you have tried and failed to make the
proof. You need not be told that persisting in a charge which one does not
know to be true is simply malicious slander.

Some of you admit that no Republican designedly aided or encouraged
the Harper's Ferry affair, but still insist that our doctrines and
declarations necessarily lead to such results. We do not believe it. We
know we hold to no doctrine, and make no declaration, which were not held
to and made by our fathers who framed the Government under which we live.
You never dealt fairly by us in relation to this affair. When it occurred,
some important State elections were near at hand, and you were in evident
glee with the belief that, by charging the blame upon us, you could get
an advantage of us in those elections. The elections came, and your
expectations were not quite fulfilled. Every Republican man knew that,
as to himself at least, your charge was a slander, and he was not much
inclined by it to cast his vote in your favor. Republican doctrines
and declarations are accompanied with a continued protest against any
interference whatever with your slaves, or with you about your slaves.
Surely, this does not encourage them to revolt. True, we do, in common
with "our fathers, who framed the Government under which we live," declare
our belief that slavery is wrong; but the slaves do not hear us declare
even this. For any thing we say or do, the slaves would scarcely know
there is a Republican party. I believe they would not, in fact, generally
know it but for your misrepresentations of us in their hearing. In your
political contests among yourselves, each faction charges the other with
sympathy with Black Republicanism; and then, to give point to the charge,
defines Black Republicanism to simply be insurrection, blood, and thunder
among the slaves.

Slave insurrections are no more common now than they were before the
Republican party was organized. What induced the Southampton insurrection,
twenty-eight years ago, in which, at least, three times as many lives
were lost as at Harper's Ferry? You can scarcely stretch your very
elastic fancy to the conclusion that Southampton was "got up by Black
Republicanism." In the present state of things in the United States, I
do not think a general or even a very extensive slave insurrection is
possible. The indispensable concert of action cannot be attained. The
slaves have no means of rapid communication; nor can incendiary freemen,