Admitting that an appeal to slaves is constitutional, and also according to examples of history, it is said that it will be unavailing, for the slaves will not hearken to it. Then why not try? It can do no harm, and will at least give us a good name. But, if not beyond learning from the enemy, we shall see that the generals most hated on our side, and, like Adams and Hancock in the Revolution, specially excepted from pardon, are Phelps and Hunter, plainly because the ideas of these generals are more dreaded than any battery or strategy. Of this be assured: the opponents of this appeal are not anxious because it will fail; only because it may be successful do they oppose it. They fear it will reach the slaves, rather than not reach them. Look at it candidly, and you cannot deny that it must produce an effect. It is idle to say that its influence will be bounded by our jurisdiction. When the mill-gates are lifted, all the water above, in its most distant sources, starts on its way; and so will the slaves. Remote kingdoms trembled at the Pope’s excommunication and interdict, and an elegant historian has described the thunders of the Vatican intermingling with the thunders of war. Christendom shook when Luther nailed his theses on the church-door of Wittenberg. An appeal to our slaves will be hardly less prevailing. Do you ask how it would be known? The fall of Troy, long before our telegraph, was flashed by beacon-fires from Mount Ida to Argos. The slave telegraph is not as active as ours, but it is hardly less sure. It takes eight days for a despatch from Fortress Monroe to the Gulf of Mexico. The glad tidings of Freedom will travel with the wind, with the air, with the light, quickening and inspiring the whole mass. Secret societies of slaves, already formed, will be among the operators. That I do not speak without authority, please listen to the words of John Adams, taken from his Diary, under date of 24th September, 1775. “These gentlemen [Georgia delegates] give a melancholy account of the state of Georgia and South Carolina. They say, that, if one thousand regular troops should land in Georgia, and their commander be provided with arms and clothes enough, and proclaim freedom to all the negroes who would join his camp, twenty thousand negroes would join it from the two provinces in a fortnight. The negroes have a wonderful art of communicating intelligence among themselves: it will run several hundreds of miles in a week or fortnight.”[127] This is testimony. The destructive avalanche of the Alps is sometimes started by the winding of a horn, and a structure so irrational as Slavery will tremble at a sound. * * * * *