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[63] critical state of affairs; and fully agree with you, that there has never been a time when abolitionists should weigh their words (whether written or spoken) more carefully than now, in order to avoid needless persecution and baffle pro-slavery malignity. Our work, as abolitionists, is still to impeach, censure, and condemn where we must, and approve when we can; but, in such an inflammable state of the country, the injunction: ‘Be ye wise as serpents, and harmless as doves,’ deserves to be carefully heeded. I have always believed that the anti-slavery cause has had aroused against it a great deal of uncalled-for hostility, in consequence of extravagance of speech, and want of tact and good judgment, on the part of some most desirous to promote its advancement; but this is a drawback which has ever affected the success of reformatory movements, and grows out of the incompleteness of human development.

It is very desirable, as you intimate, that the Standard and the Liberator should harmonize, as far as practicable, in the mode of dealing with such correspondents as wish to make use of their columns to express their honest but often badly expressed sentiments on men and things. In common, on the ground of free discussion, we are both often called to publish what, on the score of good taste and fair criticism, we cannot endorse; but I grant a larger indulgence than it would be proper for you to do, seeing that no one else is responsible for the Liberator but myself; whereas, the Standard is the official organ of the American Anti-Slavery Society, and on that account should be conducted with more habitual circumspection. Still, I would have the Standard err on the side of liberality, rather than of exclusiveness, so as to always indicate its fearlessness of the most thorough investigation and the strongest dissent; while, at the same time, I would have you exercise your own good judgment, just as you have hitherto done, in determining what shall appear in the Standard. I do not feel that I can give you any advice, or that you need any.


Lincoln's annual message to Congress in December made a last plea for the scheme of compensated emancipation broached in his July message, and proposed a constitutional amendment by which any State abolishing slavery by or before the year 1900 should be entitled to compensation from the Federal Government. A single point illustrates how far Mr. Lincoln yet was from putting

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