Edward Everett dooms slaves to death, who dare to resist the "midnight and merciless atrocities, the wholesale murders, and the abominations not to be spoken by Christian lips to Christian ears," that are perpetrated upon them and their wives and children by Christian hands; that pimp and pander to the lusts of slave-breeders, glorifies them for committing those atrocities, "too unutterable for the English language," upon the slaves and their helpless families, but hangs the slaves and their friends who incite and aid them to resistance and defence!
Abject, humble, uncomplaining submission to external, arbitrary authority, is the law and gospel of Church and State; even when that authority counts manhood and womanhood, female virtue, conjugal fidelity, the purity of marriage, and the sanctity of parentage, crimes punishable with death.
God and Humanity call the slaves of the South and the people of the North to insurrection and treason against a power so Satanic in spirit, and so rapacious, so libidinous, so malignant and murderous in practice. Insurrection of soul against slaveholders, the right and duty of slaves and of the North—this is the first step; then, the means of resistance are to be such, only, as we would use in our own behalf, were we slaves.
The slaveholders have hung John Brown. Let them be assured there are tens of thousands of John Browns now hovering on the confines of slavery, ready to enter in and scatter themselves all over the South, to incite slaves to insurrection against their masters, and to guide them on their way to Canada, bidding defiance to slaveholders, and all slaveholding and slave-catching constitutions and laws; being ready to meet the alternative of a slaveholder's gallows. That instrument of torture has lost its terrors. It is the right and duty of slaves to gain and defend their freedom. It is the right and duty of the people of the North to incite and help them to freedom. This is becoming a paramount duty in the estimation of thousands, and no terrors of the slaveholder's wrath and vengeance will prevent them from doing it.
HENRY C. WRIGHT.
