THE ANTI-SLAVERY EXAMINER PART 1 OF 4 BY The American Anti-Slavery Society 1836 No. 1. To the People of the United States; or, To Such Americans As Value Their Rights, and Dare to Maintain Them. No. 2. Appeal to the Christian Women of the South. No. 2. Appeal to the Christian Women of the South. Revised and Corrected. No. 3. Letter of Gerrit Smith to Rev. James Smylie, of the State of Mississippi. No. 4. The Bible Against Slavery. An Inquiry Into the Patriarchal and Mosaic Systems on the Subject of Human Rights. No. 4. The Bible Against Slavery. An Inquiry Into the Patriarchal and Mosaic Systems on the Subject of Human Rights. Third Edition--Revised. No. 4. The Bible Against Slavery. An Inquiry Into the Patriarchal and Mosaic Systems on the Subject of Human Rights. Fourth Edition--Enlarged. No. 5. Power of Congress Over the District of Columbia. No. 5. Power of Congress Over the District of Columbia. With Additions by the Author. THE ANTI-SLAVERY EXAMINER VOL. I. AUGUST, 1836. NO. 1. TO THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES; OR, TO SUCH AMERICANS AS VALUE THEIR RIGHTS, AND DARE TO MAINTAIN THEM. FELLOW COUNTRYMEN! A crisis has arrived, in which rights the most important which civil society can acknowledge, and which have been acknowledged by our Constitution and laws, in terms the most explicit which language can afford, are set at nought by men, whom your favor has invested with a brief authority. By what standard is your liberty of conscience, of speech, and of the press, now measured? Is it by those glorious charters you have inherited from your fathers, and which your present rulers have called Heaven to witness, they would preserve inviolate? Alas! another standard has been devised, and if we would know what rights are conceded to us by our own servants, we must consult the COMPACT by which the South engages on certain conditions to give its trade and votes to Northern men. All rights not allowed by this compact, we now hold by sufferance, and our Governors and Legislatures avow their readiness to deprive us of them, whenever in their opinion, legislation on the subject shall be "necessary[A]." This compact is not indeed published to the world, under the hands and seals of the contracting parties, but it is set forth in official messages,--in resolutions of the State and National Legislatures--in the proceedings of popular meetings, and in acts of lawless violence. The temples of the Almighty have been sacked, because the worshipers did not conform their consciences to the compact[B]. Ministers of the gospel have been dragged as criminals from the altar to the bar, because they taught the people from the Bible, doctrines proscribed by the compact[C]. Hundreds of free citizens, peaceably assembled to express their sentiments, have, because such an expression was forbidden by the compact, been forcibly dispersed, and