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BONDAGE AND FREEDOM

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itation seems to be the final revival. on a broader and grander scale than
ever before, of the question which they vainly attempted to suppress forever. The fugitive slave bill has especially been of positive service to the
anti-slavery movement. It has illustrated before all the people the horrible
character of slavery toward the slave, in hunting him down in a free state,
and tearing him away from wife and children, thus setting its claims higher
than marriage or parental claims. It has revealed the arrogant and overbearing spirit of the slave states toward the free states; despising their principles-- shocking their feelings of humanity, not only by bringing before
them the abominations of slavery, but by attempting to make them parties
to the crime. It has called into exercise among the colored people, the
hunted ones, a spirit of manly resistance well calculated to surround them
with a bulwark of sympathy and respect hitherto unknown. For men are always disposed to respect and defend rights, when the victims of oppression
stand up manfully for themselves.

There is another element of power added to the anti-slavery movement.
of great importance; it is the conviction, becoming every day more general
and universal, that slavery must he abolished at the south, or it will demoralize and destroy liberty at the north. It is the nature of slavery to beget a
state of things all around it favorable to its own continuance. This fact, connected with the system of bondage, is heginning to he more fully realized.
The slave-holder is not satisfied to associate with men in the church or in
the state, unless he can thereby stain them with the blood of his slaves. To
be a slave-holder is to be a propagandist from necessity; for slavery can
only live by keeping down the under-growth morality which nature supplies. Every new-born white babe comes armed from the Eternal presence,
to make war on slavery. The heart of pity, which would melt in due time
over the brutal chastisements it sees inflicted on the helpless, must be hardened. And this work goes on every day in the year, and every hour in the
day.

What is done at home is being done also abroad here in the north. And
even now the question may be asked, have we at this moment a single free
state in the Union? The alarm at this point will become more general. The
slave power must go on in its career of exactions. Give, give, will be its cry,
till the timidity which concedes shall give place to courage, which shall resist. Such is the voice of experience, such has been the past, such is the present, and such will he that future, which, so sure as man is man, will come.
Herc I leave the subject; and I leave off where I began, consoling myself
and congratulating the friends of freedom upon the fact that the anti-slavery