malice, not for a selfish purpose, not to do
them an injury, not to cease warning, exhorting, reproving them for
their crimes, not to leave the perishing bondman to his fate--O no!
But to clear our skirts of innocent blood--to give the oppressor no
countenance--to signify our abhorrence of injustice and cruelty--to
testify against an ungodly compact--to cease striking hands with
thieves and consenting with adulterers--to make no compromise with
tyranny--to walk worthily of our high profession--to increase our
moral power over the nation--to obey God and vindicate the Gospel of
his Son--to hasten the downfall of slavery in America, and throughout
the world!

We are not acting under a blind impulse. We have carefully counted the
cost of this warfare, and are prepared to meet its consequences. It
will subject us to reproach, persecution, infamy--it will prove a
fiery ordeal to all who shall pass through it--it may cost us our
lives. We shall be ridiculed as fools, scorned as visionaries, branded
as disorganizers, reviled as madmen, threatened and perhaps punished
as traitors. But we shall bide our time. Whether safety or peril,
whether victory or defeat, whether life or death be ours, believing
that our feet are planted on an eternal foundation, that our position
is sublime and glorious, that our faith in God is rational and
steadfast, that we have exceeding great and precious promises on which
to rely, THAT WE ARE IN THE RIGHT, we shall not falter nor be
dismayed, "though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be
carried into the midst of the sea,"--though our ranks be thinned to
the number of "three hundred men." Freemen! are you ready for the
conflict? Come what may, will you sever the chain that binds you to a
slaveholding government, and declare your independence? Up, then, with
the banner of revolution! Not to shed blood--not to injure the person
or estate of any oppressor--not by force and arms to resist any
law--not to countenance a servile insurrection--not to wield any
carnal weapons! No--ours must be a bloodless strife, excepting _our_
blood be shed--for we aim, as did Christ our leader, not to destroy
men's lives, but to save them--to overcome evil with good--to conquer
through suffering for righteousness' sake--to set the captive free by
the potency of truth!

Secede, then, from the government. Submit to its exactions, but pay
it no allegiance, and give it no voluntary aid. Fill no offices under
it.