are the vigorous, consistent,
and sublime theology of New England, the widely spread influence of her
cultivated and philanthropic clergy, with that part of the clergy and
church of the South which, in sustaining slavery, has lost all hold upon
human sympathies, all influence, save in the regions where the highest
crime against humanity has become a matter of interest, of sordid
speculation. Alas! what sadder spectacle could be seen than the
ministers of Christ using their talents to lead their people into wrong,
mocking religion, trailing its snowy wings in the mire of the most
corrupt political dogmas, doing their utmost to upheave that grand
corner stone set by Christ himself in the primal temple of Christianity
and humanity: 'All things whatsoever you would that men should do to
you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.'

That men and women, taught from infancy to look upon slavery as a moral
and political as well as a material good; whose ideas, manners, habits
have become interwoven with its existence in their midst, and who, no
matter how falsely, as those may think who look upon it from a
comparatively disinterested standpoint, conceive that it lies at the
base of their social prosperity and happiness; who have been accustomed
from forum, hustings, pulpit, and press, to hear an institution that
appeals to so many selfish instincts and principles in the human heart,
lauded and defended, and made to be the Ultima Thule of Southern hope,
pride, and ambition; that they should view with displeasure and anger
such an influence as the institutions of New England must always wield,
is not so surprising. But that men can be found here in the free North,
yea, more, in New England itself, to sympathize with them, to echo their
degraded sentiments, and to wish to see the slave power supreme in the
land, is what surpasses wonder, and almost belief. Yet a portion of a
large, old, and venerated party have come to be their miserable allies
and claqueurs. The truth is, we may say and believe that slavery is a
dire wrong, a foul injustice, done to a whole race, and therefore ought
to die, but that does not tell one half of the damning story: the worst
is this, that it gradually kills out the virtue, the manliness, the
moral vitality of the nation that allows it; that it has done so in our
own nation to an alarming extent is the great, the fear-impelling cause
why it should be rooted out, abolished, as an in