about slavery if you were there?"

"Just as I do here, to be sure," answered the Quaker. "I would advise
the slaves to be honest, industrious, and obedient, and never try to run
away from a good master, unless they were pretty sure of escaping;
because if they were caught, they would fare worse than before. But if
they had a safe opportunity, I should advise them to be off as soon as
possible." In a more serious tone, he added, "And to thee, who claimest
to be a minister of Christ, I would say that thy Master requires thee to
give deliverance to the captive, and let the oppressed go free. My
friend, hast thou a conscience void of offence? When thou liest down at
night, is thy mind always at ease on this subject? After pouring out thy
soul in prayer to thy Heavenly Father, dost thou not feel the outraged
sense of right, like a perpetual motion, restless within thy breast?
Dost thou not hear a voice telling thee it is wrong to hold thy fellow
men in slavery, with their wives and their little ones?"

The preacher manifested some emotion at this earnest appeal, and
confessed that he sometimes had doubts on the subject; though, on the
whole, he had concluded that it was right to hold slaves. One of his
daughters, who was a widow, seemed to be more deeply touched. She took
Friend Hopper's hand, at parting, and said, "I am thankful for the
privilege of having seen you. I never talked with an abolitionist
before. You have convinced me that slave-holding is sinful in the sight
of God. My husband left me several slaves, and I have held them for five
years; but when I return, I am resolved to hold a slave no longer."

Friend Hopper cherished some hope that this preaching and praying
slaveholder would eventually manumit his bondmen; but I had listened to
his conversation, and I thought otherwise. His conscience seemed to me
to be asleep under a seven-fold shield of self-satisfied piety; and I
have observed that such consciences rarely waken.

At the time of the Christians riots, in 1851, when the slave-power
seemed to overshadow everything, and none but the boldest ventured to
speak against it, Friend Hopper wrote an article for the Tribune, and
signed it with his name, in which he maintained that the colored people,
"who defended themselves and their firesides against the lawless
assaults of an armed party of negro-hunters from Maryland," ought not to
be regarded as traitors or murderers "by men who set a just value on
liberty