able rights, of which are
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; yet there are
now in this land, more than two millions of human beings,
possessed of the same deathless spirits, and heirs to the
same immortal hopes and destinies with ourselves, who are
nevertheless deprived of these sacred rights, and kept in the
most cruel and abject bondage; a bondage under which human
beings are bred and fattened for the market, and then bought,
sold, mortgaged, leased, bartered, fettered, tasked,
scourged, beaten, killed, hunted even like the veriest
brutes,--nay, made often the unwilling victims of ungodly
lust; while, at the same time, their minds are, by law and
custom, generally shut out from all access to letters, and in
various other ways all their upward tendencies are repressed
and crushed, so as to make their "moral and religious
condition such that they may justly be considered the heathen
of this country;" and since we regard such oppression as one
of the greatest wrongs that man can commit against his
fellow; and existing as it does, and tolerated as it is,
under this free and Christian government, sapping its
foundation, bringing its institutions into contempt among
other nations, thus retarding the march of freedom and
religion, and strengthening the hands of despotism and
irreligion throughout the world; and since we deem it a
duty to ourselves, to our government, to the world, to
the oppressed, and to God, to do all we can to end this
oppression, and to secure an immediate and entire
emancipation of the oppressed; and believe we can act most
efficiently in the case, in the way of combined and organized
action:--Therefore, we, the undersigned, do form ourselves
into a Society for the purpose."

If there was anything for which the abolitionists as a body were
peculiarly distinguished, it was for the perfect uniformity of
sentiment upon all great points connected with the general question of
slavery. This was attributable to the clearness and fullness with
which the principles of the Society had been enunciated. Not so with
the Colonization Society. You quoted the language of the most eminent
of its supporters, but were immediately told that the Society was not
answerable for the views or designs of its advocates. How very
different a course did the Colonizationists pursue towards the
Anti-Sl