NO UNION WITH SLAVEHOLDERS.
‘ The United States Constitution is a ‘covenant with death, and an agreement with hell.’
‘The free States are the guardians and essential supports of slavery. We are the jailers and constables of the institution…… On this subject, OUR FATHERS, IN FRAMING THE CONSTITUTION, SWERVED FROM THE RIGHT. We their children, at the end of half a century, see the path of duty more clearly than they, and must walk in it. To this point the public mind has long been tending, and the times has come for looking at it fully, dispassionately, and ,with manly and Christian resolution…No blessing of the Union can be a compensation for taking part in the enslaving of our fellow-creatures; nor ought this bond to be perpetuated, if experience shall demonstrate that it can only continue through our participation in wrong doing. To this conviction the free States are tending.’ William Ellery Channning.
(Liberator, October 16, 1857, masthead)
