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[382] myself, I have not been so fortunate. With a price set upon my head by one of the Southern States of the Union—outlawed everywhere in the slaveholding South for my hatred of slavery —you will pardon me if I am somewhat lacking in loyalty to the existing Union. (Laughter.)

The Union! What is it? Where is it? Where, as the uncompromising friends of liberty, will you find protection under it? Gentlemen, look well to your language; use it intelligently and truly. The two great pro-slavery parties in the land join with you in glorifying this Union, and pledging to maintain it as a slavery-sustaining compact. If you use the term “Union” in the ordinary political sense, then I ask how it happens that you who are pledged to give [no] support to slavery are thus in perfect agreement with those parties? If you do not, then I ask where is the Union, and what do you mean by preserving it? Why, are you not conscious of the fact that in South Carolina, in Alabama, in any slaveholding State, this anti-slavery gathering would not be tolerated? We should all be deemed worthy of Lynch law, and in all probability be subjected to a coat of tar and feathers! What a glorious Union it is that we are enjoying! How worthy of preservation!

Alas! the Union is but another name for the iron reign of the Slave Power. We have no common country, as yet. God grant we may have! We have no common Union, as yet. God grant we may have! We shall have it when the jubilee comes—and not till then.

The American Anti-Slavery Society met in New York1 city at the Chinese Assembly Room on May 11, 1853, amid the utmost quiet. Calhoun, and Clay, and Webster had, as Mr. Garrison pointed out, been translated since 1850.2 Was there no one to give the signal to Rynders to save the Union once more by mobbing the abolitionists away for another term of years? Could Mr. Garrison, unchecked, mention as signs of progress the blotting out of those pillars of the Slave Power, the Jerry rescue, the armed stand against the Fugitive Slave Law at Christiana, the success of Uncle Tom's Cabin? So it appeared. Douglass, too, was there, but where was his “halfbrother” Ante, p. 294.? Dr. Furness's place was supplied by Henry Ward Beecher, who made his first speech on an abolition3

1 Lib. 23:[78], 81.

2 Lib. 23.81.

3 Lib. 23:[82].

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