he peace of the slave-holding states";
that "man cannot be justly held and used as property"; that the tendency
of slavery is morally, intellectually, and domestically, bad; that
emancipation, however, should not be forced on slave-holders by
governmental interference, but by an enlightened public conscience in
the South (and in the North), if for no other reason, because "slavery
should be succeeded by a friendly relation between master and slave; and
to produce this the latter must see in the former his benefactor and
deliverer." He declined to identify himself with the Abolitionists,
whose motto was "Immediate Emancipation" and whose passionate agitation
he thought unsuited to the work they were attempting. The moderation and
temperance of his presentation of the anti-slavery cause naturally
resulted in some misunderstanding and misstatement of his position, such
as is to be found in Mrs Chapman's _Appendix_ to the _Autobiography of
Harriet Martineau_, where Channing is represented as actually using his
influence on behalf of slavery. In 1837 he published _Thoughts on the
Evils of a Spirit of Conquest, and on Slavery: A Letter on the
Annexation of Texas to the United States_, addressed to Henry Clay, and
arguing that the Texan revolt from Mexican rule was largely the work of
land-speculators, and of those who resolved "to throw Texas open to
slave-holders and slaves"; that the results of annexation must be war
with Mexico, embroiling the United States with England and other
European powers, and at home the extension and perpetuation of slavery,
not alone in Texas but in other territories which the United States,
once started at conquest, would force into the Union. But he still
objected to political agitation by the Abolitionists, preferring
"unremitting appeals to the reason and conscience," and, even after the
prominent part he took in the meeting in Faneuil Hall, called to protest
against the murder of Elijah P. Lovejoy, he wrote to _The Liberator_,
counselling the Abolitionists to "disavow this resort to force by Mr
Lovejoy." Channing's pamphlet _Emancipation_ (1840) dealt with the
success of emancipation in the West Indies, as related in Joseph John
Gurney's _Familiar Letters to Henry Clay of Kentucky, describing a
Winter in the West Indies_ (1840), and added his own advice "that we
should each of us bear our conscientious testimony against slavery," and
that the Free States "abstain as rigidly from the use of pol