done, all necessity for
the extirpation of any part of the people will at once be removed.
Baptisms _of blood_ are seen only when humanity has failed in her
offices, and the suffering discern hope only in the brute efforts
of despair.
Mr. Elmore is doubtless well versed in general history. To his vigorous
declamation, I reply by asking, if he can produce from the history of
our race a single instance, where emancipation, full and immediate, has
been followed, as a legitimate consequence, by insurrection or
bloodshed. I may go further, and ask him for a well authenticated
instance, where an emancipated slave, singly has imbrued his hands in
his master's blood. The first record of such an act in modern times, is
yet to be made.
Mr. Elmore says "the white inhabitants in the slave states should be
informed of the full length and breadth and depth of this storm which is
gathering over their heads, before it breaks in its desolating fury." In
this sentiment there is not a reasonable man in the country, be he
abolitionist or not, who will not coincide with him. We rejoice at the
evidence we here have, in a gentleman of the influence and intelligence
of Mr. Elmore, of the returning sanity of the South. How wildly and
mischievously has she been heretofore misled! Whilst the Governors of
Virginia, Alabama, Tennessee and Arkansas, have been repelling offers,
made in respectful terms, of the fullest and most authentic accounts of
our movements; and whilst Governor Butler of South Carolina, has not
only followed the example of his gubernatorial brethren just named, but
is found corresponding with an obscure culprit in Massachusetts--bribing
him with a few dollars, the sum he demanded for his fraudulent promise
to aid in thwarting the abolitionists[A]; whilst too, Mr. Calhoun has
been willing to pass laws to shut out from his constituents and the
South generally information that concerned them more nearly than all
others--we now have it from the highest source, from one selected by a
state delegation as its _representative_ in a general committee of the
whole slaveholding delegations, that the South ought to be "_informed of
the full length and breadth and depth_" of the measures, intentions, &c,
of the abolitionists. At this there is not an abolitionist who will not
rejoice. We ask for nothing but access to the popular mind of the South.
We feel full confidence in the eternal rectitude of our principles, and
of their reception
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