It is a matter of astonishment that slavery has so long existed, and yet that its enormities have taken so little hold on a people professing to be Christians. In a country whose inhabitants dipped their hands in blood to establish FREEDOM, there are over _two and a half millions_ of human beings, entitled to all the rights of white men, held in absolute bondage. Are the people of this nation aware of this fact? Thousands of times has this awful truth been reiterated in the ears of American Christians, and yet from the profound indifference which yet generally exists on the subject, we are led to ask, Do the people of this nation realize the fact? More than any other nation on earth we boast of our liberty, our refinement, our advancement in the arts and sciences, our railroads, our various facilities for intercommunication, and all the outward appliances to render life comfortable. We have seized upon the very lightning of Heaven, and commanded it to bear our messages from one distant point to another without the intervention of time, literally annihilating all space: and we not only boast of these things, but we aver in the face of the abhorrent fact of slavery, that we are the most virtuous nation on earth! To the enormity of slavery we are, indeed, spiritually dead. Were slavery about to commence, were we to summon the voters of this nation to the polls to decide whether two and a half millions of human beings should be subjected to this bondage, what think you, reader, would be the result? Can there be a man found who would vote for the measure, unless indeed the love of money had so blunted all humanity as to render his better feelings entirely inactive? It is in vain for apologists of slavery to defend it by such arguments as this: They will tell you that the slaves of the south are better fed and clothed than the colored people of the north. The fact is not admitted. But, suppose it were a fact. Is man to be considered as a mere ox, to be bowed up and stall fed? Is he a mere victuals grinder and clothes horse? Or, has he a higher nature? Has he not a mind capable of rising higher and higher in all that is expansive, pure and holy? Has he not within him a spark of pure Divinity, which, when he is surrounded with high and ennobling influences, is fanned into a light so bright as to lead us to respond to the glorious truth, Man is indeed made in the image of his God? Do you talk of _selling a man_? You might as well talk of selling immortality or sunshine! You might as well talk of your right to monopolise the atmosphere, to determine how much air a man should breathe, and to retail it out to him by the jaw-full!