veholders, than
if I was attacking them in America; for almost every paper that I now
receive from the United States, comes teeming with statements about this
fugitive Negro, calling him a "glib-tongued scoundrel," and saying that
he is running out against the institutions and people of America. I
deny the charge that I am saying a word against the institutions of
America,{327} or the people, as such. What I have to say is against
slavery and slaveholders. I feel at liberty to speak on this subject.
I have on my back the marks of the lash; I have four sisters and one
brother now under the galling chain. I feel it my duty to cry aloud
and spare not. I am not averse to having the good opinion of my fellow
creatures. I am not averse to being kindly regarded by all men; but I
am bound, even at the hazard of making a large class of religionists in
this country hate me, oppose me, and malign me as they have done--I am
bound by the prayers, and tears, and entreaties of three millions of
kneeling bondsmen, to have no compromise with men who are in any shape
or form connected with the slaveholders of America. I expose slavery
in this country, because to expose it is to kill it. Slavery is one of
those monsters of darkness to whom the light of truth is death. Expose
slavery, and it dies. Light is to slavery what the heat of the sun is to
the root of a tree; it must die under it. All the slaveholder asks of
me is silence. He does not ask me to go abroad and preach _in favor_
of slavery; he does not ask any one to do that. He would not say that
slavery is a good thing, but the best under the circumstances. The
slaveholders want total darkness on the subject. They want the hatchway
shut down, that the monster may crawl in his den of darkness, crushing
human hopes and happiness, destroying the bondman at will, and having no
one to reprove or rebuke him. Slavery shrinks from the light; it
hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest its deeds should be
reproved. To tear off the mask from this abominable system, to expose
it to the light of heaven, aye, to the heat of the sun, that it may burn
and wither it out of existence, is my object in coming to this country.
I want the slaveholder surrounded, as by a wall of anti-slavery fire, so
that he may see the condemnation of himself and his system glaring
down in letters of light. I want him to feel that he has no sympathy
in England, Scotland, or Ireland; that he has none in Canada,