this point, however, the difficulty of an arrangement is every day growing less. This provision of the constitution is undergoing a silent repeal, and no human power can sustain it. Just in proportion as slavery becomes the object of conscientious reprobation in the free States, just so fast the difficulty of sending back the fugitive increases. In the part of the country where I reside, it is next to impossible that the slave, who has reached us, should be restored to bondage. Not that our courts of law are obstructed; not that mobs would rescue the fugitive from the magistrate. We respect the public authorities. Not an arm would be raised against the officers of justice. But what are laws against the moral sense of a community? No man among us, who values his character, would aid the slave hunter. The slave hunter here would be looked on with as little favor as the felonious slave trader. Those among us, who dread to |