and their citizens a like
return, that they do not enter our territories for the purpose of
violating our laws in the punishment of our people for the exercise of
their undoubted rights--the liberty of speech and of the press on the
subject of slavery. We ask that no man shall be seized and transported
beyond our State, in violation of our own laws, and that we shall not
be carried into and imprisoned in another State for acts done in our
own. We contend that the slaveholding power is properly chargeable
with all the riots and disorders which take place on account of
slavery. We can live in peace with all our sister States; if that
power will be controlled by law, each can exercise and enjoy the full
benefits secured by their own laws; and this is all we ask. If we hold
up slavery to the view of an impartial public as it is, and if such
view creates astonishment and indignation, surely we are not to be
charged as libellers. A State institution ought to be considered the
pride, not the shame of the State; and if we falsify such
institutions, the disgrace is ours, not theirs. If slavery, however,
is a blemish, a blot, an eating cancer in the body politic, it is not
our fault if, by holding it up, others should see in the mirror of
truth its deformity, and shrink back from the view. We have not, and
we intend not, to use any weapons against slavery, but the moral power
of truth and the force of public opinion. If we enter the slave
States, and tamper with the slave contrary to law, punish us, we
deserve it; and if a slaveholder is found in a free State, and is
guilty of a breach of the law there, he also ought to be punished.
These petitioners, as far as I understand them, disclaim all right to
enter a slave State for the purpose of intercourse with the slave. It
is the master whom they wish to address; and they ask and ought to
receive protection from the laws, as they are willing to be judged by
the laws. We invite into the arena of public discussion in our State
the slaveholder; we are willing to hear his reasons and facts in favor
of slavery, or against abolitionists: we do not fear his errors while
we are ourselves free to combat them. The angry feelings which in some
degree exist between the citizens of the free and slaveholding States,
on account of slavery, are, in many cases, properly chargeable to
those who defend and support slavery. Attempts are almost daily making
to force the execution of slave laws in the fre