Anti-Slavery Leaders of North Carolina.
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[282
atrocities they have perpetrated in the legislative halls south of the Potomac. * * * A few years of entire freedom from the cares and perplexities of public life would, we have no doubt, greatly improve both their manners and their morals ; and we suggest that it is a Christian duty, which devolves on the non-slaveholders of the South, to disrobe them of the mantles of office, which they have so worn with disgrace to themselves, injustice to their constituents, and ruin to their country.”' The last sentence brings up the non-slaveholders, whose wrongs he breathed out as fire. He said to the slaveholders “Do you aspire to become the victims of white non-slave holding vengeance by day, and of the barbarous massacre of the negroes by night ? Would you be instrumental in bringing upon yourselves, your wives and your children, a fate too horrible to contemplate ? Shall history cease to cite as an instance of unexampled cruelty the massacre of St. Bartholomew, because the world—the South—shall have furnished a more direful scene of atrocity and carnage? Sirs, we would not wantonly pluck a single hair from your heads ; but we have endured long, we have endured much ; slaves only of the most despicable class would endure more. * * * Out of your effects you have long since overpaid youselves for your negroes, and now, sirs, you must emancipate them—speedily emancipate them or we will emancipate them for you !” This extract smacks of insurrection. In another place this is found : “In reason and in conscience, it must be admitted, the slaves might claim for themselves a reasonable allowance of the proceeds of their labor. If they were to demand an equal share of all the property, real and personal, which has been accumulated or produced through their effort, heaven, we believe, would recognize them as honest claimants.” These sentiments seemingly grew out of a commendable sympathy for the slaves, and they had a certain justification in facts, yet it is impossible 1
2
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1 3
The Impending Crisis, pp. 131-2. Ibid., p. 142.
2
Ibid., p. 106.