Note 10 — Chapter IV

The old corner stone of the whole edifice—☞ property in man. ☜ This reply of the master, is just like the low, and vile swaggering and bragging of the South, that has so long intimidated the time-serving politician of the North, with Southern principles, and the dough-faced christian with infidel principles. There is something humiliating in the thought, that the South has been able always to put down the rising spirit of freedom at the North, by brags and swagger! ☜ Ever since the early days of the Revolution, when Adams and Hancock, and Ames, and Franklin, tried to get the South to wash her hands from the blood of oppression, and be clean, bluster, and noise, and brags have crushed our efforts. And these same patriots, noble in every thing else, were dragooned into submission, and this Moloch of the South was worshipped by the signers of the greatest instrument the world ever saw. And, as the compromise must go on, an unholy alliance was formed between liberty and despotism; and as the price paid for the temple’s going up, tyranny has made a great niche in our temple of freedom, and there this strange god is worshipped by freemen. Oh! God! what blasphemy is here? tyranny and liberty worshipped together! offerings made to the God of heaven, and the demon of oppression on the same altar!

Nullification lifted its brags and boasts, and swagger, and the North gave up her principles. And because the South has always succeeded, they already boast of victory over all the Abolitionists of the North, and expect either that they have accomplished the work of crushing them, or that they can do it just when they please. But the South will find that since the days of Jay, and Adams, liberty has grown strong, and when the great struggle comes, they will see that there are but two parties on the field,—a few slave-driving, slave-breeding tyrants covered with blood, unrighteously shed, at war with the combined powers of the world. The principles of Abolition, have ennobled the human mind, and in all the world’s history, cannot be found a body of men, who have endured so much obloquy and abuse, with so much unflinching firmness, and manly fortitude, as the Abolitionists. They are not to be awed by swagger, nor stopped by brags. No! thanks to our Leader, the Lord Jesus Christ, who died to break every chain in creation, the work of human freedom must go forward; and the South has no more power to stop the progress of light, and principles of liberty in this age, than the progress of the sun in the heavens. The great guiding principle of all the benevolence in the world is, to interfere to save a brother from distress and tyranny.—Every reform must interfere with tyranny: ’twas so with christianity in its establishment—with the Reformation—with our Revolution—and shall be so—for christianity makes it man’s business to interfere with every usurpation, and system of tyranny and invasion of human rights, until every yoke shall be broken in the entire dominions of God.