of society who contemplate no such result, will contribute to it, by
declaiming on their hardships and rights.

With us, it is almost physically impossible that there should be any
very extensive combination among the slaves. It is absolutely impossible
that they should procure and conceal efficient arms. Their emissaries
traversing the country, would carry their commissions on their
foreheads. If we suppose among them an individual of sufficient talent
and energy to qualify him for a revolutionary leader, he could not be so
extensively known as to command the confidence, which would be necessary
to enable him to combine and direct them. Of the class of freemen, there
would be no individual so poor or degraded (with the exception perhaps
of here and there a reckless and desperate outlaw and felon) who would
not have much to lose by the success of such an attempt; every one,
therefore, would be vigilant and active to detect and suppress it. Of
all impossible things, one of the most impossible would be a successful
insurrecction of our slaves, originating with themselves.

Attempts at insurrection have indeed been made--excited, as we believe,
by the agitation of the abolitionists and declaimers on slavery; but
these have been in every instance promptly suppressed. We fear not to
compare the riots, disorder, revolt and bloodshed, which have been
committed in our own, with those of any other civilized communities,
during the same lapse of time. And let it be observed under what
extraordinary circumstances our peace has been preserved. For the last
half century, one half of our population has been admonished in terms
the most calculated to madden and excite, that they are the victims of
the most grinding and cruel injustice and oppression. We know that these
exhortations continually reach them, through a thousand channels which
we cannot detect, as if carried by the birds of the air--and what human
being, especially when unfavorably distinguished by outward
circumstances, is not ready to give credit when he is told that he is
the victim of injustice and oppression? In effect, if not in terms, they
have been continually exhorted to insurrection. The master has been
painted as a criminal, tyrant and robber, justly obnoxious to the
vengeance of God and man, and they have been assured of the countenance
and sympathy, if not of the active assistance, of all the rest of the
world. We ourselves have in some measure pleaded guilty