they can never be carried up. They are the integral elements of associated human life. We demand, and have a right to demand, of the Christian men of the South, that they shall revolutionize the moral condition of the slave in this regard.

I stand up in behalf of two million women who are without a voice, to declare that there ought to be found in Christianity, somewhere, an influence that shall protect their right to their own persons; and that their purity shall stand on some other ground than the caprice of their masters. I demand that the Christian Church, both North and South, shall bear a testimony in behalf of marriage among the slaves, which shall make it as inviolable as marriage among the whites. It is not to be denied that another code of morals prevails upon the plantation than that which prevails in the plantation house. So long as husband and wife are marriageable commodities, and to be sold apart, to form new connections, there can be no such thing as sanctity in wedlock.

Let it be known in New York that a man has two wives, and there is no church so feeble of conscience that they will not instantly eject him; and the civil law will instantly visit him with penalty. But the communicants of slave churches not only live with a second, while their first companion is yet alive, but with a third, and fourth; nor is it any disqualification for church membership. The Church and the State wink at it. It is a part of the commercial necessity of the system. If you will sell men, you must not be too nice about

their moral virtues.

A wedding, among this unhappy people, is but a name a mere form, to content their conscience, or their love of imitating their superiors. And every auctioneer in their community has the power to put asunder whom God has joined. And marriage is as movable as misfortune itself. The bankruptcy of their owner is the bankruptcy of the marriage relation, in half the slaves on his plantation.

Neither is there any Gospel that has been permitted to rebuke these things. There is no church that I have ever known in the South, that bears testimony against them. Neither will the churches in the North, as a body, take upon themselves the responsibility of bearing witness against them.

I go further: I declare that there must be a Christian public sentiment, which shall make the family inviolate. Men sometimes say, "It is rarely the case that families are separated." It is false! It is false! There is not a slave mart that does not bear testimony, ten thousand times over, against such an assertion. Children are bred like colts and calves, and are dispersed like them.

It is in vain to preach a Gospel to slaves that leaves out personal chastity in man and woman, or that leaves this purity subject to another's control! that leaves out the sanctity of the marriage state, and the unity and inviolability of the family. And yet no Gospel has borne such a testimony in favor of them, as to arouse the conscience of the South! If ministers will not preach liberty to the captive, they ought at least to preach the indispensable necessity of household virtue! If they will not call upon the masters to set their slaves free, they should at least proclaim a Christianity that protects woman, childhood, and household!

The moment a woman stands self-poised in her own purity; the moment man and woman are united together by bonds which cannot be sundered during their earthly life; the moment the right of parents to their children is recognized — that moment there will be a certain sanctity and protection of the Eternal and Divine government resting upon father, and mother, and children; and Slavery will have had its death-blow struck! You cannot make Slavery profitable after these three conditions are secured; the moment you make slaves serfs they become a difficult legal tender, and are uncurrent in the market; and families are so cumbrous, so difficult to support, so

expensive that owners are compelled, from reasons of pecuniary interest, to drop the system.

Therefore, if you will only disseminate the truths of the Gospel; if, getting timid priests out of the way, and lying societies, whose cowardice slanders the Gospel which they pretend to diffuse, you bring a whole solar flood of revelation to bear upon the virtues and practical morals of the slave, you will begin to administer a remedy which will inevitably heal the evil, if God designs to cure it by moral means.

6. Among the means to be employed for promoting the liberty of the Slave, we must not fail to include the power of true Christian prayer. When Slavery shall cease, it will be oy such instruments and influences as shall exhibit God's hand and heart in the work. Its downfall will have been achieved so largely through natural causes, so largely through reasons as broad as nations, that it will be apparent to all men that God led on the emancipation; man being only one element among the many. Therefore, we have every encouragement to direct our prayers without ceasing to God that he will restrain the wrath of man, inspire men with wisdom, overrule all laws, and control the commerce of the globe, so that the poor may become rich, that the bond may become free, that the ignorant may become wise, that the master and slave may respect each other, and that, at length, we may be an evangelized and Christian people. May God, in his own way and time, speed the day!

Lom Buchen

"THAT John Brown was wrong, in his attempt to break up Slavery by violence, few will deny. But it was a wrong committed by a good man-by one who dreaded the vengeance of the Almighty and forgot His long-suffering. His errors were the result of want of patience and want of imagination, and he paid the penalty for them. He had faith in the divine ordering of the affairs of this world; but he forgot that the processes by which evils like that of Slavery are done away, are thousand-year old, — that, to be effectual, they must be slow, that wrong is no remedy for wrong. He was an anachronism, and met the fate of all anachronisms that strive to stem and divert the present current, by modes which the world has outgrown." THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

MR.

III.

SPEECH OF CHARLES O'CONOR.*

R. CHARLES O'CONOR was received with loud applause. He said:

Fellow-Citizens, I cannot express to you the delight which I experience in beholding in this great city so vast an assembly of my fellow-citizens, convened for the purpose stated in your resolutions. (Voices-"Louder! louder!")

It may be proper to say, gentlemen, that I cannot speak any louder than I do at this instant; and if it be not equal to your desires, I can only cease to employ my feeble voice. (Cries of "Go on! go on!") I am delighted, gentlemen, beyond measure, to behold at this time so vast an assembly of my fellow-citizens, responding to the call of a body so respectable as the twenty-thousand New Yorkers who have convened this meeting. If any thing can give assurance to those who doubt, and confidence to those who may have had misgivings as to the permanency of our institutions, and the solidity of the support which the people of the North are prepared to give them, it is that in the Queen City of the New Worldthe capital of North America — there is assembled a meeting so large, so respectable, and so unanimous as this meeting has shown itself to be in receiving sentiments, which, if observed, must protect our Union from destruction, and even from danger. (Applause.)

* Delivered at the Union Meeting held at the Academy of Music, New York, December, 19, 1859. (281)

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