e is ours!
The Union which grinds them to the dust rests upon us, and with them
we will struggle to overthrow it! The Constitution, which subjects
them to hopeless bondage, is one that we cannot swear to support! Our
motto is, "NO UNION WITH SLAVEHOLDERS," either religious or political.
They are the fiercest enemies of mankind, and the bitterest foes of
God! We separate from them not in anger, not in malice, not for a
selfish purpose, not to do them an injury, not to cease warning,
exhorting, reproving them for their crimes, not to leave the perishing
bondman to his fate--O no! But to clear our skirts of innocent
blood--to give the oppressor no countenance--to signify our abhorrence
of injustice and cruelty--to testify against an ungodly compact--to
cease striking hands with thieves and consenting with adulterers--to
make no compromise with tyranny--to walk worthily of our high
profession--to increase our moral power over the nation--to obey God
and vindicate the gospel of His Son--to hasten the downfall of slavery
in America, and throughout the world!

We are not acting under a blind impulse. We have carefully counted the
cost of this warfare, and are prepared to meet its consequences. It
will subject us to reproach, persecution, infamy--it will prove a
fiery ordeal to all who shall pass through it--it may cost us our
lives. We shall be ridiculed as fools, scorned as visionaries, branded
as disorganizers, reviled as madmen, threatened and perhaps punished
as traitors. But we shall bide our time. Whether safety or peril,
whether victory or defeat, whether life or death be ours, believing
that our feet are planted on an eternal foundation, that our position
is sublime and glorious, that our faith in God is rational and
steadfast, that we have exceeding great and precious promises on which
to rely, THAT WE ARE IN THE RIGHT, we shall not falter nor be
dismayed, "though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be
carried into the midst of the sea,"--though our ranks be thinned to
the number of "three hundred men." Freemen! are you ready for the
conflict? Come what may, will you sever the chain that binds you to a
slaveholding government, and declare your independence? Up, then, with
the banner of revolution! Not to shed blood--not to injure the person
or estate of any oppressor--not by force and arms to resist any
law--not to countenance a servile insurrection--not to wield any
carnal weapons! No--ours must be a bloo