Page:The Natick resolution, or, resistance to slaveholders.djvu/11

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letter to the richmond enquirer.
9

our Senators and Representatives in Congress dare not avow this as their opinion in Washington, at home, among their constituents, they countenance and sustain it by direct advocacy, or by silence. The North has reason to expect it of them, the coming session, that they will openly advocate the doctrine and practice of insurrection and resistance, as the right and duty of the slaves of the South and of the people of the non-slave States. We have much reason to hope, that, come what may, they will do it.

It was asserted in the above meeting, that John Brown, at Harper's Ferry, had truly embodied the general idea of the North, and had done no more than his simple duty to himself, to the slave, to the slaveholder, to his country, and his God. There are thousands among those who have known his plans and movements the past four or five years, and have sympathized with him, and who have known of his call, as he believes, from God, to do a deed that would arouse the South and the nation to consider the sin and danger of slavery, and who have known also of his unfaltering determination to do that deed, and strike that blow, who would now cheerfully take his place in the dungeon and welcome the gallows in his stead, if thereby he might be spared to lead on the mustering sons of liberty to free the slaves, and crush the power of those who live by whipping and selling women, and by "trafficking in slaves, and the souls of men."

The sin of this nation, as it was asserted in that meeting, is to be taken away, not by Christ, but by John Brown. Christ, as represented by those who are called by his name, has proved a dead failure, as a power to free the slaves. John Brown is and will be a power far more efficient. The nation is to be saved, not by the blood of Christ, (as that is now administered,) but by the blood of John Brown, which, as administered by Abolitionists, will prove the "power of God and the wisdom of God" to resist slaveholders, and bring them to repentance. John Brown and him hung will do that for the slaves and for those who enslave them which Christ and Him crucified has never been made to do. The blood of Christ, as dispensed by the American Church and clergy, has been the most nutritious aliment of American slavery, and has been made to add only to its growth and