If, said Mr. B., he had expressed sentiments different from these, or
if he had inculcated as the principles of his brethren any thing
different from these just and noble sentiments, let the blame be
heaped upon his bare head. These sentiments they had held from a
period to which the memory of man runneth not to the contrary. Here
tonight, 3000 miles off, God enabled him to produce a record proving
an antiquity of half a century, in full maturity! How grand, how far
sighted, how illustrious is truth--compared with the wretched and new
born, and blear eyed fanaticism that carps at her! These are the
principles of the Presbyterian church of the United States. She has
risen with them, she will stand, or, if it be God's will, she will
fall with them. But she will not change them less or more. The General
Assembly is but now adjourned. They have had this question before
them--perhaps have been deeply agitated by its discussion. But so
tranquilly does my heart rest on the truth of these principles, and on
the fixed adherence to them, by my brethren, that nothing but a
feeling that it would be impertinent, in one like me, to vouch for a
body like that, could deter me from any lawful gage, that all its
decisions will stand with its ancient and unaltered principles. In
accordance with these principles the great body of the members of that
church had been all along acting.--There were about 24 synods under
the care of the General Assembly, of which about one third were in
the slave country. The number was constantly increasing, on which
account, and in the absence of all records, he could not be more
exact. The synods in the free states stood, he believed, without
exception, just where the Assembly stood, on this subject. In the
slave states, much had been done--much was still doing--and in proof
of this as regarded this particular denomination--in addition to what
he had all along declared, with reference to the great emancipation
party, in all of those states, he asked attention to the several
documents he was about to lay before them. The first was a series of
resolutions appended to a lucid and extended report, drawn up by a
large committee of Ministers and Elders of the synod of Kentucky--in
obedience to its orders after the subject had been several years
before that body. That Synod embraces the whole state of _Kentucky_,
which is one of the largest slave states in the Union. The resolutions
are quoted from the New York Observer, of April 23, 1836.
1. We would recommend that all slaves now under 20 years of
age, and all those yet to be born in our possession be
emancipated, as they severally reach their 25th year.
2. We recommend that deeds of emancipation be now drawn up,
and recorded in our respective County Courts, specifying the
slaves we are about to emancipate, and the age at which each
is to become free.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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