HEROD, JOHi^ Am JESUS ; 
 
 OR 
 
 AMERICAN SLAYERY 
 
 AND ITS 
 
 CHRISTIAN CmiE. 
 
 A SEMOX PPtEACHED IX DIYISIOX STEEET CnURCH, 
 
 fV-\ 
 
 By rev. at D. mayo. 
 
 ALBANY : 
 
 WEED, PARSONS & COMPANY, PRINTERS. 
 18C0. 
 

 
^ S E B M O N . 
 
 Text — Mark vi, 14, 15, 16. 
 
 " And King Herod heard of Jesus (for his name -was spread abroad), and 
 be said, That John the Baptist Avas risen from the dead, and therefore mighty 
 •works do show forth themselves in him. Others said, That it is Elias And 
 others said, That it is aprophet, or as one of the prophets. But when Ilerod 
 heard thereof, he said. It is John, whom I beheaded : he is risen from the 
 dead." 
 
 Eighteen hundred years ago, there appeared in the corrupt 
 nation of Judea, a stern and terrible Prophet. John the Bap- 
 tist appeared, crying '' Repent ye, for the Kingdom of Heaven 
 is at hand." He came preaching in the wilderness, clothed 
 with camel's hair and a girdle of skin about his loins, and he 
 ate locusts and wild honey. The people of the proudest city 
 and country on earth flocked to hear him. He preached a gospel 
 of terror and destruction to the wicked. '-Now," he said, " the 
 axe is laid unto the root of the trees : therefore every tree 
 which bringeth not forth good fruit, is hewn down and cast 
 into the fire." He said to his hearers : " Oh, generation of 
 vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to 
 come ?" For now, he said, had appeared the awful day of 
 reckoning. The high places should be brought low, and the 
 low places be exalted. One was coming, mightier than 
 he, who would baptize with the Holy Ghost and fire ; who 
 would purge the earth and burn the chaff with unquench- 
 able flames. He appeared to Herod the Tetrarch, who had 
 
4 AMERICAN SLAVERY AND ITS CHRISTIAN CURE. 
 
 Stolen his brothel's wife ; and assailed his domestic institu- 
 tions, saying: "It is not lawful for thee to have her!" 
 There were but two things for Herod to do j repent, or kill 
 the Prophet. He chose the latter, and beheaded John in 
 prison. 
 
 Bat nowappcared another Prophet in Judea. Jesus came, 
 sajing : " Repent," but in a sense vaster than John the Baptist! 
 He preached a gospel so much higher than the stern old 
 martyr, that though John was the greatest prophet of the 
 order that was passing away, the least in the new Kingdom of 
 Heaven was greater than he. Jesus knew and valued John ; 
 but he preached a higher form of religion. The Hebrew' 
 Prophet had only wrath for the godless; the Christ had love 
 for all. To the one, sinners were vipers to be exterminated ; 
 to the other, wicked men were brothers to be regenerated. 
 John would fly upon the tyrant Herod and overthrow him. 
 Jesus would proclaim a gospel that would change every 
 tyrant to a lover of his lowest serf. John's idea of the 
 Kingdom of Heaven was an immediate, decisive battle 
 between evil and good men, which should burn up the chaff. 
 Jesus believed in burning out sin by converting every sinner 
 to a saint. John's system of reformation was revolution • 
 war to the end. He was out of patience with the tyrant! 
 He lost liiith in Jesus because he thought him not decisive, 
 and did not upset Herod in a day, and sent his disciples to 
 him saying : " Art thou he who should come or look we for 
 another ?" Jesus would plant seeds of immortal truth and 
 love in the soul and society, whose growth would displace the 
 vile growths of evil. John had no policy, despised the name, 
 but drove at the enemies of the Lord with the short sword 
 of wrath. Jesus was the fuuider of a policy of reformation 
 that needed ages for its majestic unfolding; that is even now 
 slowly regenerating the earth. John hated the sinner as he 
 supposed God and God's Messiah must. Jesus loved all 
 spirits; died for all and so proved himself the Christ of 
 God. 
 
AMERICAN SLAVERY AND ITS CHRISTIAN CURE. 5 
 
 But how could Herod, the tyrant, steeped in blood and 
 lust and falsehood, understand Jesus? He understood 
 John ; that he intended to put him out of the way as a 
 monster, and killed him at once. But when the Christ of 
 God's love appeared; the Christ that did not wish to harm 
 one hair of the tyrant's head, only to cleanse him of his sins, 
 and give him eternal joy and peace as a regenerate creature' 
 Herod knew him not. To the gloomy despot the message of 
 Jesus was only the old message of John. « Who is this of 
 whom I hear such things ?" says he, " John have I beheaded ;" 
 and then the fiends of remorse shrieked through the resound- 
 ing chambers of his soul : " It is John whom I beheaded. 
 He is risen from the deadV Oh, could Herod have known 
 who Jesus was, what he wished to do for him, how the love 
 of the Christ was seeking him and would make him a happy 
 and holy man ! But that was just what Herod could nVt 
 see. He was too far gone to distinguish the messenger of 
 wrath from the messenger of love. He saw only the'^ghost 
 of John whom he had beheaded ; he heard only the swift 
 steps of the avenger; he felt only the steel of the assassin. 
 Visions of his burning towns, revolting subjects, enemies 
 thirsting for his blood, mingled with his dream of pomp and 
 power. He treated Jesus as the risen John, and plotted for, 
 and finally helped to accomplish his death. 
 
 All this is with us to-day. Herod lives in this republic, 
 in that Slave Power which claims possession of this New 
 World, as it has dominion over the Old. He is the implacable 
 foe of all goodness not of the despotic type; and will trample 
 out all civilization that cannot be subdued to his own relent- 
 less pattern. The old prophet is here ; John Brown beheaded 
 for doing what Moses and Joshua and David did; what 
 Isaiah and Jeremiah and John the Baptist preached. The 
 Slave Power has just killed the best specimen of the old 
 Hebrew fighting Prophet that ever was born on American 
 soil. Our John saw our Herod, and knew him for God's foe, 
 and flung his sword in his flice; and Herod was able to do 
 1* 
 
b AMERICAN SLAVERY AND ITS CHRISTIAN CURE. 
 
 nothing better than make a great state holiday and take his 
 life. 
 
 Jesus is also here 3 not altogether in any man, in any 
 church, in any state of this Unionj but in that spirit of 
 regeneration which cries aloud through all our borders: 
 "Repent!" Christ in America is that wondrous spirit of 
 love and liberty, which rebukes men everywhere for every 
 wicked thing they do ; which is toiling to save every sinner ; 
 which curses no man, but has a blessing alike for Virginia, 
 red with the Prophet's blood, and the Prophet himself red 
 with the blood of those he counted the enemies of God; 
 which says to the Slave Power : " Depart ye, accursed, into 
 everlasting fire, prepared for the Devil and his angels ;" but 
 to the slaveholder and the slave: " Come to me, and I will 
 save you both from this demoniacal oppression ; reconcile you 
 to each other ; teach you bondman to forgive your persecutor, 
 and you tyrant to emancipate your victim." Christ, the 
 regenerating love and freedom of God is here, slowly chang- 
 ing cverj^ American Institution, and converting our half bar- 
 barian society to the true civilization, where all men are 
 equal in right to become what God has made them capable of 
 becoming. 
 
 As I have looked over the events of the last few months, I 
 have seen again this old drama of Herod, John and Jesus. 
 I have seen irresponsible despotism trampling down Human- 
 ity, rising up from its daily feast of blood and falsehood, and 
 lust, to hold a carnival against the fierce prophet that would 
 slay it in its sins ; shuddering at every leaf that stirred through 
 the land ; evermore crying out in its sleep : " It is John," and 
 raging against the wisest and best of the country, like a 
 demon. And I have seen Jesus calmly submitting to be called 
 a devil, bearing his cross of patient crucifixion, but none the 
 lest irresistibly saving us all. Let us take this old Bible story 
 and learn how good it is for to-day. Let us understand, 1st. 
 What Herod is doing and proposes to do in Ainerica ; 2d. 
 What John is doin^ and will yet do; 3d. What Jesus the 
 
AMERICAN SLAVERY AND ITS CHRISTIAN CURE. / 
 
 Christ is doing and will do till this Republic becomes the 
 Kingdom of God. 
 
 First : What is Herod doing, and what does he propose to 
 do in America? 
 
 Herod is the type of irresponsible despotism. Every na- 
 tion is sooner or later threatened by the tyranny that con- 
 sists in the subjugation and use of the weak by the strong 
 for their own pleasure. A majority of the governments of 
 the world have been and still are only the few oppressing the 
 many, under forms of society invented to perpetuate the ori- 
 ginal wrong. Our republic, like every previous republic, is 
 menaced by this foe to human nature — irresponsible despot- 
 ism. Though partially seen in all directions, this tyranny 
 culminates in the Slave Power of this Union, and with that 
 institution as a lever seeks to upset the whole fabric of our 
 national freedom. 
 
 Our American Herod is the enslavement of four million 
 colored laboring men and women by three hundred and fifty 
 thousand white men and women. This white aristocracy has 
 reduced the slave race to the condition of property by the 
 annihilation of almost every natural right that separates hu- 
 manity from the brutes. The slave has no legal property, no 
 lawful marriage, no independent possession of himself. He is 
 said to belong to the master whose property he is ; and as the 
 laws by which he is seemingly protected are made by the 
 master, the power is virtually irresponsible. This aristocracy 
 of three hundred and fifty thousand slave owners thus holds 
 a vast population in complete slavery. It has possession 
 through its wealth, concentration and hereditary prestige of 
 the whole social system in the slave states. Through politi- 
 cal privileges, by itself forced into the national Constitution, 
 and by its unity of interest, it has hitherto managed to hold 
 and administer the government of the United States, and 
 greatly to embarrass the development of free society in the 
 whole country. 
 
 American Slavery is a military despotism perpetuating itself 
 through the forms of law. Every enormity and crime that 
 
8 
 
 AMERICAN SLAVERY AND ITS CHRISTIAN CURE. 
 
 belongs to irresponsible tyranny, is exhibited in its past his- 
 tory and present state. It began in the invasion of an nn- 
 offendnig people, and their subjugation by sword, fire and 
 chanis; a war of invasion, compared with which John 
 13rown s foray was an Indian-summer day's pastime From 
 the hour when the first shipload of negroes was bought 
 111 Virgm.a, it has been a relentless armed possession of the 
 conquered race. It began in the Old Dominion with a code 
 of slave laws so barbarous that they were a scandal to 
 human nature, fit precursor of Modern Virginia Justice. 
 Old Gov. Berkley, raged against the printing press and free 
 speech m that colony, very much as the dignitaries of that 
 state now rave against " incendiary publications." The Slave 
 Power entrenched itself in its present citadel before the or- 
 ganization of the government. It forced itself into the Con- 
 stitution of the United States by the same kind of threats 
 with which it now holds the nation under its intolerant rule 
 Driven from seven states of the North, it seized nine others 
 far more extensive, fertile and better situated for its pur- 
 poses. It resisted the repeal of the slave trade as lon<^ as it 
 could, and then continued it in defiance of law, and ha°s now 
 practically re-established it. It wrenched Missouri from 
 Ireedom in 1820, by threats that were as treasonable as 
 John Brown's carpet bag constitution. It drove the country 
 into war with a neighboring power; conquered Texas, New 
 Mexico and Utah, a territory fifteen times the size of New 
 York and doomed it all to Slavery; and threatened to 
 dissolve the Union, because it could not thus curse Califor- 
 nia, another vast province, three times as large as New York- 
 on the Pacific. It broke the most solemn compact ever made 
 between the North and the South, to subdue Kansas-another 
 empire three times the size of our state, to itself. It invaded 
 Kansas with the sword, and it did not hide its constitution 
 in a carpet bag ; but took it out and put it on the people • 
 and by the help of arms, stolen from a United States arsenal' 
 fastened a slave government upon that territory, under which 
 
AMERICAN SLAVERY AND ITS CHRISTIAN CURE. U 
 
 she yet groans. It slew more than a hundred men in that 
 territory, and wasted tens of thousands of property. It has 
 now proclaimed, by its courts, that more than 1,000,000 
 square miles, including all the territory of the United Stales, 
 is slave territory ; and is about to assert its right, by the same 
 court, of carrying slaves through every free state. It has 
 practically re-established the slave trade, and by the connivance 
 of the government, sends out its armed hordes to threaten 
 neighboring states with whom we are at peace. It is openly 
 proposing to subvert the constitution of our country, and 
 change the United States from a republic to an oligarchy, in 
 which the Slave Power shall rule by force and fraud, as surely 
 as any aristocracy ever governed a subjugated people. 
 
 From the beginning, American Slavery has been practically 
 the rule of the sword. It governs its slaves by a police and 
 code, the most barbarous that exists in the civilized earth. 
 It suppresses every class that can disturb its possession ; 
 either by social oppression, as the poor white, or by banish- 
 ment and plunder, as the free black. It denies the constitu- 
 tional right of protection to any citizen of the United States, 
 supposed to be dangerous to itself; and by the mob, the duel, 
 the recreant court, defies all attempt to maintain the privi- 
 leges of American freemen on slave soil. It claims the right 
 to rob the United States mail, and insults the government at 
 every turn. Through the hands of its parasites, it has sla'n 
 scores of men on free soil, for no other crime than liberty. 
 From the day when it shot Lovejoy, in Illinois, for the crime 
 of free printing, to the present hour, its whole career has 
 been one of unbridled insolence. It has half killed one 
 Senator on the floor of Congress, and has just shot another 
 in California ; and has threatened every eminent statesman 
 and philanthropist of the United States with death. '\Yho 
 shall draw up this dreadful record of blood, and show the 
 names of its victims, murdered under the lash, burned at 
 the stake, hunted with dogs and guns ; women violated, men 
 shot and scourged ? The history of these enormities, within 
 
10 
 
 AMERICAN SLAVERY AND ITS CPIRISTIAN CURE. 
 
 the last fifty years, would appall the civilized world, could it 
 be gathered in one book. And now it has crowned its infamy 
 by hanging a man on the charge of treason and murder, each 
 of which it has committed over and over ao-ain. 
 
 And this is the bloody despotism, that now howls through 
 the land, against the noblest and purest men and womenin 
 America ; calling them "Traitors," "i\gitators,'' "Infidels;" 
 setting up its pettifogging lawyers to accuse them of treason 
 and its base journalists to offer a price for their life, and its 
 clergy to read them out of the church ; plotting to get emi- 
 nent northern men before its courts, to be slain by a jury or 
 without a jury ; accusing us of sedition, and arming itself, not 
 to resist us who never invaded it, but to subdue us 'into 
 compliance with its demands. Treason ! Why, the Slave 
 Power, for the last forty years, has been organized treason 
 against the existence of a republican government. Agitation ! 
 Why, the country has rocked to and fro, from the first day 
 of its existence, with the struggles of this despotism for 
 dominion. Murder ! Summon the ghosts of the victims of 
 Slavery, and let them tell the tale ! Violence ! Who has 
 filled the land with mobs against free speech and liberty ? 
 Who, in 1856, forbade the people of fifteen states from voting 
 for one presidential candidate, on peril of death? What 
 power is now threatening on the floor of Congress to dissolve 
 the Union, if a President of a hostile party is elected 7 
 
 Is it strange, in view of these crimes, that the Slave Power 
 thus boldly accuses freedom of all mischievous and base 
 things? It is the old trick of despotism. Just as Francis 
 Joseph and Pope Pius stigmatize the freemen of Europe as 
 « Heretics," " Traitors," " Enemies of God and social order," 
 so does our oligarchy maintain its rank among the world's 
 oppressors, by persistent calumniation of all the friends of 
 liberty. The Slave Power is the great liar of the western 
 contment. It perverts history, poisons character, breaks 
 faith, plots and undermines, bribes and circumvents here 
 just as every tyrant does abroad-just as despotism always 
 
AMERICAN SLAVERY AND ITS CHRISTIAN CURE. 11 
 
 has done since Cain killed his brother, and lied to God about 
 the evil deed. Thus while itself "the sum of all villainies," 
 the Slave Power lives by charging all the crimes of the deca- 
 logue on the freemen of the land. 
 
 Do not think I am unjust to our brethren of the slave re- 
 gions of this country. The Slave Power is not the South. 
 It is a great landed aristocracy of 350,000 people, located at 
 the South ; owning one-third the real estate of that region, 
 213,000,000 acres, and wielding a capital, in land and slaves, 
 of two and a half billions of dollars. This southern aris- 
 tocracy is in alliance with a corrupt commercial class in the 
 great cities of the Northern States and the British Empire. 
 New York, Liverpool and Manchester are as much the seat of 
 the Slave Power as the cotton fields of South Carolina; Cin- 
 cinnati and Philadelphia as surely as the rice swamps of 
 Georgia and the sugar estates of Louisiana. The Slave 
 Power always assumes to speak for the south ; just as despot- 
 ism always overlooks the people. But there are 331,000,000 
 acres of land, and seven millions of white people, in the 
 Slave States, that are not of the Slave Power, though now 
 held in subjection by it. This oligarchy, a smaller number 
 of people than now inhabit the city of New York, rules this 
 Republic ; just as a few thousand kings, generals and noble- 
 men oppress the great empires of Europe. The Slave Power 
 is the despotic tendency of the country concentrating about 
 and buttressing the slaveholders. Thus, every man, in Church 
 and State, who wants to play the tyrant, finds himself in 
 natural affinity with it. The south is full of noble men and 
 women who groan under its yoke. 
 
 We may wonder why men, who are often amiable and re- 
 spected in private life, should lend themselves to such enor- 
 mities as are daily committed by the Slave Power; but it is 
 the law of human affairs, that every despotism finally assails 
 not a class, but human nature. There is a dreadful logic in 
 tyranny that drives its supporters from point to point to the 
 last result of crime and blasphemy. The Slave Power set out 
 
12 AMERICAN SLAVERY AND ITS CHRISTIAN CURE. 
 
 with denying human rights to the negro; but it has found 
 that the negro, being a man, is tied to every other race and 
 every sacred interest. To keep him down it must keep every- 
 body else down, and crush freedom everywhere. Herod 
 began with the desire to play the king; he was driven from 
 crime to crime, till he stole his brother's wife, beheaded John 
 and helped to crucify Jesus. "When the Slave Power declares 
 a negro no man, it declares you and me no better than a 
 negro if we stand in its w^j. It would kill a Senator of 
 Massachusetts, a President of the United States, as quick as 
 a runaway slave, if either really blocked its path. It would 
 forbid the white children of Ohio to read as soon as the negro 
 children in Mississippi, if this were necessary to secure its 
 power. It would proclaim martial law in New York and fill 
 the cars of the Central Railroad with soldiers as soon as in 
 Virginia, if New York threatened to abolish it. Though 
 good men are often found in a dominant aristocracy, 
 despotism never yet stopped at any enormity. It swal- 
 lowed the massacres of Rome, the horrors of a St. Bartholo- 
 mew's day, the slaughters and confiscations of Napoleon. 
 It is capable, in America, of all it ever has been, or now 
 is capable elsewhere. It is as determined to put out Liberty 
 here as in Austria. Despotism and Freedom are foes from 
 eternity, and to all eternities to come. One must die : 
 the only question in America is — which shall subside, the 
 Slave Power or Freedom ? The " irrepressible conflict," of 
 which so much is now said, is not a conflict between the peo- 
 ple of the different sections of this republic, but a duel be- 
 tween the two opposing forces in the republic, from which 
 only one will come out alive. I have no doubt which party 
 will be left on the field. I believe the Slave Power is to be 
 broken down within half a century, and Freedom become the 
 law in America. 
 
 How shall that be done ? Shall John or Jesus abolish 
 Herod ? How does each propose to destroy him ? 
 
 Second : "What does John propose to do with Herod ? 
 
AMERICAN SLAVERY AND ITS CHRISTIAN CURE. 13 
 
 John tbe Baptist is the tj'pe of that old Hebrew Religion 
 that would regenerate the world by cutting of and destroying 
 the wicked men in it. It believes in a God of implacable 
 justice, who '' lays the axe at the root of the trees and hews 
 down and casts into the fire every tree that beareth not fruit." 
 It identifies the sin and the sinner. It looks at a great wick- 
 ed institution, and summons it in the name of God to subside. 
 If it- does not subside it draws the sword and in the name of 
 God rushes to destroy all who uphold it, from the face of the 
 earth. That old Hebrew way of disposing of sin has its re- 
 presentative to-day in America. John Brown was its perfect 
 incarnation. John Brown feared God and hated evil as 
 fiercely as any hero of that old day. He was brave, just and 
 humane to the full extent of his principle ; indeed there was 
 in him somewhat of tenderness caught from a higher faith 
 than his own. But just as firm and true and pure as he was 
 in his personal character, just so terribly did he Late Slavery, 
 the sum of all villainies. He saw it was the worst sin on the 
 continent ; the end of wrong to man and blasphemy against 
 God ; and his soul burned like a slow fire a quarter of a cen- 
 tury to exterminate it at one blow. He waited with won- 
 derful patience and prudence till the Slave Power drew the 
 sword against freedom in Kansas. Then he flew to the fight 
 hoping the hour had come. Ilis counsel was rejected ; but 
 he still fought on his own responsibilit}^, and having once un- 
 sheatlied his steel, threw away the scabbard. He finally be- 
 lieved the day had appeared. With a lack of his usual prudence 
 he trusted the representations of his associates, that the bond- 
 men were ready for revolt. In full confidence in that he seized 
 the chief strategical point of the oldest slave state, and flung 
 defiance in the face of despotism in the citadel of her 
 power. 
 
 He was deceived and overpowered, and has died as he lived ; 
 
 taking nothing back ; warring with the tongue and pen when 
 
 his rifle was wrenched away. He looked the despotism of the 
 
 new world full in the eye with a glance of defiance that burned 
 
 2 
 
14 AMERICAN SLAVERY AND ITS CHRISTIAN CURE. 
 
 to tlie soul of the Old Dominion. He repelled the religion 
 of his enemy, saying : " I Avould rather a dozen slave chil- 
 dren and a good old slave mother would ask God's blessing on 
 me, than all the clergy in Virginia." He mounted his scaffold 
 with the step of a monarch ascending his throne, and bid 
 good-bye to his executioners as cheerfully as if he were going 
 to a feast. What shall we call him but the best incarnation 
 of the old Hebrew gospel of God's wrath against sinners that 
 ever trod the soil of this new world. Just as Joshua swept 
 the heathen to destruction ; just as Isaiah stormed hail stones 
 and fire against the wicked ; just as Cromwell bent a King's 
 neck under the axe ; just as the Puritan slew the Pagan sav- 
 ages ; just as Havelock sent the Sepoys to Hell to the music 
 of prayers and sacred songs ; — did this man — not in a spirit 
 of revenge, but in the spirit of the old gospel of destruction — 
 stamp his foot at Harper's Ferry and send Virginia into an 
 ague that all the political and ecclesiastical quinine of her 
 despotic governors and slave-driving priests cannot lay to 
 rest. 
 
 There was a great truth in this way of dealing with sin in 
 the days of Moses and David. The Hebrews were one little 
 people which represented the true God in the world, and all 
 the rest a wilderness of heathendom. The only question in 
 Judea was, which party should survive. Joshua said, " chooj-e 
 this day whom you will serve," and sent the heathen to 
 Hades. There has always been a great truth in this mode of 
 purification where Christianity has not prevailed. It is the 
 only method where there is no power of Christian sentiment 
 and institutions to work with. For the worst thing than can 
 happen to any nation is to be altogether enslaved; nothing is 
 60 bad as that. The next better thing is to destroy that des- 
 potism by killing the despots; that is the Hebrew way; 
 " God, the consuming fire." The best way is to destroy des- 
 potism by converting the despot to freedom and saving the 
 oppressor and the oppressed together, as Russia is now eman- 
 cipating her slaves. That is Christ's way. Jesus said to 
 
AMERICAN SLAVERY AND ITS CHRISTIAN CURE. 15 
 
 Peter when he drew his sword to defend him, "Put up thy 
 sword ;" not because Jesus was a coward, but because his 
 word was a sword so much sharper than Peter's, that it 
 would separate the wicked from their sin, and save the world 
 from Satan. John Brown's way was infinitely better than to 
 submit forever to perfect subjugation by the Slave Power. 
 But as Jesus said, " The least in the Kingdom of Heaven is 
 greater than John the Baptist," the greatest prophet of the 
 old faith; so we must say, even while our souls are thrilling 
 with this old hero's sublime fanaticism : " There is a better 
 way than yours, John, and we trust the day is past when 
 your sword can save us." 
 
 For, if as certain fiery reformers and thundering preachers 
 say, John Brown is the true leader of this crisis ; then we 
 are all bound to avenge his death, and wash out that gallows 
 in the blood of the State that reared it. Then the North must 
 devote her gigantic wealth, her terrific energy, her indomit- 
 able courage, to a might}^ crusade on the South, and slay 
 and burn till the slave is free and safe from his oppressor* 
 And that is a civil war of eighteen millions of white people 
 against eight millions of their white brethren, with four mil- 
 lions of black slaves waiting the hour to make it such a ser- 
 vile war as never yet was seen. Let such preachers and 
 agitators look down into this hell, and tell us if they are pre- 
 pared to whet the sword for such a harvest of death. If we 
 were a nation of heathens or old Jews, and knew no better 
 way, even that would be better than the slavery of 30,000,000 
 to 350,000. If we should lose Christianity out of America^ 
 so that we all run down into heathen or old Hebrews, that 
 would be the only way left for us. But whoever says this 
 of America, I declare it a libel on our civilization ; and a 
 counsel of madness and folly to preach insurrection and inva- 
 sion, as a cure for our national ills. 
 
 I do not doubt that the Slave Power will force its subjects 
 into more than one insurrection, before its rod is broken. I 
 cannot be sure that this horrible iniquity may not yet go out 
 
IG AMERICAN SLAVERY AND ITS CHRISTIAN CURE. 
 
 in the blood of our fellow-countrymen. I feel the accumulated 
 peril of every year's delay in the settlement of this formidable 
 controversy between justice and oppression. But while I 
 cannot change the laws of History, and must bow to God's 
 most terrible retributions, I must ask myself: " What is my 
 duty as a teacher of Christianity in such a crisis as the pre- 
 sent ?" Shall I declare that the sword is the only way left 
 to us to solve this dreadful problem ? I am not a non- 
 resistant, and believe Christianity permits man to defend him- 
 self or society to protect itself by force in the last extremity 
 of peril to life or liberty. But shall I say that last extremity 
 is upon our country, so that insurrection and invasion are the 
 onl}'- remedy for our ills ? When I look over this great North 
 with its growing conviction against slavery, and behold wbat 
 wonders have been wrought among us since my own boyhood, 
 I am not prepared to repudiate Christ's Gospel of peaceful 
 regeneration, and fall back on the Gospel of armed revolution 
 as a cure for anything in this country. Indeed, it seems to 
 me a shameful abuse of the vast natural supremacy of the 
 North to crush out in blood a state of society that with 
 patience and fidelity, can yet be redeemed to liberty. 
 
 I believe also such method of operation would be clumsy 
 and impolitic. We want to destroy the Slave Power ; and 
 that is equally located in North and South. A vast majority 
 of the southern people are not its supporters, but its subjects ; 
 and this method would involve millions of uon-slaveholding 
 whites in all the horrors of a bloody war, and destroy those 
 who are on our side. 
 
 But could we gather the three hundred and fifty thousand 
 slaveholders into one army, and guard against ever}- contin- 
 gency of harm to the slave or non-slaveholding white, it would 
 be wicked beyond expression, under present circumstances, to 
 make war upon them. For the slaveholders are men — such 
 as we should be under their temptation. If we are better 
 than they in this respect it is because God has given us a 
 better education in civilization. They arc our brethren and 
 
AMERICAN SLAVERY AND ITS CHRISTIAN CURE. 17 
 
 sisters. God loves them as truly as the black man. "We 
 want lo save them — recall them from their " wild and guilty- 
 fantasy," and consecrate the admirable power and ability they 
 now devote to despotism, to the establishment of a Christian 
 republic. Never, while one hope remains of saving our country 
 together to God and humanity by Christian influences, should 
 we draw the sword on them. If Satan should so far get the 
 upper hand that the only alternative were slavery of the 
 whole or the destruction of the despots, there would be less 
 doubt what we ought to do. But that day has not come — 
 will never come, if we perform our duty as Christian citizens 
 of the republic. 
 
 Third : What does Jesus propose to do with Herod 1 
 Jesus, the Christ, would destroy sin by regenerating the 
 sinner and saving all concerned in it from the power of the 
 Devil. He is the source and symbol of those great spiritual 
 ideas and forces which, silently or actively, forever shape the 
 destinies of mankind. Physical force is the ready weapon of 
 man in his sensual and barbarous condition, and every savage 
 people seems condemned to hew its way to civilization by the 
 sword. Christianity pronounces war, even in the best cause 
 and the last resort, a degrading remedy for any wrong, and 
 repudiates it while spiritual methods have the most distant 
 hope of success. And it always exalts these forces to the 
 highest place in her estimation and insists that men shall ex- 
 haust every resource of just private and public influence and 
 policy before they oppose force to force. Nothing but the 
 imperative necessity of self-preservation can excuse society 
 from using the military arm in defense or assertion of liberty 
 and order ; and Christ would lead every nation to that point 
 where an enlightened and religious public sentiment would be 
 the only police, and righteous laws be obeyed and evil decrees 
 be spurned by an irresistible opinion of the people. Until that 
 time, Christ, in every community, is the Spiritual Force of 
 truth and love extirpating all error and sin by regenerating 
 the ignorant and vile, as opposed to the power of phy^cal 
 
 2* 
 
18 AMERICAN SLAVERY AND ITS CHRISTIAN CURE. 
 
 force enlisted for the same ends. His best representative in 
 America is that true church consisting of all souls who believe 
 and live out the " liberty wherewith he has made them free." 
 Whoever truly loves God and man is a Christian ; and every 
 Christian hates Slavery as he hates hell, and in the spirit o^ 
 love to all men devotes his life to its extirpation. 
 
 This spirit of Christian freedom has already done mighty 
 things in our nation. It has created eighteen free common- 
 wealths, spite of their faults, the noblest new states the world 
 ever yet beheld. It is now going on to raise those free states 
 up to the standard of Christian public and private morality. 
 It has looked at American despotism fastened upon fifteen 
 slave states, and long ago pronounced its final doom. And 
 now in the slow, sure way in which God works when he 
 would lift up a nation to enduring might, it is elaborating its 
 policy and beginning its toil. That plan is not now the plat- 
 form of any party, but is to become more and more the creed 
 of all parties, churches, states and society itself. Let me, 
 not as a statesman, which I do not claim to be, not as speaking 
 for any sect or party, for I belong to none of them, but as a 
 free Christian minister, a free member of the Church Uni- 
 versal, a citizen of the United States, set forth this policy, as 
 it looks from my pulpit. 
 
 The end proposed by the Christian sentiment of freedom 
 is to save the American Union from Slavery, and make it the 
 great controlling power of constitutional liberty on the West- 
 ern Continent ; the noblest ambition that ever yet fired the 
 soul of any community. In that Union a majority of 
 states, and an overwhelming majority of wealth, numbers and 
 power of every kind is nominally on the side of liberty, 
 though now paralyzed by imperfect knowledge and low ideas 
 of man ; while the minority, by concentration and fanatical 
 belief in despotism, rules the whole country. God has cast our 
 lot as citizens of this American Union, and set before us the 
 mission of redeeming it from the American form of despot- 
 ism. We shall gain nothing by attempting to repudiate our 
 
AMERICAN SLAVERY AND ITS CHRISTIAN CURE. 19 
 
 social and civil relationship to that confederacy and feigning 
 to ignore any of the duties or methods resulting therefrom. 
 A Christian in the United States is not a disembodied spirit 
 of light, criticising the country ; but a citizen of a government, 
 spite of its faults, the best on earth, and a nation nearer 
 its deliverance into a true civilization than any people of an- 
 cient or modern times. His peculiar duty is to apply the 
 Godlike sentiment of love and liberty in every relation of his 
 private and public life ; doing all he has the power to accom- 
 plish, and striving to leave his posterity on higher ground 
 than he now occupies. I speak of this progress of freedom 
 as the work of Christianity ; for I have no faith in anything 
 but the religious reverence for man as God's immortal 
 child, to lift this nation out of its present barbarisms. The 
 lower nature of every man is a tyrant ; in America, a slave- 
 holder and negro hater ; and all parties or policies emanating 
 from that lower region of humanity, will miserably fail to 
 elevate the down-trodden races of our land. The progress of 
 true religion will mark the growth of an efl'ective Anti- 
 Slavery sentiment. This, of course, is a vast and gradual 
 enterprise, offering the most illustrious missionary field on 
 earth to the faithful soldier of that religion whose founder 
 died for the spiritual rights of mankind. In reaching forward 
 to this glorious consummation, the Christian sentiment of 
 America must proceed somewhat in the path I now imper- 
 fectly delineate. 
 
 First. There must be a great education of the masses of the 
 people of the north and south, into faith in freedom and the 
 true destiny of the republic. Not so much agitation as edu- 
 cation ; the dissemination of facts and arguments ; the calm, 
 forcible, persistent appeal to the reason and conscience of the 
 people, is what we want. Every neighborhood should be 
 flooded with documents, showing forth in plain, practical 
 terms, the inhumanity, bad policy, folly of Slavery.* An 
 
 * Among the best of such documents, is the " Compendium of the Impend- 
 ing Crisis," by Mr. Helper- It is shown to be best, by the fact that the Slave 
 
20 AMERICAN SLAVERY AND ITS CHRISTIAN CURE. 
 
 army of trained lecturers should perambulate the country, not 
 denouncing the southern people, but exposing Slavery at all 
 points, and arousing the land in a great revival of sentiment 
 and conviction. We have only yet begun this work. The 
 people are still grossly ignorant of the real merits of this great 
 controversy. Let every man in his place, every journal, every 
 orator, spread the truth and arouse the conscience through 
 all our borders. 
 
 Then use this awakened sentiment, to weed despotism out 
 of northern institutions, and concentrate them all against the 
 Slave Power. 
 
 Let the church purify herself of complicity with Slavery ; 
 the free Christians in it giving themselves no rest till those 
 who are in bonds are converted ; not raging and cutting off in 
 wrath, but "speaking the truth in love." Let every religious 
 and charitable institution be purged of this virus, and its 
 whole policy be directed against Slavery. 
 
 Let our whole system of education be arrayed on the side 
 of freedom. If the south sends her sons and daughters to 
 our schools, let them learn that knowledge is here regarded 
 the handmaid of humanity. Let all magazines, journals, 
 books, that pander to the Slave Power, be regenerated or 
 remanded to the sole use of their masters. Let it become a 
 disgrace for a cultivated man to sneer at Liberty, and our 
 northern literature and art be won over to reverence for man. 
 Let the theater give us plays on Freedom, and the concerts 
 heoric songs of Liberty ; and let music, painting, sculpture, 
 architecture and public spectacles be won over to this side. 
 
 Let society be organized in every northern city and village, 
 on the basis of human rights ; and every man and woman be 
 made to feel that no wealth, or grace, or position can atone 
 for infidelity to mankind. 
 
 Power deemed it necessary to spend six weeks in Congress cursing it. It is 
 not an "incendiary publication," but an irresistible argument addressed to 
 tlie non-slaveholding wliites of the Soutliern States. Could every such per- 
 son read and comprehend it, Slavery would bo a doomed institution. 
 
AMERICAN SLAVERY AND ITS CHRISTIAN CURE. 21 
 
 Let the superiorities of free labor be demonstrated in every 
 way, and organized emigration overflow every territory and 
 state, peaceably working out the great problem of scientific 
 industry against servile toil. Thus, in time can our godless 
 commerce be walled in, and shamed into reverence for the 
 free institutions she now too often would undermine for 
 accursed lust of gold. 
 
 Let every man in the place and profession where God has 
 set him, toil to fill his soul and his position with love for true 
 Liberty. Thus, slowly but inevitably shall we make every 
 northern institution an ally of the true republic ; and society 
 itself will become a great wall of granite, against the practical 
 encroachments of the slave oligarchy. 
 
 This peaceful and practical reform will make every north- 
 ern Christian, every northern institution, a missionary to the 
 Slave Power. It will also raise up a noble host in the South 
 who will assert the right of free discussion and assail despo- 
 tism on its own ground. Thus shall we be prepared for that 
 large exercise of Christian statesmanship that will finally 
 adjust the forces of the republic. That statesmanship must 
 begin in the deliverance of the free states from the power of 
 Slavery. Let the Slave Power understand that no further 
 aggressions will be submitted to ; no new indignities endured. 
 Then let the united party of freedom take possession of the 
 general government ; granting to the Slave Power all its consti- 
 tutional rights ; but interpreting and administering the Con- 
 stitution for Liberty as it now is interpreted and adminis- 
 tered for despotism. Let that government take the sword 
 out of the hands of the southern and northern destructive 
 and wield it only in the sacred interest of Justice and Lib- 
 erty. Let tlie infamous Fugitive Slave Law be repealed, and 
 the constitutional duty to return fugitives from service to 
 their employers be remanded to the several states, each 
 commonwealth to decide who does owe service by a jury of 
 freemen. Let there be no more slave states. Though every 
 hair of the Slave Power stand on end with disunion, let the 
 
22 AMERICAN SLAVERY AND ITS CHRISTIAN CURE. 
 
 gate be locked against Satan forevermore. Let every inch of 
 territory be consecrated to freedom, and whatever new 
 empires Providence may commit to our charge be pledged to 
 Liberty forever. Let the Supreme Court of the United 
 States be remodeled till it represents man and not the auction 
 block. Let all fillibustering and slave trading be suppressed 
 by the strong arm of the law j and every revolting slave state 
 be aftectionately embraced within the restraining arms of a 
 determined government. 
 
 Then let the government of the United States say to the 
 Slave Power : " We hold the sword of order only to be drawn 
 in the sacred interest of freedom. We shall hold it to prevent 
 you from carrying off any of the states of the Union into a 
 slave empire, for that would doom your slaves and servile 
 whites to perpetual bondage. We shall hold it to suppress 
 all border ruffianism, fillibustering, mail-robbing, mobocracy, 
 slave-trading. We shall hold it to prevent a northern inva- 
 sion or slave insurrection ; for civil and servile war are nei- 
 ther a Christian nor a statesmanlike cure for our national ills. 
 Thus confined within your present bounds, we leave you to 
 the inevitable operation of that spirit of Christian progress 
 which will compel j^ou to adjust your state of society to the 
 advancing civilization of your age. We will respect and pro- 
 tect you in the exercise of the right to deal with an evil 
 which the present generation inherited from the sin of the 
 past. You shall have the time, under a just administration 
 of the government, to work out this fearful problem on your 
 own ground, by your own best wisdom and religion, aided by 
 the sympathy and advice of civilized mankind. If this seems 
 to you an oppression, remember that despotism has no na- 
 tural rights on earth that any man is bound to respect ; 
 and that it is only by God's grace and the forbearance of 
 Christian civilization giving you space to repent, and trying 
 to save your people altogether, that you endure another hour. 
 For America must be free, and Slavery must disappear." 
 
AMERICAN SLAVERY AND ITS CHRISTIAN CURE. 23 
 
 I know there is no political party, no Christian sect, no 
 northern state, as a whole, 3^et fully up to this ; but the 
 Christian sentiment of the country will finally bring us all to 
 this conclusion ; and ere another twenty-five years, no party, 
 church or community in the north, no progressive man in the 
 south, will dare to support despotism — but the only rivalry 
 will be in fidelity to the rights of human nature. 
 
 But what will Herod be about while Jesus is thus building 
 around him a celestial wall of Liberty 1 Of course, Herod in 
 America will do what he did in Judea ; for despotism " never 
 learns nor forgets anything." When Jesus came, Herod cried 
 out : " It is John whom I beheaded ; he is risen from the 
 dead." Just so blind is the Slave Power to-day, to the dis- 
 tinction between the destructive who would grasp the sword 
 of extermination, and the Christian who would save all to 
 freedom. One thing the Slave Power is beginning to feel ; 
 that it is doomed. It knows it ought to die ; it feels itself an 
 enemy to God and man, and the best civilization of the age. 
 For the time, it seeks to conceal its mortal terror under a 
 show of ruffianism and bombastic defiance of the world, and, 
 like Milton's Satan, impiously chooses evil for good, and says : 
 *• Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven." But, in 
 these latter times, it has fallen upon a dismal suspicion, that 
 its days are numbered. Its long guilty career of falsehood, 
 oppression, murder and blasphemy, has filled its soul with 
 strange and awful forebodings ; and in the midst of its insane 
 boasts and maddest plans, it inwardly quakes like the aspen 
 leaf. It suspects it must die. It can conceive of only one 
 way of demise — through blood and wrath from the humanity 
 it has so long oppressed. 
 
 It fears the slave — not because the slave is warlike or will 
 rise — but because it has so outraged him. It fears the free 
 negro — not for his actual hostility — but because it has so 
 terribly wronged him, and drives him out from its borders or 
 makes him a slave. It fears its own white, laboring men, and 
 banishes a Helper or an Underwood — not because they are 
 
24 AMERICAN SLAVERY AND ITS CHRISTIAN CURE. 
 
 incendiaries — but because it has so trampled on the righls of 
 its plebeian white caste. And it fears the North — not because 
 the North, or any state, or any large number of men ever did, 
 or do now propose invasion or insurrection — but because it 
 has insulted and injured the North past endurance. Our own 
 calm and patient spirit, has encouraged it to bluster and pre- 
 tend that we are cowards ; but it knows, that if the deep, 
 cool soul of our eighteen millions were once stirred on the 
 farms, and in the shops and homes, and upon the decks of 
 this great North, it would wither like the grass before an 
 arctic frost. Yet it takes counsel of its fears and ambition, 
 and plunges against our cold and passive patience. 
 
 But when John Brown appeared at Harper's Ferry, the 
 Slave Power thought its day of doom was come. It saw in 
 his stern face the frown of God, and burst into a frenzy 
 through its fifteen states ; and now is raving in all the tumult 
 of preparation for a great conflict with the sword. It has 
 done by him only what it could do. It sees now only that 
 one man. It knows no difference between the Christian and 
 the Hebrew ; the sword and the baptism of love. It cannot 
 see that the Christian freemen of the countrj' do not propose 
 to slay one man, to deprive the South of one just right, to do 
 one unkind or violent thing, but only to save the people of 
 fifteen states from their worst foe, and save the nation from 
 ruin. It does see that the Christian sentiment of America 
 intends to destroy Slaverj^ j and it knows but one mode of 
 its destruction. 
 
 So when the northern mother prays among her children 
 for the slave ; and the minister preaches the Gospel of Free- 
 dom ; and the child gives the fugitive a loaf of bread and 
 cup of water for Christ's dear sake; and the statesman 
 unfolds his policy for Liberty and Union ; and the philanthro- 
 pist pleads for human nature, the Slave Power shrieks : •' It 
 is John whom I beheaded, he isrisen from the dead P^ It 
 burst forth into volleys of rage against every man and woman 
 who will not be its slave, and gnashes its teeth against them, 
 
AMERICAN SLAVERY AND ITS CHRISTIAN CURE. 25 
 
 demanding their blood ; driving them from the Southern 
 States, arresting them for free speech, threatening everything 
 insane and wicked ; hiring renegade editors to call our best 
 men traitors, and write obscene things about our noblest 
 women ; and generally acting as Macbeth behaved when the 
 ghost of Banquo rose at the feast of his guilty power. 
 
 All this is to be expected, and must be patiently endured. 
 Let not this torrent of despotic invective be responded to by 
 servile Union meetings, that forget Liberty to remember 
 merchandise, or by frantic disclaimers of imaginary crimes. 
 I am sorry any man has stooped to defend himself against 
 the puerile and insane charges of the Slave Power, and the 
 Satanic press, during these latter months of its carnival. Let 
 there be no more explanations to the Slave Power ; but let 
 us all say to the people of the Southern States : " Brethren 
 and sisters, let not your tyrant deceive you. This great 
 rising spirit of freedom that is resounding through our vast 
 areas like the coming up of the north wind over the stormy 
 sea, is not John whom you beheaded, rising from the dead. 
 We have taken John's body from the bloody hands of the 
 Slave Power, and laid it in its grave among the mighty 
 Adirondacks, and his spirit is in the hands of God. But hia. 
 Gospel is the old Gospel of wrath that is passing away ; our 
 Gospel is the good news of love that Christ has brought in. 
 "We intend to destroy the Slave Power and save you from it, 
 and save the Union, too, from sin and shame. And lest John 
 should rise and cut us off in the midst of our sins, we intend 
 to place the sword safe under the segxs of the law, and never, 
 while you are true to your citizenship, will it flash ruin 
 through your borders. We shall hold it to prevent the Slave 
 Power from dissolving the Union, or further assailing our 
 liberties ; but the weapon with which we shall uproot des- 
 potism, will be one of which it will know too little until it 
 feels it in its bones and blood ; all penetrating as the air, 
 irresistible as the light; the power of Christian freedom and. 
 3 
 
26 AMERICAN SLAVERY AND ITS CHRISTIAN CURE. 
 
 love, illuminating your souls and changing your civilization 
 from murky darkness to shining day." 
 
 Against that vreapon of a Christianized public sentiment, 
 inspiring men, shaping institutions, pouring in everywhere 
 like the water and the air, the mightiest powers of earth must 
 strive in vain. How small looked Jesus, hanging on the 
 cross, to those who represented the authority and held the 
 heavy sword of the Roman despotism ; and yet, how did his 
 truth penetrate, like subtle fire, into every ojint of that 
 mighty fabric of tyranny, slowly dissolving it into fragments 
 and moulding the states of modern society. Just so is Jesus 
 fighting for the truth in America. Herod can kill John, can 
 kill you and me, and a thousand like us ; but can he kill the 
 glorious spirit of freedom in millions of lofty souls ? Al- 
 ready is the Slave Power alarmed and aroused by the en- 
 croachments of that spirit, so intangible and yet so irresistible. 
 It never yet understood how it lost Kansas. It seized the 
 ballot box, subdued the friends of freedom, erected an usurped 
 government over them, slew scores of men, burned, banished , 
 held for a time all the approaches to the territory. It re- 
 enforced its own power by the whole weight of the govern- 
 ment of the United States, and yet, spite of all, it was beaten, 
 and an empire glided from its grasp as by magic. It was the 
 first great conflict in which the northern brain has been pitted 
 against the bullet of the Slave Power. Our weapon was the 
 best, and we thought Kansas out of their hands. 
 
 There is sometimes represented on the stage a wonderful 
 pantomime, in which a supernatural knight, bearing a magic 
 sword, is commissioned to foil and destroy the great roue and 
 bully of a kingdom. The bravo seeks out and defies his 
 strange, silent foe and slays him in single combat. He sinks 
 into the earth only to rise behind his back ; falls again only 
 to spring up fresh and calm. Every where the ghost-knight 
 haunts his burly enemy. Wherever the spectre appears, the 
 powers of nature turn against the sinner. In his own kitchen 
 the game and meats spring up alive j in the forest he is 
 
AMERICAN SLAVERY AND ITS CHRISTIAN CURE. 27 
 
 mocked by a flitting beauty who vanishes on being pursued, 
 or when caught turns to the statue of one of his murdered 
 enemies ; in the graveyard the effigies on the tombs wave 
 their ghastly hands ; in his midnight orgies the marble forms 
 of his victims enter and confront him. He shoots the mys- 
 terious stranger, but the bullet is caught and tossed back to 
 his feet; till worn out and maddened by the never-ending, 
 still beginning contest with a supernatural power, he curses 
 his God, and is carried off by demons to his reward. 
 
 I sat one night at the play and saw this grotesque and 
 awful pantomime ; and as I looked the stage expanded to a 
 continent, and I beheld only the great conflict between free- 
 dom and despotism. I saw the Slave Power, as in my youth, 
 mob the abolitionists, and put a gag in the mouth of the 
 Congressmen, and rob the mails, only to set every man 
 talking, and make the national capitol a great debating so- 
 ciety on Slavery, and the post-office the express of freedom. 
 I saw it drive us into a Mexican war, and gain an imperial 
 territory which turned to ashes in its hand, only giving it 
 three slave votes in Congress, with a score of commonwealths 
 in reserve for us. Then I beheld it enact the Fugitive Law, 
 to catch a few runaways ; and lo ! the whole country was 
 mined by the underground railroad, with its station on every 
 plantation, and a nation of freemen growing up across the 
 line. I saw it break the compact that might have given it 
 half a dozen slave states, only to lose all it fought for, and 
 create the organized emigration that will defeat it in every fu- 
 future territory. I looked on as it half slew a Senator for one 
 speech of two hours ; and behold ! the whole North swarmed 
 with orators cursing it in countless tongues. I read its bul- 
 letin of a Dred Scott decision, only to learn to interpret the 
 Constitution for freedom, and arouse the people's judiciary 
 of every free state. I saw it set up John Brown's gallows' 
 which, much as I abhor the shedding of blood, I fear the 
 North will never take down, but keep to hang every Slave 
 Governor or Senator who draws a sword against the state. 
 
28 AMERICAN SLAVERY AND ITS CHRISTIAN CURE. 
 
 I see the shadow of that gallows already creeping towards 
 more than one great man. I saw it open the slave trade, 
 and organize its fiUibustering hordes, only to turn against 
 itself the moral sentiment of the whole civihzed earth. So 
 must it be. The Slave Power has gained a hundred victories 
 since I was a child, and not one has given it any real increase 
 of power ; the country is freer ; we are marching with a more 
 resistless pace towards Liberty than ever before. 
 
 No wonder the Slave Power is driven to insanity. Baffled 
 as by spirits at every turn ; losing every conquest ; its oldest 
 state invaded by free emigration ; its newest rising into a free 
 republic, what can it do but fly to arms, and spend the money 
 with which it ought to educate its people, to buy Sharp's 
 rifles and revolvers at Hartford and Springfield, and cocked 
 hats and gold lace in New York, to shoot — whom ? Does it 
 want more of our blood? We have ten thousand men, 
 women and children, who will go to the scaffold if need be, 
 as cheerfully as martyrs ever went to the stake. What 
 then? Can it hang our literature? Can it bayonet our 
 school ? Can it manacle our busy hand ? Can it set a police 
 over our growing corn, and wheat, and grass ? Can it shoot 
 our immortal souls ? Can it fight duels with the eloquence 
 that peals through a thousand churches ? Can it gibbet the 
 prayers of four millions slaves that storm the throne of God, 
 and day and night cry out : " How long, oh, Lord ! how 
 long ? " Can it empty its rail cars and hotels of thoughts of 
 freedom ? Lo ! they are burning in a million hearts within 
 its own homes ; they are dividing its own soul in ttvain ! 
 
 Vain is the struggle against inevitable Justice. The Slave 
 Power is doomed. If the party of freedom is wise and 
 strong as the emergency demands, no state will shoulder arms 
 to march out of the Union, no raging armies will follow a 
 Quixotic Virginia Governor to the siege of the Capital. Lib- 
 erty will be triumphant by the voice of the people and enfold 
 the Slave Power and all its fretful humors with a wall of im- 
 placable justice and fraternal love, and set the intellect and 
 
AMERICAN SLAVERY AND ITS CHRISTIAN CURE. 29 
 
 the conscience of the Christian world to catechise and warn 
 and illuminate and labor with it for half a century. And 
 God's will must be done in the regeneration of the country 
 and the triumph of man. 
 
 Men and women of America ! that is the battle you are 
 called to fight. For a few years more it is left for us to 
 choose whether we will subdue Herod by the gospel of John 
 or Jesus. Shall the good and right-minded now unite peace- 
 ably to stop this guilty career of folly and crime, or shall we 
 still go on, blundering and blind, till complication gets worse 
 confounded, and God sends forth the spirit of war and ruin to 
 scourge the land ? For the republic must be redeemed from 
 this threatening despotism. Shall we now combine, and in wis- 
 dom, moderation, love, save the whole ; or shall we contend and 
 divide till half has fallen off to unite with barbarous Mexico 
 for a great slave empire ; or state is hurled against state in 
 the horrors of civil discord and servile anarchy ? Choose 
 speedily whom you will have to do this work, for already the 
 hours rush on to the consummation, and we may not long be 
 left to any choice. Who shall it be ? Herod, brandishing 
 the slave whip over a fallen empire j John risen from the 
 dead, raging like a Nemesis from ocean to ocean ; or Jesus, 
 rising upon the continent in a sunshine of order and justice, 
 and liberty, and fraternal love ? 
 
Caylord Bros. 
 
 Makers 
 Syracuse, N. Y 
 
 PAT. JAN. 21, 1908