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It only remains that we name a few things, which we trust our Southern brethren will unite with us in saying that they should refrain from doing. (1.) You ought not to, and we trust you will not, betray impatience and irritation, whenever we of the North attempt to press the claims of the enslaved on your attention. Your doing this,–as you sometimes have,–seems to indicate, that, in your opinion, we Northern Christians have no responsibility in regard to slavery and its evils; and that when we discuss this theme we make ourselves “busybodies in other men’s matters.” To the justness of this opinion we cannot subscribe. While we disclaim all right or intention to break our compact with you as States, we feel that American slavery is a question of too great moment to ourselves and to unborn generations for us to have no concern with or responsibility for; and as patriots, as philanthropists, as Christians, we are constrained to do all that we rightfully may for the downfall of this hoary system of wrong and woe. If any of you differ with us in opinion on this theme, we trust you will allow us to discuss it to our heart’s content; and that you will listen to our reasonings with Christian meekness and candor. Not to do so will be construed as an evidence of intrinsic weakness in your cause. (2.) You will freely admit, we presume, that certain practices are authorized by your slave laws, in which you must not indulge even so long as by any necessity you hold slaves. Your slave codes, for example, do not recognize the sanctity of family ties and the domestic affections as existing among slaves; but, as Christian masters, you must. You doubtless believe, as do we, that the marriage relation, with all its rights and immunities, was as much designed for the negro as for the white man; that he, as truly as the other, is entitled to “cleave unto his wife,” unexposed to the danger of man’s putting asunder what God hath so closely joined, that “they are no more twain, but one flesh.” You believe, too, that God united husband and wife thus indissolubly, not simply that they might be a help and solace to each other in the toilsome pilgrimage of life, but that the children with which God should bless them might grow up under their supervision, and by them be qualified for a career of usefulness and honor. Thus you believe, and believing thus, you will not, we trust, counteract God’s benevolent designs, by countenancing, in your own practice, the separation of husbands and wives, or of parents and their offspring. We feel assured, that, whatever your laws may allow, or non-professing masters around you may do, you will never ignore the conjugal or parental rights of your servants, or indulge in any thing adapted to mar their domestic enjoyment. Were you to do so, we confess we could not extend to you “the right hand of fellowship” as brethren in Christ. Were a church-member of ours to practise thus, we should regard him as amenable to discipline. We should also regard it as disciplinable for a master to overwork, or brutally chastise, or but half feed and clothe his servants; or to hold slaves for mere purposes of gain, or to traffic in them. None of these inhumanities could we reconcile with the obligations of a Christian profession; and we confidently hope that in these views you will heartily concur, and that with them your practice will correspond.

Christian brethren of the North and the South! The question we have been considering is one of vast moment. Upon the right disposition of it are suspended, under God, interests of immeasurable value, and which stretch far out into the unseen future of our country and the world. Coming ages and unborn generations are to be affected; favorably or otherwise, by the decision of this vexed question; and, brethren, unless I misjudge, its right decision is, to a very great extent, lodged in our hands. As decides the American church, so, methinks, will decide the American people. And now,–may I confess it?–I have dared to hope that the sentiments of this Essay are not only sound, but in unison with the views of the great mass of American Christians. Are we not agreed in this: that American slavery is a system of deep injustice and wrong, not sanctioned by the Word or the providence of God; fraught with incalculable mischief to the interests of both masters, and slaves, and to the social and religious well-being of our whole country; a blot on the escutcheon both of the nation and of the church; a weapon for scepticism to wield, and an obstacle to the introduction of millennial glory; and hence, a system which ought speedily to terminate, and which all good men should unitedly oppose and seek to subvert? If we are thus agreed, let us join hands as well as hearts, and, swerving neither to the extreme of passive indifference on the one hand nor to that of erratic fanaticism on the other, in the majesty of principle let us move calmly onward, a phalanx of Christian philanthropists, attempting naught but what they are assured God would have them attempt, and employing only such means as are warranted by an enlightened conscience. Leaning prayerfully on Him who hears the sighing of the oppressed, let us push vigorously forward, and, though the year of jubilee has not yet fully come, be assured it will come,–that proud day, when not only “throughout all the land,” but throughout the civilized world, liberty shall be proclaimed “unto all the inhabitants thereof.” Hasten its advent, “O Thou that hearest prayer,” and that “delightest in mercy!” Amen and Amen.