aving felt the unequalled sin of slavery
no more deeply--for feeling it now no more deeply, I confess myself to
be altogether without excuse. The great criminality of my long
continuance in the Colonization Society is perhaps somewhat palliated by
the fact, that the strongest proofs of the wicked character and
tendencies of the Society were not exhibited, until it spread out its
wing over slavery to shelter the monster from the earnest and effective
blows of the American Anti-Slavery Society.

Another of your charges is, that the abolitionists, in declaring "that
their object is not to stimulate the action of the General Government,
_but to operate upon the States themselves, in which the institution of
domestic slavery exists," are evidently insincere, since the "abolition
societies and movements are all confined to the free Slates_."

I readily admit, that our object is the abolition of slavery, as well in
the slave States, as in other portions of the Nation, where it exists.
But, does it follow, because only an insignificant share of our
"abolition societies and movements" is in those States, that we
therefore depend for the abolition of slavery in them on the General
Government, rather than on moral influence? I need not repeat, that the
charge of our looking to the General Government for such abolition is
refuted by the language of the Constitution of the Anti-Slavery Society.
You may, however, ask--"why, if you do not look to the General
Government for it, is not the great proportion of your means of moral
influence in the slave States, where is the great body of the slaves?" I
answer that, in the first place, the South does not permit us to have
them there; and that, in the words of one of your fellow Senators, and
in the very similar words of another--both uttered on the floor of the
Senate--"if the abolitionists come to the South, the South will hang
them." Pardon the remark, that it seems very disingenuous in you to draw
conclusions unfavorable to the sincerity of the abolitionists from
premises so notoriously false, as are those which imply, that it is
entirely at their own option, whether the abolitionists shall have their
"societies and movements" in the free or slave States. I continue to
answer your question, by saying, in the second place, that, had the
abolitionists full liberty to multiply their "societies and movements"
in the slave States, they would probably think it best to have the great
proporti