been witnessed upon earth-to deliver our land from its deadliest curse-to wipe out the foulest stain which rests upon our national escutcheon-and to secure to the colored population of the United States all the rights and privileges which belong to them as men, and as Americans-come what may to our persons, our interests, or our reputation-whether we live to witness the triumph of LIBERTY, JUSTICE, and HUMANITY, or perish untimely as martyrs in this great, benevolent, and holy cause. Done in Philadelphia, this sixth day of December, A. D., 1833.

CONSTITUTION OF THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY.

PREAMBLE.

WHEREAS the Most High God "hath made of one blood all nations of men to dwell on all the face of the earth," and hath commanded them to love their neighbors as themselves; and whereas our national existence is based upon this principle, as recognised in the Declaration of Independence, "that all mankind are created equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness ;" and whereas, after the lapse of nearly sixty years, since the faith and honor of the American people were pledged to this avowal, before Almighty God, and the world, nearly one-sixth part of the nation are held in bondage by their fellow-citizens; and whereas slavery is contrary to the principles of natural justice, of our republican form of government, and of the Christian religion, and is destructive of the prosperity of the country, while it is endangering the peace, union and liberties of the States; and whereas we believe it the duty and interest of the masters, immediately to emancipate their slaves, and that no scheme of expatriation, either voluntary or by compulsion, can remove this great and increasing evil; and whereas we believe that it is practicable, by appeals to the consciences, hearts, and interests of the people, to awaken a public sentiment throughout the nation, that will be opposed to the continuance of slavery in any part of the republic, and by effecting the speedy abolition of slavery, prevent a general convulsion; and whereas we believe we owe it to the oppressed, to our fellow-citizens who hold slaves, to our whole country, to posterity, and to God, to do all that is lawfully in our power to bring about the extinction of slavery, we do hereby agree, with a prayerful reliance on the Divine aid, to form ourselves into a society, to be governed by the following

CONSTITUTION.

ART. I. This Society shall be called the AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY. ART. II. The object of this Society is the entire abolition of slavery in the United States. While it admits that each state in which slavery exists, has, by the Constitution of the United States, the exclusive right to legislate in regard to its abolition in said state, it shall aim to convince all our fellow-citizens, by arguments addressed to their understandings and consciences, that slaveholding is a heinous crime in the sight of God, and that the duty, safety, and best interests of all concerned, require its immediate abandonment, without expatriation. The Society will also endeavor, in a constitutional way, to influence Congress to put an end to the domestic slavetrade, and to abolish slavery in all those portions of our common country which come under its control, especially in the District of Columbia,-and likewise to prevent the extension of it to any state that may be hereafter admitted to the Union. ART. III. This Society shall aim to elevate the character and condition of the people of color, by encouraging their intellectual, moral, and religious improvement, and by removing public prejudice, that thus they may, according to their intellectual and moral worth, share an equality with the whites, of civil and religious privileges; but this Society will never, in any way, countenance the oppressed in vindicating their rights by resorting to physical force.

ART. IV. Any person who consents to the principles of this Constitution, who contributes to the funds of this Society, and is not a slaveholder, may be a member of this Society, and shall be entitled to vote at the meetings.

ART. V. The officers of this Society shall be a President, Vice Presidents, a Secretary of Foreign Correspondence, a Secretary of Domestic Correspondence, a Recording Secretary, a Treasurer, and a Board of Managers, composed of the

ADDRESS TO THE PUBLIC.

105 above, and not less than ten other members of the Society. They shall be annually elected by the members of the Society, and five shall constitute a quorum.

ART. VI.-The Board of Managers shall annually elect an Executive Committee, to consist of not less than five, nor more than twelve members, which shall be located in New York, who shall have power to enact their own by-laws, fill any vacancy in their body, employ agents, determine what compensation shall be paid to agents, and to the Corresponding Secretaries, direct the Treasurer in the application of all moneys, and call special meetings of the Society. They shall make arrangements for all meetings of the Society, make an annual written report of their doings, the income, expenditures, and funds of the Society, and shall hold stated meetings, and adopt the most energetic measures in their power to advance the objects of the Society.

ART. VII.-The President shall preside at all meetings of the Society, or in his absence, one of the Vice Presidents, or, in their absence, a President pro tem. The Corresponding Secretaries shall conduct the correspondence of the Society. The Recording Secretary shall notify all meetings of the Society, and of the Executive Committee, and shall keep records of the same in separate books. The Treasurer shall collect the subscriptions, make payments at the direction of the Executive Committee, and present a written and audited account to accompany the annual report.

ART. VIII.-The annual meeting of the Society shall be held each year at such time and place as the Executive Committee may direct, when the accounts of the Treasurer shall be presented, the annual report read, appropriate addresses delivered, the Officers chosen, and such other business transacted as shall be deemed expedient. A special meeting shall always be held on the Tuesday immediately preceding the second Thursday in May, in the city of New York, at ten o'clock, A. M., provided the annual meeting be not held there at that time.

ART. IX.-Any Anti-Slavery Society, or association, founded on the same principles, may become auxiliary to this Society. The Officers of each Auxiliary Society shall be ex-officio members of the Parent Institution, and shall be entitled to deliberate and vote in the transaction of its concerns.

ART. X.-This Constitution may be amended, at any annual meeting of the Society, by a vote of two-thirds of the members present, provided the amendments proposed have been previously submitted, in writing, to the Executive Committee.

ADDRESS TO THE PUBLIC.

In behalf of the American Anti-Slavery Society, we solicit the candid attention of the public to the following declaration of our principles and objects. Were the charges which are brought against us, made only by individuals who are interested in the continuance of Slavery, and by such as are influenced solely by unworthy motives, this address would be unnecessary; but there are those who merit and possess our esteem, who would not voluntarily do us injustice, and who have been led by gross misrepresentations to believe that we are pursuing measures at variance not only with the constitutional rights of the South, but with the precepts of humanity and religion. To such we offer the following explanations and assurances.

1st. We hold that Congress has no more right to abolish slavery in the southern states than in the French West India Islands. Of course we desire no national legislation on the subject.

2d. We hold that slavery can only be lawfully abolished by the Legislatures of the several states in which it prevails, and that the exercise of any other than moral influence, to induce such abolition, is unconstitutional.

3d. We believe that Congress has the same right to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, that the state governments have within their respective jurisdictions, and that it is their duty to efface so foul a blot from the national escutcheon. 4th. We believe that American citizens have the right to express and publish their opinions of the constitutions, laws, and institutions of any and every state and nation under Heaven; and we mean never to surrender the liberty of speech, of the press, or of conscience--blessings we have inherited from our fathers, and which we intend, as far as we are able, to transmit unimpaired to our children.

5th. We have uniformly deprecated all forcible attempts on the part of the slaves

to recover their liberty. And were it in our power to address them, we would exhort them to observe a quiet and peaceful demeanor, and would assure them that no insurrectionary movement on their part, would receive from us the slightest aid

or countenance.

6th. We would deplore any servile insurrection, both on account of the calamities which would attend it, and on account of the occasion which it might furnish of increased severity and oppression.

7th. We are charged with sending incendiary publications to the South. If by the term incendiary is meant publications containing arguments and facts to prove slavery to be a moral and political evil, and that duty and policy require its immediate abolition, the charge is true. But if this term is used to imply publications encouraging insurrection, and designed to excite the slaves to break their fetters, the charge is utterly and unequivocally false. We beg our fellow-citizens to notice, that this charge is made without proof, and by many who confess that they have never read our publications, and that those who make it, offer to the public no evidence from our writings in support of it.

8th. We are accused of sending our publications to the slaves, and it is asserted that their tendency is to excite insurrections. Both the charges are false. These publications are not intended for the slaves; and were they able to read them, they would find in them no encouragement to insurrection.

9th. We are accused of employing agents in the slave states to distribute our publications. We have never had one such Agent. We have sent no packages of our papers to any person in those states for distribution, except to five respectable resident citizens, at their own request. But we have sent, by mail, single papers addressed to public officers, editors of newspapers, clergymen, and others. If, therefore, our object is to excite the slaves to insurrection, the MASTERS are our agents!

10th. We believe slavery to be sinful, injurious to this, and to every other country in which it prevails; we believe immediate emancipation to be the duty of every slaveholder, and that the immediate abolition of slavery, by those who have the right to abolish it, would be safe and wise. These opinions we have freely expressed, and we certainly have no intention to refrain from expressing them in future, and urging them upon the consciences and hearts of our fellow-citizens who hold slaves or apologize for slavery.

11th. We believe that the education of the poor is required by duty, and by a regard for the permanency of our republican institutions. There are thousands and tens of thousands of our fellow citizens, even in the free states, sunk in abject poverty, and who, on account of their complexion, are virtually kept in ignorance, and whose instruction in certain cases is actually prohibited by law! We are anxious to protect the rights, and to promote the virtue and happiness of the colored portion of our population, and on this account we have been charged with a design to encourage intermarriages between the whites and blacks. This charge has been repeatedly, and is now again denied; while we repeat that the tendency of our sentiments is to put an end to the criminal amalgamation that prevails wherever slavery exists.

12th. We are accused of acts that tend to a dissolution of the Union, and even of wishing to dissolve it. We have never "calculated the value of the Union," because we believe it to be inestimable; and that the abolition of slavery will remove the chief danger of its dissolution; and one of the many reasons why we cherish, and will endeavor to preserve the Constitution, is, that it restrains Congress from making any law "abridging the freedom of speech or of the press."

Such, fellow-citizens, are our principles. Are they unworthy of Republicans and of Christians? Or are they in truth so atrocious, that in order to prevent their diffusion, you are yourselves willing to surrender, at the dictation of others, the invaluable privilege of free discussion, the very birthright of Americans? Will you, in order that the abominations of slavery may be concealed from public view, and that the capital of your republic may continue to be, as it now is, under the sanction of Congress, the great slave mart of the American continent, consent that the general government, in acknowledged defiance of the Constitution and laws, shall appoint, throughout the length and breadth of your land, ten thousand censors of the press, each of whom shall have the right to inspect every document you may commit to the post-office, and to suppress every pamphlet and newspaper, whether

NEW-ENGLAND ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY.

107

religious or political, which in his sovereign pleasure he may adjudge to contain an incendiary article? Surely we need not remind you, that if you submit to such an encroachment on your liberties, the days of our republic are numbered, and that although abolitionists may be the first, they will not be the last victims offered at the shrine of arbitrary power.

The constitution and the laws have left to us means to spread and to carry into effect the doctrine of human rights, of universal liberty. The law, at least, in the free states, allows the use of all means, except those which our own conscience would forbid; the constitution of the New-England Anti-Slavery Society permits no others than such as are sanctioned by law, humanity and religion. It is enough that we have freedom to speak and to print; freedom peacefully to assemble, and associate, to consult, and to petition the government of the Union as well as the legislature of every state, and thus by individual and united exertion, to act upon the public mind. Thus armed with all the legitimate weapons of truth, we feel bound in conscience never to lay them down until the principle that man can hold property in man is effaced from our statute books, and held in abhorrence by public opinion. After the most careful examination, we are convinced that slavery is unjust in itself, and cannot be justified by any laws or circumstances; that it wars against Christianity, and is condemned by the Declaration of our Independence. We are convinced that it is injurious to every branch of industry, and more injurious still to the mind and character both of the master and the slave. Its existence is the chief cause of all our political dissensions; it tends to unsettle the groundwork of our government, so that every institution, founded on the common ground of our Union, is like an edifice on a volcanic soil, ever liable to have its foundation shaken, and the whole structure consumed by subterraneous fire. The danger of a servile and a civil war is gaining every year, every day; for the annual increase of the slave population is more than sixty thousand; and every day about two hundred children are born into slavery. As the more northern of the slave states, seeing the advantages of free labor, dispose of their slaves in a more southern market, and by degrees abolish servitude, the whole slave population, and with it the danger of a terrible revolution, are crowded together in the more southern states. Under all these threatening circumstances, what have the southern states, what has congress done, to avert the impending calamity from the Union? Congress, which has full and exclusive power to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, and in the territories, and to abolish the domestic as well as the foreign slave trade, shrinks from touching the subject. The fear of instant difficulties to be encountered, overcomes the more patriotic fear of the ever increasing evils engendered by improvident delay, which reserves to our descendants, if we should escape them, the inevitable consequences of our own culpable neglect.

And what has been done in the slaveholding states to prepare the great change, from a corrupt to a sound and vigorous state of society? There are, indeed, benevolent individuals endeavoring to elevate their slaves by oral instruction, and by allowing them to cultivate portions of land for the joint profit of the master and the laborers. But the law and the general practice, so far from endeavoring to diminish,

are calculated rather to increase the evil in order to render it more secure, to imbrute the slave more and more, and extinguish in him every aspiration and pretension to be a man. Hence the laws against teaching a slave have become more numerous, and the penalties more severe, particularly in those states in which the colored population is continually gaining upon the white. They refuse to free the slaves on the ground of their not being fitted for the proper use of freedom; and they refuse to prepare them for it, because the preparatory course would induce them to throw off the yoke instantly.

In this hopeless state of things, a few individuals, deeply impressed with the great and increasing evil of slavery, have thought it their duty to unite their efforts to undeceive the public mind, to rouse the fortunate heirs of freedom to a sense of their own obligation to extend and secure the blessings they possess. They saw that the most powerful men in the nation were inactive, either because the magnitude of the evil led them to doubt the possibility of finding an adequate remedy, or because they feared to disturb the political or commercial connexions between the North and the South, or because they were prejudiced themselves, or thought it a hopeless attempt to conquer the prejudice of others.-The disinterested devotion of the few who went forth to prepare the way for the gospel of universal freedom by teaching that slavery is a sin, of which all the people of this country are more or less guilty, and ought immediately to repent and to reform-the generous efforts of a few ardent minds have kindled the philanthropic sympathies of many.

The hostility, and still more the indifference with which the sentiments of the first champions of immediate abolition, were received by the majority of influential men in this country, may have betrayed some of them occasionally into unguarded and intemperate expressions. Still, the people at large begin to feel that the object, as well as the motives, of the friends of the oppressed are right; and as soon as the conviction of a good cause has once unsealed the deep fountains of the heart, and has engaged the energies of a free people, it is as vain to attempt to check or divert their onward course, as to coax or force Niagara to roll back its mighty waters from Lake Ontario to Erie.

But the dissemination of Anti-Slavery sentiments, it is said, will be productive of a servile and civil war, and terminate in the dissolution of the Union. Now if there is any thing in the theory of government that can be considered as an unquestionable truth, it is the principle that free discussion of every thing that concerns the constitution and government, is the indispensable condition, the conservative principle of every republic. The constitution of our country has fully recognised this conservative principle, in ordaining that no law shall be enacted "abridging the freedom of speech or of the press." And what more have abolitionists done, what else do they aim at, than free discussion of a part of our social system? To collect and disseminate correct information, to argue, to answer objections, and to advise— these, and no other means, are authorized by the constitution of any Anti-Slavery Society in the United States. However strongly and urgently the sin and misery of servitude have been set forth in the writings that have appeared with the sanction of these Societies, yet they have never countenanced, but always most earnestly disapproved the use of force, and the desperate recourse to insurrection. They have appealed to the conscience and the self-interest both of the slaveholder and the slave; and on the ground of religion as well as worldly prudence, they have urged the masters to give up of their own accord, their despotic power, and the slaves to be subject to their masters, with a religious trust that the voice of reason and Christianity will ere long overcome the partiality of the law which makes the enjoyment of the rights of man to depend on the color of his skin.

You who discern the signs of the time, and are guided by them-do you remember how your forefathers left their father-land, to seek liberty among strangers and savages? Do you remember how the sons of the Pilgrims rather ventured their lives and their all in desperate fight; than consent to pay a paltry tax, because imposed by unlawful authority? Did not your fathers sign the Declaration of Independence and human liberty? And did not the same spirit that gave you strength to overcome the bands of oppressors and mercenaries in your devoted land-follow the fugitives to their own homes, and wake the nations of the old world? France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Poland, England, have felt the touch of the redeeming angel. A spirit of keen inquiry is going through the world, to examine every creed and every charter; it does not believe in the "divine right of