Surely, if ever there was a moment when every faculty should be bent to the service, and all invigorated by an inspiring zeal, it is now, while the battle between Civilization and Barbarism is still undecided, and you are summoned to resist the last desperate shock. To this work I am not equal; but I do not shrink from the duties of my post. Alas! human language is gentle, and the human voice is weak. Words only are mine, when I ought to command thunderbolts. Voice only is mine, when, like the ancient Athenian, I ought to carry the weapons of Zeus on the tongue. Nor would I transcend any just rule of moderation, or urge this warfare too far among persons. Humbly do I recognize the authority of Him, who, when reviled, reviled not again; but this divine example teaches me to expose crime, and not to hesitate, though the Scribes and Pharisees, chief-priests and money-changers, cry out. And it shows how words of invective may come from lips of peace. “Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.” Thus spake the Saviour in Jerusalem; and he still speaks, not in Jerusalem only, but wherever men are won from truth, wherever crime exists to be exposed and denounced. What, then, I repeat, is Slavery? The occasion forbids detail; but enough must be presented to place this outrage in its true light,--as something worse even than a constant state of war, where the master is constant aggressor. Here I put aside for the moment all the tales which reach us from the house of bondage,--all the cumulative, crushing testimony, from slaves and masters alike,--all the barbarous incidents which help to arouse a yet too feeble indignation,--in short, all the glimpses which come to us from this mighty Bluebeard’s chamber. All these I put aside, not because they are of little moment in exhibiting the true character of Slavery, but because I desire to arraign Slavery on grounds above all controversy, impeachment, or suspicion, even from Slave-Masters themselves. Not on wonderful story, where the genius of woman has prevailed, not even on indisputable facts, do I now accuse Slavery, but on its character as revealed in its own simple definition of itself. Out of its own mouth do I condemn it.