An Address, Delivered on the Fourth of July, 1836, at Pine Street Church, Boston, in the Morning, and at Salem, in the Afternoon: By Request of the Friends to the Immediate Abolition of Slavery (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from An Address, Delivered on the Fourth of July, 1836, at Pine Street Church, Boston, in the Morning, and at Salem, in the Afternoon: By Request of the Friends to the Immediate Abolition of Slavery

The glorious Declaration of American Independence, Of which every citizen of these United States has been so proud, con tains this very sentence. It even stands at the head Of it, as the starting point, the grand reason Of all the toils and suffer ings Of our fathers, to throw off what they regarded as the yoke Of oppression. This bold and fearless declaration of the equal rights Of men, stands imprinted upon the escutcheon Of our country, in letters which the world may read. Yet while we present it to the eyes Of all mankind, and make it our glory to urge it upon their attention, as the grand principle, the standing rule by which we are determined to live, and in defence of which we mean to die, we bind two and a half mil lions Of our fellow-men in chains. We declare that they have been created with rights equal to ours, that our Maker endow ed them with the same rich inheritance which he has given us; and then we strip them Of all their rights, and make them, so far as we can do it, beasts, instead Of men. We declare, that liberty and the pursuit of happiness belong to them inalienably, as the gift of God, and then we put a yoke on their neck, a fetter on their heel, and apply the scourge to their back, and wrench from them the fruit of all their toil. Such is America, in the eye of the world.

Were I to draw a picture Of the exact attitude in which our country stands before the nations of the earth I would Show you a man standing erect, his head uplifted as if conscious of much dignity and self-importance, wearing a crown of large dimensions, on which should be emblazoned, in letters of gold.

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