ance.

I charge America, before the world and God, with the awful crime of
reducing more than two millions of her own children, born on her own
soil, and entitled to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,"
to the state of _beasts_; withholding from them every right, and
privilege, and social or political blessing, and leaving them the prey
of those who have legislated away the word of life, and the ordinances
of religion, lest their victims should at any time see with their
eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and
should assume the bearing, and the name, and the honors of humanity.

I charge America, "as a nation," with being wickedly, cruelly, and, in
the highest sense, criminally indifferent to the happiness and
elevation of the free colored man; with crushing and persecuting him
in every part of the country; with regarding him as belonging to a
low, degraded, and irreclaimable _caste_, who ought not to call
America his country or his home, but seek in Africa, on the soil of
his ancestors, a refuge from persecution in the land which the
English, and the Dutch, and the French, and the Irish, have wrested
from the _red_ men, and which they now proudly and self complacently,
but most falsely style the _white_ man's country.

I charge all this, and much more, upon the _government_ of America,
upon the _church_ of America, and upon the _people_ of America.

It is idle, to say the least, to talk of rolling the guilt of the
system upon the individual slave-holder, and the individual state.
This cannot fairly be done while the citizens throughout the land are
banded, confederated, united. It is the sin of the entire church. The
Presbyterians throughout the country are one body; the Baptists are
one body; the Episcopalian Methodists are one body; they acknowledge
one another; they cordially fellowship one another. They make the sin,
if it be a sin, theirs, by owning as brethren in Christ Jesus, and
ministers of Him, who was anointed to preach deliverance to the
captives, men who shamelessly traffic in rational, blood-redeemed
souls; nay, even barter away for accursed gold, their own church
members. It is pre-eminently the sin of the church. It is the sin of
the people at large. It is said the laws recognize slavery. I reply,
the entire nation is answerable for those laws. We hear that the
"Constitution can do nothing," that "the Congress can do nothing," to
which I reply, Woe, and shame,