it will prove the "bruised reed, which when we lean upon it will break, and rend all our side, and cause all our loins to be at a stand?"
Last: I deprecate this action, because so far as it is to have any success, it is to bring a mischievous element into our church, at the expense of driving a multitude of valuable members and ministers out. Sir, it is paying too dear for the indulgence of religious romance, or the propitiating of meddlesome abolitionists, to rend our Southern Church, and drive from us its noblest part. I solemnly caution members of this Synod of the intense, the indignant, the irreconcilable opposition which their measures excite among the great body of our eldership and people. Do they say that they see no striking marks of such opposition; that the free ventilation of the proposal, in the newspapers and elsewhere, does not seem to have provoked it? I reply, I know the temper of the Southern people, at least of Southern Presbyterians. The reason they have not spoken out in thunder-tones already, is twofold: first, they have hitherto been incredulous of a serious intention to force negroes into ecclesiastical superiority to themselves; and they have felt a disgust so profound for the whole proposition, and the unseasonableness of its discussion, that they have turned aside with loathing from the whole debate. But let this plan be put in practice, and if I know anything, I forewarn you, gentlemen, that you will spring a mine, which will blow the engineers of negro equality high into the air.
Look, I pray you, at the grounds of this sentiment, which you will outrage. For a generation, Southern Christians have seen the negro made the pretext of a malignant and wicked assault upon their fair fame, and their just rights. At length, he has been made the occasion of a frightful war, resulting in the conquest and ruin of the land, and the overthrow of all our civil rights. And now, our conquerors and oppressors, after committing the crime of murder against our noble old commonwealth, and treading us down with the armed heel, are practising to add to every atrocious injury, the loathesome insult of placing the negro's feet upon our necks. This day we are threatened with evils, through negro supremacy and spoliation, to whose atrocity the horrors of the late war were tender mercies. And these ebony pets of this romantic philanthropy, this day lend themselves in compact body, with an eager and almost universal willingness, to be the tools of this abhorred project; the scorpion—say rather the reptile lash in the hands of our ruthless tyrants. But our brethren, turning heartsore and indignant from their secular affairs, where nothing met their eye but a melancholy ruin, polluted by the intrusion of this inferior and hostile race, looked to their beloved Church for a little repose. There, at least, said they, is one pure, peaceful spot, not yet reached by this pollution and tyranny. There, at least, Virginians may meet and act, without the disgust of negro politics and the stain of negro domination. Will you, dare you say to them, no? There too, the hated subject and the foul intrusion shall be thrust upon you; thrust upon you by the folly of Southern men, of your own spiritual guides!
And now that every hope of the existence of Church, and of State, and of civilization itself, hangs upon our arduous effort to defeat the doctrine of negro suffrage, shall the General Assembly be invoked, to
