ion as a
slaveholding instrument, and finding their views supported by the united
and entire history of every department of the government, it is
not strange that I assumed the constitution to be just what their
interpretation made it. I was bound, not only by their superior
knowledge, to take their opinions as the true ones, in respect to the
subject, but also because I had no means of showing their unsoundness.
But for the responsibility of conducting a public journal, and the
necessity imposed upon me of meeting opposite views from abolitionists
in this state, I should in all probability have remained as firm in my
disunion views as any other disciple of William Lloyd Garrison.

My new circumstances compelled me to re-think the whole subject, and
to study, with some care, not only the just and proper rules of legal
interpretation, but the origin, design, nature, rights, powers, and
duties of civil government, and also the relations which human beings
sustain to it. By such a course of thought and reading, I was
conducted to the conclusion that the constitution of the United
States--inaugurated "to form a more perfect union, establish justice,
insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote
the general welfare, and secure the blessing of liberty"--could not well
have been designed at the same time to maintain and perpetuate a system
of rapine and murder, like slavery; especially, as not one word can be
found in the constitution to authorize such a belief. Then, again, if
the declared purposes of an instrument are to govern the meaning of all
its parts and details, as they clearly should, the constitution of our
country is our warrant for the abolition of slavery in every state in
the American Union. I mean, however, not to argue, but simply to state
my views. It would require very many pages of a volume like this, to
set forth the arguments demonstrating the unconstitutionality and the
complete illegality of slavery in our land; and as my experience, and
not my arguments, is within the scope and contemplation of this volume,
I omit the latter and proceed with the former.{309}

I will now ask the kind reader to go back a little in my story, while I
bring up a thread left behind for convenience sake, but which, small
as it is, cannot be properly omitted altogether; and that thread is
American prejudice against color, and its varied illustrations in my own
experience.

When I first went among the