hands with thieves and consenting with adulterers--to make no
compromise with tyranny--to walk worthily of our high profession--to
increase our moral power over the nation--to obey God and vindicate
the gospel of his Son--hasten the downfall of slavery in America,
and throughout the world!

We are not acting under a blind impulse. We have carefully counted
the cost of this warfare, and are prepared to meet its consequences.
It will subject us to reproach, persecution, infamy--it will prove a
fiery ordeal to all who shall pass through it--it may cost us our
lives. We shall be ridiculed as fools, accused as visionaries,
branded as disorganizers, reviled as madmen, threatened and perhaps
punished as traitors. But we shall bide our time. Whether safety
or peril, whether victory or defeat, whether life or death be ours,
believing that our feet are planted on an eternal foundation, that
our position is sublime and glorious, that our faith in God is
rational and steadfast, that we have exceeding great and precious
promises on which to rely, THAT WE ARE IN THE RIGHT, we shall not
falter nor be dismayed, "though the earth be removed, and though the
mountains be carried into the midst of the sea,"--though our ranks
be thinned to the number of "three hundred men." Freemen! are you
ready for the conflict? Come what may, will you sever the chain that
binds you to a slaveholding government, and declare your independence?
Up, then, with the banner of revolution! Not to shed blood--not to
injure the person or estate of any oppressor--not by force and arms
to resist any law--not to countenance a servile insurrection--not to
wield any carnal weapons! No--ours must be a bloodless strife,
excepting _our_ blood be shed--for we aim, as did Christ our leader,
not to destroy men's lives, but to save them--to overcome evil with
good--to conquer through suffering for righteousness' sake--to set
the captive free by the potency of truth!

Secede, then, from the government. Submit to its exactions, but pay
it no allegiance, and give it no voluntary aid. Fill no offices
under it. Send no senators or representatives to the national or
State legislature; for what you cannot conscientiously perform
yourself, you cannot ask another to perform as your agent. Circulate
a declaration of DISUNION FROM SLAVEHOLDERS, throughout the country.
Hold mass meetings--assemble in conventions--nail your banners to
the mast!

Do you ask what can be done, if yo