Presented by 
 tfie Worsbijjf’ul Company 
 of vjolcstniihs. 
 
 1903 . 
 
TIE DISSOLUTION 
 
 THE AMERICAN UNION, 
 
 DEMANDED BY JUSTICE AND HUMANITY, AS THE INCURABLE 
 , • • ENEMY OF LIBERTY. 
 
 CIIALMERS, CUNNINGHAM, AND CANDLISI1, 
 
 MEMBERS OF THE FREE CHURCH 
 
 fo tT) c !3I)BlitiDiU5t5 nf ©rent Britain mrtt LrrtnnU. 
 By HENRY C. WRIGHT, 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 CHAPMAN, BROTHERS, & Co., 121, NEWGATE STREET, 
 
 SOLD BY GEORGE GALLIE, BUCHANAN STREET; 
 
 EDINBURGH, QUINTIN DALRYMPLE; FREDERICK STREET; 
 
 DUBLIN, RICHARD D. WEBB. 
 
 MDCCCXLVI. r|UW ^ • 
 
 Price Twopence . ’ ^¥3^. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 LETTER 
 
DISSOLUTION OF THE AMERICAN UNION. 
 
 The following Letters were originally addressed to the 
 Editor of the “ Glasgow Argos,” and were inserted in 
 that paper:— 
 
 LETTER I. 
 
 Mahore Cottage, Roseneatii, 
 Mens! m, 1845. 
 
 Sin,—The formation of the existing political Union between 
 the American States, was an insult to God, and an outrage upon 
 man ; and its overthrow is demanded by every consideration of 
 justice and humanity. At a receut meeting of the Glasgow 
 Emancipation Society, a resolution was adopted— 
 
 “ That it is the dnty of the friends of liberty and equal rights in 
 Grout Britain, and throughout the world, to combine, and by (.'Krist¬ 
 ian, peaceful, and Mindless means, to seek the dissolution or the 
 American Union, as the gigantic enemy of freedom, and the rights 
 
 If consistent with the objects of your paper, I should like to 
 occupy its columns to state some facts touching the origin and 
 administration of that national government. 
 
 That the Union is a Slaveholding compact, will be made 
 manifest by the facts to be presented—by which 1 mean, in the 
 language of John Quincy Adams, “ That the preservation, pro¬ 
 pagation, and perpetuation of Slavery, is the vital and animating 
 spirit of the rational Government.” 
 
 THE CONVENTION THAT FRAMED THE CONSTITUTION. 
 
 The Declaration of Independence, in which the Colonies for¬ 
 mally renounced allegiance to Great Britain, was made July 4th, 
 1776. Soon after, July 12lh, Congress appointed a Committee to 
 draw up Articles of Confederation. But this being found inade¬ 
 quate to the wants of the States under their new circumstances, a 
 Convention was called, to meet in Philadelphia in June 1787, to 
 remodel the Government. It continued its sittings in secret ses¬ 
 sions till September 17th. Twelve States were represented in it, 
 eight of which were Slavcholding, i. e,, New York, New Jersey, 
 Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, 
 and Georgia. Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, 
 and Connecticut, were non-Slaveholding. The Convention was 
 composed of forty Delegates, of whom twenty-five were from 
 
justice, and humanity, than did that assemblage of forty men, 
 headed by Georoe Washington. They pledged a nation to the 
 support of a system “made up (as Rowland Hill said) of every 
 crime that treachery, cruelty, and murder can invent,” and which 
 (as Pitt said) “ is an outrage upon justice, and only another name 
 for fraud, robbery, and murder." The debates in that Conven¬ 
 tion, as reported by Madison, are enough to call down upon it 
 and the Government which it framed, the execration of mankind 
 and the vengeance of insulted Heaven. I could give many more 
 extracts from it; but enough has been quoted to show that the 
 Convention intended to make “ Slaveholding, Slave-breeding, 
 and Slave-trading, the foundation of the policy of the Federal 
 Government." 
 
 IN THE CONVENTIONS CALLED BT THE SEVERAL STATES 
 
 To adopt the Constitution, the same was understood and admitted, 
 though many individuals deprecated this, and opposed the adop¬ 
 tion of it because it was so. In the Virginia Convention, Madison 
 says of the clause touching runaway Slaves—" This clause was 
 
Washington lived and died a Slaveholder! This one black spot 
 upon his fame, like the plague-spot upon the human body, will 
 spread, as the nature of the crime of Slaveholding is understood, 
 until it pollutes and deforms all that seemed fair and honourable 
 in his character. Ho will stand upon history as a Slaveholder, 
 and this, like the crime of a convicted felon, will he all of his 
 character which the purified vision of mankind will be able to see. 
 
 Thus have I endeavoured to show what is the essential nature 
 of the Union, and what were the intentions of its founders: 
 (1) from tlie nature of the Convention that framed it; (2) from 
 the terms of the Constitution itself; (3) from the speeches 
 of its framers ; and (4) from the construction put upon it by the 
 State Conventions, called to ratify or reject it. All combine to 
 prove that the whole nation, by the present compact, is bound to 
 support and perpetuate Slavery. In my next, I will give other 
 facts illustrating the Slaveholding character of that Republic. 
 
 Henry C. WbIgut. 
 
2Q 
 
 LETTER V. 
 
 Mamore Cottage Roseneath, 
 July 12/A, 184a. 
 
37 
 
 FORM OF A MEMORIAL 
 
 FROM THE PEOPLE OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND TO THE PEOPLE 
 OF THE NON-SLAVE STATES OF AMERICA, 
 
 Touching their duty to withdraw from their Political Compact tcitk 
 Slaveholders. 
 
may succeed in every righteous effort “to 
 and “secure the blessings of liberty to your- 
 mankind, your Memorialists will ever pray.* 
 
 1 was adopted by the Committee of the Glasgow 
 Oct. 21st, 1845, to be presented at a public meet- 
 ; City Hall. 
 
SEND BACK THAT MONET. 
 
 TO THE MEMBERS AND MINISTERS OF TIIE FREE CHURCH 
 OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 “ What is the association between the Free Church , and a stone wet with 
 the blood of the Slave?"—Rev. Dr. Duncan- of the Free Church. 
 
 Mamore Cottage, Roseheath, 
 October 12th, 1845. 
 
 Fiuexds, —In the United States of Amcrica.|3.00 0,000 of our 
 fellow-beings are held and used as beasts and things ;/they are. 
 living without legal marriage in a state of concubinage; are. 
 without any protection to family relations and endearments; havo- 
 no control over their offspring to train them up for God as 
 rational, accountable beings, but are obliged to yield them up, 
 soon as born, to be reared as brutes for the market; they have 
 no control over their own persons, and are robbed of the capacity 
 to make anything their own ;/are incapable of being a party to a 
 civil or criminal suit, and of being witnesses against their oppres¬ 
 sors in civil or ecclesiastical courts ;)are liable to ho seized, a, 
 any moment, and sold to pay their master's debts; are forbidden, 
 on pain of death, to attempt to change their condition, and to rise 
 from brutes to men, from Slaves to freemen; are transmitted 
 from parents to children as goods; are denied the means of moral 
 and intellectual improvement,-/are punished with stripes, inu 
 prisonment, and death, for acts which, in all others, are regarded 
 as Christian virtues and duties;Jare bought and sold “ like other 
 live stockare shut out from the comfort and hopes of redemp¬ 
 tion by Jesus Christ, as far as it is in the power of man to shut 
 them out, and are compelled to live in absolute heathenism,{the 
 sole end of their existence, is “the profit of the master their 
 powers of body and soul, their civil, social and domcstic"rights, 
 and relations, their time and eternity, are all merged in the pecu¬ 
 niary interests of their owners. ^Tliey are fed, clothed, reared, \ 
 worked, disciplined, baptized, brought into the churches,—taught 
 that there is a God—a judgment to come—and an eternal state— J 
 to enhance their price in the market. 
 
 Who holds them in this condition*? Not the Slave Laws,— 
 nor the system or institution of Slavery. Laws are nothing— 
 institutions are nothing—without men; but the living Slave¬ 
 holders and their abettors reduced them to Slavery and contiuuo 
 
> share; as you bon- 
 h is bought and sold 
 
G. GA1LIE and Q. DALRYMPLE 
 
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