may be seized, or arrested by any person whatever, carried before a mere Justice of the Peace, and on oral testimony, true or false, or by affidavit, taken ex parte in a foreign State, that the person so seized, or arrested does owe labor, or service to the claimant, be consigned by the mere dictum of such Justice to a condition worse than death itself to perpetual slavery; thus placing the murderer on far more safe and elevated ground, than the unfortunate slave, who is guilty of no crime, but whose condemnation is predicated alone on the color of his skin.

When I look in the statute book of my country, and find its pages stained with such gross injustice, and continued there for so great a length of time, and find that injustice sustained by men of intelligence and standing, I can not but exclaim with Jefferson, "I tremble for my country, when I remember God is just, and that his justice will not sleep forever."

You admit that slavery is both a moral and political evil, and you place the existence of it, not the commencement of that evil, in the very constitution of your Government. I am not willing to join you, and thus humble our Republican Institutions in the eyes of all mankind. But this is not all. You have sworn to support the Constitution of the United States. Did it ever occur to your mind, that your oath bound you to an active maintenance of slavery in any of the States? If it is proper and right to take an oath to support an entire instrument, I can see no immorality in taking a like oath to support any of its parts. Yet I will not believe, for a moment, that you would, under any circumstances, take an oath to support the existence of the system of slavery, which you pronounce to be a moral and a political evil. We may submit with patience to the evils of government, but to swear to give to those evils an active support, is a requirement which the honesty of the human heart will not submit to, for any place or power the Government can bestow.

It-is a strange thought indeed, that the framers of the Constitution of the United States should, by that Instrument, intend to rivet anew the chains of slavery, and guarantee its perpetual existence in all time to come; when the Congress of the United States, by the Ordinance of July, 1787, immediately preceding the date of the Constitution, and while the Convention that framed it were actually in session, gave the death-blow to slavery in the North-Western Territory; it being the first portion of Territory over which the United States had the right of jurisdiction, by providing, in a fundamental article for the government of the country, "that there should be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said Territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." This solemn rebuke of slavery was given by the Fathers of the Revolution, the first moment they had the power to act on the subject. The debt of gratitude the people of this portion of the United States owe to the authors and supporters of this Ordinance, can never be paid, nor too often acknowledged.

Yet you would have us believe that the wise and good men of that age who formed the Constitution of the United States, possessing the same feelings and having the same interests as those who framed the Ordinance of the same year, intended to perpetuate slavery as a Constitutional right. It is drawing too largely on the credulity of your fellow citizens, to expect their credence to such a proposition as this. Permit me to ask you, do you expect and believe that slavery as it exists in the United States, is to be perpetuated and concurred in, in all time to come?

',

Look upon the millions whose rights it has trodden down, and who groan beneath the incalculable load of human suffering it inflicts, and then turn your face to the justice of Heaven, and answer the question.

We have petitioned for some faint alleviation for the evils of slavery. Though at present overthrown, we are not disheartened. Another year will again call your attention to this important subject; and it is hoped that. then we may all meet it with greater consideration and a deeper sense of the high obligations it imposes; and that in the pursuit of the object to be attained we will neither do nor suffer wrong, and that the moral power of public opinion will be sufficient to accomplish this work.

Under that belief, we confidently commit the issue to that Being in whose hands are the hearts of our rulers, and "as the rivers of waters, He turneth them whithersoever He will."

New Richmond, March 30th. 1837.

CHAPTER XX.

MOBS Alton Riots - Death of Lovejoy - Mob in Cincinnati, in 1836Public Meeting-Birney's Press Destroyed-Warned to leave the City-Gazette Threatened-Speech of the Mayor to the mob at midnight-Public sympathy with the mob-Contrast in Public Opinion, Mr. Morris invited to Dayton by the Mayor and others, in 1839 - His Answer - Visited Dayton in 1842-Mob Violence - His Letter to the Mayor after the mob-Remarks on Mobs - Mob at Lexington, Kentucky, against Cassius M. Clay- His heroism-Mob spirit at Cleves, O. Church closed-Prayer in the public road by Samuel Lewis - Infidel converted-Lane Seminary-Trustees forbid the Students to organize an Anti-Slavery Society — Dr. Beecher's Speech to the Students-Anti Slavery influence of the Beecher Family - Attack on Senator Sumner-Condemned by the North-Approved by the South-Mobs overruled for the extension of Anti-Slavery Sentiments.

REASON and truth are the only legitimate weapons of discussion, the true tribunal before which error is defeated and truth vindicated and established. There is no logic nor light in the use of physical force, or violence; and a resort to them, is a perfidious war on intellect, on right, on every divine prerogative of man's nature. It is the utter annihilation of intellectual manhood, and subversive of the method, which Heaven has ordained for the development and triumph of all truth, and the exposition and overthrow of all error and wrong, and alike destructive to social order and civil Government. Free and thorough investigation, is the right and privilege of all men; and all things are subjected to this searching ordeal. No system is exempted from this universal law, either by the inhibition of the Creator, or in the nature and necessity of things. "Whatsoever is of the truth cometh to the light," and desires investigation.

The system of slavery, alone, in this free Republic, and in this age of intellectual activity and analysis, demands exemption from the ordeal of thorough discussion. Fear

ful of the power of truth, it has sought to prevent discussion of its nature, and all its workings, by lawless violence, by the logic of physical force. Almost all the free States, have been dishonored, by the efforts of mobs to silence the voice of freedom, and of a free press, on the subject of slavery. Commercial motives-fears of losing the trade of the South, if the North agitated the slavery question, have been the origin of most of the mobs, that have taken place in the Northern States. Life and property have been sacrificed to the ferocity of mobocratic violence.

Alton, Illinois, witnessed the first blood shed in defense of the rights of freedom. Here, in the press and life of Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy, was a ruthless mob, triumphant in the destruction of the inalienable and Constitutional rights of American citizens. He was "nursed in storm and trial," and for months nobly contended against a mob, headed by leading citizens, and countenanced by the Municipal authorities of Alton, in the midst of men who thirsted for his blood, and with a courage that was invincible and morally sublime, he waged a warfare against the unholy crusade, that the mob was making on life, and the liberties of the press. Three different times was his press destroyed. Public meetings were called urging him to desist. But he declined, nobly declaring, "I insist on protection in the exercise of my rights. If the civil authorities refuse to protect me, I must look to God; and if I die, I have determined to make my grave in Alton." There, as a martyr to American freedom, he did die. On the night of the 7th of November, 1837, while defending with a few friends, a free Press from the mob, he was murdered. As the blood of the Christian martyrs, was the seed of the Church, so the blood of the martyred Lovejoy, was the seed of freedom.