g that it had the power, and should
exercise it, "to suppress the domestic slave-trade between the several
states," and "to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, and in
those portions of our territory which the Constitution has placed under
its exclusive jurisdiction."

After clearly and emphatically avowing the principles underlying the
enterprise, and guarding with scrupulous care the rights of persons and
states under the Constitution, in prosecuting it, the declaration closed
with these eloquent words:--

We also maintain that there are, at the present time, the highest
obligations resting upon the people of the free states to remove slavery
by moral and political action, as prescribed in the Constitution of the
United States. They are now living under a pledge of their tremendous
physical force to fasten the galling fetters of tyranny upon the limbs of
millions in the Southern states; they are liable to be called at any
moment to suppress a general insurrection of the slaves; they authorize
the slave-owner to vote on three fifths of his slaves as property, and
thus enable him to perpetuate his oppression; they support a standing
army at the South for its protection; and they seize the slave who has
escaped into their territories, and send him back to be tortured by an
enraged master or a brutal driver. This relation to slavery is criminal
and full of danger. It must be broken up.

"These are our views and principles,--these our designs and measures.
With entire confidence in the overruling justice of God, we plant
ourselves upon the Declaration of Independence and the truths of divine
revelation as upon the everlasting rock.

"We shall organize anti-slavery societies, if possible, in every city,
town, and village in our land.

"We shall send forth agents to lift up the voice of remonstrance, of
warning, of entreaty and rebuke.

"We shall circulate unsparingly and extensively anti-slavery tracts and
periodicals.

"We shall enlist the pulpit and the press in the cause of the suffering
and the dumb.

"We shall aim at a purification of the churches from all participation in
the guilt of slavery.

"We shall encourage the labor of freemen over that of the slaves, by
giving a preference to their productions; and

"We shall spare no exertions nor means to bring the whole nation to
speedy repentance.

"Our trust for victory is solely in God. We may be personally defeated,
but our principles never.