rial, and intellectual advancement, if they are to become patriotic, meritorious, and useful citizens, they must be surrounded with all the conditions indispensable to such progress.
The Providence which guides the destiny of mankind having solved the dark enigma of slavery in America, there is no longer any sound reason apparent to these addressers why the civil status of the newly-constituted member of the American state should not be recognized as equal to that of any citizen. They feel that the time has arrived when the old pro-slavery sentiments, judicial, civil, or political, should pass away, and that an enlightened public opinion should prevail in accordance rather with present than with past conditions. They think that not a flaw in the superstructure of liberty should be permitted to escape the penetrating eye and the vigorous intelligence of the American people, that it is for the interest of the whole nation that correct views prevail upon the momentous subject of the civil liberty of their race, and that the polity of the State should be in full harmony with the constitutional amendments. They contend that frequent resurveys of its landmarks are essential to the preservation of the territory of constitutional freedom; and beg leave to suggest that, inasmuch as slavery desecrated all those humanities of life which are the original inheritance of mankind, the public mind should ponder the circumstances of the national history of the colored citizen; believing that, if the people of the nation would study the beginning of the social anomaly of slavery in this free country, the thoughts thence arising must result in the creation of a popular intelligence to which these addressers could with greater confidence appeal, to throw off the horrid incubus which for centuries has hampered the nation's judgment.
They further submit that the legal status of the civil rights of every race in America is an important matter, well worth the consideration of men of wisdom and equity, and that they ought, therefore, to be heard with patience, and their complaints judged by the light of the sun of reason rather than by that of the satellite prejudice; that not until all grievances are dispassionately listened to, attentively considered, and thoroughly reformed, are the utmost bounds of civil liberty at-
