was a member,
held a long session, discussing the proper scope and tenor of the
document. But little progress being made, it was finally decided to
entrust the matter to a sub-committee, consisting of William L.
Garrison, S. J. May, and myself; and after a brief consultation and
comparison of each other's views, the drafting of the important paper was
assigned to the former gentleman. We agreed to meet him at his lodgings
in the house of a colored friend early the next morning. It was still
dark when we climbed up to his room, and the lamp was still burning by
the light of which he was writing the last sentence of the declaration.
We read it carefully, made a few verbal changes, and submitted it to the
large committee, who unanimously agreed to report it to the Convention.

The paper was read to the Convention by Dr. Atlee, chairman of the
committee, and listened to with the profoundest interest.

Commencing with a reference to the time, fifty-seven years before, when,
in the same city of Philadelphia, our fathers announced to the world
their Declaration of Independence,--based on the self-evident truths of
human equality and rights,--and appealed to arms for its defence, it
spoke of the new enterprise as one "without which that of our fathers is
incomplete," and as transcending theirs in magnitude, solemnity, and
probable results as much "as moral truth does physical force." It spoke
of the difference of the two in the means and ends proposed, and of the
trifling grievances of our fathers compared with the wrongs and
sufferings of the slaves, which it forcibly characterized as unequalled
by any others on the face of the earth. It claimed that the nation was
bound to repent at once, to let the oppressed go free, and to admit them
to all the rights and privileges of others; because, it asserted, no man
has a right to enslave or imbrute his brother; because liberty is
inalienable; because there is no difference, in principle, between slave-
holding and man-stealing, which the law brands as piracy; and because no
length of bondage can invalidate man's claim to himself, or render slave
laws anything but "an audacious usurpation."

It maintained that no compensation should be given to planters
emancipating slaves, because that would be a surrender of fundamental
principles; "slavery is a crime, and is, therefore, not an article to be
sold;" because slave-holders are not just proprietors of what they claim;
because em