they would not submit to it. Abuse certainly never had the effect of softening men's hearts, nor was it ever an aid, with men of independence and self-respect, in the accomplishment of any good purpose. To give respectable individuals the appellations of "robbers" and "man-stealers" because they happened to be born in a part of the country where slavery existed, and upon plantations on which their fathers had dwelt before them, and amidst a condition of things which, though bad in itself, they had no share in producing, and saw no means at once of remedying — such language could have no possible effect but to excite feelings of indignation, and to close the ears of citizens of the South against every allusion to the subject.[1]
Such has been the disastrous effect of this most unwise course. And not only this, — but it has operated injuriously on the condition of the slaves themselves, by increasing the severity of the masters, — compelling them to take extraordinary precautions against insurrection, and thus depriving the negroes of many privileges they had formerly enjoyed. Thus do violence and fanaticism ever defeat their own ends:
- ↑ "In a certain paper," says Mr. Freeman, "the writer having selected passages from the writings of such men as Mr. Clay, Gen. Harper, President Caldwell, and others, exclaims — 'Ye crafty calculators! ye hard-hearted incorrigible sinners! ye greedy and relentless rovers! ye contemners of justice and mercy! ye trembling, pitiful, pale-faced usurpers! my soul spurns you with unspeakable disgust.' I cannot think that good men, even among abolitionists, can approve of this language." — Plea, Conversation IX. No! such violence and grossness of abuse as this could never avail in any cause, and is never needed in a good cause: the spirit that could indite such a sentence was not from above.
