. Deep
into the Southern heart has this feeling penetrated. For scores of
years we have been laboring earnestly in our mission. In all this time
we have contributed far more to the greatness of the North than to our
own. Yet all this time we have been assailed, attacked, vilified and
defamed, by the people of the North, from the cradle to the grave, and
you have educated your children to believe us monsters of brutality,
lust and iniquity.

I tell you, that from the time the abolition societies aroused the
latent anti-slavery spirit of the North until now, nothing but evil
has come of the excitement and discussion. It has spread a horrid
influence far and wide; it has for years distilled, and is now
distilling its poison and venom all over the land.

It was under English, yes, British, Anglo-Saxon instigation that it
first commenced. By this instigation it has been fed, been given life,
continuity and power. Think you the English authors of this
instigation had any purpose but to disrupt this Republic? They
professed to regard slavery as an evil and a sin. The fruits of their
action were first manifested in religious societies--first in the
largest churches in New England, in the Presbyterian or Congregational
churches, next the Methodist, then the Baptist, and finally, the venom
spread so widely, its influence separated other churches. What has the
moral influence of this power done? It has made the abstraction of our
slaves a virtue. Societies have been formed for that very purpose,
inciting their members and others, by the vilest motives, to steal our
slaves, to destroy our property.

Nor have they been sufficiently modest to cloak their designs under
the veil of secrecy. These people advocated their pernicious doctrines
openly in your leading cities, even within the consecrated walls of
Fanueil Hall.

Openly among your people, in the very light of day, these efforts were
carried on for the destruction of your sister States. There has not
been an effort of the law nor an exertion of public opinion to put
them down.

These efforts culminated in the actual invasion of my own old honored
State, and your people thought they were doing GOD service in signing
a petition to our authorities for mercy to John Brown and his ruffian
invaders of our soil. And when these men met the just reward of their
crime, there was, throughout the North, in your meetings and your
public prints, expressions of sympathy for these robber