"It is far from the intention of this Society to affect, in any manner, the tenure by which a certain species of property is held. I am myself a slave-holder, and I consider that kind of property as inviolable as any other in the country. I would resist encroachment upon it as soon, and with as much firmness as I would upon any other property that I hold. Nor am I prepared to go as far as the gentleman, who has just spoken (Mr Mercer) in saying that I would emancipate my slaves, if the means were provided of sending them from the country."
At the same meeting Mr Randolph said, "He thought it necessary, being himself a slave-holder, to show that so far from being in the smallest degree connected with the abolition of slavery, the proposed Society would prove one of the greatest securities to enable the master to keep in possession his own property."
In Mr Clay's speech, in the second Annual Report, he declares: "It is not proposed to deliberate upon, or consider at all, any question of emancipation, or any that is connected with the abolition of slavery. On this condition alone gentlemen from the South and West can be expected to cooperate. On this condition only, I have myself attended."
In the seventh Annual Report it is said, "An effort for the benefit of the blacks, in which all parts of the country can unite, of course must not have the abolition of slavery for its immediate object; nor may it aim directly at the instruction of the blacks."
Mr Archer of Virginia, fifteenth Annual Report, says, "The object of the Society, if I understand it aright, involves no intrusion on property, nor even upon prejudice."
In the speech of James S. Green, Esq. he says: "This Society have ever disavowed, and they do yet disavow that their object is the emancipation of slaves. They have no wish if they could to interfere in the smallest degree with what they deem the most interesting and fearful subject, which can be pressed upon the American public. There is no people that treat their slaves with so much kindness and so little cruelty."
In almost every address delivered before the Society similar expressions occur.—On the propriety of discussing the evils of slavery, without bitterness and without
