SPEECH AT FANEUIL HALL,
BEFORE
THE NEW ENGLAND ANTI-SLAVERY CONVENTION, MAY 31, 1848.
The design of the abolitionists is this,—to remove and destroy the institution of slavery. To accomplish this well, two things are needed, ideas and actions. Of the ideas first, and then a word of the actions.
What is the idea of the abolitionists? Only this. That all men are created free, endowed with unalienable rights; and in respect of those rights, that all men are equal. This is the idea of Christianity, of human nature. Of course, then, no man has a right to take away another's rights; of course, no man may use me for his good, and not my own good also; of course, there can be no ownership of man by man; of course, no slavery in any form. Such is the idea, and some of the most obvious doctrines that follow from it.
Now, the abolitionists aim to put this idea into the minds of the people, knowing that if it be there, actions will follow fast enough.
It seems a very easy matter to get it there. The idea is nothing new; all the world knows it. Talk with men. Democrats and Whigs, they will say they like freedom in the abstract, they hate slavery in the abstract. But you find that somehow they like slavery in the concrete, and dislike abolitionism when it tries to set free the slave. Slavery is the affair of the whole people; not Congress, but the nation, made slavery; made it national, consti-
