THE AMERICAN QUESTION 
 
 A Lecture delivered in the Corn Exchange, Manchester , in 
 
 Answer to the Speeches delivered by the Hon. and Rev. 
 
 B. Noel, Dr. Massey, and others , in the Free-trade 
 
 Hall, on June 3rd. 
 
 Nine-tenths of what was said at that meeting was on the 
 evil of slavery, and calls for no reply; for though most of 
 the stories told appeared to be fictions, and many of the 
 statements made were madly extravagant, it is hardly worth 
 our while to dwell on them, as we are all agreed that slavery 
 is an evil. The superiority of freedom to slavery has never 
 been questioned in Manchester for a generation past, and 
 those who attempt to make an impression to the contrary 
 are chargeable either with the grossest ignorance, or with a 
 base and wicked attempt to deceive their hearers. The 
 question with us, and with the people of England generally, 
 is, not whether slavery is an evil, but in what way, and by 
 what means, we ought to seek its abolition? One party, the 
 party represented by the Chairman and speakers at the 
 Free-trade Hall Meeting, favour the employment of fire and 
 sword, encourage a resort to wholesale massacre, and the 
 most revolting forms of rapine, rape, and ruin. They coun¬ 
 tenance the horrible war which is wasting the American 
 continent, and dishonouring the American nation, and seek 
 to strengthen the hands of the Government that is waging 
 that war,—a Government the most corrupt and tyrannical, 
 the most malignant and incompetent that ever disgraced and 
 cursed a civilised nation. We, on the contrary, favour 
 peaceful and bloodless measures. Our doctrine is, that the 
 proper weapons to be employed in the war with moral and 
 social evils are not carnal, but spiritual weapons; and our 
 conviction is, that weapons of this description, when pro¬ 
 perly employed, are sufficient; that they are not, as our 
 opponents fancy, feeble, but mighty through God, to the 
 pulliug down of the strongholds of evil. We repeat, that 
 this, and this only, so far as slavery is concerned, is the 
 point on which the members of “ The Union and Emanci¬ 
 pation Society” differ from the sober and enlightened por¬ 
 tions of the people of Manchester, and of the English 
 nation at large. 
 
 One of the clerical speakers at the Free-trade Hall 
 Meeting asked, “Shall we not rebuke slavery?” We 
 answer, rebuke it as freely as you please, and we will join 
 
 No. III .—Price One Penny. 
 
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 with you in rebuking it; but do not expect us to applaud a 
 more frightful and infernal evil, which has shed more blood, 
 and caused more crime, and inflicted more suffering, a thou¬ 
 sand times over, in two short years, than American slavery 
 has caused from the day it was planted to the present hour. 
 
 We were asked, “ May we not pray for the slave?” Of 
 course you may. But cannot you pray for the slave with¬ 
 out cursing your brethren? Would you pray to the God of 
 peace and love with your lips, and serve the demon of war 
 and hate with your hands and hearts? 
 
 “ We propose to address our brother ministers of Ame¬ 
 rica,” it is said. We answer, address them, and welcome; 
 but urge them to peace, and not to war; to gentleness, and 
 not to fury; and advise them to follow Jesus of Nazareth, 
 who went about doing good; and not the roaring lion who 
 goeth about devouring all that come in his way. Do all 
 you please, and all you can, to abate and abolish evil, but do 
 not, under pretence of philanthropy and piety, give coun¬ 
 tenance to a party and a Government the most corrupt, the 
 most despotic, the most false and heartless, and the most 
 Anti-English that ever was raised to power. 
 
 We were told that those who do not sympathise with 
 Abraham Lincoln and his party are friends to slavery. We 
 answer, we do not sympathise with Abraham Lincoln and his 
 party, yet our hearts and consciences tell us that we are 
 not friends of slavery. We sympathise with the party of 
 peace, and we not only believe and know, but we are pre¬ 
 pared to prove, against the ablest advocates the war party 
 can put forward, that the party of peace is the party of free¬ 
 dom; and that the party which counsels war and servile 
 insurrection are the greatest enemies both of black and 
 white, both of bond and free. 
 
 The Honourable and Reverend Baptist Noel told us that 
 there will be no possibility of emancipation if the South be 
 allowed to become an independent nation. The slaveholders 
 have got their wealth, their power, and their rank by slavery, 
 said he, and how can we expect them to give up so gainful 
 an institution? We answer, is there nothing better in the 
 human heart than love of money, rank, aud power? And 
 even when nothing better is found there, can nothing better 
 be got in? Did the Honourable and Reverend Baptist Noel 
 never hear of such a thing as men getting new hearts, or 
 getting the old ones changed? Did he never hear of stony 
 hearts being turned to flesh? Did he never hear of such a 
 book as the Bible; of such a personage as the Prophet of 
 Nazareth; of such a preacher as Paul; of such a thing as 
 
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 the Gospel; or of such a being as God? Will it be news 
 to him when we inform him, that the Gospel has proved the 
 power of God to the salvation of countless multitudes, in¬ 
 cluding even proud and persecuting Priests, and selfish and 
 cruel slaveholders? Will it be news to him when we inform 
 him, that a minister of the English Established Church, 
 under the impulse of Christian feeling, once sacrificed both 
 income and friends, both rank and power, and that the name 
 of that minister was the same as his own, the Honourable 
 and Reverend Baptist Noel? Will it offend his pride if we 
 should tell him that there are persons as impressible and as 
 improvable as himself, both among preachers and politicians? 
 Will it be news to him when we inform him, that thousands 
 of ministers have made sacrifices as great as his, and vastly 
 greater, before he was born? And may we venture to tell 
 him, even at the risk of hurting his professional feelings, 
 that clergymen have not the reputation of being the most 
 ready to make sacrifices for righteousness’ sake? May we 
 not inform him, or, if he has heard or read of the matter 
 before, remind him, that slavery has been a source of wealth 
 and rank and power in almost every nation of the earth, and 
 that yet the goodness of the human heart has been such, or 
 the power of truth and moral influences so great, as to in¬ 
 duce those nations, one by one, to abolish the objectionable 
 institution? Is it necessary to remind him, that many in 
 this favoured land of England were slaveholders, and even 
 traders in slaves, and that they derived wealth and power 
 and rank from slavery and the slave trade, and that yet 
 they gave up the traffic in negroes, and knocked off the 
 fetters of the slaves? Is it necessary to remind him, that 
 the Northern States of America held slaves, both black and 
 white, and not only trafficked in the bodies of Africans, and 
 kidnapped Indians, but bought and held in bondage youths 
 stolen from England, Wales, and Scotland; but that yet, in 
 course of time, those Northern slaveholders, kidnappers, and 
 traders in men and women and children, experienced a 
 change, or died, and gave place to a wiser and abetter gene¬ 
 ration, who, without being forced to it by sword and fire, 
 washed their hands of those abominations? Is the Ho¬ 
 nourable and Reverend Baptist Noel a stranger to the 
 history of his race, and to the character and tendency 
 of the religion of Christ? Or does he suppose that the 
 car of progress has stopped; that the work of human im¬ 
 provement has come to a final halt; that truth has lost its 
 might, religion its influence, and God his power? One 
 advocate of this un-English, ferocious, and Anti-Christian 
 
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 “ Union and Emancipation Society ” said at Bacup, that in 
 America Jesus had been dethroned, and Moloch or Beelze¬ 
 bub installed in his place; but is it so? Are the Gates of 
 Hell at last victorious? In the name of God,—in the name 
 of Jesus,—and in the name of insulted and outraged huma¬ 
 nity, we say, NO. As in the days of old, so now, “ Blind¬ 
 ness has happened to a part of our Israel, and to a part of 
 the Leaders of our Israeland if left to themselves, the 
 blind and their leaders might soon be in the ditch; but we 
 have too much regard for them, and too much regard for 
 the honour and happiness of our country, to let them alone. 
 We will give them back their sight, not by bloodletting or 
 burning, but by applying the eyesalve of Gospel truth, and 
 the emollient of Christian charity. Be it known then to 
 the Honourable and Reverend Baptist Noel, and to all his 
 blinded or misguided brethren, that the Lord still reigneth, 
 that truth is still all-powerful. And be it further known, 
 that God is not in the earthquake, the tempest, or the fire; 
 but in the STILL SMALL VOICE. “It is not by 
 might, nor by power, nor by men with garments rolled in 
 blood, that social and moral evils are to be abolished, but 
 by my Spirit, saith the Lord.” 
 
 One Reverend Gentleman told us that the war in which 
 Lincoln and his party are engaged is God’s work. Such 
 ravings are blasphemous. If wholesale slaughter, if Butler’s 
 reign of terror, if Burnside’s tyranny, if Schenk’s delight 
 in torture, if wholesale robbery and wanton desolation, if 
 lying despatches, if proclamations intended to bring about 
 indiscriminate massacre of men, women, and children, if 
 M‘Neil’s butcheries, if Turchin’s rapes, if Blenker’s rapine, 
 be the work of God, pray tell us what is the work of the 
 Devil? Have the ministers who have taken in hand to 
 plead the cause of the Union and Emancipation Society put 
 darkness for light, and good for evil, and mistaken the 
 demon of malice for the God of Love? And if the armies 
 of Lincoln are the armies of Jehovah, how is it that two of 
 his soldiers fall for one of the enemy? 
 
 But Lincoln and his party have liberated two or three 
 hundred thousand slaves, we are told. We answer, there 
 are remedies worse than the diseases they are meant to 
 cure; and the Washington war, if meant to be a remedy for 
 slavery at all, is one of that description. The slaves which 
 it has liberated it has, as a rule, liberated into a worse con¬ 
 dition. Many of them have perished: to use the words of 
 one of their liberators, they have been made food for powder. 
 Others have been doomed to dig in the trenches, and serve 
 
5 
 
 the army, at the risk of their lives. Others are suffering 
 from want and idleness. A few are working on the plan¬ 
 tations as free labourers, at a dollar or a dollar and a 
 half a month, or from twopence to threepence a day. And 
 for every negro thus emancipated, two white men have been 
 sacrificed, two white wives or mothers made widows or 
 childless, and many hapless children orphans. We repeat 
 it, there are remedies worse than the diseases they are 
 meant to cure, and this is one of the worst of them. 
 
 “ Did not Jesus die for the negro?” asked one of the Reverend 
 orators. We answer, Jesus did die for the negro; but he 
 did not kill other men, either for the negro or the white 
 man. He offered himself, not others. And he died as a 
 lamb, not as a fury. He raised no mercenary armies; he 
 offered no bounty to vice; he shed no blood; he desolated 
 no homes; he excited no servile insurrection; he encou¬ 
 raged no wholesale, indiscriminate massacre; nor did he in¬ 
 struct his followers to do so. He reproved with meekness; 
 he judged in righteousness. He sought to lift men up, not 
 beat them down. He took the form of a servant, not of a 
 soldier. He was meek and lowly, gentle and holy, peaceful 
 and loving. He knew no sin; he used no guile. Wheu 
 he was reviled, he reviled not again; when he suffered, he 
 threatened not; but committed himself to Him that judgeth 
 righteously. 
 
 fi We are met in the name of Jesus,” said Dr. 
 Massey. And must that blessed name be used as a cloak 
 for vice and violence for ever? Met in the name of Jesus 
 to encourage hate, and rage, and carnage! Met in the 
 name of the dying lamb, to act the ravenous and roaring 
 lion! Met in the name of love, and peace, and freedom, to 
 enslave or exterminate a nation, and impoverish and afflict 
 two continents! If the name of Jesus has any charms for 
 you,—if his word has any weight with you,—obey his 
 teachings; follow his example. Give yourselves, if ye will, 
 as martyrs and saviours; but stain not your hands with the 
 blood of others. Die, if ye will, but do not kill. Save, if 
 you can, but do not destroy. For the Son of Man came 
 not to destroy men’s lives, but to save them. 
 
 Attempts were made to excite the passious of the work¬ 
 ing men and their friends by quoting extravagant sayiDgs 
 from a couple of Southern fanatics; but was not Mi. 
 Rylance aware that sayings as extravagant can be quoted 
 in any quantity from Northern anti-slavery fanatics. What 
 does he think of the Rev. Mr. Tilton’s statement, that the 
 only means by which the white races can be made what 
 
6 
 
 they ought to be is by each white man taking a negro 
 woman for his wife, and each white woman accepting a 
 negro man for her husband? What does he think of Garri¬ 
 son’s theory of non-resistance,—of his denunciation of human 
 authority, law, and government, as Anti-Christian? What 
 does he think of the extravagance of the men who say 
 that they would rather see the South a desolation, a 
 waste-howling wilderness, than see it a prosperous and in¬ 
 dependent nation; nay, that they would rather “the great 
 globe itself, with all that it inhabit,” were flung from its 
 orbit, and driven to wander darkling through the dreary 
 realms of chaos, than that the Washington Government 
 should miss the pleasure of exercising lordship over the 
 Southern people? If the extravagance of a couple of South¬ 
 erners ought to make it impossible for us to sympathise with 
 the South, what shall we do with regard to the North? 
 The truth is, we shall forgive, or excuse, or tolerate the 
 extravagances of both, and endeavour by gentle counsels and 
 a Christian example to bring both to reason, to justice, 
 and to charity. 
 
 One of our clerical counsellors quoted the authority of 
 the great and noble Dr. Channing; but Channing coun¬ 
 selled no war for the abolition of slavery. He called for 
 no insurrection of the slaves. He rebuked even extrava¬ 
 gant, violent, and abusive language. Though he did honour 
 to the motives of the Abolitionists, he never could join 
 their party, or sanction their policy, they were eo unspar¬ 
 ing and unmeasured in their censures. As the celebrated 
 divine and eloquent preacher of Boston appears to be re¬ 
 garded by some of our Reverend Lincolnites as an authority, 
 it may not be amiss to quote for them his remarks on the 
 proceedings of the Garrisonian Abolitionists. They are 
 terribly applicable to the Union aud Emancipation advocates 
 of England, and if they fail to check their immoderate aud 
 misguided zeal, we must give them up as lost. In his work 
 on Slavery, this most gentle and loving teacher pronounces 
 the Garrisonian Abolitionists fanatics, says they take too 
 narrow views, and speak and act as if no evil existed but 
 that which they oppose, aud as if n6 guilt could be com¬ 
 pared with that of couuteuaucing or upholding it. “ Their 
 adoption of immediate emancipation as their motto was an 
 error. To hold up the slaveholders as monsters of cruelty 
 and crime, and to endeavour to inflame the excitable with 
 a fiery zeal, aud induce them to seek the subversion of 
 slavery by auy means which may promise speedy results, is 
 not the work of enlightened philanthropists. Endanger the 
 
public peace,—put the welfare of the nation in jeopardy,— 
 and the best men in the community must become your oppo¬ 
 nents.” Again he says:—“ The system of agitation adopted 
 by the Abolitionists, has created alarm in the considerate, and 
 strengthened the sympathies of the Free States with the 
 slaveholder. It has made converts of a few individuals, 
 but it has alienated multitudes. Its influence at the South 
 has been wholly evil. It has stirred up bitter passions aud 
 fierce fanaticisms. They have exhausted on the slaveholders 
 the vocabulary of reproach, and have been answered by 
 wilder tones in return; and the cause of freedom and huma¬ 
 nity, instead of being aided, has been injured. They 
 have set down opposition to their 'policy as attachment 
 to slavery. They have gone on the assumption that 
 their own dogmas are the only true faith, and have 
 made their own zeal the standard of a true interest 
 in the oppressed. They have been too belligerent to 
 make friends. The great mass who have refused to take 
 part with the Abolitionists have been governed by pure 
 motives. The fear of a servile war, the dread of political 
 convulsions , a perception of the difficulty of great social 
 changes, a dread of rashness, are the motives which deter 
 them from giving countenance to their violent movements.” 
 
 It is unnecessary to say how fearfully the events of the 
 last few years have justified the censures of the great Ame¬ 
 rican philanthropist. The civil war in Kanzas, the raid of 
 old John Brown, the extravagant eulogies on the misguided 
 insurrectionist uttered and paraded through the North by 
 Abolition lecturers, the mad extravagance of Wendell 
 Phillips in pronouncing him the best and greatest man that 
 ever lived, the one that died on Calvary excepted, and the 
 public utterance of the horrible wish that from his blood a 
 hundred thousand such invaders of the South might arise, 
 to bring about by fire and blood the glorious revolution he 
 had failed to effect, are fresh in the min Is of many, and the 
 dire effects which have filled the world with grief and con¬ 
 sternation are now before us, and will be mourned for many 
 generations. 
 
 Another of the Union and Emancipation orators said the 
 Southerners have plunged the country into a bloody war. 
 The facts of the case, however, are simply these. The 
 Southerners, unable to remain in connection with the North¬ 
 erners without a sacrifice of their rights, choose peacefully 
 to secede. They proposed a conference, and sent commis¬ 
 sioners to arrange the terms of a peaceful separation. Their 
 commissioners were insulted by the Northern Government. 
 
8 
 
 The Northern Government called for seventy thousand 
 volunteers to intimidate or coerce the Southerners, and war 
 was the result. But the war was the work of the Washing¬ 
 ton Government, and is so still. The South have repeatedly 
 expressed a desire for peace, but the Washington Govern¬ 
 ment insists on unconditional submission, and in this way 
 renders peace impossible. Another minister said the 
 Southerners are trying to tear down the Government of 
 the North. The only answer is, that the statement is 
 utterly untrue,—they simply contend for the right to have 
 a Government of their own. 
 
 “ The slaveholders say they will perpetuate slavery,” said 
 one. We doubt the statement; but suppose it to be true, 
 what then? The Northerners said they would annex 
 Canada; but they did not. They say they will whip Eng¬ 
 land as soon as they have done with the South; but they 
 will not. Men and Governments have often said that cer¬ 
 tain things should be for ever; but both they and the things 
 which they attempted to make perpetual passed away. And 
 so it will be in the South. 
 
 All things on earth keep changing, and men change with 
 them. The men who do not change, die, and give place to 
 others; and it was long ago observed that the children are 
 sometimes wiser than their fathers. Truth is eternally at 
 work, changing both laws and institutions, religions and 
 governments. The leaven hid in the meal works on, slowly 
 and silently, till the whole is leavened. And so it will be 
 with slavery. It has had its day in most lands. It will 
 have its day in the Confederate States. But the man who 
 thinks any evil immortal, or who fancies that nothing but 
 his own rash hand of blood can exterminate it, “ errs, not 
 knowing the Scriptures, and the power of God.” Evil is 
 doomed, and Christian truth and love are destined to be its 
 gentle exterminators. The men who attempt to purge the 
 world of sin, and man of folly, by fire and sword, belong to 
 the class who “ know not what they do.” They have a zeal 
 for God and humanity, but it is not according to knowledge. 
 Their hearts may be nearly right, but their heads are fear¬ 
 fully wrong. Though teachers themselves, they have need 
 that some one should teach them the first principles of Chris¬ 
 tian and philosophic truth. And well will it be for them if 
 they discover their error before their hands are stained with 
 blood, or their souls oppressed and tortured with the thought 
 of having aided the destruction of their brethren. 
 
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