still left to us! "Would such tameness and submission
have freighted the May-Flower for Plymouth Rock? Would it have
resisted the Stamp Act, the Tea Tax, or any of those entering wedges
of tyranny with which the British government sought to rive the
liberties of America? The wheel of the Revolution would have rusted on
its axle, if a spirit so weak had been the only power to give it
motion. Did our fathers say, when their rights and liberties were
infringed--"_Why, what is done cannot be undone_. That is the first
thought." No, it was the last thing they thought of: or, rather, it
never entered their minds at all. They sprang to the conclusion at
once--"_What is done_ SHALL _be undone_. That is our FIRST and ONLY
thought."

"Is water running in our veins? Do we remember still Old Plymouth
Rock, and Lexington, and famous Bunker Hill? The debt we owe our
fathers' graves? and to the yet unborn, Whose heritage ourselves must
make a thing of pride or scorn?

Gray Plymouth Rock hath yet a tongue, and Concord is not dumb; And
voices from our fathers' graves and from the future come: They call on
us to stand our ground--they charge us still to be Not only free from
chains ourselves, but foremost to make free!"

It is of little consequence who is on the throne, if there be behind
it a power mightier than the throne. It matters not what is the theory
of the government, if the practice of the government be unjust and
tyrannical. We rise in rebellion against a despotism incomparably more
dreadful than that which induced the colonists to take up arms against
the mother country; not on account of a three-penny tax on tea, but
because fetters of living iron are fastened on the limbs of millions
of our countrymen, and our most sacred rights are trampled in the
dust. As citizens of the State, we appeal to the State in vain for
protection and redress. As citizens of the United States, we are
treated as outlaws in one half of the country, and the national
government consents to our destruction. We are denied the right of
locomotion, freedom of speech, the right of petition, the liberty of
the press, the right peaceably to assemble together to protest against
oppression and plead for liberty--at least in thirteen States of the
Union. If we venture, as avowed and unflinching abolitionists, to
travel South of Mason and Dixon's line, we do so at the peril of our
lives. If we would escape torture and death, on visiting any o