Only by plain language can this attempt be adequately exposed. Only in this way can it be seen in its true character. Only in this way can you be moved to shrink from it with proper repugnance. In this spirit the religious press of the country is beginning to speak. The Boston “Recorder,” the most venerable of all the religious papers of New England, and perhaps of the whole country, which for more than half a century has been a weekly teacher at uncounted firesides, thus solemnly appeals to the conscience of patriots and of statesmen:-- “The proposed Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which passed the House of Representatives last week by a vote of 120 to 46, will, if it should become the fundamental law of the land, _inflict upon our free institutions greater infamy than anything contained in our written Constitution_. There are things there which were sufficiently disgraceful in their intent and purpose. That the slave-trade should not be prohibited before 1808, that three fifths of the slaves should be represented in Congress by the votes of their owners, that fugitive slaves should be returned to their owners,--these were scandalous provisions to which our noble fathers submitted only because without them we could have no common national existence. But they couched these offensive propositions in terms that, on the cessation of Slavery, would have no objectionable meaning. This event they anticipated much earlier than it has actually occurred. And now that it is a fact, no one wishes the clauses of the Constitution to which we have alluded to be stricken out. “But now it is proposed to ingraft upon this revered instrument a principle implying that a State may decree that all men are not born equal, and may disfranchise a majority of her citizens and their sons and their sons’ sons forever! Good jurists have declared that the Constitution, as it now stands, would forbid any such State action, and that all constitutions and laws disfranchising citizens because of their parentage, color, race, or descent, are null and void.… We are not aware of any attempt to refute this view with a shadow of success. “And now it cannot be that we shall give up our vantage-ground, _and stain the triumph_ bought with so much precious blood with _a concession which might be turned to so base a use_. “Let every patriot, to whom the good name of America is dear, bestir himself. Let every Christian who believes that God is no respecter of persons, let every father who would not leave to his children a legacy of national discord and a birthright in a nation yet to bleed in Helot conspiracies, let every statesman who believes that even justice is the only sure foundation of national tranquillity, arouse himself.”[229]