No Compromise with Slavery / An Address Delivered to the Broadway Tabernacle, New York

by William Lloyd Garrison

Here, then, are twelve reasons which are popularly urged in all parts of the country, as conclusive against the right of a man to himself. If they are valid, in any instance, what becomes of the Declaration of Independence? On what ground can the revolutionary war, can any struggle for liberty, be justified? Nay, cannot all the despotisms of the earth take shelter under them? If they are valid, then why is not the jesuitical doctrine, that the end sanctifies them, and that it is right to do evil that good may come, morally sound? If they are valid, then how does it appear that God is no respecter of persons? or how can he say, "All souls are mine"? or what is to be done with Christ's injunction, "Call no man master"? or with what justice can the same duties and the same obligations (such as are embodied in the Decalogue and the gospel of Christ) be exacted of chattels as of men? But they are not valid. They are the logic of Bedlam, the morality of the pirate ship, the diabolism of the pit. They insult the common sense and shock the moral nature of mankind. Take them to Europe, and see with what scorn they will be universally treated! Go, first, to England, and gravely propound them there; and the universal response will proudly be, in the thrilling lines of Cowper,

"Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs
Inhale our air, that moment they are free!
They touch our country, and their shackles fall!"

Every Briton, indignant at the monstrous claim, will answer, in the emphatic words of Brougham: "Tell me not of rights; talk not of the property of the planter in his slaves! I deny the right—I acknowledge not the property! The principles, the feelings of our nature, rise in rebellion against it. Be the appeal made to the understanding or to the heart, the sentence is the same that rejects it." And Curran, in words of burning eloquence, shall reply: "I speak in the spirit of the British law, which makes liberty commensurate with, and inseparable from, the British soil—which proclaims, even to the stranger and the sojourner, that the ground on which he treads is holy, and consecrated by the genius of universal emancipation. No matter in what language his doom may have been pronounced; no matter what complexion an Indian or an African sun may have burnt upon him; no matter in what disastrous battle his liberty may have been cloven down; no matter with what solemnities he may have been offered upon the altar of Slavery; the first moment he touches the sacred soil of Britain, the altar and the god sink together in the dust—his spirit walks abroad in its own majesty—his body swells beyond the measure of his chains, and he stands redeemed, regenerated and disenthralled, by the irresistible genius of universal emancipation."

Again—take these slaveholding pleas to Scotland and from the graves of the dead and the homes of the living, they shall be replied to in thunder-tones in the language of Burns: "A man's a man, for all that."

"Who would be a traitor knave?
Who would fill a coward's grave?
Who so base as be a slave?
Let him turn and flee!"

Pass over to Ireland, and there repeat those excuses for Slavery, and eight million voices shall reply, in the words of Thomas Moore:

"To think that man, thou just and loving God!
Should stand before thee with a tyrant's rod,
O'er creatures like himself, with souls from Thee,
Yet dare to boast of perfect liberty!
Away! away! I'd rather hold my neck
By doubtful tenure from a Sultan's beck,
In climes where liberty has scarce been nam'd,
Nor any right but that of ruling claim'd,
Than thus to live where boasted Freedom waves
Her fustian flag in mockery over slaves!"

And the testimony of O'Connell, in behalf of all Ireland, shall pass from mouth to mouth: "I am an Abolitionist. I am for speedy, immediate Abolition. I care not what caste, creed or colour, Slavery may assume. Whether it be personal or political, mental or corporeal, intellectual or spiritual, I am for its instant, its total Abolition. I am for justice, in the name of humanity, and according to the law of the living God." "Let none of the slave-owners, dealers in human flesh, dare to set a foot upon our free soil!" "We are all children of the same Creator, heirs of the same promise, purchased by the blood of the same Redeemer—and what signifies of what caste colour or creed we may be? It is our duty to proclaim that the cause of the negro is our cause, and that we will insist upon doing away, to the best of our human ability, the stain of Slavery, not only from every portion of this mighty empire, but from the whole face of the earth." "Let the American Abolitionists be honoured in proportion as the slaveholders are execrated."

Pass over to the Continent, even into Papal-ridden Italy, and there urge the popular pleas in defence of slaveholding, and, from the Vatican, Pope Gregory XVI. shall reply: "We urgently invoke, in the name of God, all Christians, of whatever condition, that none henceforth dare to subject to Slavery, unjustly persecute, or despoil of their goods, Indians, Negroes, or other classes of men, or to be accessories to others, or furnish them aid or assistance in so doing; and on no account henceforth to exercise that inhuman traffic, by which Negroes are reduced to Slavery, as if they were not men, but automata or chattels, and are sold in defiance of all the laws of justice and humanity, and devoted to severe and intolerable labours."

Proceed to Austria, and there defend the practice of reducing men to Slavery, and the Austrian code shall proclaim: "Every man, by right of nature, sanctioned by reason, must be considered a free person. Every slave becomes free from the moment he touches the Austrian soil, or an Austrian ship."