the duty of Congress, inasmuch as it possessed the power, to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, the National Territories, along the coast and between the States.  The free States are the particeps criminis of the slave States.  They are living under a pledge of their tremendous physical force to rivet the manacles of chattel slavery upon millions in the South; they are liable at any instant to be called on under the Constitution to suppress a general insurrection of the slaves.  This relationship is criminal, “is full of danger, IT MUST BE BROKEN UP.”

So much for the views and principles of the declaration, now for the designs and measures as enumerated therein:  “We shall organize anti-slavery societies, if possible, in every city, town and village in our land.

“We shall send forth agents to lift up the voice of remonstrance, of warning, of entreaty, and of rebuke.

“We shall circulate, unsparingly and extensively, anti-slavery tracts and periodicals.

“We shall enlist the pulpit and the press in the cause of the suffering and the dumb.

“We shall aim at a purification of the churches from all participation in the guilt of slavery.

“We shall encourage the labor of freemen rather than that of slaves, by giving a preference to their productions; and

“We shall spare no exertions nor means to bring the whole nation to speedy repentance.”

The instrument closes by pledging the utmost of its signers to the overthrow of slavery—­“come what may to our persons, our interests, or our reputations—­whether we live to witness the triumph of Liberty, Justice, and Humanity, or perish untimely as martyrs in this great, benevolent, and holy cause.”  Twin pledge it was to that ancestral, historic one made in 1776:  “And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of DIVINE PROVIDENCE, we mutually pledge to each other, our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.”

Whittier has predicted for the Declaration of Sentiments an enduring fame:  “It will live,” he declares, “as long as our national history.”  Samuel J. May was equally confident that this “Declaration of the Rights of Man,” as he proudly cherished it, would “live a perpetual, impressive protest against every form of oppression, until it shall have given place to that brotherly kindness which all the children of the common Father owe to one another.”  As a particular act and parchment-roll of high thoughts and resolves, highly expressed, it will not, I think, attain to the immortality predicted for it.  For as such it has in less than two generations passed almost entirely out of the knowledge and recollection of Americans.  But in another sense it is destined to realize all that has been foreshadowed for it by its friends.  Like elemental fire its influence will glow and flame at the center of our national life long after as a separate and sovereign entity it shall have been forgotten by the descendants of its illustrious author and signers.