ssary source of numberless mischiefs, the very thought
of which harrows up the soul, and the infliction of which no
superintendence of any government can either prevent or control.
Mitigate and keep down the evil as much as you can, still it is
there in all its native virulence, and still it will do its
malignant work in spite of you. The improvements you have made
are merely superficial. You have not reached the seat and vital
spring of the mischief. You have only concealed in some measure,
and for a time, its inherent enormity. Its essence remains
unchanged and untouched, and is ready to unfold itself whenever
a convenient season arrives, notwithstanding all your
precaution, and all you vigilance, in those manifold acts of
injustice and inhumanity, which are its genuine and its
invariable fruits. You may white-wash the sepulchre,--you may
put upon it every adornment that fancy can suggest,--you may
cover it over with all the flowers and evergreens that the
garden or the fields can furnish, so that it will appear
beautiful outwardly unto men. But it is a sepulchre still,--full
of dead men's bones and of all uncleanness. Disguise slavery as
you will,--put into the cup all the pleasing and palatable
ingredients which you can discover in the wide range of nature
and of art,--still it is a bitter, bitter draught, from which
the understanding and the heart of every man, in whom nature
works unsophisticated and unbiassed, recoils with unutterable
aversion and abhorrence. Why, Sir, slavery is the very Upas tree
of the moral world, beneath whose pestiferous shade all
intellect languishes, and all virtue dies. And if you would get
quit of the evil, you must go more thoroughly and effectually to
work than you can ever do by any or by all of those palliatives,
which are included under the term "mitigation." The foul
sepulchre must be taken away. The cup of oppression must be
dashed to pieces on the ground. The pestiferous tree must be cut
down and eradicated; it must be, root and branch of it, cast
into the consuming fire, and its ashes scattered to the four
winds of heaven. It is thus you must deal with slavery. You must
annihilate it,--annihilate it now,--and annihilate it for ever.

'Get your mitigation. I say in the second place, that you are
thereby, in all probability farther a