hrist: "Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto
you, do ye even so to them."

A correct understanding of what is meant by immediate abolition must
convince every candid mind that it is neither visionary nor dangerous;
that it involves no disastrous consequences of bloodshed and desolation;
but, on the, contrary, that it is a safe, practicable, efficient remedy
for the evils of the slave system.

The term immediate is used in contrast with that of gradual. Earnestly
as I wish it, I do not expect, no one expects, that the tremendous system
of oppression can be instantaneously overthrown. The terrible and
unrebukable indignation of a free people has not yet been sufficiently
concentrated against it. The friends of abolition have not forgotten the
peculiar organization of our confederacy, the delicate division of power
between the states and the general government. They see the many
obstacles in their pathway; but they know that public opinion can
overcome them all. They ask no aid of physical coercion. They seek to
obtain their object not with the weapons of violence and blood, but with
those of reason and truth, prayer to God, and entreaty to man.

They seek to impress indelibly upon every human heart the true doctrines
of the rights of man; to establish now and forever this great and
fundamental truth of human liberty, that man cannot hold property in his
brother; for they believe that the general admission of this truth will
utterly destroy the system of slavery, based as that system is upon a
denial or disregard of it. To make use of the clear exposition of an
eminent advocate of immediate abolition, our plan of emancipation is
simply this: "To promulgate the true doctrine of human rights in high
places and low places, and all places where there are human beings; to
whisper it in chimney corners, and to proclaim it from the house-tops,
yea, from the mountain-tops; to pour it out like water from the pulpit
and the press; to raise it up with all the food of the inner man, from
infancy to gray hairs; to give 'line upon line, and precept upon
precept,' till it forms one of the foundation principles and parts
indestructible of the public soul. Let those who contemn this plan
renounce, if they have not done it already, the gospel plan of converting
the world; let them renounce every plan of moral reformation, and every
plan whatsoever, which does not terminate in the gratification of their
own animal natures."