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Political Action

Political Action image
Parent Issue
Day
22
Month
September
Year
1841
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

Eight years ago I learned from a regu- lar perusal of the United States Telegraph, under the editorship of Duff Green, and at that time, the organ of John C. Calboun and John Tyler, that the advocates of domestic slavery dreaded and deprecated the discussion at the North, mainly through fear that it would uventually lead to a formidable political action. VV hile we, few in numbers, and fcebfe in resources, were holding our meetings and issuing our publication, they were luoking forward with' manifest alarm to our futuro influence at the ballot box. - Whoever has walched carefully the tone of the Southern press, and the speeches of Southern men in and out ol Congress, cannot have failed to perceive that antisslavery discussion has been chiefly deprecated as the inevitable preliminary of anf i-slavefy action. When Henry Clay in the ü. S. Senate made his offering to slavery, what was the crowning iniquity, the all-alarming transgression of the abohtonÍ6ts in the eye of that saga ciouB watchman on the walla of "the institution?" They were carrying theirfanatkism to the ballot box ! What was the language of the miserable At her ton and his colleagues of New Hampshire, when returmng to look their constituent s 'm the face, after meanly treading their right of petilion in the dust of the Re presen tatives' Hall? Why, that they had no sort of objection to moral suasion on the subject; they only objected to the carrying of abolition into politics! - Are we so blind that we cannot draw an inference from all this? Is it not manifest that tho slaveholder and his Northern fnends have all along dreaded our reeort to our citizen's rights for the redress of our own grievances, and the alave's wrong! That they listen to our abstract arguments, discussions and resolution8, as fearful notes of preparation for 4the Ierse rhetorie of the ballotbox."