American Slavery is American's Disgrace: An Address Delivered in Sheffield, England, on March 25, 1847
AMERICAN SLAVERY IS AMERICA’S DISGRACE: AN ADDRESS DELIVERED IN SHEFFIELD, ENGLAND, ON 25 MARCH 1847
Sheffield Times, 27 March 1847. Another text in Sheffield and Rotherham Independent, 27 March 1847.
As Douglass neared the end of his British tour he accelerated the pace of his speaking engagements, often lecturing seven nights a week. This intense activity took its toll, causing the London Inquirer to notice his fatigue at a meeting at Warrington, where he “appeared to be suffering from great debility. ” One of the cities revisited during Douglass’s final swing through England was Sheffield, where he delivered a “farewell lecture” at the spacious theater on 25 March 1847. The Sheffield Times said that “the desire to hear his address was unusually strong” and before the doors to the hall opened, “the crowd waiting for admission was immense. ” In his opening statement, Alderman Thomas Dunn, chairman of the meeting, remarked that British denunciations of slavery reflected no ill will toward Americans, who would, he believed, follow the example of the British and emancipate their own slaves as soon as they recognized that slavery was a national disgrace. Dunn’s comments about America’s tarnished image in the eyes of the world were a suitable introduction to Douglass’s speech. When Douglass concluded, William Jeffcock, Esq., proposed a resolution charging that slavery was incompatible with Christianity. John Taylor, a member of the Mechanics’ Institute who had spent six months in America, corroborated Douglass’s remarks and seconded the resolution. The motion was unanimously carried and the two and one-half-hour meeting ended at 10:00 P. M. London Inquirer, 13 March 1847; Sheffield Iris, 1 April 1847.
FREDERICK DOUGLAS[S] was received with loud cheers, and in commencing observed, that he never appeared before them with a greater desire to do justice to his cause than on the present occasion; but he seldom addressed an audience less prepared. He was happy to know that the subject of American slavery was no longer an obscure one. The question was no longer confined within the narrow limits of the American slaveholder’s plantation, nor to the Slave States, nor even to America itself. It was
attracting the attention of the good, the noble, and the philanthropic, throughout the world. He presumed he stood before an audience who had not heard the whole question discussed, and he might therefore briefly state the existing relations between master and slave in the United States of
America.
In this country he found that there was some misapprehension in the minds of men respecting the condition of the slave. He was thought of merely as one who was made to labour without any wages, and who was ineligible for any office either in the state or church; and this was considered by some to constitute slavery. He was there, however, to tell them that there were in slavery darker and bitterer elements than these.
The essential principle of slavery was that it enforced a right and property by one man in the body and soul of another man. The slave was in the power of the master to whom he belonged. He was considered as property, used as property, treated as property, thought of as property—and as nothing but property so far as the Government of the country was concerned. He was not legislated for as a man; he was not thought of as a man. All his wants, his desires, his capacities were regulated with the view of enhancing his value as property. Was he fed? It was done to increase his value as property. Was he clothed? It was done, not to promote his comfort, but to strengthen him, to preserve him, and to increase his value as property. Was he instructed in any handicraft or trade? It was done, not that he might be benefited, but that another might reap the reward of his increased facility for toil. He was a slave! He was treated as property to all intents, purposes, and constructions whatsoever. He was cut off from the rest of the human race—robbed of his God-given rights—and, though crowned with immortality, he was herded with the beasts of the field, and compelled to become a mere marketable commodity.
Then, again, the slave had no power to alter his relation—no assent nor dissent to give in the matter—no voice in his own destiny. His mind, as a mental, moral, and responsible being, was blotted out from existence; he was cut off from his race; dragged down from the high elevation where God had placed him—“a little lower than the angels”1Ps. 8: 5.—and ranked with the beasts of the field. All his powers were in the hands of another. He might not decide any questions with reference to his own actions; he was property at his master’s will. His master’s caprice and authority were absolute, and his obedience must be absolute also.
One consequence of this relation was cruelty—unmitigated cruelty—on the part of the master, which he could not avoid while he retained his position as a slave holder. Cruelty was inseparable from the system, and it could not be otherwise. The most humane man in the world—aye, if they could conceive of an angel from heaven becoming a slaveholder, he would be compelled to be cruel, because he would have to keep man in the condition of a slave; and, they knew, man was not made for that condition, (hear, hear) nor did he ever like to submit to that condition. His tendencies were to freedom—his happiness was dependent upon progress, elevation, and improvement. But slavery was an everlasting stand-still to the human mind, in which there was no progress, no improvement. No faith, no hope, entered into the relation of master and slave. He was a slave at his birth; he felt himself a slave in his childhood, in his boyhood, in his manhood: he looked down upon himself, and said, “I shall be a slave to-morrow; I shall be a slave this month; I shall be a slave next month; I shall be a slave this year; I shall be a slave next year; and I shall be a slave all the years of my life, without improvement, without hope. ”
Now this feeling necessarily produced dissatisfaction, which dissatisfaction was constantly manifesting itself in the looks of a slave. He (the lecturer) had been punished and beaten more for his looks than for anything else—for looking dissatisfied because he felt dissatisfied—for feeling and looking as he felt at the wrongs heaped upon him. (Cheers) Hence, wherever slavery existed, it was accompanied by certain peculiarities. This was alike the case whether they contemplated the ancient Greek and Roman slavery, our own colonial slavery, or slavery in the United States of America. (Hear.) It was always, under all circumstances, accompanied by whips, chains, gags, thumb-screws, cat-o’-nine-tails, branding-irons, fetters, and other instruments of torture of a similar character. This was always the case; it belonged to the system; they were indispensable. Only let the whip, the branding-iron, and all the bloody paraphernalia be taken away, and the slave would walk forth from his master, a man—a free man.
A power to take away life must be there in order to secure the obedience of the slave. Without being beat the slave would not work. No man would work unless he were either beat or paid. (Loud applause.) Englishmen were said to be very industrious, and no doubt they were so—no nation could boast greater industry, enterprise, and perseverance than the English—yet, in all his experience, during 19 months’ residence in this country, he had never seen a man in the market place seeking for work without wages. (Laughter) Every man who sought work had some object in view—that
object was, to earn money. But the slave had to work without wages. In the absence of the cash, there must be the lash. (Renewed laughter.) The slaveholders not being willing to pay wages for their work, fell back upon the only alternative of applying the lash.
Now he (the lecturer) was not there with any bitter feeling to America, nor with any malevolent designs upon America; but still he was not prepared to say that he entertained any great respect for America, (a laugh) or for American institutions, American morality, or American Christianity. No; he could not find it in his heart to speak well of the nation which allowed to live in slavery three millions of those with whom he was identified in complexion—of a nation which, whilst it boasted so loudly and so long of liberty and light, at the same time did not permit him to go and stand in any part of it in the enjoyment of the right over his own body. He could not speak well of America while eighty thousand infants were annually born into it in a state of slavery. He could not speak well of the nation—no matter what might be its natural advantages—when he remembered that its broad and noble rivers had carried to the ocean the tears and the blood of three millions of his brethren. He could not find it in his heart to use very conciliatory terms to such a nation.
Love for America, he considered, was not inconsistent with the strongest rebuke of its crimes. Resolute and unflinching opposition to its slavery was the best evidence they could give of their regard for America; and, for his part, he was determined to give her that evidence ofhis regard, both here and wherever he might be placed. (Cheers) Of all nations on the face of the globe, America stood forth self-convicted of being the most hypocritical; for where was there a nation on the earth that made such a boast of liberty as she? On every coin, from the cent to the dollar, was stamped “Liberty; " on every star—spangled banner was the liberty-cap; and on the return of each anniversary of her independence, the roar of every cannon, and the sound of every “church-going bell," greeted a nation proud of its freedom. In almost every prayer there was—“O Lord, we thank thee that we live in a land of civil and religious liberty.” Almost every orator said, that theirs was the land of the free, and the home of the brave. They said they were to be the means of putting down despotism in the Old World; they professed to be the heaven-ordained nation to give the Bible and the gospel to the heathen, and to civilize, enlighten, and Christianize the world. They had tract societies, Bible societies, Sabbath school societies, and all the religious machinery that exists in this country, and a great deal more of profession.
And yet there was the spectacle of republican slaveholders, democratical slaveholders, missionary slaveholders, Bible society and tract society slaveholders. Revivals of the slave trade and revivals of the Bible societies went together. The auctioneer’s block stood in the same neighbourhood as the pulpit; and the blood-stained gold went to support the pulpit, while the pulpit, in return, covered the infernal slave business with the garb of Christianity. (Cheers) They had Methodists selling Methodists, Baptists selling Baptists, Presbyterians selling Presbyterians, and Episcopalians selling Episcopalians, to the highest bidder.
On that very land slaves were so devoid of every right and privilege, that one of the first objects of the Government seemed to be to keep them in total ignorance. (Hear, hear.) There were laws punishing with fines and imprisonment any who should dare to teach a slave his letters. In Louisiana they were punishable with death the second time they were discovered instructing a slave. In South Carolina the man who taught a slave how to spell the name of the God who made him was punishable with death.2Douglass possibly relies on George M. Stroud, A Sketch of the Laws Relating to Slavery in the Several States of the United States of America, 1st ed. (Philadelphia, 1827), 85-90, even though Stroud cites no state or local law that made the instruction of slaves a capital crime. Penalties for teaching slaves to read or write ranged from whipping to heavy fines and long jail sentences. In Virginia there were seventy-one crimes for which blacks were punishable with death, while for only one of them was death inflicted upon a white man.3Douglass probably relies on either Stroud, Laws Relating to Slavery, 1st ed., 107-09, or [Theodore D. Weld], American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses (New York, 1839), 149. Yet the black man knew nothing of the law, nor had he any means of ascertaining it, but still he was seventy times more liable to the punishment of death than the white man, with his religious instructions, with the Bible in his hand, and with every means of improvement. (Great sensation.) In all the Slave States there was a law that if more than seven slaves be found together without a white person, they should be apprehended, and each receive thirty-nine lashes upon his bare back. According to another law, if any slave was found riding a horse by night or by day, he might receive forty lashes upon his bare back, and his cheek be burned with a red-hot iron. Again, if any female slave should dare to raise her hand against the brutal and licentious designs of her master, she might be lawfully put to death.4Douglass probably relies on the slave codes compiled in [Weld], American Slavery, 144-45. (“Shame, shame”) In no case could a slave give testimony against his master, nor a free black against a white man.5[Weld], American Slavery 148-49, argues that statutes and public opinion precluded testimony from slaves and free blacks where a white person was involved.
This, then, was the condition of three millions of people, and he could have gone on to state still further particulars. Yet, with these laws—cruel, stringent, and bloody as they are—the people in the south found them insufficient to satisfy their rage in many instances, and hence they went without law and beyond law in the punishment of their slaves. At one time, a slave having protected himself against the brutal assault of a white man, was instantly seized, carried into the woods, and burned; and there the mob of gentlemen of property stood round; and when the flames had well nigh consumed the lower part of his body some one proposed to shoot him. He besought them earnestly to shoot him; but, said the multitude, “No, we will rather slacken the fire, that your pain may be increased;" and while the blood was boiling in his mouth, and his lips were burning to a cinder, they actually did so. But it might be enquired, why did not the law prevent this? It was because it was perpetrated by the sovereign people, and they were above the law.
The lecturer did not mention these things to harrow up the feelings of the audience, but he wished to let the slaveholder know that his crimes were not concealed within the limits of his own plantation, and that the English mind was shocked at the thought of his barbarities. The lecturer wanted the slaveholder to know that his crimes—dark and bloody as they are—were being made known to England and to the world, and that his conduct was being exposed. Time was when the slaveholder could keep these matters to himself, when he could brand and burn his slaves unperceived by the English public; but that time was now past, (hear, hear), the slave now broke loose from his chains, and went forth to tell his own story, and to make known the wrongs of his brethren. (Loud applause.)
But the tortures mentioned were not all. Within the last few years, in Louisiana and the southern Slave States, when a slave runs away his back is made perfectly raw by the lash, and then, in order to prevent the castigation from proving fatal, his master takes warm brine and pours it into the wounds, thus increasing the torture in trying to prevent the wounds from causing death. (Great sensation.) After this, the slave is again taken out, tied hands and feet to a post, and the driver is made to take a live cat, and drag its claws over the closing wounds, and tear them open again. (“Shame, shame”)
Then there was the branding system, which was considered indispensable to the retention of slaves. Every master thought it wise to brand his slaves with his own initials. The paint brush might do for the beasts, but it wouldn’t do for man; because the brute was in its legitimate position, while the slave was not. The slave was tied to a post, the branding iron heated,
and the driver—whose heart had become stone-like from the constant tortures to which he had subjected the slaves—applied it deliberately to the quivering flesh of his brother man. (“Shame ”) In American newspapers advertisements might be seen day after day stating that the run-away slave had such and such letters branded upon him, or as having teeth lost, which was another mode of marking slaves, and in some parts they actually clipped off their ears. These things, then, were indispensable to the system, for slavery must be accompanied by cruelty.
Till but lately the slaveholder represented himself as a very kind, humane man, and had said the slave was in the best condition he could be in. He had endeavoured to turn away sympathy from the slave to the slaveholder, and to excite opposition against the abolitionists. For his (the slaveholder's) sake, the lecturer was glad to be there to counteract, to some extent, the influence of such men. In order to speak more definitely of American slaveholders and their apologists, he would state, that in August last seventy ministers from the United States attended a meeting of what was called the American Evangelical Alliance,6The international assembly of churchmen which met in Freemasons' Hall, London, from 19 August to 2 September 1846 was officially designated the Evangelical Alliance. An American affiliate, the Evangelical Alliance for the United States of America, was not formed until 1867. Ruth Rouse and
Stephen C. Neill, eds. , A History of the Ecumenical Movement, 1517-1948 (Philadelphia, 1954), 255. and there they taxed their ingenuity and whole mental power in forming excuses for slaveholding. (Hear, hear, and sensation.) Unhappily they did not altogether fail in their object; but succeeded in hood-winking some of the most talented and intrepid ministers of this country.
The lecturer then proceeded to state what he conceived to be the support of slavery in America. In the first place, the Government was on the slaveholder’s side, as might be seen from the fact that for forty-two out of fifty years, the Presidential chair had been filled by a slaveholder. Thus, the nation professing to be the freest on the globe, was governed by a tyrant. (A laugh.) The Speaker of the House of Representatives was a slaveholder, the principal posts in the army and navy, and nearly all the diplomatic offices were in similar hands.7Douglass advances the argument of William Bimey, Official Statistics of the Distribution of the Offices of the Federal Government, in Facts for the People. n.s. no. 3 : 17-24 (March 1843). Although John W. Davis (1799-1859), Democratic congressman from Indiana and Speaker of the House (1845-47), lived in Maryland where he practiced medicine from 1821 to 1823, it has not been determined whether he ever owned slaves. William Wesley Woollen, Biographical and Historical Sketches of Early Indiana (Indianapolis, 1883), 234. In short, slavery was popular in the United States. It was well understood that to be a slaveholder was a qualification almost indispensable to the election for any public office, and a non-slaveholder
had no chance of being chosen President. Nothing but a slaveholder would answer for the freest nation on the globe.
It might be asked why was this the state of things? It was because slaveholders were united; and slavery was always more true to itself than freedom was to itself. (Hear, hear.) Despotism was wakeful and always on the watch; it had its vigilant committees and its secret spies; but liberty slept, slumbered, and hence was taken captive. In the American States there was power sufficient to abolish slavery; but they were disunited, and the slaveholders were able to buy them up.
Another reason of the popularity of slavery was, its connection with religion. This was the most important aspect of the question, as well as the most grievous. American slavery was unlike West Indian slavery, because it had religion on its side. It had been said, that abolitionists were infidels, opposed to the religious institutions of the country. This arose from the circumstance that slavery in America had the sanction of religion. This was not the case in the West Indies: for there slavery was the direct enemy of religion; and the slaveholder hated, persecuted, burned the chapels, and rendered insecure the life of the missionary.8After the British Colonial Office in 1823 issued the first in a series of ameliorative measures to eliminate the abuses of slavery, West Indian colonists, historically suspicious of nonconformist missionaries, increasingly held ministers. particularly Methodists and Baptists, responsible for any signs of unrest among the slaves. ln Barbados the assembly rejected the government's proposals, and an anti-abolitionist “party of respectable gentlemen" sacked the Methodist chapel at Bridgetown and drove its “villainous preacher" from the island. Responsibility for the massive slave uprising in Demerara in 1823, involving some 13,000 slaves on thirty-seven estates, was attributed to Peter Smith, minister at the London Missionary Society's chapel on an estate whose slaves played a prominent role in the uprising. Smith was later sentenced to death but died of tuberculosis while confined in a Georgetown jail. In Jamaica a new slave code passed in 1826 prohibited religious meetings after dark, banned the missionaries' practice of collecting money for religious instruction from slaves, and disallowed the recruitment of slave and free black religious leaders. After the brutal repression of a series of slave revolts that erupted in Jamaica's northwestern parishes in 1831-32, all of the Baptist and most of the Methodist chapels in the western parishes were demolished, though Presbyterian chapels in the area were not disturbed. In St. Ann's Bay, where the local Baptist minister had been burned in effigy, the proslavery Anglican rector George W. Bridges headed the organization of a Colonial Church Union committed to the expulsion of dissenting missionaries. Between February and March of 1832, Unionists led the destruction of mostly Wesleyan and Baptist chapels and determined to extirpate evangelical Christianity among the slaves. Philip Wright, Knibb "The Notorious": Slaves' Missionary, 1803-1845 (London, 1973), 27, 30-111; William Law Mathieson, British Slavery and Its Abolition, 1823-1838 (London, 1926), 127-219; C. Duncan Rice, The Rise and Fall of Black Slavery (New York, 1975), 252; Philip D. Cunin, Two Jamaicas: The Role of Ideas in a Tropical Colony, 1830-1865 (1955; New York, 1970), 40, 61-72, 81-89; Matthew Simpson, ed., Cyclopaedia of Methodism, 5th ed. rev. (Philadelphia, 1882), 931. (Loud applause.) Religion there assailed slavery: it cried aloud and spared not, but lifted up its voice like a trumpet against it.
But in the United States the case was different. Slavery had there no defenders equal in ability and perseverance to those sent from the bosom of the Church. It came clothed in all the sacredness of the pulpit, and professing to have the sanction of the Bible and of God. Thus, when slavery was opposed in the street it fled to the church, to the prayer-meeting, to the conference, to the Bible society, to the tract society, and there it bows down, and goes to pray. (A laugh.) And then, if any one came to attack it, it cried out, “You are an infidel, you are seeking to divide the Church, and call off our attention to political matters. Let us alone—we are pious.”
But the practice of the abolitionists was, wherever they saw a head to hit it. (Loud applause.) Wherever they saw slavery, they had a battle. If it went to the church and into the pulpit, they followed it, and there invoked the thunders of heaven and of our common humanity to descend upon it. (Cheers) They gave it no quarter, because they believed it to be opposed to the will of God; because they believed it to be from the infernal, and not from the celestial regions; from the devil, and not from God; and that pulpit which sanctioned and supported it was unworthy ofthe name of Christian. (Hear, hear.) On this ground they stood, and bade defiance to any arm that attempted to move them. They would not allow the name of Christian to those who encouraged slavery, for it was nothing but stealing the livery and cloak of religion to serve the devil.
The lecturer then denounced the fellowship between Christian churches in this country and slaveholders, and said, that so long as this continued the slave had but little hope of emancipation. Slavery existed in the United States because it was popular; it was popular because of the religious sanctions it received; it received religious sanction in the United States because it was not reprobated as it deserved; it was not disreputable in the United States, because it was not so disreputable elsewhere as it ought to be; it was not so disreputable it ought to be because the people of England were not so familiar with the character of the slaveholder as they ought to be; and the people were not so familiar with his character as they ought to be, because those who had the public ear would not consent to instruct them upon the subject as they ought. Englishmen ought to look at this question more than ever, because of the reciprocity and interchange going on between the two countries; because the relaxation of restrictive laws was bringing them into closer contact;9A series of fiscal reforms that drastically reduced prohibitive duties on a wide range of foreign agricultural imports hearkened the dismantling of the old protective system and had led to the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846. Partly in response to British trade concessions, the U.S. Congress passed the Walker tariff (1846), which enlarged the “free list" of imports and reduced the general tariff level by 5 percent. Wilbur D. Jones, The American Problem in British Diplomacy, 1841-1861 (London, 1974), 61. because of the great influx of
British labourers into America; and they should let that country know that Great Britain maintains a high moral sentiment upon the subject of American slavery.
The lecturer then referred to the mean and contemptible prejudice against the blacks, simply on account of their colour, which was one of the greatest hindrances to the onward progress of the anti-slavery principle in the United States, and related several circumstances in his own history illustrative of this. When wishing to go in an omnibus from Boston to Weymouth, the driver, with a savage look, said, “I don’t allow negroes in my omnibus.” Once, when he had paid his money, and was about to enter a menagerie, he received a like denial. On another occasion, he was not allowed to remain in the cabin of a pass-boat, and on asking the reason, the reply was “Because you are a negro, and if you don’t go, I will make you.” “Then,” replied the lecturer, “you’ll have it to do.” (Loud applause.) A number of servants were then called in to assist in getting him out, but he was firmly united to his seat, and in order to get him out, after tearing his clothes to pieces, they had to beat him until his hands were blue, for he was resolved not to leave off with any effort of his own. He would not strike them, for he was a peace man; but he wished to show them that he had a strong sense of right and wrong; and at last they had the pleasure of dragging him out, seat and all. (Laughter and applause.) There were other negroes in the cabin, but they were there as servants, and he was there as a gentleman; they were in their place; he was out of his place.10Cf. Douglass to Garrison, 1 January 1846, in Lib., 30 January 1846. Douglass apparently draws upon his encounters with Jim Crow regulations on New England's Eastern Railroad to color his account of his ejection from the cabin of the steamer Massachusetts. The lecturer then related other instances of ill-treatment which his colour had brought upon him in America, and said that every effort was made to depress the slave, and prevent his progress.
Why, then, did he (the lecturer) go back to America, when in England he was free, and had so many inducements to stay? He had travelled in all parts of this country during a visit of nineteen months, and he had never received the slightest insult on account of his colour. (Applause) He would go back and tell America his history and experience in England. His friends in the north had pressed upon him to stay, and had offered him a house,
with all appliances necessary to support himself and his family. But he preferred to live a life of activity, and to go back to his beloved, though guilty, country; and to suffer affliction with his people rather than live in ease and luxury in England. He preferred to go forth and mingle in the strife for emancipation, to living in this country. (Applause) He went back, not to be treated as in England, but to be laughed at and spurned. Nevertheless, he went gladly—cheerfully—with his zeal kindled, his firmness strengthened, his energy increased, and his determination more and more inflexible, never to remain silent while there was a slave in the United States. (Loud applause.)
The lecturer concluded by thanking the audience for their kind attention; he was unable to say more; and begged to take his seat by bidding them farewell. (Loud and continued applause.)
One of the audience here inquired of the lecturer if the Methodist Episcopalian11Actually Methodist Episcopal. Church of America were allowed to deal in slaves?
Mr. DOUGLAS[S]: They are, both ministers and people—In answer to a further inquiry, the lecturer said that the Bishop of Troy12This is possibly a garbled transcription of Douglass’s remarks, for the episcopal structure of the Methodist Church in the United States recognized no such bishopric. No single bishop among the five Methodist bishops elected by 1846 regularly presided at the annual Troy Conference. In the 1840s the Troy Conference included churches in northeastern New York and western Vermont. None of the bishops seems to have resided in the region at that time, though Bishop Elijah Hedding had made his home in Poughkeepsie, New York, by 1851. Simpson, Cyclopaedia of Methodism, 873; Theodore L. Flood and John W. Hamilton, eds., Lives of Methodist Bishops (New York, 1882), 199. was not a holder of slaves. He knew this because Troy was [in] a Free State, where
there were no slaves allowed to be kept by law. There had been a separation in the churches upon the question of whether bishops might be slaveholders, and they were not allowed to be so, because they had to travel in Free States where there was a strong prejudice against the practice. The great mass of Christians in America were guilty in the matter, and there were but two or three small exceptions to this general rule. There was the Free-Will Baptist Church, the “True Wesleyans,” a small sect who had separated from the Methodists,13The Wesleyan Methodist Connection. and the Covenanters, a small body of Christians inhabiting the Allighanies,14The Reformed Presbyterian Church was centered in the Allegheny region of Pennsylvania. who were inflexible in their opposition to slavery. Then there were the Friends, who, it was scarcely necessary to say, were in no manner connected with slaveholding in a religious capacity; and in whom—to their everlasting credit be it spoken—the fugitive slave
always found a protection and shelter. (Loud applause.) Even the Friends, however, were not so active in the cause of emancipation as he would have them; they did not come up to his standard; but if all religious denominations would take a similar stand to theirs, no slave would drag his chains or rattle his fetters in the United States. (Loud applause.) The Friends were not counted worthy to be admitted into the Evangelical Alliance, but slaveholders were counted worthy. Pray, look on this picture, and look on that—it spoke volumes. (Applause)