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Show 46 LIBERTY AND SLAVERL the judgment of a Southern man : it is the opinion of the more decent and respectable abolitionists themselves. Thus says Dr. Channing, censuring the conduct of the abolitionists: "They have done wrong, I believe ; nor is their wrong to be winked at because done fanatically or with good intentions; for how much mischief may be wrought with good designs! They have fallen into the common error of enthusiasts-that of exaggerating their object, of feeling as if no evil existed but that which they opposed, and as if no guilt could be compared with that of countenancing or upholding it."* In like manner, Dr. Waylal)d says: "I unite with you and the late lamented Dr. Channing in the opinion that the tone of the abolitionists at the North has been frequently, I fear I mnst say generally, 'fierce, bitter, and abnsive.' The abolitionist press has, I believe, from the beginning, too commonly indulged in exaggerated statement, in violent denunciation, and in coarse ani! lacerating invective. At our late Missionary Coiivention in Philadelphia, I heard many things from men who claim to be the exclusive friends of the slave, which pained me more than I can *Cbn.tming's Works, "Vol ii., p. 126. ARGUMENTS OF ABOLITIONISTS. 47 express. It seemed to me that the ~pirit which many of them manifested wa~ very different from the spirit of Christ. I also cheerfully hear testimony to the general courtesy, the Christian urbanity, and the calmness under provocation which, in a remarkable degree, characterized the conduct of the members from the South." In the flood of sophisms which the abolitionti~ ts usually pour out in their explosions of passiOn, none IS more common than what is technically termed by logicians the ignoratio elencl!i or a mistaking of tho point in dispute. Nor i~ this . f~llacy peculiar to the more vulgar sort of abohtwnists. It glares from the pages of Dr. Wayland, no less than from the writings of the most fierce, bitter, and vindictive of his associates in the cause of abolitionism. Thus, in one of his _letters to Dr. Fuller, he says: "To present this subject in a simple light. Let us suppose that your family and mine were neighbors. We, our wives and children, are all huma beings in the sense that I have described nndn in consequence of that common nature a~d b ' the will of our common Creator, are s~bject t~ the law, Tltou shalt love thy neigltbor as tltyselj. Suppose that I should set fire to your house. shoot you as you came out of it, and seizin~ |
