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not temporary or local in its character.
It belongs to all times, and to all countries.
It is an everlasting link in the golden chain of Human Progress.
It is a part of the great Movement, under whose strong pulsations all Christendom now shakes from side to side.
It is a cause, which, though long kept in check throughout our country, as also in Europe, now confronts the people and their rulers, demanding to be heard.
It can no longer be avoided, or silenced.
To every man in the land it now says, with clear penetrating voice, ‘Are you for Freedom, or are you for slavery?’
And every man in the land must answer this question when he votes.
The next point to which attention was directed, was the Anti-slavery sentiments of the Founders of the
Republic, where a plain recital of facts is given.
At the period of the Declaration of Independence there were upwards of half a million of colored persons held in slavery in the United States.
These unhappy people were originally stolen from Africa, or were the children of those who had been so stolen, and, though distributed throughout the whole country, were to be found in the largest numbers in the Southern States.
But the spirit of Freedom was then abroad in the land.
The fathers of the Republic, leaders in the War of Independence, were struck with the impious inconsistency of an appeal for their own liberties while holding in bondage their fellowmen, ‘guilty of a skin not colored like their own.’
In private and in public they did not hesitate to bear their testimony against the atrocity.
The following resolution, passed at Darien, in Georgia, in 1775, and preserved in the American Archives, (Vol.
I., 4th series, p. 1134,) speaks, in tones worthy of freemen, the sentiments of the time: ‘We, therefore, the representatives of the extensive district of Darien, in the Colony of Georgia, having now assembled in Congress, by authority and free choice of the inhabitants of the said District, now freed from their fetters, do resolve;—To show the world that we are not influenced by any contracted or interested motives, but by a general philanthropy for all mankind, of whatever climate, language, or complexion, we hereby declare our disapprobation and abhorrence of the unnatural practice of Slavery in America, however the uncultivated state of our country, or other specious arguments may plead for it; a practice founded in injustice and cruelty, and highly dangerous to our liberties as well as lives, debasing part of our fellow-creatures below men, and corrupting ’
