298 INDIANA HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS 



The two things that are most despised and hated in 

 the South, are masters that abuse and starve and ill-treat 

 their slaves, and abolitionists, who seize upon every iso- 

 lated case of the kind, and trumpet it through the land 

 as evidence of the manner that all slaves are treated, and 

 then call upon the people of the free states to aid the ne- 

 groes to free themselves from such inhuman bondage, 

 peaceably if they can, forcibly if they must, no matter 

 whose or how much blood shall flow. 



Is it any wonder that abolitionists should be hated, de- 

 spised, dreaded, feared in the South, when they see such 

 doctrine as I am about to read from the Emancipator, 

 showing how they intend to abolish slavery. Speaking 

 of politics and the prospect of the abolition party getting 

 into power, the Emancipator, the leading "Liberty 

 Party" journal says: 



"Let them (the Whigs and Democrats) distinctly un- 

 derstand, that our use of the ballot box leads to a use of 

 the cartridge-box. We are opposed to international war, 

 and believe that a Christian nation would never need to 

 fight offensively and defensively. But we are in favor 

 of the execution of law, and the establishment of justice 

 at all hazards. So that, if it were possible for slavery to 

 exist in this Union after the opponents of the system had 

 assumed the reins of government, ive should be in favor 

 of using the physical potver of the nation to put it out of 

 existence. It is nonsense, it is knavery, it is suicide, to 

 talk any longer of the General Government not having 

 power to abolish slavery in the tvhole country, when the 

 slaveocracy is giving it power to annex to us all the 

 slavery of Texas and Cuba and Brazil. It has that power, 

 or it is not for one moment fit to live. It has that power, 

 or else to establish justice and secure the domestic tran- 

 quility is a thing which it is utterly incapable of doing." 



"Fortunately, this avowal comes at a sufficiently early 

 day to operate as a warning to the true friends of free- 

 dom, not to confer power upon a party which stands 

 ready to trample the constitution under its feet, and in- 

 volve the country in a civil war." 



