derous "purpose" of
a forcible abolition. In reply to this imputation, I need only refer you
to the Constitution of the American Anti-Slavery Society--to the
Declaration of the Convention which framed it--and to our characters,
for pledges, that we design no force, and are not likely to stain our
souls with the crime of murder. That Constitution says: "This society
will never, in any way, countenance the oppressed in vindicating their
rights by resorting to physical force." The Declaration says "Our
principles forbid the doing of evil that good may come, and lead us to
reject, and to entreat the oppressed to reject, the use of all carnal
weapons for deliverance from bondage. Our measures shall be such only,
as the opposition of moral purity to moral corruption--the destruction
of error by the potency of truth--the overthrow of prejudice by the
power of love--and the abolition of slavery by the spirit of
repentance." As to our characters they are before the world. You would
probably look in vain through our ranks for a horse-racer, a gambler, a
profane person, a rum-drinker, or a duellist. More than nine-tenths of
us deny the rightfulness of offensive, and a large majority, even that
of defensive national wars. A still larger majority believe, that deadly
weapons should not be used in cases of individual strife. And, if you
should ask, "where in the free States are the increasing numbers of men
and women, who believe, that the religion of the unresisting 'Lamb of
God' forbids recourse to such weapons, in all circumstances, either by
nations or individuals?"--the answer is, "to a man, to a woman, in the
ranks of the abolitionists." You and others will judge for yourselves,
how probable it is, that the persons, whom I have described, will prove
worthy of being held up as murderers.

The last of your charges against the abolitionists, which I shall
examine, is the following: _Having begun "their operations by professing
to employ only persuasive means," they "have ceased to employ the
instruments of reason and persuasion," and "they now propose to
substitute the powers of the ballot box;" and "the inevitable tendency
of their proceedings is if these should be found insufficient, to invoke
finally the more potent powers of the bayonet."_

If the slaveholders would but let us draw on them for the six or eight
thousand dollars, which we expend monthly to sustain our presses and
lecturers, they would then know, from an experie