"You are fighting for slavery. You want to make or keep other people slaves. Do you not know that your wicked efforts will end in making slaves of yourselves? You come here to make this a slave State. You are fighting against liberty, which our Revolutionary fathers fought to establish in this Republic, where all men should be free and equal, with the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Therefore, you are traitors to liberty and to your country, of the worst kind, and deserve to be hung to the nearest tree.
"But we shall not touch a hair of your heads. Have no fear. You are deluded men. You have been deceived by men who are your elders but not your betters. You have been misled into this wrong, by those your leaders; thus, they are the real criminals and worse than traitors, and, if we had them here instead of you, they would not find such mercy at our hands.
"You we forgive. For, as you yourselves have confessed, we believe it can be said of you that, as was said of them of old, you being without knowledge, 'you know not what you do.' But hereafter you will be without excuse.
"Go in peace. Go home and tell your neighbors and friends of your mistake. We deprive you only of your arms, and do that only lest some of you are not yet converted to the right. We let you go free of punishment this time; but, do we catch you over the border again committing depredations, you must not expect, nor will you receive, any mercy.
"Go home, and become liberty-loving citizens of your State and country, and your mistakes and misdeeds, as also the injuries which you have inflicted upon us, will not have been in vain."
XII
Hard Lines
