I have not, overlooked the distinction taken by the reverend gentleman; though, I confess that, to a mind no less obtuse than my own, it is very little better than “a distinction without a difference.”  Whilst he denies, that I can, as an American citizen, rightfully labor for the abolition of slavery in the slave states, or even in the District of Columbia; he would perhaps, admit that, as a man, I might do so.  But am I not interested, as an American citizen, to have every part of my country cleared of vice, and of whatever perils its free institutions?  Am I not interested, as such, to promote the overthrow of gambling and rum drinking establishments in South Carolina?—­but why any more than to promote the overthrow of slavery?  In fine, am I not interested, as an American citizen, to have my country, and my whole country, “right in the sight of God?” If not, I had better not be an American citizen.

I say no more on the subject of the sophistries of President Wayland’s book on, “The limitations of human responsibility;” nor would I have said what I have, were it not that it is in reply to the like sophistries couched in that objection of yours, which I have now been considering.

Another of your charges against the abolitionists is, that they seek to “stimulate the rage of the people of the free states against the people of the slave states.  Advertisements of fugitive slaves and of slaves to be sold are carefully collected and blazoned forth to infuse a spirit of detestation and hatred against one entire and the largest section of the Union."

The slaveholders of the South represent slavery as a heaven-born institution—­themselves as patriarchs and patterns of benevolence—­and their slaves, as their tenderly treated and happy dependents.  The abolitionists, on the contrary, think that slavery is from hell—­that slaveholders are the worst of robbers—­and that their slaves are the wretched victims of unsurpassed cruelties.  Now, how do abolitionists propose to settle the points at issue?—­by fanciful pictures of the abominations of slavery to countervail the like pictures of its blessedness?—­by mere assertions against slavery, to balance mere assertions in its favor?  No—­but by the perfectly reasonable and fair means of examining slavery in the light of its own code—­of judging of the character of the slaveholder in the light of his own conduct—­and of arguing the condition of the slave from unequivocal evidences of the light in which the slave himself views it.  To this end we publish extracts from the southern slave code, which go to show that slavery subjects its victims to the absolute control of their erring fellow men—­that it withholds from them marriage and the Bible—­that it classes them with brutes and things—­and annihilates the distinctions between mind and matter.  To this end we republish in part, or entirely, pamphlets and books, in which southern men exhibit, with their own pens, some of the horrid features of slavery.