to the claims of the slave!" * * *

We are weak here,--out-talked, out-voted. You load our names with
infamy, and shout us down. But our words bide their time. We warn the
living that we have terrible memories, and their sins are never to be
forgotten. We will gibbet the name of every apostate so black and high
that his children's children shall blush to bear it. Yet we bear no
malice,--cherish no resentment. We thank God that the love of fame,
"that last infirmity of noble minds," is shared by the ignoble. In our
necessity, we seize this weapon in the slave's behalf, and teach caution
to the living by meting out relentless justice to the dead. * * *
"These, Mr. Chairman, are the reasons why, we take care that 'the memory
of the wicked shall rot.'"

I have claimed that the antislavery cause has, from the first, been ably
and dispassionately argued, every objection candidly examined, and every
difficulty or doubt anywhere honestly entertained treated with respect.
Let me glance at the literature of the cause, and try not so much, in
a brief hour, to prove this assertion, as to point out the sources from
which any one may satisfy himself of its truth.

I will begin with certainly the ablest and perhaps the most honest
statesman who has ever touched the slave question. Any one who will
examine John Quincy Adams' speech on Texas, in 1838, will see that
he was only seconding the full and able exposure of the Texas plot,
prepared by Benjamin Lundy, to one of whose pamphlets Dr. Channing,
in his "Letter to Henry Clay," has confessed his obligation. Every one
acquainted with those years will allow that the North owes its earliest
knowledge and first awakening on that subject to Mr. Lundy, who made
long journeys and devoted years to the investigation. His labors have
this attestation, that they quickened the zeal and strengthened the
hands of such men as Adams and Channing. I have been told that Mr. Lundy
prepared a brief for Mr. Adams, and furnished him the materials for his
speech on Texas.

Look next at the right of petition. Long before any member of Congress
had opened his mouth in its defence, the Abolition presses and lecturers
had examined and defended the limits of this right with profound
historical research and eminent constitutional ability. So thoroughly
had the work been done, that all classes of the people had made up their
minds about it long before any speaker of eminence had touched it in
Congress. The po