The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus

by American Anti-Slavery Society

Very respectfully,

Your obedient servant,

F.H. Elmore."

[This letter of Mr. Elmore contains but little more than a reiteration of alarming cries on the part of the slaveholder;--cries that are as old as the earliest attempts of philanthropy to break the fetters of the enslaved, and that have been repeated up to the present day, with a boldness that seems to increase, as instances of emancipation multiply to prove them groundless. Those who utter them seem, in their panic, not only to overlook the most obvious laws of the human mind, and the lights of experience, but to be almost unconscious of the great events connected with slavery, that are now passing around them in the world, and conspiring to bring about its early abrogation among all civilized and commercial nations.

However Christian, and civilized, industrious, prosperous and happy, the SLAVEHOLDERS of the South may be, this cannot be said of the SLAVES. A large religious denomination of the state in which Mr. Elmore resides, has deliberately pronounced them to be "HEATHEN." Their "industry" is seen at the end of the lash--of "prosperity" they have none, for they cannot possess any thing that is an element of prosperity--their "happiness" they prove, by running away from their masters, whenever they think they can effect their escape. This is the condition of a large majority of the people in South Carolina, Mississippi and Louisiana.

The "two races" exist in peace in Mexico,--in all the former South American dependencies of Spain, in Antigua, in the Bermudas, in Canada, in Massachusetts, in Vermont, in fine, in every country where they enjoy legal equality. It is the denial of this that produces discontent. MEN will never be satisfied without it. Let the slaveholders consult the irreversible laws of the human mind--make a full concession of right to those from whom they have withheld it, and they will be blessed with a peace, political, social, moral, beyond their present conceptions; without such concessions they never can possess it.

A system that cannot withstand the assaults of truth--that replies to arguments with threats--that cannot be "talked about"--that flourishes in secrecy and darkness, and dies when brought forth into the light and examined, must in this time of inexorable scrutiny and relentless agitation, be a dangerous one. If justice be done, all necessity for the extirpation of any part of the people will at once be removed. Baptisms of blood are seen only when humanity has failed in her offices, and the suffering discern hope only in the brute efforts of despair.

Mr. Elmore is doubtless well versed in general history. To his vigorous declamation, I reply by asking, if he can produce from the history of our race a single instance, where emancipation, full and immediate, has been followed, as a legitimate consequence, by insurrection or bloodshed. I may go further, and ask him for a well authenticated instance, where an emancipated slave, singly has imbrued his hands in his master's blood. The first record of such an act in modern times, is yet to be made.

Mr. Elmore says "the white inhabitants in the slave states should be informed of the full length and breadth and depth of this storm which is gathering over their heads, before it breaks in its desolating fury." In this sentiment there is not a reasonable man in the country, be he abolitionist or not, who will not coincide with him. We rejoice at the evidence we here have, in a gentleman of the influence and intelligence of Mr. Elmore, of the returning sanity of the South. How wildly and mischievously has she been heretofore misled! Whilst the Governors of Virginia, Alabama, Tennessee and Arkansas, have been repelling offers, made in respectful terms, of the fullest and most authentic accounts of our movements; and whilst Governor Butler of South Carolina, has not only followed the example of his gubernatorial brethren just named, but is found corresponding with an obscure culprit in Massachusetts--bribing him with a few dollars, the sum he demanded for his fraudulent promise to aid in thwarting the abolitionists[[A]]; whilst too, Mr. Calhoun has been willing to pass laws to shut out from his constituents and the South generally information that concerned them more nearly than all others--we now have it from the highest source, from one selected by a state delegation as its representative in a general committee of the whole slaveholding delegations, that the South ought to be "informed of the full length and breadth and depth" of the measures, intentions, &c, of the abolitionists. At this there is not an abolitionist who will not rejoice. We ask for nothing but access to the popular mind of the South. We feel full confidence in the eternal rectitude of our principles, and of their reception at the South, when once they are understood. Let the conflict come, let the truth of liberty fairly enter the lists with the error of slavery, and we have not a doubt of a glorious triumph.

[Footnote [A]: Appendix H.]