r subject.

As a Southerner, I feel that it is my duty to stand up here
to-night and bear testimony against slavery. I have seen it! I
have seen it! I know it has horrors that can never be described.
I was brought up under its wing. I witnessed for many years its
demoralizing influences and its destructiveness to human
happiness. I have never seen a happy slave. I have seen him dance
in his chains, it is true, but he was not happy. There is a wide
difference between happiness and mirth. Man can not enjoy
happiness while his manhood is destroyed. Slaves, however, may
be, and sometimes are mirthful. When hope is extinguished, they
say, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." [Here stones
were thrown at the windows--a great noise without and commotion
within].

What is a mob? what would the breaking of every window be? What
would the levelling of this hall be? Any evidence that we are
wrong, or that slavery is a good and wholesome institution? What
if the mob should now burst in upon us, break up our meeting, and
commit violence upon our persons, would that be anything compared
with what the slaves endure? No, no; and we do not remember them,
"as bound with them," if we shrink in the time of peril, or feel
unwilling to sacrifice ourselves, if need be, for their sake.
[Great noise]. I thank the Lord that there is yet life enough
left to feel the truth, even though it rages at it; that
conscience is not so completely seared as to be unmoved by the
truth of the living God. [Another outbreak of the mob and
confusion in the house].

How wonderfully constituted is the human mind! How it resists, as
long as it can, all efforts to reclaim it from error! I feel that
all this disturbance is but an evidence that our efforts are the
best that could have been adopted, or else the friends of slavery
would not care for what we say and do. The South know what we do.
I am thankful that they are reached by our efforts. Many times
have I wept in the land of my birth over the system of slavery. I
knew of none who sympathized in my feelings; I was unaware that
any efforts were made to deliver the oppressed; no voice in the
wilderness was heard calling on the people to repent and do works
meet for repentance, and my heart sickened within me. Oh, how