Could he have been dropping a dime that the decision wasn’t going to go Republicans’ way, and signaling that his lengthy dissent would provide a roadmap for white nationalist MAGA Republicans to come back to the court with an argument insane but clever enough to survive John Roberts’ desire to still get invited to the right cocktail parties?

We may never know. But what we do know, is that Clarence Thomas is not on our side. And by “our” … I mean the Blacks.

Dear Black Delegation —

Can we please amend our protocols to remove the term “Uncle Tom” from our collective lexicon … particularly as pertains to one, Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas?

To be clear, my interest is not in relieving the irascible associate justice of responsibility for the harm he has so viciously inflicted on the very people who overwhelmingly supported placing him onto the Supreme Court (to keep the “Black seat” Black) despite credible allegations of sexual pestery against Anita Hill (and other women who didn’t even get to testify, thanks to a Democratic Senator named Joe Biden.) Far from it. Rather, I’d like to move that we, The Black Delegation, at long last absolve poor Uncle Tom of the ignominy of being the catch-word for a sellout.

The fact is, Uncle Tom, the title character in the best selling slave narrative Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, was a hero — not a villain. He was a good man, who died trying to protect his Black loved ones. Read this excerpt from a 2008 NPR interview Michel Martin did with folklorist Patricia Turner:

Prof. TURNER: Many African-Americans don’t hate the real story that Stowe wrote. The Uncle Tom character that she gives us is extraordinarily Christian. The climax of the story really comes when Uncle Tom is asked to reveal where two slave women are hiding, who had been sexually abused by their master. And he refuses. Knowing that he is going to be beaten to death, he refused to say where they are. And African-Americans who have read the novel can appreciate what kind of heroism that took for a black man to sign away his life to save two black women.

Unfortunately, the stage depictions don’t include that part of the story. They grossly distort Uncle Tom into an older man than he is in the novel, a man whose English is poor, a man who will do quite the opposite, who will sell out any black man if it will curry the favor of a white employer, a white master, a white mistress. It’s that distorted character that is so objectionable to African-Americans.

MARTIN: How did that happen? It is quite remarkable that this is a book which was intended to, and in many ways succeeded in revealing to people who were not aware or chose not to pay attention to the horrors of slavery, I mean, the unimaginable brutality, the exploitation of women, the physical violence, all of that. It was meant to reveal this, and somehow or other this character, who is meant to be very brave and an example of, you know, Christian forbearance, turned into this - the sell-out. How did that happen?

Prof. TURNER: The producers of the early stage shows didn’t think that they could attract an audience for the Uncle Tom as he was depicted by Stowe. They couldn’t sell tickets to a theatrical production, the climax which would have been this man dying, rather than the revealing the whereabouts of these women.

They could sell tickets, as they had been successful by showing blacks in minstrel depictions, showing them liking to dance more than they liked to work, showing their insensitivity to each other, showing their willingness to tell the master or mistress what he or she wanted to hear. That sold tickets, and so those were the shows that they produced, staged and circulated throughout the world.

Read the whole interview here. Well worth it — and important to recall that in its time, Uncle Tom’s Cabin sold 300,000 copies in the U.S. in 1852, its first year of publication, and even more in Great Britain, where antislavery feeling was stronger. Indeed, it was the best-selling book of the 19th century, outselling every book on offer except the Bible. Despite that, it was the warped, Blackface version of Uncle Tom in the stage plays that most people remembered, giving that poor, heroic man a bad name.

And so I think it’s time we stopped doing the devil’s work by continuing to use Uncle Tom’s name in vain. And I hereby move that we swap in a new name stand in for the concept of a Black man willing to sell out Black women and men with no apologies:

With deepest respect to all of the kind, pro-community Clarences in the community who are not selling us down the river for trinkets from creepy billionaires, going forward we might also consider making the full heel turn to the term “Justice Clarence” as an alternate substitute, to be used in such phrases as: “Ole, Justice Clarence ass…” and “Oh we know he’s a Justice Clarence.” “Uncle Thomas” ought also to be an acceptable substitute.

Let’s bring it to a vote, and make sure we keep all of the delegations apprised.

As to what brought on this request? Behold, Justice Clarence’s concurrence in the Alito-penned ruling that once again, saw the modern day Roger Taney — Chief Justice John Roberts’ shameful court majority, gutting the Voting Rights Act down to the skids, for the apparent purpose of assuring that Roberts’ political party never loses control of Congress, such that a new congress could bring a halt to John Roberts’ and his fellow Leonard Leo gang’s endless corruption and grift.

Justice Clarence’s concurrence in the Calais case states that NO VRA Section 2 claim should ever prevail, ever ever ever, period.

May you live long enough, Clarence, to fully understand how deeply disappointed and repulsed the vast majority of Black Americans are in you. And the Geechees don’t claim you either, man. Don’t even show up to the cookout. You’re not getting a plate, even taken to the car.

On Clarence

has a startling, intriguing take on who Clarence is, and how he came to be that way. Worth a watch (and do subscribe to his channel!) And the core point that Garrison makes is that Clarence has staked his philosophy on insisting that there is no such thing as “Black people” as a collective, and instead each of us should be treated as individuals.

Individuals who only have rights that Uncle Clarence will defend … if they are white.

Handmaid’s Tale stuff

Watch this space…

So to this regime, women can’t even sit on a soybean board… From Reuters:

CHICAGO - The Trump administration rejected all four women farmers chosen by their peers to represent them in an industry group called the United Soybean Board earlier this year, a rare intervention by the U.S. Department of Agriculture that three of the women suspected was because of their gender.

From the Pentagon to the U.S. Department of Education, the Trump administration has vowed to root out policies that promote diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, from every layer of government.

Normally, soy farmers pick their representatives and the USDA signs off. This time, the USDA rejected at least five of the farmers selected for the United Soybean Board, including four women. It did not give any reason, according to three of the women.

Sara Stelter, a Wisconsin farmer stripped of her role on the soy board, saw the decision as part of Trump’s broader policy.

“It seems like a small thing,” Stelter said, “but in other ways, it’s really a big deal because it’s just another thing of where the current administration views women, I believe, and what their role should be.”

Reuters could not determine the reason for USDA’s rejection of the five candidates for the soy board. The USDA and the United Soybean Board did not respond to detailed questions from Reuters about the rejections, saying only that the agriculture secretary selects board members from candidates put forward by state boards. The White House did not fulfill a public information request seeking any correspondence on the matter, citing a backlog of requests, and a spokesperson declined to comment, referring Reuters to the USDA.

So much for the meritocracy. We will be judged by our skin color, gender, and political ideology, and not least by the level of our personal fealty to the president.

Under his eye…

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And damned if the 2020s aren’t just the 1920s revisited, only with the party labels flipped.

The 1920s were the second golden age of the Ku Klux Klan. They had come to prominence after the civil war after the collapse of Reconstruction, when their mission was to prevent Black men from voting, and Black families from achieving economic parity with whites. Jim Crow helped them to succeed, and we are in the 150th anniversary of the abject violence that made it happen, which led to the creation of the Department of Justice; whose original mission was to protect formerly enslaved Black Americans from white violence:

Amos T. Akerman was an unlikely figure to head the newly formed Department of Justice. In 1870, the United States was still working to bind up the nation’s wounds torn open by the Civil War. During this period of Reconstruction, the federal government committed itself to guaranteeing full citizenship rights to all Americans, regardless of race. At the forefront of that effort was Akerman, a former Democrat and enslaver from Georgia, and a former officer in the Confederate Army.

Though the United States had had an Attorney General since the formation of the government in 1789, none had been empowered with the full force of a consolidated legal team quite like Akerman. And none had had the monumental task of enforcing the 14th and 15th Amendments and new legislation delivering long overdue rights to four million formerly enslaved black men and women. This department’s work on behalf of the emancipated population was so central to its early mission that Akerman established the department’s headquarters in the Freedman’s Savings Bank Building.

In the immediate wake of the Civil War, Akerman, a New Hampshirite who had settled in Georgia in the 1840s, looked to the future, leaving the Democrats for the Republicans and prosecuting voter intimidation cases as a U.S. district attorney in his adopted state. Reflecting on his decision to switch his allegiance to the party of Lincoln, Akerman said, “Some of us who had adhered to the Confederacy felt it to be our duty when we were to participate in the politics of the Union, to let Confederate ideas rule us no longer….Regarding the subjugation of one race by the other as an appurtenance of slavery, we were content that it should go to the grave in which slavery had been buried.”

Akerman’s work caught the attention of President Ulysses S. Grant, who promoted the Georgian to Attorney General in June 1870. On July 1 of that year, the Department of Justice, created to handle the onslaught of post-war litigation, became an official government department with Akerman at its helm. The focus of his 18-month tenure as the nation’s top law enforcement official was the protection of black voting rights from the systematic violence of the Ku Klux Klan. Akerman’s Justice Department prosecuted and chased from Southern states hundreds of Klan members. Historian William McFeely, in his biography of Akerman, wrote, “Perhaps no attorney general since his tenure…has been more vigorous in the prosecution of cases designed to protect the lives and rights of black Americans.”

Yet despite the federal government devoting an entire agency to protecting the formerly enslaved from what amounted to domestic terrorism, the Klan revived, full force in the 1920s, thanks to Democratic president Woodrow Wilson. From The Bill of Rights Institute:

During the 1920s, cultural conflict and modernization helped resuscitate the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). Whereas the original KKK was a violent, racist organization born in the post Civil War South, the modern Klan was driven by somewhat different concerns. Many white, lower middle-class, Protestant Americans in the North and Midwest were fearful that immigrants were changing traditional American culture, and they responded with anti-Catholicism and anti-Semitism.

The revival of the Klan was inspired by Birth of a Nation, director D. W. Griffith’s violently anti-black blockbuster film of 1915 that promoted the southern “Lost Cause” view of the Civil War. The movie was one of the most controversial films ever made and was based on the 1905 novel The Clansman by Thomas Dixon, Jr. On Thanksgiving Day, 1915, Colonel William J. Simmons and a few friends burned a cross on Stone Mountain near Atlanta to signal the revival of the Klan as one of many fraternal groups, but it harkened to an earlier Ku Klux Klan that often fought violently against rights for freed African Americans in the post-Civil War Reconstruction South.

The new Klan retained its namesake’s antipathy to blacks and its penchants for secrecy, the wearing of masks and sheet-like outfits, and vigilante-style violence. It also employed a special terminology for members, inventing words that began with the letter “K” such as “Kloran” (its handbook), “Klavern” (a local branch), and “Kludd” (a chaplain). It charged $10 to join (of which recruiters got a cut) and held a monopoly of selling Klan uniforms and regalia to members. As KKK membership grew into the millions by the early 1920s, the money poured in.

This “second” Klan could easily be as violent as its Reconstruction Era ancestor, but it was more fraternal and social, though its brand of socializing was restricted to native-born, Protestant whites. It supported the recently enacted national prohibition on alcoholic beverages and opposed labor unions, immigration, and foreign entanglements such as the League of Nations. Klan members and leadership disliked Wall Street and big business in general, and chain stores in particular. Said national Klan leader Hiram Evans, “Increasing economic inequalities threaten the very stability of society.” The rise of industrialism and consumerism presented bewildering changes that the Klan blamed on stereotyped Jewish bankers on Wall Street.

Unlike the early Klan (or the Klan of the 1960s), the 1920s Klan, although founded in the South, was not exclusively southern. It boasted support nationwide, primarily in the Midwest. In 1924, more than 40 percent of all Klan membership could be found in just three states (Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois), but the Klan also secured significant support in Maine, Colorado, and Oregon (where it helped ban Catholic schools). It enjoyed a small-town base but also appealed to big-city Protestants, with large chapters in such cities as Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Dallas, and Indianapolis. In the South, most members were Democrats. In the North (such as in Indiana), most were Republicans, though Milwaukee had a fairly large Socialist membership.

And the Klan was so prolific, they were thoroughly represented in both parties. In Colorado, both the Democratic mayor and the Republican governor were high level members of the Klan. And the notion of being in the Klan was not something that people hid. People were members right out in the open. So open: the Klan consumed the 1924 Democratic national convention (better known as the Klanbake” and marched through Washington in 1926.

And yet, the United States never created a domestic terrorism statute to deal with entities like the Klan, or with its modern counterparts: the neo-nazis, Patriot Front, Boogaloo Bois, Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, whose “Western Chauvinist,” anti-immigrant ethos is now deeply rooted in the federal government, thanks to people like Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon, Tom Homan, and Donald Trump.

Two can play at that game

Well imagine, if you would, if the next Democratic president, and Democratic governors starting in 2029, were to take what Trump and governors like Ron DeSantis have done to their invented domestic enemy “Antifa” and apply to the genuinely dangerous far right ideology known as MAGA. Namely: designate it as a domestic terrorist organization. Sounds crazy? Behold, America’s most pinch-faced governor… Listen to the whole thing if you can stomach it, and not the whingeing about the Southern Poverty Law Center and its designation of right wing groups as nazi affiliated and curious. The whole stream of right wing complaints that are spewed by this man.

But as the one journalist with good sense asked, why couldn’t a future Democratic governor reverse that designation and turn it on right wing groups like MAGA?

Next, recall Donald Trump’s insane presidential memorandum dated September 25, 2025 and entitled: Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence, which designates any group or individual as a domestic terrorist for the following thought crimes:

…anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality…

So basically, if you believe trans people are real, that Black history shouldn’t be erased or that immigrants should not be kidnapped off the street by armed, masked men, or if you find right wing fake Christianity to be repugnant, you are, to this regime, a terrorist.

So what’s stopping the next Democratic president from issuing a similar directive at MAGA? After all, this is a movement that encourages hatred toward and vicious, conspiratorial lies about racial minorities and non-white immigrants, which has encouraged violent threats against them, demands that immigration be limited to white people from Europe and white South Africans, attacks trans individuals, setting them up for verbal and even physical attacks, and venerates the anti-American, treasonous Confederate States of America, including flying their flag—the flag of an enemy country that fought against the United States. To say nothing of the fact that this far right extremist group already attempted to overthrow the government, and their crimes are on tape.

After all, their adherents literally marched through Washington D.C. on the nation’s 250th birthday like the Ku Klux Klan of old:

… only with more ridicule…

Still, what’s to stop Democrats from designating MAGA as a domestic terrorist organization if and when they regain federal power, or in the states where they hold power now? After all, MAGA right wingers wear common insignia, not unlike a street gang…

… they can be identified by common tattoos, often reflecting crusader ideology. And these often Christian nationalist organizations (which is what the Klan is) align ideologically with billionaires who openly declare their opposition to democracy. I think there’s a strong case to be made by a future Democratic president, congress and pro-democracy governors. These right groups are far more organized and aggressively marketed to young white men in particular than the loose confederation of anti-fascists that call themselves “ANTIFA.” They have a far deeper and larger history of actual violence.

And the statistics are clear — at least when not suppressed by this regime — it is far right, not far left groups that pose the greatest threat of domestic terrorism in the U.S.

So why not back up these facts with an official designation?

The fight for birthright citizenship is not over

Worth a read: this excellent piece for The Root by activist Dorian Warren and Cook County Commissioner Josina Morita of Illinois, on how the narrow victory for the 14th Amendments plainly-written section one is just round one of the fight for Americans of color:

Birthright citizenship was not handed to Black Americans and later borrowed by immigrants. It is one promise — forged in the fire of Reconstruction to secure Black citizenship, and extended in 1898, in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, to protect the American-born children of the very Chinese immigrants the nation had tried to exclude. Black, Asian, and immigrant Americans do not hold separate stakes in the Fourteenth Amendment. We hold one.

Which is why, in Justice Thomas’s dissent, we heard something beyond a legal argument. We heard permission — permission to do to today’s families what was done to Josina’s more than a hundred years ago: to deny birthright citizenship not under the Constitution, but around it. Not by amendment, but by argument and by statute. The ruling did not close the question so much as keep it alive, inviting the next challenge forward. And what begins as a fight over immigrants rarely ends there. It reaches Asian Americans, and Black Americans, and anyone some official decides does not fit the fabric of the country.

We know this because it has already happened.

Josina’s great-grandmother, Mary Wing, was born in the United States. So were her parents. She was born a U.S. citizen. But when she married Fung Gum Wing, a Chinese immigrant, the collision of race and gender in federal law took her birthright citizenship away. Under the Chinese Exclusion Act, her husband was an “alien ineligible for citizenship.” Under the Expatriation Act of 1907, a woman was made to assume her husband’s nationality — or, in Mary’s case, his lack of one.

Mary did not lose her citizenship under the Constitution. She lost it by act of Congress. And that is exactly where the next fight will be fought. In Congress.

For twenty years, Mary was stateless — without constitutional rights or protections in the only country she had ever known. Her parents were citizens. Her children were citizens. She was not. In the 1930s, under amendments to the Cable Act of 1922, she was finally able to apply for citizenship. She applied as any immigrant would. She took the citizenship test. In 1939, her naturalization certificate arrived. Under “former nationality,” it reads: “American.”

An American, made to prove she was one.

The danger the dissent flirts with is not abstract. Strip the Fourteenth Amendment of its plain meaning, and Black Americans could once again be asked to carry papers to prove their freedom — Social Security cards, birth certificates, documentation of belonging — in a country that already over-polices and over-surveils them. The same logic that unmade Mary Wing’s citizenship is the logic that would have unmade the citizenship of Dorian’s ancestors, had the Court gone the other way. It is the same fight. It always has been.

And if you think it couldn’t happen again, you haven’t been paying attention. Stephen Miller, freed from the scrutiny of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which called him out on his nazi-curiousness, along with the ironic Marco Rubio, whose parents were foreign non-citizens when he was born, the soulless Todd Blanche, the goons at DHS including Tom Homan and Markwayne Mullin, not to mention right wing members of congress, are already studying Thomas’ dissent for instructions on how to come back with a case John Roberts thinks he can get past his dinner guests.

Hell, maybe Uncle Clarence delivered his instructions in person…

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In addition to the rain delay, which forced a swath of MAGA fans into the National Museum of African American History and Culture for shelter…

… prompting a range of memes:

When the rain finally stopped … the regime unleashed a post-midnight fireworks display that reminded most people of World War III…

But it turns out that was just the disaster that we could see. The list of performers on tap for the festivities was large, if not all that impressive. And I have the full list. Here it is. Had the “party” gone off as planned, the assembled MAGA hoarde would have been treated to performances by:

• Chris Macchio

• Danny Rader

• Chris McHugh

• Glen Caruba

• Steve Mackey

• Jonathan Trebling

• Brent Rader

• Jason Webb

• Billy Justineau

• Eddy Dunlap Alicia Enstrom

• David hamilton

• Artemis II

• Arturo Sandoval

• Big & Rich

• Carrie Menolakos

• Chris Blue

• Craig Morgan

• David Phelps

• Eddie Floyd

• Nicolle Floyd (the narrator)

• Franklin Graham

• Gary levox

• Gary Sinise

• Gene Simmons (from Kiss)

• Gretchen Wilson

• Gertrudejene Holliday Stone

• Jason Crabb

• Jim Caviezel (the guy who played Jesus onetime and won’t ever let us forget it)

• Laura Osnes

• Lee Greenwood

• Liberty Worship Collective

• Lu Praise Gospel Choir

• Lynyrd Skynyrd

• Michael W. Smith

• Rachel Hale

• Original Voices of America (an Indigenous dance group)

• Sammy Hagar (the rocker)

• Stevie Salas

• Sainted

• Voices of Service

• Carlos Mateos Sr.

• Col Gerald York

• Maj. General Ondre Barry

• Dennis Quaid

• Several dancers, and

• Ceelo Green

I have no idea who most of these people are, if I’m being honest.

And yes, I do mean the rapper, Ceelo Green, who was apparently going to do a tribute to James Brown, in full wig and costume.

In fact, he has been teeing up the performance all week on his Instagram page.

including several posts of James Brown and himself dressed up as the legendary performer.

It’s all very cryptic…

These lyrics…

Now that I’m rich, I’m gonna go there and meet him…

and pay the price for my freedom

Wouldn’t that be nice

Now that I’m rich,

I’m gonna be my slavemaster’s neighbor’

I’m gonna sit at the table

Pass the beans and rice

How did we go from whips and chains to whips and chains?

How did we go from whips and chains to whips and chains?

But my car keys can’t unlock me…

My car keys can’t unlock me…

It could mean something, or it could mean nothing, and Ceelo was just clocking a check (hopefully in real money and not Trump meme coin, which would mean essentially performing for free.) I reached out to Ceelo to see if this was intended to be real life, a protest or a parody, but have received no comment as yet. Will keep you posted.

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On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass, a formerly enslaved man of approximately 34 years of age (slaves were not granted birth certificates so he estimated he was born in or around 1818) who had escaped from a plantation near Baltimore, Maryland in 1838 — becoming America’s foremost abolitionist — gave a keynote address at the Independence Day celebration held at Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York. Rather than falsely praise a country that had enslaved him, his mother, his family and his forebears, and which had worked to physically and mentally break him; he instead delivered a scathing rebuke of a nation that claimed to have been formed on the basis of liberty in 1776.

Read Frederick Douglass’ biography here

Below is the speech in full:

Or if you prefer to listen to it, best to hear it in the voice of the late, great, Ossie Davis:

Frederick Douglass: Fellows citizens, pardon me and allow me to ask, why am I called to speak here today? What have I, or those I represent to do with your national independence. Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice embodied in that Declaration of Independence extended to us? And am I therefore called upon to bring our humble offering to the national alter and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us? Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to those questions.

Frederick Douglass: Then would my task be light and my burden easy and delightful? For who is there so cold that a nation sympathy cannot warm him, who so adore it and dead to the claims of gratitude that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? Who so stolid and selfish that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nation’s Jubilee when the chains of servitude have been torn from his limbs? I am not that man. In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak. And the lame man leap as an heart, but such is not the case. I say it with a sad sense of disparity between us. I am not included within the pales of this glorious anniversary. Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you this day rejoice are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you, not by me.

The sunlight that brought life and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me. This 4th of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice. I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of Liberty and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems were inhuman mockery in sacrilegious irony. Do you mean citizens to mock me by asking me to speak today? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And let me warn you that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation Babylon, whose crimes towering up to heaven with thrown down by the breadth of the almighty, burying that nation in irrecoverable ruin.

Fellow citizens, above your national tumultuous joy I hear the mournful wail of millions whose chains heavy and grievous yesterday are today rendered more intolerable by the jubilant shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, may my right hand forget her cunning and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth. To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs and to chime in with the popular theme would be treason most sacrilegious and shocking and would make me a reproach before God and the world.

My subject then, fellow citizens, is American slavery. I shall see this day and it’s popular characteristics from the slave’s point of view. Standing here identified with the American bondsmen, making his wrongs mine. I do not hesitate to declare with all my soul that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July. Whether we turn to the declarations of the past or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting.

America is false to the past, false to the present and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will in the name of humanity, which is outraged in the name of Liberty, which is fettered in the name of the constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon dare to call and question and to denounce with all the emphasis I can command everything that serves to perpetuate slavery, the great sin and shame of America. I will not equivocate. I will not excuse. I will use the severest language I can command. And yet not one word shall escape me that any man whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice or who is not at heart, a slaveholder shall not confess to be right and just.

But I fancy, I hear some of my audience say it is just in this circumstance that you and your brother abolitionists fail to make a favorable impression upon the public mind. Would you argue more and denounce less? Would you persuade more and rebuke less? Your cause would be much more likely to succeed. But I admit, where all is plain, there is nothing to be argued. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The slave holders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. There are 72 crimes in the state of Virginia, which if committed by a black man, no matter how ignorant he be, subject him to the punishment of death, while only two of these same crimes will subject a white man to like punishment.

What is this but the acknowledgement that the slave is a moral, intellectual and responsible being? The manhood of the slave is conceded. It is admitted in the fact that Southern statute books are covered with enactments forbidding under severe fines and penalties, the teaching of the slave to read and write. When you can point to any such laws in reference to the beasts of the field, then I may consent to argue the manhood of the slave. When the dogs in your street, when the fowls of the air, when the cattle on your hills, when the fish of the sea and the reptiles that crawl shall be unable to distinguish the slave from a brute, then I will argue with you that the slave is a man.

For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. Is it not astonishing that while we are plowing, planting and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metal of brass, iron, copper, silver, and gold, that while we are reading, writing, and ciphering acting as clerks, merchants, and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators, and teachers that we are engaged in all the enterprises, common to other men, digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific feeding sheep and cattle on the hillside, living, moving, acting, thinking, planting, living in families as husbands, wives, and children, and above all confessing and worshiping the Christian God and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave.

We are called upon to prove that we are men. Would you have me argue that man is entitled to Liberty, that he is the rightful owner of his body? You have already declared it. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for Republicans? Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation? Is a matter, the set with great difficulty involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard to understand? How should I look today in the presence of Americans dividing and subdividing, a discourse to show that men have a natural right to freedom speaking of it, relatively and positively, negatively and affirmatively? To do so would be to make myself ridiculous and to offer an insult to your understanding. There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven, who does not know that slavery is wrong for him.

What? Am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to Rob them of their Liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their relations to their fellow men, to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with ions, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters? Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood and stained with pollution is wrong? No, I will not. I have better employment for my time and strength than such arguments would imply. What then remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not divine, that God did not establish it, that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? There is blasphemy in the thought. That, which is inhuman cannot be divine. Who can reason on such a proposition? They, that can, may. I cannot. The time for such argument is past.

At a time like this, scorching irony not convincing argument is needed. Oh, had I, the ability, and could I reach the nation’s ear, I would today pour out a fiery steam of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire. It is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm. The feeling of the nation must be quickened. And the conscience of the nation must be roused. The propriety of the nation must be startled. The hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed and it’s crimes against God and man must be denounced. What to the American slave is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.

To him, your celebration is a sham, your boasted Liberty, an unholy license, your national greatness, swelling vanity. Your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless, your shouts of Liberty and equality, hallow mocked, your prayers and hymns your sermons and Thanksgivings with all your religious parade in solemnity are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, a thin veil to cover up crimes, which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of the earth, guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour. Go search where you will. Roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world. Travel through South America. Search out every abuse and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me that for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.

The Internal Slave Trade

Take the American slave-trade, which we are told by the papers, is especially prosperous just now. Ex-Senator Benton tells us that the price of men was never higher than now. He mentions the fact to show that slavery is in no danger. This trade is one of the peculiarities of American institutions. It is carried on in all the large towns and cities in one half of this confederacy; and millions are pocketed every year, by dealers in this horrid traffic. In several states, this trade is a chief source of wealth. It is called (in contradistinction to the foreign slave-trade) “the internal slave-trade.” It is, probably, called so, too, in order to divert from it the horror with which the foreign slave-trade is contemplated. That trade has long since been denounced by this government, as piracy. It has been denounced with burning words, from the high places of the nation, as an execrable traffic. To arrest it, to put an end to it, this nation keeps a squadron, at immense cost, on the coast of Africa. Every-where, in this country, it is safe to speak of this foreign slave-trade, as a most inhuman traffic, opposed alike to the laws of God and of man. The duty to extirpate and destroy it, is admitted even by our DOCTORS OF DIVINITY. In order to put an end to it, some of these last have consented that their colored brethren (nominally free) should leave this country, and establish themselves on the western coast of Africa! It is, however, a notable fact, that, while so much execration is poured out by Americans, upon those engaged in the foreign slave-trade, the men engaged in the slave-trade between the states pass without condemnation, and their business is deemed honorable.

Behold the practical operation of this internal slave-trade, the American slave-trade, sustained by American politics and American religion. Here you will see men and women, reared like swine, for the market. You know what is a swine-drover? I will show you a man-drover. They inhabit all our Southern States. They perambulate the country, and crowd the highways of the nation, with droves of human stock. You will see one of these human flesh jobbers, armed with pistol, whip and bowie-knife, driving a company of a hundred men, women, and children, from the Potomac to the slave market at New Orleans. These wretched people are to be sold singly, or in lots, to suit purchasers. They are food for the cotton-field, and the deadly sugar- mill. Mark the sad procession, as it moves wearily along, and the inhuman wretch who drives them. Hear his savage yells and his blood-chilling oaths, as he hurries on his affrighted captives! There, see the old man, with locks thinned and gray. Cast one glance, if you please, upon that young mother, whose shoulders are bare to the scorching sun, her briny tears falling on the brow of the babe in her arms. See, too, that girl of thirteen, weeping, yes! weeping, as she thinks of the mother from whom she has been torn! The drove moves tardily. Heat and sorrow have nearly consumed their strength; suddenly you hear a quick snap, like the discharge of a rifle; the fetters clank, and the chain rattles simultaneously; your ears are saluted with a scream, that seems to have torn its way to the centre of your soul! The crack you heard, was the sound of the slave-whip; the scream you heard, was from the woman you saw with the babe. Her speed had faltered under the weight of her child and her chains! that gash on her shoulder tells her to move on. Follow this drove to New Orleans. Attend the auction; see men examined like horses; see the forms of women rudely and brutally exposed to the shocking gaze of American slave-buyers. See this drove sold and separated for ever; and never forget the deep, sad sobs that arose from that scattered multitude. Tell me citizens, WHERE, under the sun, you can witness a spectacle more fiendish and shocking. Yet this is but a glance at the American slave-trade, as it exists, at this moment, in the ruling part of the United States.

I was born amid such sights and scenes. To me the American slave-trade is a terrible reality. When a child, my soul was often pierced with a sense of its horrors. I lived on Philpot Street, Fell’s Point, Baltimore, and have watched from the wharves, the slave ships in the Basin, anchored from the shore, with their cargoes of human flesh, waiting for favorable winds to waft them down the Chesapeake. There was, at that time, a grand slave mart kept at the head of Pratt Street, by Austin Woldfolk. His agents were sent into every town and county in Maryland, announcing their arrival, through the papers, and on flaming “hand-bills,” headed CASH FOR NEGROES. These men were generally well dressed men, and very captivating in their manners. Ever ready to drink, to treat, and to gamble. The fate of many a slave has depended upon the turn of a single card; and many a child has been snatched from the arms of its mother, by bargains arranged in a state of brutal drunkenness.

The flesh-mongers gather up their victims by dozens, and drive them, chained, to the general depot at Baltimore. When a sufficient number have been collected here, a ship is chartered, for the purpose of conveying the forlorn crew to Mobile, or to New Or-leans. From the slave prison to the ship, they are usually driven in the darkness of night; for since the anti-slavery agitation, a certain caution is observed.

In the deep still darkness of midnight, I have been often aroused by the dead heavy footsteps, and the piteous cries of the chained gangs that passed our door. The anguish of my boyish heart was intense; and I was often consoled, when speaking to my mistress in the morning, to hear her say that the custom was very wicked; that she hated to hear the rattle of the chains, and the heart-rending cries. I was glad to find one who sympathized with me in my horror.

Fellow-citizens, this murderous traffic is, to-day, in active operation in this boasted republic. In the solitude of my spirit, I see clouds of dust raised on the highways of the South; I see the bleeding footsteps; I hear the doleful wail of fettered humanity, on the way to the slave-markets where the victims are to be sold like horses, sheep, and swine, knocked off to the highest bidder. There I see the tenderest ties ruthlessly broken, to gratify the lust, caprice and rapacity of the buyers and sellers of men. My soul sickens at the sight.

“Is this the land your Fathers loved, The freedom which they toiled to win? Is this the earth whereon they moved? Are these the graves they slumber in?”

But a still more inhuman, disgraceful, and scandalous state of things remains to be presented.

By an act of the American Congress, not yet two years old, slavery has been nationalized in its most horrible and revolting form. By that act, Mason & Dixon’s line has been obliterated; New York has be-come as Virginia; and the power to hold, hunt, and sell men, women and children, as slaves, remains no longer a mere state institution, but is now an institution of the whole United States. The power is co-extensive with the star-spangled banner, and American Christianity. Where these go, may also go the merciless slave-hunter. Where these are, man is not sacred. He is a bird for the sportsman’s gun. By that most foul and fiendish of all human decrees, the liberty and person of every man are put in peril. Your broad republican domain is hunting ground for men. Not for thieves and robbers, enemies of society, merely, but for men guilty of no crime. Your law-makers have commanded all good citizens to engage in this hellish sport. Your President, your Secretary of State, your lords, nobles, and ecclesiastics, enforce, as a duty you owe to your free and glorious country, and to your God, that you do this accursed thing. Not fewer than forty Americans, have, within the past two years, been hunted down, and, without a moment’s warning, hurried away in chains, and consigned to slavery, and excruciating torture. Some of these have had wives and children, dependent on them for bread; but of this, no account was made. The right of the hunter to his prey, stands superior to the right of marriage, and to all rights in this republic, the rights of God included!

For black men there are neither law, justice, humanity, nor religion.

The Fugitive Slave Law makes MERCY TO THEM, A CRIME; and bribes the judge who tries them. An American JUDGE GETS TEN DOLLARS FOR EVERY VICTIM HE CONSIGNS to slavery, and five, when he fails to do so. The oath of any two villains is sufficient, under this hell-black enactment, to send the most pious and exemplary black man into the remorseless jaws of slavery! His own testimony is nothing. He can bring no witnesses for himself. The minister of American justice is bound, by the law to hear but one side; and that side, is the side of the oppressor. Let this damning fact be perpetually told. Let it be thundered around the world, that, in tyrant-killing, king-hating, people-loving, democratic, Christian America, the seats of justice are filled with judges, who hold their offices under an open and palpable bribes, and are bound, in deciding in the case of a man’s liberty, to hear only his accusers!

In glaring violation of justice, in shameless disregard of the forms of administering law, in cunning arrangement to entrap the defenceless, and in diabolical intent, this Fugitive Slave Law stands alone in the annals of tyrannical legislation. I doubt if there be another nation on the globe, having the brass and the baseness to put such a law on the statute-book. If any man in this assembly thinks differently from me in this matter, and feels able to disprove my statements, I will gladly confront him at any suitable time and place he may select.

Religious Liberty

I take this law to be one of the grossest infringements of Christian Liberty, and, if the churches and ministers of our country were not stupidly blind, or most wickedly indifferent, they, too, would so regard it.

At the very moment that they are thanking God for the enjoyment of civil and religious liberty and for the right to worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences, they are utterly silent in respect to a law which robs religion of its chief significance, and makes it

utterly worthless to a world lying in wickedness. Did this law concern the “mint, anise and cummin,”—abridge the right to sing psalms, to partake of the sacrament, or to engage in any of the ceremonies of religion, it would be smitten by the thunder of a thousand pulpits. A general shout would go up from the church, demanding repeal, repeal, instant repeal! And it would go hard with that politician who presumed to solicit the votes of the people without inscribing this motto on his banner. Further, if this demand were not complied with, another Scotland would be added to the history of religious liberty, and the stern old covenanters would be thrown into the shade. A John Knox would be seen at every church door, and heard from every pulpit, and Fillmore would have no more quarter than was shown by Knox, to the beautiful, but treacherous Queen Mary of Scotland. The fact that the church of our country, (with fractional exceptions,) does not esteem “the Fugitive Slave Law” as a declaration of war against religious liberty, implies that that church regards religion simply as a form of worship, an empty ceremony, and not a vital principle, requiring active benevolence, justice, love and good will towards man. It esteems sacrifice above mercy; psalm-singing above right doing; solemn meetings above practical righteousness. A worship that can be conducted by persons who refuse to give shelter to the houseless, to give bread to the hungry, clothing to the naked, and who enjoin obedience to a law forbidding these acts of mercy, is a curse, not a blessing to mankind. The Bible addresses all such persons as “scribes, pharisees, hypocrites, who pay tithe of mint, anise, and cumin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy and faith.”

The Church Responsible

But the church of this country is not only indifferent to the wrongs of the slave, it actually takes sides with the oppressors. It has made itself the bulwark of American slavery, and the shield of American slave-hunters. Many of its most eloquent Divines, who stand as the very lights of the church, have shamelessly given the sanction of religion, and the bible, to the whole slave system. They have taught that man may, properly, be a slave; that the relation of master and slave is ordained of God; that to send back an escaped bondman to his master is clearly the duty of all the followers of the Lord Jesus Christ; and this horrible blasphemy is palmed off upon the world for Christianity.

For my part, I would say, welcome infidelity! welcome atheism! welcome anything! in preference to the gospel, as preached by those Divines! They convert the very name of religion into an engine of tyranny, and barbarous cruelty, and serve to confirm more infidels, in this age, than all the infidel writings of Thomas Paine, Voltaire, and Bolingbroke, put together, have done? These ministers make religion a cold and flinty-hearted thing, having neither principles of right action, nor bowels of compassion. They strip the love of God of its beauty, and leave the throne of religion a huge, horrible, repulsive form. It is a religion for oppressors, tyrants, man-stealers, and thugs. It is not that “pure and undefiled religion” which is from above, and which is “first pure, then peaceable, easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy.” But a religion which favors the rich against the poor; which exalts the proud above the humble; which divides mankind into two classes, tyrants and slaves; which says to the man in chains, stay there; and to the oppressor, oppress on; it is a religion which may be professed and enjoyed by all the robbers and enslavers of mankind; it makes God a respecter of persons, denies his fatherhood of the race, and tramples in the dust the great truth of the brotherhood of man. All this we affirm to be true of the popular church, and the popular worship of our land and nation—a religion, a church and a worship which, on the authority of inspired wisdom, we pronounce to be an abomination in the sight of God. In the language of Isaiah, the American church might be well addressed, “Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me: the new moons and Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting. Your new moons, and your appointed feasts my soul hatest. They are a trouble to me; I am weary to bear them; and when ye spread forth your hands I will hide mine eyes from you. Yea! when ye make many prayers, I will not hear. YOUR HANDS ARE FULL OF BLOOD; cease to do evil, learn to do well; seek judgment; relieve the oppressed; judge for the fatherless; plead for the widow.”

The American church is guilty, when viewed in connection with what it is doing to uphold slavery; but it is superlatively guilty when viewed in connection with its ability to abolish slavery.

The sin of which it is guilty is one of omission as well as of commission. Albert Barnes but uttered what the common sense of every man at all observant of the actual state of the case will receive as truth, when he declared that “There is no power out of the church that could sustain slavery an hour, if it were not sustained in it.”

Let the religious press, the pulpit, the Sunday school, the conference meeting, the great ecclesiastical, missionary, bible and tract associations of the land array their immense powers against slavery, and slave-holding; and the whole system of crime and blood would be scattered to the winds, and that they do not do this involves them in the most awful responsibility of which the mind can conceive.

In prosecuting the anti-slavery enterprise, we have been asked to spare the church, to spare the ministry; but how, we ask, could such a thing be done? We are met on the threshold of our efforts for the redemption of the slave, by the church. and ministry of the country, in battle arrayed against us; and we are compelled to fight or flee. From what quarter, I beg to know, has proceeded a fire so deadly upon our ranks, during the last two years, as from the Northern pulpit? As the champions of oppressors, the chosen men of American theology have appeared—men, honored for their so called piety, and their real learning. The LORDS of

Buffalo, the SPRINGS of New York, the LATHROPS of Auburn, the COXES and SPENCERS of Brooklyn, the GANNETS and SHARPS of Boston, the DEWEYS of Washington, and other great religious lights of the land, have, in utter denial of the authority of Him, by whom they professed to be called to the ministry, deliberately taught us, against the example of the Hebrews, and against the remonstrance of the Apostles, they teach that we ought to obey man’s law before the law of God.

My spirit wearies of such blasphemy; and how such men can be supported, as the “standing types and representatives of Jesus Christ,” is a mystery which I leave others to penetrate. In speaking of the American church, however, let it be distinctly understood that I mean the great mass of the religious organizations of our land. There are exceptions, and I thank God that there are. Noble men may be found, scattered all over these Northern States, of whom Henry Ward Beecher, of Brooklyn, Samuel J. May, of Syracuse, and my esteemed friend on the platform, are shining examples; and let me say further, that, upon these men lies the duty to inspire our ranks with high religious faith and zeal, and to cheer us on in the great mission of the slave’s redemption from his chains.

Religion in England and Religion in America

One is struck with the difference between the attitude of the American church towards the anti-slavery movement, and that occupied by the churches in England towards a similar movement in that country. There, the church, true to its mission of ameliorating, elevating, and improving the condition of mankind, came forward promptly, bound up the wounds of the West Indian slave, and restored him to his liberty. There, the question of emancipation was ahigh religious question. It was demanded, in the name of humanity, and according to the law of the living God. The Sharps, the Clarksons, the Wilberforces, the Buxtons, the Burchells and the Knibbs, were alike famous for their piety, and for their philanthropy. The anti-slavery movement there, was not an anti-church movement, for the reason that the church took its full share in prosecuting that movement: and the anti-slavery movement in this country will case to be an anti-church movement, when the church of this country shall assume a favorable, instead of a hostile position towards that movement.

Americans! your republican politics, not less than your republican religion, are flagrantly inconsistent. You boast of your love of liberty, your superior civilization, and your pure Christianity, while the whole political power of the nation, (as embodied in the two great political parties, is solemnly pledged to support and perpetuate the enslavement of three millions of your countrymen. You hurl your anathemas at the crowned headed tyrants of Russia and Austria, and pride yourselves on your Democratic institutions, while you yourselves consent to be the mere tools and body-guards of the tyrants of Virginia and Carolina. You invite to your shores fugitives of oppression from abroad, honor them with banquets, greet them with ovations, cheer them, toast them, salute them, protect them, and pour out your money to them like water; but the fugitives from your own land, you advertise, hunt, arrest, shoot and kill. You glory in your refinement, and your universal education; yet you maintain a system as barbarous and dreadful, as ever stained the character of a nation—a system begun in avarice, supported in pride, and perpetuated in cruelty. You shed tears over fallen Hungary, and make the sad story of her wrongs the theme of your poets, statesmen and orators, till your gallant sons are ready to fly to arms to vindicate her cause against her oppressors; but, in regard to the ten thousand wrongs of the American slave, you would enforce the strictest silence, and would hail him as an enemy of the nation who dares to make those wrongs the subject of public discourse! You are all on fire at the mention of liberty for France or for Ireland; but are as cold as an iceberg at the thought of liberty for the enslaved of America. You discourse eloquently on the dignity of labor; yet, you sustan a system which, in its very essence, casts a stigma upon labor. You can bare your bosom to the storm of British artillery, to throw off a three-penny tax on tea; and yet wring the last hard earned farthing from the grasp of the black laborers of your country. You profess to believe “that, of one blood, God made all nations of men to dwell on the face of all the earth,” and hath commanded all men, everywhere to love one another; yet you notoriously hate, (and glory in your hatred,) all men whose skins are not colored like your own. You declare, before the world, and are understood by the world to declare, that you “hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal; and are endowed by their Creator with certain, inalienable rights; and that, among these are, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”; and yet, you hold securely, in a bondage, which according to your own Thomas Jefferson, “is worse than ages of that which your fathers rose in rebellion to oppose,” a seventh part of the inhabitants of your country.

Fellow-citizens! I will not enlarge further on your national inconsistencies. The existence of slavery in this country brands your republicanism as a sham, your humanity as a base pretence, and your Christianity as a lie. It destroys your moral power abroad it corrupts your politicians at home. It saps the foundation of religion; it makes your name a hissing, and a bye-word to a mocking earth. It is the antagonistic force in your government, the only thing that seriously disturbs and endangers your Union. It fetters your progress; it is the enemy of improvement, the deadly foe of education; it fosters pride; it breeds insolence; it promotes vice; it shelters crime; it is a curse to the earth that supports it; and yet, you cling to it, as if it were the sheet anchor of all your hopes. Oh! be warned! be warned! a horrible reptile is coiled up in your nation’s bosom; the venomous creature is nursing at the tender breast of your youthful republic; for the love of God, tear away, and fling from you the hideous monster, and let the weight of twenty millions, crush and destroy it forever!

The Constitution

But it is answered in reply to all this, that precisely what I have now denounced is, in fact, guaranteed and sanctioned by the Constitution of the United States; that, the right to hold, and to hunt slaves is a part of that Constitution framed by the illustrious Fathers of this Republic. Then, I dare to affirm, notwithstanding all I have said before, your fathers stooped, basely stooped. “To palter with us in a double sense: And keep the word of promise to the ear, But break it to the heart.”

And instead of being the honest men I have before declared them to be, they were the veriest imposters that ever practiced on mankind. This is the inevitable conclusion, and from it there is no escape; but I differ from those who charge this baseness on the framers of the Constitution of the United States. It is a slander upon their memory, at least, so I believe.

There is not time now to argue the constitutional question at length; nor have I the ability to discuss it as it ought to be discussed. The subject has been handled with masterly power by Lysander Spooner, Esq., by William Goodell, by Samuel E. Sewall, Esq., and last, though not least, by Gerritt Smith, Esq. These gentlemen have, as I think, fully and clearly vindicated the Constitution from any design to support slavery for an hour.

Fellow-citizens! there is no matter in respect to which, the people of the North have allowed themselves to be so ruinously imposed upon, as that of the pro-slavery character of the Constitution. In that instrument I hold there is neither warrant, license, nor sanction of the hateful thing; but interpreted, as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. Is slavery among them? Is it at the gateway? or is it in the temple? it is neither.

While I do not intend to argue this question on the present occasion, let me ask, if it be not somewhat singular that, if the Constitution were intended to be, by its framers and adopters, a slave-holding instrument, why neither slavery, slaveholding, nor slave can anywhere be found in it.

What would be thought of an instrument, drawn up, legally drawn up, for the purpose of entitling the city of Rochester to a track of land, in which no mention of land was made? Now, there are certain rules of interpretation, for the proper understanding of all legal instruments. These rules are well established. They are plain, common-sense rules, such as you and I, and all of us, can understand and apply, without having passed years in the study of law.

I scout the idea that the question of the constitutionality, or unconstitutionality of slavery, is not a question for the people. I hold that every American citizen has a right to form an opinion of the constitution, and to propagate that opinion, and to use all honorable means to make his opinion the prevailing one. With out this right, the liberty of an American citizen would be as insecure as that of a Frenchman. Ex-Vice-President Dallas tells us that the constitution is an object to which no American mind can be too attentive, and no American heart too devoted. He further says, the constitution, in its words, is plain and intelligible, and is meant for the home-bred, unsophisticated understandings of our fellow-citizens. Senator Berrien tells us that the Constitution is the fundamental law, that which controls all others. The charter of our liberties, which every citizen has a personal interest in understanding thoroughly. The testimony of Senator Breese, Lewis Cass, and many others that might be named, who are everywhere esteemed as sound lawyers, so regard the constitution. I take it, therefore, that it is not presumption in a private citizen to form an opinion of that instrument.

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Now, take the constitution according to its plain reading, and I defy the presentation of a single proslavery clause in it. On the other hand it will be found to contain principles and purposes, entirely hostile to the existence of slavery.

I have detained my audience entirely too long already. At some future period I will gladly avail myself of an opportunity to give this subject a full and fair discussion.

Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented, of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation, which must inevitably, work the downfall of slavery. “The arm of the Lord is not shortened,” and the doom of slavery is certain.

I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. While drawing encouragement from “the Declaration of Independence,” the great principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age. Nations do not now stand in the same relation to each other that they did ages ago. No nation can now shut itself up, from the surrounding world, and trot round in the same old path of its fathers without interference. The time was when such could be done. Long established customs of hurtful character could formerly fence themselves in, and do their evil work with social impunity. Knowledge was then confined and enjoyed by the privileged few, and the multitude walked on in mental darkness. But a change has now come over the affairs of mankind.

Walled cities and empires have become unfashionable. The arm of commerce has borne away the gates of the strong city. Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe. It makes its pathway over and under the sea, as well as on the earth. Wind, steam, and lightning are its chartered agents. Oceans no longer divide, but link nations together. From Boston to London is now a holiday excursion. Space is comparatively annihilated. Thoughts expressed on one side of the Atlantic, are distinctly heard on the other.

The far off and almost fabulous Pacific rolls in grandeur at our feet. The Celestial Empire, the mystery of ages, is being solved. The fiat of the Almighty, “Let there be Light,” has not yet spent its force. No abuse, no outrage whether in taste, sport or avarice, can now hide itself from the all-pervading light. The iron shoe, and crippled foot of China must be seen, in contrast with nature. Africa must rise and put on her yet unwoven garment. “Ethiopia shall stretch out her hand unto God.” In the fervent aspirations of William Lloyd Garrison, I say, and let every heart join in saying it:

God speed the year of jubilee The wide world o’er! When from their galling chains set free, Th’oppress’d shall vilely bend the knee, And wear the yoke of tyranny Like brutes no more. That year will come, and freedom’s reign, To man his plundered rights again Restore. God speed the day when human blood Shall cease to flow! In every clime be understood, The claims of human brotherhood, And each return for evil, good, Not blow for blow; That day will come all feuds to end, And change into a faithful friend Each foe. God speed the hour, the glorious hour, When none on earth Shall exercise a lordly power, Nor in a tyrant’s presence cower; But all to manhood’s stature tower, By equal birth! THAT HOUR WILL COME, to each, to all, And from his prison-house, the thrall Go forth. Until that year, day, hour, arrive, With head, and heart, and hand I’ll strive, To break the rod, and rend the gyve, The spoiler of his prey deprive So witness Heaven! And never from my chosen post, Whate’er the peril or the cost, Be driven.

#End.

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SCOTUS Droppings

The Supreme Court dropped a bunch of decisions this morning, so let’s go through them briefly:

The majority ruled in favor of E. Jean Carroll and against Trump’s latest attempt to set aside the civil jury verdict that he did indeed sexually abuse and defame her. G…

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That’s how he describes what Bari Weiss has done to his beloved 60 Minutes, the program to which he’d given 37 years of his life — just a few years less than the time he has been married. And Pelley, who was fired last week by the Zionist crew who swallowed CBS is not keeping quiet about it. In his first sit-down intervi…

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In fact, according to his attorneys, if he chose to “move fast and break things” by putting a stick of dynamite under it and bringing it down like the Twin Towers, he could do it. And no one could stop him.

And that’s their

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There is a time to negotiate. And there is a time to demand.

Back in January of 2016, this was the press release issued by the White House:

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Viewership of the three major network offerings is down 70-80 percent in the “money demo” (18-49) and 9 percent overall versus the peak year for the genre, 2015; the year Colbert took over The Late Show from David Letterman, Jimmy Fallon succeeded…

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In an unsigned order, the John Crow Roberts court has effectively decreed that only Republicans can gerrymander their states to lock in partisan political control of federal and state elected offices. Louisiana can do it, literally while people are voting. Alabama can do it, despite this same court having ruled just…

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Isn’t it rich? Aren’t they a pair? Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, and Jeff Landry: the “lock ‘em up” Republican governor of Louisiana share a clear politi…

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Sam Alito knows he’s wrong. He just doesn’t want anyone to say so out loud.

And so when he and his corrupt Gang of Six rushed, in unprecedented fashion, to make his “Fuck Them Blacks” ruling go into effect immediately, rather than in the 32 days it almost always takes for a Supreme Court decision to activate, he didn’t expect to be challenged. Not least …

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Let me explain.

First: there was his name: Ronald Wilson Reagan … six letters in each part … giving you: 6-6-6. And then there’s the matter of him surviving what was supposed to be…

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Welcome to my new mini-series: Chronicles of MAGA, in which I’ll attempt to lay out the backstory of how the American right wound up in the hands of people like Nick Fuentes — the nazi-curious streamer who has become one of the most quoted and quotable figures in the America First movement — and how the MAGA schism over Israel is the likely precursor to…

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Step one: fix your face

And by “fix,” I mean surgically alter the bone structure of your grill and add heaping helpings of thick, pancake makeup so you look more or less …

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John Mitchell (born Sept. 15, 1913, Detroit, Mich., U.S.—died Nov. 9, 1988, Washington, D.C.) was the U.S. attorney general during the Nixon administration who served 19 months in prison (1977–79) for his participation in the Watergate Scandal.

And here are paragrap…

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