“Is this the peace? Is this the fulfilment of your promise? Is not this the very sequence which we told you would come? That compromise was a ball of frozen rattlesnakes. You turned them in your hands then with impunity. We warned and besought. We protested and adjured. You persisted in bringing them into the dwelling. You laid them down before the fire. Now where are they? They are crawling all around. Their fangs are striking death into every precious interest of liberty! It is your work! “In this emergency where are those ministers of the Gospel who have always refused to infuse into the public mind a sound and instructed moral sentiment upon the subject of slavery? Hitherto you have been silent, because it did not concern the _North_. We earnestly protested that so deep and dreadful a disease could not prey upon any limb of this nation and not strike its taint and danger through and through the whole body politic. We implored men not to let the first principles of human rights die out of the popular mind; not to let a gigantic engine of despotism, through its selfish remunerations of commerce, deaden every quick sensibility to justice and bribe to sleep the vigilance of humanity, though every palm should have thrice as many pieces of silver as did he of old. “The North is both bound and asleep. It is bound with bonds of unlawful compromise! You, ministers of Christ, held her limbs, while the gaunt and worthy minions of oppression moved about, twisting inextricable cords about her hands and feet; or, like Saul, stood by, holding the garments of those that slew the martyr! The poor Northern conscience has been like a fly upon a spider’s web. Her statesmen, and not a few of her ministers, have rolled up the struggling insect, singing fainter and fainter, with webs of sophistry, till it now lies a miserable, helpless victim, and Slavery is crawling up to suck its vital blood! “What, then, do you owe to God, to heaven, and to your country, in an effort to regain conscience, liberty, and duty? God, who searches the heart, knows that it is not in our heart to say these things for the sake of aspersion. We would lie down before you, and let your steps tread our very neck, if you were only marching toward the high ends of our country’s good. But we cannot endure to see noble and venerable ministers of the Gospel first duped and deceived, and made to serve the ends of oppression, and then, when the mighty juggle is detected, stand silent and aghast, as unwilling now to repair as before to prevent the utter misery and evil. “But let us not be deceived. Let every man be prepared for a future! If this bill shall be defeated the North will be like a man just dragged out of the rapids above Niagara! If this bill pass, the North will be like a man whirled in the very wildest rage of the infuriate rapids and making headlong haste toward the awful plunge.