Another of your charges is, that the abolitionists oppose “the project of colonisation."

Having, under another head, made some remarks on this “project,” I will only add, that we must oppose the American Colonization Society, because it denies the sinfulness of slavery, and the duty of immediate, unqualified emancipation.  Its avowed doctrine is, that, unless emancipation he accompanied by expatriation, perpetual slavery is to be preferred to it.  Not to oppose that Society, would be the guiltiest treachery to our holy religion, which requires immediate and unconditional repentance of sin.  Not to oppose it, would be to uphold slavery.  Not to oppose it, would be to abandon the Anti-Slavery Society.  Do you ask, why, if this be the character of the American Colonization Society, many, who are now abolitionists, continued in it so long?  I answer for myself, that, until near the period of my withdrawal from it, I had very inadequate conceptions of the wickedness, both of that Society, and of slavery.  For having felt the unequalled sin of slavery no more deeply—­for feeling it now no more deeply, I confess myself to be altogether without excuse.  The great criminality of my long continuance in the Colonization Society is perhaps somewhat palliated by the fact, that the strongest proofs of the wicked character and tendencies of the Society were not exhibited, until it spread out its wing over slavery to shelter the monster from the earnest and effective blows of the American Anti-Slavery Society.

Another of your charges is, that the abolitionists, in declaring “that their object is not to stimulate the action of the General Government, but to operate upon the States themselves, in which the institution of domestic slavery exists,” are evidently insincere, since the “abolition societies and movements are all confined to the free Slates.”

I readily admit, that our object is the abolition of slavery, as well in the slave States, as in other portions of the Nation, where it exists.  But, does it follow, because only an insignificant share of our “abolition societies and movements” is in those States, that we therefore depend for the abolition of slavery in them on the General Government, rather than on moral influence?  I need not repeat, that the charge of our looking to the General Government for such abolition is refuted by the language of the Constitution of the Anti-Slavery Society.  You may, however, ask—­“why, if you do not look to the General Government for it, is not the great proportion of your means of moral influence in the slave States, where is the great body of the slaves?” I answer that, in the first place, the South does not permit us to have them there; and that, in the words of one of your fellow Senators, and in the very similar words of another—­both uttered on the floor of the Senate—­“if the abolitionists come to the South, the South will hang them.”  Pardon the remark, that it