Right to Interfere.—self-defence.

“But we of the North,” it is often said, “have no right to meddle with slavery; then why talk about it here? It is for the South alone to decide whether it shall be abolished, and, if so, when and how.” Granted;—that each State has the sole right to legislate on the subject, within its own limits. But this is far from proving northern anti-slavery action to be wrong, or northern inaction, touching slavery, to be right. It is our right and duty to defend ourselves against the aggressions of the slave-power. These have been notoriously many and gross. It has trampled on our right of petition and free speech; demolished our free presses; plundered our mails and burnt their contents; imprisoned and enslaved northern colored freemen, and outraged the persons of northern citizens, both white and colored; insulted northern States by offering indignities to the representatives of their sovereignty; virtually annulled that provision of the Constitution which guaranties, to the citizens of each State, “all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States;” and, in instances and ways unnumbered, in its treatment of the North, done violence to every dictate of justice, every principle of law, human or divine. It has usurped, by far the greater share of all political preferments, power and profits; controlled the action of the government in all its branches; wasted the nation’s blood and treasure in wars for its advantage; and always shaped the most important measures of public policy with a single eye to the promotion of its own interests, at whatever sacrifice of northern rights or the general welfare. Against the longer continuance of this state of things we may and ought to labor earnestly.