or asserting it, and especially for
persisting in the assertion after you have tried and failed to make the
proof. You need not be told that persisting in a charge which one does
not know to be true is simply malicious slander.

Some of you admit that no Republican designedly aided or encouraged the
Harper's Ferry affair, but still insist that our doctrines and
declarations necessarily lead to such results. We do not believe it. We
know we hold no doctrine, and make no declaration, which were not held
to and made by "our fathers who framed the government under which we
live." You never dealt fairly by us in relation to this affair. When it
occurred, some important State elections were near at hand, and you were
in evident glee with the belief that, by charging the blame upon us, you
could get an advantage of us in those elections. The elections came, and
your expectations were not quite fulfilled. Every Republican man knew
that, as to himself at least, your charge was a slander, and he was not
much inclined by it to cast his vote in your favour. Republican
doctrines and declarations are accompanied with a continual protest
against any interference whatever with your slaves, or with you about
your slaves. Surely this does not encourage them to revolt. True, we do,
in common with "our fathers who framed the government under which we
live," declare our belief that slavery is wrong; but the slaves do not
hear us declare even this. For anything we say or do, the slaves would
scarcely know there is a Republican party. I believe they would not, in
fact, generally know it but for your misrepresentations of us in their
hearing. In your political contests among yourselves, each faction
charges the other with sympathy with Black Republicanism; and then, to
give point to the charge, defines Black Republicanism to simply be
insurrection, blood, and thunder among the slaves.

Slave insurrections are no more common now than they were before the
Republican party was organized. What induced the Southampton
insurrection, twenty-eight years ago, in which at least three times as
many lives were lost as at Harper's Ferry? You can scarcely stretch your
very elastic fancy to the conclusion that Southampton was "got up by
Black Republicanism." In the present state of things in the United
States, I do not think a general, or even a very extensive, slave
insurrection is possible. The indispensable concert of action cannot be
attained. The slave