“Resolved, That were the slave-holders now willing to abolish slavery, in our opinion the immediate and unconditional emancipation of all the slaves in the United States, without providing for their colonization, would render the condition of both the whites and blacks infinitely worse than it now is, and would be an act of palpable and unpardonable inhumanity to the _slaves_.” Signed: Valentine Kieffer, President; Nathan Perrill, John Entrekin, Wm. Renick, Sr., Vice-Presidents; Elias Bentley, W. N. Foresman, A. Huston, Secretaries. All the officers were well-known and prominent people, and it is not strange that persons of such note and intelligence should have given their approbation and signatures of approval to such a meeting, when we reflect that most pro-slavery men in the free states had been taught to believe or say: If the slaves were liberated, they would come north in swarms and “_steal our chickens_,” and destroy the peace of society “_by marrying every good-looking white woman in the country_.” But there existed no occasion for alarm; the slave-holding states South never had an inclination to emancipate their slaves. _They_ were the wealth of that country, and its growing greatness fostered the desire to found an aristocratic empire on slave labor. The number in bondage was rapidly increasing and their labor was becoming more and more remunerative. They had but to see the increase of this wealth and its products in fifty years, to stimulate the desire to found a government on the aristocracy of the institution. In 1810, there were in all the states but 1,191,360 slaves; and notwithstanding New England, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania had in the meantime liberated theirs--and the African slave trade had previously been abolished--the underground railroad had been doing a lively business--and the manumissions and colonizations that were going on in the “breeding states”--in 1860 the number had increased to within a small fraction less than four millions.